Friday, July 10, 2009

Following the Beats

The Main Bus station of Mexico City is a wonderment in Kafkian derangement. Grabbed a ticket on the ADO bus line and headed south. Comfortable for third class and relatively cheap.
After the 24/7 chaos of Mexico City, I was definitely ready for some cobblestone-street, local-characters, clear-air highland action.
San Miguel de Allende was recommended to me by Jorge, my waiter friend that I had met at a cafe in DF who started up a conversation (a Spanglish combination of my awful Spanish and his only slightly better English) after he noticed I was reading his favorite book, the ultimate loner’s tale Catcher in the Rye. After showing me around the sights of DF, he stayed the night - was really sad to see such a positive, well mannered guy go. But, I had to do what I had to do...
San Miguel had a huge influx of 'alternative' Americans looking for something different after WWII, and was quite a Beat hangout for years, I do recollect Burroughs and Kerouac both wrote about it. In fact, Neal Cassidy, the real-life hero of On the Road died here, allegedly wandering the train tracks in some kind of drug coma. Sounded promising, I thought I'd check it out. Wouldn't you?
As the bus chugged and shuffled along over a pristine highway, the view was of rural Mexican barrios and farmlands and massive cactus fields. On the bus sitting adjacent to me, I met José Gonzalès (sadly not the indie singer-songwriter, but a still very cool old local), who told me I had to stay at La Villa de Pancho.
Indeed it turns out Pancho runs the coolest show in town, and my planned one night stay in San Miguel immediately turned into two when I saw his crazy rooms and the price of his cervezas Sol. (I digress, Sol beer are a food group, right? Somewhere near the bottom of the nutrition pyramid, requiring around six servings a day, right?).
I went for a long stroll around San Miguel, which was aesthetically perfect in every way. (Sadly not audibly perfect as there were a few too many gringo accents around the main areas for my liking - damn 'Mericans...). On my walk I accidentally became an honorary crime-stopper when I heard yelps and hideous screaming. I unfortunately didn’t witness the crime but was the only person around to see a scrawny guy with a bloody nose run off and duck into a house down a little alleyway. Eventually the police came on scooters, no less. By this point I was having a Corona on a little ledge I found that overlooked the whole town (so beautiful), but decided to do my civilian duty and tell them where he went. The fat cop/skinny cop decided to play the I Don't Speak English And Don't Understand Your Spanish routine. Ended up just miming someone punching someone else and pointing to the door where he went. I don’t think they found him though, which is really a bit of a worry because it was a pretty small house. I wanted to ask them if they’d looked under the bed but it didn’t seem appropriate at the time. And that was the end of that excitement and I went back to my Corona...
However, my attention was attracted by the description of the small colonial town of San Miguel de Allende in my trusty and well-thumbed copy of the Lonely Planet Guide to Mexico. The town is named after Ignacio Allende, one of the heroes of the Mexican War of Independence of 1810 to 1821, and has been declared a national monument by the Mexican government.
I decided to explore the hilly cobbled streets and myriad of churches, plazas and gardens. It has rightly earned its charming reputation, and now has a large number of expatriates and an artistic community attracted by its mild climate, clear light and invigorating highland air. Unfortunately, as with many other Mexican towns with stunning settings and a kindly environment, the streets are now clogged with cars, the sidewalks full of jostling tourists (including Your Repoerter!) and the original character is slowly dissipating. Despite this, it was easy to spend many hours enjoying the gardens of the Plaza Principal, and marvelling at the pink 'ice-cream cone' spires of the Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel (another imposing cathedral modestly described as a parish church) - its design apparently based on a picture postcard of a Belgian church, and its plans etched in the sand by the architect.
Realizing quickly I’m not much a 'sights and activities' person- my favorite thing to do by far is to go for these long, random walks around the town I’m in to just see what happens - find the indigenous locals or some mad artist, followed by having a beer or coffee and people watching - art galleries are great in small doses, but I’m afraid museums don’t hold my attention for very long - I can only take so many Catholic statues depicting one saint after the other with that same look of satisfied contempt of the poor. Only seen the one set of ruins so far, which were awesome, but we’ll see how I feel about them in a month or so, I imagine by then I will have ruined them for myself (where oh where would my sense of humor be without lame puns?).
A nice tranquil day here in a sleepy town. Sat drinking in a bar and planned a few more days in small highland towns before hitting the coast by the weekend.
Tired - found one internet cafe where I can pound this out. Will write more manana...adios!

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