North America,  Mexico,  Travel

First week in Guanajuato

January 15, 2023 /

A few days ago, I found a sofa owner in the next city of Guanajuato, Guanajuato. I had to buy a bus ticket, but he suggested that I take the Blablacar to come here, because the price will be half cheaper than the bus. . I used this car sharing software for the first time in Spain three years ago. I had a few particularly interesting experiences, but I don’t know that it is also used here in Mexico. But because I haven’t used this software for a long time, I forgot the password for a long time and couldn’t log in. Later, I went in but I don’t know why I couldn’t find the ride from Puebla to Guanajuato. My sofa owner was very enthusiastic about using his account to search for me. I found a ride from Veracruz to Guanajuato via Puebla on Saturday, and asked me if I would use his account to book for me. As for the reply, he sent me the WhatsApp contact information of the owner of the ride, asking me to contact her. I got in touch with her and she said she wouldn't get off the freeway into downtown Puebla, but would pick me up at an outlet mall on the outlying freeway around 1pm. I found out on the map that she would pass by another place nearer to me on the highway, and asked her if she could pick me up there, and she said no problem.

The big local foodie said on Friday that he would go to his niece’s birthday party on Saturday morning, and asked me if I would like to go with him, and told me that the park where the birthday party was held was not far from the place where the hitchhiker mainly picked me up, so I could go directly go from there. So I carried my big backpack and waited for his brother-in-law to pick us up at 11:00 am on Saturday. It was Mexico time again, and we didn’t pick us up until 12:00 am, and we went to pick up his mother on the way. When it was almost 12:30 in the park where the birthday party was held, I stayed there for 10 minutes without eating anything, so I called Didi to meet the hitchhiker at the agreed place.

When I arrived at the meeting place for the hitchhiking owner, I got in the car. There was another girl in the back seat of her car. The hitchhiker's husband told another car to follow her. They are both from Veracruz but have lived in Guanajuato for five years. Just went to Veracruz from there to spend Christmas with their family. Because her husband works online, he drove back two weeks in advance, so they will drive two cars. She is a psychological counselor who works for the Ministry of Health and Sanitation of the government of Guanajuato. Most of the patients she is responsible for are teenagers. She talked to me about psychological problems, domestic violence, substance abuse, alcohol, drugs and other issues. The psychological counseling services provided by her work in the government's public health department are free. After talking about the medical insurance here, I was surprised that although she works in the government department, her contract does not provide insurance. She said that it depends on the specific situation. Not all people who work for the government have medical insurance provided by their jobs. . She has been working there for five years, and her holidays have gradually increased since last year. Now she has 20 days of holidays a year, but she has to use them separately. There are 10 days for Christmas and New Year holidays, which is a lot in Mexico. Then we talked about her husband, who had known each other since college, had been together for eight years, got married three years ago, and raised a cat and a dog. She said that their wages were very low before, but since her husband started working as a programmer for a Canadian computer game company last year, his economic situation has improved a lot, no wonder the family now drives two cars. She also said that her husband likes racing cars and participating in electric remote control car races. His husband had learned some Chinese before, but of course he only remembers "Ni Hao" now. Ha ha.

She said that because there is no direct bus from Veracruz to Guanajuato, they usually drive a car back to Veracruz to see their family every two months. If they take her sister who is studying in Guanajuato with her, they will rarely use it. Share the wind car software to pick up other passengers. The high-speed tolls on this road are very expensive. She said that the tolls alone (without refueling fees) cost more than 1,000 pesos, so using the free-wheeling software can reduce a lot of expenses. After the first passenger on our way got off at the outlet mall in Puebla, another male passenger got into her husband's car from there. Later, in a small town, I picked up two college students who were going to Guanajuato.

The owner of the ride was very enthusiastic and recommended me some interesting places in Guanajuato, and said that she could take me out after get off work or on weekends. I asked her if she knew of any friends who rent out rooms for a week or two, and she said she could ask for me. Later, when talking about the house they rented now, she said that they rented a big house with four bedrooms, except that they lived in two rooms with her sister, and the remaining two rooms were guest rooms for family and friends, because They always have family and friends coming to see them. She said that no one will come after the festival, and that the empty room can be rented to me for a short term if I want, and she said that she would go back and discuss the price with her husband before suing me. Then she asked me where I lived in Guanajuato these two days, and I said I was staying at the friend’s house who booked this ride for me, and then she asked me how I met this friend, so I told her about the couch This magical software also recommends that she can use it to receive sofa guests when she has a vacant room, as well as the various benefits it will bring. She seemed very interested and asked me to show her how the software works the next time I see her.

