ON THE ROAD TO SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE
This is, a day early, my Monday first impressions my first visit to Mexico. The first thing I saw was at about midnight as we were driven along the highway from the airport to the Hampton Hotel where Martha and I spent the first night, before being driven Tuesday morning by shuttle from Leon to San Miguel de Allende. The stores lining the road and the constant advertising signs reminded me of highways in Sri Lanka and India and Colombia. There was nothing esthetically pleasing about the roughly built storefronts or the random signs everywhere. Everything was practical and dingy.
What I have in my imagination of Mexico is extreme sensuality: bright colors, bustling open markets, and crowds of people. But much of Mexico, like much of ;Sri Lanka and India, is dismal modern.
But everything was certainly cheaper than in Asheville. The Hampton Inn room was $70 which included a free sumptuous breakfast with ten hot choices, fruit, pastries, juices and coffee, a $15 meal in Asheville. And the shuttle from Leon to San Miguel de Allende was $30 apiece for an hour and a half van ride with just the two of us, a three hour drive for the driver.
I had no idea what the countryside would look like. We were driving at about 6000 feet elevation through low mountains but what surprised me most was that the landscape was completely dry and there was almost no agriculture, only tan thick grass everywhere and scrub trees. Obviously it rained at some point in the year, June I believe, when the grass shot up and everything was a lush green but now the grass was brown. So there wasn’t much to see out the window and I wondered as we rode how bleak San Miguel would be.
But when we got to San Miguel we entered a different world of flowers and bright colors and marvelous shops which were just like Galle in Sri Lanka or Ville de Leyva in Colombia or Punte del Este In Uruguay, places visited by the well to do.
This gap between the rich and the poor is a little disorienting, something I am going to wonder about while I am here.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 