After having traveled for almost 3 straight weeks (the first 5 days with a group to a beach called Puerto Escondido and then a 15 day honeymoon with Dan), I could probably write something closely resembling a novel, but to save you the trouble (and me the carpal tunnel) I will try to keep it to a very cut and dry outline with plenty of pictures to tell the story. Your imagination can fill in the rest and by all means do the trip justice and let it run wild.
To start it off, the Saturday before we left for Puerto Escondido Cholula held its annual Campanas Concert. It is famous throughout Mexico since Cholula has 365 churches (1 for each day of the year and the most per capita in all Mexico) and people from all over Mexico (thousands) gather in the Zocalo around 8 at night (with lots of traditional dancing and music playing all day and evening leading up to it) and then every church in the city rings its bells in unison when it gets all quiet.
After the ringing, an orchestra plays. Can you guess which orchestra was chosen for this year? You got it, UDLA's very own featuring one of the most illustrious trombonists the Latin world has ever known (and no idea why the director felt it was necessary to bring in Ricardo, a professional trombonist, seen on the right, but fortunately I was able to walk him through the slide positions and teach him a thing or two.)
And of course a picture of my enormous fan club who came out.
And a group picture taken the next day as I was saying good bye after they played another concert in which to put it lightly, I was not invited to play. In case you can't spot me I am in the second row in the right half of the picture.
After the concert we headed to a small town called Puerto Escondido on Monday where Dan and I met a small group of other international students who were already there.
Puerto Escondido is known as a series of beautiful surfer's beaches which has managed to stay relatively secret and uncommercialized despite its beautiful sand, monster waves, and Pacific Ocean sunsets (and slightly strange locals such as Claire here who gave out beach massages and claimed to have descended from the clouds).
Before hand I had set up a scuba class and as a result for 3 of the mornings I went on a series of 6 dives to get my certification.
Once we got back to Cholula, there was some really intense studying, an exam or two, and a tour of the largest pyramid in the world which is located in Cholula (the base is 1 km wide). From there, Dan and I had about 3 final nights where we struggled through countless chicas telling us how badly we would be missed and begging us not to go...kind of.
There were also some very sad good byes with my Mexican family who will be dearly missed and a final meal at our all time favorite taqueria (nicknamed 2nd home). We have been checking the Dow since this fateful night and their stock has tumbled an appreciable amount.
From here things got really serious as most everyone else was going their separate ways and Dan and I headed out for a 15 day trip in which we planned to hit 7 different cities in the middle to west coast of Mexico before my December 23rd flight back home. The title of this trip, the honeymoon, was initially applied weeks before as a joke, but little did we know how frighteningly appropriate that title would become.
First stop was in Mexico City with all of our bags in tow for Cirque du Soleil Dralion. To eloquently sum it up...Awesome.
Not awesome was that despite repeated efforts to invite nearly every girl we knew in Cholula and Mexico City to come with us, we got pitched a shut out and thus began a recurring theme...Dan and I, just Dan and I.
From there we spent the night in Mexico City and headed out the next morning for a city called Morelia. After riding the sweetest bus in the world (internet, enormous reclining seats, sliding door to separate the bathroom and sink from passengers, etc.) we arrived.
Though initially a bit concerned with the taxi drive to the Zocalo, we soon were greeted with the most beautiful city we had seen yet.
After finding a hotel we went exploring and found the area from the Zocalo down to the famous Aqueduct of Morelia to be absolutely gorgeous architecturally and it seemed as if we were smack dab in the middle of Europe.
It also didn't hurt our impression of Morelia that we walked for over 4 hours without seeing an unattractive girl, but that is for another blog.
After the walk we went for a nice dinner in the Zocalo and then out for a relatively tranquil night since there was a big religious festival going on in the streets to celebrate the Virgin Guadalupe.
The next day we got a bit of a late start, but ended up making it out to a really cool waterfall which was about an hour long bus ride.
From there we headed to the Island of Janitzio in Patzcuaro which is an island of 400 inhabitants in the middle of the Patzcuaro Lagoon.
