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This week I thought I'd share with you some of the photos I took while wandering around San Miguel.
Let's take a walk.
Next week, come with me on a day trip to Guanajuato for a concert in an ancient church, a motley assortment of other music and entertainment, and photos of another beautiful city.
Meanwhile...Happy Halloween!
San Miguel offers lots of ways to look around and learn: a trolley tour of the town (which we took), walking tours of the historical center, tours to attractions and nearby cities.
The tour that caught our attention early in the visit was a guided walk through El Charco del Ingenio, San Miguel's botanical garden. A marvelous project begun in 1988, El Charco has reclaimed nearly 250 acres and transformed them into a natural wonderland.
With early support from the Mexican Environment Agency and the National University of Mexico, Cante A.C.--a Mexican non-profit organization--began its work. The garden was inaugurated during the total eclipse of the sun on July 11, 1991.
Our tour was a tour of flowers. Over the last twenty years, the Charco team has encouraged the re-proliferation of the indigenous wildflowers and blooming plants. Our guide this soft warm morning was a knowledgeable and passionate participant in the work being done there.
Our group of fifteen or so was made up of Americans and Mexicans, adults and children. We were fortunate to be joined on the tour, by chance, by the author of a book about the wildflowers of San Miguel (which I bought, along with another, in the excellent gift shop).
I suppose I could go get that book and tell you what all these flowers are. I'll tell you what: instead, I'll tell you the ones I know without peeking. If you'd like to know others, send a comment and I'll gladly look 'em up. Or you can just tell me the ones you already know.
For right now, I think I'll mostly just let the photos tell the story.
Cosmos! A wildflower of the Mexican high plateau...who knew?
As we walked through the garden, our guide collected any seeds that were ready to be sown and handed them out for each walker to toss wherever they would like to see them grow.
Here, around the pond, grow the plants that like having their feet wet, including a pale lavender water hyacinth.
The children were as fascinated as the adults by the variety of nature.
This one is lantana, which I saw growing wild in the hills and villages around the city.
This one fascinates me: it's amaranth. It grows wild but has been cultivated as a grain for over 8,000 years. It made up a huge proportion of the Aztec diet, as a matter of fact.
In one large part of the botanical garden overlooking a beautiful canyon is the solar observatory.
But my favorite structure is one I dubbed the Twigloo.
I am so building one of those.
A flock of young students, on a guided trip through the gardens, had some time on the slide as their reward for their patience.
At the end of the tour, we returned to the reception area with its snack bar and gift shop, neither of which is the slightest bit tacky. They had a small assortment of plants for sale, grown right there at El Charco.
You know, of course, that I could write about this wondrous place for hours. Instead, I'm going to give you a link to my favorite page on their excellent website, which tells of the history and development of the garden and park. I encourage you to explore the other pages.
It's my favorite kind of story, the tale of a vision come to life.
Time: Sunday. Late morning into afternoon, the day after the castillos and cohetes and fireworks into the wee hours.
Place: El Jardin, San Miguel's main plaza.
Occasion: Day Two-and-a-Half of La Fiesta de San Miguel Arcángel.
Oh boy! We're goin' to a parade!!
And no, the cohetes aren't over yet by a long shot.
The plaza is again teeming with spectators to watch the troups of costumed performers from all over Mexico as they dance for blocks approaching the main venue.
Dancers large and small are fairly pooped by the time they arrive at the plaza, but they put on a fine show nevertheless.
Near the church, the groups disperse for rest and photo ops or to continue performing.
I especially liked the counterpoint of the pre-Hispanic indigenous dancers in the courtyard of the Catholic church.
Countless indigenous peoples are represented here, in full glorious costume, presenting to the modern crowd the ancient practices and traditions.
I had a chat with a few of the young men in one of the most marvelous groups, the Tastoanes of Tonalá.
Tastoanes are ancient figures whose job it was to absorb evil from the world. They are followed by un-costumed young men who brush and whip at them with mesquite branches thereby removing the evil from the tastoanes themselves so they can be purified to continue their difficult work.
