I left Zacate­cas pretty late in the day — right around noon. I didn’t have that many miles to go before I got to my next tar­get — Gua­na­ju­ato. The day was pretty unevent­ful until I turned off to Gua­na­ju­ato. I was in a sev­eral mile long traf­fic jam. They were paving the road, so cars ahead were kick­ing up a big chunks of asphalt and gravel. I had to keep my face­mask closed to keep from get­ting one in the eye, and I was only going about 30 MPH, so it was damned hot. I only did about 200 miles, if that much, but it was enough.

Com­ing into Gua­na­ju­ato was pretty con­fus­ing. It’s a city sur­rounded by tall hills (moun­tains?) on both sides, with the city run­ning down the mid­dle. To make my intro­duc­tion worse was the fact that they have a large num­ber of streets that run under­ground. They paved the old river beds and have used them to fun­nel traf­fic through the city. None of the roads go in a straight line, most of them are one way, and I didn’t see one stop light while I was there. Come to find out, it’s a World Her­itage City, which means that the city has to be very care­ful in mak­ing any changes, and I think stop­lights were part of the changes that were discouraged.

As usual, I can’t find a place to park with my Moto. So after dri­ving the length of the city a cou­ple of times, I decided to head back to a hotel I found ear­lier. I can’t find it, but I did see a hotel with park­ing, so I pull up on the side­walk. I’m tired and kind of annoyed, but the hotel — Hotel Santa Fe seems pretty nice, if a bit expen­sive. It’s approx­i­mately $65/us a night. That’s more than I’m sup­posed to be spend­ing on this cheap trip through Mex­ico, but it’s a nice enough place, built circa 1862, and right on the zocalo. For that price they threw in break­fast, a drink in the bar and taxes. I decided to stay for two nights before I’d even parked my bike.

The bed was very nice (king sized) and lovely, lovely, pil­lows. My room wasn’t on the main square, but on the other size of the hotel, off a some­what busy street. This wasn’t a prob­lem, as the hotel had the best, qui­etest (most sound dea­din­ing) slid­ing glass door I’ve ever heard. It shut the noise out com­pletely. Gua­na­ju­ato, as with most of the places I’ve been since I entered Mon­tana, was pretty high up — it’s 2008 meters, or 6,587 feet.

This was unlike any town I’ve seen in Mex­ico. It looks a lot like a town that should be in Spain, or France. The Rough Guide says it was “for cen­turies the wealth­i­est town in Mex­ico.” They also say there is more to do here than any city of it’s size in the world. Those are big words, and prob­a­bly true ones. Diego Rivera was born here, but wasn’t really rec­og­nized until after his birth. This was (is?) a con­ser­v­a­tive town, and Rivera, a Social­ist and Marx­ist wasn’t very pop­u­lar. He has a small museum, but it’s not one of the largest. There are a ton of muse­ums, so many that I didn’t even try to get even a frac­tion of them. I think one could spend a week here with­out see­ing everything.

This town was in the Mex­i­can colo­nial style, as were many of the old min­ing town in Cen­tral Mex­ico. It made the place beau­ti­ful, and since it’s a world her­itage city, it’s going to stay that way. As I men­tioned ear­lier, it’s a col­lege town, and the Uni­ver­sity build­ing itself looks like it could belong to Hogwarts.

The hotel had cable TV, which was pretty nice, since they had a lot of Eng­lish lan­guage movies on. That’s some­thing I’m com­ing to enjoy. There were a cou­ple of odd movies on TV. One had Shirley Mclaine with a young boy who was a spelling bee cham­pion that would only dress like a girl. Ms. Mclaine has fallen pretty far. They also had Harry Pot­ter on the morn­ing I woke up. I wasn’t able to watch it since it’s a cou­ple of hours long, but I wish I could have. One thing they had that I enjoyed immensely was Olympic bloop­ers. The first night was funny — it had high divers tak­ing bad dives. The next two nights weren’t so funny. One was guys doing the clean and jerk, where you lift a huge amount of weight over your head. I think the last guy might have bro­ken his hip. I also found out, on free TV, that what we call strip­pers in Amer­ica are called bal­le­rina exotic’ in Mex­ico. Think what that would do for their self esteem? On TV one night they were hav­ing, essen­tial, a strip off, as a seg­ment on a vari­ety show. And it looked like all the girls had high self esteem, since they weren’t strip­pers, they were bal­le­rina exotics.

One thing that is odd, but cool, about Gua­na­ju­ato is a fas­ci­na­tion with Cer­vantes. Yup, that Cer­vantes. They have an Inter­na­tional Cer­vantes Fes­ti­val every year, and the coolest part is year round, the stu­dents from the Uni­ver­sity will dress up as Cer­vantes era min­strels and per­form in troupes. They do it with­out the slight­est bit of pre­tense or embar­rass­ment. It’s pretty neat — one of the neater things I’ve seen since I’ve been here. And of course, they have a Cer­vantes museum and statue.

I can’t really describe the town as well as I can show it to you. Please take a look at the pic­tures, and if you’re ever close — go. You prob­a­bly won’t be, so I’d even say it’s worth a trip on it’s own. If you visit, you’ll be glad you did.

Fol­low this LINK for more pic­tures. Some are dupli­cates. I’m try­ing to get this whole thing under control.