I have no idea why people live here, but they do. We talked to an 80 year old on the boat ride out there who had lived there his entire life, interesting, but not nearly enough libraries for my taste.
The coolest thing about the island was this enormous statue called the Statue of Morelos situated at the peak of the island. Inside is a spiral staircase with mural paintings on all the walls of the life of Morelos and at the very top of the fist is an observatory with awesome views of the lagoon.
After the sunset we headed back into Patzcuaro on the mainland where we met up with 2 girls I had met the night before (triggering extreme jealousy in Danny) and they took us back to Morelia.
That night we went out with them to Velvet, the single greatest bar in the world. It is indoor/outdoor with marble fire pits, an incredible mountain side view of the entire city, ridiculous females (if you are in to that type of thing), and on that given night unlimited free Torres 10 brandy and scarfs and hats due to a sweet promotion.
The next morning we bounced out of bed and hopped on a bus trying to go to Puerto Vallarta. To get there you have to connect in Guadalajara (the 2nd largest city in Mexico and supposedly the city in Mexico notorious for having the most beautiful girls). Needless to say we were expecting it to be the highlight of the honeymoon and decided to spend the afternoon there before catching an overnight bus to Puerto V. Unfortunately, Guadalajara did not even come close to the hype, but there will be more on that later.
We arrived in Puerto Vallarta at about 5 in the morning and after finding a hotel headed out for a meal and a day on the beach. After quite nearly stumbling onto a beach reserved for men who were legitimately on honeymoons together, we found another plot of sand and enjoyed a lovely afternoon of sodas and a great sunset.
The next day we decided to head out at 9 AM for a booze cruise. In theory it was the greatest thing in the world, unlimited drinks, a boat tour around the curving coastline, and three stops at different spots featuring waterfalls (though I did discover Dan wasn't kidding about his Equestrian allergy when he set a North American record for sneezes following the procession of horses that were optional in our trek up to the cascade) and snorkeling.
Due to some extremely fine fine print, the open bar wasn't exactly as promised, but regardless we had a great time.
At this point, I would like to introduce the photo shoot which was unintentionally going on for the newlyweds throughout 40 hours we were in Puerto Vallarta (and remember you can never be too careful in Mexico in case you were wondering about the life jacket).
Fortunately we were able to befriend a group of 3 girls from Guadalajara (the only good thing to come out of there) and their families right around our age on the boat who were nice enough to separate us for a picture.
After we returned to port, we headed out for an exciting night where we were fortunate enough to run into...
The boys:
Dad:
The girls:
and plenty of suerte (the backwards hand in Mexico actually means thank you and good luck):
The next day we packed up yet again for a return trip to Guadalajara. Now the initial trip had been less than exceptional with every restaurant and bar closed due to the Guadalupe festival, but we were hopeful that round two would be much more fruitful.
We were wrong... Now, I am not going to go into specific details, but it seemed that just about everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong (within reason, I understand we were in a large city in Mexico and things could have been much worse).
Examples would be empty bars, taxi drivers taking us to wrong locations, disappointing, attractions not living up to the hype, torrential rain during our open air tour bus ride (and when the bus driver tells all the people on the second deck to sit down because we are approaching a low hanging bridge in Spanish, LISTEN TO HIM, thank you Edgar my 14 year old guardian angel for saving my life), and a serious lack of co-eds(except for the fact that Dan managed to find the only natural red headed Mexican girl in the world).
Despite these crucial (or some might suppose trivial) shortcomings, we were able to have a bit of appreciation for some of Guadalajara's beautiful architecture.
Fortunately, the saving grace of this city happens to be its proximity to the town called Tequila which ironically is the tequila capital of the world.
We were fortunate enough to make it out to this absolute gold mine for an afternoon and received a wonderfully enlightening tour (which began in a tequila shaped bottle tour bus, easily should have been my 16th birthday present, thanks Dad) and tasting of the Cofradia tequila distillery from Elisa (who by the way loved us). Unfortunately tequila doesn't go down any easier in Tequila, or at least that is what Dan told me as I per the usual abstained.
