Happy Birthday to myself in Guanajuato…

Hello eveyone,

it being to 5th of the 7th month, it is my eighteneeth birthday. It feels pretty good to be in the beautiful city of Guanajuato; i just had a great breakfast of fresh orange juice (jugo de naranja) and bean and cheese melted onto some hot buttered rolls (Morelles i think). We left Mexico City at 12.45 on monday; the combination of a private bus terminal and the brilliant metro (which costs about 30 pence to go anywhere) was very easy to do (i was warned that Mexican bus stations are the most confusing places in the world but this was basically a Greyhound station). It cost us 252 pesos, about 18 sterling, to travel the 500 or so km to Guanajuato. On leaving the City all was apparent was the endles spawling slums. I won´t go into details, but this did put a bit of a down on the journey, to witness that kind of poverty, in a sleek first class coach.

Thn we were passing between the 7 hills of mexico city and onto the high plains. For a couple of hours it was only rock scrub, mountains and small subsistence farming. The it became flatter; more arable and grassland until the land became completely flat with a horizon of blue mountains. I have never seen so much sky in my life – the clouds seemed to touch the top and roll away from it. Then the storm started to gather, and the sky was so intense that i think i actually developed a sense of forboding.

We arrived in Guanajuato (pronounced qwana-kwato) and were all pretty worried – the bus station was in a sparsely populated bit of scrub and we had no rooms and no idea where to go. I managed to get a bus to the centre – and all became clearer as we moved through this journey. We started through what was the outskirts but then entered a tunnel and came out in a more developed industrially populated area. Then we moved up into the steeply winding hills, and considered what it would be like to sleep out in the open (absurd to me now, with our nice rooms and favorite cafe etc.). Another tunnel and it all became clear; the town was actually a small city (of only 20,00) but bulit in the steep valley between several mountain-sized hills and rocky outcrops. This place is amazing – to cut a long story short we found rooms in this old centre of the city, and it is incredible – all the houses are built on top of each other, and there are several main plazas, with fountains, giant box shaped trees and basilicas. (There are even underground roads everywhere, with celllar doors from houses just opening up above them).

Yesterday we explored – we veisted the Diego Riviera museum which was ok, and walked all over the city. We were going to visit the Mummy museum (more Mexican morbid exihibitions) but after trecking there realised that the sight of the worlds smallest Mummy didn´t really appeal to us. Today we are planning to do some walking in the foothills, but after being so tired from walking yesterday and a couple of beers at 2500 m we kind of overslept.

So far the trip has been all that i have hoped for and more, the food very good,and we get along with a smattering of Spanish. I have a feeling Guanajuato is going to be the most picturesque places we are going to visit, it is just so damn cool (as Rupert would say).
p.s. (to all who know us) If you have any questions about Mexico, don’t hesitate to ask.
- JR X