Travelers who would think nothing of renting a car and eating their way through Tuscany or Provence quiver at the thought of doing the same thing in Mexico.
Hey, I quivered at the thought — and this was my thought. But I wanted to try this thing.
What I found in eight days of meadering from Mexico City to Puerto Vallarta was an experience every bit as beautiful and as culturally rewarding, and as delicious, as exploring the countrysides of Europe. Different, for sure, but just as much fun. And unlike Italy and France, Mexico is right down the road.
The plan was to fly into Mexico City, stay there just long enough to see if it’s really the hellhole everyone says it is, then rent a car at the airport and get out into the country. The route would take in some of central Mexico’s old colonial towns — Queretaro, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Morelia and Guadalajara — and finish with Puerto Vallarta’s Pacific beaches.
Yes, I had the same questions everyone does: Will there be out-of-control buses careening around every blind turn? Pigs on the roads? Banditos everywhere? Impoverished children hustling gum at every stop sign? Corrupt cops with palms forever out? Bad gas, bad food, bad water?
The answers came quickly and emphatically: No, no, no, no, no, no, no and no.
And even though it’s got its share of problems, I really liked Mexico City . . .
Mexico City to Queretaro
I’d arranged from home to pick up my rental car at Mexico City Airport specifically because I did not want to drive in the heart of Mexico City. I followed the Hertz lady’s directions and wound up driving in the heart of Mexico City.
Now, a few quick words about Mexico City: It wasn’t all that smoggy, the food was good, the pyramids were awesome, the cathedral was sinking and driving in the city was no crazier than driving in Boston. A little sign on my hotel room’s dresser said getting into any random cab would be a really dumb thing to do, so I walked a lot — but I still would’ve liked more than 36 hours in Mexico City.
Back to our story.
I eventually got turned back around — the details don’t matter, but I think only one turn was illegal — saw the sign I’d missed for Queretaro and was on my way on a road that was slow, industrial and crummy until another sign appeared: “cuoto.”
“Cuoto” means “toll.” Mexican toll roads are not cheap (see accompanying story), but they’re a lot like ours, which means they’re fast, in good shape and generally have lots of lanes. Use them.
An hour out of the city, much of the countryside was cactus-studded hilly grassland with occasional clusters of simple houses and with mountains in the distant haze. Another hour or so, approaching Palmillas, billboards touted barbacoa.
There, on a tollway service road, half a dozen modest joints sold the local specialty: tender barbecued mutton (I think it was mutton). A pile of the stuff at Barbacoa Los Arcos, accompanied by a stack of freshly made tortillas, with chopped onions and salsas (red and green) for garnish — $3.50.
Farther down on the road, irrigated fields of bright green vegetables replaced the cactus and grassland; and about three hours after leaving Mexico City, signs (in Spanish, but with icons anyone can understand) brought me into Queretaro’s historic center.
Before doing a little home work for this drive, I’d never heard of Queretaro. But it was here in 1866 that puppet emperor Maximilian had his brief reign ended by a firing squad; the country’s constitution was signed here in 1917, in a theater still in use as a theater. There is much history here.
Today’s Queretaro is a quaint, immaculate and prosperous state capital of narrow streets and public gardens and small plazas and lovely churches. It is a place to explore on foot — much of it was built in the 1700s and is well preserved — and when the exploration is done, it is a place to leisurely sip a beer or cappuccino at one of the outdoor cafes that line the gardens and plazas.
Those same cafes serve meals. Dinner at the upscale Los Magueyes Restaurant-Bar on the Plaza de Armas — three enchiladas and a quarter of a chicken — $3.80.
For those who visualize Mexico as dust and adobe or as tourist-clogged beachfront or as Tijuana smarm, Queretaro is an early revelation.
Nonetheless, the road beckoned.
Queretaro to San Miguel de Allende
Mexico Highway 57 is four lanes out of Queretaro, through heavy industry that gives way again to dry grasslands and hills and cactus and, here and there, a cluster.
