This morning I went across the street to a place called Munich for breakfast. I don´t know why it is called Munich, but they have posters of, you guessed it, Munich, on the walls, as well as pictures of some famous German guys, maybe Handel, Bach (was he German?), etc. I had a nice breakfast for half of what my hotel charges.
As I was sitting there, I saw taxis across the street. My plan for the day was to find a taxi driver to take me to some small villages outside of Puebla so that I could see a little bit of what life is like in the countryside and maybe see some more indigenous type places. I sat there rehearsing in my mind what I was going to say, and also checking out the drivers to see if there was one that I felt comfortable with. I didn´t want one who smoked, or looked like he drank too much, or who had an old car that would be uncomfortable.
As I left Munich, the driver who was next in the queue looked like he was ok. I approached his window and asked him how much he would charge me for a full day because I wanted to visit some small villages outside of Puebla. He said he´d charge 100 pesos an hour, which seemed like a better way to do it than per day (because how long is a day anyway?)
So, I ran upstairs and got my stuff and came back down and we were on our way.
I had a little guidebook that they gave me in the tourist information center that had different routes that you could take to visit what the guy in the office called magical pueblos, because they were more indigenous and had more of a mystical quality to them. I chose the huipil and coffee route - for no special reason.
We visited the first little village and where wasn´t a whole lot there. My driver stopped several people and asked if there was anything of interest that we could see. They told us there was some kind of a well or something, which we found, but it was dry and had a cross in it. There was a sign saying that it was commissioned by Hernan Cortes, who my driver told me was a hero of the revolution - scary that he thought that, as Cortes was one of the conquistators. Oh well.
It seemed like we might end up having to go pretty far on this tour and then have to retrace our steps to get back, which didn´t appeal to me once we got started. Seemed like all we were going to find were churches and maybe a few old haciendas. So instead I told my driver I wanted to take a route that took us around the volcano La Malinche and headed back to Puebla. There were some places that we could stop along the way that looked interested.
As we headed around La Malinche, we passed through some beautiful countryside with amazing panoramic vistas of the mountains and several volcanos popping up here and there. We´d stop every now and then so I could take a picture and we would enjoy the fresh air.
We passed one old building that was an old hacienda and there was church next to it. My driver asked if I wanted to go there, and we did. It was built up on a hill above the road we were traveling on. The church was nice but the view was amazing. I took the above photo. As we stood there admiring the views and enjoying the fresh air a car drove by. They saw us and stopped and turned around. I thought either they were other tourists who were going to ask us for directions or maybe someone from the town to ask if we needed help.
Two guys got out of the car and one of them was carrying a walkie talkie type thing. They asked what we were doing. Our driver said we were just taking photos and looking. They asked what we were looking at. Our driver told them we were looking at the views.
They told us we were not allowed to take photos there. That if we wanted to take photos we had to go further up. I of course would have argued with them and gotten all pissy, but my driver just went along with it and apologized and handled the whole thing very diplomatically. This is why I decided to post the photo. Who do they think they are to tell us we can´t take photos of their stinky little town (well, it didn´t actually stink, but they did).
We continued on and passed through several other small towns, each time stopping at the church. At one we climed up the bell tower because we saw people up there. We didn´t realize that they were actually there to ring the bells. The views were amazing, and it was even more amazing when the bells started ringing. My driver said he had never been on the roof of a church, and I said neither had I. It was a special experience for both of us, and fortunately the people there were nicer than in old stinkyville.
After a while I started getting tired and wanted to return to Puebla. We were in the state of Tlaxclala, which is the smallest state in Mexico. We didn´t stop in the capital, Tlaxclala, because I was tired and just wanted to come home.
It was a fun trip and I was glad I was able to help out my driver, whose name was Gustavo. He was really nice and had spent some time in New York working in a pizza shop. I enjoyed talking to him, though after a few hours my brain went into overload and Spanish became unintelligible to me.
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