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Heart of the Colonial LoopNovember 20-26, 2000 -- My hands still stained (figuratively) with the blood of the bulls, I board the bus for the heart of the Colonial Highlands, Zacatecas first, then Guanajuato. Trip is starting to take on a new sense of urgency as I realize that I miss having a guitar and need to make a pilgrimage soon to the Mecca of guitars, the tiny mountain town of Paracho. Zacatecas
The 170 km journey north to Zacatecas enters a vast plain. You can see hills and mesas off in the distance. Some parts look exactly like the stretch of Highway 101 in California between San Miguel and San Ardo, if that helps you any. What Western Oregon does with spring colors, this part of Mexico does with fall colors. The earth changes from dusty white, to brown, to red clay, to orange. Cactus, sage, and scrub brush move on and off the set like perfect stage props in a John Wayne western. The land is vast, very few inhabitants, a land best suited to cattle grazing. I am starting to judge the length of a trip by the fullness of my bladder:
The problem is, a lot of the buses don't have bathrooms, second class especially, and even in first class, I'm a little neurotic about what I am going to find or touch in there, so I try to wait. I was at a strong Medium Bladder when we almost imperceptibly started to rise up out of the plains. I could see mountains, and I had a vision of where I thought Zacatecas might be in a perfect world, and when we started heading for that point, I got more and more excited. Then, we were weaving up and through some hills, and pretty soon, I could see it snaking along the mountainside. Brick houses covered in cement and painted lovely colors, stretching all around. At the bus station, the taxi drivers were bastards. I told them I wanted the Hotel Zamora, and they said they wouldn't take me there, only to the Center. They were laughing at me and being evasive, wouldn't get up off their ass, kind of pointing at each other saying there was no one there to give me a ride right now. I wandered off, then wandered back, and I tried to say How does one get a cab around here? Unfortunately, I said, How does one obtain a cab around here? This set them to laughing at me again and asking each other, I don't know Juan, how did you obtain yours? I obtained mine at a used car lot. I walked off disgustedly and caught a bus. Bus was two pesos, and I came down right into the November 20th Revolution parade. Chock full of military types marching mainly. There is an amazing aqueduct that crosses the road as you enter the city. It is one of those Roman-style ones that is off the ground about thirty feet, and has arches about 50 feet wide that carry water from the hills to the city. Not sure if it still works, but it is hundreds of years old and is pretty impressive that it is even standing. I think there was water in it though cause I could see water lilies in one part of it. Checked into the Hotel Zamora for 8 bucks a night. For lunch, I had carnitas, a succulent meat dish. The boil chunks of pork in hot oil. You buy it by weight, eat it with tortillas, totally amazing. I also had a chicharrone, fried up pig skin cracklings, amazing! I went to take in the sunset by the cathedral, supposedly the best in Mexico. As I sat there, kids were staging an exhibition with trick bicycles and jumps, they'd all jump a certain distance, then put obstacles in front of the jump to see who would be the best of the best. By the time it was over, there were 15 bikes (the bikes of the previously vanquished) lined up in front of the jump. The winner cleared an impressive 15 feet or so. This guy sits down next to me and asks if the jumps we are watching are easy? I think he is pulling my leg, but no, he's serious. After awhile of chatting, he tells me he is the mechanic for the clock tower, and would I like to see it? Holy shit yes, I just need to meet him back there in a couple of hours when the church is open. He is late when I return, I think he is pulling my leg again, and am a bit paranoid that he is trying to pull something on me. But he does show up, oops, darn, I forgot my keys, would you accompany me along this dark, scary looking street so I can get my keys and we can chat? Uh.....I think I'll wait right here. Come on (this is all in Spanish), so we can chat. Uh....I'll read my book and wait for you. Fifteen minutes later he is back and yes indeed, he does have the keys.
