Today was our first long drive, so we got an early start to take the scenic route out of Guadalajara and drive through the Barranca de Huentitán, which is a canyon carved by the Río Grande de Santiago. It was beautiful & filled with tons of birds (we saw a trogon!). From there, it was about a 5-hour drive through winding, lush green hill sides to Zacatecas. Nick was in road trip heaven! He LOVES him some scenic drives - especially when they involve waterfalls.
We got to Zacatecas with 1.5 hours to spare to squeeze in the two main sites we came to see before they closed: Mina el Edén and the teleférico (aerial lift). The colonial town of Zacatecas was founded by the Spanish in the 1540s because they discovered silver here - so much, in fact, that this region supposedly supplied 20% of the silver supply from the Americas back to the Spanish crown. The Edén mine started in 1586 (through the use of enslaved indigenous adults & children under such dangerous conditions, an average of 5 people a day died in the mine - a fact made light by a replica skeleton built into the walls 😶) and didn't stop extracting (gold, zinc, copper, iron, and lead, in addition to silver) until 1960, when the city expanded to the area that surrounds the mine. The tour was cool - they had a lot of statues set up to show you what working conditions and equipment was like across 400 years. You could even see down below the shafts into the subterranean river that flowed through the mine.
We then high-tailed it to the teleférico to catch one of the last cable cars going up to Cerro de la Bufa (hill that over looks the city). We weren't able to hike around or spend any time up there, as we had 5 minutes to get on the last car down (lol) but the view above the city was cool. Tons of homes and plazas crammed into a valley, though it seemed like they had planned for tourists soaring above the town, as many of the buildings & rooftops colorfully painted with murals only visible from the cable cars.
Back on solid ground, we walked around town for a few hours (it's easy to lose track of time since the sun doesn't set until close to 9pm). This town is BEAUTIFUL - packed with Spanish & Italian style plazas and colonial churches. It truly felt like a European city, where residents spent their evenings strolling the cobblestoned streets or hanging out on the plaza steps. Turns out we stumbled into town on June 23rd, when the city celebrates the Battle of Zacatecas during the Mexican Revolution, when Pancho Villa's army defeated federal troops in 1914. We followed the sound of trumpets & drums to a huge procession for St. John the Baptist that was winding through the streets. It would have been cool to hang out in the town more but it had been an exhausting day & we had another long drive the next day. But Zacatecas is well worth a second, more lengthy visit!
Zacatecas cathedral (mid 1700s)
Plaza de Armas
Nick enjoying hot chocolate
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