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I haven’t really written at all about the last couple of weeks, but a lot has happened. A lot of it won’t make it here, as this simply isn’t the place for it. Lots of fun has been had though. I’ll break it up into sections, dated roughly a day or two after thay happened. This is your first installment of me trying to catch up.On Monday, the eleventh, Jessica flew in to Mexico City, from PDX. She is a friend of a friend, who I met for the first time about six or seven years ago, and then didn’t meet again until a couple weeks before I moved here. At my friend’s going away party, we talked about Mexico, and how she would be here, and how we should run around the country together, seeing as we’ll both be here, and have open schedules. We emailed a few times between then and her arrival, to confirm details. She showed up here around 6pm. We didn’t do a whole lot the first couple of days. I showed her around the immediate area, much the same way Rose showed me around when I first arrived. We checked out a piercing/tattoo parlor, and discussed getting our noses pierced, but neither of us ended up doing it. Tuesday we arranged plans for our trip to Guanajuato to pick up her best friend Megan.
Wednesday morning came, and we woke up early, made maps, caught the metro to Terminal Norte, and hopped the first bus to Querretaro. Tickets were about 130 pesos a pop. Our initial plan was to have the bus driver drop us off on the highway right outside of Querretaro, and we would hitch from there. Querretaro is approximately halfway from DF to Guanajato. After spending quite a bit of time talking with the bus driver however, our driver told us we would be much better off staying on until San Miguel Allende, and hitching from there. This would cost us just another 40 pesos a piece. When pulling in to San Miguel, the driver pulled off to the side of the road, pointed us in the direction of Guanajuata, and told us good luck.
With that we jumped off the bus, walked up the road a bit, stuck out our thumbs and our sign reading “Guanajuato”, and no more than ten minutes later we got a ride. Our first ride was from three farm kids, in a small off-white and rust colored pickup, that had a massive cargo container in the back. The cabin was already full, but the two younger ones jumped up top into the cargo area, and not thinking much of it, so our mochilas(backpacks) went as well. The music was a Metallica cover band whose name escapes me. I’ll leave how excellent they were, up to your own imaginations. After twenty minutes, Jessica brought to my attention that everything of value to us, was in our backpacks. Our backpacks, were in the cargo area, with the two young kids. We had no way of knowing what they were doing up there with them. I was certain we were fucked. I had a hard time enjoying to rest of our ride. They took us as far as the junction just outside of Cebolla(lit: Onion). Perhaps the driver noticed our discomfort. Perhaps he understands some of the english that Jessica and I were so confident he did not. Whatever the case, when we got out, he told us we could check our backpacks before we go. Upon a quick feel for my camera, with a positive result, I was satisfied, and told him thanks so much for the ride. We were back on the road.
At the junction there was a group of what maybe were farm workers. Maybe they were waiting for a bus. We weren’t around long enough to inquire. In no more than two minutes our next ride pulled up. A long haul semi headed for Leon, about 100 km past Guanajuato. Perfect. No more hitching to get to our final destination. Upon climbing up into the truck, the passenger seat was piled with tools and some burned CD’s. We sat in the back. The view was amazing. One hundredfold that of the view from second class bus side window. We were now off the major freeway, travelling through the country. Cacti everywhere, bearing innumerable refreshingly delicious looking tunas(prickly pear).
Not far into our trip, we passed through a small ranchero. We pulled off to the side of the road. Our driver and Jessica were speaking in Spanish, and I was oblivious to what was going on. We walked 100m, and came to the edge of a dam, water high on one side, and far below on the other. The river to the south was flowing through a deep canyon, and that to the north, into a much wider, flatter area. This dam likely helps keep this small ranch town from flooding each year. After a while checking out the view from the dam, it was back in the truck and on our way. The rest of the trip as I recall was largely uneventful. The Mexican countryside however is was an excellent change from the freeway truckstop towns which were our main scenes when looking out the bus window.
Welcome to Guanajuato! We are let off at a gas station where we use the facilities, and wait for the phone, while we eat tacos. Or tamales. You can never be sure with these things. It’s all different variations of the same thing. Delicious, certainly; but the same. After our food was done, and water half drunk, we decided it would be a better use of our time to walk the direction we decide must lead to the town center. We wander about, make fruitless phonecalls, climb hills to nowhere, before finally hopping a pesero to a pleasant park where we drink Corona from a Nalgene, eat mango so fresh you feel bad for the plant that undeniably bore it so recently it is still mourning its loss, and play cards until boredom sets in slowly, like the sun is slowly drifting towards the next hemisphere.
To Be Continued…..