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 the pyramid. It was a pleasant walk; the air had cooled down with the sun lowering, and one by one the outlines of hills and volcanos appeared in the distance. We climbed to the church and looked down to see a tall pole on the San Pedro side with a couple of people climbing up. We walked on and a few minutes later we saw them swinging around the pole, suspended by their feet. Sad to have missed the leap, but a good sight nonetheless. The view over the different parts of Cholula is unusually good; I’m not always a fan of these city vistas as often all you see are grubby rooftops and the odd statement skyscraper (which just enrages me) but here you case see the many churches and the coloured walls as well.
Today, this morning, we went off to Puebla. First stop was lunch at Los Murales, a well known local restaurant, and I realised that it was the first time we’d been to an actual restaurant in weeks; our dining out is frequent these days but invariably to breakfast places and cafes. Our first course was gusano, a caterpillar that infests the maguey plant. These were distressingly large, fat and mealworm-like but fried to a crisp like chips. Nevertheless I would have struggled to eat them just straight off. Instead, first they were dowsed in serrano and mezcal (I only eat my worms drunken, I muttered) and set alight (or flambeed, I added), then wrapped up in tortillas with a hearty spoon of guacamole. After the first taco I could contemplate biting them in half and did; they were very enjoyable and undoubtedly the foodstuff of the future.
Next was a trio of cemitas, the local sandwich, which was pleasant, surprisingly light, but nothing out of the ordinary. I particularly enjoyed one which had a sort of breaded croquette in the middle, consisting of slab of paneer-like cheese enfolded in a molasses-y smoky chipotle paste. Then I had a dried goat meat soup with corn dumplings, which was extremely tasty, rather like nihari, but nearly felled me. I brought the leftovers home to turn into a pilau. The GF had a nopal salad (a more refined version of the one last weekend), followed by quesedillas with a trio of moles: poblano, pipian verde and a third very pineapply one. These moles were quite refined and tasty, though still overwhelming. However, I can picture myself enjoying them more over time.
After lunch we thought we would fall asleep but it was actually surprisingly easy to get over the meal. We strolled through the centre of Puebla, first towards a museum hosted in a colonial hospital. I think we must have missed the best rooms in this, for though the space was fascinating (huge, cool, with early modern Spanish religious and heraldic paintings), the works themselves were a bit whatevs.
Wandering through Puebla’s streets was very pleasant indeed, and I really took to the city. We eventually left the centre and came to the more raggedy outskirts, still beautiful and colourful but definitely less cared for by government, at least. Eventually we arrived in Xanenetla, a sort of hipster barrio filled with murals. We didn’t actually walk through its streets (a pity) as we dived straight into the recently opened tunnels. These were inexplicable at the time: a kilometre or so of tunnels rising uphill, clearly very carefully renovated and well lit, with displays of objects found in them along the sides. At one point the tunnel came to ground level and we were in Xanenetla again, with a view over the city and murals on every street leading off. Then diving back in and climbing up, up, until we emerged in a sort of park crisscrossed by bridges and ramps, with a lake towards one side. This rose up to the city’s old fort from where we got a taxi back to Cholula. Later googling tells me that the tunnels were constructed in the 16th century but were considered an urban legend until their rediscovery a few years ago.