Monte San Nicolas

A while ago, a new friend, Liz, took me to a small community outside of Guanajuato to see a three room, 1st-6th grade school. Unfortunately there was some holiday that closed public schools, that we didn’t know about so I just literally saw the school. I didn’t get to see teachers and kids.

The town is Monte San Nicolas and it was a mining town way back when. Now, the mine has closed and it is just a struggling little place on a dirt road about 10 miles from Guanajuato. It is quite beautiful though and there is a very lovely church that is being restored.

(Coincidentally, there was an article about the town last Sunday in the local paper.)

The old school.

New school, which was built a few years ago.

The town is incredibly old and there are ruins that are being preserved.

We drove through Santa Rosa on the way home, which is actually on the highway and Liz took me to this bakery, where they have the best bolillos around in the wood fired oven.  Bolillos are a white bread rolls that are ideally crusty on the outside and soft and bready  on the inside.  They also had a flaky pastry that was just like a croisant, except for the shape.  So GOOD.  The bakery has been in the family for years and is just a door with no sign so you need to know it to go.  It basically looked more like a mechanic’s garage than a bakery, but they sure make good stuff.

Tuxpan

I finally have some time to continue with the tale of our journey to Veracruz.

I learned from that fateful trip to Tijauna that super long days of bus travel are best avoided, so after Xilitla we decided to just go part of the way down the east coast to Tuxpan, which is actually inland a bit and on a huge river.

We got there in the early evening and left the next morning. It was hot and overcast and really quite lovely in a grungy modernish way. We had a good dinner on the zocolo and took a latenight swim in the pool on the roof of the hotel. That was fancy. But those pictures were all a blur.

In the morning we walked to the bus station and I went crazy taking pictures. It was all so attractive to me - not many tourists come to Tuxpan, it seems. Tom ended up having a good time watching the people watching me, the crazy gringa, stopping to take pictures every few feet. I had been completely oblivious to the stares until he pointed them out.

This was just outside a doctor’s office. We wondered how reassuring it is to feel that the doctor will put your health into Jesus’ hands (as pretty as he may be.)

Shrines

I decided to take pictures of shrines this trip. Not hard to find. They are in every bus station, most neighborhoods and many houses. This is just a small sample:

Just a typical weekend in Guanajuato

FRIDAY AFTERNOON

Our friends Victor and Cindy decided to have a little BBQ since everyone was home from our spring break.

They live in a big beautiful house where the kids just run off and you can forget all about them.

After dinner fashion show

After the party we went to pick up Aunties Sue and Quince who arrived from Portland, but I didn’t get any pictures.

SATURDAY

We went into town with Victor and Cindy and their two kids Taner and Kyan.

We stopped in a church to say hi to poor Jesus. Mikko’s friend Adam had us go in so we could see a statue of a saint who was pointing up, St. Jude(?) and who Adam thinks looks like he is flipping everyone off. I don’t know why I didn’t take a picture.

Got a drink

At the Jardin there were some medieval people being interviewed while they waited for the parade. Notice the little gringo trying to get on TV.

Then of course, the medieval belly dancers and bag pipers came along.

and the rest

We followed the parade to the medieval encampment at the baseball stadium.

There were sword fights, and archery contests as well as horsey things. You could also get medieval tacos, gorditas, enchiladas etc.

That night we played cards by candlelight in observance of the “Hour without Power”

SUNDAY

Victor and Cindy live right across the road from this big dam type lake thing, the Presa de la Olla. There are lovely little parks around and many families come and picnic and take out boats on Sundays. We decided to join them.

Cindy got the prize for happiest rower, in our boat.

Kyan got it for cutest rower

I guess I got the prize for pinkest sweater wearing rower.

The other boat kept pursuing us and bombing us with bread that was supposed to be for the ducks. What is the deal with 8 year old boys?

(The big, square looking, white house, on the left is Cindy and Victor’s FYI.)

We had all worked up our appetites, what with all the rowing and bombing and such, so went to an excellent restaurant that not only has very good food from all over Mexico, but the best burgers in town.

Just your average weekend in beautiful Guanajuato, Mexico

4 days in TJ

This is a bit of an epic post, but Tijuana is a bit of an epic place. It is all so big and heavy. I have just barely scratched the surface. Our friend that we stayed with has a blog about living there.

We traveled up Baja through miles and mile of this type of landscape .

This is the first of 6 military checkpoints that we had to stop at. They just chose a few random suitcases to go through, then showed the crowd pictures of things: drugs weapons etc. that they have gotten at that particular checkpoint. I got reprimanded for taking this picture, but he didn’t make me erase it.

