I left Zacatecas and headed on to another old Silver town called Guanajuato.
Im getting towards the middle of Mexico now where there are lots of towns and lots of freeways, and lots of traffic. And that makes for more challenging driving conditions.
There is so much more traffic, and it is moving very quickly on the highways. There are also toll highways and free ones, and they take the same routes but as you would expect the free ones go through the small towns with lots of speed bumps and slow trucks and busses etc. whereas the toll highways avoid these things. Im trying to stick to the free ones ... Not because of cost but because you simply get to see so much less "stuff"... Like in one small town today, there were two guys in a pickup who were "holding up" two other guys in a sedan...
I dont know what was happening but I didnt see any official badges or markings whatsoever, so I assume it was all "private bussiness", but as I rode past in traffic (like, just a metre or two away), The two "protagonists" had stopped their pickup in the street and moved to being just behind the windows on opposite sides of the sedan. They each had one hand on their hips and were very seriously getting the passenger out of the sedan. As I rode slowly by, I got a very close look at that hand on the hip and it was on the grip of a 9mm pistol in his waiste belt (no holster at all) and the hammer was most definitely cocked!
Like I said I dont know what it was about, but Id really rather not have been riding by at just that moment :)) ... But nothing happened and I went on with navigating the town traffic.
As I was saying, the traffic situation was more "involving" than further North. Ive been getting very good at the "automatic driving" thing, but now its different. There are all sorts of "active decissions" that I have to be making (ie using my concious mind rather than my instinctive mind), and that means I dont get into "the zone" and its more tiring.
I then rode through the rather large city of Leon and was very happy about having my GPS. It really helps in this sort of situation. Its a large city with many arterial roads and finding the one I want to be on to get out the other side of the city and headed in the right direction is quite challenging.
Now the GPS basic road map for this (and all others) city is extremely basic. Its also often inacurate by a couple of hundred metres, so even using the GPS I have very limitid information.
But its enough... I can head in the right direction and I kinda know when Im on "roughly" the right road. Its very effective! Instead of having to stop and ask directions a half dozen times, I can just ride on and maybe just ask once when I think I am on the right road.
But, an hour or so after that I arrived in Guanujuato and one of its "claims to fame" is that it has quite a few "underground roads"!
And they are not joking either... There are lots of them... and they are not short tunnels either, They go for many kilometers ... and they have intersections and entrys and exits all underground, and the traffic is thick and quite fast on all of them...
The town is built on some very steep hills and ravines so the roads are all very serpentine and you have no idea where a road will take you when you get on it. I have no idea why they decided to "add to" the traffic experience in this town (I think they did it many decades ago though), but it is what it is!
Just an hour before, I breezed through a complex city road system with the GPS, but guess what happens in a tunnel!.... yep... No info at all!... Im left flying blind ... but Ive had plenty of experience at this too, so no worries :)
You just gotta keep moving with the traffic and taking wild guesses as to what a given road sign means or if that "destination" is anywhere that you might want to get to...
It was all quite amusing :)))
I spent about half an hour on a "Serendipitous tour" of the town and its traffic, before I decided Id better just stop and get some help... But as luck would have it, when I pulled to the side at a spot that looked like it was in the "historic" part of town, I spotted a "Hostal" sign... So I went to see if they had a room.... But, they didnt (being "full"apparently is another "claim to fame" for this townl)... so I asked them where else I might try, and they said try going this way... So I did, and there was room at the next place I tried (just a few doors away), and so I just rode my bike up onto the pavement about 50m from where Id stopped, and all my problems were solved :)))
Guanujuato is a VERY touristy town. I went for a walk to see what was happening, and it seems that EVERYTHING is happening! There are tens of thousands of tourists in town (mostly Domestic tourists though). There is a three week long festival going on here with all sorts of street entertainment, and concerts (which are all totally free by the way); And thats on top of the usual "historic, cultural tourist city"... Actually, the whole city is a UNESCO world heritage site... Yep, "everything" was going on.
So, I wandered around and looked at stuff, and had a bite to eat - "street meat"... My favourite :)
Then I just happened upon a concert setting that was about to get started and so I just went in with the crowd and sat down amongst them and after about 20min, a Latin bad started playing Latin pop music... I dont know who the guy was, but he was definitely "BIG". The music videos projected while they were playing were definitely big budget affairs (Id guess at hundreds of thousands of dollars worth in the making), and the crowd sure seemed to like him. I gather he was Cuban and roughly equivelent to the Cuban version of Ricky Martin!
Anyway, by half way through the show, a good portion of the crowd were up and dancing ¨with gusto!¨...
Have you ever seen a thousands strong Latin crowd dancing impromptue salsa and mirenge ( and anything else that lets them wiggle those georgeous hips ;) ) while standing "en mass" on bolt together scafolding grand stands at night with a slight mist of rain falling and very gusty winds blowing!... Its a VERY strong mix of inspiring, amazing, terrifying, and fun! Old, young, beautiful, or otherwise... They were all up, and pretty soon, so was I :))... And as most of you probably know, I really dont find it easy to get up and dance usually!
But the scaffolding held, and nobody got hurt, and the dancing warmed everyone up... and eventually the show ended.
After that I headed home, but like I said, the roads are really curvey and it was night and Id pretty much forgotten where home was, or even what it looked like... I carried on walking in a random direction that I hoped was about right.
Yep, after a bit I started to recognize things... And then I decided to stop in a bar that had pleasant sounds eminating from it on the way home, and there was more live music but it was more mellow. I had about three beers and didnt say a word to anyone, just sat and soaked up the ambiance... very different from the dancing experience of minutes before :)
... and then I walked on and found home... My motorbike standing out the front (hasnt been stolen yet... nice!) was the give away :)
So then I went to bed...
Dormintory space was all they had available. I usually try to avoid this option because someone always snores! But this time, there was no one else in the room!??
But true to form, five minutes after I put my head down, a bunch of rowdy young Mexicans came into the room wanting to keep partying!
But they were nice enough about it and invited me to join them :)
... and what the hell...
So, I got up and joined them... and that led to more beers... and the drinks ran out... so that lead to going to get more... and that led to a rowdy group of young Mexicans and one foreigner standing in the way of traffic while toting a box of assorted alcahol and mixers etc... and that led to the police car (three cars back in the traffic line) deciding to get involved... and that led to the rowdy group of young Mexicans and one foreigner no longer having the alcohol... and, undetered, that led to another visit to the liquor store... but they were now closed... so that led to having to buy more beers instead at a different little shop... and that led to smoking and drinking and a bunch of young Mexicans in the dorm who just decided to sleep where they lay... and that led to someone vomiting very noisily in the "not so wee hours" of the morning... and that all led to "a good time" being had by all, but not much sleep for me......
And so now its a new day.
And this has all happend in the last 24 hours, with not more than about a couple of dozen words in English, despite my Spanish still being really bad.
So, Im kinda feeling like a "stranger in a strange land" and its all been a little surreal ... in a good but very "other worldly", and "disconnected" sort of way.
I wonder what will happen tomorrow?
