San Miguel de Allende (continued)

It's been two weeks since we arrived in San Miguel de Allende (SMA), and four days since we began our stay at Heather Hanley's marvelous condo in the heart of downtown, El Centro. In no time we developed the habit of retreating to the third-floor rooftop in the late afternoon to watch the waning daylight with a 360-degree view of the city. Here we are on the rooftop terrace, and below that is a shot of the courtyard of Heather's building.

Where to start in describing San Miguel? There are many websites that detail the town's central role in the Mexican revolution and talk about the various cultural influences here. Here, a summary from www.sanmiguelguide.com:

"San Miguel de Allende, is located in the mountainous central region of Mexico, part of what is referred to as the "Bajio" of the state of Guanajuato. This "low" region in reality averages about 7000 feet, but is so called for being a relatively flat area ringed by mountains.

"Originally known as San Miguel El Grande was founded by a Franciscan monk named Juan de San Miguel in 1542. It was an important stop over on the Antigua Camino Real, part of the silver route from Zacatecas.
When the Mexican War of Independence began in the nearby town of Dolores (now known as Dolores Hidalgo) on September 16th, 1810 ... the rapidly growing revolutionary army came to San Miguel El Grande. ... It was in San Miguel that General Ignacio Allende joined the army as Padre Miguel Hidalgo's chief lieutenant and led the army to several victories. Allende was not able to enjoy an independent Mexico, free from Spanish colonial oppression, as he was captured during a battle and beheaded. General Ignacio Allende is now a national hero, and San Miguel el Grande renamed itself "San Miguel de Allende" in 1826 in honor of his actions.

"As the mineral wealth waned, the many caravans ceased, and by 1900 San Miguel de Allende was in danger of dying out. Having been declared a national monument in 1926 (no neon signs, no new style buildings), the old Centro district still has the colonial style elegance of its wealthy past. In the 50's San Miguel became a destination known for both its beauty and for its natural hot springs. ... It was after World War II that San Miguel began to revive as a tourist attraction, as many GI's discovered that their education grants stretched further in Mexico at the US accredited art school, the Instituto Allende, founded in 1950.

"San Miguel de Allende is world famous for its mild climate, colonial architecture, and large expatriate population, which estimates number from 8,500 - 10,000. The majority are Americans, with a healthy percentage of Canadians, and smattering of Europeans and other nationalities. Many people have elected to retire here, as the large community of foreigners has brought about a number of conveniences that would normally not be available in a town of this size."

Indeed, our felt experience of SMA so far has mostly to do with how this place, population about 62K, contrasts with the Mexican towns we know or are getting to know: tiny Mulege (population 3K) and Santa Rosalia (about 20K) and La Paz (about 500K), all in Baja California, and Zihuatanejo (about 60K), in Guerrero state.

In SMA are many things that we've never seen in other Mexican towns of this size or greater: a thriving tennis community and many courts; organic grocery stores and restaurants; classes in every possible art and craft, in language, in yoga, and more; art galleries and restaurants galore; concerts galore; a library with the largest collection of English-language titles in Mexico; great local transportation (you can easily live here without a car); and volunteer organizations (education, health, social services, etc.) that serve the natives of SMA and the area surrounding it.

SMA is not everybody's cup of tea -- too gringo for many, too European-looking for others. But we find ourselves appreciating the Mexican cultural elements -- the incredible colonial architecture and food and music and art -- that are refined and revered and preserved here more than in other areas where we've spent time. That said, the "regular, everyday Mexico" that we love is also here -- for example, Gary has found several puestos (food stands on the sidewalks or in the mercado) for terrific tacos and for carnitas (roasted pork). He wants you to know the tacos cost about 60 cents each :-)...

Terri finished her first week of Spanish class -- 3 hours a day with private instructor Alicia -- and tomorrow begins her second week. She's getting into new territory, and it's harder but important to carry on. ... Gary met famed local photographer and author Robert de Gast and spent 2 hours of private photography tutoring with him. It's challenging to choose which photos to take and share here, because everywhere you look is a gorgeous building, gorgeous landscapes, interesting people doing interesting things. You'll continue to see more of Gary's photos on these blog pages.

