Guanajuato, Dolores Hidalgo, and New Plans

You can check out all of my Gto and DH photos here Gto and DH.

The capital of the state of Guanajuato is Guanajuato.   I have visited most all of the towns within 100 KM of San Miguel de Allende, and Guanajuato (Gto) is the only one that I want to write about.  I only spent two days in town but thoroughly enjoyed every minute.  I borrowed a friend's motorcycle to get there, which was an adventure in itself.

As I am following the signs to the centro of Gto, I find myself going though a labyrinth of underground tunnels.  As I understand, these tunnels were built for silver mining.  There is silver mining because the town was built where an astroid collided with the earth and deposited a bunch of silver.

I took this photo on foot as riding a motorcycle and snapping photos is much more difficult than on a bicycle

I make it to the centro and try to find parking and a hotel.  I obviously stick out really badly because I had two hawks immediately descend upon me trying to help me locate a hotel.  I just kept telling them, "no entiendo" or I don't understand until they gave up even though I could tell mostly what they were saying.  I ended up in a hotel affixed to a parking garage at 250 Pesos for both per night.  The passage way to the room was daunting as there were three separate places where my head was in danger if I wasn't paying attention as I walked.  In any event, I was staying directly across from the Mercado Hidalgo where locals buy all kinds of things ranging from coffee mugs to raw chicken.

Photo taken from the upstairs catwalk.

I basically roam around town looking for places to eat.  I smell some really good food and head into Antik Cafe.  In the cafe, I meet an American waitress and ask what is that good smell coming from the restaurant.  She says it is the taco stand behind the restaurant.  In any event, it was too late to leave as I already had a drink.  She drew me a map of the places to go for the night when a younger Mexican girl overhears our conversation and scratches out some of the American's suggestions and replaces them with others.  I follow the map around and end up in some interesting places.  The first place I enter is called FBI.  This is a cantina, but this one had some regular looking college people in it.  There were of course the older working women sitting at a table with a man that was morbidly obese.  I did not snap a photo of the guy as that is probably not cool in this establishment.  There was a urinal against the wall at the entrance of the bar.  I felt obliged to wait around until I needed to pee to have the chance to basically pee in front of the entire bar and no one think twice about it.  Beers at FBI were 12 pesos.

Sign in the back of FBI

I wandered around trying to make sense of the makeshift map.  Two of the places on the list were pretty dead, and I decided to make one final push to the last place on the list which was at the edge of the centro.  The place was called Bar Fly, and it felt like a cantina that Bob Marley would go to.  The air was hot, thick, and difficult to breath.  The music was reggae all night long.  However, the place was crowded and beers were cheap.

They turned off the lights and I took a shot called the Cucaracha

The next morning I went to the Mummy Museum.  I would not recommend this to anyone as I left there feeling queasy and disrespectful.  You are not supposed to take photos in there, but of course I did to share them.  There was a section of infant mummies that really made me want to get out of there.  Luckily, the museum only takes five minutes to walk through when you hoof it like I did.

I got back to the centro and checked out the Diego Rivera museum.  I did not see any art I recognized, but his art was much more varied than I ever knew.  Diego had art from realism to cubism and all sorts in between.  I tried to take some photos but every single room with his art had a person staring there waiting for me to do something wrong.

This was the only photo from the Diego Rivera Museum

I spent the rest of the day roaming around trying to see all of the touristy things I could fit in one day.

From the top of a staircase looking back at the Centro 

Don Quixote

Random model in a photo shoot

Pipila - This guy carried a boulder on his back to stop the Spaniard's bullets then burned down the door so the Mexicans could invade and overtake the fortress during the Independence.

View from Pipila to the left

View from Pipila to the center.  The White building in the sun is the University of Guanajuato.  The green area in the shade is the Jardin.

View from Pipila to the right

I made friends with some people that had a car.  The car owner gave me a night tour of Gto for about three hours.

The city at night from the Mirador

We went to the Guanajuato Grille for our late night festivities.

This was a Tuesday night before school is in session.  I am told that it is crazy busy on the weekends.

Me trying to do the Headless Captain Morgan stance.

I left in the morning and headed up into the mountains to get to Dolores Hidalgo, the birthplace of Mexican Independence.  The temperature in the mountains was about 20 degrees cooler than in Gto.  I was a total popsicle by the time I made it to DH.  The town was small but full of history.  However, I wasn't in a history mood so I just snapped a few photos and headed back to San Miguel.

Padre Hidalgo

CHANGE OF PLANS -------------------------

I have been living in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico since Dec 16, 2010.  I will take a bus from San Miguel on Jan 17, 2011 to Mexico City.  Later I will fly to Montevideo, UR on Jan 23 and continue my trip from there but riding north this time.