Cuernavaca and Taxco

Nov 18-20th we took a quick bus trip starting with Cuernavaca, about 45 minutes south of Mexico City in the State of Morelos. Since we only had 1/2 day by the time we arrived we created our own tour of the city, including the outstanding Robert Brady House. Here we are in the garden of his beautiful home.

Brady was born in 1928 in Idaho but lived in Venice for 5 years before settling in Cuernavaca in 1962. He had a great eye for collecting and filled his house with original works by artists such as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and artifacts from his lifetime of travels. He was close friends with the famous Josephine Baker and there were photos of them and posters and statues of her throughout the house. He died in 1986 and left his house and grounds to a foundation where it remains as it was when he died.

I love this story of Brady's relationship with Josephine Baker:
In 1973 he became involved with African-American singer and dancer Josephine Baker (1906-1974). Baker promoted her belief that people of various ethnicities can live together harmoniously. Divorced from her fourth husband, Josephine and Robert decided to say wedding vows in an empty church in Acapulco, Mexico, to cement their platonic friendship in 1973, but the 'marriage' ended and they separated in 1974.

We visited the palace of Cortes which was built in 1529 and you can see bits of the original walls and floors. Now a museum, it contains murals painted in 1929-30 by Diego Rivera depicting the bloody history of the Spanish conquest. Here he included himself in period dress as a plantation owner. It is interesting that he rendered many of the images to appear three dimensional like this alcove but it was all to fool the eye.

Our hotel was the beautiful Hosteria Las Quintas








The next morning we went to Xochicalco to see the pyramid, one the the three main pre-Hispanic archaeological sites in Mexico, which flourished between 800-900AD. We got there early enough so that we were the about the only ones there and were able to wander without the normal crowds.








At the top was the nicely preserved Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent.


We continued on through the mountains to Taxco, the famous "silver city," but I'll blog about that another day.