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San Sebastian del Oeste

3/11/2015

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San Sebastián was founded as a mining town in 1605, during the early Spanish colonial Viceroyalty of New Spain period. New Spain was a Spanish territory that came into existence in 1522, the year following 1521's Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire; the Viceroyalty of New Spain was created as the Royal administration of New Spain. It covered Mexico, Spanish Central America, Spain's Caribbean colonies, and parts of the Gulf Coast of North America, primarily La Florida. The Viceroyalty existed until independence was won by Mexico in 1821.

Gold, silver and lead were mined in the area. More than 25 mines and a number of foundries were established by 1785.  Silver mining became the main driver of not only the economy of New Spain, but vastly enriched Spain, and transformed the global economy.   For all the interesting details of Spain’s conquests beginning with Herman Cortes, check out Wikipedia’s New Spain article.

San Sebastian was formally established as a city in 1812.  At one time a provincial capital and mining boom town of 30,000 people, you will find it strangely deserted with only about 900 people living there now.

I decided to leave the heat of PV behind for a day to visit San Sebastian and check out this historical mining town for myself.  One option was to take a bus to La Estancia and hitchhike the last five miles.  I learned of a La Cruz local taking small groups up the mountain in her Hiace Toyota van, a four cylinder Mexico model that had the look and feel of VW vans.  A long-time La Cruz resident and USA expat, April (under the call sign Wave House) has several tours she promotes to cruisers over the morning radio net. It turned out to be a good choice as she has a wealth of knowledge about the area and was a great guide.

After picking up the group next to PV Sailing (a local sail loft), only two blocks from where I was staying, she drove us towards the mountains, through Las Palmas and reached La Estancia after about an hour.  The final miles were over dirt and cobblestone roads flanked by trees and white houses with red trim. The first order of business after we arrived was lunch at the La Lupita's restaurant to have lunch.  We developed a hunger after hiking the trail to the St. Gertrude mine.  The air was cooler here at 4,500 feet.

After lunch we explored this sleepy town for an hour-and-a-half starting with the main plaza which had a gazebo stage as many plazas do.  There were several eateries in addition to Lupita’s only a few lodging facilities.  April recommended Hotel El Puente ($18/night) for its basic but tranquil surroundings.  It was a step back in time; the old adobe houses and signs looked like they were straight out of a Clint Eastwood film.

Picture
La Lupita restaurant
The 7-person group and the guide, April, enjoyed a family-style  lunch for 120 pesos each gathered around a big table. Everything was fresh, flavorful and tasty in this family-owned restaurant  The service was great and the place was neatly decorated with bright colored table cloths and dishes.  Big pitchers of "aqua fresca," a fruit flavored water, were waiting on the tables.    The server ladies brought multiple plates of chips and salsas, quesadillas, shredded pork, red spicy rice, chicken mole, frijoles (refried beans) and home-made tortillas.  It was the meal of the day.  Afterwards, we were served small plates of  dessert which tasted like a cross between a flan and rice pudding.  All in all, its was a very good Mexican meal in an authentic atmosphere at the Comedor la Lupita. The comedor (Mexican dining room) was named after the daughter of the owner, Lupita.
The church is always located near the town plaza and most pueblos have both.  Plazas serve as an important place in Mexican pueblos.  Located near the center of  the pueblo, the plaza is where the most important buildings are located, such as the church (most importantly), city hall, market, hospital, etc.  Regardless of size or population, the Mexican town is organized around the plaza.  It is here where key events take place:  festivals, national celebrations, social gatherings, music concerts, and political events.

The church, dedicated to the town's patron saint, San Sebastian, was originally constructed in 1608 but was rebuilt in 1868 after an earthquake hit the area.  At the time, Catholic church governance was all the locals knew. 
The Church of Saint Sebastian was designed in the colonial Spanish baroque style. It has notable architectural details, including Corinthian columns and ceiling vault frescos.  The town celebrates its patron saint with a week-long festival which starts in late January of each year.
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Hacienda Jalisco on the Road to San Sebastian

3/7/2015

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En route to San Sebastian del Oeste, the Hacienda Jalisco, now a bed-and-breakfast rustic guesthouse, was built 225 years ago by the Spanish guard to hold and protect the output of silver mines of San Sebastian, in preparation for shipment to Spain.  Staying at the Hacienda will take travelers back 150 years to get a taste of what life was like in the Spanish colonial era.

