in Life, Mexico

Guanajuato Trip September 2009

Mexico celebrated Independence day last week (what, they celebrate Cinco de Mayo in September?), so we took advantage of the extra vacation day to make a trip to Guanajuato, Mexico, about four and a half hours north of Mexico City by bus.

Guanajuato is a colonial town that sprung up when silver was discovered there back in the 1500s. One guide book said that for about 200 years, 20% of all the silver mined in the world came from this town. Silver and other minerals are still mined today.

The town is very hilly. The main part of the downtown is at the base of a narrow valley, and is relatively flat, and then houses appear to be stacked on top of each other as they go up from the valley on either side. Most of the streets are actually alleyways between houses.

We stayed at Casa Zuniga, a very cool Bed and Breakfast run by an American, Rick, and his wife, Carmen. Very cool house that Rick built himself from the ground up over the past three years, with additional stories in the works.  The amazing part is that the house is only accessible by about 3 flights of stairs, so every bit of the building material had to be hand carried by Rick and his workers.  Lots of bricks!