The (Un)Expected

(6/30/22-7/1/22)

Guanajuato was a sight to see that – sadly – we didn’t get to see too much of. Driving into this hilly town, we entered subterranean tunnels built along the path of an old river, where GPS was clearly no help. Once above ground, the city was layer upon layer of buildings clinging to the steep slopes of a narrow ravine. This city was also built by the Spanish in the mid-16^th century on the backs of local indigenous people after the discovery of rich gold and silver deposits (so much so, it supplies 20% of the world’s silver for 250 years). As such, it was a very wealthy city – rich in industry, academics and arts – serving as an important site during Spanish colonial rile as well as during the Mexican revolution. So I was excited to start exploring! 

Big church on a hill

Pretty house

Buildings built into the steep hills

Guanajuato

Having contracted what I thought was a sinus infection from the ‘less than stellar’ hot springs in San Miguel de Allende, I wasn’t feeling so great, so we decided to book a van tour of the city rather than try & walk the labyrinth ourselves. It wasn’t exactly the tour we thought it would be. Driving around for 5 hours, we saw the monument to El Pipila that overlooks the city from high above. El Pipila us a revolutionary hero who burned down a Spanish granary, allowing Hidalgo’s forces to win their first victory towards independence in 1810.

We then headed to the Museo de las Momias (which we had intended to see), where actual human remains are on display. They aren’t really mummies as they were intact (no organs removed) and they were not prepared or ceremoniously wrapped. They also weren’t that old. The remains were excavated, starting in 1865, to make room for more bodies in the town cemeteries. The crypts were sealed above ground and the dry air pretty much preserved the bodies intact with little decay. So it was interesting to see what death (without much decay) actually looks like.

The morbid theme continued at the site of the Spanish Inquisition at Hacienda del Cochero. It’s a beautiful castle-like building with an overgrown garden above ground, but below are the torture chambers used during the inquisition with (mostly) replicas of the instruments used there. The most interesting part was the son of the young tour guide who took us around. He was only 3 years old at most and joined his mom on the tour, jumping around the torture chambers and playing with the dummy corpses – I imagine there will be very little that scares that kid when he gets older.

We made several other stops to a few souvenir stores, where I’m sure the driver was getting a commission, and to a ‘house of horrors’ set in the home of a former doctor-turned-serial killer, who killed his female patients in order to experiment with ways of bringing them back to life (with no success). Supposedly his motivation was the loss of his fiancé, whom he hoped he would eventually be able to bring back to life if only he could figure out how using his female patients. The museum was more of a kitschy haunted house, complete with Halloween-like decorations and a costumed tour guide who made morbid jokes and pressed hidden buttons for scary sounds and blasts of air to shock us along the tour route.

Most of the day was a blur as the driving tour dragged on and on and I wasn’t feeling very well and had tuned out most of the Spanish-language guides. We grabbed a pizza for dinner & headed back to our hotel HIGH up the side of a hill (I could barely breathe by the time we made it to our room), where we at least got a nice view of the city at night, overlooking the main plaza. A plaza, which we had hoped to explore the next day except that my ‘sinus infection’ turned out to be covid and that ended all hope of seeing the rest of Guanajuato.

View from our hotel room

I was able to get a second covid booster shot back in May (the same time Nick contracted covid) in the hopes that it would protect me (and his natural antibodies would protect him) from getting covid while on travel. No such luck. But I do believe that having the second booster at least protected me from getting any severe symptoms. No idea how I contracted it – thankfully Nick did not – as we’ve been wearing masks indoors and using hand sanitizer, but thankfully the symptoms were mild and I only really felt terrible for one day (the one day in Guanajuato, sadly). The congestion stuck around for about 5 days (got nasal spray & decongestant form the pharmacy) but after that was pretty much gone.

To avoid spreading covid to others, we left Guanajuato and started our journey toward Mexico City a day early. We had quite a bit of driving ahead of us, so Nick booked us a last-minute hotel just outside of Querétaro, which happened to be the nicest hotel we’ve stayed at so far LOL.