Lo siento, it has been a while but with 3 tests and 2 papers due up for next week things have been a bit hectic this week in the classroom and library (actual building with books, not Franklin St. bar) but a little slow on the bloggable activities front.
Fortunately, last weekend included two incredible trips to Vera Cruz and Catemaco and I will again be splitting it up into two entries.
Friday morning a group of about 20 of my friends headed off for Vera Cruz by way of a 3 hour bus ride. I being the responsible student stayed behind to attend my physics lab and then headed to the Puebla bus station for the 3:30 bus.
At 10:00 (remember this should have been a 3 hour trip) after a missed bus (incredibly not my fault but rather that of my traveling partner and his girlfriend), a lengthy talk with a 19 year old cosmetology student who promised to cut my hair when the time comes (and first under 25 year old I have talked to here that could not speak English), a 2.5 hour detour, and a sweet ride through the mountains we arrived in VC.
Figuring the night would be a little slow as we got our bearings around us, I met up with a part of the larger group to discover this weekend was Vera Cruz’s annual music festival and it would be taking place 3 blocks from our hotel.
I quickly got ready and headed out and after devouring 8 tacos from the street vendor (questionable decision making) we made it to the festival. The set up was amazing with a enormous stage (can be seen in the far background) and tower situated right on the edge of the big Vera Cruz harbor and there were people everywhere.
The music was decent but indecipherable to me, but I was certainly in the minority in this thought train because people really got into it. As soon as the first band started playing these weird weird circles formed and about 20 people at a time would rip off their shirts and begin running through and pushing each other as hard as possible.
This was not an isolated thing and they sprung up all over the place. Not wanting to miss a moment of the experience I hopped right in the middle of a couple and after multiple guys were generous enough to donate their sweat and god only knows what else to me, I retired.
I next was introduced to my sleeping companion for that evening (don’t get your hopes up, she wasn’t tall, thin, olive skinned, and beautiful, in fact she was a male French exchange student named Suweihl who I was to share a bed with that evening in our hotel room, relax Momma).
After this Dan (Australian amigo) and I received flyers for an after party for the concert. Again subscribing to “not wanting to miss anything” philosophy we hopped in a taxi with 3 other extremely excited but very nice Vera Cruzian strangers and rode over.
It turned out to be someone’s garage/yard and after some interesting looks and a few recreational dance moves, we headed out to explore the rest of the city.
We wound up after another taxi ride in the commercial district and were actually turned down at a bar for not wearing pants amazingly enough. After a thorough search of the building to ensure there were no other access points we checked out some other locations, got some more tacos and an ice cream bar (I have developed a real addiction to the Magnum Ice Cream bars they have here) and headed back to the hotel.
The next morning another friend and I went for the historical tour (Vera Cruz constitutional building and Cathedral pictures) and after checking out the Zocalo (town center) we had breakfast at a quaint café.
Following this, we went for a little stroll. It is a cool city (reminded me of Baltimore being on the water but a lot older), but very centralized so you can hit most everything in about 2 hours as we found.
Originally we had assumed that the beaches of Vera Cruz would be great (I had always thought that name sounded very beachy), but apparently after talking to multiple locals we found that was wrong. At some point, the decision was made to drive to Catemaco (3 more hours further away from Puebla) for an evening there and then a Sunday of fun.
From an efficiency standpoint I was furious with this decision but again referred to the “not wanting to miss anything” philosophy and agreed to go. In order to make the most of the sunlight a group of 4 of us (including these two girls, the middle one from Canada, and far right from England and notice the flags on the building behind us) decided to hit a beach on the way which wasn’t supposed to be too nice but still was a beach.
After getting over the fact that the black sand (from the volcanic activity in the area) made it look like we were in a plowed cornfield next to the ocean, we hopped in the water.
I quickly noticed a group of about 20 Mexican guys playing a game with a small soccer ball in the ocean between two circular nets attached to poles which were stuck in the ground. It looked a lot like a golden snitchless game of Quidditch to me so I hopped in and played for a bit. Until Tom a former semi-professional Australian Rules football player joined in I was pretty much dominant as the only player over 5’10” and made some quick friends.
Afterwards hopped in a taxi and headed to the bus stop for the 3 hour trip to Catemaco. Quite an eventful 24 hours with not near enough sleep, but after discovering that Catemaco is famous for its witches and monkeys (I foolishly believed it was only a rumor and neither one existed, but still thinking that it was a cool concept) I found a second wind and was pumped for what lay beyond…
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