The list of things we wish to do here hasn't gotten any shorter -- in fact, it continues to lengthen as we learn about more places to see and things to do. We're meeting fascinating people, and everyone has a story to tell about how they came to live here. A lot of those stories involve folks just falling in love with the look and feel of SMA.

Yesterday we rented an ATV, which is a common mode of transport on the narrow cobblestone streets here that are full of topes (speedbumps). For 6 hours we explored little callejones (narrow alleyways) in various colonias (neighborhoods) that we'd unlikely have had time to find on foot. Some curve steeply from El Centro up into the hills, and while we were up there, we went to the El Charro de Ingenio, the botanical gardens that feature a zillion types of cactus and yucca and other arid-landscape plants. Afterwards, we returned down to town and checked out the Fabrica de Aurora, a former cotton mill that's been transformed into a space full of art galleries, furniture stores, cafes, and gardens.

After turning in the ATV, we strolled through the Jardin, the park in front of the beautiful Parroquia catedral. The Jardin is always full of Mexicans and gringos relaxing and visiting, and yesterday there were mariachis playing and lots of vendors selling flowers for Valentine's Day.

Today, we are headed to Parque Benito Juarez, the largest green space in SMA, where there is a plant sale (species from all over Mexico have been brought in this week) and an art exhibit. From there, we'll go over to the trailer park where we lived at the start of our visit here and where our rig is currently stored. We've been invited to a potluck where the matriarch of the Mexican family who owns the park is going to teach us how to make tamales, and one of the park residents is going to show how to make chiles rellenos (mild poblano chiles stuffed with cheese). Yum!

Soon, more from San Miguel.

San Miguel de Allende

Perhaps it was a mistake to let 8 days pass before writing about San Miguel de Allende. So much has happened in a single week, and we have so many wonderful impressions of this place that it'll be hard to summarize the events and thoughts of even this short time. Alongside this text you'll see photos that Gary has taken on our  walks around town of details of beautiful buildings and churches plus people we've seen on the zocalos (town plazas) and elsewhere.

First off, a few corrections to our initial post: The clay tennis courts at the RV park where we're staying, which looked to us last Thursday to be under an inch of water, took less than a day (!!) to drain. We actually played Australian doubles yesterday with Wayne, a guy who is staying here too, and I played singles with him again today. It's both Gary's and my first experiences playing on clay: The ball bounces differently and feels to us like it's coming at twice the speed as on a hard surface, and the loose dirt underfoot is unnerving as you start to go for a ball or try to stop and find yourself sliding. Also, after only a game or two, I found myself breathing hard, and I chalked it up to not having played for a few weeks. But Wayne reminded us that San Miguel is at 6,700 feet elevation, which is a much different scene than sea level in Baja or Zihuatanejo, our usual winter stomping grounds.

Secondly, I mentioned in the first blog posting that I was starting a Spanish class last week, but I decided to take a few days to explore with Gary before diving in. So today I started 3 hours a day of one-on-one instruction at Instituto Allende, a language school that's been in SMA for about 50 years. I was with Alicia, a wonderful and experienced teacher, for two hours, then with Tomas, a retired school superintendent and lovely man, for one hour. Muy intensivo!!! Next week, I may move to the Warren Hardy language school here for a 2-week group class. My Posada friends Cheryl and Wendy and I used a Warren Hardy workbook this fall for our Spanish self-study and liked his approach.

As mentioned earlier, we arrived in San Miguel to highly unusual weather. Last week I drafted a post tentatively titled "40 Days and 40 Nights" about the 72 hours of unrelenting rain we experienced. In our little 19-foot motorhome, we have about 70 square feet of living space, and 30 of that is the bed, which is the only place to sit. So as you can imagine, it was ... cozy! We watched pirated movies that we'd bought in the mercado (they sell everywhere for US$1.50 each, and across the screen during the movie a few times will roll the phrase "For Academy Award consideration only....."). We watched the previous day's news on PBS and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. We did email. We wrote the first installment of this blog. We played cribbage (Gary was leading 7-6 when the rains stopped). We did yoga and calisthenics in the 10x4 aisle space. We started Happy Hour early!

