4
Mar

Third Time’s a Charm – Guanajuato, Mexico

Posted on March 4th, 2010 :: Posted in Church, City, Mexico, UNESCO Site

We’ve driven through Guanajuato, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, twice already but we’ve actually never spent more than a few hours there. Not good enough for a city that many consider to be one of the most beautiful in Mexico, so we scheduled a proper visit to the city that prolific local silver mines built and which played an early and important role in Mexico’s independence from the Spanish.

Built in a depression between dramatic mountains Guanajuato is a maze of steep, narrow streets and all traffic heading east to west use an underground tunnel constructed in the dry remains of what used to be a river. We won’t lie: it’s a bit of a driving nightmare, but it’s worth it.

This panorama of Central Guanajuato was taken from the Monumento a Pipila high above the city. (click image for larger panorama)

The city revolves around a densely-packed sprawling central area which is full of intact architecture from the 1600s and 1700s. Quiet squares, plenty of charming pedestrian streets and sidewalk cafes give Guanajuato the look and feel like a European college town. More than 20,000 Mexican students attend the Universidad Guanajuato and they mingle with students from around the world who come to town to attend the city’s many language schools. With so many students around there’s a broad range of places to stay, including plenty of hostels. We went in the other direction, however, and stayed at the Hotel Villa Maria Cristina, part of the conscientiously-vetted, full-service Mexico Boutique Hotels group.

The hotel, a converted and expanded mansion, is located slightly out of the fray of downtown Guanajuato in an area called Paseo de la Presa and we enjoyed being in a neighborhood within a 15 minute walk of the centro. We also enjoyed the hotel’s pool, hot tubs (indoor and outdoor), sauna and steam room–amenities not commonly found in city hotels.

Basilica de Nuestra Señora de Guanajuato

Basilica de Señora de Guanajuato

High on our list of things to do in Guanajuato was the Museo-Casa Diego Rivera. Located in the artist’s childhood home, the museum features some lovely in-tact ground-floor living rooms and bedrooms plus a series of galleries on the upper floors of the building. We’ve seen a lot of Rivera’s work in various museums and in murals on public buildings across Mexico but his early work collected here was completely different. Here you can see Rivera’s sketches of traditional Mexican landscapes and even his attempts at Cubism. If not for the signature at the bottom most of us would never peg the stuff as Rivera’s. A bargain at 15 pesos per person.

In hilly Guanajuato the only access to most homes is via stairways up steep alleys.

Because Guanajuato is built amongst the hills, some of the town has sprawled upward onto the hillsides which means many neighborhoods require quite a hike up narrow, stone-paved alleys just to get to and from your house. We worked our way up a series of these streets to reach the Monumento de Pipila above town and all along the way we wondered how the many inhabitants deal with everyday household needs–like having a refrigerator delivered.

Built to honor a local hero of the war of independence, Monumento de Pipila is also a great place to enjoy sunset over the colors and church domes of Guanajuato. The walk up is also a great way to work up an appetite for rotisserie chicken at Restaurant La Carreta.

Not far from the restaurant is one of Guanajuato’s most famous sites: Callejon del Beso (little street of the kiss). This alleyway is so narrow that the second floor balconies of houses across the street from each other practically touch. On these balconies a kind of Mexican Romeo and Juliet doomed love story played out and the street has become a must-smooch destination in the city. Never mind that an anti-obscenity ad campaign in the city in 2009 momentarily gave the impression that kissing in public was forbidden. That is until Guanajuato’s mayor stepped in and proclaimed his city to be the “kissing capital.”

Pedestrians on bustling Calle Obregon in Guanajuato.

The trees in the plaza in front of the striking Teatro Juarez are some of the densest, lowest and best trimmed we’ve seen yet in any square in Mexico. The branches have literally grown together making a solid square around the plaza, like a tidy, green picture frame. This is lovely to look at or sit under but it makes it hard to get back from the theater far enough to get any perspective on the all-dressed-up structure.

Groups of singers and musicians gather around this square at dusk and start taking requests (and pesos) for surprise serenades they’ll slyly deliver to unsuspecting wives and girlfriends later that night.

This cafe makes good use of a bridge connecting two buildings.

One of the many fountains in Guanajuato.

The beautiful Teatro Juarez with a sliver of a moon rising.

The wide, inviting steps leading up to the opulent Teatro Juarez are a kind of impromptu meeting place for students in Guanajuato. The theater is gorgeous, but we wish they didn’t charge so much (35 pesos per person plus 40 pesos for a camera) just to go inside and look around.

Templo de San Francisco Guanajuato Mexico

Templo de San Francisco in Guanajuato.

About 10 miles outside of town, way up on a hill, sits the Cristo Rey statue of Jesus. At nearly 70 feet tall it’s said to mark the geographical center of Mexico. The only problem is that this is the second “geographical center of Mexico” that we’ve come across so far (the other one was in Tequisquiapan near Queretaro). We shouldn’t talk, however. We’ve been to two places that claim to be the geographical center of the United States.

