A Festival of Fools and a Mummy Museum? Sounds good to me!

Note: Because of all of the traveling we’ve done in recent months, the safari taking precedence, followed by another short family getaway, and then a trip to Spain and Germany that I will cover when I get a chance after this, only the first two days of this post about our entire two-week Mexico trip were written immediately after we got back, the rest being resurrected in my rather unreliable memory from looking at photos, but mainly from Anna also recalling how it all went down.

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When we initially found out last year that Anna was going to have a conference in Mexico City we were both excited and cautious. We had been to Mexico before, spending a few nights in Ensenada in early 2020, but to be fair that’s only 125 kilometres (78 mi) south of the US border. Our good friend that we know from Singapore, Enrique Caballero, was born in Mexico City and he gave the place glowing reviews, as did some of Anna’s Mexican colleagues that we met last year in Oman. On the flip side we get inundated with US media that, although has an agenda, still has a lot of influence on people and their negative view of the country to the extent that one of Anna’s aunties texted us and essentially told us not to leave the hotel despite having never visited Mexico before.
Donald Trump famously said of Mexican refugees, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. … They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people,” and now by spending a week in two smaller cities, followed by a week in Mexico City we would be able to see first hand how accurate the portrait of Mexico painted by the media really is. Let’s start with the first leg of our tour.

Saturday, June 15, 2024
After a gruelling trip that began at 6:15am with an eight-hour flight to Tokyo, a three-hour layover before a 13-hour flight to Mexico City, and capped off with a three-hour drive, we were now in San Miguel de Allende, timezones making it only 6:00pm on the same day when we arrived at our hotel:

San Miguel de Allende is the principal city in the municipality of San Miguel de Allende, located in the far eastern part of Guanajuato, Mexico. A part of the Bajío region, the town lies 274 km (170 mi) from Mexico City, 86 km (53 mi) from Querétaro and 97 km (60 mi) from the state capital of Guanajuato. The town’s name derives from a 16th-century friar, Juan de San Miguel, and a martyr of Mexican Independence, Ignacio Allende, who was born in a house facing the central plaza. San Miguel de Allende was a critical epicenter during the historic Chichimeca War (1540–1590) when the Chichimeca held back the Spanish Empire during the initial phases of European colonization. Today, an old section of the town is part of a proclaimed World Heritage Site, attracting thousands of tourists and new residents from abroad every year.

Our hotel, Casa No Name, was incredible, a converted 18th-century mansion complete with the original murals running down the corridor, antique clocks and furniture all around, and a courtyard that used to be frequented by designers and celebrities. Inside our room in front of the wardrobe there was even a glass floor that looked into an old cellar where crockery and straps of bullets sat on shelves.
This would be our home for the following couple of nights:

If we were going to have any hope of sleeping that night we would need to get out and do something and entertaining ourselves wouldn’t prove too tricky, because there was a bit of a party atmosphere in this town. The streets and buildings were beautiful and everywhere was really lively so we had a look in some nearby shops before finding a rooftop bar. When the sun began to set it was time to get dinner and what better way to kick off your first night in Mexico than with some tacos? They definitely aren’t difficult to come by so we ordered some pork and some fish ones and then moved on to the historic core zone for a look:

At the entrance of the city stand the statues of Ignacio Allende, Juan Aldama, Miguel Hidalgo and Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez, with one of the Archangel Michael in the center. While the outlying areas of the town and municipality have changed over time, the historic center remains much as it was 250 years ago. The layout of the center of the city is mostly a straight grid, as was favored by the Spanish during colonial times. However, due to the terrain, many roads are not straight. There are no parking meters, no traffic signals and no fast food restaurants. These roads are lined with colonial-era homes and churches. With a few exceptions, the architecture is domestic rather than monumental, with well-tended courtyards and rich architectural details. The houses have solid walls against the sidewalks, painted in various colors, many with bougainvillea vines falling down the outside and the occasional iron-grated window. Many of the larger structures have large entrances that once accommodated horses and carriages.