Then the sun came out, and all of us in the 10 tiny RVs in this park emerged from our rigs like moles from their holes. The socializing began, and before long plans were made for the sports fans to watch the Super Bowl together yesterday and the shoppers to go to the weekly "tianguis" (huge open market) tomorrow. It's a fun group here --  50-somethings and 60-somethings and one couple of 80-somethings who've been coming in their RVs to SMA for anywhere from one to 10 seasons.

After the rain subsided, Gary and I immediately headed out to resume our walking exploration of town. That day, on our walk to the center of town, we passed a modest storefront called Optica Allende. Gary, who's noticed a change in his vision recently, decided to get some new glasses here, and we made an appointment with the old optometrist at the store for the next day.

When Gary arrived, the old doctor's son, also a doctor, was waiting for him. The young doctor conducted the exam using, shall we say, old technology: a pair of thick, black-framed, round glasses into which he inserted various-strength lenses until he found the correct ones for Gary's bifocal prescription. He asked Gary to go outside and walk around to check the correction for distance, and he offered some small-print text to check the correction for reading. Gary picked up the new glasses three days later, and they are perfect.

In that closet-sized store were a few cases of eyeglass frames, all priced differently. But in the end, no matter which frame Gary considered, the cost of exam+frames+lenses was $2000 pesos (about $175). The young doctor spoke some English but we never could get to the bottom of why the cost didn't change if Gary chose the more expensive frames instead of the cheaper ones :-) ... In the same vein: In one display of eyeglass cases with sample frames, tucked into two cases were dead hummingbird carcasses. I asked about that, and the doctor explained that colibris (hummingbirds), even dead ones, are a symbol of good luck in Mexico, and that lovers will often give one to their sweethearts. Viva la cultura mexicana!

On one of our walks downtown, we had a huge stroke of good fortune in meeting Heather Hanley, a terrifically generous woman who came to San Miguel a few years ago after living in Italy for 30+ years. Her home is an art-filled condo in a renovated convent in the heart of San Miguel. Serendipitously, Heather was to be gone on vacation for 8 days and offered to rent her lovely home to us for that period. We get to be there starting Wednesday, February 10. Here, a photo of Heather and Terri on the rooftop terrace of her building.

Last weekend we went to an art and craft fair at the Instituto Allende, a former hacienda and current art and language center in SMA. The Instituto has lovely stone buildings and gardens, and the entrance and courtyard contain murals depicting historical scenes by the famous contemporary Mexican painter David Leonardo. (An aside: In 2006, when my Seattle friend Lisa Matchette offered her home in La Manzanilla, on the Pacific coast in Colima state, as a vacation retreat, I stayed there for two weeks. While in La Manz, I bought a small painting by David Leonardo in a local gallery, not fully knowing what a treasure I was acquiring, only knowing that I loved it and wanted to live with it!)

There's much more to say and show about San Miguel, and we'll post again soon.

Welcome to our Mexploration 2010

 
We intended to start this blog on January 1st, 2010, when we left our home in Posada Concepcion, in Baja California Sur, to begin our second annual exploration of the Mexico mainland, this time for three months. On a giant ferry, we crossed from La Paz, further south on the Baja peninsula, to Mazatlan, a resort city in Sinaloa state on the Pacific coast.


Like last year, our plan was to cruise around in a small motorhome. Last summer, however, we sold our former 23-foot RV and downsized to a 1989 19-foot Mallard Sprint, which we acquired at an auction for $4K. This one-owner gem had 26K miles on it and had been well cared for. We upgraded to high-end tires, ambulance-quality shock absorbers, and other things to improve its safety and ride, and we freshened the interior with new curtains and one of Gary's small, beautiful Tibetan rugs. It has a nice-sized bed, a bathroom/shower, a frig, a microwave, a 2-burner stove, and a sink. Sufficiente!


