Guanajuato - the budget traveller and the "Festival Internacional Cervantino"

Well what perfect timing.. popped back up north beacuse i felt guilty about not going to guanajuato and morelia as everyone screams how beautiful they are.. and fuck me.. so glad i did! First of all I am slap bang in the middle of a performing arts festival that called Festival Internacional Cervantino, which is a latin american/mexican version of our Edinburgh Festival, so it is buzzing here!! but first of all I need to express the amount ofmoney I spanked in guardalahara and mexico city, because of my encarsseration at the turtle camp,i thinkiwent a little wickie wild on the boozing and going out front...somehow coz i think its so cheap here when i'm drunk i think i'm the fricking milky bar kid and just buy everyone drinks!!

So I'm now budget traveller, eating nothing that is less than 20peso off the street.. not drinking in bars... and drinking on the hostel roof top..(which is actual quite sweet!) and some early nights and noclubbing afterwards...BUT fate has given me a sweet hand as this festival is non stop, with free theatre and music till late so all good... I have things to entertain my ADD Brain!

So today is day one and I you can't start exploring guanajuato without climbing all the way to one of the top of the mountain and taking a picture of this beautiful, silver mining town! My god, words can't described how beautiful this townis. Everybuilding is painted in the most vibrat colour, so when you get a panaormaic shot of the place it's literally looks like one of those crazy Hewitt packards adverts!!

Also there's lots of crazy tunnels that lead underground and take you to different destinations... so when walking around you have to go"deeper underground" and then reappear in another crazy part of town!! it's quite a special little place. So my first day was pretty much getting the cable up the mountain...taking a load of photos...walkng down the stepsand admiring the mexician graffiti.

I then trucked my fat ass to the Casa del Deigo Rivera (house of Diego Riveria). A steal of 20 peso,the firt floor wasn't that interestig it was just how the house was when he lived there.. looked and smelt like anold bristish victorian house.. but actually quite a wealthy one..lots of wood and lace etc... so you could tell he was quite affluent from his art. 2nd floor was amazing it started off with clearly all his early workwhen he was student and then it progressed into his later work.It fasinating, you can see why Frida was soin love with this man, he   truely was talented and vast range on his styles of painting/drawing. You could see his impressionist work when he use to hang out with picasso, using similar cubanism in his work, then there was 3 rooms dedicated to his ink and water colour of indigenious Mexico... which looksnothing like his work, to his lithographs and then to his planning pages when creating a mural! There were about 15 rooms all containing this magnitude of his range of work, which shows if you wanna make it as an artist you need to never stop drawing! the upstairs had somecrazy exhibiton about catholismin mexico in 1600's lots of scary ass pictures of San Dolareaes, which is the virgin mary and jesus being crucified,you know i normally love that stuff but this wasn't tacky and blinged to the max.. it was actaully quite scary, you could see how they used it as scare tactics!

So i checked the schedule for that night to see what was going on in the evenhilling on the rooftop sparked up a conversation with an american called Cole (I informed him that his name was very day of our lives!!ha ha) first american in mexico! But him and this Peru Girl (who i still have no idea what her name is!!) were going to this piece of theatre about the traditional african mining dance/mime from a quebec theatre group called "Bourask" - Theatre Biscornu..so tagged along with them..and it was pretty funny and total audience participation.. with the slapping of the wellies etc...

Then went to a massive concert on the main free stage at 8.00pm which was called "canciones de la Revolucion......Revolucionadas!!"
and was amassive band playng songs fromthe 100years ago with lots of visugae footage fromthe revolution,lots of crazy B&W mexican men riding around on horses...celebrating.. well i feel ilearnt something!


So was over no...partying for me...refused going to an electro night...which was incredibly hard for me (but also cole and peru girl were kinda getting it on so i would have been mrs tag along...which is something noones wants to be!)..so i grit my teeth and shoved my ass to bed, with 3 hotdaogs - which again Sarah you would jizz yourself on the frankfurter front...10peso(50p) for three hotdogs...I felt like a dirty whore!


But I also fianlly got round to watching "the cove". If nobody knows what this film/documentary is about..please download and watch it! It's so incredibly sad and fucking hurrendous what the fucking japanese government is doing to slaughter of dolphins!! shocking! putting on my list of things to campaign about!

Second day as budget traveller and today is one of those days where i could not be fucked! I could be in fricking disneyland and i still couldn't be assed to go on space mountain! the one thing that sucks when your travelling is sometimes you want to do nothing!!! like all you "sane" people who work 9-5pm... you'll spend saturday or sunday just chilling in your pants..watching crap on tv... eat the content of your cupboards...but when your travelling..it's hard to do that...the minute you wake up you get people in your face making you feel really guilty if you don't do anything that day... you get...."well i'm going here... i'm doing that...i've just done the most craziest shit...."....oh shut the fuck up!!!! it's hard being on a budget and not being assed to do anything....so finally after 26 years of dealing with peer pressure...I finally have found that "eminem" place where "i just don't give a fuck", feeling and actually ended up having an awesome day!!!


