Day 11

Day Eleven from our Mexico trip.
Part One


With this picture we said good bye to tia Alfonsa and to Santa Maria. From left to right, tio Eliseo, my niece Maryita, tia Alfonsa, my sister Elena, then the coolest of them all namely me, tia Ofelia and last but not least my mom.

Day eleven of our trip was emotional because we had to say goodbye to those tios and tias that we hadn't seen in so many years. But we had spent ten glorious days with them and we had gathered many memories that will stay with us for many years to come. During these ten days we visited five or six different towns and we saw many relatives, we said "hi" to the ones we knew and "nice to meet you" to the ones we had never met before.


Here, tia Alfonsa poses in her little convenience store. A small store like this will never make her independently wealthy but will allow her and her husband to have a decent life. Stores like this in a town like Santa Maria are few and far. Her store is a blessing for the town as it is very well stocked.

Tio Eliseo told us that the trip back to Cuernavaca would take almost four hours and that he was taking a different route that would take us to the small town of Tenansingo where we could make last minute purchases, and also to see yet another beautiful church.

In Tenansingo we found another jewel of a church. This one just like the one in Sacualpilla was a sanctuary and you could also go all the way up to where the image of the Holy Patron is displayed. The church was so beautiful it showed signs of being remodeled while still keeping it's original integrity. I went shutter crazy here too as I took lots of pictures.





Tio Eliseo is not an architect and yet he has built some houses from the ground up. He built this beautiful house in Piedras Negras and lived there for a few years. Now that they decided to move back to Santa Maria he left the house to his son and his wife. The two story house comes complete with a convenience store too.



While I didn't have a picture of his house I did managed these of the convenience store.

There in Piedras Negras we decided to have lunch. My tio's neighbour has a small restaurant and the tacos there were really good too. They advertise the barbacoa but to me the tinga tacos were way better, not to mention hot, hot, hot. I had to drink a beer to put out the fire left by the tinga. They are conveniently located right next to the highway so small businesses like these see a lot of traffic.



Tinga, a lively, tangy stew made up of pork, chorizo, tomatoes and chipotles.


Pictures borrowed form the internet.


I took this picture from the roof of my tio's house. Notice how close the highway is.

Once we were on full stomachs we decided to continue on our trip to Cuernavaca. Tio Eliseo only had one more stop planned. Ten minutes from his Piedras Negras house you will find a canyon of astonishing beauty. The impresive view is second to none, granted a Grand Canyon it's not but it's so beautiful never the less.

If you suffer from High Anxiety then you don't want to even get out of the car. You can literary stand at the edge of the abyss, really one false move and you can sing "good bye cruel world" because it will be a long fall down. While they do have some safe view points where you can stand behind a fence made of stones, we dared to take a peek they way the locals do it. Maryita asked tio Eliseo to hold her hand while leaning forward. Me I took a quick peek too and the adrenaline rush just made my entire body tingle with anticipation of what could happen should we slip.

This place was beautiful, way at the bottom the Balsas river (I believe that's the name) runs and suddenly dissapears as from that point on the river continues under the mountain as an under ground river.


This image was taken from the very edge, see the river running way at the bottom of the canyon.


Here my sister Elena says, "That's close enough for me" while tio Eliseo shows us that in order to lean safely you can put a foot out front while the other foot remains back, this way when you lean your body forward you'll keep some balance. I just think it's pretty insane but we had to do it. lol


Non daredevil smart people will stand behind this protective stone fence and will fully take in nature's beauty.



And these images show what you can see beyond that fence. Isn't it beautiful?

We saw so much on this day that I couldn't possibly do it in one post. As we reached our destination in Cuernavaca the second part of the day was just as interesting and fun. Stay tunned for that soon. For those of you that are bored to tears with these, don't despair only three more days are left... except knowing me I'll continue to blog about it for a long time to come, he he he!