Taxco

I know what you're all thinking. You went on another vacation? Aren't you already ON vacation right now in Mexico? I know. We're becoming little fresas. But hey, that's part of the deal! I worked hard for this! Haha.

We got four days off this weekend so we headed out for our second biggish vacation to... Taxco! Which is a beautiful city up in the mountains. Kind of like Cuetzalan, but a lot less indigenous :)

On Friday we headed out. First we took a bus to Puebla (Puebla is the gate to everywhere so we go through there a lot), then from Puebla to Cuernavaca. Cuernavaca is a pretty little town about three hours southeast of Puebla. We were pretty tired from traveling all day so we decided to stay in Cuernavaca for the night in this lovely 58 peso per person hotel...

Fancy right? Not so much. But cheap!

In the morning we got up, bought our bus tickets, and looked around town some more. My favorite thing was stumbling upon this square that had some gorgeous cathedrals and buildings from the 1800s.

The whole place just had that old peaceful atmosphere that I love. It was sad when we had to leave! But there were more adventures to come.

Finally we headed out. We arrived about an hour and a half later in Taxco, to this lovely view.

Taxco!!!

It is beautiful. The city has a very European feel, all color coordinated with white buildings and orange roofs. And all the taxis were old VW Bugs! So fun. The city is also the "cuna de plata," the cradle of silver, so there were tons of vendors everywhere selling silver jewelry. We spent Saturday just exploring the city and figuring out what there was to do there. Here are some things we saw.

Capilla de San Nicolas, aka Saint Nicholas' Chapel, aka Saint Nick, aka SANTA CLAUS! So this is where good ol' Santa goes to church. I always wondered!

Unfortunately, this isn't Santa's Chapel. I wish! This was inside the main cathedral in town and it was BEAUTIFUL. We see a lot of cathedrals, but I loved this one. It was so ornate and everything was plated in gold.

Another thing we did on Saturday was find where we were staying. Ashley knows some people that had gone to Taxco when there were here teaching and had stayed in a really cool place, so we decided to follow suit. And that place was... A monastery! El Monasterio Betania. Except there were no monks there, just nuns. I thought nuns lived in convents? Who knows. But it was way cool! What happens is that the nuns live in this place and have a lot of extra rooms, so they let people stay there if they want and feed them breakfast and dinner. It's free but they ask for a donation, which was really nice because we got to choose how much to pay. I didn't get a picture of the monastery itself, but here's a picture of the bathroom!

Absolutely covered in fun Mexican tiles. We loved it! The nuns were so nice to us. We couldn't find their information beforehand so we just showed up and asked if there were rooms and they welcomed us right in! I didn't get any pictures of the nuns themselves either, but look on Facebook because the other girls took some! They were a lot different than I had imagined. After Cuetzalan I was expecting them to be a lot more cut off from civilization for some reason. But they were very modern! They had cars, used telephones, and they even have a Facebook page. But they were just as nice as I had expected. I was sad to say goodbye to them when we left!

On Sunday we did some adventuring! We headed out to a big cave called Cacahuamilpa... Try saying that five times fast. The cave is two kilometers long and SO big! I can imagine it being the home of t-rex or something haha. The tour was interesting for about the first twenty minutes... And then the next hour and forty were pretty boring. But it was good!

Picture with no flash. Do you see me? 

That's better.

We love Cacahuamilpa!

After that caves we did some rafting! Well more like some fourteen year old boys rafted us through a river in a cave. I was loving our helmet lights. Such an adventure!

After all of this it was about 4 pm, so some of us headed back to town while others stayed to do some more adventuring. Those of us that went to town, though, headed to the mall in Taxco. I know right? Of course the white girls go the mall. But we just wanted to see how it compared to ours in Tehuacan! It was built straight onto the side of the mountain. Pretty cool. After that we headed back into town and explored some more. Mexican cities are always way busy on Sunday night because everyone goes to mass and then stays out for a while to party. The day before I had seen all these people walking around with these boxy strawberry things, so I bought one!

Super yummy. It's just a box of chopped, sugared, frozen strawberries that they open up and then add a bunch of delicious whipped cream and mix it all around for you. So good! I am definitely buying frozen strawberries and Cool Whip to recreate this when I get home. Mmmmmmm.

After this we headed back to the monastery, ate dinner with the nuns, and headed to bed. The next morning we got up, walked around some more, and then headed home! I'd call it another successful vacation!

Coming up this Saturday... Another temple trip to Oaxaca! Can't wait.

Adios!