More from the state of Guanajuato

Last Wednesday I had to return to Queretaro for a group reconnect meeting (basically to make sure things are ok alter the first 4-6 months). It was nice to be back in Queretaro and amazing to see how clean it is compared to Puebla. Plus I can never pass up a stop at my favorite food stall in the market, which might have the cheapest beer in all of Mexico (25 pesos for a liter of indio) and the best alambres (chorizo, bistek, onions, cheese, and peppers all mixed on a grill and served with tortillas and salsa).

So for this past weekend’s travel I was pretty much in the state of Guanajuato. From Queretaro I went north to San Jose Iturida and then to a small town called Mineral los Pozos. This is a tiny town that back in the 1850’s was well populated due to its prosperous mines. However, when the mining creased, so did the town’s population. In recent years there has been a small push to begin developing the town as a tourist attraction (addition of 2 upscale hotels), but for now it remains relatively small and a little isolated (last bus to anywhere leaves at 7). You walk down the main streets and they are abandoned, decaying stone buildings all over. We no problems just wandering into them. There are also some old churches that have been overtaken by cactus and dust. On the main plaza in town we wandered into what might have been the only bar in town, complete with swinging doors, walls adorned with black and white photos of the Mexican Revolution, and a bartender with a long white beard, cowboy hat, and a vest make out of snake skin and leather.

From Pozos we caught the bus to San Luis de la Paz, a cute little town with a nice colonial center, and surprise surprise a couple pretty churches. The next morning we back tracked south towards Queretaro and then headed west towards Celaya and finally Valle de Santiago. After a little too much time on a 3^rd class bus (think dirt road and no suspension for 1hr 45 min), we finally arrived in Valle, home of the 7 luminarias, or 7 volcanic craters. One of the craters is just on the edge of town and has houses built up the side of it. After a quick stop at the craters it was time to head back on the 1.45 hr bus trip to Celaya followed by an hour to Queretaro followed by 3 hours to Mexico City and then 2 hours back to Puebla.

Volcanic Craters

This weekend we had to host a new vol who is currently in training so Saturday morning we just wondered around Puebla and then Sunday headed to Tlaxcala, Tlaxcala to spend the night. There is a hiking club in Tlaxcala that one of the other vols is active in so, at 7 am we all met at the bus station and headed out to the north eastern part of the state to a place called Hoyanca, which is basically a giant crater. Someone kept telling us it was formed by a meteor that crashed, but after some investigation when we got back, they think the big hole is actually the result of volcanic activity. Eitherway, we got to climb down into it and then back out, which was pretty fun. Then we spent the rest of the day either on buses or back in Tlaxcala in the historic center.

HOYANCA:




TLAXCALA:

Camping in El Chico

To begin, here's a map that has some of the places from the last couple entries.....

Off on another weekend trip, this weekend I went back to the state of Hidalgo to the national park “El Chico”. One of the other vols works in the park, so Janet, Corey (the vol that works there), and I met up early on Sat morning in Pachuca to head to El Chico for some hiking before some other vols in the area came in for a regional meeting that we were having that night. After dropping our stuff at the camp site, we went on a guided hike with one of the people that works in the park down into a canyon and then up along the ridge. El Chico is at about 9,000 feet and has some amazing rock formations and waterfalls. The one downfall of the park is the lack of marked trails (which is why it was great that Corey´s coworker took us around, allowing us to see a lot more things than if we had just wandered around solo).

By the time we finished the hike and headed back to the campground, the rest of the group had arrived and the temps were starting to drop. Last week had been extremely hot and we’re still in the middle of the dry season, but that definitely changed on Saturday night. We walked into a near by town (Mineral del Chico), a cute old mining town that covers about 5 blocks, for dinner and the fog and clouds began to roll in. Once back at the camp site we were able to get a camp fire going for a while, but then it started to pour, luckily my tent managed to stay completely dry.
Unfortunately it never really stopped raining. So the next morning the forest and everything was wrapped in a dense fog that kept getting thicker and wetter as the day went on. While the rest of the group headed home, Janet and I decided to go to another mining town called Real del Monte.

