We'd planned some kind of trip like this for a few years, but the plan all changed when we were lucky enough to witness the total eclipse in Exmouth, Western Australia, in 2023. After that, we just HAD to see the next one... and that was going to be in the coastal city of Mazatlán in Mexico.
<< Previously in New Zealand's North Island --- Next to the USA >>
Then, we just had to be in Mexico to witness the next one, the full total eclipse on April 8th, 2024, starting in Mazatlan, a big coastal city that, I have to admit, I'd never even heard of. So, rather than go to Europe first and wind our way to New Zealand last, we switched it around and went to New Zealand first, then to Mexico, USA and then Europe.
So, after Auckland we had a very long flight over the Pacific to Los Angeles, onto Mexico City for three nights (two really, as we arrived after midnight on the first). After that, we'd planed four nights in the Baja California Sud town of La Paz before the actual eclipse in Mazatlan. Originally, I'd planned to fly from there to Leon but that flight got cancelled so we had find a bus route instead. We decided to break that journey up stopping one night in Guadalajara and finishing the Mexican experience with two nights in the picture postcard town of Guanajuato.
Day 24 Sunday, 31st March - Frida Kahlo on Mexico City after the longest night (Accommodation #15)
One of the recurring talking points we've been making in conversations about this journey is how we left New Zealand at midnight on Sunday 31st March and arrived in Mexico four minutes later. Of course, the explanation is that we crossed the international timeline en route. In effect, we went from the very end of that day to the very beginning somewhere in the middle in the Pacific ocean. In actuality, it was a very very long day, lasting some 36 hours.
We actually landed in Los Angeles earlier (in terms of the time on the clock anyway) than we left Auckland.
Arriving in Mexico City after midnight was not a particularly attractive prospect and it was made worse when it soon became apparent that the taxi I'd booked to pick us up (through Booking.com) did not show up. But no problem, we got another and he took us to the Metropol Hotel in the city center quickly and easily. The hotel staff were very friendly and we were able to get into bed pretty quickly and get some sleep.
One early mistake I made was trying to plug our international multi-plug adapter thingy-me-jig into the wrong socket. (It must have been a shaver point or something). So I Googled an electrical store in Mexico City that might be open on a Sunday and got up early to try to find it.
As usual with these mini adventures, it took me to places I wouldn't have gone to and I did walk through the square next to the Palacio Nacional.
Anyway, it was all for nothing as the shop in question was shut.
One good thing I did was to buy some breakfast and coffees to take back to Leb in the hotel.
Another good thing I did was when planning this trip, I'd booked tickets for the Frida Kalho Museum. If I hadn't we wouldn't have got in at all as all the places were sold for the day we were there. Museums in Mexico tend to be shut on Mondays so, as our stay was for just two days, it had to be the first of them.
We got a taxi ride to the museum which was a modest blue house in the suburbs. It contained a lovely exhibition of her work and it's always awe inspiring to visit the place that the person in question used to live in. It certainly evoked memories of the film Frida.
Frida's family tree
As depicted in the film, Leon Trotsky famously came to Mexico to escape Stalin and lived very close to Frida Kahlo and Diego Riviera. That is, he lived there until Moscow sent it's KGB thugs to kill him.
So, it was a no brainer after visiting Frida's to pop in to see Leon too.
Leon Trotsky's house - just 8 minutes from Frida's
Then, it was a simple task of getting a taxi back to the city center where we had a stroll around the Alameda Central.
I can't account for my mood that evening but I wasn't up to a proper full on Mexican meal so we ended up having a very ordinary pizza and a beer in a cafe off the central square. I would make up for this in the days that followed.
So ended our first full day in Mexico. We went to bed early as we had to get up at the crack of dawn the next day to catch our bus to see Teotihuacan.
Day 25 Monday, 1st April - Teotihuacan
One of the most iconic tourist destinations in and around Mexico City are the Teotihuacan Aztec pyramids, so that was our second major destination on the Monday. As we'd find out, they aren't really Aztec after all.
The bus was booked to leave early (I think at 6:20 am) so we had to get up before dawn and walk across the city center to our designated pick up point.
We were nice and early and only one person was waiting in line before we arrived - a male nurse from the Philippines who now lived in New York. A private nurse, he stressed.