The exit for San Miguel de Allende was onto a good, fairly straight and very fast two-lane road that eventually climbed and slowed and shrank to a street with speed bumps. Finally, after one grand turn, there came a scenic overlook with about 10 parked cars.
I parked mine. And when I looked over, I saw, for the first time, San Miguel de Allende.
What I saw was a splendid scene — of church spires and domes and winding streets and walls painted in pastels, all shimmering in the bright Mexico sun. My camera couldn’t capture it; having better luck was a woman seated on a folding chair at the far end of the overlook, working in watercolors.
San Miguel de Allende (pop. about 60,000) is very special. More than anything, it’s gorgeous. That San Miguel has become known as an “art colony” trivializes its magic. Mining and missionaries built it, and time mellowed it; the artists came much later, in this century.
Lunch at the Cafe Colon: rich chicken-rice soup, chicken enchiladas in a green salsa and a Corona — $3.
Andy Andersen, a retired educator who lives most of the year in Montana near Yellowstone National Park, is already an accomplished artist, specializing in detailed black-and-white renditions of aircraft. This is his fourth winter in San Miguel. This season, he was working with local painter David Mallory, in Mallory’s studio, which was where I found him touching up a small painting of Arizona’s Walnut Canyon. He expects to do seven miniatures like this one — this was the first — until he gets what he’s after.
“I’m trying to learn a little bit about color,” Andersen said.
He is 74.
“It’s just a great place to be,” he said. “And of course, I love the people. I’m talking about the people that work the ground, lay the brick, drive the taxis, who make their living in normal ways.”
And one more thing.
“I pay $180 for a month on an apartment,” Andersen said.
What I saw was a place where every doorway, every wall, every flower, every face begs to be put on canvas or a sketchpad or photographed or, at the very least, not forgotten.
San Miguel is a town that wins you over instantly. Then it grows on you.
But I had more places to see.
San Miguel de Allende to Guanajuato
The slow route from San Miguel to Guanajuato is north to Dolores Hidalgo, then back down to Guanajuato. It takes about two hours. The fast way, more or less straight across, takes half as long — but I kind of wanted to see Dolores Hidalgo. It was site of an important moment in Mexican history: On the steps of its central church, in 1810, Father Hidalgo called for the Mexican people to rise up against Spain, which they did — and lost. But it was a start, and today the church presides over one the country’s more pleasing plazas.
A wedge of chicharron (fried pig skin) with red salsa, from a plaza vendor — 20 cents.
The region is also famed, with Puebla, as one of the centers of Talavera tiles and pottery, and Talavera factory shops literally line the roads leading into and out of town. Before I saw it, I had zero notion of what Talavera was. I stopped at one shop, bought two Talavera tequila glasses ($1.20 each) and wanted to buy everything in the store.
Mexico Highway 110 is a two-lane road that starts out from Dolores Hidalgo as an interesting, mildly winding highway with mountains in the distance. Then the mountains and road meet.
Then comes the sign: curvas peligrosas. Then come the curvas.
The next 20 miles or so are mountain driving. Experienced palms sweat on drives like these. The payoff was absolutely spectacular views. These were mountains I’d flown over. Now I knew them.
Then after one last bend, the sight of a giant dome almost took me off the pavement.
The Valenciana mine was discovered in 1760. Tons of silver and gold have been brought out of its pits (the mine remains active) and untold lives were lost getting it. The dome belonged to a church alongside the mine: the Templo La Valenciana (1788), whose grand exterior gives only a hint of the wealth of gold within. This is a building capable of dazzling even the most church-weary tourist.
From there, the road snakes down into Guanajuato.
How to describe Guanajuato . . .
Go back to what I wrote about San Miguel de Allende. Guanajuato is like that, only there’s more of it, along with a university whose students sing and play guitars in the streets while wearing renaissance costumes and passing out mini-jugs of wine.
