New Mexico Road Trip

For those of you who have not being following with a scorecard, we’re off on our travels once more.  We still have stuff to write about San Miguel that didn’t get done because half the town lost its internet connection in a storm, so look forward to that with baited breath.  Meanwhile, our quest is to find a place in New Mexico to spend a month or so in winter, so far without success but where we are now, Silver City, shows promise.  The surroundings are lovely, the downtown a little worse for wear because of the recession (remember when it started, you right-wingers of short memory), and tomorrow we go exploring the Gila Wilderness.  Meanwhile we are sitting in a motel without water, but they’ll relocate us to their other place if they can’t fix it soon.

White Sands National Park

Hike up to 7,300 feet

Rock-hugging plant life

So what have we accomplished so far?  Well we managed to get beyond the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles on our second day: all you hear is the thumping of bibles, all you smell is dead cows and farting cows, and all you see is nothing.  As soon as you get near the New Mexico border, it all starts to look beautiful.  Our first serious port of call was the noisy town of Ruidoso, where we found a wonderful Mexican greasy spoon called Chef Lupe’s, where we had breakfast twice, and it has the best huevos rancheros ever.  We suspect they mark the order checks for the cook.  The first morning they put a G on there for gringos, and the eggs were kinda mild.  Next day they would be G2, meaning “those gringos are back, let’s see how these suckers stand up to some real food.”  Not for the faint-hearted, but you know something?  It’s only the second time since the Great Disaster that I’ve actually felt something in my upper lip.  And what’s wrong with the beautiful mountain resort town of Ruidoso?  Not the major fire which wrapped around it in June, but the fact that it could be a mountain resort town anywhere.

Pictures included from our hike near Ruidoso, and from the White Sands National Park.  The latter may not be up to snuff, because my little camera found it exceedingly difficult to cope with the amazing brightness of the terrain.

Time Lost

Or e’er, thrice summer gone, we first surveyed,

Beyond the azure wave and dusty lands,

This lofty place where now mine eye on domes

And towers dwells ….

Sorry.  I’ve been reading Cymbeline!  Anyway, as I was saying, before our first trip to San Miguel, we read a couple of books which Jeanne had found at Amazon (she does that: she finds tour books and so forth, then gets me to read them so she doesn’t have to).  One was Tony Cohan’s On Mexican Time, and the other was Falling in Love with San Miguel, by Carol Schmidt and Norma Hair.  Cohan was married to an artist when they moved here, and the women are a lesbian couple who also built a life

here.  Jeanne claims to have seen them around here twice.  It turns out that the ladies are right now in the process of leaving here for health reasons having to do with altitude (6400’), though they still love the place and don’t exactly relish going back to Phoenix; and local scuttle says that Cohan has been seized upon by a younger woman and has left the artist. 

Carol and Norma write very practical books and blogs about our not-so-little town: what it’s like to be gay here, and how to live cheaply on Social Security income, for example.  Tony Cohan was a writer from LA already before coming here, and the book is much more esoteric.  He writes about coming here on vacation and slowly being sucked into a different view of the world.  They eventually bought a fixer-upper and settled here for a number of years.  As his title suggests, he is preoccupied about how life here’s changes your view of reality.  I sympathize.

A couple of days ago, Jeanne and I were sitting in the jardín, as the plaza here is known.  It is a beautiful square in front of the main church (there are many, and almost all architecturally significant), the mock-Gothic Parroquia, shady with huge sculpted ficus by day, softly lit with twining lights at night, and it is the town’s social center, busy by day and crowded by night.  For no particular reason, I asked Jeanne the time.  “Twelve forty-eight,” she replied.  At that moment, the parroquia clock chimed out noon.  It is, of course, correct; as is Jeanne – but not here.  Here, there is really no such concept as 12:48: why would the forty-eight be important?

Later in the day we returned to the jardin, which is only about five blocks away.  We sat on a bench looking outwards, listening to a rather good mariachi band in front of one of the restaurants under the arcades, and not too far away there was a tuna, as they are called in Spain and probably here: student groups singing traditional songs in colorful costumes.  Children all around are playing with inflated toys and flashing lights bought from the vendors on the church steps.  Adults stand around the food stalls which sell roasted corn and other delicacies.