More people soon arrived and the tour guides soon had half of us queuing on the other side of the road. The New Yorker was going on a full day tour, ours was just for the morning.
The bus came pretty much on time and we got on board. They quickly found out which of us spoke Spanish or English and the tour guide handed out head sets accordingly. Behind us were a bunch of young Germans. It never ceases to impress me, and embarrass me, how these people, given the choice, opt for English and are competent enough to understand the language to do so.
It was about an hour to get there, with a stop half way for coffee and a bite to eat.
Once we arrived, it soon became apparent that Teotihuacan was more than we had expected. To say it is big is an understatement. We must have walked 4km along what was the main road of an ancient city and this, apparently, is only a fraction of what the city was originally.
Most of the buildings were originally painted red, like this...
The pyramids were temples not tombs and they were not built by the Aztecs, although they did inhabit this place later.
After walking through the ancient city ruins the tour took us to a nearby village to try to tempt us with touristy items like obsidian and tequila. A cool dude gave an excellent and very compelling talk in perfect English on all this - but we avoided the temptation and had a relatively small meal at the restaurant where we shared the table with a lovely young Jewish couple from New York. We shared our fear of a (it seems bizarre to even suggest this is a possibility, as I write this he's a convicted felon) Trump victory in the November election.
The obsidian was particularly interesting. A think slice of it can act as solar glasses. The guy said that it was an important tool for early astronomers predicting the calendar. With the benefit of hindsight it would have been good to have bought one for the eclipse coming up. That would have been cool.
Instead, we opted out. The tour guides dragged out our stay at the village, clearly hoping we'd have a few drinks and buy something expensive, so we didn't get back to Mexico City until mid afternoon. This was a bit o a blow for me as I'd hoped we'd be back close after lunch giving plenty time to visit the Azteca Stadium.
Tours of the stadium were definitely going on that day but the web site said the last tour starts about 4:30 and we only had an hour to get there. It's quite a way so I decided against another taxi ride. According to google it was accessible on the Metro - as you'd expect, right? So we set off to try to get on the last tour of the stadium.
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| Azteca - Never made it |
It was quite eye opening to go on the metro. Every few minutes a variety of poor people would enter the carriage peddling their wares... pens, bags... you name it.
At one stage a disabled man came aboard and slid down the carriageway on his back side asking for pesos. Very sad.
We eventually got off at our destination station and went looking for the line to connect to.
It soon became apparent that there was no such metro line but a bus stop. This couldn't be right. So, in a city of over nine million, to get to the biggest stadium from the center you have to change and get on a ... bus!?
I must have goofed somewhere. To cut a long story short, after a few failed attempts to figure out where to go, I pulled the plug on this little adventure. Another football frustration.
We set off back to the city center and had a potter around again before going to bed for the last time in Mexico's captial.
Day 26 Tuesday, 2nd April - La Paz
The flight from Mexico City was at a civilised time and it all went very smoothly.
We had a nice Mexican breakfast at the airport before getting on the small but comfortable plane heading west to the tip of the Baja Californija Sud and the small city of La Paz.
The name means "peace" and after a hectic few days, that was exactly what we were looking for.
Upon arriving in La Paz my main concern was to find out how Forest were getting on. They were playing Fulham in a night match over in Nottingham and it was pretty crucial to their hopes of surviving a for a third season in the Premier League that they win, or at least get something from the game.
As soon as we arrived at our room at the very nice beach resort I'd booked, I connected to the WiFi to discover - what joy! - that Forest were winning 1-0... no, 2-0!
We unpacked and quickly set off to try to find a bar that might be showing the game. I wasn't optimistic about the prospects of that and, sure enough, none of the sports bars Google suggested were. Never mind. We found a nice bar on the Malecon and watched some Mexican league game play out as the Forest match ended with a great win for the tricky trees.
...after which we had a romantic walk back after the sun had set.
Day 27 Wednesday, 3rd April - La Paz Malecon
The first full day in La Paz was a really chill one. We had nothing planned except to slob about and relax.
