Hello there!
After a short break and consolidating my first edition of my Travel Diaries, which included my travel posts to 14 different countries, here's kickstarting my second edition of Travel Diaries! For those who are keen to read my the first edition, you can find them here.
I am actually quite excited to start this new country and new series of posts, because it's something that I wanted to do for quite some time, but I needed some time to tidy up my photos and organise my storytelling and places. And this new country is Mexico!
Back in 2009, I had the opportunity to go for a summer exchange programme to spend 7 weeks studying in an university in Queretaro, a small city in Mexico and that was one of my more memorable parts of my life! Going halfway across the globe from Asia, I didn't know much about Mexico so I went there with my eyes wide open, and ready to embrace the different cultures and experiences.
A few months before the actual trip, if you are old enough to recall, there was the H1N1 virus which was quite prevalent in the world, including Mexico, and the trip was almost cancelled. Eventually, the programme was postponed, and the situation got better and travel restrictions were lifted. Even so, many participants of the programme decided not to go ahead for personal reasons. Because this trip was such a rare opportunity, I made the decision to go ahead.
So let the adventures begin!
Here's the series of Mexico posts so far:
Mexico - Flying Halfway Across The Globe
In my first post, I mentioned I opted for a homestay with a local family instead of the staying in the university hostel. There are pros and cons to this, but I was fortunate that my homestay location was just a 10 minute walk from the university. This made my daily commute to school very easy, compared to some of my other friends where they had to take a bus everyday. There were only two people in the family aside from me, my host mum and a guy from Dominican Republic. My host mum worked in the US before so it was really fortunate that she was able to speak English, and it helped a lot when I was still learning and struggling to pick up Spanish.
And one of the first few days, she was nice enough to bring me and two other students on a drive out to explore the nearby sights and attractions. Thinking back, she didn't have to do that because she just had to take care of my daily stuff and needs, but she went the extra mile. Till date, I am still grateful for all that she did.
Our first destination for his day trip was to a winery. I believe if my memory served me right, it should be Vinedo Sala Vive. This was the scenery that greeted us when we arrived. And they had a fountain in the complex.
We went for a tour of the facilities. The tour was conducted in Spanish and because it was just my first few days there, I could not understand most parts of it. Still, being a young student, it was still interesting to see these things and I remembered I was happily taking photos back then. Of course, I would not have thought that after 17 years, these photos will be on Hive. Haha.
One of the highlights of the facility tour was the underground wine cellar. It was a long flight of stairs down but it was exciting for me.
Pardon the quality of the photos because it was very dim beneath, and the quality of cameras in 2009 weren't that advanced too.
This was our guide, who was sharing information at various checkpoints at the tour. I didn't need to listen and I could just focus on looking at the surroundings and taking photos. Haha.
An escape out? Haha.
Finally, after another flight of steps up, we were back to ground level!
I know this is a travel blog (not a food blog), but a visit to the vineyard would not be complete without some wine and some light bites! We also ordered some food for lunch as well, before we embarked on the next destination of this day trip!
It's always interesting to see something interesting which I would not be able to experience back in my country. That's also why most people travel, to experience new things, new cultures, new food, and new ways of living. The pace of life was also very different, you could see the people here were just chilling their afternoon on a weekend, enjoying good food and wine. That's something uncommon in our fast pace of life these days.
And that's all I have today! Have you been to Queretaro of Mexico? Let me know in the comments below!
Finally, thanks for reading my post in the community under World Map Pin!
