Ever have one of those experiences where you learn about a place and then when you tell people that you are going there, they say “oh yea, it’s great, we loved our visit”? Then you you feel like the last ones in the world to know. That was Guanajauto for us.
We were flipping through a guide book, plotting out our route to Mexico City when we came across a few photos of Guanajuato. The original plan was to drive from Tequila to San Miguel de Allende, but after we read a bit about Guanajauto, we decided to stop for a week. It was a gamble that paid off.
Due to lack of availability at Cofradia (See previous post), we moved into the main city of Tequila to wander around for a day and see what it offered. We didn’t know what to expect but were worried that it would be full of tour buses with people on drunken tequila tours. We were happy to find a pretty little town with a lively town square.
We left Cofradia in the late morning, moved our luggage to a the new hotel, conveniently located right downtown a couple blocks from the town square. As usual, we got a late start, so by the time we checked in to our hotel, it was time for lunch.
While in San Jose del Cabo, Matt and I had a chance to learn more about mezcal. We decided that it was only fair to go someplace to learn more about Tequila. After all, all tequilas are mezcals, right? Where better to learn about tequila than in Tequila?!
We were told about Hotel Boutique la Cofradia from a nice man in San Jose del Cabo. It’s basically a distillery with a tasting room and four hotel rooms on the property. We were not sure what to expect, but when we arrived we knew that we were someplace special.
After leaving Mazatlan, Neeley and I made our way to southern Puerto Vallarta. Our plan was to spend one night in a hotel so we could pack everything we needed into our small backpacks and then catch a water taxi from Boca de Tomaltan to Yelapa the following morning.
The five-hour drive to Puerto Vallarta was quite nice. It was even nicer when we discovered the banana bread sellers on the side of he road in San Blas where we stopped for lunch.
We made it to Puerto Vallarta in the early evening. Unfortunately, the hotel was completely forgettable. Luckily the staff was wonderful and we were only staying for one night.
In the morning we drove fifteen minutes from our hotel to the small village of Boca de Tomaltan where we arranged to park our car and take a water taxi to Yelapa. Yelapa is accessible via vehicles, but takes about four hours, versus twenty minutes via water taxi from Boca, or forty-five minutes from Puerto Vallarta.
We are currently in Guanajuato Mexico right now, and lost WiFi at our apartment that we are renting. So our uploads are slowed down by trips to the coffee shop.
We have a backlog of pictures and stories from Yelapa, Tequila, and Guanajuato to post up in the next week. We will be leaving for San Miguelle de Allende this Sunday, and hope to be back to updating.
-Matt
(PS, the picture is the heart of a blue agave plant, used to make tequila. We had a wonderful tour at Cofradia Distillery earlier this week, more about it in our post.)
