October 2021

A revived ghost town. Atmospheric. Photogenic. The next San Miguel de Allende. These were the words I came across as I was looking into Mineral de Pozos (population: 3,500) as a possible overnight excursion spot from Guanajuato. Why not check it out, I thought. So when 2 friends visited us from Miami during our 17 day stay in GTO, we hired a driver/guide (5000 pesos/$250 for 2 days) and drove northeast for an hour to Dolores Hidalgo for a quick visit, then, went on for another hour to arrive in Mineral de Pozos, or Pozos in short. (map)

This Chicago Tribune article about Pozos written in 2014 mentions 3 hotels in town. By the time we got there in October 2021, there were over a dozen hotels to choose from hotel booking sites. Most of them were highly rated, thus, it was hard to pick one for us. We ended up at Hotel Secreto, a 3 room sanctuary right on the main square. It was like someone’s dream house: comfortable and spacious rooms artfully decorated and surrounded by a beautiful garden.

The manager at Secreto Hotel recommended the restaurant at Hotel Posada de Las Minas for dinner. Great choice! Even if you don’t eat there, it’d be worthwhile to peek in.

Our $70 room at Secreto came with a sumptuous breakfast in the garden: freshly squeezed juices, fruit bowls, wonderful Mexican pastries, great coffee and tea. And a made-to-order hot breakfast followed. Simply delicious!

After breakfast the manager helped us with hiring a cab driver to take us around (US$ 10/hour). We ended up keeping the cab for under two hours. One point in history (19th Century) a bustling silver and gold mining town with as many as 300 to 500 mines and 70,000 residents, the mining declined by 1910’s and the population of Pozos died down to 200 by 1950’s. We could not leave this town without seeing some of the old mines, we thought. 

Our driver was eager to show us as many old mines as possible, but, for us, seeing a couple gave us a pretty good idea and didn’t need to see more. Somehow these ruins were quite photogenic. There’s probably a lot of stories to be told. too. We were satisfied, though, just to feel that without actually hearing any.

Whether one likes the smell of lavender or not, a field of light purple flowers is a sight to behold. We don’t know why or how this lavender farm happens to exist at this very spot, but, we enjoyed the visit. There was a restaurant attached to it, but it was not open. We did get some lavender oil for gifts at the store on site.

So was it a revived ghost town? Yes, it was closer to a “revived” than “ghost” town. Atmospheric? Quite so. Photogenic? I think so. The next San Miguel de Allende? Well. SMA is a town of 170,000+, and, it started its love affair with the expats (or was it the other way around?) in the 1950’s. It has much better infrastructure. But Pozos is being revived by people with artistic sensibility and healthy understanding of the importance of preserving local culture. They can also learn from SMA and copy many of the good parts. Is this a place I would like to visit again and again or live in? Probably not. That doesn’t mean there won’t be others who would. We certainly were glad to have made the trip to this sleepy little town middle of nowhere.

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.

How we spent a month in GTO

Itinerary Suggestion

October 2021

We spent another day and night in San Miguel de Allende with 6 friends as part of an outing from Guanajuato. This time we decided to do a guided tour so that we would learn a bit more about the town. I booked a private tour for our group organized by a non profit outfit, Historical Walking Tour of San Miguel de Allende, benefiting an organization that provides free health care to local children. It cost $20/person for the tour, which was not cheap for Mexico, but it was for a good cause.

We met our guide in front of the Allende Historical Museum, and he took us around town armed with good historical background stories. We could not go inside of the buildings because of the pandemic, but we still learned a lot from the tour.

We stayed at an Airbnb house which had a rooftop with a view to kill for! (pictured above) It was a very artsy, spacious place with enough room for our group of 8. It cost about $25/person with 8 people sharing with the pandemic discount.

We walked up the street looking for breakfast the next morning & stumbled upon Petit Four, a wonderful bakery cafe. The morning grew brighter just from being in this beautiful setting. The food was wonderful, too.

We all needed to do some souvenir shopping, so we walked over to an artisan market. We began finding things for our kids and grand kids, but, in the end, we decided getting something for ourselves was fun, too.

The best experience of being in SMA is the slow, aimless walking around. You never know what you will encounter or where you will end up for lunch, in this case, Los Milagros. If it were in the U.S., I would’ve said we had found an interesting restaurant with great food. But, being in SMA, I can just say it was a low key local restaurant with solid food.

We had arranged a van for 8 people ($126) through gettransfer.com, but the provider sent us two sedans instead. It didn’t matter, and we got back to Guanajuato in under 90 minutes.

• San Miguel de Allende main article
• Queretaro & Tequisquiapan