Guanajuato part two

So each town has a distinct flavor, Guanajuatos is noise. Dogs on every roof, like cheap car alarms going off when anything pass´s. One dog sets of the next and it´s a dog symphony. All night. Through the ear plugs. Louder than Burning Man. Then there was the Saturday night we went to a local pub with our neighbor Dave the Canadian miner, got home around 3 (remember that things don´t start here till midnight... Dinner is served at 10...) and where woken at 5:45 by the church bells/fireworks/drum and bugle corps for what we don´t know. A mystery. At 5:45. The joys of travel. Otherwise the town is great, very pretty, set in a deep valley with as many tunnels as roads. not much car traffic on the visible streets, lots of pedestrians, Guanajuato has Mexico´s preeminent college for arts, music, theater and mining... Lots of students and it is also the capital of the state of Guanajuato, so lots of government types too. Many more foreign tourists than Zacatecas and lots of foreign students, mainly euro and Japanese... A flip side to this is that the locals are not as friendly as other places we have been, I think part of that is all the day trippers from Mexico City and San Miguel Allende. San Miguel is a super Americanized town, property values have shot up and out of the reach of locals, lots of resentment and grumpiness. Guanajuato must see that they are next on the list... A 18th century home on a square in the heart of town is 150K$... A little further out and its 40k... The same thing in San Miguel is 10 times that... We are only an hour away... Starting in about a week is yet another festival, this one is one of Latin Americas best art festivals...
(http://www.guanajuatocapital.com/ingles/Fic1.htm)
So we may stay a while... Despite the dogs...

Guanajuato

We are now in Guanajuato in the state of the samename, an eight hour drive south and 2,000 feet lowerthan Zacatecas. It's warmer and sunnier and it's our
first day exploring the town and getting our berrings. The town is in so steep a canyon that streets are almost impossible. Big items are delivered by burro,
including sacks of flour and groceries. All the streets are cobblestone and steeper than you would imagine. The had a river that they put underground in the 1800's but they had a devastating flood in 1905, damned the river and turned the underground tunnels into streets! All they did was string lights and let the cars go! I'll have to check but I believe there are more walkways and stairs than streets.
We stopped in Aguascaliente on the way here and soaked in some fabulous hot springs, the building had been in operation since 1808! It was a great break from driving in Mexican traffic, which is not a low stress exercise! Darby

things that are illegal in the usa

so... Mexico's Independence day was amazing, a band sand was set up in the main plaza, fireworks strung across the plaza and the fronts of buildings, even the bufalator cables had hundreds of feet of fireworks hanging from it... The small plaza in front of the Santa Domingo church, about 100 x 100 feet had huge mortars set up , like the ones week have at the fourth but instead of a barge and the coast guard to keep everybody safe there was a few feet of yellow safety ribbon.... The plaza itself is tiny and surrounded by 3 and 4 story buildings... think Ivar's 4th of July display going off from half of westlake plaza... In the main plaza where we were (zacatecas produced 25% of the worlds silver for 250 years, a very rich place, there are many churches and plazas...) a huge burningman sized tower thing had been set up in one corner with a little fence around it, maybe 10 feet from the tower. strings of fireworks hung from the governors palace, the cathedral (built in 1748) and the hotels across the street. The bands played, the people danced and chatted, vendors roamed the crowd selling snacks, more and more people arrived till about 11:30 the mayor came out on the balcony the do the "grito" or cry of freedom, a famous part of the Mexican revolution, by midnight the place was wall to wall people, then the fireworks tower went off... WOW a huge tower of spinning pinwheels and random explosions, things flying off into the crowd, a torrent of wind blown sparks driving all the people that had been crowded around the tower base back into the street, more pinwheels and explosions, it spelled out "Viva Mexico" at one point before the head exploded and the crown spun up into the night sky... Then the stuff hanging from the buildings and bufalator cable went off, huge showers of sparks and debris while the really big stuff in the next plaza started to go, enormous Ivar sized fireworks directly overhead, then a counter barrage started from the top of the cathedral, launched at an angle over the plaza, great except for the ones that hit the steeple and bounce down into the crowd!!! One of the things we love about Mexico is the all ages aspect, kids running around, grandmas sitting on the side lines chatting, babys, adults, all partying like crazy at 1 in the morning...

