We had about two weeks of vacation/holidays in December 2008 and given that it was December, we only had one place to go - south. We had been to Mexico enough times. The only place (well, we don't like beach resorts) where we can spend two weeks with enough to do would be Mexico City and we had been there twice already. So we decided to brave it and try visit few cities this time. We fully expected problems with Pranav's motion sickness when travelling between the cities. Note that we were of the opinion that Avomine/Dramamine are not to be tried on a one year old. Pranav was still on Gerber food and Enfamil. We carried his entire supply with us. That was a heavy baggage to carry. But it got lighter as the trip progressed and spared us from having to run around strange cities in search of baby food. We bought diapers on the go.
Pranav had so far not puked on a flight. So we were of the opinion that we should only try to avoid driving when he is awake. So we targeted his afternoon nap for the drive to LAX form Irvine. This meant catching a late afternoon flight to Mexico City and by the time we landed there it was quite dark. Given that it was Christmas eve, the immigration was packed and the transport options were thin. Some really dubious looking taxi driver in a even more questionable vehicle dropped us to our hotel for twice as much as it should have normally cost. But we were glad that it didn't end up in a worse situation than that.
We took an early morning bus ride to Puebla. Pranav was slowly losing his morning sleeping habit around this time. So he did not sleep as easily as we had hoped for. He threw up once (not a whole lot) as soon as the bus left the station, but thankfully, immediately went to sleep and didn't wake up till we reached Puebla. We checked in our Hotel Puebla Plaza which was just a stone throw away from the Cathedral. The hotel was a bit cold, but apart from that it was livable. Given that it was Christmas day, we couldn't do much save visit the Cathedral.
We were ambitious for the day. We booked a private van to tour Cacaxtla ruins and visit Tlaxcala city. Motion got to Pranav by the time we reached Tlaxcala. He threw up at our final destination. The only good thing was that we could cover the town by foot and didn't have to drive anywhere immediately. We saw as much as we could and as soon as Pranav started his afternoon nap, we made a bee-line back to Puebla. We found a good Laundromat to wash all the smelly cloths.
Today was the typical city sightseeing day where Pranav could happily live in his stroller while we walked to all the sites in the city. The only problem with such days is that the baby is full of energy at the end of the day when we are drop dead tired from all that walking!
We knew that today would be the worst day on the trip and it lived up to our worst nightmares. We had a 5+hour bus ride from Puebla to Oaxaca. We ensured that we did it when Pranav would be asleep. But he only sleeps for a couple of hours in the afternoon. He made a real mess in the other 3 hours he was awake. The ride from hell finally ended and we spent the rest of the day feeding him fluids. The thing with motion sickness is that it stops the moment the motion stops. So after the motion stops we don't have to worry about feeding anything to Pranav and he would not throw up anything we give him afterwards.
We took a short taxi ride to visit the Monte Alban ruins. Pranav hadn't started walking yet. So he was quite happy sitting in his stroller and watch the world pass by. It was a bit of a pain pushing the stroller on the uneven surface at the ruins. Apart from that the trip was quite enjoyable. We visited a few museums in the afternoon.
We spent the day checking out the sites in Oaxaca. We spent most of the time at the ornate Santo Domingo church. In the afternoon I (Manoj) took off to visit Mitla ruins as Aparna took her afternoon nap with Pranav.
We checked out more sites in Oaxaca before catching an early afternoon flight to Mexico City. Given that flights have not yet bothered Pranav, the day ended quite event-free
The problem of the day was caused by my (Manoj) inability to read than Pranav. We were to take the 7am flight to Zacatecas. But the flight I had booked was for 7pm and there was no 7am flight to Zacatecas. After long conversations that stretched the very limit of my Spanish knowledge, we could find a seat on the 9am flight. As we had all off Pranav's food with us, we didn't have much trouble adjusting to the schedule change. We just found it hard to find food on the New Year's day. We spent the afternoon checking out the city Cathedral in Zacatecas.
Today was a city sight-seeing day - a piece of cake now-a-days! We took the gondola ride to see the bird's eye view of the city in the morning and checked out the mask museum in the afternoon.
In the morning, we went to the nearby town of Guadalupe to check out the monastery and the museum. It was deserted and Pranav really loved it. At this age he could only walk with support. We could leave him at the bench at the centre of the room and he would keep walking around it as we would check out the art pieces in the room. In the early afternoon we took the flight to Mexico City.
Fly back to Irvine. Don't remember much from this day. So must have gone smooth.
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