Gringo Tour 08/09 - Part 26

We each had a pretty bad night sleep. Our hotel room is not only facing the street (which has a pretty loud market nearby complete with buskers playing suicide music) but the hotel restaurant next door and lobby – where they play really bad muzak until 11pm at night (which comes right through our hotel door) only to start it up again for breakfast at 6am. It sort of feels like the international economy Qantas of hotels. It sort of feels like we have been given a pretty crummy room in terms of sound.

We didn’t have breakfast included at the hotel and had read over the internet that it was pretty bad at the Hotel Colonia. We decided to brave it out on the street but alas the best we could do was a little bakery which only sold super-sweet custard-y cakes. We made the best of a bad situation and bought some (I was starting to wish that a bad bout of South American gastro would kick in by now so we could lose some weight). We headed back to the piazza – where we both bought some drinks ( I had bought some overpriced tomato juice to wash down my sugary cakes… strange combo). We sat down in the park (amongst the millions of copy-right infringement balloon sellers (Disney would have a field day suing these people) where we consulted Don’t Know in order to work out what we wanted to see.

We decided to check out Museo Amparo which was supposed to be a highlight of Puebla according to our almost 10 yr old copy of LP (was published in 1999). It was down a quaint street off the main square (where the local council appeared hellbent on ripping up perfectly old cobblestone paths) and there were a tonne of shoes hanging from overhead powerlines (maybe there was a drugdealer at the museum). Although all of the displays in the museum were in en espanol – at least they had these plastic cards which were in Engrish which attempted to explain many facets of pre-columbian culture in the Puebla region in fairly gory detail (with some mangled translations into Spanglish). One thing I’ve noticed about Mesoamerican art is that it is quite varied – some stuff looked Egyptian, some south American. There was also a temporary art exhibit with some Mexican artist who liked to do crazy stuff with VW beatles and vans which was pretty good.

We then wandered to the other side of town to the Museo Regional de la Revolution – which was the site of a massive shootout/siege back in 1910 when a band of revolutionaries were killed by the fascist dictator – Diez. Absolutely nothing was in engrish – but it was fairly interesting and LP did give a bit of a gist of what happened – a husband (Aquiles Serdan) and his wife (and 17 others) were held up in the building. Most were killed – but Aquiles and his wife stayed hidden in a hole in the house for a couple of days before his coughing gave them away – and he was arrested and executed a bit afterwards. The Museo was a little bit like a Mausoleum with lots of memorabilia of Serdan and the siege and the bullet holes around the front of the building were still evident,

We had lunch in a little restaurant which was bright and quaint – Ant ordered Mole Puebla (which was the famous dish from Puebla) and I ordered some enchiladas which were nice. We also did some guacamole with tortilla chips which is way tastier than the kind you get back at home. Although the typically bad Mexican service was extra and free…

After lunch – we made tracks for what LP called the “Museo Poblano de Arte Virreinal” which was a “top-notch museum” (LPs words not ours). It appeared that the museo had changed hands since 1999 when LP was written – and it was a fairly half-baked concoction of “ye olde hospital” exhibit (all of the stuff which was on display was either a facsimile copy, a photo-copy or a (Ant’s favourite) diorama), a bad contemporary art display, a bad contemporary rug display and a bad ancient tapestry exhibit (where it was completely empty of tourists – yet completely loud and bewildering thanks to the 28 flat screen TVs all playing really loud at once different things – sounded like you had a bout of Spanish schizophrenia). I wrote all of these “hard but true” things in all of the visitor guest books including “I wouldn’t use these as rugs in my home let alone hang them in an art gallery” – signed under my pseudonym – “Nikky”.

After the somewhat underwhelming experience at “Museo de Crappy” – we headed back to the world’s. loudest. ex-Jesuit Church. Hotel – “Hotel Colonia” (note to self – never take any hotel suggestions from my mum) – we checked out the hotel’s laundry which was located on the top of the hotel. After climbing the somewhat Escher-stairs – Ant did a load of washing (Ant just can’t stand washing his clothes in the sink) whilst I had a bit of a chill in the somewhat noisy hotel room.

We headed out of the hotel around dusk where I showed Ant the “World’s. Lamest. Mall.” in all of its lamest-ness. Ant too concluded that it was fairly lame – and we made an exit for some nicely landscaped gardens right next door to the mall. It had all felt like the mall/gardens/conference centre district was all new and part of the same development – but because the economy could be falling down the toilet could be the reason why the mall is fairly lame.

We headed to a nearby mountain peak – where both Ant and myself were the butt of someone’s insult (en espanol) – but it wasn’t a clown – rather it was some guy in a hotted up 1982 Ford Laser hooning past. Well my 2002 Pulsar beats yours any day of the week… It felt a whole less touristy (even though Pubela wasn’t exactly chock-full of tourists). There was a strange looking hotel (which even had a write up in LP – saying that it had “well landscaped gardens”… but in a zombie-apocalyptic sort of way) and Pubela’s “World Trade Center” which looked like a couple of conference rooms in a deserted two-story office (circa 1980s). Also of interest was the local mayor’s house which looked way more like a drug baron compound complete with hired goons… ahem I mean Mexican police. Anyway – Mexican mayor – drug baron – aren’t they the same thing?

At the peak – we had a somewhat nice view of the sunset over Pubela (if you could see it through the Bejing style smog) and there was some military fort thingy where most Mexicans were tippy-toeing over the front gate (because they were too short to see over the 5 foot fence).

We decided to make a break back for town because this wasn’t the sort of place you would want to stay around after dark. We toured around the main piazza on the look out of some dinner. There was a place chock full of locals on the piazza – but we were being heavily touted to go in. At first we avoided it – but decided that it might be the best bet (after having a big lunch). Also – most other restaurants on the Piazza had the acid xylophone thing going on.. (Note to Pubela – the acid xylophone thing is highly annoying).

When we went back to the local touty restaurant – we had to wait (unbelievably) to gain someone’s attention to get a table. We were seated towards the back and were each handed a menu (en espanol) – which seemed to have a lot of the same thing (eg: tacos) but we couldn’t really decipher what all the meats were. I mean – we understood what chicken (pollo) and beef (carne) was – but nothing else made much sense. We ordered a couple of Sols (those Mexican beers you can find at Aldi) and also ordered the English speaking waiter – who explained what most things were. We decided to have a 30 peso plate each of beef tacos with cheese. The plate was fairly small – but it hit the spot. You got some beef with melted cheese on it and about 5 tortillas which you wrap the meat in. At every Mexican restaurant – you are always given about 4 or 5 different sauces or salsas. Some are fairly mild – and some can be pretty hot (but rarely are they pretty hot – most things in Mexico are definitely in the mild range).

After dinner – we headed out to the main Churro restaurant for some dessert. After only ordering a 2.5 peso churro last night (which was the size of a baby penis) – we decided to order about 10 each for 25 pesos (or $AUD2.50). It was neccye, different, and unusual. We also got a couple of bottles of water from a nearby convenience shop (Pubela was full of them). Although after dark – they go into “lock-down” – where there is a front window you can order things from (a bit like a petrol station in Australia after midnight). Although it would be pretty hard trying to hostage negotiate with a 7-11 clerk who doesn’t speak any spanglish.