#11: Guanajuato - Mexico - A Year and a Day

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Guanajuato
Saturday, 4th October 2003

I've been in Guanajuato two and a half weeks now, and really enjoying settling for a while, but now starting to feel the wander-urge very powerfully. Re-reading, this article paints a very positive picture of my time here, however there were some days that were more than a little lonely and depressing. I still haven't sorted out in my head why that was exactly, so will try to write about it in the next article.

Two weeks in Guanajuato

Guanajuato





Guanajuato's historic centre is UNESCO protected and traffic lights and neon are prohibited. The city winds over hills, the weather is usually pleasantly hot in the day and cool to coldish in the evening. It may seem strange, but I delight in cold evenings - I quickly got tired of central Baja's everhot. The ability to wear more than a t-shirt and be comfortable feels like a wonderful luxury. My house is on a steep tiny street up from the centre and from the roof terrace everday I look over the multicoloured streets of this picturesque city. The city has a
series of underground streets, which fill with fumes and aren't much fun to walk in.

Music is a key part of Guanajuato life. Several evenings a week a team of brightly uniformed student players march through the streets, beating drums and followed by a great crowd of helpers/tourists. School children march too, celebrating various enigmatic events and saint's days. Almost every day I have been here, in a small square a female dance troupe practice slow snaking movements to a student beating a fast drum. My neighbours think nothing of coming home at 3am and starting a guitars and singing session, which takes some getting used to. One of my language teachers repeats a saying: In Mexico, only husbands come home quietly at night.

On a more atonal level, I am sometimes woken by the cries of "GAS! GAS!" from the wandering gas vendors. These durable men lug the large cylinders about the streets from early morning to evening. Not an easy job.

Guanajuato is a university town, and the combination of the students and all the backpackers/young foreign residents here create a young, peaceful, exciting air. I like being in this cosmopolitan place. My accommodation costs 65 pesos a night and it would be a LOT cheaper were I here longer term. I have a room in a house converted into budget accommodation, with my own bathroom, and access to the kitchen and roof terrace. I regularly chat to my loquacious land lady, she is a firm believer that if a guest can't understand her Spanish, she needs to speak quicker and with more complex words. I quickly decided not to stay with a local family while studying, as it was just too expensive - US$17 a day for food and lodging.

Guanajuato is a very international city. There are a lot of young foreigners here working in the nearby town of Silau, plus many Spanish students, plus the more transient tourists like myself. After southern Baja, Mazatlan and Durango, it's a bit of a shock to be back in the tourist trail. But it was such pleasure last week to spend several evenings with a young English couple who were travelling around Mexico. I guess there are some conversations one can only have with one's own countryfolk.

My small, friendly language school is in a beautiful building and is full of some really nice people from all over the world. In the school one hears long, fluent conversations in English and German, more stuttering conversations in Spanish and the occasional Japanese. A caustic, good looking Swiss student insists to anyone who will listen that he and I are "old world, old school", not awful and dumb "Americanos". One morning only he and I have arrived early for a group trip - he sniffs, "I see only the Europeans got here on time".

Of course, I kind of dislike there being so many other foreigners here, so many other people like me. I realise I've grown to really enjoy my novelty, both to locals and other travellers. Elsewhere in Mexico, for example, I could start a conversation with any other traveller just by meeting their eye and saying hello. Here I try this and people look at me as if I were a predatory weirdo. I've also met a few long term foreign residents here that I've formed a big dislike to. They have a patronising attitude that isn't "Welcome, this a great fun city, want to meet for a beer in a bar I know?", it's more like, "Hi, I know this city like the back of my hand, come under my wing and I'll show you a party"; they "forget" the person they are talking to doesn't know any Spanish and then laugh, "I was just asking you, 'where are you from?'"

Two other things about Guanajuato. One, there are a lot of dogs here. Estimates of the stray dog population are in the tens of thousands. I see packs of them running in the city's tunnel roads, I hear them barking, barking, the hills reverberates their endless idiotic shouting. I speculated to my English friends that maybe the dogs were engaged in a city wide philosophical debate on the nature of Being or whatever, with one bark meaning yes, two no, and more complex statements represented by ever larger numbers of barks.

The other night a quite large stray dog walked into my kitchen when the door was open and refused to leave. I attempted to be forceful and shouted at him, but dogs are rarely intimidated by me. Eventually I had persuaded him to stand near the door, and then three other stray dogs ran past - he took some steps after them and I slammed the door shut. If I'd had a lead and some dog food, he'd probably be my dog now...

