Travels from the past 2 weekends

http://picasaweb.google.com/rachel.holston/Guanajuato

http://picasaweb.google.com/rachel.holston/PuertoVallarta

http://picasaweb.google.com/rachel.holston/CasaBariachi

Well, I definitely lied when I said my next post would be shorter. Oh well!

The weekend before last we (the 4 girls in the program) went to Guanajuato, which was a lot of fun. We were originally going to go for just a day trip, but after being told we were crazy by both the travel agent we bought our bus tickets from and my host family, we decided to stay overnight on Saturday. Our 4 hour bus ride there was the most comfortable travel experience I’ve ever had, including having flown first class one time. Apparently we ended up choosing the best bus line (which was only like $5 more than the next cheapest one) and it was a great trip.

Guanajuato has really beautiful architecture and felt more like a European town than Mexico. One of the cool features of the city is its maze of underground roads. Originally the river flowed through this system of tunnels, but after it flooded one too many times a dam was built and the caverns were paved with cobblestones and lit for auto traffic. In the several times we rode in cabs in the underground roads I never figured out how you’re supposed to know which way you can go. From what I remember all of the caverns we drove through were one way, and they randomly intersect with other tunnels at weird angles. Really fun to ride through, wouldn’t likely be much fun to navigate.

In Guanajuato we went on a whirlwind tour of as many places as we could see in less than 24 hours. We started out with the Diego Rivera museum, which was what I was most excited about. He was born in Guanajuato, and they converted his house into a museum that included a lot of his works as well as works of other artists. Another cool place we visited was the Don Quixote museum, which included works by Picasso and Salvador Dali. Later in the day we went out to La Valenciana mine, where we got to climb down into an old mine shaft. This mine is still operational and was once the most productive/important mine in the city. The average life expectancy of a mine worker was 10 years from the time they started working—not surprising.

In the evening we made it to the Callejon del Beso, which is an alley so narrow that lovers can stand on balconies on the opposite side of the street and kiss. We had to watch way too many couples exercise their excuse for some PDA, but it was (mostly) cute. When we made it back to one of the main square areas there was a large group of people dressed up in really intricate costumes (see pictures). They were apparently celebrating some kind of religious anniversary but we never found out exactly what. It was cool watching them dance though. Then, after it got dark we got to watch a different performance of these people who were dressed up in medieval costumes and played different instruments and sang. According to an American lady we met, if you paid the 90 pesos you got a souvenir cup that they filled with wine and then you followed them through the streets. There were several groups of these medieval performers and if they met up with another group then they would have a performance ‘duel’—not sure how they figure out the winner or what happens to the loser.

Especially at night, Guanajuato felt like a lot like Disneyland—really quaint and idyllic. I loved the cobblestone streets and the lack of traffic, and the whole place was just a big party/festival after dark with the medieval performers in the streets, mariachi performers at restaurants, and abundance of places to just sit and people watch. We met a lot of Americans, as well as a really nice Mexican family with an 11 year old daughter who was very interested in learning more about us older American girls. Too cute.

Only glitch in the trip was the horrible night in the hostel we stayed in. That was my first experience in a hostel, which sucks because I know there are some that are wonderful but that was one of the worst nights I’ve ever had. From 12-4 there were a group of guys banging on doors including ours and playing loud music directly outside our door. None of us slept for longer than 20 mins at a time for those 4 hours and one of the guys had a laugh that really creeped me out, especially when he would laugh right after banging on our door. Ugh, not fun.

After that awful night we were glad to get on our super comfortable bus and sleep for the entire ride home. We had planned to tour Tonala and Tlaquepaque on Sunday when we got back, but after about an hour in Tonala Vanessa and I were hot and tired (and tired of carrying our backpacks around with our overnight stuff from Guanajuato), so we headed home.

All in all it was a really fun trip to a very unique city and I wish we’d had time to see more!

Then, this past weekend all 6 of us went to Puerto Vallarta. Given that it was more of a vacation than a tourist trip, there isn’t a lot to write about PV. The 5 hour bus ride there involved some really winding mountain roads but it was absolutely gorgeous, really lush and green. I tried to take some pictures of it but they don’t even come close to capturing how pretty it was. Once we were there we stayed at an all-inclusive resort which was an awesome idea so we didn’t have to go searching for every meal, and it was relatively cheap (though not what you would think of for resort standards in the US, but great for 6 students/recent grads without a lot of extra money). Food wasn’t amazing, but it was decent for the money. It rained right after we got there on Friday, but since it wasn’t storming we headed out to the beach anyway. Saturday we hung out by the pool most of the day, taking breaks to go sea kayaking and go on this ridiculous relay race that involved a whole lot of running on the most slippery tile you can imagine while trying not to fall really hard. In the late afternoon/evening there was a huge storm and we discovered that there was about ¼ inch of space under the windows in one of our rooms, which seemed to have been designed that way but wasn’t very functional for the rainy season. I guess that’s why the entire place had tile floors. Oh well. For dinner we ate at the resort’s Italian restaurant which was average food but awesome atmosphere with a piano player who took Roger’s request and played “What a Wonderful World”. Later that night we headed to the downtown area with some people we had met at the resort. There were a lot of really cool street performers out and I was sad I didn’t bring my camera. One guy was balancing rocks on top of each other (on their edges), which sounds boring but was actually pretty fascinating to watch how he did it. Then, on Sunday we had a few hours to shop in the extremely overpriced shops downtown before we headed back. Overall an awesome trip, other than the fact that I got sunburned on my stomach and back. Ugh, oh well.

Ok that’s it for the travel updates! I also have updates on class/clinic, but those will be up another day because this is already a ridiculously long post.

Hasta luego!