Cuetzalan, Puebla, Mexico
I´m currently living in the city and state of Puebla. Puebla is a beautiful state with a lot of very cool places to visit here. At this point, I´ve been lucky enough to visit several of the other cities surrounding where I live. There are many designated Pueblos Magicos or magic towns that Mexico has created in order to encourage tourism to smaller places. Towns are called pueblos magicos if they follow strict rules regarding colors and architecture. I´ve seen some amazing places that I never would have guessed were worth the visit.
Cuetzalan was one of those places. It´s definitely not a tourist desitnation that I would have learned about in the United States, but it´s very, very cool.
I went there with two good friends from where I work. I´m so used to traveling on my own that I sometimes don´t know what to do when traveling in groups. We ended up having a great time.
We left at the earliest morning bus and it was a really close call. We were literally running through the bus station.
The bus ride there was very bumpy to say the least. Luckily, I don´t have a lot of problems with feeling carsick but one of my friends got very sick.
When he arrived, we hopped in a taxi to get to our hotel. We stayed at a place called Hotel Mixti, which means cloud in the local dialect. Our hotel was perfect for our needs. It was centrally located and the breakfast was really great.
After we arrived and settled in at the hotel, we decided to head into town. We walked around the city and explored.
Since we had a few days there, we decided to try and take it easy and not rush too much. When I travel by myself, I tend to push myself to do everything in as short as possible. In this case, it was really nice to have someone be like, ¨Calm down, Meghan.¨
The area is famous for its Tlacoyos and coffee so we all made sure to have a nice leisurely breakfast. Tlacoyos are basically really thick tortillas covered with beans or mean. And then of course covered with green or red salsa. They were really really good and I had them for breakfast everyday of the trip.
We had a long leisurely meal and then wandered around town.
The town of Cuetzalan is very small so it's easy to walk most places. In the city center, there was a nice church and lots of pretty buildings to look at.
As you can see from the pictures, it was pretty rainy and dreary the first day that we arrived. The town has a high elevation so it can get pretty cool and rainy.
For dinner, we went to a really cute restaurant that decorated using shadow boxes full of stuff. It was really really cute. I got annoyed though because they messed up my order so I can´t really recommend it.
We set up a tour for the next day that cost about 600 pesos per person. We decided that a guided tour made the most sense for us so that we could see a lot with our limited time.
We went to bed early so that we could wake up refreshed for our big day.
When we were researching what hotels to stay at, we naturally read the comments and almost everyone talked about the amazing breakfast at the hotel where we ended up staying. The breakfast was pretty amazing to be honest.
On our tour, we were able to see the ruins of Yohualichan, the Waterfall called Las cascadas de brillas and a cave that I can´t remember the name of.
We started off our day with a tour of Yohualichan. It´s basically a very, very small version of what I saw in Teotihuacan. The style and design of the pyramids are very similar. It´s cool though because it´s not as well known and it was nice to spend time in ruins that weren´t totally overrun by tourists.
We got really lucky with the weather on the day that we decided to do all of our touristy stuff. I made the mistake of only packing cold weather clothes and definitely regretted it.
Since I travel around solo so much, I sometimes forget how much fun it can be just to goof around and take too many selfies with pals. We took way too many pictures at the ruin, but it was so much fun.
After the ruins, we went on a short hike to visit las cascadas brillas. Along the way, our guide explained some of the uses of the plants and talked to us about the wildlife. It was definitely interesting to learn about some of the medicinal properties and other uses.
On the way there, they had a zipline set up so both Lauren and I ziplined down. I was a little afraid of running into trees, but it ended up being a lot of fun.
Lauren brought her bathing suit so she went for a swim in the water. I dipped my toes in, but it was really, really cold so I didn´t have any interest in swimming. It was really, really beautiful though.
For our last stop of the day, we went to visit a cave. The cave was really big and really cool. I enjoyed listening to our guide explain the stories behind figures that people saw in the stalactites and stalagmites.
Mostly, I was just happy to explore with good friends.
For dinner, we went out at one of the local restaurants. It was the night of the Super Bowl so we watched it on television. The meal itself was pretty forgettable, but we had a really interesting night of trying to figure out the bill. It´s a long story but they ended up charging us twice for a tip.
The next day was a travel day, but we decided to plan a small trip to visit the Botanical Gardens. I ended up being very happily surprised by the botanical gardens. It was a really pleasant excursion. A great guide led us around and explained all the uses of the plants. I ended up buying some super fresh coffee and vanilla to bring back as presents.
It was easy to get the botanical gardens. There´s a collectivo that passes by and it only cost about 6 pesos. We just had to watch carefully for signs on the road.
We ended up hitching a ride back to town with two kind strangers. We could've waited for another collectivo, but we got good vibes so we decided to go for it. I´m always afraid when I hitch rides with strangers but it's always turned out fine.
We returned to the hotel to pick up our bags and head to the bus station. We said goodbye to Cuetzalan and returned to Puebla just in time to go grocery shopping and prepare for work.
