In less than a day we are off back to Mexico City for New Year’s Eve and then on to Oaxaca (pronounced Wah Ha kah mostly)! It seems hard to believe that we have been here in San Miguel for seven weeks: we have made a lot of new friends (locals and expats), actually learned to get by in Spanish although we are far from fluent, tanned up a bit, fattened up a bit (unfortunately), seen a couple of plays, went on multiple bicycle rides into the cactusy high desert (good for flat tires), rented quad motorcycles for a day of tooling around in the Campo, seen lots of art most of which is out of our price range and only a tiny amount of which we even like, eaten lots of tacos, indulged in some tequilas or three, walked up hill and down dale every day, enjoyed warm weather and gorgeous sunsets nearly every day, enjoyed a thunder and lightning-filled rain storm, practiced cooking local dishes and learning to make a few new ones (sopes for instance), watched a little of the local TV, went to the local hot springs, had massaahhges, watched the Gemenid meteor shower, sampled the local cookies once or twice, visited nearby towns (Dolores, Queretaro and Pozos), went to the big Tuesday market known as La Placita to the locals and the Tuesday Market to the turistas, listened to and watched countless fireworks, participated in a Posada and the neighborhood Dia de La Virgen de Guadalupe fiesta till two thirty in the morning, sampled the occasional ice cream, went to several clubs and listened to live music till two or three in the morning, met lots of dogs and a few cats, knitted several turtles and a scarf, read several Mexican history books, managed not to get Moctezuma’s revenge otherwise known as Turista, visited numerous beautiful churches (some of them formerly beautiful), had traditional American Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, received (and ate) a fabulous care package from home (Christmas Pud de Barbara – muchas gracias), saw Avatar in 3D with Spanish subtitles,went to Costco and ate a Costco pizza, tried mailing postcards and packages using MexPost and generally had a really chilled-out and great time.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Sunday, December 27, 2009
SMA: A Few Other Things
It has been a while since we posted partly because of an apparent lack of time and partly because not a lot has been happening. This isn’t strictly true since of course lots has been happening it just seems mundane and thus we have not been inspired.
Several weeks ago in the lead up to the shopping frenzy called Christmas we went out to a local village, La Cienaguita, to visit a house owned, built and decorated by an eccentric pair of expat artists sometimes known as “The Wizards” for their clothing, long beards and pointy hats (always a dead give away for wizards). The house is pretty spectacular, overwhelmingly decorated in bright, colorful mosaics:
After an hour mostly spent hanging out and avoiding epileptic fits we headed back into town for an ice cream.
A few days later we joined our friends Kit and Roy for sunset cocktails at Casa Linda followed by dinner at Pegaso and our first Posada. Posada’s are a reenactment of Mary and Joseph’s travails finding a motel for the night in the Roman provinces. A procession goes from Church to Church, one pair each night, for seven nights. At each end-point Church a room is asked for and denied (mais bien sur). The assembled children and adults who have ben walking along singing hymms and such are fated with ponche (fresh made apple cider), tamales, and candy.
The day before meeting up with Kit and Roy I went cycling with Javier and the guys. We tooled out into the Campo as usual and wound up passing by an ancient damn (una presa) built almost three hundred years ago
Christmas Eve, Darcie and I rented quad motorcycles with our friend Kim and her son Grant. We spent the whole day wandering around the Campo racking up a total of 50 miles or so.
Christmas came upon us after a late night having dinner with new friends followed by a couple of hours milling around with other friends in the Jardin (the main town square) in the hopes that something might happen at midnight (we never made it to midnight as fatigue and margaritas caught up with us). We did get to see the live animals populating the crèche:
They were a great success – none were left.
The following day we had mimosas with John and Yaya made with cava and hand-squeezed orange/mandarin juice and then all four of us hopped into John’s car and we went off to the nearby town of Pozos which is a former mining town now decaying and dissolving back into the earth.
Former mines litter the landscape and of course the landscape needs to be treated with care since there has been little effort made to close up the yawning mine shafts
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
SMA: “M” Does NOT Mean “Men”!