Late the next day when we got up we walked down the hill into town and hung out people watching, around 8 at night we were in the main plaza and 2 groups of musicians gathered and started to play different songs, kinda competing. we watched for a while and noticed a crowd growing, it turns out to be a strange Zacatecas tradition of almost random street party, groups of musicians gather, then a crowd, then the musicians wander around the city, playing from park to park, plaza to plaza... 3 boys about 14 were wondering around the crowd with 4 liter bottles of tequila, filling little clay cups on Mexican flag colored ribbons that a very well dressed matron was handing out. we were given cups and the boys started filling them every time they where empty as we danced from plaza to plaza with the crowd.... Met some people who told us this particular group was largely a 5 state bowling league celebrating the winning team from Zacatecas!!! They invited us to the awards ceremony in a fancy hotel, more tequila and lots of food, bowling trophy's, a great adventure... Turns out the kids with the tequila where on the soccer team one of our new friends coach's... There parents had been the ones handing out the cups....

A lovely culture, wonderfully different than ours.

Nick

Musicians, mezcal and bowling?

The strangest things happen when you follow your instincts...
It was Saturday evening, we were tired but not too tired. So we head down into town for an ice cream. We wander for a bit, seeing several competing musical groups with crowds preparing to wander the town. We had heard of this particular sponteneous party, specific to Zacatecas. We don't find any ice cream that we want, so we decide to walk along with one of the musical processions. We think, "we'll just go for a few rounds then head home"... The party who is hosting the procession hands out small ceramic shot glasses on a ribbon that we wear around our necks, young teenaged boys come by and fill your glass with mezcal and off we go. The traveling party goes from plaza to plaza, stopping to play 3 to 5 tunes while the crowds dance and drink. There is a whole mix of people, young and old, families, couples and singles. Grandmas dancing with their grandkids and smiles everywhere. The teenagers pour the drinks and sneak one or two while Dad isn't looking.
We reach a central plaza and the musicians play for an hour or more. We get talking to a father and son standing next to us, Arturo and Martin, who tell us they are from Zacatecas and come to these processions every Saturday. When the music stops, they tell us that everyone is is heading up to the Hotel Parador for some food and ask us if we want to tag along!
Sure!
Preparing to walk, they lead us to their car and off we go up the hill. During the ride we find out that Arturo is an accomplished tenor and he gives us one of his CD's! We get to the hotel and it turns out that the big dinner in the main dining room is for the regional competition for bowling leagues! Little did we know that both Martin and Arturo are accomplished bowlers and their leagues are at the top of the list! We thank them profusely and they refuse any payment for dinner.
The kindness here is immeasurable. They even give us a ride to our camp spot, it's 2am, and we didn't even get the ice cream we had started out for...
We didn't miss the ice cream one bit.

More Zacomania

Wow, this is a fun town! In just a week we have been to four museums, including one in the ruins of a catherdral, one in an old convent that was converted to a prison, and now it is the modern art museum! We've eaten more good food, including the fresh buds of prickly pears, buckets of gorditos, fantastic mole, and pozole (great spicy soup for those rainy days).
This past weekend was the big Independencia fiesta. The tradition goes back to Miguel Hidalgo, who shouted "Viva Mexico" from the town square in 1810 at the very beginning of Mexico's break from Spanish rule. So we followed the crowds to the main Zocalo here in Zacatecas (we are only a few hours drive from the City of Dolores Hidalgo where the cry (grito) originated), we find a place on the stairs with the others and wait. They have a huge stage covering one end of the square and shortly many singers and bands take the stage and the crowd builds until the whole square is filled. By 10 pm, the crowd is getting excited! The other end of the square is a 40' tall tower of fireworks, a contraption of metal framework covered in fireworks, and in the square just to the north of us, one block away, they've set up HUGE mortars in big steel tubes, just like the ones we see on the barges in Seattle. At exactly 11pm, the governor comes out on the balcony to great applause and flag-waving. She shouts "Viva Mexico" and the crowd answers, "VIVA", the whole square and half of the town is filled with people shouting and waving flags! It was amazing. The school band is on stage and played the national anthem and soon the fireworks start up! We are about 100' from the main display and as soon as they atart up the crowd surges away from them as the sparks start to fly! Mexican fireworks are fantastically dynamic, powered by loud whistling crackers, they spin and whorl in bright colors and shapes. Like a ferris wheel on fire! They filled the square with smoke and ash but deterred no one! The crown of the display swirled and twirled until it completed flew off in a blaze of white sparks! Everyone cheered and shouted for more! The whole side on the cathedral behind us was rigged with crackers at the top that covered the whole side of the church with a curtain of white sparkles. Then in the final show, the entire length of the teleferico (aerial tramway) above the town was strung with more! It went off turning the colors of the flag and then turning into an enormous curtain of white sparks falling down abopve the city! Stupendous!
Not to be outdone, the huge mortars go off right over the town and continue from ontop of the Bufa (the big hill nearby).
I think we like this place...

