Yep…back to Mexico! Turns out fourth attempt to come to San Miguel worked – yay! This place is worth the effort to come here – and it is a bit of effort. It is at least an hour from an airport – there are two options – and Mexican highways are a bit of an adventure. We have been here a few weeks now and have definitely enjoyed our time thus far!
We arrived a week earlier than our original date and unfortunately our house was not available that week. We decided to splurge a bit and stayed in a very nice hotel right off the main plaza. Which, of course, has the main big church. With bells. Bells that ring…all the freaking time. Every fifteen minutes. And I don’t mean ring once at 11:15, no, they ring with two other ringing thingies, then they ring once for the quarter hour. The bells are slightly muted at night but not much. And if you didn’t want to be awake at 7AM, too bad, because the bells go nuts then. Like fifteen people are all ringing their own bells to their own internal tune. Even our trusty white noise machine (named Miami) can’t compete with those bells. Anyway, Hotel la Morada was very nice and quite comfortable. But most importantly it had a good desk, as that was the week prior to, and where we spent the night of the Great Switchover – the hospital system that the Husband works for was switching their EMR (electronic medical record). This was a huge deal, with a year and half of work leading up to it. We thought, yeah, nice place for him to work and we were close enough to everything that when he had a little time we could explore. What we didn’t know…was that this was the culmination week of a month long festival in honor of Saint Michael (San Miguel). And the grandest day/night/day of the party? The night that the Switchover occurred. Holy moly. We have never been witnesses to such events! Parades every day at 10AM, musical performances, giant papier mache characters, mariachi bands (sometimes several playing at the same time – different songs), and people…so many people. The best thing about our hotel room? We were on the top floor with a private terrace that looked over the plaza! Our own viewing point without being in that super spreader event! Although I did not drag myself out there at 5AM for the giant, final fireworks – I think I was evented out by that point. But what a party it was! Confession time…we took very few photos of the events! And they are just not very good. Nor did we take a good photo of our view from our terrace. Failure.
One of the final events of the Festiva De San Miguel was the biggest freaking parade I’ve ever seen. The route was probably 2.5 miles long and it wasn’t exactly flat. It was dedicated to the indigenous people of the area with traditional costumes, music and dancing. I think 60% of the area population was in the parade. The other 40% was lining the streets to watch. Some of the costumes were amazing!
Our encounter with the parade was accidental. We had moved into our house and needed to go to the grocery store. The two biggest stores are right next to each other – on the opposite side of town from us, about a two mile walk. With a Panio on the way (I’ll talk more about Panio in another post. I will dream of Panio). Right…grocery store…I thought Puerto Vallarta had the nicest Mexican grocery store ever, but City Market now gets that award. Cheapest place? No. But we can find things that we need and it has a great vibe. I love fresh ground peanut butter and was super happy to see they had a grinder. Do need to teach them that roasted peanuts are a better choice than raw though. They also have machines with almonds and white chocolate or almonds and dark chocolate – yum! We were happily getting a couple of containers when this local family saw us. They asked us, and we understood enough, that they were asking what you do with it. Toast! we answered and I also mimicked eating it right out of the container. The kids were enthralled so I think they got a little of each one! One of those hilarious moments 😂
Once the Festiva de San Miguel was over the decorations for Dias de los Muertos went up! Over the last couple of weekends we have been seeing more and more marigolds – these golden flowers are believed to help the dead find their way to the altars set up for them. We intentionally timed our stay in San Miguel to be able to experience this tradition, so expect more on this subject.
I will leave you with this spectacular photo the Husband took…one of the few from our hotel terrace!
