I'm sure we did something yesterday, but I don't remember a lot of details. We were excited that for a moment it wasn't raining so we had a chance to stretch our legs and wander around looking for the store in which Sue, Chris and I saw doorknockers on her first night, a store which has vanished without leaving behind a single clue to its existence. And then it started to rain again so we responded appropriately by cozying up again and dining in. This morning Viaje San Miguel was supposed to send us yet another tour guide to take us to Queretaro. We thoroughly enjoyed the day we spent in Dolores Hidalgo with Francisco and looked forward to another day like it. As is often the case in SMA, our driver was a bit late and, like Ray, he had several phone calls to make and receive. We stopped at the store "just for a minute, alright?" and then also stopped to deliver a small potted plant (herbabuena) to his son who we met on the side of the road. And then we were off. It was a little like picking up someone in a lonely bar, when about 15 minutes into the trip I asked in a small and awkward voice from the back seat, "So, what's your name?"
Victor apparently saw no reason for a tour guide to be effusive or even particularly knowledgeable. He gives a decidedly different tour than does Francisco or even Ray.
We did learn that Queretaro is a 17th century city and so older than the other places we have been so far, but it is also much more industrialized. They have fewer tourists and more business travelers. There are evident international companies: Office Depot & Max, Walmart, Sears, Burger King, Sherwin Williams, Starbucks, Toyota. There are 74 arches in the aqueduct and Victor can't believe the amount of money the government has simply wasted by illuminating the arches to accentuate their beauty. He also blames the Mexican government for the immigration problems in the U.S. because they don't do anything to provide opportunities for the Mexican people. The only reason churches are beautiful is to show who's boss. Victor has four sons, but he says it may not be worth it to have children at all. His eldest son lives in Houston but Victor cannot visit him because he entered the U.S. illegally at one point and having been discovered and deported cannot obtain a travel visa. He paid for his second son, an architect in SMA, to go to school and his third son is in school to be an accountant. He doesn't have any money for the fourth son, who wants to be a chef, to go to school so he occasionally gives him 100 pesos to keep him out of trouble. It might suck to be the last son. That being said, he complained about the people from the outlying region who come into the cities and sell handicrafts with their children in tow and said those children should be in school. He also had an opinion and words to share about the beggars, who are lazy, but his most common lament was that it was impossible to eat on a tour guide's salary.
Victor's general demeanor could have been overlooked but for his relatively hands-off approach to guiding a tour. At the Cementario were Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez--the woman who alerted Allende and his band of revolutionaries that their plots had been discovered--is interred, he stood next to us as we read a plaque that was in Spanish and English and pointed out the dates listed. At the Franciscan monastery, he passed us off to a monk and went and waited in the car. Once we arrived in the historic center of town he indicated we should get out of the car so he could find someplace to park. We thought this might take 10 minutes, but he said he would meet us by the statue he had pulled up in front of in an hour's time. When Chris asked him where we should go in his absence, he said we should "go right, go left and see things." We didn't have a street map for the city or a guide book or anything so anyway Queretaro seems cool and all.
The Franciscan monastery is worth a visit. In the 17th century, the monks settled in the region and had the aqueducts built from the spring at the end of town to the heart of their settlement. The aqueduct is dry but stands and runs a great length through the city. In the monastery an ancient man wearing a green threadbare turtleneck, grey slacks and sandals showed us around. He had hairs sprouting from his ears and reminded me a little of Mickey Goldmill from Rockey, which I guess means he reminded me of Burgess Meredith but maybe only because he was tiny and old and carried a stick. He made it clear at the start that we had to put money in the basket for the convent and that at the end we should give him some money just for him. He said he could only speak French, Italian, English, Spanish and Latin; he hoped those languages would be sufficient. Sometimes he would say he didn't know the word in English but it was _________ in Latin, so sure. The monastery is a spectacular structure and cleverly designed. The water from the aqueduct was piped through the building in clay pipes and used to refrigerate food in the kitchen and different cisterns filled with spring water versus rain water and were used to satisfy different needs. In 1697, Fray Antonio de Margil de Jesus arrived and brought with him a walking stick which he thrust into the ground in the center of the monastery garden. From there sprang a new tree: Arbol de Espinas which only grows in the monastery (and possible someplace in South America but our small monk friend said there was no chronicle of this). This tree has no seeds and its flower is a spike that grows from the branches in the form of a cross. Its neat. And a miracle. And Chris will probably be going to Hell (or at least Purgatory if that still existed) for making fun of it so mercilessly. More recently, Maximilian was imprisoned in the monastery before he was sentenced to death and subsequently killed on the Hill of Bells outside Queretaro, someplace Victor would not bring us to even though it was the only thing Chris inquired about. The tour through the monastery was worth the trip to Queretaro and the basket donation and the donation slipped into the old man's palm.
We visited several churches, the names of which were lost to us as soon as we left them without having a book, but one had a large diorama depicting Purgatory just inside the main entrance that was lit from below with fiery red lights and in which a bishop and a police officer and several scantily clad women, among others, were burning. Like the scenes from Calvary and the worship of Judas the Traitor and the circumcision of Jesus, it was another rather dark portrayal we had never seen before.
Victor made two things happen. He made a blind man play a song for us on his marimba (first he asked what a famous song from Chicago was and then was disappointed that the blind man didn't know "Sweet Home Chicago")and he made us stand in the street and listen to him play for 15 minutes. So that was something.
We also visited the House of the Contessa which Victor argued was the most beautiful house in all of Queretaro and I don't doubt it having been in the lobby of the hotel that now inhabits the space. It is no surprise it was a regal residence in history. However, since he did not show us any other residences, it's really hard to judge.
The ride home was peaceful and relatively quiet in that Victor chose not to speak but we did take a slight detour through the 1980s; Victor was really rocking out to one of his mix tapes that offered at top volume such notables as Sweet Child O' Mine, Who Can It Be Now?, Spirit in the Sky, Boys Don't Cry and Livin' on a Prayer. Despite Chris having his own head phones in trying to drown out that noise, Victor did shout the question to him about whether or not he knew Sweet Child O' Mine and then followed up with a question about how long Chris had sported the fashion 'do he has now.
We are using Viaje San Miguel one last time for our airport shuttle; pray for us that Francisco or really any other person in SMA is our driver.
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