Happy New Year

Things were really dead when I went out this morning. There was hardly anyone on the street and everything was closed. I had breakfast in my hotel because Munich was closed.

I started thinking that maybe a week in Puebla was too much and maybe I should find a way to go to Veracruz like I had planned. I didn´t want to take another taxi adventure and was getting tired of walking around the streets of Puebla and seeing tiled buildings and churches.

Well, eventually I ventured down to the zocalo to talk to the tour operators there. It seemed like it was a good day to go to Cholula - the place my students told me had 365 churches. Even though I read in my guide books that it is not true, my taxi driver, Gustavo, yesterday said the same thing. When I asked him if that wasn´t a legend, he said no, it is true.

Well anyway I spoke to a guy at a little tour booth set up in the zocalo who was a trip. He was an older guy missing a few teeth who talked a lot. He told me a lot about Puebla, about Cholula and about some of the other places I could visit. His Spanish was very clear and easy to understand and I thought it would be really interesting traveling with him. The only problem was that if I went alone, I would have to pay for 2 or 3 people (I didn´t really understand that part).

I checked back a little later and there were other people who had signed up for the tour, so off we went.

I can´t remember the tour guide´s first name, but his last name was Sanchez, and he was so smart, I referred to him as ´the doctor´so I will call him Dr. Sanzhez. Turned out he also drove our bus.

It was me, a family from Guadalajara and a cute Spanish guy and a Swiss girl who had met that morning and apparently hit it off (I wish I had hit it off with a cute Spanish guy).

The tour was amazing and fortunately we visited more than just Cholula (which by the way, Dr. Sanchez confirmed did NOT have 365 churches). We started off at San Francisco Acatepec, which is pictured above. The doctor explained to me earlier that when the Spanish colonized Puebla they wanted Puebla to be a Spanish city, but that the outlying villages, even though they had Catholocism imposed on them, also maintained their own believes and integrated the two. You could really see it in this church. The outside was completely covered with tiles of many different colors and all kinds of decoration, but the inside was what was really astounding. Every inch of every wall and all of the ceilings were covered with decoration - faces, animals, flowers, fruits, there were even mirrors that reflected everything in the church and made it seem even more elaborate. You could see where many indigenous symbols like the sun and the moon had been incorporated and were there along with saints and other Christian symbols. Unfortunately, because I couldn´t use a flash, the photos are a little blurred, but they are in my photo album anyway. This is what I wanted to see yesterday, but didn´t (I didn´t know that this is exactly what I wanted to see, but this was it).

The next place we went to was Santa Maria Tonantzintla. There the church was very similar inside to San Francisco Acatepec, but the outiside was not as elaborate. What was different on the outside was that there was a mass going on. The church was too small to hold everyone that was there, so the mass was actually happening in the courtyard of the church, which was covered by a huge tarp. There were several hundred people there and it was sort of a carnival atmosphere. There was a band playing tubas a flutes and drums, and people selling a chocolate drink that they were foaming up by using a kind of a stick that they twirled between their palms. We walked through the courtyard to the entrance of the church which we entered when the service was finally over. Again, the walls and ceiling were covered completely with stucco imagery. It was just amazing. I was glad we got to visit while the church was actually in use, because that added to the power of the visit. I don´t know, if I could attend a mass like that, maybe I would go to church.

We went from there to Cholula, which was also interesting but not nearly as interesting as these two little villages. Cholula has the largest pyramid in the world (in volume not in height) and there is a church built on top of it. Most of the pyramid is covered by grass, and parts of it are exposed as well as a part that has been badly restored. We climbed to the top and had an amazing view of Cholula and the surrounding volcanos, but it was really windy and there was dust and kinds of other things blowing around. It was especially windy at the top of the pyramid.

Our tour was supposed to finish at 3:30, but we didn´t leave Cholula until 4. It was really great and I plan to visit Dr. Sanchez and see what other adventures he has in store for me.