Unlike any of the other Mexican cities I’ve been to so far, Guanajuato’s bus terminal is quite far from the city center. From there, I had to hop on a local bus that didn’t really seem to have a defined route. I trusted the bus driver to tell me when we arrived at the historical area. Stupid me, however, listened to an old woman who told me to get off at a certain stop. Which turned out to be nowhere close to where I expected to end up. I walked around in circles for a while, trying to get my bearings straight.
When I finally walked by the city center stop (where I should’ve gotten off!), I actually ran into the woman who gave me wrong directions! I was so tempted to scream at her!!! Then again, I didn’t know how to express my frustration in Spanish, and really…maybe she WAS trying to help me out. Positive thinking.
For the rest of my stay in Mexico, I’ve decided to splurge on a single room. Only because I took out too much pesos the other day… 150P a night ($11-ish). Not bad at all : )
Guanajuato is a really charming city. Colorful houses lined along the hills,
connected by narrow cobble-stoned alleys. I love the vividness!The best place to see the city’s beauty is atop San Miguel hill. There’s a funicular running up to the top from the city, but it wasn’t functioning the day I was there. So, I walked up, following LP’s directions. A little freaky since the path doesn’t get much traffic, and stray dogs (possibly rabid) abound.
It’s good that I didn’t read the guide book carefully. A girl I met later in the day (when I safely made it back down in one piece!) told me that the path is supposedly quite dangerous going solo.
Some of the other sights I enjoyed in the city included the Universidad de Guanajuato and Casa Diego Riviera.
I didn’t actually go into the university, but I thought the architecture was impressive. Wish I could study Spanish here for a couple of months… (I did meet a few Japanese people in the Mexico City hostel who were doing that)
And as the name suggests, Diego Riviera was born here. The house has been converted into a museum, with a great collection of his works like his sketches for the murals I saw in Mexico City.I have to say, though, that my favourite site in Guanajuato was the Mummy Museum. Yes, the baby mummy was a bit disturbing.
But everything else was really cool. And funny too! Basically, they dug these mummies out of the nearby cemetery and decided to build a museum. Because they didn’t have a clue as to who the mummies were, they created a personal story to go along with each mummy on display. For example, there was “The China Girl” – “Some stop to observe me and think out loud or discuss among them if I arrived with some of the Chinese, Korean, or Japanese colonies that entered this country during the 2nd half of the 19th century...Who knows? Perhaps I was in transit and therefore nobody returned to claim my body. What do you think?” (FYI – I didn’t memorize this line; I took a photo! Digital photography is so useful.)
I took a bus there thinking it was far away, but I walked back to town. It took only about 15 minutes, downhill.Random, but I had Japanese food in Guanajuato. One of my roommates from Mexico City told me about this place where she used to work. It was a tiny (think 8 people max) café run by a young Japanese couple. The menu is very limited, but the food was good and light. Especially the hijiki! From Guanajuato, I had intended to head to San Miguel de Allende, a small, artsy colonial town. But the town is apparently full of American retirees and therefore pricier in comparison. Never mind. I’ll return a day earlier to Mexico City and chill.
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