Week #15: Puebla, Atlixco y Metepec

It has been another amazing week traveling in Mexico! We spent most of the past week in Puebla which is the 4th largest city (3.25 million) according to most sources. You would think that this would be a straight forward exercise to figure out the largest cities in Mexico but I came up with many different lists that had Puebla anywhere from 4th to 6th largest - the only thing the lists all agree upon is that Mexico City is always the largest by far! 

Puebla was founded by the Spanish in 1531 and has a long and storied history of battles with many different countries including the Spanish, French and Americans. Cinco de Mayo is a big holiday here to commemorate May 5, 1862 when Mexico was victorious over the French in the Battle of Puebla. In this battle, the French were much better armed than the Mexican army but many of them had contracted cholera and were severely dehydrated so the Mexicans were able to defeat them despite their smaller, poorly equipped forces. We learned this all on a walking tour that we took around the city which was very informative. Puebla is a very vibrant, bustling city that is well-known for its universities, industry and excellent local cuisine. Puebla has the world's largest Volkswagen plant outside of Germany in addition to an Audi plant. 

As we do in most cities that we visit, we spent days wandering the city finding our favorite cafes, bakeries, shops and museums to visit. We sampled three unique food items in Puebla - cemitas poblanas, dulces (sweets) and obscure liquors. Cemitas are these huge sandwiches with lots of cheese, avocado, a meat of your choice (can be vege too), chipotle peppers and a strange herb called papalo. Neither Ginny nor I were big fans of papalo as it's very bitter - kind of a cross between arugula and cilantro and tastes like dish soap. Some of the candies were very good though such as this coconut ball wrapped in candied lime rinds. We also liked this liquor called a pasita which is made from raisins (see photo below). The bar we went to offers a cash prize and covers your bar tab if you can drink 100 pasitas in one sitting - apparently only one person has completed it and legend has it that he died afterwards - from alcohol poisoning, of course!     

Another thing that Puebla is well known for is Talavera ceramics and tiles. The approach was brought over from Spain but they've made it their own style here using many of the minerals available from the city's proximity to the Izta-Popo volcanoes. All of the Talavera ceramics are hand painted and they are quite beautiful - see photos below. 

The final thing of note during our Puebla visit is that we parked our van right outside of a police station which was a first for us. We had read about this station being particularly welcoming and friendly so we decided to give it a shot. There were always cops around so we felt fine leaving our van for extended periods while we explored the city. They also let us come into the station to use the bathroom and even let us take a few hot showers as well! See photo below of me with a few of the Puebla police officers (no, we did not rehearse that pose - weird, eh?).  

  

Before driving south to Oaxaca, we decided to pay a visit to Atlixco which is another pueblo magico less than an hour outside of Puebla and in the shadow of the giant volcano Popocatepatl. Fruits, vegetables and flowers grow really well in Atlixco due to the favorable climate and because of all the volcanic activity which makes the soil especially fertile. The best part of our visit to Atlixco was actually the place that we stayed for two nights which was an old textile factory that had been converted to a conference center. It was in the small village of Metepec and employed 3,400 workers at the height of its operation which spanned nearly 70 years from 1900 to 1970. We had a nice quiet place to park our van surrounded by greenery and access to a pool and hot showers - it was absolute bliss! 

In closing, I'll leave you with a few additional observations from our van travels in Mexico:

- VW bugs rule the road - probably due to the local VW plant, there are tons of VW bugs and buses all over the show and I'm talking about the old school style - it's pretty sweet!

- Mexicans love their hazard lights! Hazard lights are used sparingly in the US and typically reserved for vehicle breakdowns, double parking and the like. Mexicans, on the other hand, turn their hazard lights on at the drop of a hat - cow in the road, I'm driving a little slow, there's a good song on the radio...you name it! 

- PDA - it's quite common to see people hugging and kissing in public, in the parks, plazas, etc. Ginny has a theory that it's because many people live at home longer so couples have to come outside to have their alone time, without abuela sharing the couch.

- Car washing - it's a crazy popular thing down here! In fact, it's hard to go outside without seeing someone washing a car!

- Donde estan los gatos? While dogs are a dime a dozen, it's fairly rare to see a cat walking the streets...probably because of all the dogs!

- Police - we're convinced that Mexico has the highest number of cops per capita than any place that we've traveled to. We think it may just be a job creation strategy as we can't figure out what most of them do.  

- On our walking tour in Puebla, we learned that there is no driver's license test in Mexico - just pay the fee and get your license. So definitely look both ways when crossing the road in Mexico!

- Most cities we visit have pickup trucks circulating the neighborhood blasting a recording to let people know that will take their old appliances, dead batteries and other miscellaneous junk. It's a pretty nice service!