The day started with a bit of a shock though. Leb couldn't find a bracelet she'd been given as a leaving present and I couldn't find my YETI flask. After considering a bit of concern about the cleaning staff I decided that my flask must have slipped from my bag during the taxi ride from the airport. We had no clue as to what happened to the bracelet though.
As we had booked a Whaleshark cruise the next day we decided it would be a good idea to find where the boat was leaving from and walk there - right to the other end of the malecon.
We had a very nice Mexican breakfast at the cafe there.
Then it was back to our hotel for some serious slobbing by the pool.
We had lunch in the restaurant attached to the hotel.
Very nice it was too...
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| Mango drinks back on the Malecon |
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| Burritos |
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| Lots of art along the Malecon |
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| Coconut at Sunset |
Day 28 Thursday, 4th April - La Paz Whale sharks
Whaleshark day was one of the best of the whole trip. We got up very early and then retraced our route along the Malecon to the cafe we'd been to yesterday - so no surprises.
After a good breakfast I went outside to find our tour guide, a lovely young lady who spoke excellent English. Lesley joined me and about six others and we headed off along the quayside to find the boat.
It was small but cozy and we sat towards the back next to two American couples. Soon we were off. The boat slowly left its moorings and set off across the bay at quite a high speed.
Completely wrong.
Within ten minutes we spotted our first one and our team were in the water. It was amazing. You could swim really close to them, speed up to look at them eye to eye, then slow down to see them from the end.
This was repeated three times. These were younger, much smaller whale sharks than those off the WA coast. A good analogy is that Mexico is more like a nursery whist WA is like a motorway.
After getting back on dry land we walked back down the Malecon to the hotel, got changed and then went back out for some more spicy food.
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| The Whalesharks were just off the coast |
Day 29 Friday, 5th April - La Paz Sealions
When we arrived at the hotel we were offered a chance to join a boat trip out to the island of Espirito Santo to see the sealions. It only took a couple of days before we realised this was a deal too good to miss.
We were picked up from the hotel by our local guide who spoke excellent English and drove the bus back into town. As usual, on these occasions, it did not take long before we connected through the world of football and once I'd told him I was a Forest fan, I couldn't resist asking him - "so what's my club and this trip got in common?"
The answer, of course, was that the current Forest manager and the island we were about to set off for shared the same name.
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| Espirito Santo |
We made a mistake on this trip not to hire wet suits as it would turn out to be pretty cold in the water out there.
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| Bird poo coloured this little island |
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| Boobies galore |
It was quite a long boat trip out to the small island where the sealion colony lived but it was worth it. The first thing that you notice is the noise. So many sealions barking territorial claims at each other adds up. The boat did a full circumference of their rocky home before pulling up alongside them.
I had began to wonder if we were going to actually snorkel with them but soon enough we were encouraged to join our guide in the water. It was at the moment of plunging into the depths that I realised we should have hired wet suits. This was cold!
I squeezed the life jacket close to my chest and used only my flippers for propulsion. This at least kept some warmth by my body. In any case we soon had a major distraction from the temperature of the water. Endless curious seals swam by us, including at one point a huge male. He came far too close to me and definitely gave me a cautious eye. I was briefly scared but he was gone in a flash.
We swam through a beautiful archway lined with beautiful coral, aquatic plants and beautiful tropical fish before we reboarded the boat and back into the warm air.
Wonderful. My only regret is not taking my waterproof case or a GoPro. No video or photos were supplied this time.
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| The only photographic evidence I have of the sealions |
To help us warm up the tour guides had the perfect spot in mind. Just south of the sealion island on the Santo Espirito group of Islands was a lovely isolated beach where the boat pulled up close to the shore. We jumped off onto the soft sand and walked to the beach. A few minutes later they'd set up sun shades and a nice spread of food for us to scoff.
I went for a snorkel in the shallows. It was every bit as good as we've come to expect in WA. After that we had a great chat with a couple who were diving enthusiasts. The guy was from Glasgow and his partner from Egypt. They'd recently moved to Mexico and were actually thinking of relocating to La Paz. We got some good tips on snorkeling and keeping safe in Mexico. In a nutshell, they said we'd be fine/
After that, it was back to La Paz and another evening of slobing around the Malecon for the last time.
