Quetzalan

I finally got myself out of cities and into the beautiful mountains around here.  I headed up to Quetzalan with another student on Friday night and got back Saturday. It´s a 4 hour bus ride from here to there, but it took me more like 8 hours to get there all said and done.  To keep the story short, lets just say that there are two places called "Zaragoza" and when I bought my FIRST ticket, I bought it for the wrong Zaragoza and ended up crossing an 8 lane highway at one point to jump on a bus in the other direction. 

When we finally did get there, it was an place to see.  The town is a few thousand feet higher in the mountains than puebla (I´m guessing around 8k or 9k feet) and is pretty much built into the side of the mountain.  The whole town is pretty much inclined, with each farm and all of the main streets going straight up the hills... just like in SF, there were stairs built into a lot of the main sidewalks.

The town itself was very different looking than others around here, with far more native influence (and a lot of people still wearing traditional clothing).  The climate was more or less the same as the farm that Beth and I stayed on in Ecuador - cloud forest, which means some sun, but mostly fog rolling in and out and a bit of rain.  We spent our 12 waking hours there wandering around the town, taking a "bus" which was really more of a pickup truck with a bench in the back and a tarp covering it to a nearby town where there was a short hike to beautiful waterfalls, eating local food, and I got a massage ($30 for 1.5 hours!). 

All in all, despite the extraordinary amount of bus riding in a 24 hour period, it was completely worth the time and pain of the trip.  It was great to get out of the city and into the mountains and see some different scenery.

Also, a bonus of getting on the wrong bus is that I bought a specialty here, Tacos Arabe, which is basically a "taco" of spiced meat, arab style, wrapped in a "pita" tortilla rather than in a regular tortilla.  Perhaps the best taco I´ve had yet.  I actually had a moment of silence the next day to remember the wonder of those tacos!