We are now in the town of Orizaba, situated below the volcano of the same name, also known as Citlaltépetl. This is the third highest mountain in North America but unfortunately you really can´t see it from the town, except for the very top of the peak. The picture above is how it would look if we could see it.
The other nice thing about this town is that, compared to the town of Jalapa, they really respect their festival here for the Virgin of Guadalupe. We were really looking forward to the festivities on Friday night for Guadalupe but it turned out to be just a big fair with kiddy rides, booths for dart throwing, candy, gambling, t shirts and other assorted boring stuff. It was all commercial and not really aimed at the spiritual aspect of the day. There was a street that the pilgrims came down that went to the big church and they were all into it, but most of the crowd was just there for the party. Kind of disrespectful to Guadalupe, if you ask me. Along with the perpetual traffic jams, not so good food (except for some amazing street food we had), and not too many interesting old buildings, Jalapa is to be missed EXCEPT for its saving grace, the Archeological Museum.
So we left yesterday for Orizaba, which is a very nice town. We hiked about a mile from the bus station into downtown, where there is a nice square, beautiful buildings and a great market. There is also a church that is dedicated to Guadalupe where there were some nice festivities going on and this was much, much better then the day before in Jalapa. The best part were all these little kids. The boys, ages from newborn to maybe 5 or so, dressed up as Juan Diego, the Aztec prince who Guadalupe appeared to. They are so cute in their little straw hats, sandles, white linen shirt and pants, and sarape. The girls, who we call Juanita Diego, but they just call an Indian around here, are dressed up as indian girls and are just amazingly darling. There are booths that they get their picture taken in that have live rabbits and goats.
More about street food, or in this case market food. Wandering around the market yesterday I was a bit peckish. So I just looked at the different food booths to see what the locals were eating. One guy was chowing down on a bowl with a very red liquid and meat. Turned out to be pork in a spicey red sauce. With a Mexican Coke (much, much MUCH better then American Coke), it came to about 40 pesos, or $3. And it was really, really good. After we blog here we are heading back to the market for lunch today. For dinner last night we went to a ´fancy´restaurant here in Orizaba, one that has been around since 1948. Let me just say this...NEVER ORDER STEAK IN MEXICO. They just don´t know steak here, maybe its an American thing. We felt like a nice steak, Amy had filet mignon and I had a rib eye. Very thin little things and very touch. But we had a nice Portuguese wine to go with it. I´ve been fairly disappointed with restaurant meals since we left Oaxaca. Luckily, tomorrow we are back in one of the world´s great food towns.
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