Zacatecas

The day we got here we walked out to the tramway station and looked
over the town, then walked down a block, then another and soon we found
ourselves in a crowd of people, many in costume, dressed as Turks or
crusaders, marching bands and wild Huichal Indian troupes
all milling around in the street, every once in a while an organized
group would come thru, tramping up the cobbled streets with a roar or
drums and bugles then it all stopped but none of the onlookers left so
we hung around waiting in the drizzle for the unknown... We could here
drums in the distance and sense from the crowd that the best was yet to
come... Around the bend came group after group, a band of "Turks"
drumming and carrying rifles, then some Huichal dancers then a float
drawn by a tractor with a statue of the virgin Mary. Many of the
"statues" were actually children dressed in costume, kinda spooky...
All this went on late into the night, food vendors selling potato chips
with lime and salsa, tall poles with huge bags of cotton candy in scary
bright colors, baskets with gum and soda and cigarettes... It all ended
well after midnight with the passing of the statue of the local virgin
on her way to the main cathedral. It was for "Founders" day, a citywide
celebration that happens once a year, part of a two week event. We are
going to the fair next Saturday with some teachers from the college we
met at the parade. Now that should be an adventure!

Zacatecas part 1

Sunday 10 Sept
We are in Zactatecas, at 8,200 ft the second highest city in Mexico, a
great change from the summer heat on the coast, 70´s during the day and
60´s at night... a big storm comes thru every day in the afternoon and
dumps rain then it sprinkles a little every night, like clockwork. We
got here Friday, found a campground in town, a parking space in a fancy
hotels main parking area, kinda weird but the price and location are
hard to beat, a room at the hotel is $140 and our "parking space" is
$15... The town is wonderful, locals have lived here mining silver for
millennia and the Spanish took over in 1548, very Euro, windy streets
and steep steep staircases connect the two hills that surround the
city, there is a aerial tram, gondolas suspended from a cable that
connects the two hills, our camp spot is 50 ft from one end of the tram
way, so we guess our camp spot is approaching 9,000 ft... The town
tumbles down the hillsides, the houses bright colors mix with the
church spires and amazing baroque architecture. We are planning on
staying a few weeks.

