2003-08-02 - 6:46 p.m.
After Zacatecas, I went to Guanajuato.
It is a bit like Zacatecas. Colonial. Rich. But not really. It looks more like Baron Munchausen's city on the moon.
It is high in the mountains between rocky peaks. If you could lay out a normal city on cloth and pull up the corners, you might get an idea of it. The space is compressed, the streets are mostly alleyways, some barely one person wide, and the buildings almost clamber over each other on the way up the hills. And where Zacatecas is shades of grey and brown, Guanajuato is royal blue, lavender, gold, mauve, wine, scarlet, ice green.
Beneath this riot of color is a maze of tunnels. Underground roadways of dark, crumbling walls 50 ft high. Where the roads open into the air, trees jut out of the stones, a bricked-in window or a door 20 feet off the ground leads nowhere, the back end of a house is hanging off the side, held up by rotting two by fours.