Today it is one month into the trip and one-third into our allotted time. The delay in blogging about our travels stems from some unexpected events:


Terri's 95-year-old mother, Agnes (see photo), suffered a sudden illness and died on January 10. Terri flew to Cleveland, her hometown, in time to sit a day's vigil with her sister Jeanne before Agnes passed away, and to stay while other family members arrived for a private funeral service. It was good for her to be in the comfort of their company.


While Terri was in Ohio, we received news from our friend and Baja housesitter, Susan Nelson, that our dog, Buddy (see photo), had become suddenly sick. Susan and retired vet Fred Fredericks, who performs a great service to people and their pets in our Baja community, determined that Buddy's illness was ultimately terminal, and they delivered him to a gentle ending.


These losses took the wind out of our sails. After Terri returned from Ohio, we spent a few quiet days at our sweet condominium in Zihuatanejo, on the southern Pacific coast, before heading north in the RV on Mex Hwy 200. This two-lane, curvy road follows all the ins and outs of the mountainous shoreline, which is something like a tropical version of the Big Sur area of the central California coast in the U.S., only in places you can look down from the highway and see terrific expanses of unspoiled beach.

For perhaps hundreds of miles on Hwy 200 through several states (Guerrero, Michoacan, Jalisco and Nayarit), there are no stoplights because the Mexicans have developed a far more effective means of regulating traffic speed through pueblos (small towns) or near school zones: topes. Topes (TOW-pays) are giant speed bumps, and they occur frequently enough that, between them and the curves, we averaged about 25 mph all the way to Puerto Vallarta.


En route we checked out several dirt roads leading from the highway to the ocean in search of good places to camp for a night. (We also remembered places we'd discovered last winter, and we had recommendations from friends who'd traveled this way before.) As a result, we landed on some beautiful beaches, many complete with small, open-air restaurants called enramadas, where we enjoyed pina coladas and fresh grilled fish. Deliciosa!


In Puerto Vallarta, a city of 1.5 million people and a stark contrast to the little towns along Hwy 200, we met Gary's brother Rick and his wife, Marcy, for a week at an oceanfront resort. We took a day trip to Sayulita, an old '70s hippie surfer town now cleaned up and touristy but still fun.


Last Saturday we left Puerto Vallarta and headed inland over the Sierra de Mascota mountains, climbing more than a mile in elevation in a few hours of more 25 mph driving. The scenery was fantastic -- range after range revealing themselves, covered with different vegetation, tiny pueblitos dotting the hillsides. Eventually we neared Guadalajara, Mexico's second-largest city with a population of more than 1.5 million, and the 2-lane gave way to a 6-lane highway that ringed the city. We circled to the north and left the city, taking the cuota (tollway) a while before stopping for the night. The next morning we hopped back on the cuota for another day of driving -- around Leon, a major industrial city north of Guadalajara, and from a flat agricultural area into the high desert of Guanajuato state. 

We hadn't seen another gringo (American/Canadian) after leaving PV until yesterday, when we arrived in San Miguel de Allende, a well-known expatriat town dating from the mid-1500s and the Jesuit mission-building era in Mexico. In 2008, SMA was designated a Unesco World Heritage Site, which means, among other things, that its architecture, culture, and charm is tightly controlled and thus preserved.


SMA, which is also known for its terrific weather -- clear and cool in winter, clear and warm in summer -- is at the moment wet wet wet, with a few more days of rain forecast. The bright side is that it's a good time to be enrolled in Spanish class, and Terri begins one tomorrow. The down side is that we're staying at a small RV park we found in the center of SMA, and one of the big lures of the place -- 3 clay tennis courts -- are big mud puddles and unusable for at least a week. Gary was hoping to get some coaching and play time in while Terri was in Spanish class, but instead he'll be diving into a new novel on his Kindle.


We plan to be here for about 2 weeks, so stay tuned for pix and more from SMA.