Friday, October 1, 2010 San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato city

I´m on VACATION! And I FINALLY got to explore the town of San Miguel de Allende, where I´ve been for the past 3 days. I took full advantage of the hotel shower and breakfast. I unfortunately had to pay $70 to ship my shitty laptop and work stuff to the US because I couldn´t be bothered to carry it in my suitcase for 2 weeks. I almost hope it doesn´t make it there; it sounds like it´s making coffee when I turn it on, and the battery lasts 12 minutes without using Wi-Fi. I also had to get malaria pills, which was annoying because 15 days prior to today, the Mexican government enacted a law that you need a prescription for drugs; I thought this was MEXICO, not Canada. So I took care of this by having the on-site doctor at the mushroom farm write me a malaria prescription... Perfect! I walked around the pedestrian-friendly town, to a bunch of the colonial squares and the little markets. Everyone was super friendly, and I really liked the town; good weather, cheap, good food, lots of American expat retirees, and it´s beautiful (colonial buildings on hilly terrain with cobblestone streets, it´s Unesco). There was some international conference going on, so there were armed Federales on nearly every corner, which was scary; however, preferrable to armed druglords on nearly every corner. I, of course, took a picture with them. After a couple of hours, I took a cab to the bus station and hopped on a bus to the city of Guanajuato, which is a college town in a little ravine setting which is also a Unesco World Heritage site for its colonial center. I checked into a hostel where I was literally the only guest, so I had a 10-bunk dorm room all to my self, including the bathroom. I spent the afternoon walking around; I swear, here, every corner you turn, there is another cute little plaza. I took the cable car up ot the hill overlooking town, which offered a really nice view of the colorful cubical town. I walked around some more, up and down the busy streets. I stopped in at a random but super busy taqueria. This vacation, I´m only eating at really busy places because a) that means the food is good, and b) that means the food´s constantly turning over, so it must be fresh. I´ve had too many bad experiences in the past with Montezuma´s Revenge, Shaka Zulu´s Revenge, Gandhi´s Revenge, Atahualpa´s Revenge, Ramsses´ Revenge, Hammurabi´s Revenge, Haile Selassie´s Revenge, to mess with unpurified water. That being said, I had to go back to the room because I felt really sick, I´m pretty sure because of the malaria pills; fucking Mexican chloroquine. It says I don´t really need them unless I´ll be in rural parts of Oaxaca and Chiapas, and I don´t trust myself to not be in rural Oaxaca and Chiapas. It´s like strong DEET; it´ll give your kids birth defects and cause you blindness, but at least you won´t get an itchy mosquito bite. Worth it, right? I went to the house in which Diego Rivera grew up, which was a super nice house with a courtyard and multiple stories; it figures why he could just spend his time painting, instead of selling gum and shining shoes. I walked around the main square, where there was a pub crawl led by these Swiss-Guard-looking musicians. I went into some cantinas, which was awkward because everyone was a local and with their group of friends. It took forever for this club to get going; like 1am before anyone showed up. Again, everyone was at their own tables getting bottle service and everyone was a local, so it was too awkward and I went home.