We left Tlaquepaque and Guadalajara midmorning for the 5-hour drive to San Miguel de Allende. The drive was thoroughly enjoyable, with a lot of landscape variety: green valleys, pine forests, mountains, mesas, gorges, and occasional stunning broad vistas.
About halfway through the day, we were getting hungry and pulled off the main carretera to look for a restaurant. Getting off the main highway was a little tricky, and Jai had to make a U-turn to get headed in the right direction. As soon as we completed the turn we found ourselves under an underpass with a police officer standing in the middle of the road, signaling us to stop and pull over. He pointed back to where we’d come from and we saw the big NO U-TURN sign we’d totally missed. Jai got out his registration papers and license and the cop started writing the ticket.
I had visions of a huge fine of hundreds of dollars and all kinds of unpleasantness, but when the police officer came back he gave back Jai’s documents and had him sign something and it turned out the fine was 35 pesos—that’s less than two dollars U.S.! To top it off, the officer was young, good-looking and very courteous and friendly.
He was so friendly, in fact, that after he gave Jai the ticket, we asked him if he knew a good place to get lunch. He said he did know of a really good place, but “You’ll never find it. I’ll have to show you.” So he got in his pickup and took off, motioning for us to follow.
Which is how we ended up getting a police escort to a beautiful place called Bioparque La Cueva, a kind of zoo/eco-park/restaurant which was beautiful and yes, VERY off the beaten path. After making sure we had a good parking spot in the shade, our friendly policeman wished us Buen Provecho and went on his way.
We had a wonderful meal as the only guests in a big dining room with nice view of a lake and a shy, sweet waitress. Then we found our way back to the main highway (thank goodness Jai had memorized all the twists and turns on the way in) and continued our journey.
The remainder of the afternoon was a nice, smooth ride until late afternoon when we finally arrived at San Miguel de Allende. Almost as soon as we entered the town, we found ourselves locked in bumper-to-bumper traffic in SMA’s narrow cobblestone streets. Obviously never intended for modern traffic, the streets were now all one-way, which just made a bad situation worse. Over the course of a long, difficult hour and a half trying to find our way through the labyrinth, we had to backtrack multiple times and circled the entire city twice before we were finally able to get within a few blocks of the hotel we’d booked.
There was no parking anywhere and it took a long time to find a parking garage, which was far enough from our hotel that we had to take a cab there. After having driven the entire day to get there, the whole experience was extremely frustrating, but Jai, who was driving, stayed calm and collected–I’m full of admiration, because I don’t think I could have–and we finally arrived at Casa Mia (left), our hotel right in the heart of the labyrinth.
Jaime, Casa Mia’s receptionist, told us that we would have been able to avoid traffic AND park right in front of the hotel if we had not chosen to arrive on the first day of the Mexican Independence Day celebration, the biggest festival of the year. Oops!
So tired. And I wasn’t even the one driving.
Next we had to schlep our bags up 3 flights of stairs, which winded me, and that surprised me until I remembered that SMA is 1900 meters (6200 feet) above sea level! As I towed my bag into the room I heard Jai say to Jaime, “This isn’t the room I reserved. I reserved a room with 2 beds.” Seems the reservation had gotten mixed up, and of course no other rooms were available by now, so we were stuck sharing a bed.
Everybody, and I mean everybody, thinks Jai and I are a couple. (When Jai told Jaime we wanted two beds, not one, his jaw dropped and he said, “You do?”) The truth is, we’re best friends. BFFs, not BFs. We totally love each other and get along like a house on fire, but we’re just not attracted to each other that way.
Nevertheless, we were stuck with one bed, and I figured we could make it work. But that night, after a couple of hours of both of us tossing and turning and keeping each other awake, I finally dragged a blanket and pillow out to the other room and slept on the couch. (It had to be me—Jai’s too tall for the couch.) It wasn’t that bad. And we both got some sleep.
(One of the things that struck me about our traveling together was how little drama occurred. Which is pretty amazing when you consider the number of stressful situations we encountered on our road trip. I have to give Jai most of the credit for that—I’m the high-maintenance one.)
The view from our room.
The next morning we set out to explore San Miguel de Allende. Everyone I know who’s been there has told me what a beautiful, charming place it is. And it is. Every corner you turn presents another colorful, picturesque scene.
It’s like stepping into the past—but a past filled with jewelry stores, fancy restaurants and gringos walking their tiny dogs.
What struck me was the paradox of San Miguel de Allende: a justifiable Mexican pride in a rich and lengthy history and the beauty of a special place–but also a place whose very authenticity and special character have proven so attractive that it’s in danger of turning into a kind of shopping-center parody of itself.
This, believe it or not, is the courtyard of the San Miguel de Allende Starbucks.
That’s really kind of unavoidable when you have a place that’s trying to preserve its past while surviving in the present, and I have to say, it looks to me like SMA is doing a pretty good job of finding a balance.
As much as I admire all that, SMA is really not for me. I’m a beach guy, not a mountains guy, and even more importantly, I’m attracted to places with a lively energy directed toward the future, not places idealizing their past.
So thanks for your grandmotherly beauty and the culture coming out of your pores, San Miguel de Allende, but I’m ready to move on to one of the biggest cities in the world–Mexico City!