Day 30 Saturday, 6th April - Short flight to Mazatlán
So, it was time to finally go to Mazatlán, the whole reason for our revised (west-to-east) route around the world. A nice woman taxi driver took us to the airport nice and early and after a nice coffee and ham & cheese roll we boarded the plane for the very short flight across the Gulf of California we landed at the airport south of the city.
The first sign that something big was about to happen in Matalan was the length of the line at the taxi rank. With no checked in luggage, we got off the plane very quickly but there was still a very long queue waiting outside for a taxi to go to the city. We did consider catching a bus but I wanted to minimize any problems here and make sure we got to the hostel as quickly as possible as we had no mobile phone SIM.
We ended up squeezing into a people carrier, Leb and me both sat on the front seat next to the driver.
An endless playlist of loud Mexican music was the soundtrack to a smooth journey into the city where I was able to get the driver to drop us off on the corner near where we had booked a four night stay.
We approached the forbidding looking door and rang the bell. No reply. We knocked. No reply. Oops. This didn't look good. As I said we didn't have a SIM card so we needed to use someone's phone. Opposite the street was a 2 star hotel so we walked over and I told the lady, in my very bad Spanish, our situation and asked if we could use her phone.
She very kindly rang the number for us and the owner of our place clearly picked up very quickly.
Judging from the half of the conversation we heard, it went well.
"Hello. I have a couple of tourists with me here who can't get into your apartment"
"No they don't speak Spanish. They're a couple of gringos."
"OK. I'll tell them to wait."
Ten minutes later, the woman proprietor arrived and let us in. Apparently the instructions were sent to me on WhatsApp but I must have missed that somehow.
Anyway. In we went and the austere and very secure looking outside revealed a relatively warm and cozy interior including a shared kitchen, bathroom and balcony. The room itself was very spacious and would be a nice base for the next four days.
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| Waiting for the Owner to let us in |
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| Our next accommodation from across the road |
Once we'd unpacked and settled in it was time to get out and explore our neighborhood. We soon found that we were actually pretty close to the Malecon at Mazatlán. Like La Paz, the town is dominated by a long sea front. If La Paz's was big, this one was off the scale. We'd spend a lot of the next four days walking up and down it and the first stroll was that night - only about a third of the way, long enough to find a nice Mexican tortilla cafe.
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| Not too far from the beach |
Day 31 Sunday, 7th April - Mazatlán Malecon
The next morning I got up early to get a few provisions. There was a handy shop just a couple of doors away that sold all the essentials like water and milk. I also bought some fruit and very tasty spicy nuts.
I also spread the net of knowledge a bit further than the night before and found that the street parallel to ours was actually quite a prosperous busy shopping street. I quickly sussed that out too and found a pub (Edgar's Bar) and a nice food market. When I got back it was therefore easy to decide where to go with Leb.
The plan for the day was to find a good place to stop at for the eclipse the day after. Going from the projected path of totality, anywhere in Mazatlán would give you full totality for several minutes but the closer to the center of the path the better and as far as that was concerned that meant slight south of the center of the city.
I picked what I thought would be a good spot and we headed for it to check it out.
One of the great frustration of living in Perth, Western Australia, is seeing their amazing fresh food markets whenever we visit other cities. Mazatlán is no exception and, as one might expect, it has many big bustling markets full of delicious fresh food. Row after row of stalls all choc-a-bloc. The noise. The smells. Wonderful. And what do we have in Perth? Nada.
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| The Pino Suarez Mercado on Aquiles Serdan |
We then strolled towards the southern end of the Mazatlán Centro district, where the old theatre is and the trendy touristy area. The buildings are all beautifully painted in pastels.
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| Teatro Angela Peralta |
Unfortunately nothing was showing at the theatre for the four days we were there, although the tickets would almost certainly have already been sold out months before in any case.
But, as a small consolation prize, a tenor performed a wonderful virtuoso near the door of the theatre for pesos.
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| The spot we decided on for the eclipse tomorrow |
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| Eclipse center ready for tomorrow |
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| Walking down the Malecon |
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| Mexicans love their noisy bands |
One glitch for the mission with a distinct silver lining was the fact that our flight out of Mazatlán to Guanajuato (incredibly, via Tijuana) had been cancelled. They gave me a refund but it meant that we now had no planned route out of the city after the eclipse.
This actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I never liked the idea of flying north from Mazatlán only to catch another flight south. I'm not a very determined follower of green practices - like most people, I try to put the right waste item in the right bin, and I'll walk or cycle rather than drive whenever I can but I can hardly claim to avoid flying when I could avoid it. But the prospect of flying in the opposite direction to catch a connecting flight to our next stop did grate. It made the journey at least three times longer. So I actually welcomed the opportunity to catch a bus instead. The main factor against was ridiculously (with the benefit of hindsight) the fear of being kidnapped.
Anyway, I bought a bus ticket on line to take is from Mazatlán to the city of Guadalajara but the receipt was never emailed to me. So, we had two reasons to find the bus station. Firstly, to make sure we knew where it was and secondly to query the lack of receipt and get that sorted.
The first objective was met, but not the second. Because I was not sent a receipt I had no evidence that I'd made a booking at all so the girl behind the counter said she couldn't help. Not good. The ticket wasn't too expensive but we had to buy another ticket from her to make sure the next leg of our trip would happen. Whilst we were at it we also booked another bus trip from Guadalajara to Leon. From there, we'd get a local bus to Guanajuato.
Then, we walked back along the Malecon - again - back to our place.
Day 32 Monday, 8th April - Total Eclipse in Mazatlán
This was the big day.
Even long afterwards, as I finally write this up, it still counts as the best day of the trip because you do not get to see a full total eclipse of the sun very often, even less one that lasts over four minutes and one in such an idyllic spot by a beach next to the Pacific ocean.
We got up early and excited and headed off to the spot we'd worked out the day before. No glitches here please.
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| The Zone of totality easily eclipsed the whole of Mazatlán |
On the way to our chosen spot we stopped off at the market for some breakfast in the dinning area upstairs.
Then, as we approached the beach, there was time for some Mexican hot chocolate.
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| Our Danish neighbours on the sea front, |
I have no such apparatus but I rely on the images of others put on line, This one was taken with perhaps another hour to go before totality.
One of the eclipse tricks we'd learned in Exmouth last year was to look for the crescent images cast as shadows from the trees and other bushes as totality approaches. Mexican palm trees don't do this as well as the ones in WA but the effect was still clearly there to see,
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| Solar specs are essential |
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| The full eclipse |
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| Darkness Falls at midday |
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| A moment in the four minutes |
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| The silver ring |
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| Eclipse of the Head |
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| Party atmosphere afterwards |
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| Two cold beers look nice but we were sat too close to the toilet |
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| The full northern crescent of the Malecon, there and back is about 9km |
Day 33 Tuesday, 9th April - Lighthouse Mazatlán
The day after the eclipse was not one I'd wanted to spend in Mazatlán. The trouble is that thousands of others who'd visited for the same reason had the same plan and that demand drove the price of flights out of the city sky high. So, through searching the web, I found a route out that was delayed and convoluted. The plan was to fly to Guanajuato via Tijuana. But then that flight was cancelled and we had to use the bus route but by then we'd committed to four nights in the city..
So, we had a full day to spend in the city after the big event. We decided to explore the southern part of the malecon.
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| Leb chose a very nice brekkie |
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| Me, not so much |
We went to a rather underwhelming free museum in the old town.
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| One look at the hill where the lighthouse was based - and no, I don't think do |
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| The coast around the south Malecon |
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| Interesting seafood options |
Day 34 Wednesday, 10th April - Bus to Guadalajara Nightmare
So, it was finally time to leave Mazatlán. We'd rehearsed the walk to the bus station and we had resolved the tickets issue so what could possibly go wrong?
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| Last walk along the malecon |
The bus station was bathed in sunshine as we arrived nice and early. Time to get some food inside us and then find the platform and wait for the bus to come.
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| Ticket to Guadalajara - the 9:45 am bus |
All was well at about 9:20. We were early, that's why no-one else was there. But as time went on and only one other passenger joined us - a Canadian called Geoff - we began to get concerned.
"Maybe they know something we don't" wondered our fellow traveller.
9:45 was the time the bus should have departed but that time came, and then went.
At 10:00 we started asking questions.
