And down comes the rain

NEWLY UPDATED AT 8:30 PM
Once the rain stopped this evening Felipe and I hopped back in a taxi to go out to dinner. The place we wanted to go to was closed however, so we went to the same place as last night. We had to huff uphill to get there this time though since we got dropped off at the cathedral to go to the other restaurant. I say huff because at 8200 feet it doesn´t take much for us to huff. It is quite chilly here (although no snow) but we refused to wear jackets and decided to revel in our chance at being chilled since my parents inform me that the temperature in the El Paso area has been in the 90´s.

A quick sidenote about food... don´t get sucked into ordering chips (totopos) and guac as an appetizer here. The chips are NOT the same as the US. They are usually oil soaked, rock hard or even slightly burnt. Sometimes you´ll get them free anyway... more so in the north than in the south. Also, malteados are NOT malts! They are slightly cool milk (I stress the slightly) with malt powder mixed in. Get corn when you see it (if you like corn that is) on the street and DO get the mayo even though your instincts may say not too (or crema if available). I recommend the not so spicy chili however.

AFTERNOON´S ENTRY
Too bad it wasn´t in Felipe´s town! We are in Zacatecas city and there is a major thunderstorm going on outside. Luckily we´ve gotten to enjoy some of the city already although not the mine (which Felipe didn´t want to see anyway so he lucked out). Last night we went tried to go to dinner at a place listed in my Lonely Planet guidebook (which I would totally recommend over Fodor´s because I have one of those too and we never, ever use it) but it wasn´t the same place anymore. Our taxi driver had advised us of this place called Dorado de la Villa which is a tiny little restaurant that you have to knock on the door to get in. It had really awesome food. We tried sopes with chicken in red mole and the sauce was fabulous. Neither of us like the chocolatey mole poblano at all so we weren´t expecting to like this but we did. We were going to walk around the town but we were so stuffed we went back to the hotel instead since we had been driving all day and were exhausted.

This morning I must say we were very lazy and just dozed on and off until about 9:30ish. Tomorrow we have to get up early to start our 11 hour drive to Chihuahua city so and then his interview is so close we won´t really be getting much sleep. It´s like there is a giant clock going ¨tick tock, tick tock¨all around us. Hard to imagine that over 2 years of waiting is almost over for us.

Anyway, we did finally get out of the hotel about 11 and went to a cafe by the cathedral for lunch. We couldn´t really go inside since there was a service going on but I did peek. It is a beautiful pink cathedral and the inside has these huge pink stone columns. We´re going to try to see more later. After a leisurely lunch we took the cable car to the top of the hill (that´s on ´the list´) and enjoyed the view. As we were up there we saw rain clouds start to roll in so we hurried and got in line to go back down. We managed to get into the last car that was going down before the rain and wind and thunder and lightning started. Thank goodness because it´s been over an hour and it´s still raining so I don´t know how those people got down. We were going to try to walk around in the rain and find a cafe but everywhere is closed for the afternoon or for the rain... I don´t know which... so we came back to our hotel and will enjoy a nice siesta and some TV in English and watch the lightning.

Our hotel has a very nice internet lounge so I was optimistic I could put my pictures online from here but for some reason they have the picasa web album site blocked which stinks. oh well... i did put some of them on a CD so if i find an internet cafe that will let me post them I will... Otherwise you´ll all see them when I get back and have my dumb computer fixed. ugh!

Send us good thoughts and prayers!