Mexico, San Miguel Week 5

It's now February and here in San Miguel the tourists and expats are arriving in large numbers. As January weather is typically not great, a lot of people want to start their vacations now. But, this year the weather in January was above average in sunshine and warm days. February 1 brought clouds, cool temperatures and even a thunderstorm in the middle of the night. This past week was in the low 20's in the day and predictions are for higher temps, 26 hopefully, later in the week.

Fruits, boots and bras all for sale on Tuesday.

On Tuesdays there is an outdoor market on the mountain with a thousand stalls selling fruits, veggies, clothes, shoes and even hardware items. If it's not at this market, you probably don't need it. They have a wonderful way of not throwing out appliances or other items in Mexico. Everything is repairable or replaceable including broken parts of a food blender or just having your shoes resewn or resoled. Nothing is wasted and even the old cars are repaired, repainted(sometimes outside in the dust) and although we question the emission controls, the vehicles work and bounce along quite nicely on the narrow cobblestone roads. You probably wouldn't want to drive your expensive vehicles here. For one thing, many of our cars at home would be too large to maneuver or park on most streets in Centro. 

We attended an amazing documentary on Frida's life. It's almost impossible to visit a shop and not find something with a likeness of her. She is loved by all here for her talent as an artist and as a freedom fighter for Mexico and the people. 

El Charco, Botanical Garden

Although this park is 2 kilometres from town, we had to take a taxi as it would have been a climb only appreciated by ones training to summit Kilimanjaro. We did walk down though, and even that was a workout. The views were spectacular, and like all amazing vistas, hard to capture on a iPhone camera.

 After our dusty trail adventure, Bill needed his shoes shined. We pass this smiling gentleman when

we go to our salsa lessons. When he finished, he insisted that Bill take a picture of me sitting in his chair, pretending to brush my cloth sneakers.  How could I pass on such a happy moment.

There is always something happening in the Centro plaza every night and Friday was no exception. 27 young chefs in training were offering cheese and spicy pepper burritos wrapped in corn husks and a hot vanilla milk drink to everyone. Timing was perfect, we tried one for a snack and then headed to Don Taco Tequila, for you guessed it! Tacos and Tequila.....well, truthfully we had beer. But the tacos were good!

Sunday night and we just returned from a pot luck party. Wow! Regardless of who your team was, that was one exciting Super Bowl 51!