CHERRY AND HAZEL’S INCREDIBLE MEXICAN ADVENTURE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2024

We are two rather raggedy old women, Hazel, 69 years and 11 months (I don't want to be seventy one single day sooner than I have to) and Cherry, 78. l’m someone who goes with the flow but does like to stop, think, and dive deeply into detail and human nature - and Cherry is an inveterate traveller, dynamic and sussed, but whose falling-apart body is not keeping up with her lightning mind. We are two very different personalities who have loved each other for just over fifty years. For iseeyousee magazine I visualise mainly through writing while Cherry has taken almost all the photographs.

We landed in Mexico City (population 20 million) on 17th October. Everything went extremely smoothly at first. We got through passport control in about quarter-of-an- hour, found our bags soon after – nothing to declare – all slick as butter.

Our first hitch was calling an Uber. No Ubers allowed near the airport. Oh no! With tears in our eyes we loaded ourselves up with all our luggage and trudged across a few highways until we came to a quiet side-street. Well it wasn't that quiet what with cars making us jump out of the road (a little dodgy) but we sat on two big tractor tyres and messaged Uber.

Horrors of the wax museum! - we simply couldn't pay for our Uber! First my Standard card was rejected and then, when we chose to pay with cash, the app just floated out into the ether.

Luckily I had a Get-out-of-Jail-Free card! I called my son Jeremy - waking him at some ungodly Cape Town hour - and he and his wife Bettina managed to pick cash on their Uber app. (NOTE: their cards would not work on the app either. Perhaps Uber was being over-picky? ... or just protective of us because we were in a foreign country).

Anyway, we arrived at Hostal (sic) Juarez safely. We were the oldest in the youth hostel by about forty years but nobody seemed that bothered.

Our next old-lady challenge was to get to Casa Barragan. Luis Barragan is a famous Mexican architect and Casa Barragan is his most beautiful house. Once there, we found we were not allowed to take pics inside ... which in the end was rather a good idea actually. You focus on the guide instead of on taking pics. Cherry took lovely ones of Luis Barragan's neglected gardens over the road. Barragan’s houses absolutely blow you away. You have to book six weeks in advance to get a spot and by evening all tickets are sold out. Casa Barragan is considered the jewel in the crown of Luis Barragan's work and rightly so. The contrasts are so well thought-out. Gold against rough wall, light against green, wild foliage against ordered window shapes, sensuality against piety. And the symmetry juxtaposed to asymmetry in the rooms and the stairs and everything is extremely so carefully considered!

After walking through Casa Barragan, which honestly was a spiritual experience - we got stuck again. Hopelessly we tried to find our purple bus but no bus appeared and it was growing dark. Then an angel appeared! This man called Pedro asked if he could help us. He stood with us saying the area wasn't safe and explained that the buses on our route were often erratic. We must just be patient. We chatted while waiting for the bus.

Pedro had had a stroke just before Covid and claimed the Guadalupe Madonna cured him. (I kept quiet about the efforts of doctors and rehab!) He said because he had been granted a miracle he knew he had to be a better person. He called us an Uber and paid for it himself. A darling man.

Our next adventure was in the city of Puebla. Puebla is a two-and-a-half hour journey from Mexico City and is crammed full of beautiful architecture. From the bus stop we ubered (my darling daughter-in-law Bettina organised that our Uber trips got paid through her Paypal account as our cards still didn’t work in spite of all my arrangements with Standard card previously). The Uber driver dropped us in front of a most unwelcoming-looking spot, but when we rang the bell a man with a huge kindly smile let us in: Manuel. the owner of Hostal Rhodas. In an almost manic fashion, he had hardly let us put our bags down in our room when he got us to visit his next-door neighbour.

This was José Abraham, a painter, woodcarver extraordinaire and poet. He is 88 years old and a charming and intelligent conversationalist. As Cherry flirted with him, he became younger by the minute!

We explored Puebla and visited some churches on the way to a street market. I’m afraid this whole Mexican trip is crammed with churches and cathedrals, but we were absolutely enthralled by them! This one looked like it was carefully iced with fondant, just amazing.

The next morning Manuel our friendly host took us and Leo, who was 25, to see the bakery down the road.

The bakery was an absolute hive of industry. The bakers start at three in the morning and bake until one. Everything is sold out by the afternoon and then they start all over again the next day. I loved the newspaper around the oven, which was very like a pizza oven: just a fire on the side.

Young Leo had told us to be sure to get up onto the roof to see the volcano Popocatepetl as it often spewed smoke and even flames, so we got up early and took pics.

On the 22nd October, Manuel decided we would all make tamales. Not a quick task, in fact it took us all day, but the end result was delicious. You can see by the length of the woven banana leaves that Alba (Manuel’s mom) is holding that we made tons of tamales.

The next day we decided to visit Cholula, a little village near Puebla, to see the pyramid there. We found it was completely covered with foliage (someone described the grass and trees as the pyramid’s bandaid). There is a church right on top of this pyramid!

