Recovery in Cholula

The plan for the group’s final day in Puebla was to visit the nearby town of Cholula, known for its pyramid with the Nuestra Señora de los Remedios on top, and all of its other churches; as well as to visit the nearby volcanoes. That plan, however, began at 8:00 am, and having only gotten home from drinking at 6:00 am, my plan differed somewhat.

My plan involved this: sleep. Sleep until I could sleep no longer sleep or until the pain went away. Sleep until I recovered from being run over by the overnight tequila truck. Sleep until my newly-crushed soul had time to start mending and the fire between my temples began to turn into mere embers. I slept until 11:00 am.

As you know, after a night of drinking, nothing is better than some grease. I walked around to the zocalo and thought about going to McDonald’s or KFC for some traditional U.S.-style grease, but at the last minute I decided to keep with the Mexican-food only (up to this time) diet and I stopped by a restaurant and had an omelette with chorizo and refried beans. It was actually much better than it sounds. After replenishing my grease reserves, I went back to the hotel.

It had become too late to visit both the volcanoes and Cholula, but the hotel could set-up a tour of Cholula at 1:30, so I decided to do that. As I expected, and as I mentioned above, the top thing to do/see in Cholula was to climb to the top of the Great Pyramid of Cholula and visit Nuestra Señora de los Remedios sanctuary at the top. Even though it is pretty hard to even determine that there is a pyramid there, because it appears to be a hill from a distance because of the overgrowth, it is still a popular attraction.

Cholula is legendary as a town in which the Spaniards, after learning of an ambush by the locals, crushed the locals, decided to build churches on top of all of the local landmarks and that now there are 365 churches in Cholula, one for each day of the year. In reality, there are something between 35-45 churches in Cholula, depending on what you count as a church, I suppose. Nevertheless, there are many impressive and unique churches around the city and it was worth a visit. We also visited some artisan shops and tried some mezcal, but the rest of the trip to Cholula wasn’t very exciting.

I returned to the hotel around 5:00 and I decided that a nap was probably a good idea. After I slept for about an hour or so, a group of us went to Vittorio’s, an Italian restaurant near the zocalo that once held (if it doesn’t currently hold) the record for the largest pizza ever made. Nevertheless, I still went with Mexican food as the menu featured tacos de arrachera with pico de gallo and guacamole. The food was very good, but I only put down a couple of beers as I was still recovering from the all-night tequila bar the night before.

At night, I worked on my blogs for a little while and then called it an early night because we were catching a five-hour bus in the morning for Oaxaca. I’ll get into that in the next entry.

¡Lucha Libre en Puebla!

After having a few drinks with some friends in the Plaza de la Constitucion, it was time to go back and get ready for the night’s activities. Those activities were to include street food, rasslin’ and drinking, so a good time was expected.

Most of the group headed out to Lucha Libre in Puebla. Lucha libre, as you know if you’ve ever watched Telemundo, is Mexican professional wrestling. But before heading into the event, we needed to get some dinner, so we stopped at a local street vendor to get some food. At the stand, the woman behind the grill was making cemita pueblas (if I’m not mistaken, but I may be), Mexican sandwiches commonly cooked by street vendors here. The most popular sandwich appeared to be the milanesa sandwiches on bread, but I opted for chorizo on tortillas because I do love me some chorizo. The sandwich/taco came with chorizo, quesillo, potatoes and cactus. There may have been other things on it as well, but that’s primarily what I recall. After doing my happy dance, I scarfed down the sandwich and moved on.

Across the street was the stadium for the Lucha Libre. In Puebla, I understand that the atmosphere at the event is much more mild than it is in Mexico City, but that everything is much more intimate in Puebla because it is held in a tiny arena. About half (seven) of us bought tickets for the close-up section of the stadium and we got seats four rows from the ring. After entering the arena, but before we had even gotten to our seats, we had been stopped by a vendor to buy beer. She didn’t have change for a 100-peso note, so I had to get my change in more beer. Already, I was beginning to suspect it was going to be a long, but good, night.