The term hacienda comes from ‘hacer’ which means to make something … in this case it was large estate where silver was produced. 
The word Jalisco comes from the Náhuatl words xali ixco meaning sandy surface.

A massive structure with two foot-thick adobe and rock walls, great wooden shutters and doors, connected by massive ceilings and skirted by faded fresco paintings. Each of the five individual guest rooms upstairs are adorned with antique furniture pieces, large bathrooms and fireplaces.  Oil lamps are used as there is no electricity in the Hacienda’s guest rooms. 

The ground level contains a combination library/dining room (now a museum of sorts), servants' quarters and a kitchen. Antiques, books, original maps, archeological artifacts, mining tools, and ledgers throughout room highlight the Hacienda's colorful history. An impressive wrap-around balcony offers views of the Sierra Madre range.   Originally, the property had no electricity but today there are a few lights and AC plugs around the Hacienda ... I noticed a few solar panels on the well-weathered red tile roof.

Many Hollywood celebrities, such as Peter O’Toole, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, have stayed at Hacienda Jalisco.  John Huston was a close friend of expatriate Bud Acord, a Hollywood artistic type who was responsible for renovating and maintaining the property for many years as its proprietor. He arrived in the early 1960s and found the 1840s style Hacienda Jalisco in a greatly dilapidated condition.  Acord met film director Huston when he was filming the “Night of the Iguana” near Mismaloya Beach, a few miles South of Puerto Vallarta.

During its mining heyday, the European mine managers and their families lived in the upstairs rooms overlooking the courtyard where ore was pulverized using big grinding wheels (an example seen in the courtyard) driven by a water power.  The stone wall ovens, used in the smelting operations, reached high temperatures from having the tallest chimney in the area.  Remnants of the chimney remain behind the ovens.  After extraction, the silver was melted into bars for transport. With the various toxic chemicals used to extract the silver from the ore, it was a dirty and unforgiving operation performed by the local Indians, but yielded riches for Spain.  The rock in the mines was broken down with pick axes and carried out by workers in backpacks to waiting carts which were transported by mules to the smelters.  The mine workers were paid in chits which they could cash out in the company stores

The mining boom ended with the Mexican Revolution in 1910 which dethroned the long-time, autocratic president at the time, Porfirio Diaz. Popular Mexican figures, such as Francisco Madero, Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata arose to take part in the rebellion against Díaz, and separate efforts eventually coalesced into what became known as the Mexican Revolution. Due to the turmoil and bloodshed, workers at the mines ran away, and during the subsequent eleven years of war, most of the furnishings and equipment were looted. The hacienda remained abandoned for almost half a century, until Bud Acord purchased it.

The mines were, in part, responsible for the start of Puerto Vallarta. Then known as Las Peñas and consisting of just a few huts at the mouth of the Rio Cuale, it was used to supply the mines with salt which was taken by mules up to San Sebastian and other mines in the High Sierras and used in the smelting process to extract silver and other materials from the ore. The silver and gold from the mines was sent, again by mule train through Guadalajara and Mexico City to Veracruz, where it was sent, once a year, to Spain.

Today, it’s rumored that silver is still to be found in the surrounding hills, buried by former mine owners who feared bandidos.  The owners never returned to claim it after the revolution.  Ghosts have also been reported around the hacienda by persons staying overnight on the grounds.

In 2010,
Endeavour Silver Corp. announced that it has acquired a multi-year option to purchase the San Sebastian silver-gold properties in Jalisco State, Mexico from IMMSA (Grupo Mexico), one of the largest mining companies in Mexico.  The mine which has been dormant since its demise may re-open when the price of silver recovers from its current depressed levels.  There is local controversy over the fact that the company plans open pit mining, thus changing the pastoral landscape of the area.

We hiked into the mountains to see one of the mines optioned by Endeavour.  According to the hand-lettered sign in Spanish at the shaft entrance, Mina Sta. Gertrudis (St. Gertrude's Mine) dates from 1880 and runs 270 feet straight into the mountain.  We walked in with flashlights until we reached a section where it has caved in.  The shaft is high enough so I could stand up ... but just barely. It was registered as a silver mine for the Hacienda Jalisco and was worked by 12 men and 3 boys. St. Gertrude was a Benedictine mystic and theologian born in the 13th century. The Roman Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of St. Gertrude on November 16th.

