Papalote Museo del niño, Cuernavaca

CHILDRENS KITE MUSEUM OF (Cuernavaca)
Vicente Guerrero # 205, col. Lomas de la Selva, Cuernavaca, Morelos

In what was once the Casino de la Selva, is now the Papalote Museum. It's a relative of the same in Chapultepec but is slightly smaller and has its own charm. In one of its sections the famous murals can be seen that for many years gave identity to the building. In the Papalote Children's Museum of Cuernavaca there is the Blue Room of Van Gogh, a room to sharpen the senses of hearing and touch in a camera obscura, and harmonize some notes in a giant Kandinsky piano. Although it is a place for kids, there is fun for everyone.

Papalote Museo del niño, Cuernavaca

Tlayacapan - Pueblo Magico

About 50 miles east of Cuernavaca lies the town of Tlayacapan, one of the 41 Pueblos Magicos in Mexico.  One of Tlayacapan's main attractions is the former convent of San Juan Bautista  with fresco paintings on its walls dating back to the sixteenth century, showing the form of expression of the Augustinian fathers.  Associated with the San Juan Bautista monastery are a series of 26 chapels through out the area, some still in use and other in disrepair.

Tlayacapan is one of the 14 towns that make up ¨Monasteries on the slopes of Popocatépetl¨ which as a group is now a World Heritage Site. These monasteries were recognized by UNESCO in 1994, because they served as the model for the early monastery and church buildings as well as evangelization efforts in New Spain and some points beyond in Latin America.

Within the convent San Juan Bautista is also a cultural and historical museum and a small display of mummies that show something of the social class that dominated the area.

The massive convent of San Juan Bautista

Chapel Santa Maria

Tlayacapan municipal building on the plaza

Mummy museum 

Robert Brady Museum

Next to the cathedral, in the Casa de Torre, the Museo Robert Brady houses an extensive collection of works and artefacts belonging to the American artist. Brady travelled the world in search of artistic acquisitions and the contents of this museum took a whole life-time to amass. His collection of 1300 pieces contains paintings by, among others, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Paul Klee and Francisco Toledo. There is also colonial furniture, textiles, pre-Hispanic objects, African art and ceramics. It is well worth a visit.

This collection was assembled by Robert Brady (1928-1986). Born in Iowa with a career in the fine arts at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tyler Arts Center of Temple University and the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania, he established residence in Venice, Italy for five years before settling in Cuernavaca, Mexico in 1962.

Museum from the street


Main Bedroom


Kitchen


Yellow Bath

Robert Brady Museum

Jardin Etnobotanico - Acapatzingo

The village of Acapatzingo, now part of Cuernavaca, attracts hundreds of visitors, since it is the site of a country house known as Casa de la India Bonita, bought by Maximilian of Habsburg to visit the mysterious Indian Bonita, the beautiful Indian woman who so entranced him that the emperor frequently absented himself from his royal duties to spend time in her company in this idyllic setting. The 'Casa de El Olindo' is now the Jardín Etnobotánico de Morelos, housing a small Museum of Traditional Medicine and Herbs which provides original displays of the biological diversity of Mexico, the relation between man and plants and the medicinal uses of many of the latter. The thoughtfully designed garden paths enable visitors to have a close up view of eight hundred plants of various genera and forms that comprise the largest collection of medicinal plants in Mexico.

The Jardín Botánico and the Museo de Medicina Tradicional y Herbolaria are open every day of the year from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

La casa as well as the Museum


The garden grounds


The garden grounds


The garden grounds


Herb displays in the Museum


Herb displays in the Museum

A day trip to Taxco

We drove to Las Grutas (Grutas de Cacahuamilpa) near Taxco from Cuernavaca and when "the kids" found out it cost 50 pesos apiece to take the tour ... they didn't have enough money to go. They offered to wait two hours while I went but. instead we decided to drive to Taxco where Rake is from. A tour of the city and food in the market was cheaper than the tour of the caves.

