Feria del Carmen and Atlixco, Puebla

Wednesday after work I decided to go to the fería del Carmen with one of the other vols. Think carnival basically and you’ll get the idea. It was a fair to celebrate the patron saint Carmen, and is this pretty much happens in every place for the patron saint of any given church. So after dinner of cemitas (Poblano specialty….big sandwhich with meat that has been cooked in chili, avocado, cheese, chilies, and a number of other possibilities), Mindy and I pushed our way through the booths of chalupas, pizza, cemitas, cotton candy, and sweet bread and found ourselves in the game and carnival ride section.

With little hesitation we decided it would be fun to hop on a ride. All was fun at first, until we realized we had picked one of the centrifugal force rides that leaves one side of you bruised and battered as you’re plastered against the side of the car. Add in the fact that I was actually too big for the ride (lap bar could not be secured if my knees were at a normal 90° angle), it was not as fun as I remembered as a small child. Well about ½ through the ride, my wallet decided to go flying (literally) into the gathered crowd of people. Then, as I was trying to secure the rest of the contents of my purse that did not zip, my camera decided to make the journey as well. The good news is that at the end of the ride I was able to recover my wallet with all of its contents, my camera, and the memory card. The bad new however….the battery was no where to be seen. Even after returning to search at 6:30 the next morning (I was joined by a man looking for his wife’s bracelet and another looking for his girlfriend’s earring), the battery was no where to be found and the verdict is still out on whether or not I have managed to break my 3^rd camera since arriving in Mexico.

I spent a low-key Sunday in Atlixco, a town about 45 min southwest of the city of Puebla. It’s got a cute colonial center with a lot of nice churches, old buildings, and a leafy zocalo that on the weekends is filled with people selling flowers. A decent sized hill rises directly behind the zocalo and is adorned by a church.

So I climbed up to the church where there are gorgeous views of the now snow-capped volcano Popocatepetl (the church leaves a little bit to be desired, especially compared to the ones in the town).

In addition to the flower selling in the zocalo, Altixco was hosting a flower expo, so I wandered around that. There were every type of flower, fruit tree, cactus, garden statue, and plant that you could want, plus a giant flower sculpture of a praying mantis.