Guanajuato...

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I've had both an a really cool, and a so not cool week this week. Don't get me wrong it was 99.9% awesome, Guanajuato is just fantastic! But there were a couple of bumps along the way this week.

Ok, so to keep everyone updated, katherine and I have managed within like three days to find a nice house, close to uni, with great internet access and we'll be living with 2 spaniards and 1 mexican so spanish will definitely be the language of the house so that should be good. The "casa grande" as I've now dubbed it has 6 bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, roof for suntanning, wireless internet, a dog (its the owners and will probably vacate soon with him), a backyard, and a garage. In short everything we possibly needed. And get this, a lady comes every tuesday to do the cleaning, and another lady every thursday to do the washing (for $1.50 aus a load). I feel like I'm ripping them off and they were the ones to set the price. Still it feels weird to accept someone else to do my washing for me, but I suppose if it keeps their economy going who am I to question capitalism in the clothes washing industry. So katherine and I moved into our new home this afternoon after returning from guanajuato (thats next paragraph), and it took us all of 20 minutes to unpack our stuff. Mum, check out the new throw rug I bought for $28 aussie dollars. And thats probably the ripped off tourist price too. I think its gorgeous! *insert happy clapping soph here* There's my room, and the bathroom, and anything else you might be interested in seeing. I haven't taken a photo of the garden or roof top yet cause it's dark over here but otherwise you've pretty much got a photo of everything. I love the fact that there's a plant in my room, I have my very own plant to kill! So the plan is that we have a day or two to sign the contract, pay our first month in advance and wait for our fellow awesome roommates to arrive.

Ok, on to our holiday...

Guanajuato is just the cutest, most gorgeous little town I've seen! It looks like its straight out of the Spanish/French pyrenees. Its in the middle of this small canyon and its been made a World Heritage site so it doesn't have any traffic lights, or neon signs or anything else that could ruin its ambiance. We arrived Monday afternoon and were literally jumping up and down from excitment because it is just so different from fast-paced, huge guadalajara. This town is set up for the tourists well and truely. It was weird at first seeing so many westerners in the one spot after spending the last two weeks in a seriously mexican city. Traveling there first class was a good choice, the long service buses are quite plush. Dad you'd love them because they have awesome leg room, theres a toilet at the back and huge windows to look out of. It was nice just chilling out and checking out the mexican scenery (there a cacti everywhere!). There's even red soil which mad me think of home when I saw it.

So we arrived in Guanjuato and our hostel try and find our hostel, but it's no longer there so we wandered around, found another for a decent price and settled in. It was then exploring time! We had a look a the main square and the surrounding streets and sat at this cute cafe called El cafe (original) and had fajitas and burritos for dinner. The cafe was right next to the Teatro Principal (main theatre) where people just hang out on the steps and occassionally you'll find a person performing in front of them for free. So on our first night there, with people wandering about everywhere was were treated to one of these free performances. It was so cute, the man (theres a photo of him somewhere) got this little 5 yr old boy up and was doing a bull fighting scene where the boy was the bull and the performer the bull fighter and it was adorable, and very funny too when they swapped places for the finale.

After dinner we decided to go for a walk up to the major statue on one side of the canyon "el pipila". He's supposed to be one of the heroes of the mexican independence movement and he helped win the battle against the spanish in the town. It took us 1/2hour of winding through these small streets (no car or bike could fit up them) going up the hillside to this giant statue at the top. We arrived just in time for sunset which was beautiful.

The Lonely planet has this walk to do in the town so tuesday morning was spent doing this walk that took you through all the plazas of the town and to the most famous (and narrowest) street of guanajuato. Callejon de los besos is so narrow on balcony on one side almost hits the balcony on the other side. The story goes to lovers kissing across the two balconies, then the girls dad finds out and kills her and the guy has a broken heart and commits suicide by throwing himself down one of the mindshafts. It was so cute to hear the story from local kids that hang around and ask a peso to tell you the story (in rapid spanish i could barely keep up) and then they tell you about the types of kisses that there are and its so funny being lectured on kissing by a seven yr old girl!

Next thing (typical for girls I know!) was to check out the local markets. The food etc is on the bottom and the touristy stuff on the 2nd floor. We meandered around for a while enjoying ourselves and we found the coolest shop. It was chockers with trinkets for the local
'day of the dead'. It had everything skulls and bones all in the brightest colours I've seen! Mexicans certainly have a different take on death, its much more of a celebration of life, but no doubt about it they are a little obsessed.

