One Hail of a Birthday

Mexico City
March 30, 2012

It would be hard to top last year’s “Social Security” birthday when I climbed a 12,000 foot volcano outside of Mexico.  So, not trying to outdo myself, I followed a lead from the New York Times Travel Section and made a reservation at a hacienda/hotel 90 minutes away from Mexico City in Tlaxcala, Mexico’s smallest state, a state blessedly free of the violence that have beset other places.

Early in the day, I followed the Times’ directions, and caught a bus to Santa Maria Tlaxcala.  I fully expected the find the hacienda a short taxi ride away, but that was not the case.  One taxi driver wanted to charge me 300 pesos.  “Es muy largo, señor.”  It’s a long way away.  So I went back into the bus station, and caught a smaller bus to the town of Apizaco—20 minutes away.  Again, I fully expected to find the hacienda a short taxi ride away, but that was not the case.

When I exited the station, a steady rain was falling.  I pulled up the hood of my sweatshirt, walked out into the streets and went from corner to corner and bus to bus, but no one could direct me to where I wanted to go. 

And then…I began to hear another sound.  I looked up and saw that rain had turned to hail.  Now, that was a first.  It hailed for at least fifteen minutes and the ground was covered in a sea of white!  White!  I spend good money to get away from the white stuff.  I’ve had snow on my birthday, but never hail.

By now I was frustrated.  It was noon and I should have been at the hotel by now, enjoying the pool and its grounds.  So…I did what I always do when I can’t get from A to B: I hailed down a cab.  “I’m looking for the Hacienda Soltepec,” I told him. “Do you know where it is?”

“Ah, si, señor…” 

Are you absolutely certain?

“Si, señor.”  But to be on the safe side he called the dispatcher’s office to get confirmation.

And so off we went…leaving the city of Apizaco and the hail-covered streets behind us we headed into the deep, yet lovely, countryside of Tlaxcala—a landscape full of wide open fields, cattle grazing, and small volcanoes in the distance.  The day had cleared and a warm sun shone above us.  But I was suspicious.  We just didn’t seem to be going anywhere.  Again… “Are you certain?”  By now we were on a first name basis and he knew it was my birthday.

Finally, after passing little streams, and tiny villages, and after traversing down a dirt road for twenty minutes, we arrived.  But the hacienda hardly looked like a first class hotel. We drove down the long driveway, and an assortment of people met us. 

“Si, señor, está es la hacienda Soltepec, pero no es un hotel.  Hay dos Haciendas Soltepec!

"Yes, sir, this is the hacienda Soltepec, but it’s the one you want.  There are two, and the other is more than an hour away from here. "

By now the charm of bumping along the back roads of Taxcala had worn off.  I got on my phone and had Miguel call the hotel—something I should have done at the onset of this adventure.

And so we drove the sixty minutes back to Apizaco, over the dirt road, past the villages, past the streams.

Finally, shortly before 3:00 pm, a full three hours after I hailed down this taxi, we arrived at the other Hacienda Soltepec.  I feared for the price.  He’d initially quoted me 200 pesos, then changed it to 400, but when I got ready to pay, the cost was 600!  $50.00.

OK.  I went back in time to some of my father’s best advice: "Be glad you have the money to pay for these things, Dan,”  he once told me. And so I did.  Handed over 600 pesos and absolutely refused to let this deter my day.

The hacienda didn’t disappoint.  It had been touted as being one the twenty best hacienda resorts in the country. 

Two hundred years ago this part of Mexico had well over 1,000 enormous ranches, and the largest ones had massive homes known as haciendas which housed the owner, his family, and the hundreds of workers needed to maintain the property.  Hacienda Soltepec was celebrating its bicentennial.  It had been converted from a rural school to a first class hotel more than fifty years ago and was often used as a film prop and had been featured in a number of Mexican television shows.

I spent what was left of the afternoon over a leisurely lunch, then a long work-out in the gym, and a long swim in the heated pool.  Dinner, of some way-too-spicy itty-bitty birds, capped the day.

It had been, well…a different kind of birthday. I’d expected full sun and a long day poolside, but it not only thundered and lightening, but hailed as well.  That was a first, and that was OK.

I’d expected to stay put in the same locale for twenty four hours, but had an unexpected three hour tour of the Tlaxcalan countryside.  And that was OK.

I’d expected to climb the nearby volcano, but once in the hacienda,  I never stepped foot outside until I checked out.  And that was OK.

Why bother? It’s not every day I stay in a 200 year old hacienda, and it’s not every day I turn 63.

It had been one hail of birthday.  And that was OK, too.