The trip to Puebla took two hours... a swift ride east into volcanic regions. The city is ordered and tidy... streets follow a regular grid pattern... buildings present themselves with typical colonial grace, splendour, charm... a real Spanish antique. Colourful chuches abound... colours too bright... textures too soft... thoroughly clean and ornamental......
We entered the Cathedral... surveyed the pillars, the atrium, the altar, the ceiling. The music outside was some ominous cacophony... a devil at the door. We made a circuit through the interior... past bloody christs, locals in confession, stately brass gates... then exited into the night.
A crowd had formed at the Zocalo. We made our way over... through the steaming tortilla stands and candy floss salesmen. A dance troop was performing an aztec rite. They wore head dresses of peacock feathers, capes of red silk... gold coloured waist bands. They brought out burning torches and cups of fire... acted out a solemn procession. When the rite was completed, the firey objects removed... they threw themselves into something more upbeat... they stamped and lunged forward, hurtled back. The feathers shimmered and shook... mesmerising... the dancers circled and leaped.....
CHOLULA
The city had reached its peak between 1 and 600 AD... after that, the city fell. By the time of the conquest, the Great Pyramid was already obscured with vegetation... a population of 100,000 dwelled nearby... persons of toltec or chichimec descent. Cortes marched in and laid them to waste... vowed to build a church there for every day of the year. He succeeded in constructing 39... one of them atop the great pyramid itself.
The site was largely unexcavated... resembling a hill from the distance. Those sections unearthed reveal that the pyramid was built layer by layer in several stages... a little higher with each successive king. The patio of the altars at the southern side revealed Teotihuacan style architecture... something surreal... staircases meeting with walls... to the north, south, east and west... rising and falling chaotically. Beneath the pyramid, archeologists had drilled tunnels for research. Inside them, we could make out other stairways from early generation pyramids. The tunnels were something narrow and stifling.......
CUETZALAN
We decided to take an unscheduled detour to Puebla's 'magic region'... the Northern Sierra... the small town of Cuetzalan. The greater part of the journey was accomplished in three hours. We passed through several villages... fields of dead maize, often gathered into little bundles... dried up grass... ruined walls, buildings, churches... then half completed houses... manifold cacti. The final hour took us into the mountains... the atmosphere, climate and vegetation shifted. The air grew noticeably humid, dense... the hillsides dripped with lush folliage... everything was thick and green with giant ferns and fat, dark leaves. The horizon was formed by sillhoutted peaks of different shades... the nearer slopes swaythed in cloud. We wound about the mountainside... rising and falling.
From the approach, the town was perched on a slope and dominated by a surreal gothic spire. We entered onto the streets and exited out of the bus... strapped on the packs and made for the main plaza... down streets with low, slanted red roofs... the usual bustle all around... offers made and declined... stares received and returned. The plaza was marked by a bandstand and a clock tower... surrounded by variously shaped enclosures of vegetation... half broken benches... tall, tall palm trees. A totonac voladores pole stood nearby along with a great and lightly dilapidated church. Along one side of the plaza Native women sat upon the steps... barefooted and clothed in white blouses and skirts with bright embroidered details.
We checked into a room and had a wander on the roads... cobbled and sometimes steeply inclined. We arrived at the gothic spire we'd seen from the approach... at the rear of the cemetary with slabs and crosses of bright blue and white. From up there you could look down the hillside... it receeded something dense. We went back to the room and lay down for an hour. Outside our window a marching band went about its erratic rehearsals... trumpets, cymbals, snare drums clashing timelessly.
It was dusk when we ate. During the meal we were treated to further musical renditions from the plaza. Occassionally, distant flashes of lightening would break through... gradually, they drew nearer. By the time we were done, a full blown thunder storm had descended on the town. The power would cut out intermittendly... screams would issue from the darkness... everything would flicker back between the booming. The downpour was immense... the streets became a river... we went splashing through the crackling madness... past large uncovered holes... through the deluge and back to the room..........