Viva Mexico 06.09.2011 - 17.09.2011

After we were told to bring a bullet proofed vest to Mexico City, we were a bit worried. We arrived not in Mexico City Airport, but a little outside in Toluca. There we already encounter language difficulties, but a nice girl walked with us everywhere and placed us in the right bus to Mexico City. There we were very pleasantly surprised to meet Tere a friend of a friend who lives in Mexico City. She greeted us so nicely we felt like we were friends for a long time or even family. We ate in her experimental kitchen and she drove us to Coyoacan were we met her friend Jess the first time. Later on we all had dinner together and Robert and I had our first experience with the great Mexican cuisine.

The next morning we took the Metro for 3 pesos per person and we did a City tour so we get an overview of the city. We quickly realized that it has a beautiful city center and everything was decorated for their independence day on 15.09. und 16.09. We also had the chance to see the St. Regis and Priscila, the head-butler and a friend from Aspen who showed us around. Late we arrived home and fell asleep exhausted.




Today we did a tour to a few sights we started off with with some ruins from the Atzteken in the area of Tlatelolco and continued to the shrine of Guadalupe and in the afternoon we drove about 45 minutes to the Pyramids of Theotihucan. There we had one hour with the guide and two hours for ourselves, I just thought this is way too long, but we just made it in the end. The moon and sun pyramid were really impressive.



Today we went to the Antropoloy Museum, a must while in Mexico City. Robert made Spaetzle for our goodbye dinner with Tere and Jess, we could have not asked for better hosts.

We could have stayed for many more days, there is so much to see in and around Mexico City, but we had to move on and our next stop was Puebla. We arrived after a comfortable bus ride and did not know were to go, when we arrived and a Mexican started talking to us and we found out that he lives in Berlin and came home to visit his family and his brother. He would come shortly to pick him up and they could take us if we want. In the end they drove us to a town called Cholua close to Puebla. There was a large faire and the amazing view of a church on the hill and the Vulcano Popocatepedl with it's snowy top in the background. For the next two days we discovered Cholula and Puebla.



We mostly ate food from stands that our travel doctor warned us from. But all the food was great, especially the very Mexican Crepes with Nutella and bananas. Hmmmmm!!! From Pueblo we took the bus to Oaxaca were we met Micheal, also from Germany. In Oaxaca we couch surfed. For the evening we met Michael and the next morning we went to Mount Alba together to see some Maya Pyramids. That evening we took the overnight bus to San Christobal de la Casa.



We arrived at 7 am in San Cristobal and took a taxi to our hostel were we meet Ape from the US. Together we walked around town to just enjoy this Colonial town. We also tried a lot of food from the stands and especially the "Tamalis" were great. The next day was the Mexican Independence day and we walked a lot in town and also visited the Maya Medicine Museum (really hard to find) and in the evening we celebrated together with the Mexican.


After all the celebration it was hard to get up in the morning. But the three of us did it and went to the city market where the cross is to meet a tour guide at 9:30 am (tip from another traveller). The guide took us to two different native Mayan villages.


That was really interesting as they have a different time (they don't follow the summer time), they have their own law and killed the last catholic priest and now they follow their own rituals inside a church that looks catholic from the outside, but inside looks very different.


No banches but people kneeling on the floor and putting candles on the floor and if you are lucky you can see a chicken being sacrificed! Shamans performing rituals for the people in need. That late afternoon we took a bus to Palenque. We arrived there about 11:30 pm after about a 2 hour delay.



We had breakfast in Palenque and took a bus to the Pyramid Ruins. Somebody offered himself as a guide for free to practice his English. The pyramids were differend as they were inside of a jungle setting.


We had to get up early that morning to catch our bus to Flores/Guatemala. At 5:50 am we were sitting outside our hostel and waited for our bus. The bus ride was about 3 hours on dirt road to the boarder control in Mexico. We got our exit stamps without any problems and continued our journey on a about 8 meter long and 1.5 meter wide boat to cross the boarder. We reached Guatemala half an hour later were we waited for our bus to continue our trip. We got stamps (after paying some more money) from Guatemalen officials and drove for another 3 hours mostly on bumpy dirt roads to get to our destination Flores.

To see some of the pictures check the following links:

Mexico City

Cholua

San Cristobal

Palenque

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