Coz i didn't feel the pressure of having to do something that day... i just walked around grabbed a starbucks.. and a bagel.... walked around through the tunnels...took photo's of people and then because there was two things going on that night...came back at 1pm...sat on  the rooftop androte my blog formexico city, before it became absent in my ever so deteriating brain! Cole and the peru  girl... share the most delicous salad i have ever had (havn't had veg/vitamins for a long long time) and discussed Chipas and Zapatias politics...and then american politics, which i'malways interested to hear the crazy shit the republicans do!! drank a 1.5litre bottlefbeer and met a mexican leather maker whomakes hair bands... and shared my knowlegde of working with leather as a fashion designer...he tookmy email adddress... and toldme he thought i was an 18 year gringo... but that actually "i'm a decipfully intelligent young lady"... which i think is one of the nicest things anyones said to me! ha ha



then at 8pm...shook my sexy ass to the main stage where i saw "toto la Momposina y sus Tambores" which was pure ass simple colombianmusic... I have never seen anyone use a maracca the way this one guy did!! ha ha, the druming was fucking amazing..and the ladis who were singing and dnacing literally had me for two hours..shuffling my big booty on my seat..! I amabsolutely getting obsessed with latin american dancing ...salsa, tango, marengae, that i have to do a trip to south american to learn all these dances.. so sexy and so so so much fun!



Then the penultimate a theatre performance that i have seen before and can't believe i have travelling 1000 of miles...to see it again in mexico...Yes it's anamazing french theatre/circus company called Transe Express, with a performance called "Maudits Sonnants". basically it's this awesome circus performance where the best way i can describe it is a child's mobile.. but 100,00 bigger on a crane...suspended in the air,with performers who play bells and drums on each part of the mobile, while in the middle of the crane 3 girls drop down and do some kickass trapeze and rope work 100m in the air... you wouldn't believe it until you see pictures!!

 
So the first thing I did when i got back was email David back at home, because i took that beautiful boy to the show his birthday (good times)...and all the sexy people at WMC...as that shit was perform outside the theatre I spent 2 years slugging my ass off, for wow at the waterfront....man it is a small small world!

Woke up again as budget traveller...and adjusting to my new philosophy of travelling... basically chill with the still and do whatever you can be assed to do.. so woke up and suddenely was kyping my amazig friend Laura Parton...always awesome to talking to mates.. and then treated myself to twoslicesof pizza, well say treat myself.. i been living off one slice at 15pesos, for that you get a slice with a cup of coke!, so having two this morning was pushing the boat out mofo!! ha ha... then followed the crowds to one of the most craziest theatre performances i have ever seen.... OPERA IN A FOOD MARKET! - "!Opera? En el Mercado?" don't believe me look at the photos... yes fullon opera singers... singing on market stalls moving around the huge overcrowded market stalls! it was rammed and everyone was on the top balconies looking down trying to workout where the singing was coming from. It was incredible, sometimes they stand literally next to a pigs head bashing out a bit of Tosca. One of the incredible ladies belted out the classic "then take care" from Carmen selling sweets from a sweet store.. my god they did about 20 classical operatic songs...and even though they were moving in and out of market stalls, stairs and 1000's of people with camera's, they stillhit ever note! In my entire 10 years of working in theatre.. this was pure genius... and even at one point when one of the males was singing the classic song from Turandot, I had goosebumps and a wee tear in my eye... even the guy next to me was crying...clapping hystrical.."bravo"!!  ha ha
Tried to see the beautifultheatre that evan so beautift told me too, but because of the festival it was closed boooooo, so i decided that my bowls had had enough of pizza, tacos and cheap hotdog sausages..so I went to the market to pick myself up some awesome veg for a salad! (like the one cole man yesturday) and 30peso later I had enough to feed the 5000! and man and awesome mushroom and onion caesar salad...and in the words of tookie, it was "delicious!" the only sad thing was that i had to throw 2/3 of it away coz there wasno-one toshare it with! meow, so with that slight feeling of loneiness...took myself to walking the streets and heading to the jazz concert... it was cool.. it was packed so had to sit on the side... and i think with my crazy nogin of "been stuckin my head for three days" started looking at all the mexicanpeople on the street hanging  out with their mates..laughing chanting etc... and got that proper.."I miss my friends" feeling..so meander through the streets thinking of my mates in London, and then all my beautiful peeps i'd grown up with in cardiff...so on the way back I picked up a 1.5litre bottle of beer and a packet of camels menthols and sat on the roof tops and in my "where is mind?" moment thought of all the beautiful people I have left behind and was a bit sad! but one savour from grace that put a sweet smile on my face was.. as I was walking back..two young mexican boys.. stopped me on the streets..and one refused to let me pass...kept shuffling in my way..at first I thought.."I can't be assed with a bit ofperformance art right now..!" but then his friend gave  piece of paper with a mexican poem on it and told me I was beautiful! (even tho I have bags under my eyes and carrying a dirty bags of goodies!) but for that 1 min walk to the back of the hostel... I was smiling!