Guadalajara & Guanajuato. City tour

Guanajuato. View from the campground.

Until now we did not hike or walk much cause little Lissy is still too young to walk long distances. Why is there no buggy for puppies? 😉
Today we are near Guadalajara, the capital of the state Jalisco. According to the travel guide, this is a lovely town so we wanna stroll around the center instead of driving past it.
While driving into town, we already recognize a lot of cars and people.

Traffic was very, very slow and there were people everywhere. As we reached the center it was even worse and hectic. We did not expect so many people here.

Aside from finding a parking space, it was also impossible to walk a 3 month old puppy here. She would have gone mad and gotten very afraid. Thus, unfortunately, we had to decide against a city tour and find the campground. We thought, that we might still see plenty of other beautiful cities.

The campsite was a) hard to find -we tried finding it for an hour- and b) kind of abandoned, untended and thus totally unattractive. After all, we did not have to pay for it because the office wasn’t open when we arrived in the afternoon or when we left the next morning.

Guadalajara.

Guadalajara.

We counted 9 people in the car. 😉

Alcohol also plays an important role on the road, too. 🙂

We were heading to Guanajuato, the capitol of the same named state. Supposedly, this is also an interesting town where we expected less commotion.
It is located in a narrow valley, which makes the streets of the city narrow and winding. Most are alleys that cars cannot pass through, and some are long sets of stairs up the mountainsides. We also have a story to tell about the narrow alleys…
Many of the city’s thoroughfares are partially or fully underground.
We camped at the municipal campsite, which is nothing more than a parking lot, and walked to the center. Lissy was not always happy because she could not snoop around on every street corner and had to walk a few steps – but she did well. When we wanted to make our way back it was already dark. The owner of a very cute little cafe told us not to go through the tunnel as his friend was almost robbed there last week. We should better take a taxi. Unfortunately, taxis are rare. Either none was passing by or was already full. We waited and waited, Lissy fell already asleep in my arms, as we finally caught one. The 5 minute ride was only 30 pesos = 1,60 EUR. For this price we were happy to take the taxi.

Now let me tell the story about our adventure being almost stuck in one of these narrow alleys:

We were looking for a laundry, but could not find it. I already got the address online but we could not find the street. That’s why Jan started the navigation program of Google Maps. After five minutes of driving we drove into an alley which was getting more and more narrow. (Of course, there was no sign that it gets even more narrow! ) After 600m, we were kind of stuck and thought that we could not get out of here. Jan folded the mirrors, I looked out of the window on the right side to tell him how much space there is. He checked the left side. Jan drove very slow and made it while I was already imagine how a crane needed to come to get us our 😉 On both sides we did not have more than 2cm… it was really lucky that we made it through. “Uff…Yippii we made it. I am soo happy!” I thought.
But No! The next hurdle followed directly. The alley got wider and cars parked on the side. One of them parked half on the road what meant we could not come through. After repeated honking nobody rushes to the parked car. “Super! And now? We can’t pass.” Again, I pictured as we had to wait for hours until the driver came back. Jan, however, got out of the car and checked the situation. On the right side, cars were parked and on the left was a very high sidewalk. “Why do we have a Landcruiser? ” Jan just drove up on the sidewalk and passed the parked car. People were watching and laughing 🙂
I wasn’t laughing at all. I only wanted get out of here quick. The alley got wider and again more narrow.I sweated.
The last hurdle was a step of a hotel. I looked straight out of the window to tell Jan if there was enough space as a guy just came out of the hotel and said in german: “Yeah. Go on there is enough space.”
I was so glad when we finally got back to the main road. Well, we did not find the laundry – maybe because we did not paid attention anymore- but I did not care about the laundry anymore.
Unfortunately we did not take any photos. We both had not thought to unpack the camera in this situation – what we now regret of course .

The cathedral in town.

Cathedral.

Guanajuato at night.

Guanajuato at night.

One of the nice colourful places in town.

Another church…

A nice café with yummy Cappuccino!

Whoever that is, we take a picture.

Narrow alleys..

…and colourful houses.

Although we liked the cute city and could spend some more days here, we have to leave tomorrow. We are invited to San Miguel de Allende for Christmas which is already tomorrow. Some Overlanders are going to meet there and celebrate together. Joachim, the administrator of a nice and useful Panamerican webpage invited us, too.
At least it’s not far away, only 100km to go.