El Bajío with Muriel & Don

When I was in Atlanta last November, a telephone visit with Muriel and Don Stauffer, close friends who lived in Belize in the Sixties, resulted in our meeting in Mexico this January. Seven years ago, we had traveled in the triangular area in the mountains north-west of Mexico City known as the Bajío, though at elevations between 5,500 and 6,700 feet it is “low” only in relationship to the city’s 7,500-foot elevation.

The Bajío encompasses some of the most charming old Colonial cities of the country. On our earlier trip, we visited Morelia, Uruapán, and Guadalajara; this time we went to the eastern part of the triangle.

 

We met in Cancún, the man-made resort at the tip of the Yucatán Peninsula. Apparently it was charming in the beginning, though Bucher and I found it easy to a void. Now it is literally miles of concrete malls and looming identical hotels. Admittedly, the sea and beach are beautiful; water activities are varied; obviously it appeals to thousands. Probably it is one of those places one wants to see because one has heard so much about it.

We had fun because we all were delighted to be back together, but my lasting opinion is that Cancún is a magnet only if one has an insatiable desire for a neon-printed tee shirt or a beach towel with wording in dubious taste.

 

After two days in Cancún, where the excitement of reunion, twilights together on private balconies, and sufficient fine food made up for the enameled atmosphere, we flew to Mexico City, rented a car and started our tour…

Slowly.

We spent about an hour and a half in fast and irascible traffic, trying to make our way across the city on through-ways under repair, whose route signs had been removed. Rush hour was well underway before we finally arrived on the other side and found our highway.

Keeping to the spirit of the day, we proceeded not to be able to find our hotel in San Juan del Río, though we traveled endless nighttime miles through nothingness before turning back. We had reservations at La Mansión Galindo; Don was incensed that the guide books showed the wrong location.

We returned to La Estancia de San Juan, a handsome hacienda-turned-hotel I had noticed on our way through San Juan. A telephone call to La Mansión revealed that they had never heard of us and were fully booked. Fortunately, we were able to get charming rooms at the Estancia. It was one of our luckiest mistakes.

The Estancia itself was a beautiful old place. Our rooms opened off either end of a small landing at the top of a private stone staircase. The dining room served delicious Mexican-style dinner and breakfast. I would love to return.

Unfortunately, Don had scheduled San Juan Del Río purely as a necessary overnight stop on our way to Querétaro. We did not realize it was a craft-and-gem center, or Muriel and I would have insisted on prowling the mercados.

 

A leisurely tour next day took us to Querétaro, where a combination of one-way streets, pedestrian malls, and manned barricades prevented our reaching our hotel for more than an hour. Mesón de Santa Rosa was worth it, however, when we finally arrived; it remains in memory as one of my favorite hotels anywhere. It is a lovely old mansion with multiple patios, lush with flowering shrubbery.

We had the entire second floor of one wing. Both rooms were enormous. Mine had beamed ceilings and a fireplace, plus couch and comfortable chairs in addition to two double beds. The bathroom was larger than a Paris hotel room. Doors in the dark wood paneling on each side led to separate cubicles for toilet, tub, and closets. The marble vanity across the end of the room had two wash basins with gold fittings and was topped by an immense gold-framed mirror.

From my room, I walked down an open veranda to a locked grill door leading to the Stauffer’s area. First was a private balcony with white wrought-iron table and chairs, overlooking one of the patios. A door led from that into a huge room similar to mine. It was January and bitter cold, but we forced ourselves to have Happy Hour on the private balcony so we could take advantage of it.

The Mesón formed one side of a large public plaza (called jardín, garden, in the Bajío). Broad steps at each end of the plaza led past shops and restaurants to a lower plaza with an old-fashioned wrought-iron bandstand. More broad steps led past the side of a cathedral, and more importantly, past the stands of craft vendors.

We loved Querétaro and spent a happy two days there exploring before proceeding to San Miguel de Allende.

 

Cobblestoned streets, high blank walls dripping bougainvillea, sudden lush jardines, hills, hills, hills…those are my memories of San Miguel. It is a thoroughly charming town.