The small main square (actually, it’s more of a wedge than a square), Jardin Union, is lined with restaurants. At one particularly interesting moment, two bands (each with accordion, guitar, bass guitar and snare drum) and a traditional mariachi band were playing within 30 feet of each other on this square while, steps away, a street entertainer was drawing big laughs from hundreds of folks seated on the front steps of the Teatro Juarez.
Get the picture?
And while all this was going on, theater groups (some students, some not) were no doubt performing playlets at other squares around the town, because that’s what they do.
Dinner at Truco 7: a quarter-chicken in a wondrous mole sauce plus two Coronas — $4.50.
This is the place where muralist Diego Rivera was born. The house, now a museum, has some of his work. Father Hidalgo’s severed head once dangled from a hook of a granary; the granary, La Alhondiga de Granaditas, today is also a museum. The head’s gone, but the hook is still where it was.
It’s a town with local mummies (there’s a museum). It’s a town with real cantinas, the no-girls-allowed kind with open urinals at the end of the bar (and 50-cent beers). It’s a town that honors Cervantes with both a major cultural festival (October) and a delightful gallery-museum containing interpretations of Don Quixote ranging from serious art (Dali, as serious as Dali ever is) to silliness (Quixote ashtrays, Quixotes fashioned from nuts and bolts, etc.).
It’s a town where folks sell hand-crafted, husk-wrapped meat tamales on church steps after Sunday mass, the best you will ever eat — for 25 cents each.
And it’s a town whose stone-paved streets are so steep and so slick that anyone trying to negotiate those streets in bad shoes will look almost as goofy as anyone trying to drive on them.
I stayed two days. Not long enough.
Guanajuato to Morelia
A tollway out of Guanajuato (no more curvas peligrosas) quickly and easily connected with southbound Mexico Highway 45, another first-rate four-lane. Not long after the junction, the roadside signs began, each connected to a ramshackle stand and all saying the same thing: fresas con crema.
Fresas are strawberries. Irapuato, the next town, calls itself “World’s Strawberry Capital.” The berries were in season.
I pulled to the side of the road, asked a family that ran one of the stands if I could photograph the strawberries, and they welcomed me with a gesture and a smile. Then they offered a strawberry. It was large, red, sweet and lucious. I offered to pay. They refused. I shook hands with the father, and the family sent me on my way with more smiles.
“I love the people. I’m talking about the people that work the ground . . . “
The road narrowed as it skirted Irapuato and became clogged with trucks. A few miles south, the road — less congested now — found a village called Magdalena de Araceo, and in that village I walked for a time with a crowd of children, most wearing red school sweaters and heading home for lunch. Before long, they knew I was from Chicago, that I knew Michael Jordan (just a little bit, from a previous life at the Tribune) and that I spoke almost no Spanish.
For the next 10 minutes or so, these beautiful kids taught me colors in Spanish and I taught them colors in English.
They especially seemed to like saying “purple.”
The approach to Morelia was the easiest on this drive. It was flat. The streets were straight. The cathedral announcing the center of the town came into view early, and getting there was a snap.
But Morelia itself was something of a shock. As with Queretaro, I hadn’t heard of it before — but this place was altogether different from that town and the others. Those felt like old colonial but also indigenous Mexico. This, a city of nearly a half-million, felt like old Madrid, urban and sophisticated. The colorfully painted walls gave way here to dark natural stone buildings; its people, most of them dressed well, had a formality about them I hadn’t seen since Mexico City.
Ah, but this was still Mexico. Breakfast at a stall on Plaza San Francisco: menudo (tripe) in a spicy red sauce with a stack of tortillas — $1.20.
The cathedral, begun in the mid-1600s, was completed in 1744. It is huge. Like so many of the town’s buildings that date to the 1600s and 1700s, it exuded a sense of once-privileged, now comfortably accessible antiquity.
