Next on the itinerary was Puebla, two to three hours drive from the national capital (depending very much on the vicissitudes of CDMX district traffic), the scene of one of Mexico’s most recent and all-too frequent earthquakes (September 2017). Puebla has long thought of itself as the country’s second city (although in pure population terms one and probably two other Mexican cities would be slotted in between it and the “market leader” Mexico City), and it has long frustratingly striven to free itself from its demeaning tourist tag as a Mexico City day trip.
Highway 190 going south-east from Mexico City takes you to Puebla, a journey of around 140km❈. I must admit that before we went there I had never heard of Puebla, and I was surprised, or at least intrigued, a tad intrigued anyway, to discover (according to the tourism info blurb at least) that it was Mexico’s second largest city! And I was even more fascinated (yawn!) to discover it was the BEST city in all the country. ‘Best’ is an absolute descriptor and one subject to being variously evaluated by the use of different criteria.
This peerless assessment of Puebla’s ‘bestness’ was supplied by Hector, our 24-year-old, fresh-faced tour leader who just happened to be a native of that same city. Hector is a recent law graduate from the University of Puebla – you guessed it…the BEST university in all of Mexico! (I refrained from asking Hector if it was also the BEST law school in the country as well, I figured that one was pretty much so indelibly inked in that it could with full confidence be safely left unsaid!).
Soda drinks dispenser machine, Puebla style!Hector’s unchecked enthusiasm for his hometown (which some, unkind people elsewhere might view in a harsh light as compensatory jealousy of the sprawling, dominant metropolis of Mexico City) was something I found nonetheless quite endearing…good to think that parochialism, the provincialism of the less significant periphery, is an always dependable constant in society and in life. I’m convinced that the elimination of provincialism as we know it, along with that of self-interest (in fact the two are synonyms for each other in this context) would surely be clear and ultimate confirmation that western civilisation (indeed all civilisation) was doomed, irrevocably on it’s last legs!
When we hit the city outskirts late in the afternoon we thought our hotel would be close by. Instead it took a tortuously drawn-out period of time to get to it thanks to it being peak time (ie, crawl time for Puebla autos!), traffic was banking up along all the main thoroughfares. After passing half-a-dozen or more hotels that looked like our prospective hotel (not that we knew what it looked like!), we arrived at the Hotel San Angel as nightfall was fast approaching. Outside it looked pretty drab but inside the hotel, the layout, furnishings and stylish central courtyard gave it a very faded appearance of old-fashioned charm.
As we were booking in and being allocated our room numbers, our receptionist, a pleasant young guy with very adequate command of English, made a politely worded request which surprised me. He asked in a most respectful tone if any of us had any spare currency from our countries he might have as he collected them for his kids. Fair enough I thought for him to ask but it didn’t really register any apparent response from the group.
Later on when I came back down to reception to hand in the room key before doing an exploratory walk around Puebla I engaged the reception guy in conversation. We exchanged introductions, his name turned out to be Jose Carlos…as we talked I noticed that under his smart suit and freshly pressed business shirt, a very bright T-shirt was protruding which I found an amusing incongruity. What really got my eye though was the book he had on the counter which he was obviously reading when he wasn’t assisting guests. It was one of Antony Beavor’s war histories, from memory I think it might have been Stalingrad. Having read some of Beavor’s well researched and written military works and posed a question to the author in person at the Cremorne Orpheum when he gave a book talk a number of years ago, I was intrigued by Jose Carlos’s choice of reading material, and even more surprised to find the book was in English! J-C explained his twin interest in war books (especially Beavor’s, he told me he had read other ones by him) and in the earnest pursuit of learning several foreign languages.
El Catedral viewed from the lit-up ZocaloThe hotel was close to all the visitor focal points, the Zocalo (quite small but decked out in a Christmas display of brightly lit arches), the main cathedral, the municipal palace, Oficinas de Turismo, museums and so on. Next door to the Zocola and massively dwarfing it, is Puebla Cathedral. With its twin-towering edifice and fortress-like structure which takes up the whole block between 16 de Septiembre and 2 Sur, it is the largest church in all of Mexico, an honour that you probably think would have resided with Mexico City itself!
When I returned home later that evening after dinner I stopped off at reception where the ever-smiling and likeable Jose Carlos was still on duty and studiously ploughing through Stalingrad. I got José to jot down his address for me, promising to send him a sample of the numerous stock of international bank notes and coins which had been laying dormant accumulating dust in my house for years.
