SFARP's 2003 City Tour...

A Rented Bus Adventure to Historic Mexico

By Bruce F.Barber

Freda and I spent one year planning this adventure. At the end of that year we sought the assistance of Carlos Guillen (of BajaTerra, a Mexicali-based travel agent) who arranged our transportation, hotel reservations, and ferry crossing from Mazatlan to La Paz.

Because we had heard good reports of bus travel throughout Mexico, we leased a bus from a local bus company that would carry us from start to finish. That bus, driven throughout this adventure by Sr. Raul Sanchez, the bus company's owner, and Jose Neria, a professional bus driver, met us at San Felipe's Campo Ocotillos so that each tour participant could leave his and her car in a secure location at the camp and have that car immediately available upon our return on March 8.

Therefore, we departed San Felipe at 2:00 p.m. Thursday, February 20, 2003 with thirty tour participants. This 17-day adventure involved hotels in each scheduled location and four nights sleeping on the bus while traveling long distances between key points. Key points included Alamos, Sonora; Guadalajara, Jalisco; Leon, Guanajuato, Santa Rosa de Lima, Dolores Hidalgo and San Miguel de Allende (in the state of Guanajuato); Mazatlan, Sinaloa (where we boarded a ferry to La Paz, Baja California Sur), Puerto Escondito and Guerrero Negro, B.C.S.; and Ensenada, Baja California.

Our first stop was for dinner at El Herradero Restaurant in San Luis (Rio Colorado).

Afterwards, we enjoyed a movie (in the bus) before drifting off to sleep as our bus advanced through the dramatic Altar Desert region of western Sonora to Sonoita and thence south to Hermosillo, Obregon and Navajoa where we stopped for coffee early the next morning.

In Alamos, we enjoyed two restfull nights at Hotel Los Tesoros whose spacious rooms included a fireplace and firewood.

Our first and lasting impressions of this quaint colonial city stemmed from its immaculate state of cleanliness and its graveyard which dates from the16th century. In this hallowed ground lay the remains of a large number of men, women and children who sacrificed, or were sacrificed, for the freedom of their country. This one message, the sustenance of freedom in a country whose populace has not enjoyed life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness such as our own country enjoys, was to be reinforced throughout this adventure.

From Alamos, we returned to Navajoa and headed south (again) on Federal Highway 15 via Culiacan to Mazatlan where we enjoyed supper. Rolling south again, we enjoyed another movie before our second night of sleeping in the bus. Arriving at our Guadalajara hotel at 7:00 a.m. we were received graciously regardless of the hour, and assigned our several rooms. After breakfast, several of us set off to see the highlights of this major metropolitan city but returned for a pre-arranged walking tour of the city's historic center under the control of an English speaking guide.

Departing Guadalajara the following morning, we visited Tlaquepaque where many of our numbers were surprised to find such a magnificent shopping center for art (of all kinds), furniture and clothing. Because Freda and I had been there before, we enjoyed El Patio Restaurant where we found the absolute best Birria de Res imaginable. This is a place to list in your travel records as a must when visiting Tlaquepaque.

Departing Tlaquepaque in mid-afternoon, our next stop was in Leon, Mexico's leather center. Our drivers displayed an incomparable expertise negotiating streets barely as wide as our bus to place us as close as possible (within one hundred feet) to our hotel. That evening we enjoyed dinner at an outdoor restaurant (Howard Johnson's) on the city's Historic Plaza. We found an Internet Cafe on that same plaza enabling many of us to communicate with loved ones back home.

Following next morning's breakfast, we were driven to the leather shopping center which is adjacent to city center. Here, purchasers reveled in belts, wallets, purses, shoes and coats. In addition, because our bus drivers parked adjacent to what may be the best outdoor, fast food, seafood restaurant in Mexico, we enjoyed the freshest seafood available from a delightful luncheon menu on the heels of trapsing an unknown number of cobblestoned streets through "leathersville." Within one block of the city's central bus terminal, this place, Pancho's Sea Food, is another MUST to be added to your list when visiting Leon. Whether cocktails or entrees, each contained more seafood and less filler material than ever before experienced.

From Leon we were driven to Guanajuato which is advertised as Mexico's most beautiful city.

Truly delightful, it must be experienced to understand that claim. From our experience, I rated it "One of Many" but hasten to add it has an incomparable charm and unique design that may be unmatched in the entire world.

Its history is legendary with Alhondiga de Granaditas the place where the heads of four principal revolutionaries were on display (impaled at each corner of this fortress-like structure) for 10 agonizing years.

Suffice it to say there are three significant parts to this art-filled city to place it in perspective:

a. The Guanajuato River runs in a tunnel under the city.

b. Seventeen mine tunnels were widened and supported to create the avenues through which much of the city's automotive traffic runs.

c. There are "old" and "new" sections of this five-hundred-years old city to enable expansion without changing the original city's form or charm.