This not only was the easiest city to negotiate, but the friendliest, maybe because tourists were a relative novelty. The following was an actual street conversation:
Me: “Excuse me (then bad Spanish, asking about the location of a restaurant).”
Woman: “Si (then perfect Spanish, pointing and gesturing).”
Me (in English): “So down one block, then left?”
Woman (in English): “Exactly.”
The morning I left Morelia, dozens of indigenous people in native dress and hundreds of students, many carrying signs and a few with faces hidden behind ski masks, stopped traffic for 30 minutes as they marched through the heart of Morelia. The town crackled.
I had to leave. I didn’t want to.
Morelia to Guadalajara
It’s virtually all four-lane tollway from Morelia to Guadalajara, much of it over rich farmland, some over mesquite- and cactus-covered hills, all framed by mountains. This is pleasant, stress-free driving.
Just to break it up, I stopped at a little town called Huaniqueo and found a little shop that sold straw cowboy-style hats.
Me (in bad Spanish): “Do you have one just a little larger?”
Old man (in perfect Spanish, which sounded a lot like this): “Look, pal, this hat is for the sun, not to pick up babes. Twenty pesos.”
Lunch at the town’s only restaurant: chicken soup with a large chicken breast in the bowl, a stack of freshly made tortillas and a Coke — $1.40.
Guadalajara, about three hours from Morelia, is a big, modern city (about 5 million), a city of broad boulevards and tree-lined streets. Its core is mostly historic and pleasant; some of it is ragged and tired — but even there, the nervousness that (right or wrong) many feel when walking Mexico City’s streets is less evident.
Dinner at La Rinconada: Beef tongue a la Veracruzana — $5.20.
Within Guadalajara is the once-separate village of Tlaquepaque, a crafts center that would be tacky if the crafts sold and sometimes produced there (primarly glassware, stoneware, ceramics, pewter and furniture) weren’t so extraordinary.
But there is no adjective to describe the Orzoco mural in Guadalajara’s Palacio del Gobierno, painted shortly before the outbreak of World War II. At its center is Father Hidalgo, the patriot; alongside are Nazis, communists, fascists, clerics and the victims of war and injustice. It is a brutal, challenging work.
“He was criticizing everything,” said a guide named Polo. “And he was right.”
It is the city given credit (though “credit” is a matter of taste) as birthplace of mariachi, that uniquely Mexican style of music made by various stringed instruments, trumpets and voice. I like the stuff.
In Guadalajara is something called the Plaza of the Mariachis, dedicated to the form. Late on my last night in Guadalajara, in the Plaza of the Mariachis, I heard a mariachi performance of the mariachi classic, “Cielito Lindo.” It might have been the worst rendition of “Cielito Lindo” ever performed anywhere.
But, as I said, it was late. Or maybe I needed a beach. A playa.
Guadalajara to Puerto Vallarta
It’s a five-hour drive from the city to Puerto Vallarta. On the way is the town of Tequila, which is famous for . . . well, you know what it’s famous for. Half-day tours leave from Guadalajara carrying travelers eager to sample the stuff straight from the distillers. But I was driving.
The first two hours of this drive were especially fine — four-lane tollroad, some of it through mountain-desert filled with giant saguaro and organ-pipe cactus.
At the Puerto Vallarta cutoff, near Chapalilla, the road shrank to two lanes at the final toll booth and would stay that way for the rest of the run. The last couple of hours were pretty slow — but that was OK.
Because at that last toll booth, the young man taking the money had spotted my new straw hat.
Lad: “La playa?”
Me: “Si.”
In perfect Spanish. Without a quiver.
———-
Alan Solomon’s email address is alsolly@aol.com.
AROUND MEXICO
DAY 1
Mexico City-Queretaro: 159 miles.
Tolls: $8.60.
Overnight: Hotel Amberes, $25.
Best grub: Enchiladas Queretanos, quarter-chicken with mole and two Bohemia beers, $6.60; Los Magueyes Restaurante & Bar, Queretaro.
