Day Twenty-Five - Xalapa and Xico

Our trip today started with a visit to the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa. We made up for yesterday by getting to the museum at 9am, right when it opened. The museum was full of artifacts from various points in Mexican history, including many items from the Olmec civilization. I think my favorite parts were the huge Olmecan heads (similar to the copies that I found at the University of Texas and at Hacienda Teya). They were labeled in the order that they were found, and the Anthropological Museum had numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, and 9 on display. I saw a place for number 4, but it was empty. There were also various carvings, sculptures, and friezes through the museum.  Here I am with ALL of Xalapa's collosal heads collection:

After our visit to the museum, we made a short ride to the town of Xico. First, we visited Texolo, the waterfalls of Xico, which were small, but pretty.

Then we made our way into the center of town and stumbled upon a parade for Santa Maria Magdalena. As it turns out, this week is special in Xico and they have a week’s worth of celebrations. The parade was really cool, as many families and communities designed small “floats” with Paper Mache bulls to hold atop their heads. One float, instead of a bull, had a tiger! So, of course, I took a picture just for Timothy!

The parade was great, but on our way back from lunch we came upon a group of people on horses. Many of them were older men who looked like cowboys, but the best dressed were the young girls in beautiful dresses! How pretty!

Our last adventure of the day was a trip El café tal – a coffee museum! Here we learned how coffee is produced, from beginning to end. Our guide showed us the plants that the coffee is harvested from, demonstrated the removing of the “pulp” or skin from the coffee beans, explained how the coffee beans are dried and stored for about 6 months, and then discussed the machine that roasts the coffee beans (which takes about 8 minutes). Mmmmm…we also tried some macchiato, homemade cookies, and chocolate-covered coffee beans. Haha, and my money grew wings again, and quickly flew away once we entered the store. :-) But, at least my caffeine craving will be satisfied for a while!  Oh, and another cool thing...there was a quote about coffee on their wall in both Polish and Spanish...basically, lots of talk about how WONDERFUL coffee is!

Tomorrow we head to Puebla. We’re entering the home stretch now….