Were it not for all this activity, I might think we were stuck in Waiting for Godot.  “We should be going,” says my Vladimir.  We do not move.  “Are we ready to leave?” asks her Estragon, somewhat later.  She does not answer.  It appears we are not ready to leave.  Even when we do stand up, it is to take another stroll around the plaza.

At home, on our rooftop, I sit and write, rigging up an umbrella against the bright light so that I can see the screen.  I’m often distracted by the view, and take numerous pictures of the agglomeration of domes which appeared in an earlier blog, because they are to me what Rouen cathedral was to Monet, a net designed to catch the light.  I suspect Monet’s pictures are better (!), but it doesn’t matter: I just sit here and lose track of time until Jeanne’s head startles me when it appears, breathing hard, at the top of our spiral staircase.  How long have we been here?  Must be six or seven weeks, right?

We are back at the jardín.  We could not find the restaurant we had chosen for a late-night snack, so we settled for a very good pizza at La Terraza on the corner of the square.  Had we found our first choice, we would have missed it all.  The square is hopping, with at least two mariachi bands.  One of them hooks up with a large table of people next to us, and we are surrounded by the band, all nine of them: three violins, three trumpets, and three guitars of various sizes. They are very good and they go on forever.  

In contrast to the Colombian music we hear from time to time because of our family connections, all Mexican tunes, even the sad ones, are happy and infectious; whereas all Colombian tunes, even the happy ones, are plaintive and melancholy.  Much of the mariachi music is in ¾ time, but my old folk-dancer’s ear says that some are in weird Balkan rhythms, 9/16 or something.  The evening is magic, even the children as young as five winding through the musicians trying to sell gum for a peso or two are picturesque.  If you think it is a cliché to sit on a balmy evening in a beautiful setting and listen to nine tenors singing Cielito lindo, all I can say is, don’t knock it until you’ve fried it.  Go out and see what you can find in downtown Minneapolis at ten o’ clock at night, my friends.  As we leave, we bump into the other mariachi band following a white donkey and leading a young couple, a bunch of people in odd military uniforms, plus a nondescript crowd picked up along the way.  (The next day, we see the same couple posing for wedding pictures.)

I’ll tell you this.  I have lived a cosmopolitan life, as many of you know, and could take you to places in England, France, Spain or the U.S. as lovely as Baja California.  But if I had to choose a single place to settle down because of the people themselves, it would be magical, maddening Mexico every time.

San Miguel de Allende: wonderful and Safe

The school resides in a 300 yr. old building.

My teacher Jorge.  

Mexico always surprises me in ways both delightful and terrifying. (i.e. husband falling into oil pit)  Thirty years ago when I lived in Mexico City for several weeks  I vividly remember walking down a busy street in the Zona Rosa district when I looked to my left and saw the ruins of a gigantic Aztec pyramid being excavated well below street level.  It was then I knew I had to come back to this country.  It was well over three decades before I did return to Mexico and each time I return I understand why I love this country so much. 

The classrooms are all off this courtyard.

The surprises this time include the fact that my Spanish is improving and most importantly, there have been no near fatal accidents so far.  This is major considering the treacherous and exhausting stairway to our apartment and the narrow sidewalks and cobblestone streets everywhere here.  I came with moderate to low expectations with regard to Spanish because I know how difficult language learning is but, I feel I have made progress.  

My school, Academia Hispano Americano began here in 1959. The setting and the staff are fantastic.  My class size has never gone above six, so you get a lot of attention.  Our teacher, Jorge, is a native of San Miguel and started in a bi-lingual school as a young child.  He really knows his stuff!  My class goes from 8:30 to 11:30 each day with two breaks for coffee and homemade sweets served up by Jose (below).  I have met people from all over the US, many of whom have lived abroad for extended periods of time.  All have an interesting life stories to tell and interesting reasons as to why they are studying here in San Miguel.                                        

Jose serves us coffee and homemade treats each day at break-time.

We would like nothing more than to come back here in the near future, if we are lucky enough to be able to do so.   Living in San Miguel makes you feel like you have gone back a few centuries to a life that is more simple and meaningful.  San Miguel can also be a good place to lose a couple pounds and stay fit just by the mere fact you have to buy groceries.  You walk a lot of blocks to get your groceries and you sure don't want to have to carry very much.  I also love being able to communicate in another language.  Lastly, there is something about the Mexican people; their wisdom, their joy, their creativity, their fatalism, that make you want to return to this country.  Mexicans seem to know things about living that people in other parts of the world have either forgotten or never knew.   

