An Early Morning Trip to Cuetzalan: Feria de Cafe y Huipil

After spending Friday driving around the area of study for our Valsequillo project with one of the Peace Corps staff, I spent Saturday stuffing my face with tacos al pastor at Adriana’s borther’s birthday party. He hired one of the tacos vendor to set up in his house, which can definitely lead to consuming more tacos than really necessary. Bright and early at 5am on Sunday morning, Adriana, her daughter and I, as well as another pc vol and his girlfriend, headed out on a tour to Cuetzalan. The 4^th of October (Sunday) is the saint’s day for San Francisco de Assisi, the patron saint of Cuetzalan. In honor of this, they host the Feria de Café y Huipil (Fair of coffee). The problem with going to the fair for the whole weekend is that the hotels sell out and double and triple their prices, which is how we settled on a tour. The first stop was the town of Zaxapoaxtla, in the Sierra Norte of Puebla. The town is famous for 2 things, tlayoyos (which we ate for breakfast) and it’s participation in the battle of 5 de mayo. Adriana’s grandfather is supposedly buried in the town’s cemetery, but our brief search didn’t turn up his grave.

Tlayoyos!

Mushroom season is beginning, but I’ve been warned on numerous occasions to only buy mushrooms that you can identify since evidently they end up selling poisonous mushrooms in the market.

After that we have a quick stop at a waterfall called Cascada de Olla. Probably better to have headed right to Cuetzalan, but oh well. (the tour was actually cheaper than paying roundtrip bus fare)

We finally arrived in Cuetzalan for the fair. We headed directly to the church on the town plaza. Cuetzalan is a highly indigenous municipality and on Sundays, one of the masses is given in the local indigenous language. People pour into town from the surrounding villages for mass and for the Sunday market. We entered the church without problems and found that the archbishop was there to do a year’s worth of confirmations. So as you can imagine the church was packed. In addition, all the dancers that would be dancing throughout the day were in the church….dancing in front of various saints and virgins. Getting turned out be a quite a challenge as there were other people trying to enter for the next mass and in true Mexican fashion, no one wanted to wait in either direction. I almost ended up falling down on a little tiny old woman, and felt bad about it until she clothes lined me with her forearm trying to get into the church. After that it was really everyone for themselves.

Outside the church there was a complete mixing of cultures. Catholic images from San Francisco were mixed with indigenous symbols and as the voladores flew overhead, other dancers were performing at the base of the pole.

We ate a ridiculously large comida…the regional plate that had enchiladas, tlayoyos, cecina, local mushrooms, and beans.

View from the bus on the way home.

We got back at about 9:30 on Sunday night and then on Monday, Adriana and I had a 5pm meeting in Mexico City. Arriving and the meeting went well, but our boss got a little turned around on the way home and we ended up in a semi-sketchy area. We figured asking a taxi driver would be the best idea, too bad we ended up stopping the drunkest taxi driver in Mexico City that night. We finally made it home, but it was almost midnight by the time we arrived.

Taxco and the 44th Huey Atlixcayotl

After spending 6+ hours in a car on Friday to go to the Forest Expo in Mexico city (for less than 3 hours), I got up early on Saturday morning to go on my 1^st Mexican tour. Really, it was just paying for a bus transport and turned out to be a lot cheaper than paying for the round trip bus ticket. The only bad news, the bus left at 5am and we got slightly delayed when we got pulled over by police at 5:02am. I spent Saturday in Taxco (if that name sounds familiar, I’ve been there a couple of times so the name might be familiar) for some silver shopping (Saturday is the day for the wholesale silver market).

On the last Sunday in the month of September, the town of Atlixco, Puebla celebrates the Huey Atlixcayotl, the 2^nd largest dance festival in Mexico outside of Oaxaca’s Guelaguetza. The festival takes place on the Cerro (Hill) de San Miguel and coincides with the Sunday closest to the saint’s day, September 29^th. Huey Atlixcayotl means the Gran Festival de Atlixo (Altixco’s Great Festival) in náhuatl. After arriving late last year and having to stand, I left a little earlier and was able to get a seat in the 1^st row of the general admission section. The festival features dances from the 11 distinct regions of Puebla, as well as 1 invited state.

Puebla's governor was in attendance and got pulled from his seat on several occasions to dance.





So you've probably seen the following dance before, it's the voladores from the Totonacan region of Puebla and Veracruz. They probably have one of the most impressive traditions of all Mexican dances since they swing down from a pole hanging by their feet. I've seen them a couple of times, but this is the 1st time I've seen something go wrong.






It turns out that after that the voladores' pole is only put up for the festival each year. When deciding where to place the pole this year, someone clearly miscalculated the length of their ropes. Unfortunately as they we almost to the ground, they began to fly into a nearby tree. Most were ok, but the 1st on that crashed was injured and had to be taken out on a stretcher and rushed to the hospital, an unfortuante end to the 44th Huey Atlixcayotl.