Trip Mileage - 15,750
Local Currency - Peso (10pesos = $1)
Temperature - about 70
Song defining this leg of the trip - Hundred Mile High City - Ocean Colour Scene (L, S, 2SB soundtrack)
leaving Santa Cruz was pretty hard for all of us. It was one of the nicest places most of us had been to in a long while. Heading back inland wasn't appealing at that moment. However, when we arrived in Guanajuato, all that changed. Guanajuato was a real neat little city, with roads made of stones and a lot of little alleyways.
Just a quick note to wish everyone a Merry Christmas!! I´ve been in Guanajuato for a couple days now, and we´ll leave tomorrow morning after having Christmas brunch. For anyone thinking about visiting a city in Mexico for a short trip, this place would be great. There is a lot to see in a small area, and just the layout of the city is magnificent - the whole city is built in to hillsides. Theres great food, and plenty of awesome hotels and bars, but yet not touristy at all. We went in to a cantina last night that was ¨men only¨, which is sort of common for this area. All these cantinas have saloon style doors, and no bathroom, just a trough in the corner a few feet from the bar. Interesting, yes. Sanitary, probably not.
I have been asking for running partners on this trip since the start, and although a lot of people seemed eager, I was only able to find one taker, a girl on the trip named Sarah. We set off through the streets of Guanajuato, finding hills and alleyways and neat little crevases. I like running while I'm travelling. It lets you see parts of a city you wouldnt otherwise see walking. I also got a real kick out of running with Sarah. Shes blonde, fair-skinned, and tall - 3 traits people in these parts rarely (if ever) see. The attention she attracts is comical. Once, as she was running ahead of me, 4 boys about 8 years old sitting on the sides of the alley bent in towards the center of the alley as she ran past, oblivious to the fact that I was barreling behind, and nearly kicked all 4 of them in the head. Thats the way it is running with her - I'm invisible. :)
Our first night in Guanajuato, we were all looking for a place to go out, and wound up in a neat little cantina - which is pretty much a 'mens bar'. A place for the local guys to hang out to get away from the women, I guess. :) A few girls from our group came, and as they were tourists, it was OK. Neat little bar, and it had a trough right in the corner of the bar to use as a bathroom. What a great idea. You only had to go 7 or 8 feet from your barstool. :)
The next day in Guanajuato was spent shopping for presents for our 'secret santa'. Late night we walked around the town watching the celebrations (for Christmas) and I thought how lucky we were to be touring this country at this time, seeing as they celebrate Christmas with such awesome festivities. We've hit just about every town on the night of their big celebration. At midnight, a few of us went to midnight mass to see a Mexican mass.
The next morning was Christmas, and it was strange to be in shorts and a t-shirt. We exchanged gifts and began driving to Josh's (our driver) Christmas surprise. We arrived at the surprise about 2 hours later (during which drive we had a massive bus party - Jason and I bought each other half a bottle of Tequila), which was an amazing hotspring called La Gruta. It was an amazing place to spend Christmas. There were several different pools, which fed in to one another, so you could hop from pool to pool depending on how hot you wanted it. The main spring was down a 100-foot tunnel made of rocks off one of the main pools, and opened in to a 40ft diameter room with very hot water, and a ceiling which had a spout letting the water in on one side. Late at night, I went in to this room alone, and it was amazingly quiet and calm and pitch dark, and you could drag your hands across the waters surface and hear the echoes. Very cool. There was another tunnel off of one of the main pools, which Casey and I swam down. This was not a rocked tunnel, but rather, it was just dug in to the dirt, and there were roots hanging down from the top of the tunnel which would drag over your head as you swam. We swam through it until we couldnt see any light from the end of the tunnel. It was actually rather creepy. Then, about 150-200 feet in, we found a hole in the side of the tunnel, evidenced by a small circle of light under the water. I decided to swim through. A bit scarry, not knowing how long it was, or even if it was wide enough, but I figured I could probably back out if I was running out of air. It ended up being short, and came out in a well. Not terribly exciting, so I swam back through and out. Later, we learned that that particular tunnel was off limits - lucky we got to go through when we did.