After spending most of Saturday afternoon at the ex-hacienda of Chautla, we drove on to the city of Puebla where we had a hotel room reserved for the night. The hotel was nothing spectacular nor picturesque... bland, modern accommodations on the outskirts of the city catering more to people visiting Puebla on business rather than tourists. However it was a part of the chain with which Alejandro has hotel points.
Our room was on the seventh floor, and from our room and from the windows in the hallway, we had views in three directions.
I knew Puebla very well because on my first trip to Mexico, nearly fifty years ago, I studied at the University of the Americas located in the nearby town of Cholula. My, how Puebla has changed in those intervening years! Cholula used to be a rural town, but now it has been absorbed by metropolitan Puebla.
From a hallway window facing the southeast, we could look toward the center of the city.
None of the skyscrapers on the horizon existed back when I was a student.
The only thing that I would have recognized was the church dome on the hill in the La Paz neighborhood of Puebla. As a student I could stand on the edge of the campus, look out across the fields and see that dome in the distance.
From a hallway window facing the northeast there was a hazy view of La Malinche, the sixth highest mountain in Mexico. It too was clearly visible from campus... although back then I didn't even know the name of that peak.
From our room there view was a view of the volcanoes to the southwest... a very, very hazy view of the volcanoes. It wasn't until later, as the sun dipped behind Popocatépetl that the mountain was seen clearly in silhouette.
Even the next morning, the view of the volcanoes was hazy. It is a sad commentary on our increasingly polluted planet. I remember the crystal clear views of the mountains every single day when I was a student here.
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