Guanajuato, well now this is just lovely.

Lucha Libra masks
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Arrived well rested off the bus from Guadalajara, and piled out all our bags (well, most of them are mine).  After a slight panic from Mike, who left his hat and glasses on the bus, we were in a taxi on the way to our hostel.  Guanajuato is so pretty, we spent the taxi ride admiring the coloured houses and narrow cobbled streets.  It's just gorgeous.

We dropped our stuff off in our room, and headed into the town.  We just wandered around, looking at numerous fabulous buildings, from cathedrals to theatres to town halls.  The town in at a pretty high altitude, and continues up into the mountains, so is made up of narrow, winding sloped streets.  I loved it straight away.  We carried on through the town, and through some market stalls.  Some of the food was questionable, but Rick tried a sweetcorn/cream/chilli powder combo, which was unusual, but quite nice.

Views from the top of the hill
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We stopped off on the way back for a drink and some food, where we could sit outside and watch the town go by.  Guanajuato is much more popular with tourists than Guadalajara was.  The locals seem more westernised, and there are a lot more white people to be seen wandering around.  Even the shops are more like home, with things like Converse and Jean shops in the main street.

We walked back up to the hostel, and got chatting to the people working here.  We sat at the bar for a bit, then Nikki and I got stuck into our blogs and emails.  The boys ended up going out to a bar, but we headed to bed.

Coloured buildings of Guanajuato
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The next day I got up early and got back on the computer.  The boys were a bit slow about moving!  Eventually we headed out, with the intention of going to the Monumento al Pipila, which is a statue right on top of a hill and gave a great view of Guanajuato, and the Museo de las Mummias, which, as the name suggests, is a mummy museum.  I had read that the mummy musuem was a bit morbid, but the boys seemed pretty keen.  I had read that we needed to get a bus there, but didn't know where to get the bus from.  It turns out that bus stops are surplus to requirements - when you want to get on a bus, you wave a the driver in the street, then as he 'stops', you jump on.  Cool.  The museum was right up the top of a hill, and I'm pretty sure these buses were not built for these hills, especially not with the number of people on it.  It's easy saying it's a different company that does the town buses to the long distance ones.

It's really pretty!
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We hopped off the bus, and wandered up the hill toward the museum.  We called into a pretty weird graveyard, and that's when the thunder and lightening started.  It was like something out of the Omen, and may be a clip in the third film of my horror trilogy.  We headed over to the museum, and within seconds of walking through the entrance, the heavens opened.  This is not the first time this has happened, I hope we don't run out of luck any time soon.  The rain was super heavy, and at one stage I thought a roll of thunder was just maybe the sky breaking in two, it was that loud.

Still pretty
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As for the museum itself, well, that was pretty morbid alright.  The first room was just really old photos of people and their babies.  Nothing weird about that, except photos of people in that era always seem a bit creepy.  The faces are really weird.  We have one at home of my great great grandmother or something like that, it's properly freaky.  Anyways, these photos didn't seem any more creepy than usual, until we realised that all the babies in the photos were dead.  Seriously, these people were posing with their dead babies.  Mexicans in general seem to have a strong attachment to their dead, and you can see the dressed up skeletons in all the tourist shops.  But this museum is just not nice.  After the photo room, the rest of the exhibit was glass case upon glass case of bodies.  What happened was that some class of burial tax was introduced, and the bodies belonging to families who couldn´t afford to pay were exhumed. The soil the had been in was highly preservative, so you can still make out the fine detail of eyebrows, hairs and toenails.  It's quite discomforting to see men, women (some of whom were pregnant, as can clearly be seen), children and even foetuses displayed in this way.  Nikki and I stopped looking after a while, and just walked straight though.

University of Guanajuato
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We had a bit of a wait till the rain subsided, then we made a run for it.  Mike and I managed to jump on a bus heading back into town.  These things are so nuts.  There was a diversion in town, and we ended up what could only be described as a flooded clay quarry on the detour.  It was quite the experience!  We got off in town, and headed back to the hostel, picking up some lunch on the way.  Our bus must have taken quite a detour, because when we got back, Rick and Nikki were already there, having walked back and stopped for pizza on the way.  We spent a while on the computer, then headed out for food.

With some guys from our hostel
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Rick and Mike had met a guy called George the previous night, who had told them that the restaurant he worked at did really good food, and that he would sort us out with some free drinks if we went there.  We went there, and it turned out to be a really cute restaurant on the hill, with really pretty views.  George wasn´t there when we got there, so no free drink, but the food was amazing, and fairly cheap too.

After that, we went to a bar round the corner to play some pool, and stayed there for a few hours.  In the end there was quite a crowd, and I spent quite a while listening to George and Brad, a texan guy who we met who turned out to be a friend of George´s, discuss Teotehuacan and Chicheniza, all in Spanish.  It was nice to be able to understand a few words here and there!  I also spent a while talking to Ricardo from the hostel.  He apparently teaches Spanish, and was very patient, by the end I was having an actual conversation in Spanish!  Nothing too complicated mind you, but I was pretty happy with it!!

We all ended up buying some beer and heading back to the hostel, where we sat up chatting till about 5am.

The next morning, I got up around 11, and headed into the town to buy some food.  I had a little wander round, and then found the supermarket.  The plan was to buy some veg and cook some lunch, in the hope of enticing the others out of bed.  I failed miserably however, since the veg didn´t look the best, so I opted for fruit, yoghurt, juice, eggs and bread instead.  I came back, and Rick got up, bobbed to the shop for some bacon, and came back and made breakfast.  Nikki arrived down, and some time later Mike also surfaced.  After several hours of waiting on them all to shower and get ready, Mike and Nikki went back to bed, so Rick and I headed out.

We headed up to the Monumento al Pipila on the funicular.  From the top of the hill, the views were amazing.  The city is a splash of houses of every colour of the rainbow, and then some.  The statue itself is not overly impressive, but it was worth heading up for the views alone.

We headed back to the hostel for the others, and while Nikki got ready, I shaved Rick´s head.  Mike decided that wandering round was not worth getting up for, so he stayed in bed.  Back in town, we walked around a little more (sounds boring, but it´s so easy to do in such a pretty place), and on the way back stopped in the theatre for a look.  The building itself is magnificent, with 4 huge pillars at the front, and a set of stone steps leading to the street.  The students from the uni tend to gather on the steps, adding a real buzz to the place.  Inside the theatre was nice, but quite small, and access was very restricted.

We headed back to the hostel, and sorted ourselves out for an early morning departure to Mexico City.

Mozzie bite status: Don´t think I got any here, which was good.

Click here for all the Guanajuato photos.