Skip to main content

A magical walk through time

The last time I was in Cuernavaca was in March 2020, just as the pandemic started. My son Andrew and I had planned to spend March break in Mexico to visit my mom and attend a party she had planned to mark her 80th birthday. When we booked the flight, there was no pandemic looming that we thought would ever shut down the city, the airport, and eventually the North American borders. But as our departure date neared, we debated cancelling outright, as many people in Canada were abandoning their plans to vacation at a beach resort. While our trip was a vacation, it wasn't at a beach or a resort, and we thought the worst that could happen is we would be comfortably contained in a familiar home with my mom. 

Mexico had not fully accepted the reality of the pandemic. In fact, when we got to the Mexico City airport on March 16, 2020, I asked the immigration officer how widespread the virus was here, and she replied that it was all fake news, and claimed there was no virus here at all. Since we didn't share that mentality, we quarantined in Mexico City first before heading to Cuernavaca and seeing my mom. We didn't hug her or leave the house other than to go to the grocery store and Costco to beat the run on the toilet paper and water supplies. Also, we convinced my mom to cancel her party which would have been attended by about 30 vulnerable octogenarians. 

This time around,  thanks to the vaccine, my mom and I are free to hug one another, and also we are able to venture beyond the monolithic presence of Costco. So today, we travelled much further, through time it seemed as the colonial charm of the city showed us the way through the timeless streets of downtown Cuernavaca. 

I had seen all the sites many times before but for some reason --possibly because we don't take travel for granted anymore --the streets and colours seemed magical. I've tried to capture in photos why Cuernavaca has been a favourite retreat by Aztecs kings, conquistadores and many ex-pats from North America and Europe.

A colourful street leads towards downtown Cuernavaca

Ninety years before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, the conquistadores led by Hernan Cortes were building a cathedral in Cuernavaca.

A side view of the Cuernavaca Cathedral

Entrance to the Cuernavaca Cathedral

My mom and I bobbed through the streets and shops trying to enjoy the moment while we could tolerate wearing our masks in the heat. Luckily, we were distracted by the beautiful flowers and coloured pierced paper marking the upcoming Day of the Dead. We let the colours lead the way through the cobblestone streets.

The orange seasonal flowers adorn a downtown restaurant



An entrance to a local business brought to life by pierced paper and flowers








After walking for a while, we stumbled across a courtyard that was shared by a few shops and restaurants. We chose to eat here as the area was protected from peddlers and the business of the cars and street noise. We had a picturesque view of a fountain and as dusk approached, accent lighting kept the area alive with colour. 




Cuernavaca has seen the famous and infamous, from Ferdinand Maximillian, ordained by the French as emperor of Mexico, and his wife Carlotta of Belgium who spent weekends here, to Charles Lindbergh. 
The famous last scene in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where the outlaws were gunned down by the Bolivian army was filmed here as were several other classic Hollywood movies. I will have to tell my son Andrew, 18 about this, as he is currently in Vancouver studying Film Production at Vancouver Film School. First though, I think I will send him a picture of our delicious burger dinner!
 
Wish you were here, Andrew!



 

Comments

  1. Will's blog3 November 2021 at 08:22

    Hi Clara,
    Interesting travel log and beautiful pictures of the lovely colonial city of Cuernavaca, which make me want to visit and eat some Mexican food, though you are eating a burger. Maybe I'll go to Harvey's an make a Mexican burger with guacamole and jalapenos.
    William Bradley

    ReplyDelete
  2. Clara3 November 2021 at 18:38

    Thanks Will! I salute your burger choice! Abrazos!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The house of the "earth element" gods

When you cross through the threshold of the Anahuacali  museum in the southern region of Mexico City, you quickly realize this is no ordinary structure. From the outside, the museum looks like a four-cornered pyramid, a concept by Diego Rivera intended as an artistic acknowledgment of his Mexican heritage and the earth-element gods.  The four elements are represented by their respective gods in each corner of the building: for the earth, the corn goddess Chicomecóatl; for the air, Ehécatl, god of the wind; Huehuetéotl, god of fire, and for water, Tláloc, god of rain.  The only god I felt a connection with that day was the sun god, whom I was thankful for on a warm February morning.  Museo Anahuacali -house on land between two seas Diego Rivera's concept for the building also had a practical purpose. He needed a space to house and display his private collection of roughly 2,000 pre-Hispanic figurines and sculptures. He apparently chose this geographical area of Mexico...
2 comments
Read more

The Italian who unearthed the Mexican past

My father, Dr. Charles R. Wicke, was a very humble man. He died in 2012 at the age of 84, but before he started to deteriorate I convinced him to put together an online version of his memoir. In it, he shared some of his early experiences in South  America and Mexico as an anthropologist/archaeologist in the 1950s-60s. By the time he met my mom in 1964 at Mexico's National Museum of Anthropology he had been in Mexico 10 years, published a book on one of Mexico's oldest civilizations, and had mastered the Spanish language. He also had earned the trust and respect of the anthropological academic community. I've known all this for years, but once in a while, more fascinating facts are unearthed from the past in serendipitous ways.  With Marco Vigato in Mexico City Today I met the person responsible for one of those new discoveries. Marco Vigato is an Italian independent researcher living in Mexico City with his wife and two kids. A few months ago I received an unsolicited emai...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kicking up my Heels at the Grand Hotel Ciudad de Mexico

A few days ago I played tennis for the first time in a while and reinjured my right ankle which had been strained from consistently playing tennis on hard court surface. In Canada, the surface I play on is soft, like clay and it is much more forgiving on the joints. I've been icing and hobbling along for a few days and today I woke up to find my left ankle in more pain than the right one, most likely due to the fact that I have been compensating for the injury of the right ankle. I'll be okay, I know, but as I am impatient by nature and as I am within the last third of my Mexico trip, it's hard for me to stop in my tracks and literally put my feet up. "Hmm, where should I do this, so it really counts?" I thought to myself. And then I remembered one of my must-see destinations was denied a few months ago by a security guard at the Grand Hotel Mexico City. I had been in the historic city centre, and wanted to go in the famous hotel lobby to take some pictures, but...
2 comments
Read more