With CELTA now behind us, Don and I are out and about visiting cities that have been recommended for our potential future home.  A couple of weeks ago, we took a Sunday afternoon luxurious bus ride one hour south to the city of Cuernavaca. The bus was deluxe with seats and movies much like the airlines and only cost about $11.00 usd. We left Mexico City and started to climb.  With pine tree forests taking over from our ‘regular’ D.F trees, we entered clouds while the view from our huge window had us looking out over a valley far below.

We knew we were getting up in altitude (Mexico City is over 7,000 feet) because our ears popped as we continued to climb. We later found out that we were up at 9,000 feet! We pulled into a small bus station just a couple of blocks from the zocolo (town square) where families mingled among the vendors and small shops on a warm afternoon.

Most of our afternoon was spent exploring a particular site called the Jardin Borda built in the 1700s. It’s a mansion with gardens, walking paths, a lake with row boats and a huge swimming pool (now empty). The evidence of prior wealth was amazing.

Our next day trip was to Queretaro, about 3 hours north of here. It’s a city completely different from what we experienced in Cuernavaca and here in D.F. There are no street vendors on the sidewalks and the city seemed more prosperous. We saw a lot of new construction going up.

A huge engineering feat astounded us – this ancient aqueduct.  The story and lore behind this great structure would make a great future blog!

There are numerous well known industries located here along with a dozen or more universities in a city of about 1 million people. In 1996, the historic center was proclaimed a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and the World Cup was played here in 1986.

We arranged a taxi for 3 hours and our first stop was at the Mexico headquarters of the Peace Corps.

We had the opportunity to meet with Heather (Director of Programming and Training) who graciously gave of her time to explain the specific mission of the PC here and changes coming down the road that may have a positive impact for our goals – we’ll see!

Genoro (our taxi driver) was an excellent driver who’d lived in California for 4 years so he was also an excellent ‘tour guide’ for us. However, under threatening skies, he warned us taxis quit driving under heavy rain and we might not be able to get a ride later in the early evening back to the bus terminal, so we cut our visit a bit short and he dropped us off at the terminal. We got his cell number and said if we came back we’d like to hire him again!

He was right. It started to rain hard as we got on the bus and the freeway was flooded as we got closer to D.F. but we sailed on through.  A great ‘first look’ at this potential new home.