After driving all the way for about 7 hours, we finally arrived at the mountain city of Guanajuato. In the 18th century, it was the most important silver mining center in the world. Now there are still many tunnels in the city. We drove through several very long tunnels, and we felt that we could not drive them out.

Although the sofa owner's house looks very close to the city center on the map, it is only about ten minutes, but when I went there, I found that like most houses in Guanajuato, it was on a hill and needed to climb a lot of high steps. The altitude here is more than 2,100 meters, and climbing the hill is considered exercise. Fortunately, I only have a big backpack. I don't know how painful it is for tourists who drag their suitcases here. At the beginning, I kept communicating with the sofa owner in Spanish, thinking that he was a local, but after chatting, I found out that he was actually a Mexican-American born and raised in Fresno, California's mid-valley. He is also a teacher, having previously taught high school history and social science in Fresno for many years. Also taught for many years in international schools in Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Bolivia. Five or six years ago, I resigned and traveled around the world for a year and a half, visiting more than 90 countries around the world. He loves the city of Guanajuato so much that he decided to move there permanently a few months ago. He bought the house and used it as an Airbnb with two rooms, and he would host sofa guests when no one was booking in the off-season. He likes to talk about art, history, humanities, current affairs, human rights, environmental issues, etc. Since he moved here, he has also joined the neighborhood committees in his residential area to attend their meetings to discuss how to improve community security and other issues.

The next day he was going to the city center to do some shopping, so he took me for a stroll along the way. It reminds me of San Cristóbal here, because I can see colorful houses and alleys on the hill everywhere. Passing by the 290-year-old University of Guanajuato, the architecture is extremely spectacular.

We went to the largest local market, Mercado Hidalgo. It is said that this building was originally used to build a railway station. No wonder the facade of the general market is much more spectacular. After coming out of the market, I happened to meet a parade on the street. It was probably another celebration of the Holy Spirit in a certain church. The demons danced wildly, so it was very lively. But what is different from what I have seen before is that this time there are many male performers dressed as women at the gate of the market, one pretends to be a cow, and the others just started teasing the cow one by one, dancing and running, and then came up with two hands The person with the long whip signaled for the crowd to back off, and then started to use the big whip to beat the person pretending to be a cow. It was painful. Later, two men disguised as women also came up to draw each other. I don't quite understand it, but the onlookers are still quite happy to watch.

Went to visit the Mummy Museum in Guanajuato. There are more than 100 mummies that were naturally dried and formed in the local cemetery, and the museum is located next to the cemetery. The local law at that time stipulated that if the family members of the deceased could not pay the cemetery tax, the body of the deceased would be exhumed to make way for the new deceased. In 1865, when cemetery workers exhumed the bodies, they were surprised to find that some of the bodies had not decomposed, but had dried out and become mummies. This is due to the high altitude, arid climate and mineral-rich geology. Among the more than 100 mummies, you can see adults, children, pregnant women, the elderly, etc., and you can also see the smallest mummy in the world: a baby boy who is about to be born. Some of their clothes and shoes and socks are still there, and the pores and some hairs on the skin can be clearly seen. Judging from the facial expressions, most of them died normally, but there are also many who died unnaturally with grim facial expressions, and may have experienced great pain before they died. During the visit to the museum, I saw some local Mexican tourists happily taking selfies with the mummy. I thought of the acceptance of death and the celebration of the cycle of life in Mexican culture, just like the Day of the Dead. Death is the end of life, cherish every day of life. The last emergency exit sign is also in the shape of a skull, which is very interesting.

Climb to the top of Pípila Mountain to see the panoramic view of the city, it is really beautiful. Guanajuato is one of the holy places where Mexico resisted the Spanish revolutionary rule. There is a monument to the miner hero Pípila on the top of Pípila Hill. There is a famous romantic kissing alley in the city center, because the balconies of the two houses in the alley are very close, couples can kiss and take pictures here. This stems from a Mexican version of the romantic tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Crowds of tourists lined up below to take pictures, and couples had to pay to go up if they wanted to take kissing photos.

I met a local photographer brother on the sofa guest software. He was originally from Mexico City and moved here two or three years ago. Because this city is beautiful, many tourists will come here to take pictures, and they will find photographers like him on the Internet to take pictures. He usually needs to retouch photos when he has no work, but his time is very flexible and casual. He and his other two photographer friends from other cities went to climb Cerro de la Bufa the next morning and asked me if I wanted to go with them. It's been a long time since I climbed the mountain seriously, so I joined them. From the place where I live to the foot of the mountain, my friends have been here many times, so I took a shortcut to climb faster. Some of the big rocks I saw when I was approaching the top of the mountain were very interesting, as if they had been cut by a big knife. From the cross on the top of the mountain, you can have a panoramic view of the city.