   

The 1910 Mexican Revolution

It’s a very odd morning.  Jeanne is not feeling well and has stayed home from school, so I’m sneaking around so as not to disturb her.  It’s not clear, however, why any noise I could make would wake her (and certainly she slept through my washing the dishes), since she has not responded to the noise outside.  Across the street from us a workman with execrable taste in music is fixing the roof; the dogs are barking, too, for no more apparent reason than usual, but I don’t let it bother me.

It reminds me of the story told to us by our friend Judith, who lives high on the hill near where we stayed last time we were here, with a stunning view of the town.  An American rents an apartment in San Miguel, but after a week he calls his Mexican landlady and tells her that he simply can’t stay there.  He loves everything about the apartment, the neighborhood, the location, but he can’t stand the incessant noise, especially the barking dogs.  “Then why do you listen to them?” she asks.

The sun is sneaking around too: that’s the other odd thing about the morning.  When I got up and brought my coffee out here, it seemed like another beautiful day was planned.  The town usually has clear skies above us as soon as he sun starts to do his job (suns being masculine according to standard Jungian theory), while the hills all around us have a tonsure of clouds above them.  We are on the eastern edge, with the hill essentially starting at our doorstep, but we have a long view across to the sunset hills, which are often covered in a haze, as they still are now.  On our side, however, the clouds suddenly cascaded over the hills in a thick mist such as one sees all the time in the English Lake District.   The grand houses on the hill disappeared, and all those domes and towers showing in our first blog acquired a neutral background, the green hill behind them no longer existing.  An hour later, all the fog has disappeared.

We are surrounded not only by hills, but by history, for this area, the states of Guanajuato and Querétaro, are the landmarks of Mexican independence and democracy.  The USA had to deal only nice people like the British, but the Mexicans suffered greatly under the Hapsburgs, who brought them the gifts of elegance and military arrogance, and, especially, the Spanish, who brought them the gift of militant and gory Catholicism.  Some of it this history is reflected in place names: our own San Miguel de Allende and the nearby Dolores Hidalgo.  The city of Querétaro, which we visited last weekend, is a major focus of this activity, and our guide was obviously proud to highlight it for us.  During the uprisings and the back and forth of the struggle it served briefly as the capital of Mexico, and the constitution was signed there.

The city itself is sprawling and modern, and attracts people from all over Mexico to work in its factories, but the historic center is preserved and charming, with several lovely plazas lined with trees and fountains.  On our way in, we stopped at the famous Los Arcos, a massive aqueduct built in the early 18^th century and still in use, much larger, if much younger,  than the Roman one in Segovia.  A nearby mausoleum houses the remains of La Corregidora, heroine of the uprising of 1810, as well as those of her husband, the former governor of the region.  We went on to the Cerro de las Campañas, so-called because the rocks, when struck, sound like bells.  Here, poor Emperor Maximilian’s lavish exploitation of the people came to a timely end.  The Hapsburgs erected what I think is a puny little chapel as a memorial; but it is dwarfed by a colossal statue of Benito Juarez, Mexico’s first president after final independence in 1910.  Power to the people ‘n’ all that.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in lunch (that delicious huitlacoche!) and visiting some of the lovelier baroque buildings (churches, museums, former private houses).  By that time, this old geezer was ready for home, but enjoyed the trip back through the fertile agricultural zone.  We later discovered that the area produces several well-considered wines.  We have a bottle of the red which we haven’t opened yet, but we love the semi-sweet white which we are using as a cocktail and are thinking of bringing back with us.

How can you not love a place where you can get unheralded wines, huitlacoche, and a fifth of Evan Williams for eleven bucks?

Room With a View

We arrived a week ago now after surviving our maniac van driver who met us at the Leon airport and drove us to San Miguel.  He consistently drove twenty miles over the speed limit on the dark curvy roads, tailgating so severely that anyone in front of him gladly let him pass.  It took several minutes when we arrived in the city for the driver to get us to our apartment because the streets are so narrow they have to be one way only.  We had to unlock three doors to get into our new home and climb a tiny spiral staircase of 32 steps.  The staircase is so narrow that we had to unpack our large suitcase and carry up it's contents.  I used to complain about Alexis' sixth-floor walk up in NYC, and now I have this staircase to complain about. 

