Guanajuato: Day Two

We got up decently early on Saturday because we had a full day planned; like Mexico City, we had an ambitious itinerary that involved almost all of the museums in the city.

But, well, our plan was immediately hijacked by the B&B owner who, after breakfast, said he would walk down into town with us. I understood this to mean that we would all walk down the alleyway's 300-odd stairs together and then part ways at the bottom; evidently he meant to give us a tour. On the one hand, it was lovely and I saw things we never would have discovered on our own; on the other hand, I don't think it ever occurred to him that we might have had other intentions for our morning, since he didn't ask.

But enough griping...He mostly showed us in and around Guanajuato's tunnels. As I mentioned yesterday, the city is built at the bottom of a ravine and when it rains, the water gushes down the streets following its natural path to the river. Today, the water apparently still runs down the alleys and makes its way to the river, which has now been conveniently re-directed under the road. But in the past, if I understood correctly, the people just built the outside walls really high and pathways across the river to form a tunnel for the water to flow through. They placed their bathrooms on the side facing the river too and just let it swallow everything up. Sometime in the 1960s, I believe, they converted the tunnels into the main road (which takes most of the traffic in Guanajuato), and so now you can pop down these stairways and check out the tunnels.

After the tunnel adventure, we retraced our steps from yesterday and made our way to the Alhondiga de Granaditas, where the B&B owner told us the story of the battle there (which I'll get to later), and then he deposited us at the Diego Rivera museum. That wasn't where we were intending to go - seriously, he had no interest in what we actually wanted to do - so from there, we made our way to the Museo de las Momias, or the Mummy Museum, at the western edge of town. Unfortunately, we made the mistake of walking...and we took the long way around. After about 45 minutes in the heat and midday sun, we arrived and found a huge, long line. We made it into the building after 20 minutes only to discover that we weren't at the ticket booth, just at the beginning of the enormously long line that wrapped around inside. So we gave up and decided to leave it for another day - but ended up having a bit of good fortune. We refreshed with snow cones and started back, until this random Mexican guy told us it was shorter to go the other direction. So we went that way, only to run into the director of the museum, who told us that if we went through the old entrance, inside the cemetery, we would be in the museum in five minutes.

And he was right. We bought our tickets at the booth just inside the cemetery gates and within a few minutes, had descended the circular stairway into the museum - a museum, I should point out, that is probably the grossest thing I have ever seen. There's apparently something in the dirt there that preserves these bodies - some still had hair, teeth, and clothing - and they basically picked out the ones with the most horrific stories and put them on display. There were even little baby mummies. I can barely look at my photos now without feeling nauseous. In the photo to the right, the three mummies from the left to right died from being buried alive, drowning, and a stab wound.

After that adventure, Emily and I headed back to town and made a visit to the Alhondiga, the huge square building that the Spaniards used as a fortress during a battle for Independence. In 1810, Father Hidalgo led troops to Guanajuato and a major, bloody battle ensued. As the story goes, he couldn't gain traction until a brave young man, nicknamed Pipila (which my guidebook says translates to "turkeycock"), offered to set fire to the doors, using a slab of stone to shield his back. He succeeded and Hidalgo's troops won the fight but eventually, the place would come back to haunt him; after he was captured, tried, and executed, his head was hung in a cage from a hook on one of the corners of the building as an example to the people. (They hung the heads of his three co-conspirators on the other corners.) Today, the Alhondiga has been converted into a museum and a memorial. In addition to some large bronze heads honoring the fathers of Independence, two of the stairways have been painted in patriotic scenes by Jose Chavez Morado, famous Mexican muralist and longtime Guanajuato resident.

At this point - it was perhaps 3pm - we were pretty wiped out and took a lunch break at the charming Tasca de la Paz, across from the Basilica. There we re-discovered our favorite orange-red, slightly spicy sauce from lunch the day before, one that we would look forward to for many meals to come. Someone told us it was chimichurri sauce - eaten here with bread - but I can't confirm this on the interwebs. (Google tells me chimichurri sauce is usually green and comes from Argentina, and I definitely don't remember this delightful orange version from my semester in Buenos Aires.)

Anyway, after our lunch of chimichurri with a side off French bread and pork fajitas, we dragged our exhausted bodies to the Casa Diego Rivera, or the house where muralist Diego Rivera lived until he was four. There wasn't much to it; the first floor was recreated to look as it might have when his family lived there and the second floor had a small collection of his works. None of the paintings were famous; mostly they were early works, and some from his years abroad, and it was interesting to see how he was influenced by other styles, like Impressionism, before finding his own.

After that, we headed to the Jardin de la Union, where we sat around some more - but this time, at Starbucks. Guanajuato was still totally packed with people so we just sat and watched the world go by. I also snapped a lot of random people pictures - musicians, little kids, balloon men - so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when this guy approached us and asked if he could take a photo with us. (As I mentioned before, we totally stuck out.) He came back a second time and asked to take a photo just with Emily - we're hoping his intentions were pure and her head isn't now stuck on some porn body for all the Internet to see. :)

We finally motivated - we had a dinner reservation at 7pm at El Abue, made for us by our B&B host - and headed to the Museo del Pueblo de Guanajuato, mostly because we felt like we should. We made a beeline for the Baroque chapel which has since been redecorated with another mural by Chavez Morado. It was definitely eye-catching upon entering the chapel but overall, not as impressive as the murals at the Alhondiga. We then wandered through some of the galleries but with not much enthusiasm.

El Abue was just down the street so off we went to dinner. It was nice - and especially nice to have pasta after an endless stream of enchiladas and fajitas - and mostly empty.

Before heading back to the B&B, we decided to take in a little bit of the outdoor movie, playing at the steps of the University, about halfway between us and the Museo del Pueblo, so really just a few steps away. From the posted schedule, it looked like they were showing nightly movies over two weeks surrounding Easter and tonight's pick was a Spanish film called La Verguenza, or Shame. We arrived about half an hour into it, so I couldn't totally figure out what it was about - but this helpful website tells me it's about a couple who want to give their adopted child back, like a story ripped from the headlines.

So we weren't so into the movie - it was a lot of conversation taking place in just one apartment - but the atmosphere around us was awesome. People were sitting on the steps, under the stars, just enjoying the night air and being together. In fact, it reminded me of something out of a movie, like A Good Year or Cinema Paradiso.

After that, we headed back to the B&B, exhausted and with seriously achy feet. We managed to take a quick look at the Pipila statue and its view of Guanajuato, all illuminated in the black, before returning to our room for a vigorous round of Phase 10 and sleep!