The following morning I passed on the option to visit the nearby Pyramide Tepanapa (apparently the world’s largest pyramid by volume, surpassing Cheops in Giza)✦. In its place I did the afternoon option trip to Cholula – not out of any great desire to go there specifically, but partly because it was only 10 km by coach from Puebla, minimal disruption and inconvenience being the deciding factor! And thus it came to be, Cholula did not rise above it’s very modest expectations – it had nothing exceptional to recommend it, sightseeing-wise, that stood it out from any other average tourist destinations.
To save our visit from being a complete fizzer, Hector shepherded us towards the nearest restaurante/ cantina for a little culinary cultural fix. The diversion proved worthwhile as we got to taste Cholula’s most famous Mestizo local dish, mole poblano…this was basically a curious culinary concoction which looked like chocolate sauce, but didn’t taste like it! Rather, it was a spicy-sweet, sienna-coloured sauce containing spices, a variety of nuts and fruits, which you pour over mains, especially chicken. It wasn’t bad, certainly different, and the lashings of sangria which we washed the mole poblano dishes down with, helped as well.
PostScript: Museo de Artesanias – more a shop than a museum?
On our second and last night in Puebla I happened upon a quiet little, rather specialised, museum tucked away on a corner directly opposite the people-infested Zocalo. The few display cases inside showed a cross-sample of Mexican handcrafts and arts with displays of alfareria (pottery), sombreros (headware), etc. The sign at the entrance, “Museo-Tienda” was a hint prompting the question that quickly formed in my head: was this really just a shop masquerading as a museum? There seemed to be more merchandise, various crafted items for sale (especially women’s garments, bags and purses), than exhibits mounted behind glass! Given that entrance to the museum-cum-shop was free (fairly uncommon in museum-obsessed Mexico), it should come as no shock that everything on sale was a bit on the pricey side! Tienda more than Museo?
Footnote: Puebla has something else to recommend itself – the best pasteleria I encountered in the whole Mexican tour (with real chocolate!)…on Calle 16 September opposite the all-overshadowing Catedral.Pasteleria deluxe!
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❈ the countryside between the two cities was fairly nondescript, probably the only really memorable sight was a couple of not extinct (still smouldering in fact!) volcanos. We stopped several times to get photos of them but never ever got closer than about 500m from them – an overly conservatively safe distance I thought!
✦ having already trampled been all over Teotihuacán and with Chichen Itza et al still to come, I thought it prudent to minimise the chances of contracting POS (Pyramid Overload Syndrome) during the tour! /span>
After a couple of nights staying at the Metropol I heard through the tour grapevine that we were changing hotels for the rest of our stay in the Mexican capital. I got this unofficially, second-hand, from my travelling companions because my Intrepid travel agent had neglected to inform me of this switch…she was too busy off on another holiday of her own! (she did contact me several days after the move mentioning that I was probably already at the new hotel by now! – very helpful indeed…thanks for coming, duh!).
The new hotel, the Hotel Geneve was in a part of the capital known as the “Pink Zone” (Zona Rosa). The check-in was unfortunately far from seamless…a process needlessly prolonged because the front of house staff (or perhaps it was Intrepid itself) transposed all of our names on their tour list (Chinese nomenclature style!) and kept telling us they had no bookings for us! A state of inertia and confusion that was mercifully ended when Hector, our guide for the Mexico tour, turned up and was able to bring light and clarity to the situation (no points for perceptiveness on the part of the staff, being incapable of figuring out by themselves that they had our names there in front of their eyes all along, just in the wrong order!).
Lindy memorabilia
As is my wont, after dumping my bags in my room I went on a bit of reconnoitre of the hotel’s immediate environs but found it a bit drap and pedestrian (we were now a long way from the city centre and the tourist precinct). I used most of my free time before the tour introductory meeting and dinner exploring the common areas of the hotel itself. The Hotel Geneve has quite a history in itself, famous in Mexico for its “who’s who” inventory of international guests that have graced its rooms over the decades. The hotel has an appearance of being a tad past its prime now, but the management has assiduously made a concerted effort to preserve that rich history in the memory of visitors and guests. Just beyond the reception area there are a series of exhibits in the foyer, mainly in glass cabinets, displaying a miscellany of pre-war items associated with the Geneve…this ranges from the old uniforms worn by the porters to early 20th century relics of luggage bags and some colourful old city maps which would fully engage the curiosity of a dedicated cartographer!