Wandering around the cobbled streets of this town square in perfect weather at night was a great way to spend the evening, looking at churches including La Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel all lit up while bands played in front of the throngs of people, and not once did we feel remotely threatened or unsafe. Furthermore, another thing that struck us was how incredibly clean the streets we had walked down and the parks we had passed were. We continued on, first stopping off at a bar called La Sirena Gorda, which translates into ‘The Fat Mermaid’, for some drinks and snacks, and then another rooftop bar for a couple more while overlooking the city before calling it a night.
Our first night out in San Miguel de Allende:

Sunday, June 16, 2024
There was a reason for that party attitude that we had noticed the previous day and we would witness it in real time for ourselves that morning as it was the Fiesta de los Locos and a crazy parade would be winding its way through the city and down past our hotel:

A unique and quite peculiar tradition in San Miguel is the Fiesta de los Locos (Festival of Fools) or Convite de los Locos (Convocation of Fools). It is a festival filled with creativity, color, and fun, held in the middle of June. It has been, for decades, part of the festivities of San Antonio de Padua, which takes place on June 13.

The Locos parade pays homage to the Saint San Pascual Baylón. It was started by the orchard keepers of San Miguel who would dress up with masks and palm hats, to give thanks for good harvests. They also gave away fruits and invited people to the celebration and the religious ceremony. Over time, when people saw the orchard keepers all dressed up in their disguises, they would call out: “Here come the crazy ones!”

According to some elders, these parties began in 1934, with only about thirty people participating in the first celebration. It is estimated that in recent years, there have been as many as 10,000 people taking part. Today, after almost seventy years of tradition, people from different neighborhoods meet with hundreds of visitors to enjoy a truly great atmosphere on the streets of San Miguel. Like every year, the disguises depict many fanciful characters. There are funny television characters, comic superheroes, aliens and monsters from Hollywood movies. There are also parodies of national and international political figures; they will all take to the streets during the parade to the amusement and surprise of the community.

This parade takes place annually on the first Sunday after June 13, generally kicking off at about 10:00am and on this occasion it would be our first full day in town, the parade beginning to pass our hotel at roughly 11:00am. Before it started we had a coffee and then went out to witness the madness for ourselves as separate trucks led people in every conceivable costume, from Star Wars characters to Jimi Hendrix to even household mops, down the streets of the city, throwing candy into the crowd along the way.
Here’s just a small taste including some videos of the beginning and then other portions of the parade:

It was two hours later before we could leave our hotel, but it had been a lot of fun and now it was time to have a look around this place during the day. For us this meant going back to the core zone, checking out some shops and a market along the way, all while doing our best to stay out of the blazing sun. Obviously on a Sunday in a town this size not many shops are going to be open, especially when everyone feels like celebrating, so once done looking around we joined the masses and went to a bar before going back to the hotel for a swim in a desperate attempt to cool off.
When we had finally succeeded in getting our skin back to what seemed like a reasonable temperature it was time to go out again, the first stop being a fantastic dinner in a courtyard restaurant called Aperi, but our night was only beginning.
A post-parade walk and dinner:

Dinner was done so it was time to do what everyone else was doing to wrap up the festival, hit the town! Anna’s got a thing for the view from rooftop bars so we looked up a couple and then wandered past the depressing sight of my favourite car rusted out on the side of the road (but this is Mexico so I’m sure we’ll see some Beetles in great shape) and found ourselves at the first bar of the night. Our table overlooked the illuminated city once more, but then I notice something a little different from the previous night — The lights shining up one of the buildings kept changing colour and then it happened, there was a loud crack and the sky lit up with a lengthy fireworks show to signal the conclusion of the festival.
We went back down to see what life on the street was like, winding our way to the crowded park in the centre of town and almost immediately upon our arrival a mariachi band spontaneously appeared and started playing. We snapped a couple of quick photos and got other people to get some of us in front of La Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel and then we went to another bar, La Coronela. There were no seats left, but a couple let us sit at their table and then immediately began making out, a pattern we would come to see a lot, it seems that Mexicans don’t mind a bit of PDA. We weren’t in there that long before the mariachi band from the park walked in and started playing in the tiny bar and almost as soon as they started I suddenly felt the need to break the seal. It got to the point where there was no way I could hold it any longer, I would need to squeeze behind a row of trumpet players in a narrow, tightly packed area of the bar to get to the bathroom for a pee. The band managed to make space without missing a note and once done, I squeezed back past a harpist and returned to our table, our friends still going at it, and Anna suggested that since we were in Mexico we should do some tequila shots. What we didn’t realise is that shots in Mexico are twice as large as we’re used to so that signalled not only the end of Fiesta de los Locos, but also the night for us.
Hitting the town on our second night:

Monday, June 17, 2024
Despite having already had a full day in the city we hadn’t had a real opportunity to explore some of the areas outside of the core zone, particularly during daylight hours, so now was the time. We started out in Zona Centro, wandering the cobblestone streets past parks with trees full of intimidating-looking birds and many old colonial buildings, but San Miguel de Allende is built over a very hilly terrain so to see the city properly we would have to conquer some exceptionally steep slopes on those smooth stones. The going wasn’t too bad to begin with, but as we ventured out further the narrow streets got steeper and steeper, eventually transforming into a series of staircases and all of this was compounded further by the scorching heat, but when we finally reached the summit the views over the city were definitely worth it.
We were still quite puffed and sweaty after a stop in a cafe at the top so we considered taking an Uber back down, but we figured we would be doing a lot of eating over the coming days, thus it would be best to keep active, so we opted for a different, more subdued walking route back that had plenty of shops along the way, Anna buying a ring like she does in every country she visits.

After climbing what was loosely calculated as being the equivalent of 30 flights of stairs to the top of the hill and then making our way back down we needed to get off our feet again for a bit back at the hotel before heading out again for dinner and a drink. Perhaps the entire city was hungover from the festivities or maybe it was just a regular Monday night in this part of the country, but our choices seemed a little limited, however, we eventually stumbled upon La Choperia San Miguel De Allende, a sports bar that just happened to be showing Game 5 of the NBA Finals between the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks which turned out to be the deciding game, giving the Celtics their 18th NBA championship. Anna has a knack for badly timing going to the toilet during sporting events, such as when we attended an ICC Cricket World Cup match at the MCG in Melbourne and she missed a hat-trick when she ducked off to the ladies’ and on this particular occasion when she needed to take a leak she missed Payton Pritchard hit a shot from beyond half court to beat the halftime buzzer. We met a few new friends during the game and had dinner at La Choperia, but it closes at 9:30 so we left early and Anna located another rooftop bar, but we would definitely have to take the elevator after the day we’d had.
Exploring San Miguel de Allende:

Tuesday, June 18, 2024
Today we would be moving on to our next stop on our adventure, but that wouldn’t be until later in the afternoon so we checked out of our hotel and found a local market in which to spend an hour or two. This market had the best of both worlds, secondhand goods and some really good looking food, both cooked and groceries, and lunch would be the first stop. We weaved our way through the aisles, past chickens in cages and dried chillies being displayed on tarpaulins on the ground, through to the cooked food area and foodcourt. Everything looked and smelled delicious, but my weak gut was telling me to be careful, because we would be spending over an hour and a half later in a car with few toilet options in sight so maybe avoid the beef in the bain-marie served next to the cow’s skull or the miscellaneous meat stew. I was tempted by the huge pieces of pork crackling, but Anna was after churros so she hunted them down to tide us over while we looked through rows and rows of secondhand items before stopping off at a restaurant for the safe option, burritos.
Our afternoon in the market:

It was now getting a little later in the day and our ride was now here to drive us 90 minutes to our next stop, the city of Guanajuato:

Guanajuato is a municipality in central Mexico and the capital of the State of Guanajuato. It is part of the macroregion of the Bajío. It is located in a narrow valley, which makes its streets narrow and winding. Most are alleys that cars cannot pass through, and some are long sets of stairs up the mountainsides. Many of the city’s thoroughfares are partially or fully underground. The historic center has numerous small plazas and colonial-era mansions, churches, and civil constructions built using pink or green sandstone. The city historic center and the adjacent mines were proclaimed a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988.

The going was easy until we reached our destination, but it was once we had entered this gorgeous city that things got a little difficult.  A lot of the streets are small, winding alleys through which cars can’t pass and that makes driving with Google Maps even more difficult. We took one wrong turn and soon our driver was trying to navigate a corner that was the equivalent of attempting to enter a diagonal parking space on the opposite side of the road. Other times he realised he just wasn’t going to be able to squeeze down certain streets and had no choice but to reverse back down, hoping that any vehicles behind us would be able to relate and back up as well, but we were eventually at our hotel, Casa del Rector.
The hotel was in a great spot and when we arrived the sun was setting so we just sat by the rooftop pool with a drink or two and took in the magnificent views of the city, there would be plenty of time for exploring the next day:

Wednesday, June 19, 2024
We loved what we had seen in the streets when we were trying to find the hotel the previous evening, the narrow lanes giving the place the feel of a European city, and now was the time to explore it all on foot. We were staying in a college area, meaning there would be some great bars and cafes around so obviously our first stop was to get coffee and then take a look at the school itself, the Universidad de Guanajuato. From the outside it looked more like a church than a school in its design and soon we had wound our way down to Plaza del la Paz where the Basílica colegiata de Nuestra Señora de Guanajuato sits among some other actual churches, in the centre of which is a statue of a woman that is a symbol of peace in the city.
We had seen an interesting monument at the top of a hill from our balcony the previous night and with a little research we discovered there was a funicular, a type of cable railcar, to the top where we would see the Monument to the Pípila and get a view over the entire city from the other side so hopefully we’d be on that cable car soon. We stopped off for a bite and then walked around trying to get to the foot of the hill, but there really didn’t seem to be any direct route, and even though we were passing more beautiful landmarks including the La Valenciana Church it was starting to get late and we wanted to be up there as soon as possible. We noticed while wandering around that there seemed to be an extensive tunnel system running beneath the city and if it’s not built solely for cars, could that be an option?:

The Guanajuato underground tunnels are a network of wide channels that help lead traffic away from the city center. These tunnels have different layer crossroads and underground junctions. The tunnels are used for traffic which is heading in an eastwards direction. The westward direction passes through the center of Guanajuato. All of the tunnels have footpaths and even some of the bus stops are subterranean.

The tunnel system of Guanajuato was built to prevent flooding. Túnel La Galereña is the longest tunnel of this network and was excavated in the early 19th century to lead the Guanajuato River away from the center of the city. In 1960s the old river tunnels were strengthened, as they were in a bad condition and showed signs of collapse and subsidence. After the reconstruction, they were converted into a road tunnel. The first road journey was in 1961. But the old tunnels were of a suitable size for cars, medium-sized bus and vans but prevented larger transport getting into the city. A second tunnel was dug during the late 1960s, which diverted the river much deeper. Several additional tunnels were excavated during the 1990s.

Well, it does mention footpaths so that’s the rote we took, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a little intimidating trying to navigate a dark network of tunnels under a Mexican city with a poor wifi signal inside, cars flying by, and more than a handful of blind junctions, but after about 20 minutes we had popped out the other side and were a short walk from the funicular.
Looking around the central area of Guanajuato and trying not to get killed underground:

We were now at the base of the hill so a short ride to the top or a ton of stairs would have us at one of Guanajuato’s most famous sites, the Monument to the Pípila:

El Pípila is the nickname of a local hero of the city of Guanajuato in Mexico. His real name was Juan José de los Reyes Martínez Amaro (1782–1863).

Pípila, became famous for an act of heroism near the very beginning of the Mexican War of Independence, on 28 September 1810. The insurrection had begun in the nearby town of Dolores, led by Miguel Hidalgo, a criollo priest born in Pénjamo. He soon moved to the city of Guanajuato, Guanajuato, where the Spanish barricaded themselves–along with plenty of silver and other riches–in a grain warehouse known as the Alhóndiga de Granaditas. The granary was a stone fortress with high stone walls, but its wooden door proved to be a shortcoming.

With a long, flat stone tied to his back to protect him from the muskets of the Spanish troops, Pípila carried tar and a torch to the door of the Alhóndiga and set it on fire. The insurgents–who far outnumbered the Spanish in the warehouse–stormed inside and killed all the soldiers and the civil Spanish refugees

Naturally we opted for the funicular, the journey in which opened up to brilliant view over the city, this time of the side where we were staying. Once at the top we were on a stone plaza at the base of the sculpture and although it was great to see up close, we would’ve been happy to take the ride up there for the view alone.
Up on the plaza at the base of the Monument of the Pípila, but first take the ride up there with us:

We spent about half an hour at the plaza before heading back down and we decided to try to find an aboveground way to get back to the hotel. This had us combing through areas we had already explored and others we hadn’t, passing numerous statues and sculptures including one of Don Quixote and José Luis Cuevas‘ ‘La Giganta’, as well as the Templo de San Diego and Teatro Juarez, a building whose architecture has the country’s Spanish past on full display. We wandered down more streets and through some aboveground alleys, past some women in traditional Day of the Dead costumes a little early and were finally back at our hotel for a quick dip in the pool before heading out once more for dinner.
A few more sights around town:

Thursday, June 20, 2024
We would be moving on to Mexico city the following day, but we still hadn’t seen what this town is famous for — Mummies! It would be kind of pointless traveling to Guanajuato if we weren’t going to see some death so our final day here had pretty much planned itself, but that would take a backseat for a little bit, because every morning needs to start with coffee. We had passed a place the previous day, Cafe Conquistador, that looked really interesting with money hanging from the walls and ceiling and it was just down the road from our hotel. Naturally the coffee was great, but we needed to add something to the decor and fortunately for us I still had some Singapore currency in my wallet and was given a marker by the server. It would be easy (and probably highly illegal) to just to sign the note and stick it to the wall, but we wanted to be creative. Chewing gum is illegal in Singapore so why not draw a bubble coming out of coming out of Yusof Ishak‘s mouth while he holds up a pack of gum? He’s not buying, selling, or importing it in Singapore so that would go splendidly with the other notes on the wall.