hurricane John

Well the bus floated pretty good but the waves made Darby seasick. It
wasn't that bad, I slept thru most of it and we walked around La Paz
the next day with the 2 Swiss guys we met at our hotel, lots of trees
and power lines down, signs blown off the fronts of buildings and
flooded streets, palms with their tops gone and that sort of thing but
no major flooding or damage to structures. However... The ferry we
wanted to take was staying in port until the last of the danger had
passed, we had originaly meant to catch it on Fri but did not leave til
monday afternoon. Trapped in a funny hotel with Felix the excentric
owner and our new Swiss friends. The hotel was cinder block and 4
blocks from the beach which had a breakwater around it, the bus was
parked under cover so we felt safe enuf... Just hung out and played
gin rummy with the Swiss... Power went out Friday night but was back up
by miday saturday... Felix the owner was a funny little guy, a retired
math teacher who had owned the Hotel Tijuana for 25 years, very
religious with hennaed hair and a amazingly slow way of talking, he
would hem and haw and start and stop and then say a few words. He asked
us out for chinese food so the day after the hurricane, saturday
evening we all piled into Marco and Phillip the Swiss guys car, a
thrasher SUV they had picked up from friends in Portland Oregon,
covered with anti Bush bumper stickers and drove downtown to look for a
chinese resturant that was open... Not much luck, Everybody was closed
or taking the day off, the resturant felix wanted was full of Chinese
guys playing mah jong but no food was being served, undaunted we kept
driving around La Paz, the wrong way on one way streets, dodging
flooded intersections and debris in the road, finally found a nice
chinese resturant, the only place in town open! Packed with all the
other people that had been looking for somewhere open too. Good food,
good company, a nice adventure... The next day Felix offered to make us
carne asada in the hotel yard so a trip to the store with Felix and 4
kilos of meat later we were making a Mexican barbeque and drinking beer
in the yard... At 8AM Monday Marco and Phillip and D and I caravaned
down to the ferry terminal, waited an hour for it to open and finally
bought tickets, with 4 hours to wait till the the time when the ferry
might leave we... played gin rummy! The very large ferrys main task is
bringing all the trucks over from the mainland to feed and provision
the Baja. Things are substaintilly more expensive in Baja, like Hawaii
every thing comes over by boat. Once the ferry arrived there was more
card playing as the full load of storm delayed trucks was off loaded,
then it was our turn, up the super steep loading ramp and into the
strong fishy smell, to a huge cavernous hold where everyone joined into
a mad dance of... turning around and backing into our space! trucks,
tourists and general bedlam as we all spun around to park. Once aboard
it was modern and well kept, a lounge area with movies, a bar, large
outdoor spaces where we watched dolphins arcing thru the sea and a
table in the lounge to play gin rummy! It was dark when we got to
Topolobampo on the mainland, we drove 20 kilometers into the next town
and found a hotel with the Swiss guys, too tired to play cards we got
up early Tuesday and said our goodbyes to Marco and Phillip, they went
down the coast to surf and we headed inland to Durango and the cooler
climate of north central Mexico.

Driving up was an adventure in itself, El espinoza de diablo, the
devils backbone, a spectacularly scenic but white knuckled drive up
6700 feet into the mountains, lots of those poigniant crosses by the
side of the road that indicate the demise of a driver... We came upon a
white modern ford pick up that had failed to negotiate a turn and hung
like a toy at the edge of the abyss, all four wheels off the pavement,
at a 45 degree angle down, with few bushs stopping it from a thousand
foot fall. The two men who had come so close in shock by the side of
the road... Mexico is a two hands on the wheel sort of country. Once we
got to the high country it was beautiful, it reminded us both of
central Oregon, wooden houses, pines and lots of rock escarpments.
Turns out Durango has been the site of hundreds of movies, mostly
westerns.
Durango itself is a combination cow town and university town, old for
the new world, the main church was built in 1685 and there is alot of
baroque arcithecture and wrought iron. Parks and tree lined plazas with
fountains, the cooler weather... Darby and I love it! We are going to
Zacatecas tomorow and will probably stay there at least a week, we are
tired of racing around and glad to be in old Mexico...

More Baja photos!

More Baja photos

Hurricane John

We are in southern Baja now, in La Paz, waiting for the hurricane to blow thru... Lots of rain but no wind so far. Nice town... The ferry we want to take to the mainland is not running because of the storm so we wait... A nice cafe and nice people. Hanging out with some Swiss guys we met at our hotel. The streets are flooded but that is normal for the rainy season, big winds are expected later today but all is calm now...

So far the Baja phase of our trip has been driven by external factors, My tooth, the heat and now a hurricane! We did have a very nice time in Todos Santos, a small town on the Pacific coast, surfing and camping on the beach, meating people from all over the world... Baja is really a ghost town at this time of year but the locals arer super freindly and we are making the most of it. The hurricane has brought much cooler weather so thats nice...

The trip down the peninsula was fast but fun, the road down the east side of the gulf south of San Felipe was very harsh, not really 4 wheel drive hard but brutally hard road surface, some places just the living rock and washboard surface for 125 miles... We could only go in 1st gear, about 8 miles an hour and the breeze was from behind us at about 8 MPH so extremly hot and tiring... Once we made it to the pacific it was cooler but the road winds back and forth east and west so every few hours we were back on the hot sultry gulf side... Once we found a nice beach on the pacific we stayed until we ran out of water, surfing and slackness all day!

We are both looking forward to getting up into the highlands and also being in cities after the American west and Baja we are tired of the big empty. Just have to wait for the hurricane to pass!