Guanajuato IIApril
10, 2008
The mornings in
Guananjuato are cool and mild, building to a fierce late afternoon when the sun
seems most intense. At eight p.m. (we are on Central Time in the
just as it is getting dark, I can look straight up and see a fingernail of
moon.
There are no
supermarkets in Guanajuato. To buy groceries, the choices are tiny, cave-like
neighborhood shops, OXOs, which are like 7/11s, or the Mercado Hidalgo, much
like Pike Place Market in
It is in a huge building intended as a train station, but as in many cities
both here and in the
the train never came.
Any bus running
west on La Presa will take me downtown. To get back, I have to catch a bus in a
tunnel. The other day, I watched a garbage truck scrape the arch in one of the
tunnels, nearly dislodging a light fixture, and certainly taking down some
bricks and mortar. Los Guanajuatensos want the tunnels to be declared one of
the 13 wonders of
Maybe the thirteenth wonder would be appropriate.
Today, I visited el Museo Casa de Diego Rivera.
Rivera was born here and left when he was six, but now that he is
famous, the house has been restored and some of his work is on display, along
with the work of other artists. It’s a nice house, four floors around a central
courtyard, with an elaborate 19th Century fountain.
A few doors down from
Casa Rivera and across Calle Positos (which is completely ripped up for
repairs) is an English language bookstore, Donkey Jote. I was thrilled to find
a copy of my novel, Treasures in Heaven, and even more thrilled to find that
the owner Colleen Cote, had read and recommended the book. Only then did I
confess that I was the author.
I continued on
Calle Positos to some free art galleries at La Universidad de Guanajuato.
Wonderful sculptures of leather and steel in the first gallery by Jeannette
Betancourt. They resembled boats, or snowshoes, and included an amazing mask.
Rather than inquire if they were for sale, I continued on to the Plaza de
Baratillo, where I bought a lime, a cucumber, two tomatoes, and four tiny
Talavera tiles for 2.5 pesos apiece, about 25 cents, before descending into the
catacombs for the bus back to La Presa.