mexico part 4: san miguel, dolores, zacatecas

after guanajuanto, we stopped off at a number of little famous towns as we wandered our way back to the north. this is the beauty, of course, of driving.

san miguel de allende:

san miguel de allende is a little colonial town that's become a bit of an american escape town. it's adorable ... lots of little artisan shops, and that same colonial atmosphere, cute streets etc.



[cathedral spire]




what i've really enjoyed about these colonial towns is the revolutionary history of them. it's nice to be in a place with some history, and a history that is appreciated.

dolores hidalgo:

i had no huge desire to come to this town an hour or so down the road from san miguel, except that everyone says you have to come, just to buy an ice cream (or nieves, actually, which is more like a sorbet since they're water based ... helados are milk based). the ice creams are famous here because they come in all sorts of weird flavors.




[flavors of ice cream]


so a few translations – angel's kiss, rose petal, beer, octopus with shrimp, mole, rice with milk, corn, cheese, avocado, et cetera. there are "normal" ones too like pineapple (but this one's with bacardi), strawberry, lime, chocolate, vanilla, mango, cappuccino. we tasted a number of them, including beer and the shrimp one which was quite awful to be honest.

i'm fairly boring – i had guanabana with lime. the guanabana is like one of my favorite fruits from the philippines and i was was excited about it, and he suggested to pair it with lime. ivan got tequila and pinesapple with bacardi. so we're a bit boring, but really ... does anyone order octopus ice cream??

zacatecas:

to drive back to mazatlan, i thought it'd be fun to go a different way and stop in the city of zacatecas, which is famous for it's silver mining.

this was a bad idea for a number of reasons. we arrive fairly late, stayed in a shady hotel, and iván's car got broken into and they stole his stereo, a bottle of tequila, and other various knick knacks we had in there. thankfully, they were obviously idiots and didn't pop the trunk, where all our souvenirs were located. i was more pissed about it than iván was ... there were a few things that really creeped me out. they went through the interior of the car with a fine tooth comb – found a bottle of tequila under the seat, took things from the center console and glove compartment, took the pack of gum we had. i don't know ... it was just weird to sit in the car and think about those creeps being in there.

so ... bad start.

the rest of the town is fine. it's small, not touristy, but has those same pretty colonial buildings and churches.





and we also went on a tour of the mt. eden mine which is quite literally in the middle of town. the entrance to the mine is behind a hospital. a pretty cool tour, although our tour guide was fairly dull. but it was interesting to hear about the history of the mines, the people who worked in them (what a crappy life that was), and see this indoor museum of minerals found in the state.





a huge amount of silver comes from this state and mexican silver is known for being of a good quality.

and then ... we had heard that the new highway between zacatecas and mazatlan was open. the old road drives down the "spine of the devil" and is supposed to be quite beautiful and scenic, but very long and windy and takes forever. you do have to literally cross a mountain range to get from zacatecas over to sinaloa.

so. we get on the road and pay our toll and get a ways down the road and they announce a detour. onto the other windy scenic road, which was very pretty with flowers and cliffs and passing through little pueblos, etc until after a while we notice that we are not actually getting back onto the toll road. because it isn't done. and they just don't tell you that.

i was driving and getting more and more frustrated with this little two-way windy road because it just kept going. you would think you'd gone 50 k, but turns out you'd only gone about 15. like we drove 30 km/hour the entire way. definitely called the spine of the devil for a reason.







now this would be a fabulous drive if you expected it to take the six or seven hours that it does. but not so good when you're tired and all you want to do is reach mazatlan and go to bed.

but we made it to mazatlan just fine and didn't kill each other (although i made iván drive when it got dark ... just couldn't handle it anymore).