Guanajuato to Sayulita

Here in Sayulita, Mexican population: 1500; gringo population: 500.  Clearly an exaggeration but there are so many white people here.  I know, I'm part of it (and one of the whitest).  But nowhere else in the trip, Puerto Vallarta, Guadalajara, Guanajuato, have I heard so much English or felt so spring break.  It's grown significantly in these nine years and now resembles a surf mecca similar to those in Costa Rica that I've visited.  Doesn't matter, the beach, the ocean are incredible.  It's a nice way to finish the trip, although I'm very glad it wasn't the whole trip.  Today is overcast so Jamie and I will probably set out to explore a beach north of the city.  The trip here from Guanajuato was, well, long.  The night bus ride was punctuated by screaming babies, often in a duet.  Kinked necks and cramped legs later, we boarded a public bus to Sayulita (the driver was kamikaze, according to Jamie).  Upon arrival we learned that our reservations had been canceled.  Hot and sweaty and exhausted two hours later, we found a place with one room vacancy.  Mmmm, beach time.





[written 01/29/10, unable to post due to internet connection]

Mexico!

My last day in Guanajuato.  I'm waiting around in a cafe with tenuous internet connection for the night bus back to the coast, to Sayulita, for the last part of the trip.  I love Mexico.  I've been here once before, in Sayulita in fact, about nine years ago for less than a week.  I've crossed over the border in San Diego/Tijuana and Nogales with my family for an afternoon.  That's all.  Why?  This wonderful country, so close to my own but absolutely dissimilar.  Jamie and I have spent four days here in Guanajuato, a city of callejones and colores vibrantes, exploring.  The city is in a bowl, creeping up the sides of the surrounding hills, colorful house stacked upon colorful house--colors, red, orange, yellow, blue green purple pink, as the only divider.  A city of Legos, built by some imaginative child in the hills of Mexico.  Every time we set out, we somehow complete a huge circle and end up back where we started even though we began climbing westward and didn't seem to turn the other way at any point.  Yesterday, Jamie and I adventured into the hills to find La Bufa, a shrine marked by a cross at the top of one of the peaks.  With vague information from the internet and vague directions from the tourist booth, it took us over an hour to find the trail.  The entire trip was mostly sketchy, with many-a "Uhh, this way?".  It was one of those hikes that only happens in Latin America.  Sweaty, incredible.

Today we went to the famed (infamous?) mummy museum.  So extremely creepy, I can't begin to say.  Desiccated bodies--men, women, children, amazingly preserved.  I've seen mummies in museums before, but they've been wrapped in cloth.  These were simply skin, bone, cloth, most were naked, some clothed.  The skin was so thin, delicate.  Their hands were like claws, their mouths contorted in what the living would perceive as pain.  There were babies, by far the most disturbing.  I now understand why there are mummy horror movies; I did not want to turn my back on some of them.  The museum was fascinating and (as Jamie pointed out) provided a momentary glimpse into Mexico's relationship with death, something we Americans can only try to understand.

I have that feeling again, where I've begun to fall in love with a city, and there's a small heartbreak when I leave.  San Sebastian, Sarajevo, Leon, Dublin, Guanajuato.  The trip is going too fast.  Already, too many "next times".  I must return.