I offer to buy Hector a beer, and we end up in this cantina called the Taverna, way back down a side street. The bartenders, 17 and 19 years old, have a guitar and they start singing away. Pretty soon they are passing me the guitar and teach me a Mexican romantic ballad called Mi Tesoro, Nada me importa, quando me besas, de todo me olvido.... My Treasure. Nothing matters to me, when you kiss me, I forget everything.... Incredibly memorable night. They charged me only 7 bucks for the 10 beers that Hector and I drank. They also taught me how to hit on Mexican girls. Buenas Dias won't cut it. You have to hit them over the head with some serious cheesy lines. Stuff about angels and the heavens and god and how she, the woman of your dreams in her infinite beauty and majesty, relates to this. Good to know boys. I stored that thought away for future reference :)
By Thursday, I had seen about all there was to see of Zacatecas. Had met some nice people, good conversations and stuff. One of particular interest was this nice girl who was a chemistry student who couldn't for the life of her understand why I would want to be away from my family for so long, I tried for about 10 minutes, but I just gave up and said I can't explain it (read = if you don't feel it by now you never will). She was really sweet to me though, and i enjoyed chatting with her. I was getting a bit restless though, and it dawned on me why. I was itching to have a guitar, and there was one place where I knew I had to go to buy one.....Mexico's Mecca of Guitars, Jerusalem of the G Chord, Istanbul of the 12 Bar Blues, PARACHO!!! Yes, that's right, a little town up in the mountains of Michoacan where its 15,000 residents have fed, clothed, and sheltered their families for hundreds of years on the proceeds of lutherie. I was fiending to play, a core part of me was missing composing, strumming away randomly...it is my therapy. OK, but first, I had hundreds of kilometers to go. Might as well take in some sights in between. Guanajuato
We had to change buses in Leon, and I thought I had parted with them for good as we caught different shuttles to Guanajuato, but there they were again as we climbed aboard the local bus to the town center. We all were Lonely Planet guide people, so we were kind of heading for the same hotels. I really liked them, we were laughing, all totally blown away by what we could see of the town. It was probably 8 pm when we arrived, and the town was one big party in the streets. Callejoneadas were taking off in different directions with drunken revelers following troubadors off through the streets in a big, wine-drinking, laughing, singing, moving party caravan. Guanajuato is built in an impossibly steep canyon, with amazing churches and architecture reflecting all of the precious metals they have pumped out of the place since the 1500's. We checked into the Casa Mexicana, I had my favorite room so far, a triangular room so tiny that they had to put the single bed in sideways, for the low, low price of 6 bucks a night. I went out on my own to eat, caught up with them later and Tanya suggested dancing. The more we wandered, the more it appeared to us that Guanajuato is something special, they seemed to think it had more character than Italy, I'll have to take their word for it. Amazing architecture, and very liberal, sexual feeling in the air. People were there to party. The first place we went, Capitolios, had no dancing that night, as a high school had rented out the dance floor, so we just sat in its jammed bar with a roomful of impossibly sexy Mexican suave looking folks. Stares are intense, probing, sensual here...definitely a different kind of town then I had been in so far. We switched it up and went to a place called the Guanajuato Grill. 2 bucks to get in, but you get two free drink tickets, not bad. Great DJ mix of basically dance tunes, mostly Mexican, with the occasional US hit thrown in. People were there to dance, I slammed a few shots, thought, hell, I only live once, never see these people again, create your own reality you stupid self-conscious moron, and jumped out there and started dancing. I had my eyes closed for about ten minutes, and when I started to open them, I had stumbled into the middle of a circle with risers going up the walls. I was dancing like the King of Flair, like the boy with Golden Hair, like I didn't care. People were cheering me on, these girls that were hot as hell were coming down into the circle and dancing with me, people wouldn't let me sit down, kept yelling at me to get back out there, buying me drinks. It was really good for the ego, I have always felt like a total loser when I am dancing, I have been crippled by this self-consciousness to the point of not being able to enjoy it in the past. I would just grab a pretty girl off the risers, look right into her eyes, put my hand on her cheek and whisper impossible compliments into her ear and watch her eyes light up as she smiled and said Gracias. Very fun night. My friends had left pretty early, and when they returned, it got a little weird for awhile. It seems one of the locals had taken a fancy to Tanya (neither she nor Sef speak Spanish), and he had been dancing with her and chatting her up, all the time she just smiled and said Si or whatever, not knowing what impression she was having on his bloated little ego. When Sef came back up and started dancing with her, the local grabbed Sef by the back of his head and tried to take him up into the bathroom to fight. Sef is one of the most peaceful guys you'd ever want to meet, he's from Canada for god's sake, so when he came back all freaked out, I just went for phase 2 plan of stroking the macho ego. Phase 1 is being extremely polite and positive, asking questions about what is the best brand of tequila in mexico and so forth. Phase 2 is the apology, I am making up these phases as I go. I approached Mr. Frowny, and all in Spanish said, Hey man, is everything cool, I'd like to buy you a drink. Is everything all good? Look, I don't know what happened, but my friend doesn't speak a word of Spanish, he doesn't understand the customs here, and I'm really sorry if he offended you. He's a good guy, and he didn't mean to bother you. Is everything cool? Now shake hands and make friends like good little boys. Aren't we all having fun now? Basically, it's not worth it to me to provoke a major incident, I just swallow all pride, kiss ass, and then everyone is happy. It is not uncommon for people to pull knives and guns down here in a show of chivalry, my basic philosophy is that is a load of horse shit, so whatever it takes to set things right and go back to having fun, that is what I do. It seemed to work, and we closed the bar.
