Tag: Guanajuato

Image No. 1556 of 2444: A Face In The Clouds

So we’re back and happy to be home with the animals, and the photo totals are in (after iPhoto crashed twice at various points during the import process, gah!). Over the nine days we were away in Mexico I took some 2,444 pictures (along with some 17 video clips). Susan logged 1,978 images. Jeez.

I guess calling us shutterbugs would be something of an understatement.

So where to begin with all those pixels? Well, after scanning through my mass of images I settled on perhaps the most unique one of the megabunch, a 75-second exposure taken at 10:35 p.m. local time July 14 from our rooftop terrace at the Hotel Posada de Santa Fe during our first night in Guanajuato. A strange thunderless yet steadily discharging lightning storm was happening out over the distant mountains to the south of the city (you’ll certainly wanna click for maximification):

Tell me, can you see the profile of the face in the clouds that Susan found immediately (and I totally missed until she pointed it out)?

Whether or not you can, what you’re seeing is the cloudbank illuminated by at least a half-dozen lightning bursts behind it over the course of the minute and a quarter. In comparison, here’s a shot taken of just one discharge in the center over the course of about 10 seconds (again, clickable for biggification):

After some serious whittling down to my favorite faves, I’ll be uploading them to my Flickr account… but that may take some time. In the meanwhile, Susan and I are unpacking and decompressing and glad to be back and paying lots of extra attention to our wonderful four leggers.

Comin´ Home

I won´t even try to figure out where to begin. We´ve seen the Toltek ruins in Tula and while there found a hole in the wall eatery in town called Parrillada Country that was a tasty treasure. We Strolled the richly historic streets of the colonial section of Queretaro and marveled at its remarkable collection of churches big and small along with its 280-year-old aqueduct, and since Monday have been here in Guanajuato at the Hotel Posada Santa Fe, our base of operations from which we´ve just been exploring exploring exploring: Diego Rivera´s childhood home, the mummy museum, the municipal cemetery, the Alhondigas (from which the decapitated heads of Mexico´s revolutionary leaders were hung on orders of the Spanish government in cages for 10 years, the hooks are still there… fortunately the heads were entombed in Mexico City after independence was won), the Don Quixote Museum, the underground transit tunnels, more museums and, of course, churches, churches, and more churches.

I apologize for the blog silence this past week. There are only two internet computers available at the hotel (which we didn´t even know about until yesterday) and I didn´t bring a laptop — and that´s just as well as I wouldn´t have had the time or energy to recount anything at the ends of our full days loade with (almost) enough margaritas, plenty of cervezas, wonderful food, countless places of interest, the excellent occasional company of former Blogging.la contributor and Echo Parkian Hexodus, who´s a temporary expat down here studying Spanish history at the university (and who pointed us to what´s become our favorite haunt: a cafe called Truco 7). Above all I´ve been able to share it all with my love Susan, the greatest traveling partner ever!

And tomorrow we come home… with some souvenirs, the thousands of pictures we´ve taken, the memories of yet another fantastic journey, and two renewed resolutions: to read ¨Don Quixote,¨and to learn Spanish if for no other reason to know how to ask for whipped cream on my malteadas!