The City of Guanajuato, which is called The Crown Jewel of Mexico’s colonial cities, was named The Land of Frogs by a group of indigenous people. By some accounts, the indigenous took one look at the terrain and said, “Nothing but frogs could live here!” Some say the indigenous found thousands of frogs in the mountainous terrain. Other accounts say it was the shape of the mountains that reminded the indigenous of frogs. Whichever account is true, Guanajuato is a place to get to know.

Guanajuato earned its place in world geography when the Spanish found the surrounding mountains rich in silver deposits. In fact, at one time more than one third of the world’s silver riches were mined in Guanajuato. Though none of the usual summer vacation activities exists in Guanajuato, this city exudes history with every unsteady step you take on its cobblestone streets.

The City of Guanajuato is the Cradle of Mexican Independence. It was here Mexico began its quest to become Mexican. This is the perfect spot to see where and learn how Mexico began to fight for its hard-earned independence from Spain. Although small, Guanajuato has outstanding colonial architecture built with the silver revenue from times past. With modern museums, cultural events almost year-round, one of world’s oldest universities, and an almost perfect year-round temperate climate in which to enjoy this country’s Crown Jewel, Guanajuato can be the perfect alternative to the usual vacation fare.

Many first-time visitors we’ve interviewed have expressed amazement to find Guanajuato defies their stereotypical expectation of Mexico. Many who have traveled extensively throughout Europe have told us how Guanajuato could be a town from Spain or Northern Italy somehow magically transplanted to this side of the planet.

Depending on whom you ask, The City of Guanajuato has a population of between 100,000-120,000 people. It is nestled in a ravine with the city literally built up the sides of the bowl-like surrounding mountains. If nothing else, a trip to Guanajuato would be worth the time and expense just to marvel at how the Mexicans figured out how to build this city. To call it a marvel is a gross understatement.

Another marvel to behold is Guanajuato’s system of underground tunnels. Originally, the Guanajuato River flowed through the center of town. Numerous devastating floods occurred over the centuries, and engineers decided to divert the river away from the middle of town in the early 1900´s. After diverting the river, the riverbed was turned into a maze of underground streets--this time to divert traffic. 

All one need do is visit the Tourism Office to find an English speaking tour guide to take you on an unbelievably rich tour of where Mexico began—at a price that won’t break your wallet.

How To Get Here

More American tourists we meet are driving to Guanajuato. This is not as difficult as one might imagine. Go to Google.com and type “driving to Mexico”. You will find numerous articles on the logistics of driving here. The only problem you will encounter when arriving in Guanajuato is parking. Although city officials are working to solve this problem by building more parking facilities, it is a nightmare. Parking is at a premium and you will rarely find adequate and safe parking near your hotels.

The best way to arrive in Guanajuato is to fly to Leon, Guanajuato. From there you can take a cab for about $25.00-$30.00 to Guanajuato. It is about a 45-minute ride. 

A way to combat the difficulty of your Leon cabbie knowing where your lodging is located, especially if you have arranged a private apartment for your vacation stay, is to have the Leon cabdriver take you to the Guanajuato’s Holiday Inn or the bus station. From there it is a simple matter of switching to a Guanajuato cabdriver who will know where everything is in Guanajuato’s confusing maze of streets.

Lodging

Guanajuato has a large influx of wealthy travelers to whom the hotel industry caters lavishly. You can find accommodations to boggle the mind and pocketbook. One of the best resources to use is Trip Advisor at www.tripadvisor.com. Go to this site and type in “Guanajuato” or “Guanajuato hotels” to view your options.

For middle-class budgets we recommend the following: 

1. Hotel La Casa de Dulcinea, Positos #44, Zona Centro, telephone: 473-732-2406 

There are only nine rooms. There is no restaurant or phones in the rooms. There are small rooms with two double beds. Bathrooms (shower only) are inside the rooms and are small. 

2. Casa Carcamanes, Plazuela Carcamanes No. 8, Guanajuato, México, telephone: 473-732-5172 

There are rooms with baths, shared kitchen, and you can arrange to use the washing machine. They also have apartments for rent. E-mail them for apartment rates at rubendario@casacarcamanes.com 

3. La Casa Azul, Calle Carcamanes #57, Colonial Centro, Guanajuato, México. 473-731-2288 

Each room has a TV, a dorm-sized refrigerator, shared kitchen and dining room. There is a rooftop terrace for guest use as well as two shared living rooms. You can arrange to have your laundry done for a moderate price. 

