Taxco, Guerrero

Taxco, State of Guerrero
What a beautiful town and so friendly. Taxco is one of the Pueblo magico, it means the town or village had kept its original character. The traffic is total chaos and I am sure the big statue of the Christ on the top of the hill we climbed the first afternoon, must protect the poor pedestrians. It is a miracle that we did not see any accident. I was not sure we would come back with all our body parts. We were running for our life in every alley. The steep and narrow streets are covered with little old VW cars, the beetles, going up and down. No doubt the drivers have guts. All the people there have great legs and must have great heart, nothing, absolutely nothing is level. I even saw with amazement a guy in a wheel chair going down the street beside the zocalo, Plaza Borda, either he had a good technique or very strong arms or was suicidal. Maybe it was the side effect of the blessing of the dogs at the church beside. Just imagine the chaos : the people and their dogs, some coming by taxi, some by car, some on foot, the street dogs coming too, even if they had no chance to be blessed, all of them barking, the tourists in amazement, the normal traffic from all directions and that poor guy in his wheel chair running down hill. We were drinking a beer at a terrace up stairs with our new friend Cindy. We had the perfect place for that crazy show.

On one of these days we went 30 kms from Taxco to visit one of the biggest caves in the world : las grutas Cacahuimilpa. It is where we met Cindy. We walked for 2 kms inside in more than half darkness with a group of people and a guide. It was beautiful. At the end of the 2 kms, the guide left us and said we could go back alone. We all went back and at one time we realized everyone had disappeared except for the three of us. I was very glad we were not alone my husband and I. Imagine getting lost in a dark cave of 2 kms deep with no flash light. Probably every path went to Rome... the entrance of the cave, because we found it without wondering or wandering. After the cave, Cindy had paid for a boat ride, we followed her and went down and down and down... to the river and the rapids. We decided to take the ride too but before I asked the “captain” of a very small pneumatic boat, the kind you see at the beach with kids in it, if the rapids were dangerous because I had the iPad and the cell phone and did not want to go overboard and lose everything. He said “no problema” and gave us a life jacket. The ride was not very long, a few hundred meters, and the rapids not very big. I felt suddenly foolish with my oversize life jacket, like wearing a helmet when you go for walk, but it was fun and it was an adventure. A man with 3 small horses was waiting for us at the end of our boat trip. We decided to go back the 1 km on horseback. My little white horse, Paloma, liked to walk very close to the side of the cliff and my husband’s horse, Ulysse, walked too close to a fence of barb wire. It makes me wonder if these animals were getting a small revenge on the tourists when they had a chance. I did not feel entirely safe but at the end of the km going up hill I was ok and I felt compassion for the horses. I am not a jockey for sure and won’t start a career in that direction. We had a very good fun day and spent the rest of our stay visiting and going up and down in town, eating street food with Cindy and I bought beautiful silver earrings in a shop in a basement where it was a third of the price in the other shops in the zocalo plus, nobody was pushing me to buy. I don’t buy under pressure, I don’t even look.

Our hotel, the Santa Prisca, right in the centre, a few hundred meters from the zocalo, was very comfortable, very quiet at night, the price was very reasonable, about $45 Cdn, a night and the staff very friendly. We found two good and inexpensive restaurants, one on the other side of our hotel on the same street, Santa Fe, and the other one on the Plaza Borda, “ Pozoleria, ” where they make the best pozole I ever had but the street food in the market area was even better and cheaper.

Taxco was the centre of silver mining in Guerrero up to ten years ago. Suddenly the water flooded the mine and the second pump never came. Probably at that time the silver was becoming rare and the cost of a new pump not worth it.