DAY 2
Queretaro-San Miguel de Allende: 77 miles.
Tolls: None.
Overnight: Casa de Sierra Nevada del Parque, $172.
Best grub: Chicken soup with rice, enchiladas verdes and a Corona beer, $3; Cafe Colon, San Miguel de Allende.
DAY 3
San Miguel de Allende-Guanajuato: 65 miles.
Tolls: None.
Overnight: Hotel Parador del Convento, $25.
Best grub: Tamale (meat), 25 cents; from a pot after mass at the Templo de la Compania de Jesus, Guanajuato.
DAY 4
Guanajuato.
DAY 5
Guanajuato-Morelia: 126 miles.
Tolls: $1.20.
Overnight: Hotel Virrey de Mendoza, $69.
Best grub: Chipotle chicken soup, chicken breast stuffed with cuitlacoche (corn fungus), $8.60; Fonda Las Mercedes, Morelia.
DAY 6
Morelia-Guadalajara: 188 miles.
Tolls: $23.50.
Overnight: Hotel de Mendoza, $64.
Best grub: Birria (goat in a red sauce), tortillas and a Coke, $2.90; Birrieria El Chale (in the market), Guadalajara.
DAY 7
Guadalajara.
DAY 8
Guadalajara-Puerto Vallarta: 208 miles.
Tolls: $20.60.
Total miles: 880 (including in-town miles)
Total gas: $42
Total tolls: $53.90.
Note: Hotels are listed for information purposes and are not necessarily endorsements. Rate was for one person; in most cases, doubles are somewhat higher. All prices subject to change.
NOTES FROM THE ROAD
Highlights: Narrow winding streets, churches, church bells, crafts, murals, desert and mountain scenery, smiling children, gracious adults and terrific food.
Road food: Barbacoa (barbecued mutton) in Palmillas, sopa de pollo (chicken soup) in Huaniqueo, fresas con crema (strawberries with cream) in Irapuato, chicharron con salsa (pork skin with sauce) in Dolores Hidalgo, asquita (a cup of corn kernels with cheese, chile powder and mayo) in Morelia, and helados (ice cream), tamales (tamales), enchiladas (enchiladas) and tacos (tacos) everywhere. And beer.
Essential stop: Guanajuato.
Favorite town: Morelia.
Prettiest town: San Miguel de Allende.
Best plaza: Main plaza, Dolores Hidalgo.
Best mural: “Carnival of Ideologies,” by Jose Clemente Orozco, Guadalajara.
Best church: Templo de San Cayetano de Valenciana, near Guanajuato.
Best beer: Corona. With lime.
Cheapest beer: Sol, 50 cents; Salon Verde cantina, Guanajuato.
Best meal: Chipotle chicken soup, chicken breast stuffed with cuitlacoche (corn fungus), $8.60; Fonda Las Mercedes, Morelia.
Best cheap meal: Enchiladas minera (cheese enchiladas surrounded by carrots, potatoes and more cheese, plus rice and beans), $2; El Tapatio, Guanajuato.
Best market meal: Birria (chunks of roasted goat in tomato-based broth), $2.50; Birrieria El Chale, Guadalajara public market.
Best street meal: Menudo, $1.20; foodstall near Templo de San Francisco, Morelia.
Best tamale: Meat, from vendor on steps of Templo de la Compania de Jesus, Guanajuato; 25 cents.
Worst ice cream flavor: Chicharron, a free sample; Helados Aguilar, Dolores Hidalgo.
Best hotel: Hotel Virrey de Mendoza, Morelia.
Best hotel room: Casa de Sierra Nevada en el Parque, San Miguel de Allende.
Best drive: Mexico 110 between Dolores Hidalgo and Guadalajara.
Best music: Student troubadors in Guanajuato.
Best mariachi song: “Guadalajara.”
Worst mariachi singers: Guadalajara.