I definitely stayed locked up for a few more hours. My friend Dirc from Holland and I then went out for some more dancing and stuff. It didn't quite have the same zing as the night before, but this one salsa club was fun. By Sunday, I had Paracho fever and wanted to get going. My colonial loop had been great, now, I was on my pilgrimage to the Mecca of Guitars, Paracho. |
Cab ride from the plaza in Aguascalientes was a painless 15 peso effort again. Cab fares are fixed in this town, so that takes the liberal self-tipping thing out of the equation when you agree to the fare and climb on board. Caught my bus for 10 dollars and was on board almost immediately. There was a lady smiling radiantly at me when I climbed on board. This was so different from the norm I had found in my stay in Aguascalientes that I blurted out, Do you speak English? But she didn't, not a word, she was just a nice Mexican lady who smiled. This was a good reminder to me that some people smile, some don't. It's that way the world over. Crappy old movie, someone got mad and made the driver turn it off, which I thought was funny. Then, 15 minutes later, the bus driver is pulling over, people are getting restless, why are we....aw shucks, it seems that the assistant bus driver had forgotten his lunch and someone was there to pass it off to him. Pretty nifty. Later, we stopped to pick up a guy who's car had broken down, giving him a lift into the following three towns, stopping each time so he could ask if there was a mechanic.
Up the ladder we go. I should say ladders. Up and up and ladder after ladder, darker, now lighter, now pitch black. He turns on a single glaring bulb, unlocks a box, and before my eyes is a 100 year old German time piece, about the size and looks of a lawn mower engine decked out with arms and pulleys and wires and stuff. Inside this other box is the pendulum. He pulls a wire, and the bells ring. I am blown away. We're not at the top, do you want to go higher? I am already getting vertigo, but out goes the single glaring bulb and we are off again...up and up and ladder, platform, another ladder. I cover my head as rocks and pigeon shit hit it as he opens another trap door. We�re looking down over a railing now, an open area directly under a bell, but we're not at the top. A few more picture of the sunset, then more ladders, now we're in darkness and pigeon shit is everywhere, two to four solid inches of the stuff, big pigeons, baby pigeons living and dead, eggs, smashed and being roosted upon. This is absolutely surreal. These ladders look older than Christopher Columbus' underwear. At the top, we stare silently and watch the pale orange afterglow of the sun set behind Cerro de Grillo. No words needed, just smiles.
The next few days were spent doing some touristy stuff, seeing museums, relaxing. Of special note was the Rafael Coronel Mask Museum. He was a local artist who collected over 2,000 ceremonial masks that are now housed in the ruins of a convent, amazing! Another thing I enjoyed was a cable car tram that runs to the top of Cerro de la Bufa, a large hill where Pancho Villa defeated the loyalist troops of Huerta to take the city around 1914. Great museum up there, I walked down, and couldn't imagine scrabbling along the steep slopes trying to blast away at someone. Also of note is the Mina de Eden, although it was a far cry from Garden of Eden. Indigenous people were used for hundreds of years as slaves to dig out gold, silver, and lead. At one point, 5 people were dying a day from silicosis, basically from breathing too much junk into their lungs. It has seven levels, but many are flooded. I asked the guide if that water down there that had flooded six levels and was now filled with pulverized lead and shit was the same stuff their drinking water came from. He looked at me blankly and said, all the water in here is stagnant and contained. Ummhummm, right buddy...as I could imagine it rising even now. Thank god for bottled water :) Another interesting note is that on the weekends, part of the mine is used as a disco. Sorry I missed that one.
I boarded the bus Friday morning to Guanajuato. Pretty uneventful except that I missed the early bus, so I waited for 3 hours, quietly chuckling as I finished off Confederacy of Dunces, an amazing read, thanks Chris and Norm for the recommendation. Saw two people who looked interesting, noted it, went back to reading. Then I saw them wandering outside, and lo and behold, we were on the same bus. Sef, very nice guy from Canada, and Tanya, from the German-speaking part of Switzerland.
Saturday, I went and saw the mummy museum. These poor people who's relatives weren't rich enough to pay rent for grave space once the graveyard started to fill up got rudely removed from their resting place. The specific combination of minerals and water content in the soil makes many people buried here into mummies. Apparently, Mexicans are overly-fascinated with death, but from my observations, they were taking it in just about the same as I was...laughing at some of the gross expressions, lewdy 200 year old mummy pubic hair, just kind of tripping on the whole thing. I thought it was ridiculous, gross, amazing, funny, sad that these poor people had been dug up and placed here to make money. Some of the expressions were bizarre. That night, was walking around the plaza and some girls tried to get me to go to a band with them. They were clever, funny, cute, they were trying to sell a watch first that I'm assuming was stolen. OK, great, how old are you by the way? Oh, 16, but it doesn't matter here in Mexico. Uh, I have to go back to my motel. Why? Uh, my friend is there, we had plans. Invite your friend along, there are two of us. (Subtext: Uh, I don't want to spend the rest of my life behind bars here, be seeing you...never.) Uh, I'll go back and check, if I'm not back in 15 minutes, go without me.