In the morning, we packed up and checked out of the hotel, and went for a long drive on twisty mountain roads. We stopped for a while in the little town of Cerocahui (seh-ro-cah-WEE):
...where we visited this church:
...the Parroquia de (parish church of) San Francisco Javier. Juan told us that the church, which was originally built of adobe, dated back to 1679. It had fallen into disuse and was in ruins, when Father Andrés Lara arrived in 1939, and supervised its reconstruction, completed in 1941. We took a look inside the church:
...and saw a mural across the street in honor of Father Lara (he's the one in the glasses).
We then continued on our way, and came to our next hotel, the San Isidro Inn. This was a very rustic type of place, out in the middle of nowhere. As usual, after we got settled in, I walked around and took pictures:
Entrance arch
The main building
Our room
There were some interesting pieces of artwork on the grounds, such as this one, which Juan told me represented the Chepe Express:
...and this whimsical critter right outside the main building entrance:
The hotel also appeared to be a working ranch. There were horses:
...as well as cows, pigs, goats and chickens. By the way, the rightmost horse in that picture is actually a burro.
Our room was in the main building, but Lucia, Esmond and Blanca were in cabins:
Lucia and Esmond's cabin had an interesting mural on the back wall:
Take a close look at the stained glass in that window:
Those are actually bottoms of glass bottles. When I saw that, I went to look at the window from the outside, and discovered the rest of the bottles!
...although I'm not sure what the push broom is doing there.
I found this interesting sign pasted to the mirror:
The second and third lines translate to words of wisdom that I learned in Boy Scouts: "Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footprints." The first line turned out to be a worthy addition: "Kill nothing but time."
Having time to kill that afternoon, I went for a walk. I walked about a mile down the highway:
...or what passes for a highway in that neighborhood. Like I said, we were way out in the boondocks. I passed a school along the way, and several of the young boys were hanging on the fence, watching me as I went by.
Later, we all went on a walk, led by Mario, one of the owners of the hotel:
...and his faithful companion, Max:
Mario led us through some property belonging to the family, which was at one time going to be developed into an extension of the hotel. Just a few items remain as reminders of what might have been:
...and then we came to our destination - a cave:
If you look really closely, you can just make out a bar and stools inside the cave. Farther in, there were several tables and shelves, and in a little alcove at the far end of the cave, I found this shrine to the Virgin:
When we got back, we visited the gift shop:
...where Terry bought a T-shirt, and we got some gifts for friends, including a bottle of vino de membrillo, or quince wine. We gave the wine to our friend Guillermo, who said it was very sweet, but good.