We started to walk down to the Mummy Museum and passed a place that looked like they were selling some great rotisserie chickens. Also, we didn’t know exactly how long we would be looking at dead people that afternoon so we decided to line our stomachs there with some chicken and another one of the mouthwatering local soups, all accompanied by too much rice and bread. Even though we knew we would be doing a fair bit of walking that day, we had to wear that lunch off as we made our way down to the mummy museum, first stopping off at another museum, Museo y Casa de Diego Rivera with its collection from the area’s most famous artist, Diego Rivera. To be honest that Museum wasn’t all that interesting, I didn’t even take any photos, but perhaps I was just excited about the mummies so we continued on afterwards, passing what was once the art-deco Cine Reforma, sadly now a Del Sol store, along the way.
The day was only beginning:

We were now at the museum and although their website is down as of writing, Wikipedia has plenty of information on the Mummies of Guanajuato:

The city’s most famous tourist attraction is the Mummies of Guanajuato, which are in their own museum on the side of the municipal cemetery in the Tepetapa neighbourhood. The Mummy Museum contains a collection of specimens that mummified naturally in the adjoining cemetery. Authorities began exhuming bodies in 1870, when a new law required residents to pay a tax for perpetual burial. If survivors didn’t pay the tax, they exhumed the body. If the body was mummified, they stored it in a building above ground and people began paying to see them in the late 1800s. The burial tax was abolished in 1958. At first, the mummies were displayed in a poorly lit tunnel that visitors entered with a torch or candle. Visitors were allowed to touch the mummies with some even breaking off pieces for souvenirs or to verify the body was real. The modern museum opened in 1970 with proper lighting and ventilation, and the mummies protected behind glass.

The collection contains 111 mummies, mostly women, with some men and about 20 children, but only 59 of these are on display. It is considered the largest collection of mummies in the Western Hemisphere. Almost all of the people were commoners and came from backgrounds such as miners and farmers.

We entered the first room of the museum and besides seeing shelves of mummified bodies, we also encountered a loud group of American teenagers who were constantly joking about how hot the female ones would’ve been, but we were able to move ahead of them and look through all of the rooms and what was particularly interesting were the child corpses:

Of the children in the collection, one can see evidence of a practice where deceased Catholic children were dressed as angels, if girls, or as saints, if boys, to indicate their purity and assured entrance into heaven. Several are babies, including one considered the smallest mummy in the world. Two of these small bodies were partially embalmed by taking out internal organs and replacing the cavities with packing material. One was a foetus, which probably miscarried at about 24 weeks, and the other is a newborn male infant.

When we had finished looking through the museum we moved onto the cemetery where the corpses had been exhumed and it wasn’t only old tombs, there were also some that had only been there a couple of years. The cemetery was quite large, but when we had finished looking around we went to the exit gate and it was locked! Could we be spending our final night in Guanajuato trapped in a cemetery? We raced to all corners of the graveyard only to continue to find locked gates, despite our phones telling us we were at the correct exit, but it turned out good ol’ Google Maps was wrong once again as we eventually found our slightly obscured exit and started on our way back.
A look around the Mummy Museum and cemetery, all of the signs from in the museum are for the image after it:

Scroll on if you’re squeamish, there are quite a few photos!

When you’ve had an afternoon that involves a lot of creepiness like that you definitely need a drink afterwards so what better way to wrap up our final day here than with a mini pub crawl, because that seemed to be what a lot of other people were doing. When we were finally out of the cemetery we walked down the road back to the main area of the city, passing a goat loaded with milk jugs tied to a signpost and several more sculptures as we made multiple stops in bars and restaurants, the first stop specialising in pulque, an alcoholic beverage made of fermented agave sap, a drink Anna particularly liked. The place even had a mural of the pulque goddess.
Onward we continued along the winding, narrow streets into the night, eating and drinking our way through Guanajuato one last time:

So that’s it for Guanajuato. Tune in for the next part where we spend a week in Mexico City, going to a Luchador match and visiting some Mayan pyramids, as well as eating a lot, and shopping a lot!