hi everyone and welcome to another mexico series
sometimes our mood can impact our travel experience we can either love or hate a place
depending on how we feel which of course is no reflection on the location itself
i experienced this recently on a weekend visit to my 21st state in mexico veracruz
i'm heading to the pueblo mexico of Orizaba with its mountainous views and unique architecture
and Cordoba a seemingly lesser visited city you may not associate with typical tourism
if you know me you can probably guess which was my favorite that was absolutely divine
prepare for some top tier food from Veracruz, insane high altitude weather and a stroll around
an awesome ruined hacienda this is part one of my 2022 mexico series welcome to Cordoba
oh pigeons watch out for the pigeons right good morning everyone and welcome to mexico once again
i'm in my 21st state estado di veracruz more specifically i'm in the city of cordoba not
cordoba um anyway and the weather is a bit crap today i'm not going to lie but you know
at least it's not raining that's a plus i'm in the central square in front of the palacio municipal
what a shock and let's take a look around it's good to be back in mexico right brilliant
it looks like there's been some sort of demonstration recently here i know there was one
in mexico city um a feminist thing yeah feminist justice etc um in front of the palacio municipal
look at the uh sign of course the obligatory sign that you get everywhere in mexico but
it's nice because it's gold and it's white and it's not like all different colors like
you normally see with the um lovely building in front with the uh green 1904 on the clock up there
and the coat of arms at the top now if you're new this is final season david i.e it's about
the eighth time i've been in mexico now so there is of course an element of familiarity
and slight sarcasm when it comes to central squares in mexican cities and towns because
you know there's always a palacio municipal there's always a central area with a kiosk
there's always a cathedral or a church in the background but i'm gonna act as so it's
my first time here this is amazing it is it's lovely little city i think it's um kind of like
quite average it feels i don't know much about Veracruz it's always been a state that
has kind of eluded me along with states like michoacan and aguascalientes yeah and in case
you're wondering i do wear my mask um i just take it off with these talking bits all right lovely
of course there's the guys shining shoes as always the little shopping trolleys with um
little packets of crisps in all the um very hot ones of course and you've got restaurants
around the outside with potentially copyrighted music so i'm not going over there and we've got
the cathedral over here behind an artisan market did you know that veracruz is called that because
hernan cortes who founded veracruz did so on good friday and that day is also known as the day
of the true cross vera cruz true cross cathedral immaculate concepcion they're all called that
aren't they or something to do with guadalupe sorry i'm being a little bit sarcastic um it's
nice isn't it look you've got cream colors and a pale blue let's go have a look inside
that was nice as always um lots of gold kind of reminds me of the one in black's color
which isn't too far away actually in terms of distance and there was lots of gold in that one
this one less gold but still very gold um also the thing i thought was absolutely beyond epic
the music i heard in the background i thought it was just someone that just pressed play on a
recorder thing turns out this woman singing with a microphone
never seen that before haunting absolutely haunting wonderful um i need some food um
so let's have some as i was leaving i just saw these bells there's like five of them 1850 are
they like original bells that were in the cathedral so where is veracruz in mexico
there's the gulf of mexico over that way here we are in cordoba there's orizaba which as you saw
at the beginning of the video is the next video after this one puebla is over there so i came
from there from mexico city over there up there is um i think san luis potosi in that direction
up to the top left um i've never been to this area of mexico before apart from puebla and tlaxcala
okay the place i want for food is somewhere down here is this avenida dos it is um the trick
with finding places to eat in mexico and filming is finding places with um no copyrighted music
of course and also somewhere that doesn't just have one hanging light bulb meaning that the place
is basically in darkness so um wish me luck oh there's a taqueria over there with oh al pastor no
i'm not going to be a basic [ __ ] in this video we're going to have something typical to veracruz
down here it's like one of those typical mexican streets you know that's just kind of normal you
know with buses and uh azteca banco azteca and elektra and all those sorts of places reminds me
of um matamoros in Coahuila in a way love local buses in mexico oh speak of the devil Elektra
i think the food place is up here somewhere almost just fell over i found it the crazy crab let's go
so being relatively near the sea this is a seafood place
remember when i was in Culiacan, shrimp tacos
i remember a time when i couldn't read anything on menus in mexico but i guess after 9 million
times of coming here everything is fine we're having this it's called arroz a la tumbada
i've been given this this is brand new never had this before
i thought it was like a espresso or something but i don't think it is by the way it's hot
jesus christ um honestly i don't know what that is i've really missed restaurants
in um mexico because as well as what you order of course you get all this sort of
complimentary stuff lemon those thingies and also probably bread yep there we go
wonderful okay this looks absolutely stunning exactly what i need across
and yeah it's supposedly a local like fisherman's dinner similar to paella
in spain so you have various pieces of seafood you've got shrimp crab obviously rice and there's
a huge chili in the middle what a surprise lemon not lemon by the way i often get comments like why
are you saying lemon i'm not saying lemon lime um and we have bread i've been watching a guy next to
me eat so he has like it's like a soup basically so he's got bread with um the actual soup
this looks stunning look at it i love rice in mexico got some rice and some shrimp on the pool
that is heavenly much nicer than the shrimp i had in culiacan these are quite tender and meaty
nice the rice gorgeous and the crab that's like
so meaty it's almost like some sort of meat soup but it's seafood i love this it's heavenly
okay finished that was very hot extremely hot but i love hot
and spicy it's the best look it's finished okay gracias
