Guanajuato
After a 10 hour bus ride, we arrived in Guanajuato late last night. We took a taxi to a hotel downtown and managed to get Sienna back to sleep without too much disruption. The bus itself was great. We took the first class bus line called Primera Plus, which has plush seats, air conditioning, movies (great if you understand Spanish) and two bathrooms. We managed to entertain Sienna pretty well and only had to resort to the DVD player near the very end of the trip. The scenery was beautiful, and we climbed significantly (2,000 feet or so), which made us thankful we chose not to use the van.
Guanajuato is built in a ravine and a walk off the main street quickly leads to a maze of narrow alleys that snakes up the side of the surrounding hills. The steep, winding streets remind us of our time in Provence, where the towns were often perched atop hills, throwing the entire town off kilter and making exploring them that much more fun. We discovered a tiny street called Callejon del Baisos, or street of kisses, aptly named because the street is so narrow, lovers can lean out their windows across the alley to kiss. If the narrow climbing streets above aren’t exciting enough, the city holds another surprise below. Guanajuato is built atop a significant tunnel system used in the past to divert flood waters. The waters have receded so much that they now use the tunnels for walking and driving. We walked a little distance through them just enough to get a feel for the massive endeavour it was to have built them.
Since we`ve been making most of our meals in the Westy, this has been our first experience with having to eat out for every meal. We were surprised at how well we were able to eat on our tight budget. We splurged on breakfast and for only $12, we enjoyed a fantastic buffet at the Hotel los Insurgentes which included chilaquiles, huevos Mexicana, fresh fruit, pancakes and yogurt. If you haven’t had them before, chilaquiles is our new favourite breakfast food. It is crisp corn tortillas fried with green salsa and cheese and is delicious. We shared a lunch at the Hidalgo Mercado for a mere $3.20 (noodles, fruit shake and fruit platter) and later treated ourselves to coffee and strudel (a ridiculous $8 when compared to our other meals). Dinner at one of the cafés on the square was unexpectedly reasonable as well costing under $20 for two beers, a juice, an Aztec soup and two enchilada dinners. The best food we`ve had on this trip is still in Mulegé, but this was pretty darn good.
