Taxco

Saturday morning, I was up early, dressed and packed, and by 8:30, uncharacteristically exactly on time, I was standing outside the city's southern bus terminal, waiting for Sergio.

The city could really use a new building for this terminal. It's huge, first of all, the size of an airport concourse with I would guess about 50 bus slots. It's an incredibly cheap building, with the majority of the money going into a stupid metal band around the front facace, and long walls of glass along the front mostly obscured by vendors. The interior is dingy and dark, with an ugly space frame roof/ceiling structure. due to the high volume of bus travel in this country, the bus terminals should be at least as nice as the airport- nicer, since the vast majority of users are native Mexicans.

When Sergio arrived, he took lead on this trip since he's been talking about Taxco since we took the first trip to Teotihuacan. Taxco is slightly under three hours away, so the ticket ended up being about $24 round trip. Big spender, I know.

One thing I really enjoy about Mexico City and the surrounding country, is how accessible everything this, and how relatively cheap it is to get from one place to the next. I walked ten minutes from my apartment, picked up a bus that dropped me at metro station, and took that to the bus depot probably six or seven miles away. It cost me about 40 minutes and less than a dollar. From the bus terminals around the city, I can get to hundreds of towns and villages throughout Mexico, and I've never waited longer than 30 minutes for a departure once I bought a ticket. I do have to admit that a basic grasp of Spanish is useful to buy tickets, especially when it comes to talking about when you want to return, which seat you want, that kind of thing. I haven't tested the ticket agents' English skills. Yet.

The bus ride was slightly under three hours. Another damned simpering American drama on the ride out. Some bland movie about a little girl looking for her father in a town where everyone rides horses and wears cowboy hats all the time. (My new theory is that you get banal movies to put people to sleep on the day rides, action movies for the night rides).

The approach to Taxco is gorgeous. Taxco is nestled into the sides of a few steep valleys filled with lush vegetationn. Not quite tropical, but a lot more green, humid, warm than Mexico City. It's a colonial city which still looks vaguely Spanish, with whitewashed walls, terra cotta red tile roofs. The way the town climbed the walls of the valley, and formed a series of massive bowls, the steep, narrow cobblestone streets, really reminded me of Positano in Italy.

It's an incredibly picturesque city. The old churches, with the extremely baroque church in the center juts up through the sea of red roofs, and is highly visible since the city is always curving up towards you. Of course, it is on the rolls as a Pueblo Magico, and actually, the town's biggest criticism is that it has become a museum piece- building codes enforce strict adherence to preservation and similar colors, styles, and textures of the historic town. Every weekend, it floods with tourists and everywhere were boutiques and restaurants and overpriced rooftop terrace bars. As a center for silver mining, Taxco over the past century became a major center for selling and making silver jewelery and tableware, so you also see silver (or silver plate, gotcha!) everywhere you go.

The bus dumps you at the south end of the town and you must climb into the city to get to the zocalo. Thankfully, there are signs for the tourists, and locals are actually quite friendly and will give directions as well. In the Zocalo, our first destination was the church.

This church was donated by the town hero, Borda, the man who opened the silver mines and brought wealth and fame. This benefactor poured most of his resulting wealth into this church, which is pretty amazing. Baroque only begins to be describe it. The interior is lovely, with every surface of wall and ceiling whipped into sea of baroque fillagree, many walls becoming alterpeices themselves, with armies of cherubim, phalanx of saints, and everything covered in gold.

After the church, both our guidebooks recommended Pozolaria Tia Calla (Aunt Calla's Pozoles) for lunch, and it was right next door, so down we trooped (its in a basement).

We were about an hour early since Mexican lunches typically start at 2, the restaurant didn't even open until 1.

So we decided to walk up to the Christ monument up on one of the hills overlooking the city, like a miniature Christo in Rio. We asked directions from one of the teenagers promoting a restaurant or a silver shop and he gave us really detailed directions.

It's a hell of a climb, almost all stairs. It's a fantastic way to see the city though because you quickly climb out of the most touristy parts of the city into residential areas, and you're ascending stairs a few feet wide past people's houses, balconies, patios, and the city reveals amazing moments as you keep going. We lateraled through some narrow streets, past small monuments and chapels and fountains, and found more stairs. We asked about five people for directions, and they were all very happy to give us directions, ask about where we were from. Their answers all invariably included "up, up, up, you just keep going up."

We did finally make it, although my Columbian-Swiss guide with his jungle wilderness skills took us the wild steep way though the forest at the base of the monument to get to the top.

The view from the Mirador (lookout) at the base of the Christ statue was really amazing. Worth the hike up, or the combi to the base of the hill, five minutes away, or even the $3 cab fare up from the Zocalo. The entire spread of the town, the distant rain, the rolling green hills and gentle mountains.

After resting a bit, we hiked down the way we came, and went straight to the Pozolaria. Closer to 2pm now, the place was hopping, nearly full. Despite the basement, it was spacious, well lit, with a few windows admitting natural daylight, and screens showing soccer everywhere. We took the guidebook's recomendation and got the classico, green pozole with pork three ways.

Pozole is a traditional Mexican soup, typically with a pork broth base, and filled with shredded meat, some vegetables, and tons of hominy. The ones we got had two types of shredded pork and came with chicharones (fried pork rinds) and agaucate (avocados). They ladled it out of three massive tin tureens on the stoves in the kitchen nearby.

Squeeze in some of the small limes, toss in a handful of minced onion, and a little sprinkle of some really spicy chili powder, and it's amazing.
Sparkling lemonade to drink.

After lunch, we killed the rest of our time for our 6:20 return bus exploring the city and shopping. We were both looking for silver for our respective girlfriends in Europe. I actually ended up picking up a wooden painted chapulin (grasshopper), because of the strong relation of Mexico City to grasshoppers through the Aztecs.

We more or less stumbled upon the local market, a parallel and separated world from the tourist routes and streets, but no less interesting and compelling. The main market hall was narrow, with five or six floors and stairs running everywhere. The market which spread into the narrow streets and stepped terraces and balconies, was vertical like the city. There was market below and above, with long tall visual corridors through the spaces between buildings to see the spires of the church up on the Zocalo. 

The bus terminal was easy to find again, and we got back on the road to Mexico. I discovered that most people in Mexico (the country) not in the city, refer to Ciudad de Mexico (a mouthful) as simply, Mexico. This made me a little confused asking what line I was in. Of course I'm going to Mexico. Which city?

Anyway, The Amazing Spider Man was the movie for the ride back, and we pulled into the bus terminal a little before 9pm.

What a day!