"The Junkiest Place in the Whole World"

Those aren't exactly the words I would use to describe Guanajuato, a small city four and a half hours from Guadalajara, but they are the ones that stick with me the most. I was half-asleep in the hotel room, taking a mid-day siesta, when I heard this preposterous complaint from an obnoxious kid I could only assume was American, probably Texan if I had to put my money on it. He and his obnoxious family roamed the halls of our hotel, shouting loudly at each other in English as I drifted in and out of sleep.

Needless to say, Guanajuato was not junky. It was in fact precious - so precious it's clear why it was packed with tourists, both Mexican and foreign alike. Guanajuato is not the type of place you expect to find in Mexico, and --I say this with as much credibility as I can muster-- it bears more resemblance to parts of Europe, especially Spain (or so I'm told). The major feature of this strange city is that it's built on top of mountains, in between them, and in some places under them.

Let me backtrack for a minute. Having consulted with my friend BI who planned the trip, I boarded the bus in Guadalajara with five girls, myself being the only boy. Now, that might seem idyllic --it seemed that way to me at first, too-- but I soon found out that although each of the girls was friendly and curious and also a Spanish teacher, they all turned out to have boyfriends back home. (Except of course for the one I was actually attracted to -- she was a lesbian.) My first time on a long distance Mexican bus was relatively easy, and it proved what those who had gone before had told me: Mexicans buses always play the strangest movies. This time it was "The Station Agent" (en espanol "Buscando la Amistad"), an enjoyable but thoughtful art-flick about a midget named Finn who finds friendship even when trying to avoid it at all costs.

After getting off the bus and paying our obligatory 3 pesos (30 cents) to use the facilities, we hopped into a couple of taxis toward the center of town. We seemed to be approaching something, but it seemed more like a mountain than a city, and soon we were engulfed in darkness. As it turns out, the only real road in the historic center of Guanajuato is a tunnel, which cuts under the city and occasionally provides narrow off-ramps which allow motorists to exit. The strange thing was, the tunnel seemed to be as old as the city itself, built up with gray- colored bricks that predated the automobile by at least a century. It was narrow and dark with an arched ceiling, and when our taxi driver judged we were far enough into the belly of the beast, he exited and soon we were on ground level again. We chugged up a 30 degree angle road to our hotel, where we checked in and readied ourselves for a day of eating and sightseeing.

After eating our obligatory lunch, we soon learned that the other "roads" in Guanajuato were not roads at all, but alleyways (callejones). I use the term alleyways only in deference to the Spanish translation; they were actually cobblestone stairways which cut up different sides of the surrounding mountain (occasionally steep ramps for cars were jammed in between stairways on either side) . On our way to Diego Rivera's boyhood home, we got caught in a torrential downpour (these happen every day in Mexico), and then got lost, which made getting caught in a torrential downpour all the more annoying. The one beautiful thing about the rain in Guanajuato is that it turns the steep alley staircases into gushing streams. You can see the water cascading down each step as if every one was decorative fountain. Mezmerized, I stopped to take a picture and inadvertently blocked an old woman from climbing up the street. I was oblivious until she asked me if she could pass, and I let her by with goofy apology.

Eventually the rain stopped and, upon exiting the Diego Rivera museum, we climbed down the winding streets until we reached downtown. The town center was surrounded on nearly all sides by steep mountain walls, like a crater left by some ancient meteor. We wandered around the alleyways until we found what we were looking for, a path to the Pipila, a statue which overlooks the city from above. Down in the crater, you could see the Pipila, a giant cast of a man insanely clutching a torch (he later burned down the Spanish grain stash) as if to wave it over the entire city, and hordes of people crowded up around the viewpoint. You could also see the incline railway, a red boxy thing that carried up those who were disabled or unwilling to walk.

The six of us found our way up, on the way passing a woman lugging groceries in one hand and clutching her baby with another. Somebody said, "Can you imagine doing this hike every day, just to get home?" Nobody answered, and we continued up the cobblestone street in a gringo conga line.

In about 8 minutes we reached the top. Now we could see the Guanajuato that we came here for, picturesque, colorful, full of tiny people winding between massive colonial buildings. Someone had chosen a pastel palette for the city; the primitive square houses were alternating in pink, sky blue, lime green, and some other flourescent colors which were so striking I cannot remember them at this time. Despite the touristy-ness of the place, being above it all allowed for some comtemplative distance. My instinct was to look up further, to a ridge of higher mountains, which no doubt would provide an even more spectacular view. I asked some locals if there was any way to get to the top of these mountains, but they didn't seem to know, almost as if no one had ever pondered the question. One middle-age lady with short hair commented that one of the mountains which lay behind us would be the site of a pilgrimage the following Monday if I wanted to stay and wait for that. Unfortunately, I couldn't.