At about 2 in the morning they made a bunch of people, including Matthew get off and frisked them. Mikko and I were sleeping like babies, so missed the whole thing.

When we woke up the ocean was right outside and the hillsides were covered with wild flowers.

Jesus was there to welcome us at some point. He’s such a nice guy.

I was very attracted to the dashboard of our bus.

It was much colder, so far north, than we were used to. (Mikko was still a little sick too.)

We were greeted, at our friends’ house by their nine month old Chihuahua, Xoloitzcuintle, Xolito for short. He was a sweet companion, when he wasn’t humping your arm.

Our friends live less then a block from the beach, about 5 or 6 blocks from the border.

This fence runs all the way along the border, so basically is the northern border of Tijuana.

This was a park that represented the friendship between Mexico and the US. They started building the fence just before NAFTA, long before 9/11. The powers that be knew how NAFTA would trash the Mexican economy and that people would be coming north to look for work - so we had to be sure to lock them out.

Families used to picnic on either side of the fence. There were always vendors on the Mexican side selling delicious things, so people would pass food through this hole to the US side where they were miles from a McDonalds. La Migra closed the hole though. There is no one on the US side anymore, except immigration police watching the fence.

The wall has become a site for a lot of art. This shows how once the wall was built and the doors were locked it forced people to risk their lives crossing the desert.

On a lighter note- we went to a soccer game on Sunday. The Tijuana Xoloitzcuintles de Caliente. (Xoloitzcuintle, is that crazy looking Aztec, hairless dog, BTW.) This is a shot of their fans. They were as loud and rowdy as the Timbers Army in Portland.

And one crazy Mexican hotdog. The Xoloitzcuintle colors are red and black which is why the hotdog comes in a red tortilla, of course.

Unfortunately, they lost. Which was a big deal - I blame myself. Generally when I go to a Timbers game their winning streaks come to a halt too. Sorry.

Another picture I wasn’t supposed to take - so I’m posting it even though it doesn’t really show anything. According to Lynn, the new soccer stadium and everything around is owned by the ex mayor of Tijuana. Including his own private zoo, pictured here. (We could hear lions getting intimate, I believe.)

On Monday we planned to go to some museums to see some artwork of a friend and just generally do some touristy things. Little did we know it was the official holiday celebrating the nationalization of oil, so everything was closed. We saw some pretty park benches though.

The next day we ventured across the border to do a little shopping. I guess I wasn’t supposed to get this picture either.

Ah the beautiful US of A.

And a good ol’ American hotdog.

We found good sushi in Tijuana the next day.

And dropped by a workers’ rights office.

So nice to be around some radical politics, after the ultra conservative GTO.

Though why peace, workers rights and the environment are radical is a mystery to me. (Actually, unfortunately it isn’t a mystery, just a travesty.)

Then on Wednesday we got a ride to the airport, past our last glimpse of the wall, and the art on it. Each cross represents someone who has died making the crossing. At this point more people have died than in 9/11 or US casualties in the Iraq war, since the wall was built.

Mummy museum and other touristy stuff

When Shane and Denise were here, we finally did some of the touristy things one is supposed to do while in Guanajuato - not the least of which is THE MUMMY MUSEUM.

I went fully expecting to be entranced and fascinated on some level. I thought maybe I would find some insight into the Mexican perspective on death, see some mystical beauty with deep indigenous roots, that would inspire me to delve deeper and possibly connect to my enchantment with Lucha Libre. But no - it was just a strangely sterile crypt with a bunch of dried up dead bodies lining the walls in glass cases, some with clothes, some without.

Many of them had little stories, on plaques written in first person, of how or when they were exhumed.

It definitely built a good case for cremation.

And is a perfect place to set up tourist stands.

There was also the Salon de Muerto. It was a long, narrow, stone room with glassed in cases built into the walls, containing death stuff - bones, shackles, torture devices… The best part was that they played a version of REM’s “Losing My Religion” sung by Monks. And there was a cool hologram.

A few days later we went to Valenciana, which is a little town just next to Guanajuato, with a lovely church and an ex Hacienda with a basement full of torture devices that you can take a tour of.

Our guide was a girl of about 13, with braces, tennis shoes and a monks robe. She took the group through stopping at each torture device and reciting how it was used.

It was surprisingly similar to the mummy museum, but they had a far superior hologram collection.

We walked up the road to the church after that and looked around. Crazy ornate gold stuff, everywhere. There was also a little room dedicated to Jesus.

Poor Jesus.

Right before Shane and Denise left we went to the Diego Rivera Museum (he was born here.) There were some beautiful paintings and interesting information about his life. No holograms though - we considered asking for our money back.