Taxco

November 28th and 29th Adri, Ryan, Kathy, Brooke and I went to the beautiful city Taxco. I cannot say enough about this place, it is most definitely in my top five favorite cities that I have visited in the world. (it's up there with Prague and Rome) The weather is beautiful the city is quaint and the buildings are beautiful. The people were so kind and the silver from that city is just amazing. I loved it and would encourage anyone who has ever wanted to travel around Mexico to visit that city. I loved it. It was most definitely my most favorite place we have gone since I've been down here in Mexico. We left early Saturday morning at about 5 am to catch the 5:30 bus out of Tehuacan. I actually didn't sleep at all that night I just stayed up and watched a movie with A-Rod (AKA Adri) and talked on Skype before that so I was totally exhausted when we finally got on the bus. It was a great plan I slept the entire way to Taxco practically.

When we arrived in Puebla we went to the Estrella Balnca ticket counter to buy our ticket to Taxco. Well to our surprise the bus was full and they had no available tickets and the next bus wouldn't be leaving until the following morning. Well that's just great. I had asked if we should purchase our tickets before hand but we had been informed that they most definitely wouldn't be sold out. Well everyone else in our team kinda threw up their hands in defeat and decided that we would be staying in Puebla for the weekend. I just walked over to another ticket counter and asked them when the next bus to Cuernavaca would be and then how often the buses from Cuernavaca left for Taxco. It took us more time but cost us 30 pesos less to go that way so it wasn't the end of the world. We got on the bus fifteen minutes later and we were on our way to the city of Cuernavaca. When we got there we had to take a taxi to another bus station where we learned that the next bus wasn't leaving for a couple of hours. They told us about another bus station was just up the road that had a bus leaving much sooner than that. So we grabbed our bags and started the hike up the road to the Estrella de Oro. It was a nice walk and we were able to enjoy seeing some of Cuernavaca. I did see a few things I had never seen before one of which was blue tortillas. This lady had a stand on the street and was making them on her big grill (I don't know what else to call it) it was pretty sweet. When we got to the station we bought our bus tickets then went and bought ourselves some tortas so that we didn't starve to death and then we just chilled until our bus left at 12:30.

Ryan thoughfully took Adri's bag too, it ended up being a lot further of a walk than anticipated and to our delight it was all uphill!

The road to Taxco is very windy and would for sure have made me car sick if I hadn't slept the entire way. I woke up just as we were getting there and was immediately amazed at how beautiful the city was. I was so excited to get off the bus and walk through the streets and see everything that I had read about. One of the best parts about going to Taxco this weekend was that there was a huge Silver Festival... there were tons of things going on in the Zocalo (city center) and all around the city the whole weekend. It was great! When we arrived we walked to our hostel and dropped off our bags and everything else. Our hostel was even better than any of the Puebla girls had said. Joan Sebastian's Hostel is where anyone who goes to Taxco and doesn't want to spend a lot of money should stay. It was beautiful and just so great. The owner of the hostel is a surgeon and has turned his home into a hostel. He loves hosting people and telling people all about the city he loves so much. All they kept saying to us was "Esta es tu casa" They were so thoughtful! And it was in a perfect location, right by the Zocalo and it had a beautiful view from the rooftop.

I love Taxco

This is the first view I saw and this isn't even that great

Broke and Kathy waited while we were looking around on the roof

One of my favorite pictures from Taxco

One of the many cathedrals... this one is in the Zocalo

After we got settled we walked up to the Zocalo and started looking around a bunch of shops. The silver there is beautiful and really is inexpensive. It was sometimes overwhelming to walk into a shop that was just covered in silver from wall to wall, it is hard to pick out beautiful rings and bracelets and other jewelry when there was that much to look at. But it was fun!

Ever shop we went into had these small silver studs for sale... my favorite ones were the sperm and egg ones. I don't know who would buy them or why they thought they were cool but I just couldn't help but laugh and take a photo

We went to a small cafe for lunch in the Zocalo which was great and had a nice view from the window seats

Ryan, Adri and I bought desert for 3 pesos.... I love Mexico!

This is the street up to the Zocalo... Taxco is built into a mountain and surrounded by seven hills. Everything is either uphill or downhill and some of the roads are really steep. It was a good work out for my butt and legs and though I complained I thought it made the city so much neater.

After lunch and going back to the hostel for a break we walked down to where we thought the market would be. We had been told that they would be open until 9 pm so we headed down there around 6 pm. We arrived just in time to find all of the stands closing up. Thankfully some of them were still open and I was able to find some beautiful gifts that I was looking for.