"Why has our bus not arrived yet?"
To which the answer, invariably was, "It's coming... another fifteen minutes"
Fifteen minutes came and went, repeatedly.
Eventually a bus clearly marked Guadalajara did arrive and lots of passengers did get on. But not us. This was not our bus. Another similar bus arrived and more passengers alighted but with the same, very frustrating, result to us.
I began to think our bus was never going to come and expressed this belief verbally.
We got on the bus and soon we were bound for Guadalajara, Mexico's 2nd city.
The scenery varied quite a lot as we drove south from Mazatlán. First it was a very flat sandy coastal plain but then it became hilly and then almost mountainous.
Eventually we reached the start of the massive conurbation that is the sporeling mass of Guadalajara. I was following the route on my mobile on Google maps. According to the web site Rome2Rio the bus would stop on the west side of the city and so that is where I booked a hotel for the night.
The bus did make a stop close to the west side of the city but it seemed too far away from the destination given by the web site so I assumed there'd be another stop closer. So we stayed on the bus.
Then, to my horror, the driver took a turn I hadn't anticipated. Rather than carrying on towards the center close to our hotel, it veered south onto the massive ring road encircling the city. We'd already been delayed two hours and now this would eat away still more of our already short time to explore Guadalajara.
As daylight turned to night we continued east stuck in massive traffic until we arrived at our final destination, a bus station in the east of the city. There were only four or five passengers on the bus by this time, including good old Geoff.
He'd also been taken away from his hotel, but not as far away as us. He had ordered an Uber to take him back and offered to share the ride with us.
When we all got in the car Geoff proceeded to tell the driver of our predicament in slow loud English (think of an English holidaymaker in Spain - "sau sage egg and beans" and you'll get the idea.
It wasn't quite as bad as Brad Pitt in the Mexican but not far off.
"Take me to my hotel through Uber and then these guys will pay you pesos to take them to theirs."
The drive through the city center revealed a sparking affluence we hadn't seen in Mexico so far and it made us wish we'd stayed here longer already. I noticed a lot of bars were full of people watching football. What match could this be?
Anyway, the plan worked and I was grateful to Geoff and the driver, who I paid 200 pesos (about $16 Aus). This must have been much more than expected as the driver opened up his boot and handed me a six pack of very nice coffee cocktail drinks.
But the drama wasn't over yet.
Once we arrived at the hotel, it soon became apparent that there had been a problem with our booking. Unable to confirm our arrival time (no SIM you see) they'd cancelled the booking.
Fortunately they still had a room and we were actually upgraded. So we dropped our bags off, and got changed into something nicer and then went down to the bar for some well deserved luxury.
In the hotel bar a few were watching the match I'd noticed from the car. It was Messi's Inter Miami of the USA playing the Mexican champions Monterrey in the CONCACAF club championship quarter finals. The Mexicans were on their way to an easy victory and even Messi could not do anything about it.
So, from frustration to luxury and a very nice night in quite a plush hotel. Even this day, spoiled by travel problems, ended up being another very memorable one.
Day 35 Thursday, 11th April - Leon to Guanajuato Arrival
So, having not had any time in the evening to see anything of Guadalajara, we did at least have a few hours in the morning before we were due to catch another bus on the next leg of the journey to Leon.
So, we got up a bit early, had breakfast in the hotel and then left our bags for a few hours as we set off to see at least some of Mexico's second city.
The breakfast was a mistake. Always keen to try local dishes we tried a classic Mexican dish called black mole (pronounced mo - lay). Apparently Frida Khalo had it for her wedding. It combines typical Mexican spiciness with ... chocolate.
Some combinations that sound bizarre somehow work but I have to say, for me, this didn't and we left most of it.
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| Black Mole - chocolate and spice didn't mix well for us |
Having left out bags with reception we were free for a couple of hours to at least see a bit of the western neighbourhood our hotel was based. We tried to find a market but had no success and ended up in a cafe having a very nice hot chocolate.
Then it was back to the hotel where we ordered a taxi to take us back across the city to the bus station to catch our bus to Leon. The driver was a woman and it was very interesting to talk to her about the forthcoming election and the fact that a woman, Claudia Sheinbaum, might well become president for the first time.