Eating on a Budget

You can come to Guanajuato and spend as much or as little as you wish on food. Almost all the restaurants serve a meal of the day. For as little as $3.00 USD, you can get a filling meal complete with dessert and drink. For breakfast or a late snack, you can visit the many small panaderias (bakeries) where you can buy a torta (sandwich), empanadas (a meat pie), drinks and an assortment of delicious pastries for practically nothing. Fruit stands line the street. Eating while in Guanajuato need not break your budget.

For the “I-need-to-splurge-since-I-am-in-another-country”-minded there are, of course, many places in Guanajuato with foods to delight your culinary soul. Guanajuato’s citizens (Guanajuatenses) have given it the reputation of not having many good restaurants. I find this criticism understandable if one has lived here all one’s life. We do the same in United States. My wife and I lived in Lawrence, Kansas—home of the University of Kansas—and we made the same complaint about Lawrence’s restaurants. 

However, for the traveler and newly expatriated, Guanajuato has many fine places that serve traditional Mexican, regional foods, and some fine International cuisine. Here is a list of places my wife I recommend and where we love to eat:

High Price

Casa Valadez is a restaurant owned by an old Guanajuato family. The prices tend to be on the “high side” but certainly worth the sacrifice to be treated like kings and queens during your dining experience. What is immediately evident is that the quality of service is superior to most restaurants in town. In fact, it is equal to establishments where you would expect to pay far more. 

The waiters are professional, wear uniforms, and most are bilingual. They have bilingual menus with an assortment of choices ranging from traditional Mexican dishes to International cuisine. You can get one of the best American hamburgers you’ve ever tasted in your life. 

Presentation is so fine that you would swear they had Wolfgang Puck manning the stove. Each meal is served with a huge basket of French rolls called “bolillos” with butter—a Mexican restaurant rarity. This wonderful establishment serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner according to an American schedule. 

Casa Valadez is conveniently located on Guanajuato’s famous El Jardin de Union, making it a very popular choice for tourists. Get there early since Mexicans, Americans, Canadians, and Europeans flock there for the lunch hour. Long waits are not uncommon.

Medium Price

Truco 7 is a delightful blend of a jazz club ambiance with traditional Mexican foods. What you will love about Truco 7 is it is decorated with an eclectic assortment of 1940’s pictures, license plates, antique radios, and personal photos that give you the immediate impression that you are somewhere else in time when you step into this restaurant. There is also an array of jazz music playing softly in the background—the owner, we are told, is an American Jazz enthusiast. Truco 7 has the most comfortable seating we’ve experienced in all the Mexican restaurants we’ve visited.

Though you can get an excellent meal here, and the “bisteak con papas” is the best steak with potatoes in town, the service is something less than at Casa Valadez. But the service is something to be tolerated to enjoy excellent food, the most comfortable seating in town, and an ambiance unlike anything we’ve experienced in Guanajuato.

We met the Hollywood movie and television actor, Robert Bagnell, walking the streets of Guanajuato looking a little lost. We directed him to Truco 7 for lunch. When we met up with him two days later, he told us he was so enchanted with the place that he ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner there exclusively while vacationing in Guanajuato.

Truco 7 is located around the corner on a side street close to El Jardin de Union. Ask any of the “Park Police” walking in El Jardin and they will take you there personally (yes, police really do this in Guanajuato).

Budget Price

El Tapitio is located directly across from the University of Guanajuato’s magnificent steps and is immensely popular with Mexicans. They serve the infamous meal of the day, a moderately portioned meal for less than $4.50 USD. You have a choice between two meats, vegetables, and desserts and drink. There are, of course, plenty of bolillos (but no butter). The service is good (it has recently improved). The food is plain but traditional. It is good if what you are looking for is a traditional but simple lunch.

The location of this establishment is a bit of a disappointment. Though easy to find, and anyone will help you locate it, it is on a busy street right across from the University. The noise and carbon monoxide factor is a minus for many Americans and Europeans. The doors and windows are open to the street and sometimes you cannot hear yourself think much less carry on a conversation with someone you’ve invited to lunch. The Mexicans, who apparently do not mind it, crowd into this place regularly. Casa Valadez and Truco 7 are better recommendations if you are taking a guest to lunch or dinner.