The wrestling show was a lot of fun and it was great to sit so close to the action. The action wasn’t significantly different from the action at an American wrestling match. Lots of jumps from the top ropes and people being thrown around the ring and commotion on the floor outside of the ring. There were crowd favorites and one thing that I found interesting is that fans of either wrestler or teams of wrestlers would sit on either side of the stadium in the upper decks. The wrestlers would play to their audience and insult the other side of the room. It was odd for me to see wrestlers standing on the top ropes and flipping off the other side’s fans. Do we get away with that in the United States? (I’ve only been once in the U.S. and that was over twenty-five years ago, so I don’t remember.) Anyway, there was also a hell of a lot of beer, which made it that much more fun.

After wrestling, the downstairs group decided to go to a tequila bar. As you can imagine, there was a lot more beer and . . . wait for it . . . tequila. I had a shot of tequila and told the rest of the group that it would be “just this once.” I told them this for all six or seven of my shots if I remember correctly. I also recall dancing more than I have in a long, long time – perhaps the longest I’ve ever danced without knocking somebody down and stepping on her. We decided to stay until the tour leader broke his record of longest time at this bar with a group, which was 4:30 am. We left at 4:32, but then decided to re-enter. Don’t ask me why. (Incidentally, the photo for this paragraph is from the trough in the men's room at the bar. Like everything I've encountered in Mexico, it's full of limes. I found that interesting.)

We left around 5:30 am and a couple people stopped off for street vendor hamburgers. While this happened a couple women in our group disappeared. We looked around for them for about 20-minutes, couldn’t find them, and went back to the hotel. We arrived around 6:00 and they were there, so all ended well. We all knew that it was going to make for a painful final day in Puebla, but it was a great time.

On to Puebla!!!

After several days in Mexico City, I was ready to move on and up next was Puebla. Puebla is the fourth largest city in Mexico and is most famous, historically-speaking, for being the site of General Ignacio Zaragoza’s defeat of the French army on May 5, 1862 that gave birth to Cinco de Mayo, which Estadounidenses have celebrated ever since by drinking Corona and perpetuating some of their favorite stereotypes. (Of course, the French took back Puebla soon afterwards, but nobody here seems to remember the date on which that happened.) That being said, the only things that I really knew about Puebla were that its soccer team has the same logo and sponsor as D.C. United and that I needed to try some Mole Poblano.

The bus ride from Mexico City to Puebla took a little under two hours, though that is not factoring in the forty minutes or so in which we waited at the bus station. We arrived around noon and checked in to the hotel. We stayed at the Hotel Victoria, which isn’t the cleanest or nicest hotel on the planet but is located very near Puebla’s Zocalo, or city center. My room also had a little balcony that actually provided a nice view into the Zocalo.

After checking in, we did a little orientation walk around the center of Puebla. We went to the Zocalo and it was similar in outlay, if not scale, to that of Mexico City. It was Valentine’s Day so there were balloons and flowers and people selling the aforementioned everywhere. On one side of the square (as in Mexico City, called the Plaza de la Revolucion) are the city government buildings and on the other side is the cathedral, which was built in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. Once again, the weather was unbelievably gorgeous and it allowed us to take lots of photos of the picturesque plaza.

By this time, it was time to eat and we went to a little restaurant a few blocks away from the Zocalo for lunch. Because we didn’t have much time in Puebla, I knew that if there was Mole Poblano on the menu, I was going to get it here because I couldn’t leave Pueblo without trying it. Sure enough, it was on the menu and I ordered it. What came out was a plate with a large chicken leg smothered in mole sauce and some refried beans. Like the mole negro that I had tried in Mexico City, the Mole Poblano was sweeter than I was anticipating, but it was much better than the mole negro sauce that I had tried before. It went well with the chicken and the beer and a good time was had by all.

After lunch, I went back to the hotel to work on my soccer blog for a while and a few friends were going to text me when they had finished shopping so we could grab a few drinks before the night’s festivities – which included street food and wrestling. After a couple hours, I heard back from them and found them sitting on a balcony overlooking the Plaza de la Constitucion, sipping on some margaritas and I decided to partake. I had a few and have come to the realization that Mexican food and drink contain significantly more lime than I’m used to. I’m not saying that it kept me from having a second one. I’m just making a comment.

This entry seems a little short but I think the story of the Cemitas and the Lucha Libre may take a little while, so I’m going to hold off on those until the next time. See you then.