‘Viva Zapata!’
Also decorating the foyer are several glass-encased displays reminding us of the past stays at the hotel of famous international guests. The stand-outs of these were probably one honouring the American aviator and polemical, authoritarian public figure in pre-war US politics, Charles Lindbergh (an exhibit entitled “Lindy’s Post”), together with another celebrating Marlon Brando’s stay at the Geneve in the early ’50s. The actor was resident at the hotel whilst filming the story of the legendary Mexican revolutionary, Emiliano Zapata (Viva Zapata!) on location. Other equally famous hotel guests during its nearly 100 years to get a mention in the Geneve’s annals include Winston Churchill (the Geneve was apparently one of Winnie’s fave away-from-home stays), Marilyn Monroe and opera singer Maria Callas, plus a host of Mexican luminaries, no doubt famous to every Mexican but nondescript names to me.
Hotel Geneve: foyer study
The real highlight to me though was located in the rear of the foyer section…management has given it a retro makeover so that it resembles a 1930s/40s fashionable, upper class gentleman’s drawing-room/study with an extensive in-wall library, period furniture and large landscape period paintings. The setting had a very stylised look to – the sort of thing I could easily visualise in a typical English country estate mansion. Very landed gentry English in fact…no doubt about it, Winnie would have felt totally at home here in his silk dressing gown, comfy slippers, cosy open fire, a copy of The Times in hand and a tray filled with his favourite after-dinner beverages.
The Zona Rosa district where the Geneve is located is something of an Asian restaurant hub…by walking either north or south to the nearest cross-streets I was able to find a host of eating outlets which gave me a wide choice of Chinese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese and Indian. One of the bonuses of travelling through Mexico was a chance to taste authentic Mexican cuisine (rather than the dreadful Tex-Mex abominations that masquerade as food in Australian and American eateries), however the availability of Asian options this night provided a welcome respite from the gastronomical onslaught of all those corn tortillas breakfast, lunch and dinner!
On the way back to the hotel the sight of a delicious pasteleria (cake shop) teased my sweet tooth and weakening, I popped in for a little after-dinner treat. Inside the shop there was a young uniformed female attendant behind the counter on which was a glass cabinet with various postres (deserts) and large tarta. I looked around and saw what I was after, pastels (small cupcakes) and pan de dulce (sweet bread) in rows of bins in the middle of the shop. I noticed though that there were nether tongs to pick out my selection with nor any small paper bags around to put them in. I wavered round hesitantly for several seconds before the attendant beckoned me over and gave me a small square of clear plastic (like a strip of cling wrap). While I stared at the piece of plastic wondering what I was supposed to do with it, she made a fist and simulated a snatching hand motion. I picked out an enticing small cake and following her example enclosed it in the plastic sheet and placed it on the counter. The attendant picked it up and in one rapid, wrapping motion, twirled the plastic around the cup cake until it formed a tightly knit bundle and handed it back to me. Ingeniously simple…tong-free, bag-free handling!
Pastries, cakes and sweet breads are an essential culmination of any Mexican lunch! I appreciated this even more after my farewell lunch in Mexico City – I went to the extremely popular La Casa de Tono opposite my hotel where I had a workman-like quesadilla (no better than that!), washed down with a local Indio drink. As I was finishing the mayor comida, a waiter lugging a wooden display box full of pan dulces and pastels asked if I wanted to have one…I declined his offer but a short while later changed my mind – only to discover that they had all been snaffled up by the lunchtime punters within 10 minutes! Those Mexiqueños sure do love their sweet treats.
Modelo Especial
A word on Mexican cervezas Before coming to Mexico I associated Mexican beer exclusively with the extremely popular and well-known Corona cerveza (although since returning I have seen Dos Equis (XX) in Sydney bottle shops as well). Over there I discovered two things about Mexi-beer, the industry is dominated by just two producers, Grupo Modelo (who make the best-selling export Corona) and FEMSA; and the preference among locals is not for pale lagers like Corona but for dark beers. During the tour I road-tested most of the local dark brews. Modelo, Indio, Leon, Bohemia, Noche Buena (the Christmas beer!), Tecate, Estrella, in fact all well-known Mexican brands have a negra (dark) beer. My own preference though was for the Modelo Especial, an excellent (no negra) pilsener brew.
