NOVEMBER & DECEMBER, 2004
December 3 - 4, 2004
At this point, about two weeks into Mexico, we decided that a short Spanish immersion course might be a good idea. Several travelers we met along the way steered us towards studying in Guadalajara, which apparently has good schools, and has the distinction of being Mexico's second largest city at 5 million people. However, our delay in Mazatlan until Friday, and our decision to study in Guadalajara the following week, beginning on Monday, meant that we had to cut short our trips to Durango and Zacatecas.
After nearly a seven hour bus ride from Mazatlan to Durango (which took us through some pretty amazing scenery as we traveled up and over the mountains), we arrived pretty late. We went straight to the hotel, Buenos Aires, that we chose from our guide book (which had until now been right on target with its descriptions), just off the central plaza and cathedral. It worked for one night, in that we didn't have to sleep outside, but we don't recommend it. Short story: it was dirty, and loud, almost like we were in a tin can. The guy across the hall showering at 5 am with his TV at full blast was a particularly nice touch. Thankfully, we brought ear plugs!
Dinner our one and only night in Durango was a bit subpar as well. Curiousity got the best of us and we went to Corleone's, an Italian Pizza restaurant, a few doors down from our hotel. Despite our "luke warm" review of the filo dough-no sauce "pizza," the place seemed to be very popular with the young local couples. It had to have been the atmosphere, or maybe we just ordered the wrong dish!
As for the town itself, Durango is pretty cool, and worth a visit. We spent a great Saturday morning enjoying what seemed to be the first big weekend shopping day of the holiday season. We started with breakfast at El Zocabon, which was excellent. It had a really nice homecooked-diner feel if that makes sense. Lots of wood and big sidewalk windows. The afternoon was filled with window shopping on 5 de Noviembre, the central shopping area, as well as all of its arterial streets which are filled with great shops with inexpensive goods. We also lucked out on a book fair in the central plaza, and bought our first English-Spanish dictionarrio, for our Spanish language classes in Guadalajara.
We noticed a much heavier concentration of young, stylishly dressed people here than in the previous cities, and some fancier stores. Some of the lower end stores employed a certain marketing tactic we have noticed throughout Mexico, and which was particularly prevelant in Mazatlan. A man or woman with a microphone and speaker system, standing just inside or outside the store, or sometimes operating out of a car, advertised bargain basement prices and merchandise at very high decibels.
Architecturally, Durango has some gorgeous old structures and the town itself has a bit of a wild west feel (could be why lots of movies are filmed here, including the Mask of Zorro). The most impressive of the buildings we saw in our limited time in Durango was the Cathedral in the center of town - we even got to see wedding photos being taken on the front steps.
December 4 - 5, 2004
Zacataces is in Mexico's Colonial Heartland, about 4 hours South of Durango. It is very beautiful and quaint and looks like any small charming European town. It has narrow cobblestone streets and sidewalks, alleyways (or Callejons), and stair cases which wind up, down and around the ravines on either side of town. Zacatacas, in between two mountain ranges and at 8,000 feet in elevation, originally made its mark as a stop off point for travelers between the North and the South. The Spanish discovered rich veins of silver in the mountains surrounding Zacataces and for the last 400 years or more (since 1546), like most other towns in Mexico's Colonial Heartland, Zacataces has been a silver mining town. Today, it produces the largest amount of silver in Mexico. You can actually still buy silver 1700 feet deep inside the Eden Mine or, if that makes you nervous, from the silversmiths at the Centro Platero de Zacatecas. The stylish people and stores out and about on any given day and night appear to the product of the wealth generated by the silver production, and the university located in the heart of town.
We arrived in Zacataces in the early evening after a 4 hour bus ride south from Durango. The hostel we wanted to stay at (and which we would recommend as the proprietors were really friendly, knowledgeable, and spoke English and Spanish fluently) was full, so we ended up staying at Casa Angel, just around the corner (it was clean and about $18 a night for a big room and shared bathroom). There a number of other fancy hotels in Zacatecas, if you are looking for something a little more high end, including one built around a bull ring, The Quinta Real, which is supposed to be five star, but obviously, a bit out of our price range this trip!
Since both the proprietors of the first hostel we were going to stay at, as well as one of the employees of Casa Angel, Eduardo, recommended that we eat Sopa Azteca at Los Dorados de Villa, a local restaurant, we did; it is our favorite thus far! Tucked away in the northern corner of town, Los Dorados had excellent atmosphere, fabulous service, and delicious food. The soups, in particular the Sopa Mixteca and Sopa Azteca, were amazing. After a late dinner, where we pigged out, we strolled back home through the charming streets of Zacatecas and as luck would have it, met up with a callejoneada - a noisy group (consisting of a small brass band with some loud drummers, a burro loaded up with a healthy supply of mescal, and a tin cup for the mescal) which strolls around town in the evenings until the early hours of the morn, singing, dancing, playing music, and of course, stopping frequently to drink mescal!
We spent our next day wandering up, down, and around the streets of Zacatecas, checking out the cathedral and some other beautiful old buildings, and taking a ride (for a few dollars) from one side of town to the other on the El Teleferico (a cable car that swings above the city affording beautiful views of the surrounding countryside as well as Zacatecas nestled below) to Cerro de la Bufa. Since we needed to be in Guadalajara by 8:30pm that evening to meet up with our host family, and since it was about a four hour ride, we had to leave in the mid-afternoon, but we will definitely be back. We loved Zacatecas!
