San Miguel de Allende

Here I am in San Miguel de Allende. My bed is at Hostel Alcatraz a few blocks from the Plaza Jardin. There is a beautiful cathedral there, a park in the square with trees cut in corners, and many, many iron benches where people gather day in and day out. The ex-pats tend to hang out in the front, across from the cathedral. There are a few vendors that walk around trying to unload hats, colorful toys and brightly colored cloth dolls.

Morning and evenings are best here because, even in early March, it tend to get hot here. Besides that, the light is fantastic. There are a few cathedrals and an artisan market nearby and I've been haunting both with my camera. I think I am taking the same pictures over and over because I am so sure the light is better in this one than the last one I took. Silly me. Yellows and oranges are the theme in San Miguel, it seems. The streets are cobblesone and the sidewalks very narrow. I see a lot of big pieces of banded onyx used to pave them.

The bells go on and on. I hardly notice except that they wake me up at night. If they were synchronized it would help, but after one finishes ringing another chimes in. Now I recognize a new sound, that of a man hired to walk down the streets with a length of steel with a handle that he beats constantly. It is a higher pitch and ear splitting. This is the signal that the garbage truck is coming and all down the street I can hear a flurry of activity as people rush to put out the trash.

Part of another cathedral. Check out the concrete bock...it's almost criminal!

Plaza Jardin

Entering the market.

Coming Into Mexico

I don't think I've ever had to fill out so much paperwork to get past customs. I filled in declarations, a tourist card and got my bags x-rayed a lot coming into Mexico City. Once I got past the airport customs I had to empty my carry-on and get frisked yet again to get on a bus from the airport to Queretaro. My friend, Dave, told me that particular bus gets held up fairly often so maybe that's why. What a change from my last visit in the late 1970s!

The ride to Queretaro was interesting. There are miles of block and brick dwellings, jumbles of tiny rooms stacked on each other haphazardly as if they get added on in one good year, then painted some bright crazy color in another good year. Hot pink and chartreuse are big hits. Many remain drab, though. I find them all very fascinating. There is usually a wall separating these blocks upon blocks of dwellings from the main road and those walls are decorated with graffitti, some quite good. Mile after mile you see water tanks atop these dwellings, as well as on the richer homes. I asked Dave about them and was told they pump the water up and then have water when the glitches happen in the community supply, which happens fairly often. Well, that's thinking, I say.

The landscape is rather dry, sort of like in Texas, and the look is that of past volcanic eruptions. There aren't many trees but there are areas where one sees cactus and agave of notable size. I hope to eat some of that for lunch tomorrow. The sky is so so blue and the sunset was a beautiful orange. Too bad I didn't get photos. I will try later.