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 callejns (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, "Qu le pas?"-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!
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