I planned to stay temporarily at this sofa owner's house for two or three nights, and I was looking for a long-term rental house for the locals. I originally planned to move directly to the owner's house when I came here the next day, but after she sent me the address, I found out that her house is far away from the city center. Too far. Ben considered renting the house on Airbnb owned by the owner of the sofa, but after living in it for two days, he found that his house was too dark and cold. There were no windows and no sun in all the rooms, and he would be so cold that he couldn’t sleep for a long time and couldn’t concentrate on work. . Other places on Airbnb are either very expensive, or the rooms are not sunny, or there is no kitchen, no one is suitable. So on the sofa master software, I met and chatted with another sofa master I had contacted before, and wanted to ask him if he knew any friends who rented houses. He first drew me closer to a Facebook rental group, and then added me to the WhatsApp group of local sofa owners, saying that I could ask questions here. Not long after, his roommate called and said she had forgotten her key, so he said he was going back to open the door for her, and I followed along. His house is very close to my first sofa owner's house, and the house is also on a hill, but after entering, I couldn't help but sigh: your house is not cold at all, the temperature is completely different from the temperature of the first sofa owner's house . After listening to my experience of being too cold to sleep at night, he said that he has a vacant room now, but he hasn’t cleaned it for a long time after he came back from a holiday trip. I thought it was dirty, but when I went in, it was very clean and tidy, and It is still on the top floor, with windows and sunlight. He says you can stay here for a few days if you're okay, because he has another sofa guest on Thursday, the sister of an Argentinian girl he hosted a few years ago. So I moved to his place that night, it was so warm. My sofa owner said that most of the rooms in this city are cold unless they are on the top floor, and there is no heating anywhere.

After living in these two sofa owners, I found the houses here very interesting. Because most of the houses are built on the hill, basically every room in the house is on different elevations, not on different floors, because the height difference is not that big, so there will be many small stairs in the house. Only the rooms on the highest floor can get sunlight, and the rooms downstairs are usually very cold and basically have no windows. The terrace on the top floor is usually used for drying clothes, and it is usually connected to the terrace of the neighbor’s house next door. The houses are very close, and you can see the behavior of the neighbors nearby. And in the process of going up the mountain, you don't go up all the way. Many callejón alleys go up and down for a while to reach the destination, which is particularly confusing.

The next day, I sent a message in the WhatsApp group of the sofa owner looking for a house to rent, specifically mentioning that the room should have windows and sunlight. Not long after, a sister replied to me, saying that her Airbnb has a house on the top floor, and she can rent it to me for a week, and she can go to see the house at any time. After she sent me the address, it looked a bit far from the city center on the map, but she said that Google Maps is not working here, and those small mountain roads or shortcuts are not displayed on the map. She asked me to go through a long tunnel when I went to her house, which was much faster, but I thought these big tunnels were only suitable for traffic. There are many similar tunnels in the city, built many years ago when mining, and they are all one-way.

When I got out of the tunnel, I sent her a message and she came to meet me. Sure enough, I took a small road that was not shown on Google Maps. When I arrived at her house, the structure of the house was similar to the previous two. There are four rooms on two small floors downstairs. Take me upstairs to see the other room. It has sunshine and is much warmer than the downstairs. Now it’s just us and the rest are short-term. Just a few days. So it was decided to rent here. I learned that the Airbnb platform deducted 30 to 40% of the agency fee, but because I paid her rent directly, she gave me a discount to rent me for a week. Chatting with her, I learned that she is French. After quitting her job four years ago, she traveled around and slowly began to teach French online. After coming to Mexico, she liked this city very much, so she bought this house two years ago and rented out the room as an Airbnb. My first couch master experience was pretty much the same. She speaks French, Spanish, English and Portuguese, Spanish better than English. She just returned from a five-month trip to South America last month, during which time she rented an Airbnb and hired volunteers to help her take care of it.  

On Thursday, I took a taxi and moved to my French sister. I used to use Didi before, and I could pay in cash, but Didi didn’t have a car, so I switched to Uber. I forgot to charge the credit card I had saved, but I returned it before getting off the car. The driver brother added cash and tip, and he realized it when he came back. No wonder he thanked me for a long time. I took a taxi and walked down another alley, crossed a very narrow bridge and arrived at my French sister's house. The French sister is building protective measures on the terrace wall with broken glass and cement from wine bottles. It is not to prevent people. She said that the cats and dogs of the neighbors are often uneducated and sometimes come to defecate. This is to prevent them. , Also put a few pots of cacti. When there is no sunlight in the house, it is still a bit cold, so I open the door and work on the terrace. Sometimes I move the table with the sunlight, which needs sunlight to recharge. The view of the mountains at sunset is beautiful.       