Until a few years ago, the road was so bad it was impassible for a regular car and took most of the day for a 4-wheeler to make the 4500-foot climb into the pine country of San Sebastian and Hacienda Jalisco.  Now the paved road makes the trip up in to the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains to San Sebastian a mere 1½ to 2 hour drive. The building of the Progresso Bridge was also big time saver.  As in all of Mexico, you need to watch for the "topes" — so called speed bumps, many with no painted warning stripes, or the paint so worn off you don't see them until it's too late to avoid the jolt. And the pot holes ... some deep and unmarked.  There is also a rustic airstrip for prop planes and small jets near the hacienda for the not-so-faint of heart.

Don't fool yourself ... if WiFi, television and nightlife is your cup of tea, then better stay somewhere else. But if you want to borrow a night from the past, this can be a tranquil place to stay. On top of the history of the place (you are spending the night above a museum), the grounds are serene, in rustic surroundings and the ambiance can ignite the imagination.  Hiking in the cool pine forests is another activity to enjoy.

Hacienda Jalisco
San Sebastian del Oeste, Jalisco. Mexico
Phone: + 52 (322) 22 29638
Cel: 044 322 107 7007
Atencion en Español
Cel 044 322 139 23 89
Web: www.haciendajalisco.com
Email: [email protected]


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Super-quick Weather Downloader Program for Sailors

3/4/2015

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The "Weather Download v2.0" program is a skinny program that does not take up much memory or disk space and downloads a combination of up to 15 weather charts and text files in a flash ... about one second per chart.  It is especially handy to use in areas where the Internet speed is slow.  Once the program is downloaded, just copy and replace the sample URLs provided to reflect your weather planning needs.   The results of each download is put into separate folders.

Here is the way that the developer Nick of S/V Jedi describers the latest version of the program:

You will get a ZIP file when you download from the link above. Put it on your desktop and unzip it there. This will create a folder called "WxDownload v2.0 Distribution". In the folder are three files. Double-click the application (that's the file with the cute fair-weather icon ;-)

Some of the new features:
  • It's a real Windows application, no more scripts. It's programmed in Free Pascal, using the Lazarus components (also free). The application is free for non-commercial use (GNU license) and you may send it to anyone you like.
  • I programmed the TCP/IP part for downloading from Internet hosts directly into the application, so the httpget.exe that was used in the previous script isn't used anymore. This was the tricky part of this little project ;-)
  • It has a standard DBase IV format database for the descriptions of what to download from where, instead of the previous text file. The application has support for browsing, editing, adding, deleting records etc. Play with that a bit to find out how it works. Look carefully at the example records as they give hints on where to find weather for different areas. Test the URL's in your web browser and use copy&paste to enter them into the database. Use your right mouse button and the drop-down menu for copying and pasting.
  • The Application comes with a database filled with the same 14 weather downloads as the script. It consists of two files: wx.dbf is the main table and wx.mdx is the index-file for sorting on the "file name" field. This means the list is automatically sorted.
    If you delete these two database files and start the application, it will create new, empty, files magically.
  • After the download is complete, it opens the new folder with all the files for you. These folders are named using the data and time of their creation (just like the old script did) so that you can easily sort them. The folders are created in the application-folder.
  • If you want more than one set of weather-files, simply copy the whole application folder and edit the database.
  • HOT TIP: copy the application folder to your USB memory stick. You can run it right from the stick on ANY computer, without installing it on that computer!
    Make sure you copy the folder to the stick, not just the three files in the stick root directory.
  • You can re-size the window but if you make it too small you can't see all the info anymore.
  • It has a progress bar to give you an indication of how long it takes to complete the download. This is only needed when your Internet connection is very slow because the application is lightning fast!

That is probably more information than you want to know.  It works on Windows machines 32-bit and 64-bit.  It works with Windows 8 in desktop mode.  It will download any files with picture extensions (TIF, JPG, GIF, etc.) and TXT files.  Make sure that the sites you copy point to pages with these file extensions.

Click on the link below to download the program in ZIP format.
wxdownload-v2.0-distribution.zip
File Size: 797 kb
File Type: zip
Download File

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