October 2021
Guanajuato (GTO) is like our hometown in Mexico. After spending a month there in 2019, we could not go back in 2020 because of the pandemic. When we finally managed to go there in October of 2021, it felt like a home coming. We were happy to see most restaurants and shops were still there, and people were as friendly as usual.
This time our home for 17 days was up on a hillside near the baseball stadium. We had to climb up 40 steps of varying sizes to get to our place, and there was not a single tourist in sight. Neighborhood was filled with kids playing and old folks hanging out chatting with one another. It seemed like a bit of a challenge when we first tried to get to the place dragging our bags. Pretty soon, though, we could go up and down the hill in 5 minutes which gave us a perfect exercise each time.
There were bakeries and fruit & vegetable shops right down the hill. I loved the giant fresh juices ($2) from the little juice lady. I asked for 20 pesos ($1) worth of totillas at the totilla shop, and piping hot mountain of totillas came wrapped in a piece of parchment paper and a pink plastic bag.
Each year 200,000 people from around the globe descend upon Guanajuato, a city of 200,000, for the Cervantino Festival, known to be the biggest arts & cultural festival in Latin America. We never thought we could ever be part of it since we had heard that the city gets overwhelmed during this festival and it’s hard to find a place to stay. They had to skip it in 2020, but, they went ahead with it in 2021 with reduced activities.
The Festival started the day we arrived in town. The box office windows on either sidewall of the Juarez Theater served as the Festival ticket counters (online tickets were available through Ticketmaster with a fee), and we did get to go to one Guanajuato University Symphony concert in Juarez. Tickets sold out quickly for other events after that. Outdoor stages were set up at different locations in the city, and, free music and dance were performed. Our impression was the city was not overwhelmed by the festival goers in 2021.
Our home exchange host recommended a driver, Osvaldo, who also is a licensed tour guide. So we hired him for a walking tour of GTO when 6 friends visited us. He was so eager to tell us as much as he could about his beloved town, and, after 3 hours of history and much more, we said we’d had enough! We had no idea that the tunnels were sitting on top of the river that used to be so important to the mining industry that built the town. The cathedral was designed so that we could see the building in full view from any angle, Osvaldo told us. He could have gone on for a lot longer, and, he charged us just 1500 pesos ($75).
How do you get your drinking water in these hillside neighborhoods? These guys expertly drive these dolly carts along the narrow alleyways and yell, “AGUA!” If you need one, you just stick your head out and call him. He will bring the water in for you.
Another thing we love about this town: music and dance. A pandemic hadn’t killed that, we were relieved to find out.
We were sad to find out that our absolute favorite restaurant, Los Campos, was gone. Not because of the pandemic, we were told. A new restaurant took over the space, and a temporary paper sign was barely hanging on the wall to show the name of the restaurant. Some young people were working hard to make it work, it seemed, and the food was fine.
One of the two high end restaurants in town that we had not had a chance to try last time, Casa Mercedes, did not disappoint when our friends took us there on their last night in GTO. Rather surprisingly, though, their service was not as smooth as in most other top restaurants in GTO or in Mexico in general. Everything else was just excellent. Our feast came at under $25/person with drinks and desserts and tips.
We managed to get to the other one, Amatxi, before we left. We ended up eating and drinking more than we planned to because everything was so good. Impeccable service. We ended up spending around $30/person for the full course meal with a few cocktail drinks and tips.
Speaking of service, this is a curious place. We stopped here a few times, and they always said, “Manana! (tomorrow)” to our question of, “are you open?” It seemed they open whenever the chef-owner felt like it, and they almost didn’t care whether they had any customers. I had heard, though, they served great food at very reasonable prices. No menu, of course. The chef cooks whatever he wants to each day.
We went back to the Olga Costa and Jose Chavez Morado Museum and found out that their ashes lived in the plant pots in the courtyard of the museum where they used to live. How did we miss that last time!
We took 2 out of town trips this time: one 2 night trip to Queretaro, Tequisquiapan, and San Miguel de Allende, and another one an overnight trip to Dolores Hidalgo and Mineral de Pozos.
Small Wide World 
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