We returned to Guadalajara that night and then the next morning shipped out for the smaller city of Guanajuato known for its art, culture, and underground roads (really cool, a bunch of tunnels with intersections, street signs and everything else you would expect on normal streets but underneath the city).
The first afternoon we took a group tour throughout the city hitting a couple churches, a torture and and separate mummy museum (apparently Guanajuato should be more famous for its morbid obsessions because these were weird and creepy), a mine that extended up to 600 meters into the Earth, and the highest point in town where the statue of El Pipila, a war hero stands and offers great view from the top of his head.
That night we went up to the top of another nearby hill where there was a large castle which now functions as a hotel and had a nice though empty restaurant. We acknowledged that with the two of us eating alone and facing each other in a castle with a window view of the lit up city at night the honeymoon was getting a bit out of hand, but we pushed through).
The next day I got up early and took a walk through town while Danny got his beauty sleep.
Upon returning, we grabbed our stuff and headed out for our next stop, San Miguel de Allende.
San Miguel is known for being a very upscale town due to a large percent of its inhabitants being wealthy retired foreigners (almost all the conversations we overheard were in English). It also has a rich history and it was cool to see the blending of the two in Mexico as you usually get the wealthy tourism sites with no history, or the historical sites with insufficient money to preserve the attractions.
Because it is such a small town we only stayed one night, but were able to visit the coolest cathedral I have ever seen located in the Zocalo and catch an awesome sunset.
The next morning we hopped on the bus for Mexico City (sadly, the last stop in Mexico for me as I would be flying out from there 2 days later) with the intentions of going to the weekly Sunday bull fights in the largest bull fighting stadium in the world with two good friends, Lucia and Miriam (and unfortunately only friends despite our best efforts during the semester). Unfortunately we got about a 4 hour late start, but after some carefully calculated lies to make sure the girls would not ditch us, we arrived just in time for the first of 6 fights.
It was an absolutely wild event with more blood than you can imagine, but after 6 bulls had been slain we went for dinner with the girls and then back to find a hotel. Most unfortunately, the price for a room with a king size bed was half the price of a room with 2 beds and in an act that really put an exclamation mark on the whole trip we decided to be economical.
The next day we went on another double decker open air tour bus with Lucia, her mother, and two of her mother's friends. We pretty much relaxed on here and cruised the 2nd largest city in the world (depending on how you measure it) all day with a stop at the end to walk through the Chapultepec Park.
From there we headed out for another tranquil night on the town with Miriam and another friend (Mexican soap opera actress).
The next and final day for me was spent doing a bit of Christmas shopping in the various markets, grabbing lunch with a friend, and switching hotels to one with four beds in a room in preparation for "the boys" (Dan's Australian friends Henry and Bender who were flying in that evening to travel with him through South America for the next two months).
At the very peak of rush hour we headed below ground to the dreaded Mexico City metro where it took every bit of our strength and big city cunning to navigate and muscle our way through 5 different absolutely packed trains to get to the airport.
After picking up the boys and their bags we wisely decided to take a taxi back to the hotel and after some quick showers and hydrating went to Condessa, one of the nicest areas of Mexico City for dinner at a delicious Argentinian steak house (10 oz filet 16$, going to miss the peso dearly).
From there we met up with two other good friends from UDLA, Paulina and Pame who had taken very good care of us throughout the semester and also live in Mexico City and went out to appropriately celebrate my last and the boys' first night in Mexico.
A quick bag pick up, sad good bye with my hubbie, and taxi ride later I was sitting in the Benito Juarez Airport awaiting my flight home with mixed emotions.
Though I am certainly glad to be back with all my family and friends, I miss Mexico and all the good times, memories, and amigos an awful lot and definitely hope I will get the opportunity to return one day.
As far as El Blogó goes, I am sure no one wants to read about life back at UNC (sleep, class, library, repeat can be pretty boring after all) so this is it. I have truly enjoyed writing and appreciate anyone who took the time to read. Adios!!!