So, a funny thing happened to me on the way to the Forum…
Well in reality a lesson in paying attention and using my brain. I did neither in this instance and wound up walking into the then deserted “Mujeres” which if it had remained deserted would have been ok (with me anyway). As it was, I failed to note the lack of purely male facilities, proceeded to a stall and thence to wash my hands. As I was doing so I noted a chap in front of the mirror primping hair and such. “Funny, odd thing for a man to do” I thought and while washing my hands noted that the man had quite shapely hips, for a man, and high heels and was now adjusting his bra… “Oops” I thought as the “man” noticed me, with some shock, in mid-adjust, I am in the wrong room!
Since this was several weeks ago my ability to say much in Spanish was limited to things like “I need…”, “I want…” and “can I have…” none of which were appropriate at this moment (I might have gotten slapped). I shrugged, (s)he shrugged, I left the room to face the laughter of the table nearest said room that was waiting for my grand re-entrance. More shrugging, a grin or two and I sauntered casually past my mockers with as much grace as I could muster.
Since then I have been more careful and have learned not to take directions given by well-meaning people at face value.
Darcie and I went out to one of the local hot springs, La Gruta, with our friends Gregg and Karen (Blackburn’s no less but not related). La Gruta is a nicely landscaped collection of pools with the crowning feature of the eponymous Grotto (la Gruta). Three hours of swimming and lounging in 100F give or take water was most excellent and highly recommended to any and all that come to SMA.
The grotto itself is a man-made cave using local stones to form a large domed room accessed by a long, birth canal-like tunnel. As you get closer to the grotto the atmosphere gets increasingly steamy, great for the lungs but not so great for waterproof cameras seemingly as ours has picked up a minor twitch in the focusing.
The other night was the annual Gemenid Meteor shower which promised to be pretty decent here in SMA. We hiked up to the local botanical garden, El Charco del Ingenio, which is relatively isolated so light pollution could be expected to be lessened. The Charco had an expat astronomer on hand and several avid amateurs who brought telescopes. Before a thin but highly reflective cloud layer rolled in we were able to look at Jupiter which had four or five moons strung out in a line a few on each side of the gas giant which was very cool to see. The astronomer, Phyllis who is the sister in law of my local cycling buddy Gregg, gave us a good talk about the visible constellations using a highly effective laser pointer.
We saw a total of exactly two fabulous shooting stars which in reality are grains of sand (roughly) which are exciting/ionizing the atmosphere through which they are passing. When we got home we saw three more shooting stars before the cloud layer got too thick to see anything. A bit disappointing but there you go.
Monday I had a very frustrating time with my homework. Seemed like I had gone backward more than half the time. I finally gave up in disgust and went for a walk with Darcie around town before returning home to wallow in self-pity and read some Mexican history (and some yummy mystery-meat tacos (mystery since I couldn’t understand what the lady told me).
Monday, December 14, 2009
SMA: Dia de La Virgen de Guadalupe
Last Saturday was El Dia de la Virgen de Guadalupe, otherwise known as Guadalupe Day to us heretics. For Mexicans this is one of the, if not the, most important religious holidays. Literally millions of Mexicans flock to the Basilica De Guadalupe in Mexico City to pay homage and ask for relief, health, good luck, favors and so on (see post “Mexico City Day 4”). Our neighbors went into overdrive and decorated the image of the Virgen painted down at the corner with loads of flowers, a flag, balloons and so on.
The finale was a party held at midnight (but starting much earlier) on Friday night. There was a mass, a mariachi band of dubious quality, much singing of the paean, buckets of pozole, mounds of tortillas, an urn of atole (a lightly sweetened rice drink a lot like very thin rice pudding), ponche (apple/cinnamon punch) and much fun. We hung out for a couple of hours (~2:30am), chatted with several of our neighbors in our pidgin Spanish and their sometimes excellent and sometimes pidgin English.
