101 Places Not to See Before You Die - Catherine Price [61]
Chapter 100
The Traveling Mummies of Guanajuato
I’m not looking forward to death, but when I’m gone, I’d prefer it if my body is not included in a traveling mummy show.
That’s exactly what happened to about 120 people who had the misfortune of being buried in a graveyard at Guanajuato, a town northwest of Mexico City. From 1865 till 1958, a local law required relatives to pay a grave tax for the privilege of keeping their kin underground. If you failed to pay the tax for three years in a row, your loved one would be exhumed, and his or her body—which was likely mummified, thanks to the area’s arid climate—would be put on display in a museum.
I’m not kidding. The town is home to El Museo de las Momias—the Museum of the Mummies—and even though the grave tax law was changed in 1958, the bodies are still on display.
If you have a taste for the macabre, you might enjoy the exhibit. It includes a motley crew of human remains, from a tiny baby mummy who died (along with its mother) during a botched caesarian section to a woman whose raised arms and scratched forehead suggest that she might have been buried alive. Some of the mummies are clothed; some are naked except for their socks. Beyond an occasional name, however, there’s no information as to who they were or how they died.
I fall into the camp of people who think that maybe a traveling mummy show is not the most respectful way to deal with the remains of indigent Mexicans. But others disagree: the mummies are so popular that in the fall of 2009, they were taken to the United States for a seven-city tour.
Chapter 101
The Top of the Stari Grad Bell Tower
By the second week of our honeymoon in Croatia, I knew that my husband, Peter, loved bell towers. Every time we found one, he insisted on climbing to the top so that he could take pictures from its panoramic view. So I wasn’t surprised that when we arrived in Stari Grad—a small town on the island of Hvar—he made a beeline for the campanile.
But this bell tower was different. Unlike most Croatian campaniles, which are either padlocked or charge admission, it was unguarded, unlocked, and entirely covered in scaffolding. I am a cautious person and decided that a centuries-old building held up by a precarious network of wooden beams and metal bars might not be the safest structure to climb. By the time I’d reached that conclusion, however, Peter was already inside.
I entered to find him scampering up a set of steep stone steps, which were coated in a salt-and-pepper-colored layer of pigeon droppings so thick and crunchy that it sounded as if we were stepping on cornflakes. I took a few hesitant steps, asking spoilsport questions like “Do you think this is safe?” and “What if the building collapses?”
Paying no attention, he continued his ascent until the stone staircase turned into several flights of metal stairs. In what had already become a theme in our relationship, I followed and soon found myself on a metal platform at the top of the tower, seven stories above ground. I was also standing directly beneath one of four giant metal bells, all covered in bird droppings and suspended just above head level. Peter, in the meantime, had leaped up onto the thick stone windowsill and was eyeing the wooden scaffolding outside—scaffolding of unknown quality, its age and structural integrity unclear.
“Come up here and take a picture with me,” Peter said, gesturing toward the shaky wooden ledge. “It’s got a great view.”
At that point—the first moment all day—I refused. No, I would not come up on the windowsill. No, I did not want to take a picture. I was staying right here, on this shit-crusted metal floor beneath a huge bell, and if he thought I was going to let him jump onto the wooden scaffolding, subjecting me to the possibility of having to scrape my new husband’s broken body off the concrete plaza below, he had another thing coming. No one was going anywhere.
Then