Secondly, the food here doesn't seem to be as tasty as the rest of Mexico. But it is hardly a big complaint. I've started shopping in the great city market, and cooking simple meals in my kitchen: freshly made flour tortillas, avocadoes, onions, green salsa, with either beef, sausage or tinned tuna filling make tasty simple tacos. For about ten pesos I buy a chunk of delicious beef steak in the market large enough to fill tacos for a small family's lunch, or one greedy fatso's (i.e. myself).

Eeeh, Toro....

The nearby town of San Miguel de Allende runs a Pamplona-like bull run every year. Around the walled off town square, bulls are released into the street and people run, shake cloaks, tease and get hit by the bulls. Imagine a fenced off town square with a road running around it, within was the safe spectator spot. The brave or just drunk stood in the street waiting for the bulls. Me and friends from the language school took the middle option, squeezing in on some steps on the outer edge of the bull street. My only protection from gore-ation was the wall of more nervous people pressed in front of me. I was little comforted when told no one dies at San Miguel, but each year 200 people need hospital treatment. I was informed afterwards that the "no one dies" part of that statement isn't the case at all.

Parades, fireworks, giant ballons, people threw cans, water bottles and socks filled with red powder up across the crowd, hoping to hit someone on the head. A crazy man gestured and shouted to himself: in the crush somehow a ten foot space was found for him. The atmosphere was both happy and nasty - men in the street shouted out obscenities at the pageant queens, and although the crowd bounced huge ballons around, guys soon went crazy trying to stamp on and puncture them.

We were packed in tight, along the street from us a truck pulled up with eight bulls in cages. The first bull was released, and I immediately realised that this was going to be worse than I imagined. I had envisaged some Chariots of Fire style actual running in an anti-clockwise direction. Oh, no. The bull, enraged by I suspect some pretty unpleasant things done to it earlier that day tore out of the cage and started charging at anyone nearby, butting some people. One man was knocked down and the bull beat and beat at him - he was eventually pulled clear of the horns, and stood, a dazed smile on his face. The few rows of people in front of me, my only protection, no longer seemed so comforting, especially as we had a tendency to fall over every time someone got scared.

One after another, the bulls were released. But fairly quickly a lot of energy went out of the bulls, and for me the event turned from terrifying to just a little sad. The bulls were patently just tired and confused, and only half heartedly launched mini charges on the melee who flapped cloaks at them or grabbed their tails. The bulls were rounded up and taken for the matador's attention. I am thinking of seeing a bull fight in Mexico City, if only to decide what I think about the sport, but that afternoon I had no desire to see these exhausted animals finished off. But overall the day remains in my mind an amazing and scary spectacle.

We travelled back to Guanajuato and some of us met later on in the salsa club El Bar. In the bar, I stood on the balcony in the warm evening air. In front of me was arrayed the beautiful and imposing architecture of Mexico's colonial era, behind me blasted quick salsa rhythms. Somewhat relieved that a bull's horn hadn't punctured me anywhere, I smiled a lazy grin and felt I think was pure contentment and happiness. I went back inside and until 3am my friends told me: this is meringue, this is cha cha cha, on the back step you spin me...

Things I like about Mexico #1: the food

I feel like I have eaten really well since arriving in Mexico. In London, Mexican restaurants are really for parties and for drinking margharitas with. They are reasonably expensive places to eat, which Mexicans here find quite fantastical when we get talking about food. The thing I immediately noticed about Mexican Mexican food was how meaty it was. What I'd eaten in England had been mainly tortilla wrap, onions and green peppers - but here most dishes are stuffed full of meat. The ubiquitous taco is typically offered with a thick wedge of beef in a small hot soft tortilla, and the customer adds salsa, vegetables and herbs to their taste. The centre point to a good taco (or burrito, fajita etc) is the tortilla itself: a warm wrap made either from corn or flour. Tortillerias, some of my favourite shops in Mexico, make tortillas fresh in big Bond villain style machines. Personally, I find that what kills tacos is using corn tortillas that aren't cooked enough: the taste is flat, like warmed dough. Generally I prefer the somewhat more expensive flour tortillas, which are thicker and stronger, which when cooked become vaguely crispy and crunchy, mmm, mmm, mmm.

I sound like a travel agent saying this, but, don't get the impression that all there is to Mexican cooking are tacos and burritos. Tortas, grilled bread rolls with beef or other meats and vegetables are very popular everywhere I've been. I've had various soups, tomato juice based sea food cocktails, chilis stuffed with tuna, long mild deep fried chilis, roasted chickens, scrambled eggs with a spicy tomatoey sauce called Ranchero (which is delicious with steak too), distinctive Mexican hamburgers, chicken legs in tomato broth, beef and fried potato chunks in salad. In Guanajuato I've also started trying different Mexican sweets, so far particularly enjoying the chunks of Cocada (sugar heavy coconut type stuff).

