Too Sixy

So we made ourselves very at home in Lake Chapala, it was an easy town to spend time in with the abundance of Gringos. We met a Scottish rock climber, who used to own a Westy and an old Volvo estate, a group of hikers who gave us plenty of pointers for being about town and a solid WiFi connection outside a lovely clean Walmart with an incredible bakery.

We returned to our ideal, rainbow powering campsite hidden in the bushes on our second night. Just after getting the awning out, popping the top up and making ourselves comfortable (aka mid shower) a loud bang rings out from just over the hill. Realising that it’s a shotgun, we decide to pack up and move away until the perpetrators of the peace destruction cease their annoying shooting. It doesn’t take long for the rain to come back and take the entertainment away from their shenanigans and we can return to our hidey hole.

Swimming, hiking, relaxing, it was the hardest place to leave of all our travels (so far). The comfort and security that comes with not being the only pale skinned English speaking folks was a welcome relief to the constant awareness that you’re weird and unusual (I know what you’re thinking, but you know what we mean!).

But leave we did, and off up the hills we travelled in search of something quite spectacular. Only one of these exists in a select number of countries, chosen by a committee. Every year tens of thousands of worshippers make their way to these locations across the world to stand beside the road regardless of the weather and worship the gods of driving. We are of course, talking about the WORLD RALLY CHAMPIONSHIP!!!

We did it, we found “El Chocolate”, stage 4/8 of the WRC Mexico course stretched out before us like a beautiful smooth beige snake of glorious lefts, rights, ups, downs, don’t cuts and caution hairpins. But first we made camp, down in an old quarry amongst the trees. As we drove down there was a few seconds of that unmistakable squelching and the words “We’ll get stuck there in the morning” were muttered. Well, morning came round, we got stuck.

We brought with us a compact selection of recovery devices, and for this instance we chose to use a hand winch (aka Come-Along) and a couple of heavy duty ratchet straps. Actually that is the whole kit. The biggest limitation of the hand winch is that you only move about a metre before you run of out of cable and have to re-tie the strap to the tree. Unfortunately we had quite a lot more than one metre of bog to drag ourselves through. But it’s allllllll a learning experience.

Jenny at the helm, Steve working the winch we were free in no time.

Onwards, onto El Chocolate covered in boggy grossness. Oh if only there was a way to wash that muck off the van…. but what is this, “caution water splash”.

We carried on down this unusually well maintained road/rally stage at sufficient pace to catch and surprise a few locals before rolling into the spectacular town of Guanajuato.

Some culture for you now, this town used to be at the heart of a big ol’ bunch of silver mining a while back, and it’s built right into a steep valley with crazy roads, narrow alleyways and a beautiful lack of logic to anything. This kind of character is what we’ve both been missing since Europe. Canada and America are both too new, with roads too wide and too much sensible built into everything.

The whole city still has relics of the mining times, with a crazy network of one way underground tunnels to confuse motorists as the GPS signal disappears and nothing makes sense anymore.  Some go up, some go down, some randomly cross others with no indication of who has right of way, or indeed if anyone does. Other reminders include the reuse of the old railway lines, these have been set into the roads as drains, or placed at the side of the road as barriers. See, who says we don’t teach you nuffink.

We check into an AirBnB for a couple of nights needing to get some laundry done and not wanting to camp in the city beside the other “No Fixed Abode” humans. Mexico has a huge party every year to celebrate the start of their war against the Spanish for independence on the 15/16^th of September, which happens to be this weekend. The town is lively, people are wearing face paint, donning extra, extra huge sombreros and making muchos noise.  But first, we prepare ourselves with the first post-states Starbucks and some Mexican fast food at El Potro Loco (The Crazy Foal).

The next evening the real party begins, something about a man ringing a bell in 1810 in a town not far from where we were and kicking off a lot of fighting. The police marched into the square playing drums and tooting horns, then there was some talking in Mexican, then some chanting, then lots and lots of cheering, silly string and fireworks. It was pretty cool, we even felt proud to be Mexican.

The laundry fiasco is something of an epic failure. We spent a lot of time looking for a laundry place, only to eventually find one who wouldn’t have it done until after we’d left town. So, being the ingenious go getters who always find a way, we plugged the shower drain and splashed our smelly clothes around in detergenty tepid water until the smell began to subside. We then carefully wrung out each item until it was as dry as possible, and hung it outside. Half an hour later the heavens opened like you wouldn’t believe and everything returned to sodden. Ah well, mañana.

Word of warning, don’t be eating when looking at the next photos… This town is also famous for something of questionable taste, a large selection of mummified corpses. These people were tucked into crevices in their coffins under the church between 1870 and 1958 ish (which really isn’t very long ago…). The lack of oxygen and moisture meant they didn’t rot, and they were exhumed if the families didn’t pay a burial tax that was introduced for some reason. So they went and dragged these poor sods out from their place of rest to find lots of them still wearing their skin. And now you can go and see them in the..… flesh.

The “highlight” of their exhibition is a mother who was buried with her unborn (but extracted?) 6 month old foetus in her arms, both of which became “mummified”. This foetus mummy is the smallest mummy in the world, so therefore a big deal apparently.

Anyhow, we headed out and found a spot to rest next to the ants and the cacti. That mound in the photo below is an ant hill, these are everywhere. Oh, and we made another attempt to dry our laundry, fingers crossed!

We found a job that you can get in Mexico, which we feel we should share in case you ever get sick of your job and wish for a simpler life away from other humans. Goat Herder. These folk wander around behind a herd/pack/gaggle of around thirty goats all day occasionally making some noise to steer them away from the road or a cliff etc. If goats aren’t your thing, cows are another option but you might need some herding experience before taking on that kind of responsibility. Not sure what’s wrong with fences.

Mappy map map