This is the week the 2011 Guinness Book of World Records is released. Coincidentally, I attempted to set the new world record for napping today, piling one siesta on top of another for a grand total of nearly four hours. In fairness, I’m coming down with a little cold, which is why I was so wiped out.

Napping in Guanajuato, particularly on a weekend, is always a challenge because of the sheer volume of loud music pumping throughout the city, coming from clubs, plazas, houses, and in today’s case, from a wedding reception at the bottom of the hill. I fell asleep to Girl from Ipanema in one nap and awoke to Creep by Radiohead. Later, a rock band started playing just down the hill, ripping through a Mexican cover of Iron Man by Black Sabbath. This almost certainly cost me the World Nap Record.

In the evening I dragged myself into town to the Teatro Juárez to see tonight’s concert: Pancho Madrigal y El Borlote. Pancho is a well known singer, songwriter and guitarist, in his 70s with a rich voice that has echoes of Johnny Cash. His band featured a guitarist, an acoustic bass, percussion and jarana (a tiny guitar-like instrument that’s like a ukelele on steroids). They sang beautiful traditional songs with lovely harmonies and a wonderful give and take on all the instruments and voices. In the middle, all of the musicians except Pancho left the stage, and he performed three corridos, funny songs in which he would frequently stop playing music to tell a piece of the story before returning to his guitar. Unfortunately, though his Spanish was easy to understand when he was addressing the audience, the stories were mostly above my pay grade, Spanish comprehension-wise.

At the end of the concert, the band made the most token show of leaving in order to get the requisite shouts of “Otra!” from the crowd so they could do their encore.

After dinner I popped into a restaurant for a bowl of chicken soup. Although I’m worn down by this virus, the good news is that I’m finally starting to acclimate a bit to the altitude and the climb back up to the house has gone from punishing to merely difficult. Ah, progress.