On our previous visit to Puebla we had taken a very good walking tour of the central city with well-respected guide Carlos Rivero but we felt it would be a good orientation to take another walking tour on our first morning of our this visit.
So, on this visit we booked a Free Walking (group) Tour of the Puebla historic center city through the company Estación México. Essentially, the cost of the tour is a voluntary tip to the guide.
While our walk with Carlos Rivero had been a private tour and he had met us at our hotel, on this day we were instructed to look for guides wearing pink hats and holding pink umbrellas near the fountain on the Zócalo. We arrived a little early so we settled in on a bench next to this “fiber bombed” palm tree to do some people watching.
We were enjoying ourselves and periodically would do a casual walk around to look for our group but started to get a little nervous as we reached the 11:00 AM appointed meeting time. We had seen no one with a pink umbrella or a pink hat but did notice a small group gathering nearby with two guides. Both were wearing hats but one was purple and the other was made of straw but as we walked up to inquire we realized the two guides were wearing pink Estación México t-shirts.
Our group was split into English and Spanish speakers and as it turned out, we were the only ones asking for an English tour so we ended up with essentially a private tour.
While the published itinerary for this tour was somewhat similar to our prior Puebla walking tour, the emphasis was completely different. One of the main focuses of the Carlos Rivero tour was a visit inside and a detailed history of the Catedral Basilica de Puebla; our Estación tour offered really more of a walk-by and brief discussion.
Likewise we spent a good deal of time with Sr. Rivero walking through the Biblioteca Palafoxiana, the first public library established in the Americas (in 1646) but with Estación, we were limited to a look through the doorway into the room. Part of that was likely due to the admission price (for the library, not the Cathedral).
The Estación tour included a nice visit and history of the Talavera Tile covered Templo de San Francisco and a nice walk through the nearby garden that was not a part of the previous tour. We especially appreciated those sites as well as some others that were very close to our hotel, which made the walk back after the tour easier and gave us good ideas (like the historic Puebla Tunnels) for further exploring of the city that we could do on our own in the coming days.
We enjoyed Estación the tour so much that we also booked additional tours with the company for our next stop in Oaxaca.