Political rally in the Plaza


Looking up from the Plaza


Cathedral on the Plaza


Dance troop on the Plaza


An almost typical street in Taxco

Originally called Taxco de Alarcon, the silver capital of Mexico is located in Mexico’s southern region, 138 km (85 mi) north of Chilpancingo, the state capital of Guerrero, and 151 km (93 mi) south of Mexico City, off Highway 95. The climate is warm and humid, with an average year-round temperature of 19º C (66º F).

Considered one of Mexico’s most picturesque towns, this charming destination offers cobblestone streets, colonial buildings and white houses with red tile roofs. Another notable attraction of unparalleled beauty is the Catedral de Santa Prisca (Santa Prisca Cathedral), one of the most representative examples of baroque architecture in Mexico. During your stay, you also can visit the Humboldt and Borda houses, which have great historical and cultural value, or you can check out the Viceregal Art Museum and the Silver Museum; in the latter you’ll see incredible silver objects, such as earrings, necklaces bracelets and other items. Silverwork has long been a vital part of Taxco’s economy, thanks largely to American silversmith William Spratling, who had a strong influence on Mexican silver design.

Xochicalco

Xochicalco
The Spanish school (Encuentros) arranged a trip to Xochicalco one Saturday - approximately 20 miles from Cuernavaca. There is a small museum at the entrance to the site. Our guide knew the caretaker and we got a tour of the tunnel used by priests for celestial sightings. These pictures are from a trip back in 2002

Some much better pictures than my old ones - Xochicalco Park and Museum



Two other students and our guide in little town below after the trip


The ball court


Guess what


Another view


Looking down on a cold beer

Xochicalco whose name means "Place of the House of Flowers" in Náhuatl flourished between 700 and 900 A.D. It was once one of the most important cities in Mesoamerica and home to as many as 15,000 people. During the 20th century the ruins of this heavily fortified complex were extensively restored, and in 1999 Xochicalco was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Today, it is the largest and most-visited archaeological site in the state of Morelos.

The city of Xochicalco rose to prominence during the decline of Teotihuacan, whose immense ruins lie to the north of present day Mexico City. This powerful civilization had exerted its influence over most of Mexico for almost a millennium. Teotihuacan's collapse in the eighth century A.D. has still to be fully explained. Its demise left a power vacuum in Central Mexico that was filled first by Xochicalco and later by the Toltec city of Tula.

Xochicalco's origins remain something of a mystery. Its buildings bear the marks of several different cultures, including the Olmecs, the Zapotecs, and the Aztecs. However, the city's architecture and artwork are essentially Maya, leading archaeologists to believe that Xochicalco was founded by Maya traders from the Gulf Coast of the Yucatan peninsula. The strategic location south of Teotihuacan would have given them access to trade routes radiating out from the Valley of Mexico.

Tepoztlan

Tepoztlán is only about a 40 minute drive from Cuernavaca either on a Cuota or a Libre thru a few small towns. The most interesting part of Tepoztlán is it's location in a valley surrounded with striking rock formations. There is also a cool church, an ex-convento with a museo and a large market. Other than that, it's a small town worth a few hours.



View of the church with backdrop of mountains


The church


The museum


The market


One of the most interesting side-trips from Cuernavaca is to TEPOZTLÁN , just 20km to the northeast, and dramatically sited in a narrow valley spectacularly ringed by volcanic mountains. Until recently this was an entirely different world, an isolated agrarian community inhabited by Nahuatl-speaking people whose life can have changed little between the time of the Conquest and the beginning of the twentieth century. It was on Tepoztlán that Oscar Lewis based his classic study of Life in a Mexican Village and traced the effects of the Revolution on it: the village was an important stronghold of the original Zapatista movement

It's also the village where Quetzalcóatl, the Plumed Serpent god of the Aztecs, was born.