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Next on the itinerary was Puebla, two to three hours drive from the national capital (depending very much on the vicissitudes of CDMX district traffic), the scene of one of Mexico’s most recent and all-too frequent earthquakes (September 2017). Puebla has long thought of itself as the country’s second city (although in pure population terms one and probably two other Mexican cities would be slotted in between it and the “market leader” Mexico City), and it has long frustratingly striven to free itself from its demeaning tourist tag as a Mexico City day trip.

Highway 190 going south-east from Mexico City takes you to Puebla, a journey of around 140km❈. I must admit that before we went there I had never heard of Puebla, and I was surprised, or at least intrigued, a tad intrigued anyway, to discover (according to the tourism info blurb at least) that it was Mexico’s second largest city! And I was even more fascinated (yawn!) to discover it was the BEST city in all the country. ‘Best’ is an absolute descriptor and one subject to being variously evaluated by the use of different criteria.

This peerless assessment of Puebla’s ‘bestness’ was supplied by Hector, our 24-year-old, fresh-faced tour leader who just happened to be a native of that same city. Hector is a recent law graduate from the University of Puebla – you guessed it…the BEST university in all of Mexico! (I refrained from asking Hector if it was also the BEST law school in the country as well, I figured that one was pretty much so indelibly inked in that it could with full confidence be safely left unsaid!).

Hector’s unchecked enthusiasm for his hometown (which some, unkind people elsewhere might view in a harsh light as compensatory jealousy of the sprawling, dominant metropolis of Mexico City) was something I found nonetheless quite endearing…good to think that parochialism, the provincialism of the less significant periphery, is an always dependable constant in society and in life. I’m convinced that the elimination of provincialism as we know it, along with that of self-interest (in fact the two are synonyms for each other in this context) would surely be clear and ultimate confirmation that western civilisation (indeed all civilisation) was doomed, irrevocably on it’s last legs!

When we hit the city outskirts late in the afternoon we thought our hotel would be close by. Instead it took a tortuously drawn-out period of time to get to it thanks to it being peak time (ie, crawl time for Puebla autos!), traffic was banking up along all the main thoroughfares. After passing half-a-dozen or more hotels that looked like our prospective hotel (not that we knew what it looked like!), we arrived at the Hotel San Angel as nightfall was fast approaching. Outside it looked pretty drab but inside the hotel, the layout, furnishings and stylish central courtyard gave it a very faded appearance of old-fashioned charm.

As we were booking in and being allocated our room numbers, our receptionist, a pleasant young guy with very adequate command of English, made a politely worded request which surprised me. He asked in a most respectful tone if any of us had any spare currency from our countries he might have as he collected them for his kids. Fair enough I thought for him to ask but it didn’t really register any apparent response from the group.

Later on when I came back down to reception to hand in the room key before doing an exploratory walk around Puebla I engaged the reception guy in conversation. We exchanged introductions, his name turned out to be Jose Carlos…as we talked I noticed that under his smart suit and freshly pressed business shirt, a very bright T-shirt was protruding which I found an amusing incongruity. What really got my eye though was the book he had on the counter which he was obviously reading when he wasn’t assisting guests. It was one of Antony Beavor’s war histories, from memory I think it might have been Stalingrad. Having read some of Beavor’s well researched and written military works and posed a question to the author in person at the Cremorne Orpheum when he gave a book talk a number of years ago, I was intrigued by Jose Carlos’s choice of reading material, and even more surprised to find the book was in English! J-C explained his twin interest in war books (especially Beavor’s, he told me he had read other ones by him) and in the earnest pursuit of learning several foreign languages.

The hotel was close to all the visitor focal points, the Zocalo (quite small but decked out in a Christmas display of brightly lit arches), the main cathedral, the municipal palace, Oficinas de Turismo, museums and so on. Next door to the Zocola and massively dwarfing it, is Puebla Cathedral. With its twin-towering edifice and fortress-like structure which takes up the whole block between 16 de Septiembre and 2 Sur, it is the largest church in all of Mexico, an honour that you probably think would have resided with Mexico City itself!

When I returned home later that evening after dinner I stopped off at reception where the ever-smiling and likeable Jose Carlos was still on duty and studiously ploughing through Stalingrad. I got José to jot down his address for me, promising to send him a sample of the numerous stock of international bank notes and coins which had been laying dormant accumulating dust in my house for years.

The following morning I passed on the option to visit the nearby Pyramide Tepanapa (apparently the world’s largest pyramid by volume, surpassing Cheops in Giza)✦. In its place I did the afternoon option trip to Cholula – not out of any great desire to go there specifically, but partly because it was only 10 km by coach from Puebla, minimal disruption and inconvenience being the deciding factor! And thus it came to be, Cholula did not rise above it’s very modest expectations – it had nothing exceptional to recommend it, sightseeing-wise, that stood it out from any other average tourist destinations.

To save our visit from being a complete fizzer, Hector shepherded us towards the nearest restaurante/ cantina for a little culinary cultural fix. The diversion proved worthwhile as we got to taste Cholula’s most famous Mestizo local dish, mole poblano…this was basically a curious culinary concoction which looked like chocolate sauce, but didn’t taste like it! Rather, it was a spicy-sweet, sienna-coloured sauce containing spices, a variety of nuts and fruits, which you pour over mains, especially chicken. It wasn’t bad, certainly different, and the lashings of sangria which we washed the mole poblano dishes down with, helped as well.

PostScript: Museo de Artesanias – more a shop than a museum?
On our second and last night in Puebla I happened upon a quiet little, rather specialised, museum tucked away on a corner directly opposite the people-infested Zocalo. The few display cases inside showed a cross-sample of Mexican handcrafts and arts with displays of alfareria (pottery), sombreros (headware), etc. The sign at the entrance, “Museo-Tienda” was a hint prompting the question that quickly formed in my head: was this really just a shop masquerading as a museum? There seemed to be more merchandise, various crafted items for sale (especially women’s garments, bags and purses), than exhibits mounted behind glass! Given that entrance to the museum-cum-shop was free (fairly uncommon in museum-obsessed Mexico), it should come as no shock that everything on sale was a bit on the pricey side!

Footnote: Puebla has something else to recommend itself – the best pasteleria I encountered in the whole Mexican tour (with real chocolate!)…on Calle 16 September opposite the all-overshadowing Catedral.

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❈ the countryside between the two cities was fairly nondescript, probably the only really memorable sight was a couple of not extinct (still smouldering in fact!) volcanos. We stopped several times to get photos of them but never ever got closer than about 500m from them – an overly conservatively safe distance I thought!
✦ having already trampled been all over Teotihuacán and with Chichen Itza et al still to come, I thought it prudent to minimise the chances of contracting POS (Pyramid Overload Syndrome) during the tour! /span>