Today was the first official day we were allowed to leave the city limits of Queretaro without our host families so some of us decided to head to a nearby town called Bernal. This town is home to the world’s third largest monolith (or in plain English….a really big rock…Ayers rock in Australia is the 2nd largest). You can hike up to the midway point of the rock and there’s a cute colonial town down below. Since we wanted to hike before it got too hot, we decided to take a taxi there and the bus on the way back since the bus is much slower. We’re in the taxi and we see that we’re coming up on a prison and make a joke that we’re going to leave someone there. Then the taxi driver stops and pulls over in front of the prison and says that we’re here. We thought he was joking at first, but finally figured out that he had misheard us and thought we said “penal” (which means prison in Spanish), not Bernal. We got that all straightened out, but then he wanted to change cars and take a better one to Bernal so we met up with someone he knew, changed cars and finally got to Bernal. We hiked up to the midway point which is about 7800 ft (Queretaro is at about 6300). I’m still not quite adjusted to the altitude, but that’d better happen fast because I just signed up to run a 12.5km race next Sunday through downtown Queretaro, so we’ll see how that goes. Nothing too much more to report from Bernal. The town is known for their napole (cactus) gorditas and goat milk candies, which we sampled and later headed back home via the bus. We’re leaving tomorrow for a week in the Sierra Gorda region, a mountainous region in the northwestern part of the state of Queretaro.
