I got cocky. In the time leading up to this trip, I had been joking to friends about how I hadn't thrown up in about 4 and a half years. In fact, the last time I threw up was when I got food poisoning in Yangon, Myanmar the night before I was set to leave for Dhaka, Bangladesh. I’ll never forget speed-walking down that darkened street alone on the outskirts of Yangon with all my belongings on my back, butt-cheeks clenched, stomach gurgling, trying in vain to hail a cab. It was not fun. I had to do some improvising on that one, and ended up bumping my flight back to Dhaka by a day. But since then, probably because of the trauma my stomach endured while living in Southeast Asia, I have been vomit free! Or, I had* been.

Well, I’m sad to inform you, that streak is going to come to a painful end in this article. Let’s get into it.

An Intro To Puebla

The founding of Puebla dates back to 1531, during the colonial era of Mexico. At the time, this settlement was located between two of the main historical indigenous settlements, Tlaxcala and Cholula. At this point, this region was known as Cuetlaxcoapan, which means “where the serpents change their skin,” and while this name still holds today, the region is also known simply as the Mexican State of Puebla. There is also a smaller municipality in this region called Puebla, and finally there is the city that we are in today, which also bears the name of Puebla.

Just 2-ish hours southeast of the Mexican capital, Puebla is dwarfed by Mexico City. But don’t let that fool you! It’s actually got a population of about 3.25 million people (metro), so it’s no small place. It’s actually the 4th largest city in Mexico. And remember how I said that Mexico City sits at a higher elevation than Denver? Puebla is up here as well! It sits at an elevation of 7,217.85 ft (1.37 miles) above sea level. In fact, this area is so mountainous that you actually have to drive past snow-capped volcanoes to get here from Mexico City. This would be a gorgeous area to do some hiking, but today you’ll have to settle for the pictures I snapped out the window of a moving bus.

The historic center of Puebla is actually a designated UNESCO world heritage site. Once we get there in this article, you’ll understand why. There is a LOT of history in this city. But it’s also an important place in the modern day. It’s got quite a few major Mexican universities, which attracts academics and students from all over the country, and is also a major industrial hub, especially for auto manufacturing. Apparently Puebla has the largest Volkswagon plant outside of Germany!

Why are we dipping out of Mexico City to come here? In summary, because I try my best to see more than just one city when I visit a new country, and this was the place that made the most sense. The logistics were easy and it actually looked like it would be really cool. DID WE MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICE? Only time will tell. Here’s a map.

Getting From Mexico City To Puebla

Going into this trip, the only item that felt in the least bit uncertain or unknown to me was the logistics of how we would get from Mexico City to Puebla. Luckily this turned out to be quite simple. If you ever need to make this trip yourself, here’s what to do. Get yourself to the Mexico City bus station. There are quite a few of these in Mexico City, but the one you’ll want is called Terminal de Autobuses de Pasajeros de Oriente. The address is Calz. Ignacio Zaragoza 200, 10 de Mayo, very close to the airport. Get yourself here and find a ticket kiosk for a bus line called Ado. Since Puebla is so close to Mexico City, there are buses that leave on this route multiple times per hour. That makes the logistics super easy. Just buy the next available tickets out and you’ll be on the road in no time. There’s no need to purchase tickets in advance, their web platforms are not super reliable and there’s no shortage of bus seats. The buses are big and comfortable, and the trip is less than 2 hours. Easy. Here are a couple pictures from the Mexico City bus station and then the Puebla bus station.

Exploring Puebla

In Puebla, we stayed at the Gente De Mas B&B, which we booked through Hostelworld. I’d definitely recommend it! It checked all the boxes, and it was centrally located, so we walked straight out of our front door, and we were already in the historic center of the city. So it was easy to go out exploring. I confess we were a bit aimless here, but it didn’t take much wandering for us to stumble onto most of the major points of interest within our immediate area. Pictured below are the famous churches Capilla del Rosario and Catedral de Puebla, both of which were pretty massive inside and date back to the 1600s. In the gallery below you’ll also see shots of the Zócalo de Puebla, which is the city’s central plaza. And you’ll also see shots of Calle Cinco de Mayo (the narrow street with the trees in the middle of it) which is also a point of interest. Take a spin through the gallery below to get a feel for this city:

In our wanderings through the Zócalo de Puebla, we passed an open door which provided a glimpse into some sort of conference. Intrigued, I stopped in my tracks and forced us to go inside to poke around. To my surprise, nobody stopped us from entering, so we had free rein to do as we wanted in here. The building was quite old, and looked to be affiliated with some sort of government office. In my poking around on the internet since then, I believe this was actually the town hall. The interior of this place was gorgeous, and was a perfect space to hold large events like the one we were intruding on. There was a stage set up on the left side of the room, behind which was a large purple banner that said (translated) “What is, and what isn’t feminism.” There was an older professorial woman speaking into a microphone next to a panel of other women sitting on stage next to her. The crowd looked to be mostly full of members of the media. They were all smartly dressed, holding recorders, or taking notes. And around the perimeter of the room there were film crews and photographers documenting everything. So naturally I sauntered up and took a few pictures of my own. I also went up the stairs to the next floor to take pictures of the gathering from above. Still not 100% sure what this was, but it was cool to see! Seeing how other cultures come together to talk about topics like feminism is always interesting.

From there, we had big plans to go off and see more of the city. I had a few sites that I wanted to visit specifically, and I had a plan for how to get some cool aerial shots over the city at sunset (y’all know I love that shit), but before we could do any of that, first we needed to grab some food. And that’s where it all when sideways.