After we were finished down there Adri and I ended up getting separated from Ryan, Brooke and Kathy. We walked a little further up the road and we found a market area that was still open. I think I finished all of my shopping in the next hour while I was in there. It was great!! The silver here is so beautiful... I can't even do it justice and I can't show you pictures or it will spoil a lot of people's gifts. It was a fun evening. There was one man who had a stand in the market who spoke English pretty well. He had lived in the US for quite some time and so we were able to have a nice visit with him. He kept telling me that in order for me to learn Spanish I needed to practice. He spoke slowly for me and so I was able to understand most of what he said to us in Spanish and I was able to say a few things back to him. He then told us about how his son is learning English and he was just very nice and it was nice to visit with people. That is one thing I have been sad about. Because I don't speak the language I haven't had the opportunity to get to know the amazing people that live here. After we were finished with our shopping we took a different route back to the Zocalo and we walked through a lot of the stands that were set up for the festival. We decided to buy this pineapple smoothie that had this powder called 'chamuay' on the inside of the cup and on top of it. Just before they finished up our order they let us each try a spoonful of the chamuay which was possibly the most disgusting thing I have ever put in my mouth. I could hardly swallow it. The pineapple smoothie part of it was delicious but that didn't make up for all the rest of the grossness in that cup. Neither of us liked it... how could we?

Vomit in a cup... ok well it was what caused us to vomit

Some of the beautiful sliver

I don't know who this is or what he has to do with anything... I might if I would speak and read Spanish but I just wanted to take a picture

There were fireworks on Saturday night... the first one went off and just about made me wet my pants because it scared me so bad

We did a bunch more shopping at the market around the carnival before we went back to the hostel... there were rides set up and everything. It was a party and if Mexican's are good at one thing it is throwing parties. When we got back to the hostel we met up with Ryan, Brooke and Kathy and decided we were going to go out for dinner. We had some delicious pizza up on the rooftop and enjoyed the beautiful view of the city. It was freezing cold but the pizza warmed us up. Ryan kept quoting Brian Regan and I thought I was going die from laughing so hard. Adri and I couldn't stop laughing, I was crying and them Brooke and Kathy just sat there and hardly laughed at all. Everyone else in the restaurant kept staring at us and probably thought we were the weirdest white people they had ever seen. I couldn't even care because my stomach hurt so bad from laughing. It was so funny!

My view while I was reading my scriptures on Sunday morning

It was so beautiful.... and the sun was shining

It was a great weekend off

I could feel my legs getting a sunburn

After we finished reading our scriptures Adri and I went to walk around and enjoy the beautiful city. We looked in shops and took pictures in the streets. It was such a nice day.

Some of the cool statues in the city

It was just a great weekend with my best friend!

We were saying that we felt like some of the pictures we were taking could be taken out of a storybook. It was just such a neat city to visit. Just as we said that we saw this poster.... "This picture explains my feelings perfectly" Oh Adri makes me laugh!!

Just a cool silver shop we saw

Our walk to the arches took much longer than we originally anticipated. We stopped at everything we thought was cool. We met this one man who spoke perfect English, he said he learned just from working with the tourists since he was a young boy. He was so helpful and so nice. He showed us where this cool silver mine was and had a young boy take us on a tour of the mine. It was really neat. It used to be a working mine... we weren't allowed to take photos which was too bad but it was fun.

Los Arcos

Then Adri and I took the gondola to the top of the mountain where they have this huge resort. There wasn't shopping up there or anything we just wanted to see the view. It was worth the walk and all the time it took us to get there. It was beautiful!

When we got to the top of the mountain the view was amazing and the resort up there was really neat too.

When we got back we got some ice cream... Adri definitely ordered better than I did and I was so disappointed once I saw hers compared to mine but it was still really good.

We had time to visit for a bit and read the scriptures and then we had a nice visit with the owner of the hostel before we left. I asked him to play the guitar for us and it was a nice treat to hear some traditional Mexican music. It was great! It took a while and then we had to book it to the bus station to make our bus back to Puebla but all was well and we made it home in one piece.

We took a bunch of pictures before we left... I was sad to go!

We did go to Church!! This counts right??

We got some awesome pizza for the ride home

What an awesome weekend. I wouldn't have changed any of it... the people we went with were super fun and the things we got were great and the whole weekend was just great. Most definitely a highlight of my trip so far!