Tuesday 8th and Wednesday 9th November

My first visit to Mexico last year left me with a serious infatuation.  It was love at first sight: the only hope of carrying on a normal life was to go back, and as soon as possible.  Similar thoughts were occurring to Nick, who also made his first trip there last year, and it wasn’t long before plans were being hatched for a return.  Thus it came to pass that on 8^th November 2005 Nick and I left Heathrow Airport, Terminal 2 to start a new adventure.

We arrived in Mexico City around 7am on Wednesday 9^th after a long journey via Madrid.  Hire car was collected and we headed off through the city to pick up the road to Puebla.  After 3 minutes we were pulled over by a traffic policeman who told us we had gone through a red light (it was green).  A lengthy period of arguing and a relatively hefty ‘fine’ later saw us on our way again – the whole day ahead of us.

Frankly the day was a bit of a blur for me, unaccountably feeling terrible with upset stomach (and I hadn’t even eaten anything …) streaming eyes and a splitting headache.  Probably just as well as our first destination, the National Park around the lower reaches of one of Mexico’s highest peaks, Popocatépetl (OK, here we go – Po-po-kah-TE-pet-ul), proved to be very disappointing botanically.  Whilst I was busy feeling sorry for myself Nick kept himself amused with the odd penstemon, salvia and dahlia – our constant companions during the trip.

Leaving Popo behind, we headed for our stopover – the city of Puebla - where we found a decent hotel quite easily.

View at Parque Nacionale Los Marmoles - day 4

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