Three weeks ago, while spending time in Nuevo Vallarta waiting for our
son's glasses to come in, we rented a car for an in-land excursion. We
thoroughly enjoyed our two-day sojourn inland. After securing the boat
and leaving the refrigerator off so it could defrost the heavily iced
freezer, we left about 9am for San Sebastian del Oeste (St. Sebastian of
the West). We barely noticed the sign pointing the way to our
turn-off, but were encouraged by the cobblestone road. After a mile of
cobblestone, the road switched back to asphalt for several more miles.
We knew we'd reached San Sebastian because the road became cobblestone
again. This is a truly lovely community in the foothills. On the map below, we started at the far left (Nuevo Vallarta is not shown, but is adjacent to Puerto Vallarta). We followed the southern yellow highlighted path eastward.
Most of the trip was in the state of Jalisco. That's Guadalajara (second largest city in the country) at the far right.
We knew we'd reached San Sebastian when the road turned to this....
We parked near the town center and I wanted to see the church for which the town was named. We could smell it before we were inside: as we rounded a corner into a courtyard of the church, a fragrance drifted out the doorway. The thick adobe walls made the interior of the church cool and the scent of the lilies made the whole experience refreshing.
After walking around town for a bit.....
... we stopped to eat. Immediately after placing our order, this cute, fluffy fellow jumped up behind me on the chair. I gladly made room for him and the kiddos offered to (how kind!) trade places with me. Ha!
We continued east at around 2pm and slowly wound our way through the hilly terrain and its towns. Each town sported cobblestone streets - including cobblestone speedbumps - so the going was slow.
This sign amused us immensely. We don't know why the rabbits need protecting, and neither do other people - given the bullet holes in the sign.
We reached our hotel - Los Leones resort south of Ahualulco - during twilight. We were given our choice of rooms: both with tiled floors and earth-tone colors and night-tables made with a slab of wood that was a tree cross-section. We slept well for the driving had been tiring for driver and passengers. In the morning, the proprietor turned on the fountains and filters for the pools, which the kids had to themselves. I'd highly recommend this resort to anyone. It only had 20 rooms, but beautiful grounds. It was designed to host wedding receptions and other parties and was reasonably priced. Juice, coffee and fresh fruit were included in the room price, though we bought a little more for our breakfast. We all enjoyed the freshly-squeezed orange juice.
View of one of the pools and the hotel.
After a filling breakfast, we drove on to Teuchitlan through which we drove to get to Guachimontones - our main destination for this trip. Guachimontones is an archeological site discovered in 1969. The Teuchitlan culture lasted from about 300 BC to perhaps 900 AD. The key feature of this site are the circular, terraced pyramids.
I am unable to translate all of this, but the title at the top is is "Sacred Landscape & Planning". Then, "the construction of the platforms in concentric circles was inspired by the flow of the wind, the movement of the stars and the orientation of the cardinal points. " In smaller text, "From here, you can observe circles and more circles. How many can you see?" and "Structures existed that shared two spaces - this is called direct association." The title at the bottom is "Circles and More Circles".
This is our best photo of the largest, uncovered pyramid. The odd thing is that this photo was taken while standing atop an even larger, but uncovered pyramid (that we were allowed to hike up.)
Perhaps you noted all the smoke in the background of the above photo. That's sugarcane burning. As we hiked up the hill from the interpretive center to the archeological site, burnt strands of sugarcane drifted down. It was rather ethereal. To get an idea of how big these pieces of cane stalk were, Dave put the lens cap next to a few:
After nibbling on some food we brought from the boat, we headed north to a larger (and what turned out to be toll) highway. The road we were on abruptly turned into a gravel road, but we continued anyway. An my were we glad that we did: chunks of obsidian littered the road and even larger pieces were along the side. We had just spent time admiring the obsidian arrowheads, knives and other tools at the Guachimontones interpretive center and so we stopped the car a few times to pick up pieces. Truly - we were saving the tires of the rental car from the sharp stone.....
Soon, we reached a paved, divided highway. Hadn't been on one of those (divided, that is) since the States. We soon learned that our tolls also paid for "Agua" (water) stations like the one below. At each Agua stop was a structure that looked like a well, but was really just a small cistern of water - presumably for overheated radiators struggling through the mountains. Dave pretending to have a problem with the rental.....
There were many interesting sites on the highway....
We quickly made our way back west - even stopping for some watermelon (About $5 for 6 small ones) and a snack before arriving in Nuevo Vallarta.
The next day, since we still had the car, we provisioned at Costco (picking up the boy's glasses, too) and drove south (see the green highlighting) of PV for a hike in the jungle.
We were told to keep the ocean to our right and the jungle to our left....
at first, the "trail" was really access to some houses with wonderful beach views. But it soon gave way to more rustic environs...
While the views were gorgeous, we were glad to head back towards the boat where we could go for a swim in cool water (instead of very humid air).
So ended a 3 day excursion into parts of Mexico we could not easily see by boat. The next update will describe our activities south of Nuevo Vallarta.
No comments:
Post a Comment