We had thought that sleep would be a vicious rumor but surprisingly our heads (ears stuffed with ear plugs) hit the pillows and off to lala land we went. There were of course the usual celebratory fireworks at 6am and a reprise of the mariachi band and paean but lack of sleep kept us mostly unconscious.
I should mention that this particular image is the source of a local miracle. It seems that the locals painted the image to help ward of poor behavior/bad luck and so on in the immediate neighborhood. This is quite common, the adornment of important corners with La Virgen, and usually results in a decrease in littering, bad behavior and so on as it has in our area by all report.
Just before we moved in the owner of the adorned building decided that he couldn’t allow the image to remain and painted over the Virgen. He was concerned that he would lose control over his building to some extent to seriously Catholic locals, possibly superstitious ones at that. Well, you can imagine the excitement and upset.
And lo the following day the Virgen had miraculously reappeared at the corner in even better form, positively radiating a glow. You can Imagine the Excitement. Since then the locals have really amped things up, they have added sconces (with candles), flowers appear weekly, a Christmasy fringe of tinsel was added two weeks ago and last week was the aforementioned adulation. It is all really wonderful. The Owner is not Amused we are told.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
SMA: BicciBurrista
Last Sunday (Nov 6) I participated in an organized bicycle ride from the nearby town of Queretaro to San Miguel along with roughly 600 others. The ride was a fund raiser for the local Red Cross (Cruz Rojo) and cost a wopping 300 pesos which is about $25.
The ride started down in the valley that contains Queretaro and then meandered on back roads up over big three ridges. The roads were a combination of paved, cobblestone and dirt and wound through beautiful highland-countryside past farms, villages (most with no obvious means of support) and rolling countryside.
There were rest stops about every 10 to 15 km with water, juice, bananas and oranges. Usually there was a stop just after each of the big climbs. At each stop the support-police car would park in the middle of the road and everyone would be collected back together into the group, i.e., those that were slower or who had had mechanical difficulties (endless flats mostly) were reincorporated.
I can’t say enough about how well organized the ride was. There were plenty of marshals, mechanics, sag wagons, well provisioned rest stops and team spirit to go around so that even the least experienced and most out of shape could participate and have fun.
The group ranged from kids to grandparents: there were families, local cycle groups, couples, fathers with sons or daughters, kids as young as 12-ish, lots of people who were not in good shape and of course plenty of people in good shape.
The ride was roughly 60km, a little less than 40 miles, and incorporated about 3000 total feet of climbing, mostly in three big climbs. When the roads were paved the ride was straight forward but the cobbled roads and most of the dirt roads raised the challenge and the fun.
One big hill was wonderfully rough and steep but unfortunately there were so many people struggling to climb the hill that most wound up walking up. Even if one was capable of riding up the walkers got in the way and once you stopped pedaling there was no real way to get restarted until the trail leveled a bit.
The ride culminated in a downhill run, all 600 or so of us, into San Miguel with cheering crowds lining the streets, a spin around El Jardin (the main square) and then a sandwich/soda/cookie at a nearby sports field. Raffle prizes were handed out to the lucky few and then it was time to go home. For me and the people I rode with it was a simple 1 to 3 mile ride home. For the bulk, there were busses to take them back to Queretaro where most had originated.
The things that stood out most for me were the extremely high level of organization and the joie-de-vivre and camaraderie that permeated the whole event. Not once did I see people having tantrums or winging at the side of the road, people all were seemingly having a good time and were willing to help those that had issues such as cramps or mechanical difficulties (pedals and seats falling off. flat tires etc). There were around 15 pickup trucks and two ambulances to pick up people who either had insurmountable mechanical difficulties or who were too tired to continue. At the final stop before our decent into San Miguel, those on the trucks were given the opportunity to get off and ride the final 15km or so.
A fantastic day for anyone who wants a fun, mellow-paced ride through beautiful countryside that one is most likely not going to see as a tourist/typical traveler. The ride is held twice a year the first Sunday in June and December.
