Can you take the heat?

(To view the picture album click on the picture above)

At the end of May we got the visit of some of my grad school friends: Ryan and Anna, who now live in Baltimore, and Steve and Teresa, who now live in Atlanta. We spent a couple of days exploring the city and went to Teotihuacán to see the pyramids, then over Memorial Day week-end we left Sebastian with his grandparents and went on a camping adventure to Chacahua National Park, in the state of Oaxaca.

Tony told me he wants to write up a blog entry on the trip so I'll let him tell our crazy stories there... but we had an amazing time!

After Chacahua we decided we needed a less "rough" experience so we got back to Puerto Escondido and stayed there for a day at the beautiful Villas Carrizalillo boutique hotel.

After coming back from the Oaxacan coast it was back to work for Tony but our friends stuck around for a few more days to see a little more of the city and sample some nice food.

Check out our album from the trip, I cannot wait for some of the comments, especially about the facilities in Chacahua (you know who you are, you know you'll make fun of it next time I see you!)

Cabo Fun

(To view the picture album click on the picture above)

Wow, we're in May. It's amazing how time completely changes once you have a baby and seems to accelerate out of control. As it is, Sebastian will be 7 months old in a couple of days and I have been meaning to write this post for over 6 weeks.

I can't even remember what I wanted to say about it, but the fact is we had a wonderful first beach vacation with little Seb and my parents.

For once we had a more laid back trip, enjoying the resort, taking it easy. We stayed at the beautiful Hacienda del Mar Sheraton Resort and had a nice 1bd suite with a kitchen which was great since we could cook some meals in, keep Seb's milk refrigerated, sterilize bottles, etc. We did learn that traveling with a baby is more technical than it seems!

We did venture out of the resort to visit both San José del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas, had a beach day at Santa María and drove down to the "Magical" town of Todos Santos. I do have to say that I was a little disappointed by this town: it's more a street than a town and its main attraction, the Hotel California, has only the name in common with the famous Eagles song. The 1h drive through the desert to Todos Santos was very pretty though, so we had a nice outing even if the "magic" was not quite there!

Check out the pictures, they're really nice, if I may say!

Back in the Game

(To view the picture album click on the picture above)

It has been a while since I last posted on this blog. As it turns out having a baby is a full time activity and our travelling was limited to visiting our family in Chicago to introduce them to Sebastian.

But now Seb is 4 months old and we've resumed our travels around Mexico. Our first outing was a week-end trip to the State of Hidalgo. We'd been meaning to go visit the Basaltic Prisms for a long time and I'm glad we did, the site is amazing!

The Basaltic Prisms are made of igneous rock, known as prismatic basalt, formed into a fifty meters high vertical wall of gigantic columns, decorating the walls of a gully known as Alcholoya. These basaltic prisms were formed by the accelerated cooling of lava millions of years ago. They are at the waterfall formed by the San Antonio Dam, which falls through the prisms and into the river. This geologic phenomenon is unique in the whole continent.

Baron Alexander Von Humboldt, considered the father of modern geography, visited Mexico at the beginning of the 19th century. Impressed by the beauty of these prisms, he made sketches of this formation in 1803; now exhibited in the Museum of British Art, in London.

We stayed in the "Magical Village" of Huasca de Ocampo at a beautiful small hotel called Casa Azul.

The Programa Pueblos Mágicos ("Magical Villages Programme") is an initiative led by Mexico's Secretariat of Tourism, in conjunction with other federal and state agencies, to promote a series of towns around the country that offer visitors a "magical" experience – by reason of their natural beauty, cultural riches, or historical relevance. Curently there are 35 Magical Villages in Mexico.

On Sunday we visited the site of Peña del Aire (Air Boulder). The drive there was breathtaking with deep canyons, rivers, mountains surrounding us. The micro-climate of the area is reminiscent of African Savannah, which is incredibly beautiful.

Before heading back to Mexico City we visited another Magical Village: Real del Monte.

Real del Monte is a small town lying at an altitude of 2700 metres (8,800 ft). The municipality was once the richest in the state when gold and silver were discovered before the Spanish Conquest. The town's steep streets, stairways and small squares are lined with low buildings, some dating back to colonial times. The houses with high sloping roofs and chimneys indicate a Cornish influence, the legacy left by 350 Cornishmen employed by the Cornish firm that ran the mines between 1824 and 1848. Today, typical Cornish pasties (a local speciality known as pastes) are baked here and are unknown outside the State of Hidalgo.

This was a wonderful first trip as a family and I cannot wait for the next one in less than a month!

Check out the pictures from the trip by clicking the picture above.