Even before it was sure my mother would visit us, Esme and I had been thinking about how she would like to walk between the giant cactuses that can be found growing near Tehuacán, in the state of Puebla. And since just before Christmas she arrived in Veracruz, and was still visiting us, we had planned to leave today for Tehuacán, with a short stop-over in Puebla city, because we were sure she would enjoy the handcrafts market, El Parián, and the many nice buildings in the city. And so around half past seven in the morning we took a taxi to the central bus station in Xalapa (CAXA) to take the ADO bus to Puebla city. We had decided to stay for a short while in the city before we took another bus to Tehuacán.