Traveling Baker

(Photo by Julie Kim, copyright 2009)

Before Julie and I left for a quick trip to Central Mexico, our friend Rosa implored us, “You have to go to Guanajuato!” — describing how she broke out in tears upon seeing the rainbow of houses draped upon the mountainside. So we added an overnight stop to Guanajuato, the last on our five-day mini-tour. I can say without hesitation that the city has not disappointed. The panoramic view is phenomenal (“far and away, the most beautiful” in the whole country, one travel writer has put it), and it’s all accessible to Julie and me simply by opening the double doors to our small third-floor balcony. (The “Suite José Marti” at El Mesón de los Poetas downtown is well worth the 80 bucks or so a night.)

Guanajuato was a colonial mining center, which may help to explain the complicated series of underground traffic tunnels and the tangle of impossibly narrow streets. There are carved wooden doors, Spanish archways, courtyards, aging monuments to mining legends and revolutionary heroes. The main square is alive with mariachi musicians, assorted tourists, children playing, men hawking panchos, church bells clanging wildly, dogs curled up on the ground in the afternoon shade.

We could get lost here — I mean really lost. But still, it’s exciting to explore the hidden alleys with their stairs and slopes leading higher and higher up the hill, looping around old buildings (crumbling, but a controlled sort of crumbling) pocked with graffiti. We keep following the path as raindrops begin to patter on our shoulders, and the path twists again, veering just out of sight around more houses. I look at Julie — “Should we keep going?” “Yeah,” she replies with a smile and a tinge of adventure in her voice, “just a little farther up.”

(Photo by Julie Kim)

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We’re actually in Mexico for a destination wedding (Julianna and Michael’s lavish and fun hacienda fiesta held Saturday night, complete with eight-piece mariachi band, a separate mariachi trio, a tequila donkey, ice cream wagon and fireworks show). But this is vacation. San Miguel de Allende, our base camp for the previous four-fifths of the trip, was beautiful in its own right. It’s a diverse town known today for its artists, colonial architecture, shady plazas, quiet gardens and gringos (12% of the population). We had a fantastic dinner on a rooftop with sunset views of the towering 17th-century parroquia and surrounding mountains.

Julie has been going ga-ga over the guacamole, made to order with the freshest ingredients imaginable. I lost count at around six different orders of guac and chips at various locations.