Muchos Gringos!

San Miguel is a great example of a picturesque Spanish colonial town, and lots of tourists know it! It’s a great place to come to buy art, ceramics, and just about anything else you might want. It feels much less “Mexican” than anywhere else we’ve been; nevertheless the attractions and the fantastic food kept us in town for a full week.

The town’s centerpiece is the Parroquia, with it’s soaring towers which were added on to an older church in the late 19th century.

Brightly colored buidings and narrow cobblestone streets are part of what gives San Miguel its appeal.

Part of the reason for our extended stay is the very nice RV park that is walking distance to the center of town. Our first day was spent exploring the town and hitting a couple of the museums, plazas, and cathedrals.

The next day we headed out to Cañada de la Virgen, a pre-columbian site nearby. Our guide was an archeologist who participated in excavating the site. We learned a lot about the history of the region, including a colorful local landowner and her involvement with the development of the site. The people who built the site had an amazing knowledge of astronomy, including some that would seemingly be impossible to acquire without telescopes. It remains a mystery how they acquired that knowledge and that’s where the theories of extraterrestrial encounters come in. I won’t go any further into that, but rest assured that we weren’t visited by any aliens. At least not that we know of.

On Saturday we went to a nearby hot spring where we met with Katie and her family, who we spent some time with in Guanajuato. We enjoyed a relaxing day and Quinn got some much needed pool time.

The temple at Cañada de la Virgen

One of the benefits of a tourist town is that there’s lots of touristy stuff to do, and on Sunday I got to go mountain biking for the first time since leaving Colorado in November! I went with a local guide who took me and 3 other guests on a 40km ride through the countryside near San Miguel. One highlight was a visit to an unexcavated pre-columbian ruin. It was fascinating to see one in it’s natural state and to know that there was probably at least one or two people buried beneath our feet 500 or more years ago.

This is what one of those temples looks like before it gets excavated and restored.

I rode with Michael, a Swiss guy we met in Guanajuato. He and his wife are traveling to South America in a Land Rover similar to the one we had in Africa.

We stopped in a tiny village for snacks.

The ride took us through some farmers’ fields

Warning: Pictures of Quinn below:

Yum! Grapes!

San Miguel has a great, modern playground. It’s even equipped with soft surfaces rather than packed earth. And there were no re-welded joints on any of the equipment!