Guanajuato: Day One

What is this blog thing? Oh yes, right, a place where I am supposed to write and record my thoughts and travels. I'd momentarily forgotten, clearly...

So I'm back, most especially to tell everyone about our fabulous Easter trip to Guanajuato, Mexico! Emily and I sort of stumbled upon this city randomly. First, we wanted to go someplace for Spring Break - maybe Guatemala or Nicaragua - but all the airfares just seemed ridiculous. So then we changed it to Easter and somehow decided to go to Mexico again, I suppose because we had a great time the first time around. I think then I suggested San Miguel de Allende and Emily discovered its neighbor Guanajuato in a guidebook. Or something like that.

We left on the Friday and arrived in Leon just before noon. We took a cab from the airport ($40-ish total for a 45-minute trip) and after sitting through traffic on the narrow, windy hill up to the Pipila monument, finally made it to our hotel. After some consideration, I've decided not to name the B&B where we stayed - it had its goods and bads, but I've already posted an average review on TripAdvisor, which elicited a strange, convoluted email from the owner, and I frankly don't want to get into it again. (But if you really want to find it, the place is ranked as the #1 B&B in the city.) Anyway...

We spent that afternoon wandering around the city. Guanajuato has a population somewhere around 80,000 and the city - not to be confused with the entire state - is nestled into the bottom of a ravine. The layout is actually kind of long and narrow but most of the important spots (for a tourist anyway) are clustered together, within walking distance of the Jardin de la Union, the social hub of the city.


Since it was Easter weekend, the city - often referred to as the cultural capital of Mexico because of its famous Cervatino festival - was packed with Mexican tourists. In some places, it was like wall-to-wall people. So we wandered and just kind of discovered things along random streets and alleyways.

We ended up having a late lunch in the Plaza San Fernando, at one of the little cafes there. We simply chose the one that had an empty table. The hostess came over to clear it off - she picked up the bowl of used tortilla chips, brushed the crumbs off the tablemat, and then put the chips back down. It didn't bother me that much but Emily was totally grossed out (not that it stopped her from eventually eating them). However, this was probably the scene of my most disappointing meal - though I should have remembered from Mexico City that ordering a cheese enchilada gets you a hunk of barely melted cheese inside a tortilla. I also ordered ice tea, thinking it would be bottled - but the waiter brought me a cup of cold water and a tea bag. Although the B&B owner had told us that the tap water was fine, I didn't really want to chance it and could only bear to take a few sips (which probably would have been enough to do damage, I realize). From that point on, we mostly drank beer - it was always bottled and always cheap.

After that, we made our way back toward the Jardin de la Union, with its bright green manicured trees, and spent dusk parked at one of the outdoor restaurants there - this time, if memory serves, I had a mojito. The Jardin was bustling with families and musicians and rug sellers and we just watched it all go by.

Somewhere along the way, we'd heard about the procession for Holy Friday, which began at 8pm somewhere around the Basilica de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, or the yellow church in the top photo (and also, incidentally, the home to a wooden statue of the Virgin that's more than 1,000 years old). So we made our way over to the church and just sort of waited for awhile, essentially twiddling our thumbs. (We definitely stood out as gringas everywhere we went and as we sat on the church steps, this cute little girl decided to practice her English out on us.) Somehow we got the bright idea to go looking for the procession - I think we saw a flickering of light at the end of the street. And it actually was a good idea because, despite all the people sitting near us on the steps and curbs, the procession was in full swing all the way down there - and wouldn't have reached us until the very end, two hours or so later.

So off we went to join the parading masses. I think this procession might actually be the coolest thing I have ever seen. There were hundreds of barefoot women dressed as nuns and they were carrying these three large biers with one illuminated, standing figure on each (I'm guessing the two women were the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene but I don't know who the one male was supposed to be). In front of them, hooded men with thick ropes around their necks were carrying a final bier, with a statue of Christ laying atop it. The procession through the alleyways was moving fairly slowly so Emily and I were able to join in and we walked along with them as they circled through the city, past the Alhondiga de Granaditas and back up to the church. The outside edge of the procession moved along, almost like a current, and we eventually made it to the head of the group, where we found musicians and men dressed as Roman gladiators leading the pack.

We broke off from the group after at least 90 minutes of processing and made our way to the furnicular, so we could get back to our B&B at the top of the hill. The ride up was pretty uneventful except that the town's one skeevy young dude (seriously, I think there was just one - we saw him and only him multiple times) boarded our littly furnicular car and was obviously drunk. Emily was a little freaked out and wanted to get off, but it was all fine and we made it back to the B&B in one piece.