Wednesday was a lovely day. I spent time sunbathing, planning the weekend, and making cookies (side note – they do not sell brown sugar in Walmart in Mexico).
Anyway, we had the day off as it was Cinco de Mayo – the 5th of May. Now, in the US, this is a big deal. However, in Mexico, it isn’t. Yes, we got the day off of school, but that’s it. The only place it is celebrated is Puebla, the town where the battle occurred (for those of you who do not know, Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico’s Independence Day, but was the day that a battle occurred between the mexicans and the french).
Our plans for the weekend were to go to Hidalgo, which is the state east of Querétaro. Luis (one of the guys who lives here) called his uncle, who owns a hotel in Pachuca (the capital), for us so we'd have a place to stay, but on Thursday my “aunt” offered me the keys to her mom’s house. Her mom is here visiting, so the house was empty. What a nice offer!
Friday mis padres drove Kelsey, Laurel, and I to the bus station. They were going to pick up Sarah, a girl from Hope who was here last semester and was coming back for a visit, and told us they’d leave a bit early so they could take us. We didn’t make reservations this time (not for lack of trying – the bus station phone line was always busy). We wanted to take a direct bus at 7:30, but it was full, so we went to the next company, and their bus was supposed to leave at 8:30, but it wasn’t going to be direct. Oh well. The bus ended up not coming until 8:50 because there was an accident, and we didn’t leave until after 9. My “aunt” told me that her sister would be there to pick us up from the bus station, so I called her around 11:30 to tell her that we were still 2 hours away, and to tell her we could just take a taxi. She said her son would be picking us up and that he would be out and about anyway. We arrived after 1 and waited for Yerfry to pick us up. Him and his friend, Jesus wanted us to go out dancing, but we were tired. They took us back to the house, and showed us how stuff works and how to get water for showers and stuff (you had to hook a wire onto the metal box, and sparks would fly everywhere…a little scary). We started asking about taxis and places, and they told us that they’d just take us around the next day. We talked a bit more, and they talked Laurel and I into going downtown to see how pretty it is at night. We saw the clock, which is in some way or another a replication of Big Ben.
We listened to a mariachi band and then drove to Real del Monte, the next town over, which they said was also pretty at night. We ended up getting home at 4:30.
The next morning, Saturday, they came back to pick us up at 9:30. We tried to unlock the door, but we couldn’t figure it out. Then we realized that we didn’t have the right keys, they did, and they had more or less locked us in. It was quite comical, and I had flashbacks of Jessi’s wedding (haha Jess).
We drove to Omitlán de Juárez, but really only stopped to buy some CDs. We had some breakfast and were off to the Basaltic Prisms, which is on the list of the 13 wonders of Mexico. “Rocky formations thousands of years old made of basalt prisms originated by abrupt lava cooling. The construction of a dam complements the waterfall that covers these geometric figures.” Now the water flow is controlled, but before the water all collected into a river.
Then we drove to a park that I believe was in San Miguel Regla, where we walked around and rented a rowboat for a bit.
We drove past a lookout and then through the centro, where we saw the clock again.
We went back to Jesus’ house to eat and then played pool, air hockey, foosball, and danced a bit. We then went back to Real del Monte, where we ate pasties, which are a traditional dish there because it’s a mining town. We ate one “traditional” one, which had potatoes and veggies in it as well as one sweet one, mine had strawberries.
Sunday the boys picked us up again and we picked up a chicken for lunch and drove to Teotihuacán, which is in the state of Mexico. It was the capitals of the Aztecs and is pretty close to Mexico City. We didn’t have a ton of time, but we picnicked and climbed the two largest pyramids.
Me on top of Pyramid of the Moon, Pyramid of the Sun is in the background:
Pyramid of the Moon:
View from Pyramid of the Sun (which is the second largest pyramid in the "new world"):
They had to be home early, so we hung out at the house and then went to the mall to find some food. I ate at Vips for the first time. Vips is pretty much all over in Mexico, but it’s owned by Walmart, so it’s pretty much American-Mexican food. It was good though. When we returned to the house, we tried calling the bus station to make plans for the next day, but we couldn’t get a hold of any one that could help us.
Monday we woke up early and went to the bus station. We got on a bus to go to Ixmiquilpan, which is about 2 hours north of Pachuca. There’s a nice little story in which I could have been detained by immigration, but I will save that story for when I get home. Ask me about it some time, it’s a good one. We got dropped off on the side of the road near Ixmiquilpan, got some food, and entered a water park type thing. We asked the people at the gate if we could call the bus station to find out what times we could get back to Querétaro, but they weren’t that helpful. One guy inside the park started talking to us and ended up driving to the bus station to check the times for us. He found us in the pool later and gave us the schedule! People here are just so nice. Anyway, the park had a bunch of pools full of thermal waters, most of them around 90 degrees. It was lovely.
We stayed there for about three hours, and were told to cross the road and get on a bus that says “Luza” to get to the bus station. We just missed one and were told that the next one wouldn’t come for another 15 minutes, so we were pretty sure we would have to wait over an hour to start heading home. Just then a bus pulled up that said Querétaro, which is the bus we would have gotten on if we had made it to the bus station on time. Perfect. We got back to Querétaro and went to the store to buy flowers and chocolates for our madres, as it was Mother’s day here (which is why I didn’t have school, it’s a much more important holiday here than it is in the US).
New Foods:
Chayote dulce - This is a dessert where you carve out the fruit (chayote is a fruit, I'd never heard of it), mix it with sugar and vanilla, and then put it back in the peel/skin. Mi madre dribbled chocolate sauce on it and put a few dehydrated strawberries on it too.
Crepas Saludables – healthy crepes. I had tried other types of crepes before (with cajeta, chocolate, and/or ice cream), but this week mi madre made what she called healthy crepes. They were filled with spinach and onions, but the sauce was made from butter and flour, so I’m not sure how healthy they really were…
Dedo de novia – (girlfriend/bride’s finger). It’s one of the kinds of Arabic sweets that mi madre makes. It’s a roll made of flaky bread, and this particular kind was filled with pecans, but mi madre said it could be filled with a lot of different things. She put cajeta on it and it was delicious.
Enfrijoladas – basically like enchiladas but instead of being covered in chile (a spicy sauce), it’s covered in frijoles (beans).
Tamal dulce – sweet tamale. Like regular tamales, it’s made from a corn based dough, but it has a lot more sugar in it, and then they fill it with cajeta and pecans. Delicious.
Esquite - Corn kernels boiled in water with herbs. It's served in a cup and add either lime juice, spicy powder, and salt or else mayonnaise, cream, and cheese. It was ok.
Flan Napolitano – I don’t know that I’ve ever had regular flan, but this flan had a different texture than regular flan, and mi madre covered it in cajeta and put strawberries on the side.
Pictures from the Weekend:
Hidalgo and Mexico
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