Driving Back to SMA for Christmas

—Blogpost written by Bob 

In this blogpost, we continue our 6-month winter excursion in San Miguel de Allende (SMA), Mexico.  We arrived by car on October 15, traveling from near Annapolis, Maryland where we live on our sailboat.  This blogpost describes our trip back to San Miguel de Allende from our week-long getaway in Mazatlan and the days leading up to Christmas.

Thursday, December 23

We left Mazatlan at 7:45 AM with an estimated ETA at our hotel in La Piedad of 4:40 PM--but we didn't arrive until about 8 PM due to heavy traffic all the way.  We spent a lot of time in traffic jams miles ahead of major toll booths, I guess due to traffic headed to Mexico City for the holiday.  We were so glad to be staying in a nice Holiday Inn!  We had about 2-1/2 hours of driving to get all the way to San Miguel for the next morning.

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With all the driving we did today, a few things about driving in Mexico became clear: (1) speed limits and traffic signals should be treated as mere suggestions, (2) speed bumps are very serious obstacles that must be honored, (3) don't drive in Mexico after dark, (4) it is customary to pass on a two-lane highway by both the passed vehicle moving over to the right shoulder and the opposing traffic moving over to the opposite shoulder, and (5) for the most part Mexican drivers are courteous.

Friday, December 24

(Christmas Eve Day)

We left our hotel (a nice Holiday Inn) in La Piedad after breakfast at about 8 AM with a 2-1/2-hour drive ahead of us. We encountered a tractor trailer that had completely flipped over onto its roof and traffic was detoured around it--this was within the first hour of driving. 

Oh, and our car's GPS completely froze up (which has never happened to us before).  I unplugged it from its power supply and allowed it to reset on its own.  We used our iPhones for navigation for the remainder of our morning's trip.  Much later, I plugged the GPS back into its power supply and it started up and operated just fine.

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We stopped at La Comer (the supermarket) coming into town at mid- morning to restore our grocery supply and to pick up a few things to go with our planned Christmas dinner (duck).  We arrived in San Miguel de Allende at about 10:45 AM and got back to our rented apartment at about 12:15 PM.  It took us another 1-1/2 hours to unload everything from our car and put it all away.

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When we finally got back, our apartment was cold, literally and figuratively.  Our landlord sent us an email stating that she recently received a bill for electricity which was $200 more than other recent months and wanted us to pay the difference.  (What a Christmas surprise!  Of course, we will not pay it, out of principal, since "all utilities were included" according to the original ad for this apartment.)

December 25

(Christmas Day)

Last night, we slept under flannel sheets and three blankets to keep warm—the low outside temperature overnight was 37 degrees!  On Christmas morning, the (outside) temperature had increased to 42 degrees F by the time we woke up—our inside temperature still felt very cold.  We moved the propane heater into the living room where we huddled around it for warmth while we  ate hot oatmeal for breakfast.  (We cracked the window in the living room's skylight open a bit for ventilation.)

On Christmas morning, we huddled around
this propane heater while we ate
hot oatmeal for breakfast.

We cracked open one of the little window
panes in the skylight for ventilation.

Here in Mexico, there are no constraints against using unventilated propane-powered appliances indoors like there is in the U.S.  (We have known of deaths caused by using unventilated propane water heaters on sailboats--their sale is now prohibited by law.)  In addition, the apartments here do not have carbon monoxide detectors--so, the use of the supplied propane heater is unsafe.  (We will not use it overnight!)

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We had roast duck for our Christmas dinner--a big change from our more usual turkey or ham.

Our roast duck for Christmas Dinner.

Our Christmas dinner consisted of roast duck,
mashed sweet potatoes, Brussels
sprouts, and red beet salad.

Maggie did an excellent job on our Christmas dinner!  During the afternoon we watched some NFL football games on TV.  Meanwhile, the propane heater continued to run...

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That's all for this blogpost--our next blogpost will be in three or four days.  Until then, we hope everyone had a very enjoyable Christmas.

Thanks for following out blog!