At the end of my first week in Querétaro, I was getting pretty good at my routine. I don't know what it is about here, but at home I haven't been able to effectively wake up before 6:30 since high school, no matter how hard I try. Here though, I've been getting up at 6 everyday for the past 4 weeks now, except a couple of weekends, no matter what time I go to bed. Not always the easiest thing, but it's been working for me. This is probably gonna be a problem when I come back and time moves back 2 hours and I find myself waking up at 4 a.m for no reason. . . Classes were fun within reason, but by the end of the week I was pretty ready for a break. Didn't have a lot of homework, so that wasn't really a problem, just the sheer amount of Spanish in my life was more than I was used to. A couple of nights that week we went to a restaurant or two as a group so that was a nice way to relax.
That Saturday we all packed on a little tour bus and went off to Bernal, the home of La Peña ((The Pain) I'm sure there's some sort of story behind that. . .). At the time we were told that it was the 3rd tallest monolith in the world, but a little research showed that it was actually the tallest in the world! At 2510 meters, or around 8200 feet, it was quite the climb. Unfortunately you can only climb about 3/4 of the way up without equipment, but the view was still amazing. Still not fully acclimated to the 6,000 foot increase in elevation, we took a ton of breaks on the way up. I was, and actually kinda still am right now, still not fully recovered from my time in the hospital a week before the trip with my bleeding organs and all that but I did my best. Got stopped about twice for some older women to take a picture with me so that was a little odd but I rolled with it. Made it to the top after about 40 minutes though, took the Insta pic we all came for, and then ate the quesadilla my host mom made for me on a rock. Don't feel afraid of heights that often, but standing up there did get me pretty close to that. Didn't help that I decided to climb up there in my newfound Teva's from Goodwill either though.
After our walk down, we walked through the town below for about 2 hours, and had it not been so hot, I probably could've stayed a lot longer. Bernal is nicknamed 'pueblo mágico' (magic city), for some reason I probably wasn't listening to when it was explained, but I went with it anyways. Tons of shops and all kinds of food, I even got to see a giant loom where they made huge tapestries in the back of a store while they listened to Neil Diamond. Side note, I'm pretty sure every person asking for money, in both Bernal and Santiago de Querétaro, has the exact same bowl to put change into. Almost every one I've seen has the same baby blue cereal bowl and I don't really know what to do about that. Anyways, after about 2 hours we were all super tired and ready to head back. I bought a couple of some things for some people back home and got to climb a rock so it was a pretty good day.
On our way back we got to watch a movie on the bus' tv screen. Even though it did weird staticky stuff the whole way back every time we hit a bump, and believe me there are many, it was a good ole time. We all got dropped off at the central campus of our university, though not the one we actually go to, so we were able to walk home from there. At least most of us were, some people took a taxi. One of the girls lives a block away from me so we just walked home, but after a super full day and hiking after my last workout was 3 weeks before and I'd sat in a hospital bed for 4 days in between that, I kinda wanted to take a nap on the street first. Avoided giving in to that desire though, and after about a 25 minute walk I made it back home. Super lucky for me, my host mom was almost done with dinner, something I'd been waiting for ever since we left. Even though the Doritos I bought at a gas station were sub-par, I was ready for some real food. I don't remember what we had, but probably some beans and some sort of chicken, cause we have that quite a bit. Took my barely above comfortable temperature shower, chugged some water and did a somersault into my bed, despite the sunburns. Gotta be careful when I do that though, there's something in the middle of the bed that pokes out so potential for minor injury there.
Be back in a relatively soon time!
😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎
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| Had to wait for about 10 minutes for two people making out to move for this one |
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| View of La Peña from the city below |
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| She needed the pic; to show her husband presumably? |
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| It was about 75% as scary as it looks to get this one |
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