Guanajuato: Studentville

• Tweet

• Tweet

Day 36 – Tuesday 25th October 2005

After a night in the hostel (this didn’t rank as good one – see previous entry!) I woke up with 18 mosquito bites on my arms and back. To take my mind off the itching I wanted to get out and see why this city came recommended so highly by travellers and guidebooks alike, so after a quick cornflake breakfast, I hit the streets!

Although the hostel was pretty poor, it had a good location next to an alley with a very picturesque bridge and cafe. The reason Guanajuato is so popular soon became obvious to me. The streets are narrow, winding, cobbled, colonial, clean and colourful. Add all these ingredients into a bowl and you will have Guanajuato in all its glory. There is a massive student population of around 20,000, combined with another load of Americans who come down to brush up on their spanish at one of the many schools.

I had thought about studying in Guanajuato but the fact it is full of English speaking people leads me to believe I would be wasting my time as I would inevitably end up falling into a group and only speaking English, which kind of defeats the object. That coupled with the fact it is a university town where there are parites every night means it would be a double bad idea for me to have stayed in Guanajuato for more than few days. After ruminating on the possibilty I came to the conclusion I should stick to my original plan & study Spanish in a remote area of Guatemala, where there are no parties, few English speakers and the actual cost of tuition is half that of Guanajuato.

Fresh from making that decision I went to the top of the ravine in which the city lies. To get there, I paid $10 Pesos to use the new lift, the Funicular. It is a railway, but at an angle of about 60 degrees. The views from the summit were amazing once again. The sheer variety of colour and contrast made the town look almost like a model.

At the summit there is a monument to El Pipila, who in 1810 tied a stone tablet to his back and shielded by it, managed to set fire to a fortress where Spanish soldiers had been holed up for quite a time. The fire eventually smoked out the soldiers and allowed the revolutionary Hildago to take the fortress.

Some of Guanajuato’s streets are very narrow. None more so than the Callejon de Beso. Beso means kiss, and the alley got its name from a local legend, which claims a wealthy family once lived on this street. The daughter of the family fell in love with a lowly miner, but they were banned from seeing each other. In order to be able to carry on their romance, the miner rented a room across the alley from the wealthy family. The lovers were then able to exchange kisses from their respective balconies. That is, until they were discovered and met a tragic end.

By the time I’d seen all this it was late afternoon, so I sat in the park and read some more of my book. For dinner I had some of the best tacos yet. After that I utilised the best thing my hostel had to offer, two free beers in the evening!