Moctezuma’s Revenge 💀

For lack of any better ideas, we went ahead and plopped ourselves down at one of the many restaurants operating along the perimeter of the Zócalo de Puebla. We ordered some food and a couple of drinks. It was a decent meal, but as I was finishing my drink, I realized something. This drink had been served with ice cubes. I don’t know why I hadn’t caught that before I put all of it into my body; I guess I had just let me guard down.

Now, if you’ve never been to Mexico, or this region of the world, you might not know why that’s an issue. As a general rule, you should NEVER drink the water in Mexico unless you know with 100% certainty where it came from. Because if it’s tap water… you might get what is known in Mexico as Moctezuma’s Revenge.

What is Moctezuma’s Revenge?

It’s kind of like food poisoning, but different. At its worst, it can mean 3 days of fever, vomiting, and non-stop, uncontrollable diarrhea. WebMD also has a few other things to say about it, none of which are good. My parents spent a year living in Veracruz, Mexico together right after they first got married, in the early 1980s. That’s not far from Puebla! My dad has a pretty awful story he likes to repeat about when my mom got Moctezuma’s revenge and… yeah it’s not great.

It’s almost an absolute certainty that, if you drink the tap water in Mexico, you will get some version of this. So you have to be careful, because tap water can sneak into your world in unexpected ways. Ice cubes in your drinks. Lettuce that has been washed in tap water. Brushing your teeth. All of these things can be trouble. Nice restaurants in Mexico basically shouldn’t use tap water at all, for anything.

And also, the name. Moctezuma II was the emperor of the Aztec Empire when the Spanish arrived in the new world. You probably know the basic plot points from there. The Aztec culture, along with most other indigenous cultures, was all but destroyed, and Moctezuma, along with most of his people, was killed. So now the disgusting sickness that you get when you drink the water here is jokingly but ubiquitously known as his revenge. It feels like this should be sad… but if you’re talking about Moctezuma’s Revenge, you’ve got bigger things to worry about than the injustices of the past.

SO ANYWAY, back to the restaurant. There’s no guarantee that this ice was made from tainted water. They could have frozen bottled water, right? Either way, I figured that it would be worth asking. So I flagged the girl over who had served us our food and began speaking to her in Spanish. Here’s the rough translation of our conversation.

Me: “Excuse me, you gave me ice with my drink. Is it dangerous to have a drink with ice here?”

Her: “Oh, yes. You should not drink that!”

Me: “…then why did you serve it to me with ice??”

Her: (looking awkward now) “…because… it makes the drink cold…”

Me: …

Fast forward about 5 minutes and I was speed-walking to the nearest pharmacy. Whatever drug I could get to counteract the poison I had just ingested might end up being quite helpful. It was not quite a sure-thing that I would get sick, but I wanted to be prepared. In truth, I finished my drink pretty quick, so the ice cubes were barely even melted. The amount of water that had realistically been released into that drink was likely very small. But even so, I could feel something changing in my stomach.

Fast forward another 20 minutes, and we were arriving back to our hostel. I spent the next 6-ish hours back and forth from the toilet and my bed. There was a lot of poop. There was a little bit of vomit. There was a medium amount of kicking myself. There were moments of questioning why spending Thanksgiving in the U.S. like normal would have been so bad. My friend that I was traveling with had gone back out into the city to explore, but when he arrived back at the hostel shortly after dark, he found me in my bunk in the fetal position, clasping a cold jug of CLEAN water. The storm seemed to have passed, so I shakily put my pants back on, and followed him back out of the hostel for dinner. I didn’t have much of an appetite, but what else was I gonna do?

One thing I should underscore here is how much worse this could have been. All of this was the result of a what must have only been about a thimble’s worth of water. So this was Moctezuma’s Revenge-Lite. I don’t even want to imagine what would have happened if I had just drank a glass of that water outright. We would have been stuck in Puebla for days. I spoke to my parents on the phone about it and I remember my dad saying “yeah, Mexico has a way of lulling you into a false sense of security.” These were wise words. Mexico really is great! But you’ve got to keep your guard up. Lesson learned.

Puebla By Night

Back out on the cobblestone streets of Puebla, the city was a beautiful as ever, even under the cover of dark. I sat miserably, watching my friend eat a few tacos con pastor at a nearby shop. On the TV in the corner there was a TV showing a cheesy Mexican gameshow, hosted by a man with a stupid haircut, overflowing with theatrical enthusiasm. I stared at the screen in tired submission to my surroundings. Things weren’t great, but with my affliction disappearing off into the horizon, my world felt peaceful.

Walking around Puebla by night, we continued to be impressed by what we saw. You don’t tend to think of Mexico as being pretty in this way. If you’re talking about beautiful places in Mexico, it tends to be with a focus on beaches. Cancún, Tulum, Cozumel, Quintana Roo. These are the destinations Americans rave about. But here in this city that only a few months prior I had never heard of, we were walking through an unexpected fairytale.

Alas, this was a short trip. We were only planning on spending one night in Puebla. So my getting sick pretty much destroyed this visit for me. However, the easiness of the bus system would have made is pretty easy to stick around most of the next day before heading back to Mexico City. There were lots of other things to do and see in Puebla, but after what I had been through that day, I just wanted to get on with my life.

The next morning we went straight to the bus station.

It just wasn’t meant to be.