i'm not being funny but that was absolutely [ __ ] divine part of my language you know
something like that it cannot be buses it cannot be recreated anywhere in the world by anyone else
because the food the ingredients that you get in mexico are very much um only in mexico if you know
what i mean you can't get the type of chilies that you get or the types of corn that you get anywhere
else in the world and so you know having food in mexico is an absolute divine experience because
you can't have that experience anywhere else you know it's the one thing that will make me move to
mexico and be a sexy expat gringo in mexico um and it makes me laugh when i see people come to
mexico and they have like a tiny little pee drop of salsa verde on their tacos door and i'm like
go some bowls hands you know it's not gonna kill ya yes you might be crying for a while
and having sweats like you're on the menopause but um do you survive we're going this way just
having a quick cigarette um the other thing about cordoba to know is that it's also known as the
city of the 30 gentlemen because it was founded by 30 gentlemen and also i didn't know that this part
of mexico has a history with slavery obviously all of latin america does things with you know
sugar plantations you name it but there was a guy called yanga or nyanga probably mispronouncing it
who was said to be part of the royal family from gabon and at the time of spanish colonialism or
invasion um groups of slaves kind of broke out of slavery and tried to set up their own um lives
essentially and places in the mountains in verticals were where that happened and this guy
janga is celebrated here and there's even a town not far away where these battles happen between
the slaves and also the conquistadors and what i find interesting is that this is mexico yet at
one point there were two people who weren't native to this country fighting over an area of mexico it
just seems bizarre to me but i guess that's really essentially what colonialism and slavery were
about okay i wasn't expecting this but cordoba has all the hallmarks of a classic mexico video
sarcasm at the beginning followed by unexpectedly amazing food now we are walking through a
slightly less aesthetically pleasing area potentially into oblivion this is totally
me like where are the sexy colonial buildings nowhere we've got volkswagen beetles up there
and we're heading kind of into kind of low lying cloud mist hills and a place called
either toxpan or toshpan don't get me started on the letter x in both spanish and nahautl
got these hilly streets just a normal residential area
some more hallmarks of classic mexico videos we've got a mexi dog
aka hellhound and also a beautiful fluffy angel where's it gone oh there it is
oh it's a very skinny angel hello mexi dog oh yes praise bee to moctezuma i've walked all the way
around and found this entrance let's hope i don't get stopped by any security people now there are
people in there that look like tourist people oh i saw that woman earlier hi hun yes queen
whatever that means this is an old hacienda and this building was supposedly an old sugar mill
and one of the largest or well-known or greatest or whatever in mexico and there's a lot of this
old machinery dotted around as well speaking of well you've got like a fountain in the middle not
a well look at those ginormous cog things in the distance let's have a look it's ginormous
you've got smaller cogs next to it is cog the word i don't know browsers they've got these
like archway things more machinery inside and look at this this old sort of tractor slash tank thing
clearly i'm not the expert on farming machinery or sugar mill machinery um that's probably evident
this is so cool look at it
just imagine when this was in use obviously there's no roof
anymore the roof is gone as you can see at the end there some of it's kind of been renovated
and redone into something a bit more attractive but you know what this is attractive look at it
wowzers
we'll go down here as well
it's great that you can just wander around these places i'm usually stopped
um when i'm in mexico either from filming or from entering completely um but not here we've got this
tower all the way up there i'm a good look you can go in the tower i bet this is going to echo
brilliant yep they're echoes
i really like that love a bit of ruins and especially industrial ruins
things like that um isn't it great you know to watch a travel video that's actually travel
when going places instead of just sitting there talking about retiring i don't give
a [ __ ] about retiring in mexico i'm 39 years old now is the time to travel not [ __ ] retire
see what i mean about final season david no one's safe have i enjoyed my half a day in
quarterback yes i have and i know i've only been a half a day there is of course many other things
you can do here i haven't missed anything by the way i've done the things i purposely wanted to
do so there is a coffee museum you can go to um do i want to go to a coffee museum no i think
i'd rather eat pigs guts that you know this might not be sensational it might not be in my top five
places in mexico but like i said at the beginning i'm overly familiar this is my 21st state
if this was my first date absolutely it would be sensational and top of the list and what i
want to say i implore you you know if you're thinking about coming to mexico for the first
time don't just think that mexico is only cancun or expat retirement in queretaro or whatever
there are 32 states in mexico there's a lot more to it than what you read in blog posts
and on youtube and i appreciate the irony of me saying that while filming a youtube video
great clouds are looming not today satan that's my new phrase by the way let's all start saying it
so you just love the smells of a place like this in a city in mexico you've got
markets up that way you've got the exhaust fumes of the buses you've got the uh taquerias and you
name it it's just irreplaceable you can't get it anywhere else so that's it from orizaba wrong city
we're there tomorrow in the next one that's it from cordoba um i want to say one final
mention about that dish i had earlier topped here i want seconds as i keep saying the only
other time i've ever wanted seconds is in subotica in serbia when i had that goulash
and you know what that was kind of like goulash but a seafood version it was absolutely top tier
as i said orizaba the next video stay tuned if you want to watch that one and also subscribe
and hit the little notification bell if you want to see further mexico videos from new locations
as well as some epic legacy characters from back in the day such as san luis potosi gomez palacio,
ecatapec de morelos i can't wait so uh thanks for watching next time i'm gonna put my bag on
both shoulders because that's really annoying and i'll uh see you next time catch you later