La Ciudad de la Eterna Primavera

The city of eternal spring. That's how they refer to Cuernavaca. It's because of the weather I think - everyone tells us that it's lovely in the mornings but tends to rain later in the day. But it's also a very pretty city, and people are friendly.

We decided to find our way down to El Centro (downtown) this morning. We are quite a way inside the campus, there are no shops or restaurants close by and you have to leave the university grounds to get a taxi. We hadn't gone further than a few metres when the Maintenance Director, whom we had met the day before, passed us in a taxi. "Blah blah blah blah!" He called to us in Spanish. Si, si, si, (laughing) we reply. "Blah blah (also laughing)!" he responded. So we jumped into the taxi and they dropped us off at the taxi depot just down from the Uni gates, with much muchas gracias-ing and waving. A couple of seconds later we were in another taxi, heading downtown. As soon as I told the driver we were from NZ and only spoke a very little Spanish he was off. "Blah blah blah blah!!" And so forth. Actually we are beginning to understand a bit of what people are saying to us and they are very tolerant of our terrible Spanish - even Al, who has never had a Spanish lesson in his life, is starting to chat away quite confidently.

There was a handcraft market outside the palazo de Cortes (which is now a museum). There were loads of lovely baskets that I was just DYING to buy but luggage restrictions being what they are, I restrained myself. There were also lots of brightly painted ceramic plaque things, which would look great on our garage ... I may have to investigate the postage option ...

There was a stand promoting tourism in Morales (the state that Cuernavaca is capital of), manned by three policemen. They didn't speak English either but were eager to help us with our enquiries, listening solicitously to our blithering and blathering and pressing pamphlets into our hands. Even the one with the very large gun.


This is a view towards the cathedral from the Palazo de Cortes.



This is an ancient granary, built to keep rats out, on the terrace of the Palazo. Actually I think it looks a little rodent-like itself, if you look closely.

Afer the museum, and lunch (at the same place as yesterday - they recognised us!), we paid a visit to the supermarket. We bought food - a big stack of corn tortillas, still warm, exotic flavoured yoghurts and interesting white cheeses, and green skinned oranges, as well as the usual noodles and tuna-type staples. You have to buy your drinking water here as well - it's not expensive but the bottles are big! Here's a pic of our two 10L bottles (it's taken us 2 days to get through one) with the stack of tortillas in front. Salud!