Guanajuato
This past weekend was really great. Mary woke me up Saturday morning at the crack of 9:30. We were on the road by 10:30 heading toward a town named Guanajuato (pronounced Gwana-wat-o, it’s spelled just like it sounds). It is the capital city of the state of Guanajuato. I think whoever came up with that name had a good sense of humor.
Mary had been there 25 years ago, but things had changed considerably since then. The streets of the town are so twisted that the guidebook said we would almost certainly get lost, so the first thing we did on hitting the outskirts of town was to hire a guide named Enrique. He wanted $20 to guide us around town from the back seat of our car, but we bargained him down to $15 with the possibility of $3 more if we liked his services. As it turned out, this was a great move on our part.
Guanajuato is probably close to unique in its layout. It’s an old mining town, founded back in the 1700’s that has spread out over some really rugged territory. Streets go up and down the sides of small mountains. The buildings are so packed together that almost all the streets are one-way because they are so narrow. On one street I had to stop the car so a pedestrian going the opposite direction could squeeze past. The residents of Guanajuato had two ingenious solutions to this squeeze problem, which I will mention as we encountered them.
After Enrique was ensconced in the back seat we immediately encountered one of the solutions tunnels. This city of 75,000 people is honeycombed with tunnels 17 of them to be exact. We entered the first one, all of 900 meters (a little over ½ mile) long. After coming back up to the surface we started climbing up something called the Panoramic Highway, and it certainly was that. Switchback after switchback revealed the most astonishing views of the city far below.
We finally reached a viewpoint dedicated to a hero of the Mexican war of independence a young man who had a cement slab strapped to his back so the Spaniards couldn’t Colonel Sanders him with melted lead. He started a fire, which burnt down a door of the fortress where the Spaniards were holed up. That let the Mexicans enter and kill everyone inside. Later on the Spaniards captured some of the leaders of the revolt and chopped their heads off, sticking them on poles on the corners of the fortress for 10 years or so.
Anyway, our next move was to rent a room at a hotel located on a mini-mountain peak. We figured Enrique got a kickback on this deal, but Mary had done her homework and knew the hotel was a good one, so we had no complaints.
Next we went to see some church that had more gold leaf than a rich whore’s mansion. Actually, it was quite nice. If they ever get the dust off the gold, the church would be spectacular. Mary, the tight wad, finally broke down and bought a mirror for her house back in Wisconsin.
Next we visited a rather cheesy mine. It consisted of a short walk thru a tunnel, with some commentary by a couple of guides, to a pit that led down to lower levels of the mine. Trouble was, the lower levels were flooded with water, so we couldn’t go down there, but one of the guides did throw a pebble down which took forever until it hit the water.
Or next stop was the high point of the town we went to see the Momias (or in English, the Mummies). In this crowed town burial space is limited. If your descendants decide they will no longer pay the rent on your everlasting abode of peace, your corpse is evicted. Owing to the highly mineralized soil and assorted gasses, corpses are often mummified. The enterprising residents, knowing a good thing when they saw it, proceeded to set up a museum. We got in line after bidding Enrique an $18 goodbye.
The museum actually consists of two museums. One is the mummy museum, and the other bills itself as “The Cult Of Death”. The cult one is devoted to instruments of torture and execution used during the Spanish Inquisition, which lasted 250 years in Mexico. The waiting line was long. Mary and I stood in it for about 40 minutes. At $2.50 per ticket, somebody is making out like a bandit.
We entered the museum(s). One of the first exhibits was the mummy of some poor unfortunate soul reposing in an iron-spiked coffin. It was something like an iron maiden the instrument of torture where spikes slowly pierce your body as the door is closed - a dirty abomination that testifies to the evil side of human nature.
Right at that time I got an urgent call of nature due to some peppers I had ingested the previous day. I saw a good part of the mummy museum during my hurried quest for “ los baños” (the bathrooms). Mary saw the complete museum(s) and said they had a guillotine etc.
After the Momias, and having worked up a good appetite, we decided to retire back to our hotel for a late dinner. Enrique had given Mary directions on how to get there, but she missed a turn, and instead we received the treat of seeing the second ingenious solution, which the residents of Guanajuato had used to solve their topological problem.
When the city was first founded, a river flowing through the city had periodically flooded. After this happened a few times, the fed up residents rerouted the river, paved the riverbed, bricked up the sides, and put a roof over the empty channel. The old riverbed became an underground highway extending the length of the town.
Mary and I were enthralled by this subterranean passageway. It was like driving through some old crypt in England with the old gray brick walls and ceiling surrounding us. Even more weird was that people considered this a fine place to park their cars while they climbed upstairs to do their shopping above ground.
At some places the riverbed hadn’t been completely roofed over. Buildings jutted out over our passage, propped in place by strategically located braces. Picture the scene; we were driving along an old riverbed looking up at the bottoms of houses. A drive through this underground wonderland is highly recommended.
When we finally completed the length of the highway and rose to the surface again, we somehow got into a one-way lane facing the wrong way (Guanajuato does not have a single traffic light). A policeman directing traffic saw us and started approaching our car. Mary and I were so high on the city that we just smiled at him and damned if he didn’t start smiling back. He gave us directions on how to get back to our hotel as cars from two other roads waited without a single horn being honked.
A short time later, back at our hotel, Mary and I had a great dinner. We had a spectacular view of this remarkable city as the sun slipped behind the mountains and left the city bathed in shadows.
The next day we arose early and drove to a town called Dolores Hidalgo, which is famous for pottery in the Talavera style. The road there was really twisty and winding (“ sinuoso” as the Mexicans call it). We skipped from one mountain ridge to another. Every single view was breathtaking and I do not say that lightly.
We finally descended from the mountain peaks to the plain where Dolores Hidalgo is located. After getting lost only twice (Mexico DOES NOT BELIEVE IN STREET SIGNS), we finally passed the pottery factory we were looking for, did a U-turn, and started shopping in earnest. We bought tiles, we bought vases, we bought a ceramic-framed mirror - we bought a hundred dollars worth of STUFF. Then we set out for Guadalajara, got lost two more times, bought a copper vase for my sister (which she had better pay for), paid an exorbitant amount for tolls, and arrived back in Guadalajara.