Mexican food is infamous for its use of chilis. But, so far at least, I think anyone who is used to Indian or Thai food, or who eats
the chilis offered in Turkish restaurants, should be fine with everything here. Mexican food also has lots of cooling ingredients. I think after three weeks here I'd eaten more avocadoes than in the preceding 25 years. The point is that most of the hottest salsas and chilis are brought to the table separate to the meal, so I'd suspect most of the damage people talk about is self-inflicted.

So far, and touching wood furiously, I haven't started chronically shitting since arriving here - another infamous legend about Mexican food. I certainly have a lot of days where, let's say, the process line isn't running 100% smoothly, but to be honest I had a mildly upset stomach in much of my time in the USA, probably due to all the crappy fast food and foreign bacteria. Days of perfect stomach functioning are in the distinct minority on this trip. I've tried to be reasonably careful: not eating a lot of shellfish, only eating at busy taco stands, washing my hands a lot. But I suppose it only takes one mistake to ruin a couple of weeks. I've found cooking my own food highly theraputic to an unhappy digestive system - knowing exactly what is in lunch is a smoothing effect on the mind.

One legend about Mexico that is true is "don't drink the tap water". But what I think is forgotten about the advice "ask if things are made with purified water", is that, at least in the urban north/central areas of the country I've been to, no one, local or otherwise, wants to drink the tap water. The Mexicans I've spoken to about it reckon that they feel safe using the water for showers, washing hands and clothes and maybe brushing teeth, but not much more. So asking if juices/ice is made from purified water is kind of futile. Early on I did this, and people gave me an increasingly familiar look that said, "are you naturally stupid or did you need training?". I get this look a lot in Mexico trying to do everyday things. It's kind of a surprise no one's yet responded, "Actually no, the water isn't, I figured it would be fun today to poison myself and everyone in my restaurant". However, there is a serious side to trying to keep hygienic here, and maybe the water thing will be different further south. I'm becoming quite leery of dishes that sit simmering, and watch somewhat pensively how street food preparers wash their hands inbetween serving plates of food.

The main meal of the day in Mexico is a big, late lunch, around 2pm or 3pm. Breakfast, a snack at 12 and a small evening meal keep everyone going aside from the "comida". The idea of having the main meal of the day at 7pm or 8pm is kind of amazing. My language teachers ask me a lot about British food. I first say that Indian, Chinese and Italian food are very popular, but they ask about "traditional" British food. So I talk about the big breakfast fry up - eggs, bacon, sausage, fried bread, mushrooms and baked beans. But I say that most people probably just have time for toast or some cereal before off to work. For lunch, as there's no siesta, most people in London just grab a sandwich. The meal my language teachers are most interested in is "afternoon tea" - it is a famous aspect of British life to many people here. But I say no one has afternoon or "high" tea anymore - the only person I've heard talk about it is my Scottish granny. I say British people drink tea all day at work, which is a tremendous disappointment to Mexicans. I talk about old style, sometimes very bland British dinners: meat and vegetables in gravy, meat pies, fish and chips, roasts.

I find as I travel Mexico and talk about how different our countries are, I start to wonder how much of British culture is slipping away or changing. There are aspects of British life that I guess I thought old fashioned and ripe for change, like families spending an afternoon in a local pub eating Walker's Crisps and drinking Carling and so on, that I now am maybe wondering if they are a little bit of uniqueness in the world. I don't think I'm going to eat a fry up every day to keep Britishness alive, and I'm not suddenly converted to some awful and simplistic little-Englander, pre-1950s view of the country. But at the risk of sounding highly pretentious: travelling through the remnants of many, many cultures that have all but died, existing only as a tag in a museum, "We're not sure what animal this ceremonial mask is supposed to represent, perhaps a bear-killer whale-snake hybrid", it's clear that cultures really do die or change irrevocably. I think there are huge areas of British culture and society that could change for the better, including some very unpleasant things (part of the reason I was so keen to leave the country), but this trip is making me think about the aspects of "our way of life" that perhaps might be preserved and cherished.

Enrique starts to make sense

I feel like learning Spanish is like developing an extra sense to travel around Mexico with. Being able to say simple things like "tomorrow I am going to see the bulls at San Miguel" is already enriching my experience. I now realise that when Enrique sings "Bailamos!" he's saying, "Let's dance!", and when he shouts "Te quiero!", he's saying, "I love you", or "I want you". Shakira is however still far beyond me. I've had two weeks of Spanish classes so far, and while I seem able to explain my views in class on Europe's farm subsidiaries or immigration to the UK, understanding basic phrases I hear is kind of difficult.

