Mexico - Winter 23/24

Trip List Calendar

2024-01-31 : Tequisquiapan Highlights
Today was a day to walk around Tequisquiapan to see some (a lot of) the highlights. We saw the two oldest neighborhoods (San Juan and La Magdalena), the Mercados Artesanal and Guadalupano, Centro Cultural Gloria Michaus Fernández with all of the great paper maché sculptures, Parque La Pila, Callejón del Piojo, Parroquia de Santa María de la Asunción and the main town square.

We had lunch at the local Austrian restaurant. I had chilaquiles verde (uuhhhhmmmm… Austrian chilaquiles??). Oh well. There wasn’t much Austrian food on the menu but it was good anyway.

We were surprised at how many gated communities there are here. I wonder who lives in all these gated communities and why they’re… gated.


2024-02-01 : Cadereyta
Back when I was planning the trip months ago, Laura suggested that we stay in Tequisquiapan instead of Cadereyta for a week. I canceled our reservation in Cadereyta and booked us a place in Tequisquiapan. I love our place in Tequisquiapan so much. I’m glad we’re staying there just for that, but Laura was right. Tequisquiapan is a place to stay for a bit and Cadereyta is a day trip.

We took the yellow arrow bus to Cadereyta and had a look around. We saw the Mercado, Jardin Cadereyta, Templo San Pedro y San Pablo, Parroquia de San Gaspar, Templo del Refugio and Parque Las Fuentes. We had lunch at La Casita, which was really good. Then we took the red arrow bus back. It’s a much nicer bus than the yellow arrow.


2024-02-02 : Estación Bernal and Museums
This morning we walked out of town and up the hill to the old train station, Estación Bernal. As an added bonus a train came past while we were there, but it was a freight train - I think it’s been a really long time since a passenger train has pulled in.

We were going to do some errands as well before hitting up a couple of local museums, and we randomly discovered Jardin del Arte on our way back downtown.
This afternoon we went to the miniatures museum (México me Encantata) which absolutely blew us away. It has more than 200 scenes of the daily life of Mexicans: traditions, customs, jobs and festivals that the proprietor made herself over more than 40 years. It was spell-binding and beautiful. The amount of detail she’s put into it is amazing. We then went on to the wine and cheese museum (Museo del Queso y el Vino) which really isn’t a museum at all… really more just a store, and we noped out of that. We then had a late lunch on the terrace at Cilantro Perejil. The setting was great but I wasn’t impressed with the food.
Brent and I love Mexico but we also find it perplexing in some ways. One area that I find fascinating and odd is the Catholicism.

Today we noticed that a lot of people were walking around town carrying baskets with baby dolls in them. Tonight there was a massive mass at the church in the square… and baby dolls. We had to find out what it meant and we learned about Candlemass.

I suppose if you grow up with it it seems normal but… it’s a little odd from the outside looking in.


2024-02-03 : Tequisquiapan Visitors
Today was about visitors. As odd as it sounds to receive visitors in a town that you’re only visiting for a few days, we did, in fact, receive two sets of visitors.

First, we met Rob and (and Anita’s sister) from Querétaro for a short visit as they were on their way through town on their way home.

We then had a short walk over to Camino a Bremen restaurant to meet Laura, Rocio and Tobias. Tobias is Laura’s husband, and his family is actually from Bremen, so the restaurant is a favorite for them. After lunch we went to an ice cream place where Laura introduced me to the joys of red wine floats. Then we had a beer in the main square before they headed back to San Juan del Rio.


2024-02-04 : El Redentor Opal Mine
Today we went out to La Trinidad to visit Mina Redento, the local opal mine.

Rome2Rio doesn’t seem to know about Autotransportes de Tequisquiapan (ATT) - it recommended a taxi. Brent remembered seeing a bus labeled for La Trinidad when we were here the other day though. Ruta 001 is the bus to La Trinidad and it leaves on approximately the half hour.

When we got to La Trinidad we walked straight over to Tour Minas Opalo. There are a number of tour resellers but these guys seem to be the only ones really running tours.

They don’t offer much in the way of English. They gave us a jeep driver (Oscar) who speaks some English but the guy who gave the processing demo (Hector Móntez) doesn’t speak English, and the guide at the mine, Fernando, speaks some English but did the whole presentation in Spanish. Oscar seems to have had the Muzungu collection of people. It was us, two parties of Japanese folks, and a young couple who were an American and a half French/half Mexican fellow. All the other jeeps were 100% Mexican.

Hector did a great presentation about how the opals are processed and then we took a long, steep drive up a really rough road to get to the mine itself.

Fernando, the guide at the mine, was great with the crowd, and with the children, and gave away many opals to whomever answered his pop quiz questions properly. He also recruited a young volunteer to set off a fire cracker in a crevice of the mine to demonstrate the explosive process.

After the presentation at the mine, which was very entertaining, even though we couldn’t understand most of it, Fernando took us up the hill where we were invited to smash rocks and look for opals. We could keep any opals that we found. Brent and I both came away with a small handful of rocks with little bits of opal in them. My glamour sunglasses seemed to be very well suited to spotting the sparkliness of the opals - I was able to spot several just by looking through rocks on the ground.

After we returned to town in our Muzungu jeep we took a brief walk in the town and then went to look for the bus back. I wanted to grab a taxi if we could find one but there don’t seem to be many, or any, taxis in town. Anyway, before a bus showed up, a taxi from San Juan del Rio came in to drop off some folks and Brent snagged him to drive us back to Tequis.


