Roads of Terror

Some of you may not be aware of it, but the Spanish Inquisition came to New Spain (Mexico) in 1570.  There are many tales of the horrors perpetuated at this time, but there is one that is not generally known.  The Inquisitors laid out all the roads and streets in Mexico (of course they were just horse and cart trails at that time, but large armies and supplies traversed them regularly, so they went everywhere).  Eventually these roads were turned into the streets and highways of Mexico today!  What the Inquisitors did was to mandate that no road could ever be straight, that every road system was to be designed as a maze, and that there was to be no way to turn around and retrace your travels. They would then put the accused transgressors on a road, give them a destination, and if they could find their way there and back they would be found innocent.  There is no one who was ever known to have survived this trial.  This is how the roads of Mexico came to be. Maybe now it is obvious why the civil war in Mexico lasted so long.  The soldiers were always getting lost and unable to arrive where their leaders ordered. There are still people who have not found their way back to where they started who have been on the roads for years.  Maps were attempted, but they were so convoluted they were almost impossible to follow without advanced navigational skills.  After centuries of lost and weary travelers, a new invention appeared to revolutionize traveling in Mexico and to overcome the Inquisitors snares:  the GPS unit!  Those of us attempting to find our way around this amazing land treasure these above anything else, except maybe our Imodium.  However, even with these magnificent devices, getting around Mexico is a trial by maze!

Jim and I have had many opportunities to try out the roads of Mexico as we have traveled to visit the different missions to help train the mission presidents, their wives, and the missionaries. Last weekend we visited Querétaro and Aguascalientes, missions north of Mexico City.

With President and Sister Williamson in Querétaro

With President and Sister Hernandez in Aguascalientes

 We spent a lovely evening with Williamsons in the mission home where their cook made us scrumptious fish tacos. We had a wonderful visit, while Sister Williamson and I bemoaned our lack of Spanish skills and Jim helped her to understand the computer programs and demonstrate how they could really be of help to them.  We did this with the Hernandez's too and then in both towns Jim did a presentation on the 10 commandments of good health to the missionaries and instructed them in how to find help for their medical needs independently.  It is such a pleasure to get to know the different mission presidents.  Their days are so full and they give so much I am constantly amazed. Kudos to all of them.

Catrina, our dear GPS unit, guided us well for the first 2 1/2 days.  We had our first flat tire with the attendant adventure of finding a tire store/repair shop in a strange city to replace our tire.We were out in wide open spaces with ranch and farm lands, a huge change from dear old CDMX (Mexico City).  After this we had Saturday free so on Friday night we headed out for Guanajuato  ( a favorite tourist spot for Mexicans), a beautiful old mining town that was on the way home from Aguascalientes.  If you've noticed a theme in a lot of our travels (mining towns) it is useful to remember that Mexico supplied Spain and myriads of pirates with unbelievable amounts of silver and gold for several centuries. 

View of Guanajuato 

Every time we visit one of these towns we are told that this particular town supplied 70%, or 85%. or 60% of all the silver and/or gold in the world.  The math doesn't quite add up here, but I guess the general overall idea is that they supplied a really large amount of the world's gold and silver for centuries.  Now these beautiful old towns have capitalized on their charm and are producing silver and gold through tourism.

As we entered the town of Guanajuato, Catrina decided to have some fun with us.  We put the address of our hotel in and proceeded to follow her instructions.  We were lead down streets that we could hardly fit in and would come out at the same place we started after an hour of following directions.  Another rule in Mexico is never to ask a Mexican for directions.  They will always give them to you whether they know them or not which leads to even more confusion.  After more than an hour of winding in and out of the roads in town we were lead out of town and up some really steep and narrow roads.  Cate kept instructing us to turn right at the next road.  But when we'd get there it would just be a tiny driveway or dirt road.  So we'd go on and she would instruct us to turn back and turn on the dirt road.  After doubling back several times, we finally turned onto the dirt road.

It was rutted, narrow and scary.  We were sure we would come to a dead end and be stranded or puncture a tire on the protruding rocks. But after about a mile of harrowing twists, turns, and potholes, low and behold we turned the corner and there  was our beautiful hotel!

This hotel was a real work of art.  Built high on a mountain, it just snuggled into the rocks.  When we inquired of the manager why we had to get there by dirt road, he showed us the "other way" in which, although it wasn't dirt was just as narrow and winding.  We took a taxi back into town that night and discovered other crazy things about the roads.

The other road out of the hotel.

This is the entrance to a tunnel.  Over the last 50 years Guanajuato has become more and more of a tourist center.  Everyone wants to eat, party and stay in the old, romantic town center, but the narrow roads and alleyways (callejones) did not provide access to the shops, restaurants, hotels or other sites.  So they used the local miners and blasted an incredible system of tunnels underneath the town.These roads go underground all over the city.,  They are really quite unbelievable, they are so extensive.  If one thinks it is easy to get lost on top, it is far worse down in the tunnels.  Luckily we were in a taxi and did not have to navigate them ourselves, but what an adventure.

We went for dinner at 6pm and had the waiter and restaurant all to ourselves.  We stayed almost 2 hrs and had a delightful meal and conversation with the waiter.  He did end up with a pass-a-long card and an invitation to visit with the missionaries.

We walked out of the restaurant and ran into a large group of people of all ages accompanied by young men dressed in Spanish era costumes and carrying all sorts of musical instruments. For $100 (about USD 6.00) we were invited to join them and spent the next 2 hrs being guided all over the centro historico.  They played songs, sang, told jokes (Jim got a few of them), led us in a competition between males and females singing "Cielito Lindo" and ended with the men proposing once again to their wives. It was a really fun evening, although when  the tour ended we didn't know where we were and we wandered around trying to find a familiar site for the next hour until Helen suggested we use our Google Maps at which point we did just fine and got back to our hotel.

Some more views of this delightful city.

The next day we hired a guide who took us all over the city, gave us some history and accepted another pass-a-long card.  Then it was back into the car for a 4 hour drive to CDMX which turned into a bit of a nightmare.  We stopped for gas along the carretera where somehow we both go out of the car without locking it and people manning the "Sanatorios" took advantage and quickly got into the car and took out Helen's two handbags containing her journal, lesson materials for Primary and her iPad (the only thing of material value besides the bags themselves).  We didn't discover the theft until two hours later when we were stopped in a traffic jam for an hour and a half caused by an accident.  We turned off the car and listened to an audio book on George Washington.  We finally got started again and spent another 2 hours making our way to our hotel in a severe downpour navigating the Mexico City traffic in the dark.  A four hour trip took 8 harrowing hours!