Our hotel, Villa Jacaranda, was lovely. We were close to a delightful, woodsy park. There were beautiful shops.

San Miguel is something of an artists colony and home to generations of U.S. retirees. All-in-all, it was not the kind of place I went to Mexico to visit.

 

Guanajuato is charming and unusual. It is built in a deep ravine with the town sprawling up the surrounding mountains. Our hotel on one edge of the city had a panoramic view plus a closer view of nearby rooftops; I remember the drive into town as being at an angle close to the vertical.

The days were brilliantly sunny and warm but at night we nearly froze to death.

We stayed at the Parador de San Javier, a big old place whose rooms were charmingly “old Mexican.” We were almost the only guests. Muriel and Don had spent a night there on the earlier trip after I had returned to Belize. They were disappointed this visit to find that our rooms did not have fireplaces. When we arrived, Muriel was hurrying to return to paint a picturesque group of little houses she had seen on the way into town and I wanted to try to call Alex; it was only when we got together after sundown that we realized how cold it was.

I was delegated to call the desk to ask if the hotel had heat. I was told that it did not but, within moments, a valet arrived at the door with small electric heaters for each of our rooms. Don quickly discovered that theirs cycled for exactly eight seconds, then relaxed for twenty. With no fan to assist the little heat it managed to put out, the heater was of minor value to us. I do not remember who solved the problem, but we finished our Happy Hour with Don holding Muriel’s hair dryer and aiming its warm blast on each of us in turn.

The dining room was a frigid barn, despite the corner fireplace, and we had the feeling they had sent out to a nearby restaurant for our food.

Next morning we asked for rooms with fire places. We probably could have had them the first night if any of us had chosen to complain.

 

Guanajuato sits above a maze of tunnels that carry traffic through dim passageways hacked roughly from the rock. Side roads appear as ominous passages leading off at angles. The subterranean streets emerge suddenly to follow old watercourses under stone arches that hold the towering banks apart. Don navigated the maze as if he had been doing it for years.

Improbable parking garages are hacked out of the rock periodically. One climbs nearby stairs into the light and the quaint old city. Houses are cantilevered slightly over the streets. In mid-downtown, none of the brick streets seems to run straight for more than a few yards.

Everything is straight up. Stone stairways lead upward from street to jardín to street, or perhaps to a cul-de-sac where three or four private homes share a small landing and a señora sits tatting in the sun on her tiny stone veranda.

We wandered through a couple of adjacent little plazas and took a stone stairway. I could have walked around Guanajuato for hours. We returned to our first plaza and found a tiny restaurant. We were led down a stairway into a room just wide enough for one small table. The other diners seemed to be students from the nearby university. I don’t remember what we had but remember a delicious meal in delightful surroundings.

 

All in all, we spent a happy ten days enjoying entrancing towns that each charmed us in a new way. The jardines were cool under massive trees and active with the life of the city, with few tourists other around.

We visited far too many churches to keep them apart in memory: some simple with almost child-like statues; some elaborate with massive reredos, aglitter in gold and silver; others noteworthy for the goriest statues and paintings I ever have had to look at. I think, however, we all will remember emerging from one in a dusty village and being almost swept off our feet as a herd of goats pounded past us and up onto the terrace outside the church, where they quietly began chomping on the straggly grass.

Muriel and I diligently prowled each town’s market and shops for bargains, while Don recorded it all on his new camcorder.

Muriel was never without a small sketch pad and captured quaint bits of buildings or street scenes or interesting faces. In Guanajuato, where she insisted on being left by the highway to paint a particularly charming group of rustic homes, she acquired a gallery of three small boys who stood silently, slightly away from her, watching every brush stroke for two hours.

The restaurants we found were varied in style and charm, but invariably provided superb food. Their clientele was local, rather than tourist, and the meals correspondingly good. Don and I learned early to ask for the special house salsas that the locals enjoyed, usually after a skeptical look from a reluctant waiter. The heat of our food counteracted the chill of January-at-altitude.

We laughed our way through the usual quota of contretemps, linguistic and otherwise.

I cannot imagine enjoying another part of Mexico as much, though I intend to try.