Thank God for Taxis

The word maze doesn't even begin to describe Guanajuato.

We got a map when we got here, first thing, figuring that the local people must tire of telling people where the Centro or the Mercado is. So after breakfast yesterday (or was it the day before?) we set out to explore the part of the world we were in.

I have a pretty good sense of diretion  I have an excellent grasp of how one reads a map. We still got lost. Did I say lost? The best way I can describe it is in Spanish: bastante bien perdidos. Very well lost. Sufficiently lost. So lost we despaired of ever getting back.

And then, a brainstorm. I bravely stepped to the curb and raised my arm. The third taxi to pass was free. We told him where we were going, that we were lost, and he kindly agreed to fix our problem. We asked if we were far from our destination. He said, "More or less," and graciously refrained from laughing at us. Twenty minutes, three traffic jams, and two tunnels  later, he dropped us off in front of our hotel. God bless whoever invented the taxi. Oh, the fare? $3.00.

We might have been able to walk it in 10 minutes, if only we could have figured out where we were. Some things are not well described in two dimensions. Guanajuato, which is built vertically as well as horizontally, is one of those things. These people would be right at home in Tennessee, where they don't build houses, they hang 'em.

This was one of the funniest things I ever experienced.

We'll be bussing back to the U.S. in a couple of hours. ¡Hasta luego!