Sylvie's Travels Home

October 22 2022

My belly wasn’t feeling too good this morning and knowing my plumbing issues, you can get the gist of it. After spending a good amount of time in the bathroom, I was able to go for breakfast and I only had a juice and toasts. 

We went back to the room after deciding to start our day around 10:30am to give my belly more time to settle.  Max came knocking at the door in a panic because she had just realized that she had lost all of her credit cards. She thought she had put them on the counter in the bar last night while she was looking for coins in her wallet. Pogo and her went to the bar and I went to her room to look some more. No one had found them at the hotel and I came up empty handed in her room as well.  We asked her if there was a possibility that she had dropped them in the car and she said no. Pogo went to investigate anyway and found them all in the dashboard opening. They had been there since she had picked us up at the airport and she had totally forgotten about putting them there. Phew!

After all that excitement, we left the hotel around 11:30 and went back to the square we were last night. We parked and strolled around town until we arrived to the pyramid/church entrance. We wanted to visit the tunnels going through the pyramid but they were closed. We found out that they had been closed since the beginning of COVID. We decided to walk to the top to see the church. A gentleman approached us to see if we wanted a guide. We said yes and spent the next hour with him. We found out that Cholula doesn’t have 365 churches but 27!! If you count the chapels around the area, then they have a total of 159 or so….the story is that when Cortez discovered Cholula, they had tons of round pyramids, maybe 365, and he had decided to destroy them all to put churches on top. We also learned about human sacrifices, that the church was build in the 17th century on top of 5 pyramids of different era and was nearly destroyed in 1999 by an earthquake. They were able to raise 5,000,000 pesos to renovate it.

At the top they had a group representing an indigenous tribe dancing in front of the church. 

It was very hot and on the way back from the church, I was feeling a little faint. We stopped to have a bite to eat around 2:30 then went back to the hotel. 

When we were in Puebla on Wednesday, Max was looking for a restaurant’s courtyard to show us. She and I went inside a pretty courtyard but realized it was the wrong one. Some guy came to tell us that they were not opened yet but to come back in 2 weeks. Max exchanged Instagram info with him. A few days later he invited us to the soft opening of his restaurant so we decided to go. My belly was starting to act up again but decided to go anyway. Big mistake.

We took a 30 minutes Uber to Puebla and went to a small bar next to the restaurant. My first stop was the bathroom. We went to the restaurant at 7:30 anddd I went to the bathroom. I noticed that the light shade over the toilet had fallen and there was broken glass everywhere so I told the waitress.

Our 7 course meal started arriving. We had not checked the menu before going. Big mistake. It was mostly raw fish which I usually enjoy but my stomach didn’t want to have anything to do with it. The first dish was raw oysters with different sauces. I tried one and the oyster was so crunchy that I could hardly swallow it.

Dish after dish was some kind of raw fish. I tried taking a bite of each but just couldn’t eat. I thought the steak at the end would salvage the evening but nope.

Drink were included but they also had Clamato or clam juice and they were all awful as far as I was concerned.  

I told Pogo I needed to go home, ran to the bathroom and couldn’t flush because I assumed broken glass had found its way inside the top flushing button thingy. Let me out of here!! While waiting for the Uber, I went again to the little bar next door to visit their toilet!

I manage to get back to the hotel without an accident. The rest of the night was awful. I’ll save you the shitty details but let’s just say that I spent a good part of the night washing clothes, towels, floors and toilet. I also took a few showers.