Next was the plaza and local museum that was the supposed spot of liberation. Guanajuato is aparently one of the three main towns that began the mexican revolt against the spanish. Anyone heard about Miguel Hidalgo? He's pretty much a god over here, said to be the father of Mexican Independence. The museum is beautiful and had these gorgeous murales up the stairs by Jose Morales, one of the bigger artists of mexico. I'm sorry to say photos never do a mural justuce. Theres something about when you're walking up the stairs and everywhere you look there's people and a story to the mural, mostly about mexican independence or history.

After that there was the Museum of Iconography that was dedicated to all things Don Quixote. Anything and EVERYTHING that had quixote on it from paintings to statues to pottery to chess pieces was on display. It was in this gorgeous old house but unfortunately no photos were allowed 😞

That night after dinner we explored a little more and ran into what they call "callejoneadas" student minstrel groups that lead locals and tourists around the streets at night with plenty of wine to drink (if you pay) and plenty of music, jokes and stories to keep the crowd entertained as they meander the streets for an hour or so. When we ran into them they had all the blokes kneeling in front of the ladies saying a ballad or something like that (one dude was dictating what they should say) and they all sang and drank for a few minutes before moving on. Very kitch and very cool!!

The next day Katherine wasn't feeling too well. She'd suffered a bout of the "Mexican Two Step" as they call it over here and was in the bathroom most of the night. Luckily I had escaped unscathed. We decided to take a trip up to this huge mountain that is said to the be the very centre of the country. It has this huge Statue of Christ on top of it that is the second largest behind Rio so we thought that would be cool to look at. It took an hour and a bit to get to the thing along this dirt road, I thought the bus was going to die over a few of the larger bumps but it made it. The trip was worth it in itself for just seeing a couple of the tiny towns that dot the route up there. Because its pretty much the only bus going through there all the locals from those towns use it to ferry them back and forwards to guanajuato. I'd say there was no more than a couple of hundred in each town, really REALLY tiny.

The statue was cool to see, and the views stunning but after half an hour we were ready to head on back down. On the way back Katherine felt sick again and at one stage I thought we might have to make a quick exit but she made it back to the hotel and we had a quiet afternoon. That night we decided to change it up and get something not mexican (mostly for K's stomach, I don't think she could've handled anything much). The Italian believe it or not was great. I had a steak with vegies and mushroom sauce and it was heaven (and typical of me I know!).

The next day was dedicated to museums - Museo de las Momias (mummy museum) and La casa de Diego Rivera, who was actually born there and moved to mexico city when he was 6 or so. The mommy museum was... interesting but I don't think I'll be in a rush to do it again. Basically there wasn't enough room in the local cemmetary so they started digging up the graves of those families who couldn't afford the upkeep anymore and they found out that the climate is perfect for making mommies. They've got something like over 100 mummies, old, young, new, older ones, babies, everything! You should've seen how popular this place is with mexican tourists we were in a que the whole time. K and I didn't really like the place just because these poor people were on display because their relatives couldn't afford the upkeep at the local cemmetary but it goes to show how interested they are in death and whatnot.

The Diego Rivera Museum I LOVED. It's in the house his family lived in and you can tell they were well off, each kid had a room and theres a good 4 floors to the place. On the bottom level is furniture and the upper levels have about one hundred paintings, drawings etc of Riveras. he didn't actually have a style to start out with, it was a mixture of everything cubism, indigenous etc. I'm showing my nerdism but it was cool! The lady at the front desk actually invited us back for the opening of a new exhibition that night, it was free and it looked good, and even better Katherine was feeling ok again so we decided to toddle along and have a look.
It was awesome. It was really small gathering, like 100 or so, K and I stuck out like sore thumbs. We arrived at 8 on the dot and we were the first to get there. Then the artist and her husband arrived so we had a lovely chat with them. Tere Matte her name is and she does good work! She cut the ribbon and we all wandered through a collection of like 50 or so paintings. There was free nibblies, sangria, K and I felt really culturally posh! The one bummer was that it absolutely poured the whole night so we got soaked running back to the hostel.
unfortunately this is the part where it gets a bit sucky and boring for you readers. Our other plans went a bit down the drain the next day where we just meandered around with nothing much planned and thank god cause k got really sick again. And that pretty much takes us up to the trip home and moving in. my love to all. xx

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