There were quite a few reasons why I decided to visit Santiago de Querétaro, the capital of the state of Querétaro. The first one was that my drone manufacturer DJI has an official store there where I wanted to buy a new propeller. The second reason was that the city was on the way to Irapuato/Guanajuato where I planned to visit a friend. The third motive was the beauty of the city itself (I already visited it during my internship in 2014).
The first thing I did when I reached the bus terminal of Querétaro was heading towards the DJI store which was just a few hundred meters away. As the shop hast just opened a few weeks ago, initially nobody of the security personnel could tell me where it was located. After a while of running back and forth I finally found it. The sales lady unfortunately did not have access to the spare parts warehouse because the key had been lost. Fortunately it was no problem to remove two propellers from one of the exhibits. I was able to replace it immediately on my drone and it was fully functional again.
My hosts in Querétaro were not from the platform Couchsurfing, but Ángeles (the sister of Araceli) with her husband Jojo and the two children Ángel and Marie José. After having lunch together at their home Ángeles and Jojo took me on a little trip to El Pueblito, a neighbourhood of Querétaro. After strolling around in the city center of El Pueblito for a while we made another stop on the way back home at the archaeological site of El Cerrito, also known as the "El Pueblito pyramid".
The next morning I was exploring the Cerro de las Campanas, the old town of Querétaro, the Ex-Convento de la Cruz and the Acueducto de Querétaro together with Marie
José as she had classes only in the afternoon.
The Cerro de las Campanas is a hill and the place where Emperor Maximilian of Habsburg and Generals Miguel Miramón and Tomás Mejía were executed,
definitively ending the French intervention in Mexico. The mountain got its name from rocks that, according to legend, make the sounds of bells when they are struck. Nowadays there is a huge
statue of Benito Juarez, president from 1858 to 1872 and considered as one of the greatest reformers of Mexico.
The old town of Querétaro is filled with beautiful squares and small streets lined with magnificent buildings and an immense number of churches. You can also find the statue of "El Danzante" (the dancer). The origin of the Danzantes Concheros is in the narration of the founding myth of the city of Querétaro itself. On July 25, 1531, on the Sangremal hill, the conquistadors of the Spanish Crown, allied with the Otomí chief Conin, fought a ritual battle against the Chichimecas. Chronicles tell that the Chichimecas were about to defeat their opponents when a solar eclipse occurred, which supposedly frightened the natives. The Spaniards assured that in the firmament the Lord Santiago appeared with a great luminous Cross. Only in this way did the Indians submit to the cry of "He is God" and begin to dance and worship the cross.
Ex-Convento de la Cruz: The Catholic tradition says that the Chichimecas were defeated by the Spaniards on the Sangremal hill in a cruel battle on July 25, 1531 and that the Indians surrendered when they saw in the firmament a large cross and the image of the apostle Santiago. The temple and convent of the Holy Cross was built on this site in the 17th century. This is where the evangelization of the natives, who did not accept the wooden cross that the Spaniards put in place, began. Here the Franciscans prepared for the missions (College of Propaganda FIDE) among the Indians throughout the Mexican territory. Inside the convent there is a place called "Patio de Aguas" where the water arrived from the aqueduct. There is a garden inside the convent where there are trees with thorns in the shape of a cross. These are very typical and sold all over the city. It is still an active convent today where Franciscan friars study a degree in Philosophy.
Acueducto de Querétaro: Since the second half of the 17th century, the city of Querétaro had become one of the most prosperous and beautiful places of New Spain, reaching its greatest prosperity and urban development in the 18th century . However, the city lacked an efficient and healthy drinking water service, since the old canals and pipes that supplied the city carried dirty and unhealthy water, contaminated by the works. This fact was the origin of the aqueduct of Querétaro, a monumental building of 74 arches that reach an average height of 28.5 m and a length of 1,280 m. This aqueduct is a symbol of the Querétaro and one of the largest in Mexico.
In the afternoon I was visiting the Museo del Calendario (Museum of the Calendar). Querétaro offers a variety of excellent museums and I didn't expect that I would spend so much time and have so much fun in this museum when I just read its name when I entered it. Next to detailed explanations of which systems of calendars exist (moon, solar, combined), descriptions of the Egyptian, Chinese, Hindu, Celtic, Persian, Hebrew, Muslim, Attic, Roman, French, Inca, Mexica and Mayan calendar were given. Besides there were hundreds of calendars of the last centuries from all kind of countries and companies. Furthermore the museum included a fascinating exhibition of paintings and a beautiful courtyard with a fountain, a café and a roof terrace.
In the evening I was going with Ángeles, Jojo, Marie José and Ángel to Las Leyendas (the legends. These are like a kind of theatre and city tour at the same time. One gets interesting insights into the history of the city and about Mexico as a whole. One story was e.g. about Joaquin Murrieta, the Mexican Robin Hood, another one about the love story between Don Juan Antonio de Urrutia y Arana and Sor Marcela which led to the construction of the aqueduct.
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