Valenciana: close to home but a world away

Have you ever traveled to a nearby place that seemed so far away from everything you know, but so intriguing and self-contained, that you felt you could stay forever trying to get to know it?

Welcome to minuscule Valenciana, Mexico!

When I accepted my dad’s offer to use his time share membership for a summer vacation for Masayo and I, we chose the UNESCO World Heritage Site town of Guanajuato in central Mexico. If you look at a globe, it’s really not that far from my dad’s house in Florida, where we left from.

But it turned out to be a million miles away from the familiar.

Because what we didn’t know until we arrived was that our room at the Villa de la Plata hotel was three kilometers up a hill by minibus from lively Guanajuato itself, much closer to this tiny village among the hills. So our first few days were spent some distance from the “real” target, but only 500 meters from lovely little Valenciana, further up the winding two-lane Highway 110.

Being in Valenciana was like being so far removed from everything familiar that it felt like we had – to trot out a well-worn but àpropos cliché – traveled back in time.

Walking up from the time share along the mountain road, cacti and scrub brush line the path, and steep drop-offs pull your eye to the flowing hills far in the distance. Everything is tan-colored, with patches of dusty green.

The little community of Valenciana itself, though, is where the real portal to another dimension lies.

Valenciana is dominated by El Templo de San Cayetano, a huge cathedral with a dramatic golden altarpiece. Masayo and I stepped inside, where a tour guide was explaining something in Spanish to an apparently Mexican group of tourists. My own Spanish was too rusty, and the echo too great in the cavernous hall, for me to understand it. So we just gawked at the grand monuments to devotion all around us.

The church, and especially nearby mine which helped make Guanajuato the world’s leading silver producer in the 1700s, are part of the UNESCO site, but despite this there were few other travelers in the area. We seemed to have the Villa de la Plata almost all to ourselves, for instance, and Valenciana was no different. Just us and a few locals.

That church is really all there is to Valenciana; outside are a beautiful little square and a few small streets with souvenir shops and other buildings. This was probably my favorite part: with big flat colors – turquoise! magenta! yellow! – the small structures sat, clumsy but picturesque, while dogs barked at us from rooftops, unexplained concrete pillars emerged from walls, and in every doorway and in every (infrequent) face was a sense of cheerful calm and satisfaction.

Life in a small Mexican town, far from any outside troubles or concerns: could you get used to such a pleasant, self-sufficient place?

When the people of Valenciana want to eat, there are a couple of restaurants. The nicest we saw was Casa del Conde, out of our usual price range but our choice when we realized we’d been eating only junk food for about three days. I had “Italiana de Salmón”, pasta in a thick white sauce with fish. Not very Mexican, but tasty.

Otherwise, we had some makeshift quesadillas that Masayo made in our room out of ingredients from a tiny tienda up the road, and one day some cheese and chicken quesadillas and refried beans from a little convenience store-type place. With Gatorade.

Cheap, easy, random food: one of my favorite parts of budget travel. It was great!

Montezuma attempts his revenge

Many (most?) visitors to Mexico will develop some form of bellyache/diarrhea, in varying degrees. Ruefully called Montezuma’s Revenge, it was something that I figured we were going to get sooner or later, so I wasn’t that worried about it. I expected it, hoped I’d get over it soon, and tried not to avoid street food and things like that just to stay safe. The food was worth the risk.

Well it happened to me after a few days in Valenciana, but it could have been worse. For one day I felt it coming on; multiple trips to the bathroom and a vast tiredness overtook me. I rested in the afternoon, but felt achy when I awoke. Not good. How bad was this going to get?

Masayo prepared a purposely bland dinner for us – instant noodles with canned vegetables, plus Gatorade. I took it easy all evening.

The next morning I was fine – it never crossed over into serious sickness. I felt lucky, especially if that was going to be all it took to win the fight against Montezuma! I went back to drinking out of mud puddles and licking handrails. Just to strengthen the immune system, you know.

Seek out the small and out-of-the-way when you travel

The colorful and peaceful silver-mining town of Valenciana is the type of place that almost nobody would choose to go to during their holiday; it’s just too small and although there are UNESCO-related tourist facilities – the souvenir stalls, a tour of a silver mine – visitors to Guanajuato are unlikely to make the bus trip up the hill for it, even if they know about it.

If you’re fortunate, you’ll end up for one reason or another in an unexpected little place like this. And it may become a highlight of your trip – in some ways the memory of this small, hidden gem in the mountains above Guanajuato remained my favorite of the entire two weeks in Mexico.

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• Read next: Day 10: Why you oughta visit Guanajuato, Mexico
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