A long while since my last post! It's been a whirlwind summer of music, family, friends, and traveling all across the USA. While it really was a great time, I am excited to be back in Mexico, preparing for our next leg of the bicycle tour. There is much I would like to share from the last three months, and I am sure I will (so many blog posts brewing in my head!), but for this post I am going to jump right back into what is relevant to me right now. Mexico!
As some of you know, I just joined Instagram (BrewisTravels) and have been posting approximately a photo a day. While I haven't quite wrapped my head around the total usefulness of Instagram yet, I do like how it encourages me to be more timely in what I share, and to share only what I think is beautiful or interesting to those I am sharing with. Last weekend I captured some lovely photos during a day trip around the countryside of Guanajuato, and having fresh in my mind the United States' slightly (or greatly) skewed vision of what Mexico is like, I decided to share some of those photos, specifically those of the charming little pueblos in the area, each beautifully photogenic in their surroundings.
But to be honest, well this is not. Sure, it is showing much of what Americans don't imagine when they think of Mexico. But it is not truthful to present it as all sunshine and picturesque churches in lush valleys. I will probably always tend to lean towards the beautiful, as it is my nature, but in this post I want to show a little more.
Before Lewis and I came back to the States for the summer, we lived for a month in Guanajuato City, and had our own casa during this time. I will strike you all with envy once again as I present the view from our private balcony:
This time however we are the traveling homeless again, living out of bags and cafes. We made friends during our previous stay, two of which agreed to host us even though this is the busiest time of the year for Guanajuato, the time of the 3-week-long international festival of science and the arts, Cervantino. All available beds in town (and probably couches and floors) are taken, as this is said to be the largest festival in all of Latin America and many come from all over the world to enjoy it. We are lucky to have a friend in Daniel who hosts us during the week in town (where also our bikes resided during the summer), and Diana who hosts us on the weekends just outside of town. Thank you both!
Last Saturday Diana drove us around the countryside and I collected those photos. On Sunday she had to work, and we were left to entertain ourselves. Turns out urban Mexico has some similarities to the United States, and one is that the suburbs are sprawling and car-centric, and there is nothing much to do outside your home. After spending the morning internetting and using Diana's sewing machine (a wonderful surprise!), Lewis and I had a hankering to be outside. Her neighborhood is situated on a hill top surrounded on three sides by other hills which at a glance appear to be in the midst of neighborhood development. We decided to explore in that direction, since on the forth side is a highway that is a major vein into the city and full of many unpleasantries such as fuming vehicles and chain hotels and gas stations.
Last Saturday Diana drove us around the countryside and I collected those photos. On Sunday she had to work, and we were left to entertain ourselves. Turns out urban Mexico has some similarities to the United States, and one is that the suburbs are sprawling and car-centric, and there is nothing much to do outside your home. After spending the morning internetting and using Diana's sewing machine (a wonderful surprise!), Lewis and I had a hankering to be outside. Her neighborhood is situated on a hill top surrounded on three sides by other hills which at a glance appear to be in the midst of neighborhood development. We decided to explore in that direction, since on the forth side is a highway that is a major vein into the city and full of many unpleasantries such as fuming vehicles and chain hotels and gas stations.
We summited the hill and started to walk down the other side. Soon the neatly cobble-stoned avenue gave way to dirt as we approached the areas of development. After taking in the view, we descended down a dirt tract to the right and noticed that the half-constructed home closest to us had not been worked on in quite a while, being that there was no evidence of recent work such as fresh construction materials or tracks of heavy trucks in the dirt. In fact the entire home, where there was dirt, was overgrown with weeds and grass. The home had a grand view and there was no door or fence to deter us so we went inside, much to the disapproval of the barking roof-dogs of the closest inhabited home down the "street". We joked to ourselves how we could just squat here for a while and probably no one would notice. The layout of the single storied but multi-leveled home was not modest by any means, having a large stone-walled outdoor space, the foundations for a possible sun room, and what appeared to be plumbing for a bathroom in two of the three likely bedrooms. We speculated as to why it was abandoned... poor planning? Monetary crisis? After taunting the dogs from the back patio a bit longer than we should have, we moved on.
Following another water-rutted dirt track down a hill so steep we occasionally lost our footing, we passed more and more of these abandoned projects. The hillside in front of us was covered with them. A handful were "live", as in they were clearly being worked on currently. Some of them were unfinished, but at least lived in. But the glaring majority were totally abandoned. More speculation... perhaps this is a unified and somewhat recent development? Perhaps it is normal for a developer to build the bones of a home, investing as little upfront money as possible until a buyer comes along and pays for the finishing, or handles the finishing themselves? After all, the homes are all stone, brick, and cement and can handle some seasons of weather before starting to decay, unlike the typical wood-framed homes of North America. It seemed odd to us, as Americans would not stand for such eye-sores in their neighborhood, plummeting property values. The culture of Mexico is different in sometimes mysterious ways, and perhaps this method of development was a display of one of those differences. But there were so many, some apparently abandoned longer than others. There were also empty plots, and some plots with just a laid foundation. They were scattered about the hillsides like the ghost town of people who did not yet exist. At the center of one of the hillsides was an intersection with a few buildings close together, some with residents, and a little tienda selling the usual junk food and garafones of water. It was an isolated center of an expanse of skeletons that have not lived. Yet the views were stunning, even if they did feature the urban sprawl of the valleys below.
We inquired later with a nearby resident, mentioning the oddity to us of this dormant pre-development and offering our hypotheses behind it. She provided different reasoning. It seemed, as far as she knew anyway, that the reality is that people buy a plot and start to build a home until they run out of money and can build it no longer. Whether this is because of poor planning and the owners may never be able to finish, or people prefer to secure the plot and start the build, hoping to finish once funds are saved up again at some future date, is unknown to us. Perhaps a little of both. Apparently though, many started projects are never completed and are left to be ruins before their time.
Since returning to Daniel's, we have begun to notice several abandoned half-builds around the hillsides of the city center as well. I can't help but wonder who were these builders, what their unrealized dreams were, and why they were ultimately left to the stray dogs. Each one must have it's own unique untold story.