The apartment is only a few blocks from the center of town, which the natives call the jardin.  The condo we stayed in three years ago was much like any US condo.  Now I feel like I am living in my favorite book and movie, Room With a View.  This place is rustic, with views of the city from every window and our own rooftop patio just off the kitchen.  We keep the doors and windows open as the temps are in the 70's and there are no flying insects to speak of. 

I liked the luxury of the other other place we stayed in three years ago, but prefer this location and the feeling that you are living more like a local and not as a tourista.  We have simplified everything we do here with regard to cooking because the kitchen has few amenities.  The warm tortillas from the little hole in the wall up the street, 30 cents per dozen, and the fresh fruits and vegetables at the open-air market just two blocks away, make preparing simple meals very enjoyable. Looking out of our windows onto the rooftops is a constant source of surprise and interest: fireworks at seven am. on Sunday morning, six cats being fed chicken bones, the bee keeper tending his bees, a man sorting bag upon bag of recycling, children running around playing the games that children play, dogs barking and bells ringing at all hours of the day and night.  You don't need television, you just stand at the windows for your entertainment. 

I like my Spanish school very, very much indeed!!!  I tested in at the intermediate level, where I attend three hours a day, which is enough for my brain to handle.  We worked on the past tense last week and began the futuro today.  The text uses the new pedagogy as to how people learn language, and I love the approach.  Our teacher, Jorge, speaks to us in Spanish about 90% of the time.  People attending the school are all ages and from all over the US, but mostly from the east and west coasts. The walk to school takes about ten minutes or so, and when I arrive I always feel like I have had an intense aerobic workout.  Walking these cobblestone streets, hiking up and down the hills, jumping over the high curbs, and climbing all the stairs would keep anyone pretty fit.  (Taking a Celebrex everyday for the bad knee.)

Last Friday the school secretary, Carmen, taught a cooking class at school on mole, and Harry and I attended.  The mole was served over chicken and rice with beans on the side. The list of ingredients was twenty-plus items, and total preparation time was over an hour.  What you start to realize is that a recipe for such traditional ethnic favorites is just a beginning: there are a hundred different ways to make a mole.  On Saturday we went on a school-sponsored trip to the city of Queretaro for the day.  It is a city of one million and an hour's drive from San Miguel, past a ranch which raises bulls for the bullring and through fields of nopales, for which we have no word other than cactus.  (For lunch we had a soup which included nopales, and Harry had the famous huitlacoche, or corn-blight fungus, which I did not share with him.)  This week's cooking class is on the classic Mexican soup, pozole.   

Cat Among the Pigeons

(Jeanne is having a hissy-fit because she already wrote a blog, but her computer fed it to the internet, which swallowed it in one bite; so I’ve been drafted.)

Beneath our window, between 5 and 6 o’clock, a rusty rooster groans a greeting to the dawn, repeated between six and ten times, which is actually more of a summons than a greeting; but the dawn ignores him.  It does wake up the bells, which summon in their turn the brain-dead to Really Early Mass, where they presumably engage in REM sleep during the rituals.  The rooster renews his efforts at half-hour intervals until the dawn obeys, and after an unnecessary alarm clock goes off, we respond too.  Jeanne putters around getting ready for school and watches CNN in Spanish, while I don my cozy Oaxaca hoodie and take my mug of coffee out to the roof.

(One evening, Jeanne came bolting out to find out what was disturbing the fowls: a predator perhaps?  City girl, she had never heard a hen announce the arrival of a new egg in the world:  tuc-tuc-tuc-tuc-tuc-tuc-tuc-ahoohoo!  Tuc-tuc-tuc-tuc-tuc-tuc-tuc-ahoohoo!  They’re doing it again now as I write.)

On our previous visit, we lived up on the hill and could walk upstairs to the roof and enjoy a magnificent view over the town.  Here, we walk out the door to the rooftop and enjoy an equally magnificent view with the difference that we are among all the other rooftops.  You need to be there in order to realize how much of Mexican family life, in houses which turn their arses to the street, is lived on the roof.  We are surrounded by flowers, shrubs, gardens, colorful lines of laundry, piles of rubbish, collections of junk, and, of course, animals.