We were dropped with time to spare and this time the bus turned up on time and we boarded it with great relief. We had great seats. Front row of the double decker bus. So, it felt like we were flying west across the Mexican countryside. Again the terrain changed quite often and it was fascinating journey in its own right.
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| Long row of buses waiting at Guadalajara Bus Station |
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| Hurray! It came on time. |
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| The view from the front seat of the double decker |
Once we arrived in Leon, the bus drove right past the Leon football stadium which hosted all the group 4 games comprising West Germany, Peru, Bulgaria and Morocco.
Famously it also hosted the famous quarter final, West Germany versus England, where the Germans came back for 2-0 down to win it 3-2 in extra time.
We arrived at Leon bus station moments later and then had the simple challenge of finding a local bus to take us the short journey to Guanajuato. This was easy enough but the destination bus station was nowhere near the old town center so we had to get a taxi for the last leg.
Finally, we arrived at our very quaint hotel right in the town center. I had originally booked one right up in the hills but the thought of carrying our bags up a big steep hill after such a long journey did not appeal.
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| The view from our bedroom balcony |
Having arrived, we set off to explore the town center near our hotel and grab some more spicy Mexican food.
I think I slept very well that night.
Day 36 Friday, 12th April - Guanajuato Bimbling Day
We woke up to our first full day in Guanajuato and the only thing to worry about is what to fill the time with. What well know tourist sights are worth visiting? Are there any other things we'd like to do or see>
We came out of our very nice room down some lovely old stairs and received instructions from the very lovely an helpful staff. We just needed to cross the road and walk 100m down he street to another hotel where we'd receive breakfast.
Too easy!
After brekkie we set off to explore.
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| Basket of flowers - the cafe opposite our place |
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| Markets in Mexico are always wonderful |
One task I'd set myself for the day was to have a haircut. I can't stand the stupid "Mohecan" fashion among men's hair these days - god I feel old! But it was time for my usual "short back and sides" with a No 2 cut there but leaving most of it on top. Somehow I managed to convey this to my barber as he did a great job.
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| Thanks, maestro! |
After a bit of a panic catching up with Leb - she'd discovered the Diego Riviera museum. Blimey, I had no idea he was from here. We met up and did a bit more exploring before returning to the museum so I could see it for myself.
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| Diego woz ere |
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| Diego |
Too easy!
The view from the top was every bit as good as we'd hoped. Although we were a bit disappointed that there weren't more cheap options for a drink.
After that it was back in to the city center to find some nice old bars for a drink.
One tourist spot we just had to visit was El Callejon del Beso, a narrow alley behind Plaza de Los Angeles. It's known for its tragic legend. A wealthy family's daughter and a poor young man, whose windows faced each other across the alley, secretly kissed until her enraged father killed her. Some say the young man then leapt to his death, giving the alley its mournful reputation.
When we got there a group of young students were also doing the tourist round and there was great hilarity when some boys and girls decided to do their romantic kiss in public.
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| Alley of the Kiss |
As the afternoon turned into evening we decided to head towards a very attractive green square, the Jardin de la Union, in the city center dominated by expensive-looking restaurants and Mexican bands.
The meal was not as expensive as we expected, nor was it as good. Still, it was an experience listening to several Mexican bands touting for money.
The Mexicans do love their loud music, as we would experience first hand later. This was Friday night and it seemed all the city's youngsters were out determined to have a good time, which seemed to mean playing, singing or dancing in the streets until the early hours.
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| Last night in Guanajuato |
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| And what a night... the noise went on past 2:30 am |
Day 37 Saturday, 13th April - Guanajuato to USA
Eventually, some sleep did come but it was shortened by an early rise to go and get our last breakfast there. The staff were as attentive as ever and the food was good too.
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| Leb below the balcony |
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| The Impressive University Auditorium was just behind where we were staying but we only noticed it getting into the taxi. |
After that, we arranged for the hotel to order us a taxi. The driver was an amiable middle aged man and we spoke about his children and the education and health systems in Mexico.
Soon enough, we arrived at Guanajuato airport and after a couple of hours or patiently waiting we boarded the plane for our next adventure... to The United Stated, and New Orleans.
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| Adios Mexico! |