We took a combi from the park and got dropped off at an intersection in the highway to wait for another combi or a bus. Normally this would have been pretty easy, however with the fog as bad as it was, we were a little hard to spot on the side of the road. We finally did get a bus to stop and arrived at Real del Monte. As I said this was another small mining town and was actually founded by Cornish miners, so there is a fair amount of British influence in some of the streets and the food in the area. In stark contrast to the blazing 90s we´d seen the week before, it was a wet and chilly 45 or 50, making coffee and kaluha an essential accessory for exploring the town and for the wait again on the side of the highway to flag down a bus.

Trying to catch a combi in the fog and rain

More Ruins

This weekend I did 2 day trips from Puebla. Saturday I went to the state of Tlaxcala, just north of Puebla to go to 2 sets of ruins (Cacaxtla and Xochitecatl). One is your average ruins, but the other is supposed to have great colorful murals (Cacaxtla). Unfortunately after getting there I was informed that Cacaxtla it was closed for excavation. At least I wasn’t the only one there who didn’t know. So I ended up only going to Xochitecatl. There was a 2 km path from the one to the other which looked legit, until you got to the other ruins and realized you were exactly on the opposite side of the entrance and now had to walk around the whole fence (not bad expect there were a ton of cactus and I think that might have stretched the limitations of my flip flops).

Sunday went to some fairly unknown ruins (Cantona) given their size and importance, basically on the Veracruz-Puebla border. These ones are over 12 sq km and is the best organized city in all of Mexico, but few people actually know about it or visit it. So I took a bus to Oriental, Puebla, where I was supposed to be able to catch a colectivo to another town and then from there another colectivo to the ruins. However, for some reason, unknown to me and most of the other people in the town, the colectivos were not running that Sunday. Good news is that in Mexico its not too hard to convince taxi drivers take you to obsure places, including taking me to ruins that are 35 minutes away, leaving me there for 3 hours and then coming back to pick me up. Wasn’t sure if I was actually going to see the driver for the return trip, but he showed up. I think that Cantona may now be my new favorite set of ruins in Mexico. It is an immense network of streets, ball courts, and pyramids with a great scenery of mountains and cactus, many of which are blooming now. Plus as an added bonus with the time change Sunday, the whole place was virtually empty.

On the way back to Puebla the taxi driver recommended that I make a detour to the state of Tlaxcala on the bus ride back to Puebla and visit the town of Huamantla, one of the towns at the base of the volcano Maliche (a little too much smog for any good views though). It was a cute little colonial town with some nice churches and a very strange puppet museum.

Metztitlan, Hidalgo

Friday, for the first time, I got to actually leave the city of Puebla for work. Unfortunately it wasn’t for field work, but I did get to go to a ceremony to commemorate the start of a reforestation project sponsored by Volkswagon in the national park for Izta-Popo (two volcanoes, one dormant and one still active). So we got to spend the morning eating breakfast, listing to speeches, and some ceremonial tree planting with the 2 volcanoes as back drops.

Friday night I went to a small town (5,000 people) called Metztitlán which is in the state of Hidalgo to visit Janet, another person in my group. She has the most rural site of anyone in our group. Not really a whole lot going on in Metztitlán, but it is in the Barranca de Metztitlán which is a biosphere reserve (basically a natural protected area) and is gorgeous. The town is set in a valley so it is surrounded by mountains dotted with cactus. There is also a pretty convent and church (as there are in most Mexican towns). The weekend was fairly low-key, with a lot of catching up, some walks around town and up into the roads that lead out of the valley, sampling of some handmade tortillas, and catching a Metztitlán sunset from the roof of Janet’s apartment.

I live in the city, which most people would assume is pretty noisy, and while we do have the gas trucks and traffic in the mornings, it does not even begin to compare to the racket from the roosters (for cock fighting) next door to Janet’s apartment that begins at 3am every morning and never quiets down. Guess that is about it for now, Thursday marked the 6 month mark for the Mexican vacation.