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     Right now it’s late on a Tuesday afternoon. We arrived at about the same time of day on Sunday, and since yesterday was a holiday and there was no school, we had a few hours on Sunday, all day yesterday and a few hours today to explore (school started today). I’ll review the school toward the end of the week.

 

I’m beginning to adapt to Mexico. I’m waiting patiently for things to happen (at the groceries, at school, in shops). I’m enjoying the polite formality of the people. Although it isn’t noisy everywhere all the time, it can be quite noisy sometimes and unexpectedly noisy at others (remember Sherry’s story about the 5 a.m. birthday band?). And I’m adapting to it.

This is the third town we’ve visited since I’ve joined Sherry, and all three have their differences and their similarities. Guanajuato was a tourist destination but didn’t feel over-run. Aquascaliente was very much a big city. And San Miguel is a unique blend of the small, dusty, winding streets of Olde Mexico with enclosed houses, shops and courtyards, and the savvy tourist destination. There are a lot of foreigners here. A lot. There is a lot of traffic here too, but it isn’t as difficult to cross the street as in Guanajuato. Here, the roads are narrower, mostly one-way, and often the traffic has ground to a halt and you just walk between what might as well be parked cars.

The narrow little streets are quite charming. The busy ones are, well…. busy. The sidewalks are typically three feet wide (or less), but on the quiet streets, you can walk on the cobblestoned street itself until you hear a car approaching. You often step into the street anyway, to step out of the way of a person coming in the opposite direction. Usually, it’s the person facing the traffic that steps off the curb (safer), but the tourists haven’t learned that, so you do a little negotiating.

El Cento, the Jardin, is lovely, and faces what would ordinarily be called a Cathedral, but since SMA (San Miguel de Allende) isn’t big enough for a Bishop, it’s a Parroquia instead. It’s really a lovely place, especially early in the morning before it fills with people. And after it fills with people, it’s both a lovely and an interesting place. A great place to just sit and people watch – foreigners and locals alike (and foreign locals, of which there are many. Ex-pats).

When you read websites about SMA, the activities listed are almost all seeing this church, or that museum or that garden, and for a Centro so small, there are many. Plus lots and lots of restaurants. As a general rule, we shy away from places that are directly on the “tourist center”. On Sunday, we got there late in the day and wanted to both get something to eat (after a long bus ride) and the see the square. We ate on an elevated porch area overlooking El Centro. It was called EL Terrazo and it served mostly Italian food and pizza. The view was great. The food was awful. And the waiters, although not rude, certainly weren’t what you’d call good waiters. Our rule seemed to hold true.

BUT, the following morning we got to the Jardin early enough to see it almost empty, and since we hadn’t had time to go to a grocery store, we ate breakfast with a view of the garden. This time it was at La Posada de San Francisco and it was terrific (and the price was fair). I had a Oaxacan tamale stuffed with cheese and served in a banana leaf (with scrambled egg on the side). Yum.

We’ve eaten in a couple of restaurants since then. El Tomato was good, and sort of a vegetarian place. Really good smoothies. Cafe de la Parroquia (that’s right, by the church) was one of those great Mexican surprises. You’re walking down a busy dusty street which has narrow sidewalks and mostly blank walls, when you come to a door and a sign. You go in and it opens into this lovely courtyard. You’d never know from the outside that there was such a lovely place on the other side of that door. Class had just let out, it was around noon, so they were still serving breakfast. Lunch didn’t start until 2 (which is typically Mexican). My favorite Mexican breakfast is Huevos Rancheros, and this one was the best one I’d ever had. The eggs were perfect. Good food, lovely place. I’d like to try lunch there sometime.

El Cafe is the same sort of courtyard surprise, except that the street it’s on was much bigger and the courtyard much larger as well. El Cafe shared the space with a school and a couple of (I think) art galleries. The school teaches both arts and Spanish. Instituto Allende is it’s name, and it’s partly, if not largely, responsible for making SMA the place it is today, filled with artists and ex-pats. Of course, another thing that draws artists here is the light — that clear high desert light. Lovely. We only had a latte and a danish at El Cafe, but we sat on a couch in the courtyard for a fairly long while.

There are quite a few vendors around, of course. But they aren’t aggressive, and some of them are fairly entertaining. Lots of street food, which we mostly avoid, although we did have (at Sherry’s insistence) boiled corn on the cob (Mexican style). Mexican style is mayonnaise (sounded awful to me but it was Good), grated cheese, a little bit of fresh lime and a light sprinkling of red chili pepper. You can have any or all of the ingredients you want, of course. It was really really good. About a dollar apiece.

There is some begging. I wrote about how I feel about that in our Argentina blogs, but I’ll repeat it for Mexico. I have mixed feelings. There are some very very poor people here. Like at home, some of it is scam. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which.

Here’s my dilemma. On the one hand, if they’re successful at begging, they’ll be more begging and more beggars. And a nice afternoon on your hard earned vacation will be turned into either an in-your-face experience or an inner moral debate (and is that a bad thing?). For instance, today there was a young girl, we think about 8, selling trinkets at the Center. All day. Someone may have been there with her, but we don’t think so. If she did well, it was certain that she would be there every day. If she didn’t do well, would she be mistreated when she got home? What do you do?

I mentioned that there was a Starbucks here. My next post is going to talk about that, but for the discussion of begging, let me say that there was an elderly woman begging at the entrance to Starbucks. Smart. She looked pitiful. It was cold (about 42, I think). Lots of traffic in and out of Starbucks. Do you give 10 pesos to a cold old beggar when you’ve just spent 30 on a cup of coffee? What to do? I’d like to have your opinion on this. As I said, I have mixed feelings.

Just to make it a more complicated moral decision, let’s say that you already give to charity. That every year, you sit down and figure out how you can do the most good in the world with your limited funds, and you set aside a portion of your income to specific charities or organizations. Beggars, which may or may not be legit, fall under the heading of “impulse giving”. What do you think?

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