Travel day today. We woke up around 7 and I finally got to run in Chapultepec Park. Nice to run in there after not getting in Monday. Brick roads were meh, but the scenery is nice enough and no worry of traffic. Theres two sides to the park that are split by a highway. I thought the transition between the two would be obvious enough, but it was not. Ended up on a circuitous route on the way there, but found the ideal connection on the way back. Elevation is still a killer though.
Ate the rest of our fruit up for breakfast along with some yogurt and granola before heading back out to the Autobus del Norte to catch a bus to Guanajuato. It took us forever to get out of the city heading north. Both because of the size of the city, but also the speed of the bus (obviously related). There was a never ending treadmill of concrete-made neighborhoods climbing up the hillside. Even 45 minutes after boarding the bus, the neighborhoods were more dense than all but a handful of those Minneapolis. Eventually though, the city faded away and we were left with scattered towns, a little agriculture, some pastures, and scraggly forests/arid grasslands in between. Hard to make an ecological comparison to the states. Maybe like the eastern foothills of the Rockies in New Mexico. There were definitely stretches of huge oak forests climbing up the hillside as well, but those seemed more the exception.
It took forever to get to Guanajuato. Partially because we left late, and partially because I do think we hit unexpected road work, but it was a solid 5.5 hours on the bus despite there being only one stop.
The bus station for Guanajuato is a bit out of town on top of the hills. We caught an Uber again and made town in less than 10 minutes. We drove the first short bit on top of the hill and then went through a tunnel and all of a sudden, the valley and city opened up beneath us. Kate had talked about the steepness of the hills quite a bit, but it's still another thing to experience in person. Again- hard to make a comparison, because it was definitely built at a time when the hill was the master and the people worked around, rather than the other way around. I would assume there are plenty of these towns in Switzerland or Italy, but none really in the U.S.
Our Airbnb was rather tricky to find initially because they also don't do as great with addresses here compared to Mexico City. We found it fairly quickly though and headed down a steep flight of stairs to get there. There's and awesome patio though overlooking the city. The place itself isn't as nice as the one in Mexico City, but still is great and will serve us well.
We grabbed dinner at a vegetarian Falafel place that Kate had been to while studying here. It was definitely refreshing to get something lighter after a lot of heavier fried meals the last few days (or none at all when I was sick). We then meandered the city center with Kate leading the way to different cool spots, the University, etc.
The city center is on a river bed that they presumably drained or rerouted somehow and is at the bottom of the hill. During colonial days, it spent time as one of the richest cities in Mexico and one of the largest producers of Silver in the world. You can see how there's still a lot of money in the town, even 400 years later and even though assuredly a handful of individuals were presumably retaining all that money.
The colored buildings and narrow, steep, winding streets are so cool to explore. It's also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Out of curiosity, I did a little research on these and apparently there are 1157 of them in the world. My rough math scrolling through the list is that I've now been to 31 of them. Barely scratching the surface, but more lucky than most, I would imagine.
The city center was also amazingly lively for a random Thursday night. Think a town's "days" in the U.S. and then block after block of that in the downtown area. Lots of shopping and restaurants with patios and large windows spilling out into the streets. There's also these singers that go around trying to lead a group of people around the city. According to Kate, they'll sing songs, then talk about folk-lore of the city and generally act boisterous to give even more energy to the night life.
Pretty great introduction into the city. Looking forward to a full day of it tomorrow.
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