The next day I went to a nearby gym. This is the best gym I have been to since I came to Mexico this time, and there are very few people. The common feature of the three gyms I have been to is that they are all run by an old couple, and the old man seems to have practiced when he was young. After not going to the gym for almost four weeks and eating all kinds of good food for two weeks after Puebla, I finally made my own healthy food. If you don't control yourself in Mexico, you will always be fat. When I came to this city, I found that it was extremely dry, no wonder the mummies were so well preserved. Lips are easily chapped, and skin is also very dry. Ordinary lipsticks are basically useless, and it is better to buy a Vaseline balm.             

I went to a local bar cantina with the second sofa owner to experience it. It is said that this kind of cantina was only available to men a long time ago, but now of course women can also go there. Generally, the doors of this kind of bar are two wooden doors that can be opened in two directions, like the doors of bars in western cowboy movies. The space inside is generally small, with only a few tables and a bar. We didn't sit there for a long time, and watched the old man sitting next to the bar dance to the music for himself, and the people at the next table also followed the beat, which was very interesting. There is also an old-fashioned karaoke machine here, and you can order songs by inserting coins.

Passing by a handicraft store, which sells all kinds of ores produced in this city, there are many kinds. There is a museum about Don Quixote next to it, and there is a free art exhibition in one of the exhibition halls, so I went in and visited the museum for free. I also saw the Chinese version of "Don Quixote" in it.

Met a 24-year-old girl on a couchsurfing app. She and her sister came here for the weekend from a small town an hour away, and she had been here many times before. She has a very unusual experience. Although she is Mexican, her family moved to South Carolina in the United States when she was two years old and grew up there, so her mother tongue is English and she only speaks basic Spanish at home. At that time, both parents were working part-timers, and they worked outside every day to make money, so they seldom had time to spend with them. But when she was nine, the family moved back to Mexico for economic and political reasons. When she and her sister first moved back, their Spanish was poor, and they had various culture shocks, and were ridiculed and bullied by many classmates at school. It took a long time to get used to life here.

She studied international trade at university, but at the age of 21, she decided to take a year off and take a gap year to work as an au pair with a host family in another country. She could have gone to France as an au pair, but she wanted to go to a completely different country that would force her out of her comfort zone, so she chose to go to China. I have never heard of an au pair program in China. She said that it is not legal in China, but there is a market if there is demand. There are many super rich families who invite foreign au pairs to take care of their children. She found her first host family in Shenzhen through an intermediary. It is said that the two children in the family were spoiled, and they did not give her normal rest time and made her work overtime. The child's mother has a bad temper and is very disrespectful to her and the nanny at home. A temper tantrum even pushed her to . She told the agent that they ignored it completely. She couldn't bear it anymore and just slapped her ass and left. She slept on the street for a few days, but fortunately she met a Peruvian girl working in China and let her stay at her house for a few days. Later, through her, I got to know other au pairs and found another au pair family in Hangzhou. It was much better than the experience in the first family. She said that she ate all kinds of things that she had never eaten before with that family: she had eaten bastards, snakes, and even dog meat. She stayed in China for more than 8 months and came back at the beginning of the epidemic. She said she would like to go back this year. She is now working for an American technology company on the Internet, providing remote escort and care services for the elderly in the United States, and told me about various wonderful cases, which sounds very similar to an episode of "Black Mirror".

The French landlord sister is an active organizer of local sofa-surfing activities. On Saturday night, she organized a game in an open-air bar, and all the local friends she knew on the sofa-surfing software came. The second sofa owner who introduced us also went. There is also a Korean sister who came by car from a small town nearby. She is from Busan, South Korea. She studied graphic design in New York, and then returned to Korea to work. She was sent by a Korean sock company to work in a factory in this small town in Mexico. , she is a sock designer and has lived in Mexico for 12 years. Traveled a lot before and lived in Bolivia and Guatemala for a while. She said that their company provides food and accommodation, and there is a Korean chef who cooks for them. Most of her Korean colleagues who have worked here for many years still can’t speak Spanish very well, but she is very interested in learning languages. , Spanish is very slippery, and she is still learning Chinese. She told me about her travel experience in China many years ago, which is very interesting.

The French landlord sister organized seven or eight people on Sunday and drove two cars for more than an hour to Valle de Santiago to see the crater. Everyone was super punctual. There is no black volcanic rock in this crater, but white powdery sandstone, which looks like snow from a distance, and the smell of rotten eggs can be smelled in the middle. There are a total of seven craters near here, but I only visited two because the roads are difficult to drive. Once again, I feel that Asians are generally younger: the 41-year-old French landlord sister and the 47-year-old Korean sister, the contrast is too great.

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