However, El Tapitio is immensely popular with the locals and worth checking out for their superior liver and onions or their Milenesa de Pollo.

Regional Foods

There are two regional foods I recommend and insist you try when visiting Guanajuato. One is Sopa Azteca (sometimes called Tortilla soup) and the other is Enchiladas Mineras. 

Sopa (soup) Azteca is a slightly spicy soup with strips of fried tortilla, slices of avocado, and ranchero cheese—in generous amounts—crumbled into the soup, in a chili chicken broth. It may or may not contain pieces of chicken. 

For the best Enchiladas Mineras, go to Casa Valadez. Prepare to be amazed. The tortillas are dipped in a chili sauce, fried, rolled up, and placed on a bed of lettuce. Diced potatoes and carrots are fried in the same chili sauce, then spooned over the tortillas. Crumbled ranchero cheese is sprinkled over the enchiladas. Most restaurants serve these enchiladas with a piece of baked or lightly-fried chicken. Casa Valadez goes a step further than most. They pound a boned chicken breast until it is thin, cover it with a spinach and cheese mixture, roll it up, bake it, and cut it in thick slices. Very delicious and a very nice presentation. 

Vegetarianism

I once was asked by a tourist here in my adopted central Mexican town, Guanajuato, if it was true the culinary delights here were nothing to write home about. I wanted to slap him silly but resisted the urge. Instead, I regaled him with the many wonderfully prepared regional foods as well as the places where he could get his meals prepared by world-class professional cooks. 

And, it is true. We really have some classy cooks in this little mountain town who were trained professionally all over the world.

Sometimes I wonder just what tourists think México and Mexicans are really like. Are Mexicans nothing more than wild men who run around in tall, pointy sombreros with crisscrossed gun belts wrapped around their chests? Do they think the cooks run around back and butcher their chicken or beef orders for La Comida Fresca?

I am continually surprised at what I find as far as eateries go in this little town. Just the other day, we met friends for Sunday lunch. They had ferreted out a relatively new vegetarian restaurant. Now mind you, seating in some of these restaurants can be in the living room of someone's home, so you shouldn't always expect top-notch décor or ambience. However, again I was surprised.

This little place was indeed someone's home hidden away in a narrow little callejon (alley). So much of the town is a complex maze of callejónes, some not much wider than your shoulders. We snaked our way up from the San Fernando Plaza to the restaurant/home of a lovely Mexican family. The wife seated us and cooked our meals while her two sons served the meals and cleared the table afterwards.

This place was comfortable but basic. They had small card tables with metal chairs. The wife had made cushions for the seats and backs of the chairs so the seating was comfortable. We had to choose between two specials they offered that day. She rattled off the choices in the clearest "non-Guanajuato" Spanish I have heard. That was nice—I was able to understand it for a change.

My wife and I had a large dinner-plate-sized salad of fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, sprigs of something green I couldn't identify but were fantastic. The salad was covered with toasted sunflower and sesame seeds. She served us each a large bowl of freshly cooked rice, a bowl of the best broccoli soup I've ever had, and a plate of soy meatballs and fried eggplant. Now, I am not an eggplant eater but this was beyond good. I loved it. The meatballs, though made of some sort of soy product, were absolutely delicious. She also served fresh Jamaica iced tea.

The cute little boys brought the meal out to us on serving trays. They sat the trays right in front of us while bowing and scraping. I marveled at how this woman had trained these little kids to work in the family business and to act so politely. Maybe there's hope for the world after all.

We discovered that this lady learned to cook vegetarian, and I mean good vegetarian, from her husband who had been employed in a Hare Krishna temple in México City. Then, they came to Guanajuato to open this little café in their home. I just love that.

The entire meal, with drink, came to less than $3.50 USD each. It was a delightful experience and one of the many surprises this town throws at you when you least expect it.

The only problem is that this town is built like a maze not even a rat would be able to navigate. You would have no idea how to find this little place without being led by someone who knew how to find it.

And what a shame that is. This little lady's vegetarian cooking would be a hit with the tourist crowd.

And that, dear tourist, would be something you could write home about.

If you think you want something a little different in Mexico vacationing, come and try Guanajuato: The Land of Frogs!