Panamerican: Mexico

[omhughes]

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<strong>This is all the photos I took from this place in the Album below.... some nice pictures in there....</strong>

<table style="width:194px;"><tr><td align="center" style="height:194px;background:url(http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/tran...background.gif) no-repeat left"><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/Oisin.m.Hughes/GuanaJuatoPicasa?feat=embedwebsite"><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_8x5h-fHHXiI/Sr9ubkCMd9E/AAAAAAABGno/64Lmju3zBfY/s160-c/GuanaJuatoPicasa.jpg" width="160" height="160" style="margin:1px 0 0 4px;"></a></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align:center;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:11px"><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/Oisin.m.Hughes/GuanaJuatoPicasa?feat=embedwebsite" style="color:#4D4D4D;font-weight:bold;text-decoration:none;">GuanaJuato Picasa</a></td></tr></table>

Ok, first of all.... thanks to all the well wishers .... and apologies for the Buckaroo moment.

So let me begin by talking about GuanaJuato, its the sort of place that every time you write the name..you find yourself checking the map to see if you spelled it right, and just looking up at it on the sentance above it still doesn't look quite right, anyway its an injun name...so blame them. If you see the map above, well the town isn't on it...but its fairly close to the town of Leon, so were pretty much dead center in the heart of Mexico.

This place is a bit mental......first of all it used to be a major source of Silver and Gold, so the whole town is built on hillsides, so all the women have buns of steel as a result of hiking up and down with bags of shopping. The men have hoarse voices from shouting at the women to go and get the shopping.

Its run down but at the same time very authentically Mexican. You wont find any pandering here to chain restaurants or any form of brands, its just a million little shops and restaurants all glued together. There are literally hundreds of police and army on the go, myself and H, still havent figured out what the hell is going on to warrant such a military presence, they go mental if you try and take a picture of video them....

The noise levels continue to go up a couple of decibels, neither of us slept the first night if it wasn't music blaring from the street till 4am it was the Roosters who filled the silence at 4:30am. No one told the poxy Roosters in Guana whaddyacallit that they are supposed to roost at dawn and not 2 hours beforehand. The buildings run right up to the street so when trucks go by you can feel the vibration in your bed.

The road conditions are really starting to deteriorate, we learned a good lesson about driving on roads which are marked in red on the map.... dont!... you can see us trying to outrun a storm in the video above... did you every see anything like the sky?.... note....this is taken with a shitty helmet cam...so you'll have to amplify it in your head a bit to get a feel for it.

If you walk around the town music just seems to kick off all by its lonesome, doesn't appear to be organised and the students all dress up in various outfits and just put on a show... and the whole town gets involved to cheer them on.

So a great place. The only thing to taint the place is the poverty is pretty stark. It seems to me that if your old, an Indian, or a dog... well in Mexico... your pretty much ****ed.

A slightly sad story to finish with. We passed the old lady sitting on a step in one of the very busy markets in the town, you can see more pictures of it in the Album above. Anyway I stood at the top of the stairs and Helmar went off to take some pictures of the stalls and stuff and I just hung out. She was just sitting there... her pants were covered in dirt and the lines on her face were of a woman who had worked hard, I put her at over 80 years of age. She had 4 sweets and a bottle of water to her name and a little plastic cup which people were tossing a couple of peso's into.

Everytime she would take a sweet out of the bag she would tie the bag up in a knot and put it back in her pocket, as if to keep it for tomorrow. After about 2 minutes she would put her hand back in for the bag, take it out, have a look at the sweets almost pondering ...will I have another...undo the knot and take another sweet like she was savoring it as her last. H came back and we gave her a 50 peso note, down here you can buy about 50 tonnes of sweets with that.....she'll have enough sweets to wear out a teenagers jaw now.

Anyway me and that oul lady have one thing in common.... namely.....if theres a packet of sweets with only 2 or 3 left in the press.... eat em now.... tomorrow's tomorrow..... but a sweet in the gob is joy today.



Thanks for everything
Oisin

[T.H.E]

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