Sunday, November 22, 2009

A good road trip is a wonderful thing

Last weekend I had an incredible road trip adventure with my best mate Steve. In two days we had such a variety of experiences, and all within 2 hours of Mexico City.

We bussed out of DF on Friday night to the little town of Amecameca, to head up to Popocatepetl and Ixtacihautl, Mexico´s 2nd and 3rd largest volcanoes the next day. These two volcanoes are the stuff of legends - the white dormant mountain representing a lady, and her lover, the smoking active volcano, looking over her.
(4500m and over 5000m, respectively - we were there in the non snowy-season)


On the saturday evening we headed out of Amecameca, faithfully following the locals´ instructions to link up with the buses passing on a nearby highway, under a bridge, which were supposed to take us to Tlaxcala (another state). We waited under the bridge in the absolute middle of nowhere in the dark, only to be offered a ride by a reasonably unsuspicious looking sort of man. We accepted the hike and climbed along. Zooming along the highway, our driver told us he was a Federal Policeman and used to be in the Army. After we got out of the car 45 mins later, on the side of the highway, Steve said to me "Pinche Maddy - I know you too well. As soon as the guy said he was a cop, you froze and went silent in the back seat, so I had to do all the damn conversation." Hehe. Steve later admitted that he was also imagining what his final words would be as the policeman kidnapped us and held us for ransom before execution. Ha! On the side of the road in San Martin (we didnt know whether we were in Puebla or Tlaxcala state), we were told that it was a quick crossing of the highway to where the buses left for the town we wanted to get to. The "quick crossing" ended up being a hair-raising dash through a 50cm hole in a wall between cars on the highway going 120kph! Phew.

We finally arrived in beautiful, enchanted Tlaxcala on Saturday night and enjoyed the charming town, its history, colours, old ladies hand weaving, adorable little Bulls-plaza, and excellent coloured lighting. We felt we had stumbled across a well-kept secret. Mexico has so many of these.

1 comment:

Rosemary said...

Jeez Maddy. First you put up the pretty pictures, then later you add the hair-raising adventure stuff. What can I say.