Arriving in San Miguel

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We've been officially living in San Miguel now for one week. My husband Doug and I arrived last Sat. after a long and hot drive from Cave Creek, Az, across boring Texas and one tire blow-out, down to Laredo which seemed like the safest border crossing at the moment, and then across the vast, hot, unchanging desert that is part of Mexico until finally we stopped at a little 1930's style hotel called Las Palmas Midway Inn in Matehuala to recuperate a bit.

We decided to treat ourselves to this cute hotel just off the highway. It was highly recommended as a good stop for lunch and/or to stay the night. It was very clean and quiet, empty really, but the restaurant had the nicest staff and we were feeling hot and sleepy and just decided to stay. The larger room by the pool was only $75.00 a night, and we ended up having a delicious dinner topped with margaritas on our patio, and then a wonderful breakfast the next day. The room was equipped with satellite TV and was quite spacious. We had our two dogs with us, which we didn't offer to mention, but clearly they didn't seem to care.

The town wasn't much to look at but had a Walmart right across from our hotel which was interesting.

The drive through Mexico was also interesting in that it was fairly unchanging desert terrain dotted with small houses along the road. There were donkeys and horses tied to trees along the road, something that seems like a common custom in Mexico, as well as sheep and goats milling about with their herders. The houses and towns are all virtually shacks, with many restaurants that were just shells of walls with a few chairs in them and usually no doors, etc. They were all female names like 'Mary's Cafe' and 'Rosetta's Cafe' and 'Cafe Louisa', so I assumed they were all someone's mother or grandmother's home cooking. If Gringo's don't stop there, the locals certainly do as often there would be people huddled around the tables escaping the heat.

There's many vendors selling their wares as well. We only saw about three different items for sale among the numerous vendors all sitting along the road. There were strings of garlic for sale and strangely enough, rattlesnake hides hanging on short lines along with 'fresh strawberries and cream'. The latter being something almost surreal to me since I saw no sign of strawberry farms and in the stifling heat where clearly there isn't any running water or electricity, I couldn't imagine something like 'fresh cream' on offer. Maybe they literally milk the goat and bring it in at the time of purchase? That would certainly make it 'fresh'!

After leaving the Las Palmas, we reached a higher elevation, although it was still mostly high desert with lot's of cacti, especially giant Joshua Tree's and prickly pear. What struck me as the strangest is seeing young boys and girls in the middle of what seemed like no where, dressed in jeans and T-shirts looking every bit like a regular teenager, and even some well dressed women looking quite fresh sitting at what must be bus stops waiting for a ride. One was even in a pretty peach business suit!

After turning on the smaller highway leading to San Miguel de Allende, the terrain became much more lush and green, with gentle hills and farmland, and tall mountains in the distance making a picturesque back-drop. There were still the shacks and funky roadside businesses, but you could see a bit more wealth here. And then we finally entered the famous city of San Miguel de Allende from the top of the hill, and headed downward to our condo. We were finally 'home' and it felt good, but strange too.

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