I had a wonderful Lone Tourist experience in the morning, visiting the Museo del Alfeňique. This is an old mansion richly decorated in white plaster filigree, that recalls to some extent the delicate sugar figurines that are so typical of Puebla (called alfeňiques). The house hosts the museum of the city, and has all sorts of interesting local artifacts of the last 500 years. I was, of course, the only person there, and the chatty guard took it upon himself to give a tour through the collection. He also gave me many good pointers about places to go, including, to my absolute amazement, the presence of a vast network of tunnels that had been dug under the city and the nearby mountain, where the defensive forts were located. Puebla had been a favorite outing of my parents, and I thought we had visited everything there was to visit when I was a kid. Tunnels that went for kilometers and my parents had not taken us boys there? Unthinkable.
So I walked across half of the old town and found the rather inconspicuous entrance to the tunnels, duly guarded by a museum curator. I paid my modest entrance fee, and always alone dove under the city to start my exploration of about a kilometer of narrow passages. Turns out that the tunnels were not “rediscovered” until a few years ago, although there were references to them in old maps and public works encounters with cavities when laying down sewage pipes. Who built these tunnels? Some were no doubt dug by the Spaniards, in their paranoia about having a safe haven from their indigenous allies, but the ones connecting the city with the forts were probably built in the 1700’s or early 1800’s. Apparently they were extensively used when the French invaded Mexico in 1862, and on May 5 attacked the forts to find stubborn resistance to their attack. The French could have probably sieged the forts, or simply gone around them, but a certain Coronel Porfirio Díaz, commanding a rabble of Indians from the Sierra de Puebla armed simply with machetes, fell on their rear and caused them to retreat ignominiously. General Commander Ignacio Zaragoza was able to claim victory for the Mexican army, the 5 de Mayo became inscribed in history, and now General Porfirio Díaz kept the secret of the tunnels he had used to bring his rabble army behind the French army.
I was still intoxicated by my lonely exploration of the tunnels when I reached one of the beautiful parks of Puebla, The Manta Ray, with its breathtaking Punta del Cielo scenic view of the city. Then, all of a sudden, I was immersed in tourists! They were emptying in hordes out their tourist buses, covering Punta del Cielo like locust. From here on I was always in the middle of a selfie-snapping throng.
Be as it may, I hopped unto the Touri-Bus and back by the cathedral I visited the Biblioteca Palafoxiana, a beautiful library established in the 1600’s by the archbishop of the city, who endowed it with his own 5,000 books, under the condition that anyone who knew how to read could have access to the books (the first public library of the Americas). The collection and beautiful furniture were enlarged by later donations, and now it counts with over 50,000 volumes, most of which were written/drawn during colonial times. It is a dream for people like me, who love old libraries.
Lunch was at the Paseo de San Francisco, where legend has it that chalupas were invented. An order consists of eight small tortillas, lightly fried, and then smothered in red or green salsa (or mole), chopped onions, and pulled pork. Absolutely delicious and another flashback to my youth, because my Tia Reina used to invite us to eat chalupas at her house, always a sign that we were going to have a fun evening singing songs, telling jokes, and socializing while eating the delicious antojitos. Question: What are the 4 food groups of the Poblanos? Answer: Puerco, cochino, cerdo, y marrano.
I finished my day through Puebla by walking through the antiquities market of El Sapo, a quaint collection of overpriced junk. Time to go home and prepare for tomorrow, when I will head for Tlaxcala before going back to the coastal plain.
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