(Guanajuato, a beautiful old silver-mining town)
I said my goodbyes in Real de Catorce, I made some great friends, and had a fantastic time, but it was time to move on. And move on I have.
I packed up my things, and went to say goodbye to some friends I´d made over the previous few weeks. When I was there, picking their brains for local information about where to go in Mexico to find what I´m looking for, the seed of a roadtrip was planted. La Huesteca... how beautiful, what great memories came flooding back for them... oh but we can´t... oh but life is so short... teeter.. totter... BAM, we landed on the side of advendure. And off we went.
...to La Huesteca (not to be confused with La Huesteca in my previous post around Monterrey).
La Huesteca is actually a large region shared by many Mexican states, spotted with all sorts of natural wonders. But due to restrictions in time and money, we only visited this one spot. Not that I´m complaining: the water was 32 degrees celcius, all natural, and so clear you could see the bottom up to about 5 meters. It was actually warmer than the air. I don´t think I´ve ever been in water that warm outside of a bathtub, it was like silk. I missed out on some cascades, which I´m sure were beautiful, but I have a feeling I will see more, and more spectacular ones in the future.
From there, I spent a day on a bus getting to where I am now, Guanajuato. At first, I didn´t really like the vibe here. There were tonnes of tourists, mostly Americans (no offense, but in general, it´s a different kind of tourism). And the kind of tourism was what I didn´t like: lots of ´do you speak english?´and museum visiting... people coming just to see the city, and not get immersed in the culture. This kind of tourism is not for me, and I like to avoid it. I wasn´t planning on staying long at all.
(yes, I know, sepia, the oldest trick in the digital book... but come on, check it out!)
Then on my second night in town, a great thing happened.
The main market was brimming with life: oodles of vendors hawking lots of the same stuff (that I have no interest in), tonnes of live music of all styles (all latin-based), tourists eating Americanized meals at Americanized prices, and people walking around in a half-daze caught up in the commotion. Yes, it was definitely alive. But for some reason, I just wasn´t feeling it, I was disillusioned with the whole thing. I thought I´d leave the next day.
(typical scene in Guanajuato, these were just some people hanging out, playing music and laughing, outside a giant indoor market)
As I stopped to examine some art, the girl that was selling it started to talked to me. She quickly realized that my spanish was... new (she´s since come to call my particular vernacular ´prehistoric´, with a great accompanying laugh). But, she was funny, and had a good feeling about her, and best of all, she was patient. So I stayed to talk for awhile. Then, after walking around the town for a while, looking about like a tourist, I returned before she closed her stand for the weekend.
This is where things got really cool. Her boss came and dropped off a guitar, how sexy is that! Well, I started to play it in the stree with drunken abandon (I´ve not had much guitar access since leaving Canada). I figured that most of the people couldn´t understand what I was saying anyway, so it didn´t really matter what was coming out of my mouth. Well, people started to congregate - first a woman and her baby came and danced, then a bunch of local university students sat across the way on the raised sidewalk talking pictures and giggling whenever I flashed them a smile (naturally, they were women), then some other locals stopped in the street and started flashing pictures... it was all a little much really, but we were all having fun. And it turned out to be a great impression on my new friend, who invited me to dinner with her family.
So I went an celebrated my friend´s cousin´s birthday with their family, and we had a jolly good time.
Since then I´ve been just laying low, not finding much crazy adventure, but learning a tonne of spanish. I´ve been hanging out with my friend, and her friends, who don´t speak any english. I´ve attended a few university art classes, as she´s an art student. By about 3:00 every day, my brain is fried after I´ve pounded as much spanish into it as possible.
(this is the university´s main building)
But I´m learning. Slowly, but it´s happening. I´m not at the point where I can have real conversations, but I can go into a space comfortably where people don´t speak any english. Granted, most of what they say sounds like gibberish to me, as it´s generally delivered at light speed, but I can smile and nod and then get my point across... on a good day.
(I think there´s an unspoken rule here: thou shalt not paint thy house the same colour as thy neighbour´s)
All in time, little by little. I think I severely underestimated the amount of time it takes to really learn another language, and this life lesson has given me a lot of respect for people that speak other languages fluently.
Hope you´re all shining!
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