The Colonial Center-II
Guanajuato & Zacatecas

Guanajuato

Zacatecas

Jerez

 Guanajuato    

       After SMA, we drove through the pottery-making town of

Dolores Hidalgo to nearby Guanajuato, a.k.a. GTO, a university town and a state capital.  Guanajuato is the well-deserved darling of the guide books, and we found its incredible charm soon enough.  The city's layout is interesting because it is wedged in a canyon at 6700 feet.  Not able to expand outward, the early townsfolk took to building over usually largely dry riverbeds.  Later, the riverbeds were turned into roads, and a 1960s dam project made the beds permanently dry.  As a result, a labyrinth of drivable tunnels lie under the city center and form the main access to town.  One guide had given me the impression that cars were banned on top, but that wasn’t so.  The resulting two-tiered road circuit was a congested maze.  After several turns around the city, we finally got the hang of it somewhat.  We also drove the very curvy perimeter road (La Panoramica) that very roughly encircles the city and provides great vistas.  Houses go up the steep hillsides and there are sheer drop-offs where no buildings are located.  We had trouble finding any lodging; we’d try following the signs for one or more hotels, but invariably we ended up lost.  We finally eased in to El Dumpador.  The friendly owner had no qualms about the dogs and a recent re-tiling of the floors and paint job left it better looking inside than on the outside.  It had only two bugs that Milo studied with a sustained intensity and then chose to leave alone. 

     Going north out of Guanajuato was surprisingly flat, the opposite of the road going into the city from SMA, which was mountainous and narrow.  On the outskirts of the city we stopped for a good view and photo op of the whole town, and also caught a man driving a team of burros to town on the high road, laden with firewood.  We are surprised how many burros we see being used in cities like GTO for transporting things.  They plod down the middle of the street, seemingly oblivious to the congested traffic around them.

     After Guanajuato we took the toll road north through Leon and Aguacalientes.  Both appeared to be relatively prosperous industrial areas, but not grimy or polluted.  We passed an extremely large GM plant, and further up the road, and even larger Nissan complex.  Although semi-arid, like most of the Mexico we’ve seen, we passed a number of green, irrigated farms along the highway.   

      As I puttered in the van’s backseat, (Roscoe is riding shotgun for the first time, at his insistence), Bill is commenting how well Ole Bardahl (famous in Seattle decades ago for the hydroplane he raced on Lake Washington) got around Mexico.  A landmark in every neighborhood is a building painted bright yellow advertising Bardahl engine additives (no longer popular in the US) in huge black letters. 

     Bill’s Spanish is improving a great deal; at last count he had quintupled his Spanish vocabulary (from about two to ten words).  He was particularly pleased when he went shopping, by himself, for bungee cords.  He asked a clerk in the supermercado for “bungo cordos” and after a short panto-mime, the clerk immediately understood.   Bill, unfortunately, is linguistically challenged.

Zacatecas

      Our next destination was another colonial city, Zacatecas, which has a working silver mine near its central.  I suspect most of its income is from taking tourists through the mine, and so we signed up.  A little train takes the tourists into the mine, and then a guide leads the groups around.  At the end, an elevator takes people out and to the base of the Telerífica, a gondola that goes to a high lookout point.  Zacatecas is vying for the tourist dollar, and after Guanajuato installed a funicular, Zacatecas did the same and then one-upped GTO by constructing a well-built and easily drivable perimeter road.  The city is situated at 8400 feet, the highest we’ve been.  We found it chilly only late at night, but Zacateños were dressed for Arctic weather.  We felt a little out of place still wearing shorts, t-shirts and sandals.  We noticed that the citizens of Zacatecas have a decidedly European look about them, and tend to dress up a bit.   We found a large hillside motel that had no difficulty with the mutts and Bill got some wonderful sunrise photos over the city. 

      We detoured south after Zacatecas to the smaller town of Jerez, reputedly an off-the-beaten-path colonial town.  We unwittingly arrived at pre-Lenten carnival time, and every ranch and farm family for miles around was in town for the festivities.  Most men wore some sort of cowboy hat and other cowboy attire.  In an effort to fit in, Bill tried on hats in one shop but they weren't right for him.  We found the town a little crowded for our liking, so we headed north over the barren landscape to Chihuahua. 

Below:  More of Guanajuanto

             

                
                                                         Yummm...