The old section, the "most beautiful" part, was built on hill and mountain sides so that all walking is up and down rather than horizontal. There is an opera house, many churches (each with its own history), a central marketplace, an endless array of stores, many historic statues, and a world-renowned university. A week is insufficient time to comprehend the full measure of beauty, charm, history, artwork, statuary (and annual Cervantino Festival) on display here.

Departing Guanajuato, we visited an off-the-beaten-track mountain community where we discovered a pottery factory (Mayolica Santa Rosa) producing high quality merchandise comparable to the ever-popular Talavera.

An hour later, in Dolores Hidalgo we were shocked to learn how large this historic pueblo really was.

We were equally shocked to learn the full extent of its (pottery) shopping areas. In addition to the fact the 1810 revolution began here, Hidalgo offers a plethora of visitors as many as one hundred flavors of locally made ice cream. I, for example, enjoyed never before dreamed of flavors of corn, zapote, and montecado ice creams. Of these, montecado, a buttery prune ice cream with huge prune chunks, was the best but try to imagine the others including garlic, rum, jalape–o and a dozen varieties of chocolate ice cream.

San Miguel de Allende was the coup de gras where as many as half its residents are American and European. While a dozen churches were in full view from our hotel room, shopping centers and hot springs add to this quaint little city and its magnificent restaurants including Harry Bisset's New Orleans Restaurant which we hereby add to our list of MUST ENJOY locations. In addition to churches, statuary (including Ignacio Allende and Cristoforo Colon) and restaurants, we found an internet cafe and the central market place where home decor products are considerably less expensive than in many (if not most) of Mexico's other tourist cities.

Returning to Mazatlan, we stopped for supper at El Arriero, an Argentine restaurant in La Piedad de Cavados, Michoacan. Another MUST ENJOY restaurant where service, cleanliness and food quality were incomparable. With but a few hours to spare in Mazatlan (following our 7:00 a.m. arrival), we visited the central marketplace to renew a long-held nostalgia and enjoyed freshly smoked marlin before boarding the ferry to La Paz.

Our crossing (of the Sea of Cortes) was pleasant, providing a relaxing change of pace after what many may call a whirlwind adventure. Upon our arrival in La Paz, we stopped at a Ley supermarket to purchase foods and beverages for a picnic to be enjoyed along the route to Guerrero Negro. That is, owing to the distance we had to travel, and the sparsity of restaurants to feet thirty-two hungry travelers, our drivers recommended a picnic and selected a beautiful location to enjoy it.

Our picnic stop, at Puerto Escondido, was another highlight.

Hidden as its name suggests, it is a gem location surrounded by eroded volcanic mountains many of us likened to Hawaii's natural beauty. A shallow water port naturally protected from the elements, contained anchored sailboats adding charm to an idyllic scene where the waterfront is encased in concrete, a lamp-lined boulevard directs incoming cars to its inner beauty, two arched bridges provide (low) passage for boats to backwater moorings, and an RV park completes the scene. Seagulls swooped low, as we enjoyed our separate picnic lunches, to view what we might toss in their direction. As demonstrated during many prior stops, our drivers planned our enjoyment of this somewhat difficult adventure to the nth degree. (The word "difficult" is used for the single purpose of identifying sleeping overnight in a bus.)

We enjoyed dinner that evening at Mama Espinosa's restaurant in El Rosario. And, following a full-length movie and a 60-minute short, we arrived at our hotel for the night on the outskirts of Guerrero Negro. Long noted as a seasonal whale watching haven , a part of our group signed up for and departed early the next morning on a whale watching adventure. Later that day, one of our participants told me the thrill she enjoyed that morning (try to imagine a 21-foot panga surrounded by six cavorting grey whales) was exceeded only by the birth of her two children.

Ensenada was our final destination and the place we invited our drivers to dinner (at El Rey Sol restaurant) so that we might express our gratitude for their professionalism, the security we had enjoyed, their many kindnesses and their continued assurance of our complete enjoyment of this memorable trek.

During our "Guanajuato Adventure," we enjoyed blue skies and starry nights, dined on excellent food in truly outstanding restaurants, and drove 5,754 kilometers (3,575.5 miles), paid $10,000.00 (pesos) in highway tolls, and consumed a total of 2,000 liters of diesel fuel. We traveled through eight Mexican states (including Baja California, Sonora, Sinaloa, Nayarit, Jalisco, Guanajuato, Michoacan and Baja California SurÑsee the accompanying map.

The accompanying pictures will be posted as soon as possible. Too many to post. Sample thumbnails here.

For a disk of the entire photo album, E-mail bruce@sanfelipe.com.mx