We decided to take a combi-taxi home. It wasn’t comfortable, but seeing the ride to Cholula cost 100 pesos while the combi-taxi cost 8 pesos each, we decided it was worth the discomfort! We really did do this trip on the cheap.

On the 24th we arrived at our next hostel feeling rather frazzled. No Ubers. Our taxi ride cost us R80 for a 5-minute journey and the fruit-market lady sold us yucky produce. So we were ruffled and feeling unhappy. We went to shower and when I came out of the shower my toothbrush and paste were missing. Gone. Cherry helped me look and I searched absolutely everywhere - high and low: nowhere. I thought: “What sort of place is this, where your toothbrush gets stolen?”

Then I remembered an incident where my sister and I were on the point of leaving some place and my sunglasses were missing. My sister got more and more exasperated as I hunted everywhere. Finally I looked at her. She had my sunglasses on top of her head, and her own sunglasses on her nose!

So I asked Cherry if she minded if I looked through her toilet bag.

“Go ahead,” she says. And what do you know? There's my toothbrush, still wet where she'd brushed her teeth with it, and my toothpaste, which is the same brand as her own. How we laughed!

Oaxaca improved greatly in the morning. I'm not going to name all the churches and plants we saw: suffice it to know that Hierba de Conejo Hostal is two blocks from the zocalo and is run by three women. Very comfortable and convenient, and of course, cheap.

The Mexican garden of all indigenous plants was good, but the guide was not. Cherry took a photo of it and we visited the Museum of Culture that overlooked the garden. An architect from Peru was so overwhelmed by the perfection of the construction of the museum that tears ran down his cheeks and Cherry wept along with him.

By this time we were feeling overloaded with churches and museums, beautiful as Oaxaca was, so we decided to get a day pass to swim on the roof of a boutique hotel. It was glorious. We lazed about the pool, chatting to the staff and enjoying the complimentary drink and snacks. Roughly R250 well spent!

On looking down at the crowd, though, we noticed amazing stuff. Weddings were happening! We hurried down from our roof of luxury, and saw how lavishly the cathedral nearby was decorated with real (absolutely REAL) flowers. Further along we saw a wedding venue with hundreds of candles (Health and Safety officers would have had a stroke!) alight in glass balls, with ivy and baby’s breath-type flowers trailing all around.

But then, what a contrast! We saw all these very elegantly dressed people going into a few churches around: possibly five different groups of bridesmaids, and we noticed at least three brides, heading solemnly into their chosen venues but then! What do you know? After the ceremonies, the brides and their guests come dancing out of the churches, around a white ball bearing their names with bunting around. Two or three womble-like creatures would dance madly around this ball, and effigies of the bride and groom would be standing very tall near all this. It was too bizarre. I managed a video or two, but couldn’t of course intrude too much. So very, very odd!

We ended up spending more time than we’d initially planned in Oaxaca but I have to say I was blown away by the intrepid travelling skill of Cherry. She decided we would go to a small village in the middle of nowhere, called Tiacolula. So we set off. We had to find an obscure parking area somewhere in Oaxaca to climb into a taxi-type car, called a collectiva. It was very cheap but felt very unsafe. However, min gepla Cherry got us in and we drove for miles to a tree on the side of the highway somewhere in the middle of nowhere where this collectiva dropped us. And we had hardly stopped there, when a small three-wheeler scooter came along and took us up to the church in Tiacolula for eight pesos each. Well! I was extremely impressed by Cherry’s nonchalance at being sure this would all work out. We ate street food (delicious) and then explored the church which was being renovated.

Then we found a place where a family of weavers lived. Cherry bought spun yarn for her daughter and recorded the woman speaking about how the craft of weaving was passed on from parents to children. Incidentally, a funeral procession passed us by and Cherry wanted to follow them into the cemetery but I vetoed that idea! Finally we went and stood under that lonely tree on the side of the highway and along came a bus. We jumped in and a kind woman told us where to get off back in Oaxaca. A surprising day and one which really made me respect Cherry more.

We spent two more days in Oaxaca and then returned to Mexico City via Puebla for the Day of the Dead celebrations. And wow, did this city celebrate! On Hallowe’en everyone thronged around in the streets with children collecting sweets and people dressing up. Then, the next day, the Day of the Dead during which people remember and spend time with their dead children, more outfits, more candy-collecting kids, and then on the 2nd there was a huge parade. I think at least 100 floats went by, if not more. It was quite overwhelming!

We decided we couldn’t take any more celebrations so went to bed early.

The next day we decided to visit Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s studios, the ones linked with a little bridge. Well worth a visit! Here are some photos of it all. I just felt everyone has probably seen or read all about Diego and Kahlo so I’m just leaving it as images.

And then finally, before we left, we saw the Mayan ruins in Mexico City and the sun setting over it all. What a holiday!

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Useful tips for Mexico: https://www.airalo.com/mexico-esim

You can buy an e-sim which is valid for 15 days for Mexico.  It costs R250 at the moment. 

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