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15
Feb

Goodbye, Guadalajara

Posted on February 15th, 2010 :: Posted in City, Food & Drink, Friends, Mexico, Music, Tips, UNESCO Site, video

All told we’ve now spent more than three months in and around Guadalajara and, as we prepare to finally move on, we wanted to share a few of heartfelt and (we hope) helpful observations about Mexico’s second largest city.

The Zócalo is anchored by the Guadalajara Cathedral or Catedral de la Asunción de María Santísima.

Best fish tacos: Taco Fish on La Paz. Yeah, 16 pesos is a whole lot to pay for a taco in Mexico, but this street spot slings expertly fried fish and shrimp tacos with all the fixin’s. The crowd speaks for itself. Warning: unless you’re an NFL quarterback (Go Saints!) do NOT order more than two. They’re huge as well as delicious.

Best old-guy bar: Molacho. There’s no sign. Go to the corner of Alcalde and Juan Manuel right in downtown and take the stairs off Juan Manuel up to the bar which is on the second floor above the Farmacias Guadalajara on the corner. What you’ll get is old guys galore (including one playing a baby grand piano, if you’re lucky) plus botanas (free bar snacks) galore, including tacos and tostadas and even soup. People rave about a place called Cantina La Fuente, but we found it to be too big and not very welcoming. Plus, there’s no baby grand piano and no botanas.

Palacio de Gobierno in Guadalajara, one of the few historic buildings left standing in the city.

Most disturbing corporate mascot: The Farmacias Similares guy. Okay, this is a national chain of pharmacies and you see them all over Mexico. However, there seemed to be even more of them than usual in Guadalajara–all with some poor guy dressed up like the chain’s perpetually smiling fake pharmacist mascot prancing around out front. There’s just something about this guy that makes us want to whack him in the head…

This kid likes the ubiquitous Farmacias Similares mascot way more than we do.

Best market and best market vendor: In Guadalajara the impressively massive Mercado Libertad gets all the attention and it MUST be visited. But our favorite go-to market (as in we went there every single day for lunch and sometimes later for dinner too) was the comparatively tiny Mercado Corona. Great food vendors (from tacos to seafood to carnitas) and the second floor is full of stalls selling potions and lotions and sprays meant to fix anything that might possibly be wrong with your life. Want more success at work? Pick up a can of Call Client, whose label proclaims that it contains “Genuine Spray.” Got problems with gossipy friends or a chatty-Cathy spouse? Both are easily handled by a product called “Shut Your Mouth.” Even better than that is our favorite market vendor, the perpetually happy man who runs a small health-food/juice bar stand on the market’s first floor. Not only did he make the best aguas frescas (water infused with fresh fruit) we’ve had in Mexico, he always spent time to help us with our Spanish too. tip: mix strawberry (fresa) with lime (limon).

Smartest urban quirk: the walking/running man.Guadalajara is Mexico’s second largest city (after the vastly more-huge Mexico City) and it runs remarkably smoothly thanks to a whole host of tools and rules that keep even the sometimes congested downtown under control. One such tool is liberal installation of fabulous crosswalk lights that now only countdown the number of seconds that you have left to cross the street but also displays a moving human who speeds up its pace as the seconds tick away. If nothing else, this walking/running man made us smile every morning on our way to Spanish language school. Mexico City could learn a lesson here.

Best totally different places to see live music: Casa Bariachi and On the Rocks. Guadalajarans (aka Tapatios) love their live music–from traditional Mariachi (which Tapatios will claim was invented in Guadalajara) to modern rock. Our favorite place to see massive mariachi bands with a rotating cast of sit-in starts is Casa Bariachi, an enormous festive place that is almost always packed with tables full of Mexican families or Mexican women on a raucous (tequila-fueled) ladies’ night out. It’s unbeatable. For live rock we stumbled upon a place called On the Rocks which is run by a gregarious guy named Isaac who makes sure the waitresses are smiley and speedy and the bands (which usually play covers of US and European rock songs in English and in Spanish) are of high quality. His own band performs on Wednesday nights.

Most confusing moment: trying to figure out when/where the futbol (soccer) games were. Guadalajarans, like most Mexicans, are crazy for soccer. Here the two top teams are Chivas and the Liones Negros. We were understandably anxious to see one or both teams play, but our initial research on their official team web sites and the local sports pages left us totally confused about where and when the teams were playing. We even asked friends with much better Spanish than ours to do the same. None of us could figure it out. When we finally did get the hang of how to know which team was the home team and, therefore, where the game was taking place we’d already missed a bunch of matched. We never did get to a game…

Most uninhibited fountain: Along a pedestrian mall in downtown Guadalajara is a fountain. That’s not the the remarkable part. The remarkable part is that the fountain consists of a group of small boys cast in bronze, all of them peeing into the center of the fountain. It’s called the “kids peeing” fountain.

Yep. This is a fountain full of bronze boys peeing.