Knowing some Italian and French are great for learning Spanish grammar, but are really not helpful for vocabulary. I keep saying my de's (as in "de Mexico") as "dee" rather than "deh". In fact lots of pronounciations are hard: Js are usually said like Hs, Hs are silent, LL is like a Y, Gs are sometimes like Hs and sometimes not, V are said like Bs. So Villa, as in Pancho Villa, is said Be - Ya. Something to be careful about as well when starting to use Spanish is that there are a lot of double entrendres here in Mexico, particularly in food. "Do you have eggs?" (tienes huevos?) is not a good way to order breakfast, it means "do you have balls?"... asking a girl, "do you have a donut?" also apparently has two meanings. Once I became aware of the extent of the slang, I became fearful of ordering any kind of breakfast in Spanish, suspecting I was saying, "I enjoy sex with donkeys each morning."

My itinerary going forward

Wanted to put down what my plans are for the next few months - some of my friends are coming to visit me, also any comments appreciated. After Guanajuato, to Mexico City. Not planning more than three/four days there, want to do some sightseeing and head on, given the reputation for crime and pollution. Then heading south to Oaxaca and plan to spend a week or so there and take cookery classes, and after that to San Christobal de la Casas, in Chiapas. That should take me to late October. Spend most of November in Guatemala, assuming that the Antigua region is ok given the coming elections. Then in late November meet my friend Spencer, probably in Honduras. Make my way to Nicaragua, hopefully resting in the city of Grenada for a while, and in early/mid December meet my friend Gari. We will travel down the rest of Central America, and in early January, fly out of either Costa Rica or Panama City to Ecuador, depending on how far we have got.

Veracruz and the Temple of Doom

Travelling around is kind of funny. Before I started, I guess I thought I would arrive in a country and gradually absorb it all, much like in those WW2 films where country after country turns Nazi red. But now I'm actually travelling, I find myself picking a route through a country and basically meandering along it. The reality feels much more like an Indiana Jones film where a red line traces along a map, indicating the hero's travels across the world. There is so much to see/visit/experience/do in Mexico (and the US/Canada, and in every country I suspect) that I have to keep reminding myself that I cannot see it all or I will never leave. My compromise is "one of each". One pretty colonial city, one large central city (so Mexico City but not Guadalajara), and so on.

You could well say that the problem is the goals I have set myself are wrong - I am trying to see too many countries - if I am enjoying Mexico I should stay as long as I want. But I am very eager to travel on to other places, the allure of getting to Peru, Argentina and Chile is very strong. Internally, I still feel comfortable with my initial aim of travelling the world. However, I guess I had no idea how long it would take to do a country like Mexico any justice. The actual distances are nothing - I could get on a bus and be near the Guatemala border in 24 hours. But to relate in any way to the places one is passing through takes time, and I find that people need time to adjust to my presence and to accept me. I started at my language school on a Tuesday, it clearly took a few days for most of the students to realise I existed, but by Friday I had been invited to a birthday party and on Saturday I went on a group trip (to the bulls) with some really fun people and felt I had made friends. In small places like Mulege, people clearly recognised me after two days wandering around there; in a medium sized, touristy place like Guanajuato, it certainly takes longer.

Perhaps this is just me, perhaps it's just that British reserve that Americans keep telling me about. I've met people that I'm sure are more friendly and warm that me, but I think I'm on balance a pretty open and chatty person. Maybe there are really confident, good-looking and at ease people who make loads of contact right on arrival — within a day in a place have been given honorary membership of a local street gang and arranged a berth on a yacht heading south... But I don't think that's me, at least not most of the time. Speaking to other travellers, it seems very possible to spend two or three days in a place and not develop any sense of it at all, "it's just another city". I think this is particularly easy if one has nothing to do in a place, just wander round, locate cheap food, check the recommended sites and head on no wiser.

With all this in my head, I'm starting to wonder who came up with the whole round the world in a year idea. It is seeming all a bit ridiculous that a person could travel the entire world in any meaningful sense in a year, unless they adopted an extreme "box ticking" mentality. I guess what everyone does is choose areas of the world that appeal to them and leave the rest for some potential future trip.

Right now I'm trying to decide whether to make a deviation from my Guatemala bound Indiana Jones-style line and go to the state of Veracruz. It won't cost that much more, but conscious that I've spent a lot of time in Mexico, and keen to leave money and time for the places further south. On one side feel like I want to see a bit more of the country, and Veracruz is supposed to have a distinct, Caribbean-influenced culture, on the other, every Mexican I've spoken to raves about Oaxaca and Chiapas as the places to spend time in.

Hmm, still deciding.

Questions?
If you want more information about this area you can email the author or check out our North America Insiders page.

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