Border Lines

Try imagining a giant banana split bowl big enough to build a city inside. Imagine the bowl twisted into a crooked “S” shape. The next miracle is a city gets built along the winding and twisting bottom of the bowl and all up and down the sides. If you can imagine this, you have a description of Guanajuato, Mexico. This place must have given its ancient Spanish designers fits trying to build a city in a giant ravine. But, they did it.

The city today is as it was when its designers built it. The streets are few. They snake in and out, around and even under (tunnels), the ravine. The houses perched on the sides of the mountains are accessible by a series of staircases and callejóns (alleys), which is really the fastest way to get up the sides of the mountain. And, Guanajuato is not a city in the mountains. It is the mountains.

When walking through the streets of Guanajuato, you will see what appears to be a preponderance of people with bandages and casts on limbs. The reason? Falling!

I began asking, “Qué le pasó?”-What happened to you? Their answers: falling. One hundred percent of those I asked had fallen. Guanajuato can be a tricky place to navigate on foot if you are not careful.

The streets or sidewalks can be cobblestone, brick, or very poorly maintained rocky-asphalt. Falls are not just common, they are a given. I’ve taken some pretty nasty falls, never breaking anything, but nasty nonetheless. Also, when the teens are getting out of school, watch it!

A good rule of thumb when climbing the stairs up the sides of the mountain: try remembering to stop before taking in the view. Looking and walking up the mountainside could become a fatal error. Also, when walking near a school full of careless teenagers, find a plaza bench and wait the surge out. Sidewalks in Guanajuato can be very narrow and the teens, well, they don’t see you. They could knock you into the narrow streets with a bus bearing down on you.

It’s happened!

Mexican Living Print and eBooks – What You Need To Know When Traveling or Planning To Live in Mexico.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Douglas_Bower

Related posts:

1. Living in Mexico – Two Prices for Everything Readers love to write to contradict my too-often made point of American prices versus Mexican prices in Mexico. They will disagree with me by saying,...
2. Living in Mexico – True Total Immersion Spanish Almost without exception, the private language schools and universities in Mexico use the translation method of Spanish instruction. The translation method is a philosophy of...
3. Spotlight on Fallacy and Crime in Mexico In a column I wrote in August of 2005, titled, Kidnapping Americans in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, I said this about the American press and their...
4. Why Retire to Merida Yucatan Mexico? Merida yucatan is a very nice city in the south of Mexico, this city has some very good advantages, its known to be one of...
5. Choosing the Best Place to Vacation in Mexico Deciding on the best place to vacation in Mexico is a matter of determining where your interests lie and what you want out of this...