Greatest family ever: the Delgadillo/Sanchez/Hellyer clan. The generosity, help, support and overall wonderfulness of every single member of this family not only made our time in Guadalajara immeasurably easier and more enjoyable but also added to our understanding of one of the greatest things about Mexico in general: the generosity and pride of the people. We literally can’t thank them enough for feeding us and letting us stay with them and putting up with our rickety Spanish and making us feel like we were part of the family. We look forward to continuing the friendships we started in the Guadalajara area long after we’ve moved on.

Karen is all ears sitting on one of the whimsical sculptures by Alejandro Colunga in Plaza Tapatía in front of the mural-filled Hospicio Cabañas.

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6
Nov

Over the Border – El Paso to Casa Grandes, Mexico

Posted on November 6th, 2009 :: Posted in Archaeology Site, Mexico, Ruins, UNESCO Site

We’ve done it plenty of times but we still feel a twinge of uneasiness whenever we cross a border. The sense of being in a no-man’s land where the rules are not your own and they come in a language you barely understand (yes, our Spanish still sucks) is bound is to create some tension.

Before re-entering Mexico this time we picked up Dave Hensleigh from Authentic Copper Canyon (he’s in the midst of a serious web site upgrade so excuse the work in progress). Every month or so Dave runs custom tours of the Copper Canyon that get well below the surface so he’s been back and forth across the border more than most.

With an expert like Dave on hand we asked him which of the three crossing points from El Paso into Mexico we should choose and without hesitation he suggested the Santa Theresa crossing. This small entry point was practically deserted, easy to navigate and relatively hassle-free except for the curious border agents who were momentarily convinced that we must be moving to Mexico since we’ve got so much stuff in our truck. An understandable assumption, by the way.

Once that was cleared up we traveled south toward Janos, enveloped in an ever-thickening sense of Mexican well-being. Things were suddenly somehow simpler. Not easier, mind you, but certainly less complicated that they’d been just a dozen miles further north.

Hotel ... in Casas Grandes, overlooking the Paq ruins.

Las Guacamayas bed and breakfast in the town of Casas Grandes seems even more beautiful when you learn that it was hand-crafted using ancient traditional building techniques.

By dusk we’d arrived at Las Guacamayas bed and breakfast in the town of Casas Grandes. Even in the descending dark it was clear that we were at a special place. Owner Mayte Lujan built the B&B essentially by hand mimicking many of the construction techniques used by the inhabitants of the ancient town of Paquimé, the ruins of which can be seen from the deck of her bed and breakfast (more about the ruins in a minute).

The building techniques Mayte used include three foot thick adobe walls, ceilings that are a masterwork of wooden beams and angled planks and doors in a crude Christmas tree shape. Then there was Mayte herself who bustled and hustled and jostled her way amongst staff and guests in the dining room, serving up carne asada tacos and smiles.

We were hooked.

Karen and Mayte Lujan: art advocate, curator and owner and creator of Las Guacamayas bed and breakfast.

In addition to being a groundbreaking builder and an excellent host, Mayte is also an extremely passionate and influential force in local cultural and artistic history. Despite her lack of a formal anthropological degree Mayte curated the neighboring Centro Cultural Paquimé: Museo de los Culturas del Norte & Paquimé Ruins, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. She also actively advocates for and promotes the growing number of local artists who have revived the Paquimé-style of pottery (more on that in a minute too).

A beautiful gallery at her B&B displays and sells some of the best work being done in the area and Mayte was also part of an exhibit of this style of pottery at the Smithsonian in Washington DC last month.

Some of the impressive ruins of the casas grandes (great houses) at Paquimé.

We spent the next morning at the Paquimé museum and ruins. The museum is compact and compelling and display descriptions are in Spanish and in English. The mass of ruins outside the museum offers hints at how the inhabitants of Paquimé lived from 900 to 1340 AD when the city was mysteriously abandoned.

You can clearly see remnants of the famously thick walls, the oddly-shaped doors, elaborate cisterns and irrigation canals, even clay cages meant to house macaws (guacamayas in Spanish) which were thought to bring good luck.

The impressive mud walls of the ancient cityu of Paquimé.

Two to three foot thick adobe mud walls are a signature method of construction used to build the ancient city of Paquimé.

Juan Quezada, a world famous potter from the village of Mata Ortiz, has single handedly revived the ancient methods of pottery found at Paquimé.

Juan Quezada is believed by many to have single-handedly revived an ancient method of pottery making.

A short drive brings us to the dusty village of Mata Ortiz where everyone seems to be a potter. The king, according to many, is Juan Quezada who is largely credited with mastering and reviving the Paquimé style of pottery after the art form had been dead for 700 years. Mayte estimates that about 1,000 noteworthy artists are now working in this style of pottery–marked by rich dark colors, symetrical shapes (despite the fact that they’re all made by hand not on a wheel) and a slight sheen.

We were lucky enough to meet Juan Quezada himself while we were at his gallery, which is bursting with hundreds of pieces in all shapes and sizes made by Juan and members of his family. Laura Bush recently bought one of Juan Quezada’s pieces and the dashing artist swears he didn’t give her a special price.

After a delicious lunch of shrimp tacos at Tacos Il Piporro in nearby Nuevo Casas Grandes we head to Chihuahua city and the Hotel San Felipe el Real.