About forty yards away, a coven of cats, at least six of them that we have counted, share a half-dozen concrete and corrugated iron roofs with a flock of pigeons.  In summer they are presumably cats on a hot tin roof.  The birds and the cats literally rub shoulders in easy companionship – in fact, the pigeons are meaner to the pigeons than the cats are.  The cats migrate from one level to another, clambering over the pigeons’ crib as they do so.  Closer to us, about twenty feet away, a six-to-eight-year-old boy behaves in similar fashion, scrambling from one level to another and perilously and unnecessarily circumventing the big black water tank on the edge.  He has an evening ritual which we have not yet deciphered, so we do not know whether it is a functional part of the household routine or his own play, in which he cleans out a large kitchen pot then packs it again with something sloppy and scuzzy, then molds the stuff into a smaller container and carries it off with him.  On our own porch the bougainvillea are retreating for now but the geraniums are still vigorous.  There is a little bush by the door which Jeanne found covered in little birds, but she is no ornithologist so we don’t know what they were.  Not pigeons.

Another feature of life up here is the afternoon parade of thunderstorms which we can see approaching for miles, but so far there has been very little rain since we arrived.  Around us is a real neighborhood where no-one pays attention to the apparent gathering storm.  A Chow barks demanding admission to his house: we saw him in the afternoon bur recognized his 10.00pm voice.  A man comes around several times a day with a distinctive cry ending in a whoop, selling things from a little cart.  He may be yelling “cacahuet” (peanuts) but not pronounced the way we would expect it; we haven’t deciphered it and haven’t been down below to look when he comes.

Life is simple.  The kitchen is adequate but will not support our elaborate cooking style.  We shop every day in the old style at the covered market, bring home a roasted chicken or some chorizo.  When Jeanne comes home from school she will stop at the little tortileria on the next block and bring home the basis for lunch.  Have you ever had fresh tortillas?  Really fresh?  Really really fresh?  Still warm and wriggling?

I’ve bought a hat in the hope that Jeanne won’t give it away again.  If I wore it here I’d look like the Compleat Tourist, but it’s really for the next adventure, in New Mexico.  All I’ll need will be the horse.

San Miguel de Allende.....once again!

My blog break is officially over.  My goal was to move this blog to WordPress with a sophisticated new look and format when I resumed blogging.  That has not happened because Harry and I realized we need to find a young person to help us get set up properly.  So until we find such a person, Blogspot will remain my blog address.   


I began blogging on blogspot.com three years ago this month while Harry and I were in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.  It seems only fitting to start up blogging again from the place that inspired me in the first place.  I  have posted 202 blogs since that time and have had some 9,302 page views.  The most popular was the blog on English tea and tea cozies and the #2 was the blog about Fifty Shades of Grey....go figure!  I want to thank those of you who take time to read these blogs in what I have learned is my effort to fight dementia.


My blog break included time working on my Spanish (thank you, Rosetta Stone), making a quilt for my grand-daughter, Eva, attending Lexi's graduation in NYC, and a trip to Bayfield, Wisconsin with Alexis and Curtis.  I also found that, though I love to blog, blogging consistently, as I have been, is a lot of work, and I was tired.  I now find my blogging energy on the rise after the break, or I have sensed the resurgence of dementia, so I have no choice but to get back to blogging as soon as possible.   


Harry and I fell in love with San Miguel, with its cobblestone streets, colorful doors and its church bells pealing at all hours of day and night.  Lonely Planet describes San Miguel as an Italian hill town, which is good as I may never actually get to Italy.  We bought matching shoes this week for cobblestone walking, as last time I took a bad tumble on San Miguel streets wearing the wrong footwear.  Now I will not need to buy shoes if I do get to Italy someday.  


My heart has been longing to be submerged again in a different culture.  I love Mexico in all its beauty and complexity and contradictions.  On this trip to San Miguel I will be attending Spanish classes every morning and an afternoon conversation class perhaps a couple of times a week.  Harry has a new camera and will be the official photographer for the trip as well as blog editor and blog contributor should the spirit move him.  I am also hoping he will join me in the conversation group so he can continue to correct my bad Spanish grammar.        


My bank recently upgraded their on-line banking system and I had to choose new security questions to get into my bank account.  One of the security questions I chose was what would be your favorite job?  I of course answered blogging tourist.  So I hope you will come along with us on this journey back to Mexico.  


click on: The New Old Mexico in blue below

GREATHOMES AND DESTINATIONS   | November 21, 2008 The New Old Mexico  By JIM ATKINSON In San Miguel de Allende, a place beloved for its preserved Spanish colonial architecture and aura of timeless charm, new developments for expatriates may threaten the lifestyle that drew them there.