Work was frustrating yesterday as I somehow lost an entire day’s work: a document got corrupted and when it was revived all my edits had disappeared, despite having been saved many times. Anyhow, in the evening we went for our usual coffee to Bartolo (superb and lovely people), and then on for a stroll up […]
Culture traitor
We got a ride to the Puebla outlet mall, not because we intended to shop or even step inside but because we were to be collected from here. Our hostess was waiting and we drove up to San Rafael Tenanyecac, a small village quite near Cacaxtla. Along the way we passed the black obelisk from […]
Up and up
We went up to the top of the pyramid to the yellow Spanish church. There was a good view of Cholula all around, and even the volcano’s outline appeared through the haze, startlingly tall for something that is invisible for most of the day. An open space on the San Pedro side was divided in […]
Joining the wave
In the mid-morning we went out for lunch and walked past makeshift roofed veranda outside someone’s house with a table and a pan set up outside and a handwritten sign saying ‘pulque, michelada’. The food looked delicious so we decided to eat there. It turned out to be excellent: a couple of quesedillas filled with […]
Mexican baroque
This morning, after a lavish breakfast composed from our purchases from the market yesterday we went down to Santa Maria Tonantzintla, a church which used to be a temple to a mother goddess until it became a church of the Virgin. It is covered in ornate, baroque plasterwork, yes, Mexican baroque. There is ornate plasterwork […]
Underwater
I was underwater for a few days. I had a big deadline last night and was plugging away at it (after having taken Monday off to visit the pyramid) but, more to the point, it was that sort time so I was very weak and occasionally wracked with pain. Plus two days of headachey-ness – […]
Painted pyramid
The Gentleman Friend had taken Monday off so we went off to Cacaxtla, where there is a pyramid with its murals still in situ. It was very empty: a single small contingent of school children ahead of us and a small family behind us. The air was very hazy; one could barely tell the land […]
Cinco de Mayo
First, a clarification. In yesterday’s blog post I wrote about the tunnels of the pyramid in Cholula, imagining they were built for some sort of ritual purpose, but some reading on Wikipedia today tells me that in fact they were excavated by archaeologists. I am joined, I’m sure, by the archaeologists of the future, post […]
Walls closing in
In the morning, after breakfast, we finally went to the great pyramid of Cholula, reputed to be the largest in the world. Indeed, most of it just looks like a massy hill, but there have been excavations on one side revealing a crazy mix of walls and rooms from different eras. Very hard to understand; […]
Cholula in parts
With work and so on we haven’t really had an opportunity to explore Cholula fully, however I can report that it is a town in parts. We are in San Andre Cholula, the less touristed, more residential bit compared to San Pedro Cholula. Our neighbourhood within San Andre Cholula is quiet and residential (aside from […]