One of the men told me that, although the tradition is ancient, it continued into the time of the Spanish conquest, and the tastoanes took on the additional role of absorbing the energy brought by the conquerers.
I never quite understood how this fellow fit in.
Sorry, girls. He's married.
These youngsters from Aquascalientes were very proud of their Olmeca costumes.
A few of the parade participants were more conventional.
The excitement grew as word came in that it was almost time for another treat: the appearance of Los Gigantes!
These huge papier maché figures are crafted in San Miguel and are deservedly popular.
The celebration and performances continued well into Sunday night. Travis and I were able to watch from the roof garden of the rental house the show that we had been directly under the night before, as the castillos and fireworks exploded over the city once more.
Next week, we'll have a calmer column as we visit the beautiful botanical garden. You'll like it.
Adiós for now.
Last Saturday afternoon, we took naps.
It was the weekend of the fiesta for San Miguel Arcángel, who's a major celebrity here in San Miguel de Allende, and Travis and I wanted to be fresh and rested for the evening's festivities.
Also, we hadn't got a lot of sleep the night before.
Early Friday evening, cohetes began exploding all over town every couple of minutes and continued throughout the night. Cohetes are like huge bottle rockets, usually shot from concrete cylinders but sometimes right from the hands of the shooters. They whistle as they rise into the sky with their smoke tails, then explode with window-shaking bangs. From a distance, one sees the blast a split second before the concussion of sound arrives, which is physics, of course. Although science seems to have little to do with this particular activity.
This fiesta weekend officially begins with a desfile, or parade, with bands and drums and fireworks and many more cohetes. Apparently, tradition calls for this parade to be a "welcoming of the dawn". Given that the sun rises here around 7:30, I have to wonder why the parade begins at precisely 4 o'clock in the morning. But who am I to question tradition?
Midday, we mustered enough energy to walk up to the Centro Historico where we caught a part of the blessing of the caballeros.
With just a couple of hours before the next parade, we ate a quick bite and headed back for siestas punctuated by only a few explosions now and then. Moderately rested, we set out again on foot toward El Jardin, the main plaza.
We walked up Umaran, a street that parallels Canal street where the parade that starts the evening was already underway. We glimpsed flags waving now and then over the heads of the spectators lining Canal, sitting on walls and edges of roofs and on plastic chairs crowded onto sidewalks. A multitude of bands and drums and marching and dancing feet provided the required cacophany.
As we topped the steep part of Umaran, we came to a dead halt. Ahead of us the street was crammed with spectators. Ahead of them was the parade of dancers and musicians, also at a dead halt, waiting their turns to enter the plaza and perform. We did an evasive maneuver. In the plaza, under the protective countenance of the proud and goofy church tower, was the rest of the population of San Miguel and possibly several other towns.
We wandered as best we could considering the crowd: families with children and grandmas, grinning elderly men, couples walking hand in hand, flocks of teenagers, tourists and locals pointing cameras in every direction. The people were polite, doing their best to let others pass through or climb steps that had become grandstands. Near the church, looming above the dancers, stood the giant skeletons of the castillos.
If you look closely at these Tinkertoys gone mad, you'll see that every spoke and every strut has attached to it something that spews fire. Strings of other fireworks looped up to the highest parts of the church tower. It looked like we were in for a show.
And so we were.
At just past nine o'clock, the first of the three castillos began its extravaganza.
With earsplitting screams, the wheels spun and shot fire in all directions. Smoke filled the air. One after another, the three structures became towers of fire in every color, pouring sparks onto the heads of the fascinated spectators.
As its finale, each castillo set its topknot spinning, fast then slow then fast again until, trailing a blazing torrent of sparks, it left its platform and shot high in the sky for a final dazzling explosion.
Kinda fun, huh?
Thinking all was over, Travis and I were just beginning to look for an invisible path through the crowd when the grand finale began. The church lights had been turned off throughout the castillo show. Suddenly, the church itself blew its top.
Across the plaza, an answering barrage:
As the fireworks finished raining upon the crowd, we slipped away to a nightcap and rest. Because there was more to come.
To be continued...
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