2024-02-05 : Last full day in Tequisquiapan
Today is our last full day in Tequisquiapan so we did a laundry and some last-minute walking around. We saw the large artisan Mercado, what we think is a rodeo ground, and the Capilla de la Cruz Verde.


2024-02-06 : La Trinidad then to Querétaro
Yesterday was our last full day in Tequisquiapan but we have a short hop today to our hotel near the Querétaro airport. Our AirBnB host let us check out late so we took advantage of the opportunity to head back out to La Trinidad to have a better look around the town. Last time we really only had time for the Opal mine tour.

La Trinidad is a tiny town but interesting because it’s nestled against the hills where the Opal mine is. We walked up to the lookout, where we found another interesting Catholic thing… crosses on the hill that you can get up on to have your photo take. My goodness. We walked around the rest of the town and then jumped the bus back and had lunch in Tequisquiapan.


2024-02-07 : Travel Querétaro to Puerto Vallarta
One of my anxiety triggers when traveling is depending on a pre-scheduled taxi to get us to the airport. I’ve just been burned by them too many times. Not in Mexico, mind you, but enough in Calgary and Edmonton o make me… untrusting. Thankfully we have a few folks in Edmonton who are happy to drive us, but that doesn’t help us when we’re flying internally in Mexico.

Our flight to Puerto Vallarta was supposed to leave at 8am, meaning arrival at the airport at 6am. Querétaro city is quite a ways away from the airport and Tequisquiapan is even further. I did not want to take a chance on finding a taxi early early in the morning in either place.

I found a motel (Casa Antares) in San José Navajas, a tiny village outside of Querétaro that offers airport shuttle service. I contacted them to confirm their shuttle. I was happy with the response I received so I went ahead and booked it.

Our favorite tour guide (and friend), Uriel, said oh no! Don’t stay in San José Navajas! It’s awful! It’s dangerous! I assured him that we would not venture from the motel and would be taking the shuttle to the airport.

Welp, it turned out great! We got a taxi from Tequisquiapan to the motel for only $400MEX (about $32CAD). The motel is secure, clean and very appealing, with an outdoor patio and coi pond. The proprietor was friendly and helpful and he was ready to take us to the airport by 3:50. Oh yeah… I forgot to mention… Viva Aerobus changed our flight to 6am. The proprietor of Casa Antares just rolled with it no problem. What a great, stress-free experience!
We didn’t get much sleep last night and then had an annoyingly long layover in Monterrey. Other than that it’s been a smooth transition to Puerto Vallarta.

Our AirBnB, as promised, is a rustic open-air cabin-style place. It also comes with a cat who thinks she owns the place. The host says she belongs to the neighbor. She’s adorable. We’ve named her Mr. Underfoot. The only problem with our place being as open as it is is that we have no way of keeping Mr. Underfoot out, and off the bed. I’m hoping that she isn’t going to trigger an asthma attack for me. That could be a bit of a downer…


2024-02-08 : Culture Shock in Puerto Vallarta
Holy culture shock!! We have been enjoying a more authentic Mexican experience for several weeks and now we have arrived at hustle and bustle Gringo Central. Puerto Vallarta is busier than last time we were here, and our delightful little authentic street where we stayed, Jacarandas, is quickly being ‘gentrified’ and ‘touristified’. I had tried to get us in to our same AirBnB as before but it wasn’t available and now that I’ve seen what is becoming of it, I’m less sad. We also visited the Mercado and the beach.

If you’re interested in seeing our last AirBnB on Jacarandas, there are a couple of photos here: http://www.damdetails.com/calendar/day/324 and the open-air room and deck here: http://www.damdetails.com/uploads/9e55ef7eb63d66a5952332aec731d532.jpg
We just saw the most amazing thing. We’re sitting at the beach and I notice a dog taking a dump. Well, the dog lined up it’s butt so that it put its poop on a large rock. Then its person came and picked up the poop. The best-trained dog and human I have ever seen.


2024-02-09 : Chore Day in Puerto Vallarta
Today was mostly a chore day. Dawn arrives from Atlanta tomorrow to hang with us for about 3.5 days.

So, we dropped off our laundry, added some data onto my Mexican sim for Dawn to use, then did some bus recon. We caught the bus up to the airport and intended to ride it straight back again, just to make sure we know where to catch the bus on both ends for getting her from the airport.

Well, the bus doesn’t turn around at the airport. In fact, it goes all the way out to Ixtapa (no, not THAT Ixtapa, thankfully… we’d still be on the bus) and then takes a break before heading back. So all together we ended up spending between 2-3 hours on bus recon, with about 2/3 of that being an unnecessary bonus trip to Ixtapa. Oops.

When we got back we walked up to the chocolate museum to book the three of us into a tour of that place, including a workshop on making ganaches and truffles. We then had lunch at a great little hole-in-the-wall called Sandy’s. It’s near the expensive touristy stuff but not expensive nor touristy at all. It was awesome.

I also booked us for a Vallarta Eats tour that Dawn found.

We then went off to the beach to meet Joerg and Barbara for a walk and visit. They’ve been here since the beginning of January and will be here until early March. Last night when Brent and I were down at the beach we noticed a drone flying around near the pier, and we’re pretty sure it was Joerg. He says there was another guy who showed up with a drone but I think it was his that we saw. Crazy.

We were planning on going to a drag queen show this evening but we balked at the price and decided to give that a miss and figure out what to do about our last week here. We’re supposed to be out at Yelapa, which is water-access only, staying on the beach and then at a Glamping site up the river… buuuut… they’re calling for some crazy amounts of rain for the first three days and we don’t really want to be stuck out there in that so we may have to look at a Plan B…


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