November Dirt Dwellers in SMA

—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 has been quite a change in our life style!

Friday, November 26

This morning, we were really missing being on the water after being land-locked for about six weeks now.  I was really looking forward to our trip to Mazatlan on the Pacific Coast in a couple weeks (December 16 through December 23).  (I think that if we come to Mexico next winter, we will be sure to stay along the coast somewhere.)

We decided to got out for lunch at the Santa Ana Cafe (in the bibliotheca) and then walk downtown to see an exhibit of Mexican textiles and other artwork.  The following images were captured on our walkabout.

Razor spikes installed on the top of a wall
surrounding a nearby gringo compound.
(Behind the razor spikes is a wire
fence and there is razor wire
on top of the fence.)

An unusual knocker on a door
along Hildalgo Street.

A plethora of motor bikes
along Hildalgo.

Mexican textiles displayed
around the jardin.

The looms used to make the Mexican
textiles were very crude.

Saturday, November 27

Today was dedicated to college football for me.  The day started out with Michigan thoroughly beating Ohio State by a score of 42 to 27, which was great!  However later in the day, my Penn State lost to Michigan State on a snowy day by a score of 30 to 27, another 3-point loss!  (Penn State has lost five games this season, all by relatively small point differences: Iowa by 3, Illinois by 2, Ohio State by 9, Michigan by 4, and finally Michigan State by 3.  The five single-digit losses throughout the season were very frustrating.)

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A couple more images captured yesterday:

Looking into one of the many fine
restaurants in Centro.

 A musician getting setup to play along
one of the streets in Centro.

At times during the football games, Kali was climbing all over Maggie begging for attention--her occasional (almost-desperate) need for attention is a unique part of her personality that makes her different from any other cats I've had in the past.

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Later in the day, Maggie strung up Christmas lights in the kitchen and living room.

Sunday, November 28

We were awake relatively early this morning and had a delightful breakfast in our apartment.  Then, we attended a Colonia Guadalupe Bazar de Navidad right around the corner from our apartment.

Hand-made paper mache Navidad dolls 
were available at the nearby Bazar.
(This was not my photo.  We
bought one of these dolls.)

We got at the bazar a bit too early (9 AM) and left only to return about an hour later when the displays were completely setup.  On our way to the bazar we saw more mural painting along Calle Cancion India.

More mural painting along
Calle Cancion India.

 

The Bazar de Navidad.  We purchased a paper
mache doll, a hand-painted T-shirt for
Maggie, and two very tasty desserts.

Later in the afternoon, we watched NFL football games and the afternoon ended with our usual Happy Hour.  (We finally found fresh cranberries and made cranberry sauce--we used some of cranberry sauce to make the very tasty frozen cranberry margarita.)

A frozen cranberry margarita for Happy
Hour--the perfect combination of
sweet, sour, and salty.

Monday, November 29

I took a nice hot shower this morning, which we don't do everyday because of a limited water supply.  As usual, when I got out of the shower Kali was waiting for me on the toilet beside the shower.

Kali usually waits for me to get out of the shower, 
sometimes sitting on the toilet seat and other 
times on the toilet's water tank.  (She 
is intrigued by the water in
the shower.)

Our primary goal for the day was to make an appointment for service for our car in a nearby city.  We checked all the Google reviews on nearby Toyota dealers and settled on one in the city of Guanajuato--it's located 1 hour and 15 minutes west of San Miguel de Allende.  (Several of the local Toyota dealers had terrible Google reviews!  I had to convert the 73,395 miles on our car's odometer to 118,118 kilometers.)  

We accomplished the goal of setting up a service appointment online through their website.  (They are supposed to call us back for confirmation of our 10 AM Wednesday appointment.)

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We decided to go out for lunch at the Food Factory in the Fabrica de Aurora which is close by our apartment.  As we were walking up the road to the Food Factory we met a guy along the road who kinda hailed us, noticing my camera.  As it turned out, he was born in Stevensville, MD (near where we keep our sailboat in the summer), moved to Baltimore for a big part of his life, and lived in Elkridge, MD (which is southeast of Baltimore) before moving to San Miguel de Allende.  (His name was Tim and he was 76 years old.  He retired and moved to San Miguel when he was 73--he is now 76 years old.)  It was quite interesting talking with him.  He rents a 2-bedroom house ($800 per month) high in the hills above San Miguel.  (I wished that I got his contact information so we could connect again sometime.)

The daily menu board at
the Food Factory

As we were eating lunch we were discussing the advantage of living somewhere near the coast in Mexico during the winter and in San Miguel de Allende during the summer.  After a very nice lunch at the Food Factory we each had a cobbler for dessert--mine was cherry and Maggie's was apple.  They were more like a mini fruit pie in a small dish with a scoop of ice cream on top.

Floating poinsettia leaves artistically arranged
in a large ceramic bowl in the courtyard
of Fabrica de Aurora.  

That's all for this blogpost...thanks for following our blog!