Travel diary: Mexican fiestas
Felices fiestas! Happy holidays! It’s strange that, just ten days into the new year, both Christmas and New Year’s Eve feel so remote, like they happened a long time ago. Perhaps it’s because I’m so excited about 2016 and am looking forward to everything that this year has to offer.
Monterrey
In order to be allowed to enter Cuba, we had to have tickets out — and all the flights out on the dates we wanted were quite expensive. We ended up choosing the cheapest option and flying into Monterrey in the north of Mexico, with vague ideas of onward flights or long bus journeys to Guatemala. Then one day I sent a Facebook message to our friends Pete and Dalene: “We’d love to see you sometime, hopefully our paths will cross in the next year or so,” and they replied: “Are you going to be back in Mexico for awhile? We head in a few weeks…”
One thing led to another, and in the end we decided to stay in Mexico and celebrate Christmas and New Year’s Eve with them in San Miguel de Allende.
First, though, we had to get out of Monterrey, which wasn’t our cup of tea at all — just too smoggy. We booked a Blablacar and thoroughly enjoyed our onwards journey with a pleasant guy called Axa. He was heading to Querétaro, close enough to San Miguel to meet our needs, and we decided to spend a week there rather than rushing on. Good decision. Querétaro is a fantastic city with a comfortable, local feeling and lots of great restaurant options. Our AirBnb host Roberto showed us around the first night we arrived, and Pete and Dalene showed up not too long after us.
Querétaro
Our week in Querétaro was great: full of work days and fun evenings. We went to the cinema to see the new Star Wars movie (so good!) and in the process tried Uber for the first time. (By the way, if you sign up to Uber and use the code craigm5124ue in the promotions tab you get a free ride and so do we… That’s what I call the sharing economy.) We also discovered the joys of gorditas, ate tacos and churros, and generally had a great time.
San Miguel de Allende
Too soon it was time to say goodbye to Querétaro’s charming cobbled streets and make our way to San Miguel de Allende. We’d organized an apartment rental (with the help of the amazing Talon Windwalker) and spent our first afternoon with the apartment’s owner, Athea, who showed us around her neighborhood and amused us with YouTube videos.
We weren’t the biggest fans of San Miguel; it just seemed a little too much like a Disney idea of a Mexican village. However, we loved spending time with Pete and Dalene, mostly playing a card game that certainly wasn’t called Soily when we first started playing it but was by the time we left.
Mexican fiestas!
Christmas Day was a low-key affair at Pete and Dalene’s place; Talon and his son joined us for a delicious dinner, games and a bit of piñata-whacking — the sparklers we bought weren’t a success, though. We also saw in the new year at their place, with tacos and fireworks; it was a lovely end to a great day. Well, for me anyway. Craig was having problems with an eye infection and Dalene wanted to work, so Pete and I headed off to the botanic gardens to admire the local flora and rock formations. We stopped for an artisanal beer on a rooftop terrace, and on our way home let ourselves be drawn to a mobile food vendor’s stand that was selling beer-like drinks in enormous chalices. I’d been putting off trying a michelada, which is more or less beer with a spicy sauce added, because they just sounded so disgusting, but the customer who explained this particular one to us was so enthusiastic that we ordered a couple on the spot. And who’d have thought that spicy beer with seafood could be so good?
Guanajuato
Craig’s eye was still playing up a couple of days later, so he stayed behind while I headed to Guanajuato with Pete and Dalene — what a beautiful place! The highlight was climbing to the viewpoint to look out over the city, and eating chilaquiles in their favorite restaurant.
Guadalajara
It’s not the best reason for going somewhere, but we headed to Guadalajara just to catch a flight. Sadly, we had a lot of work to do, so we didn’t see too much of the city, but we did head out for dinner twice with my language exchange friend Omar and his wife Maribel. It was great to finally meet Omar after knowing him online for almost seven years, and we got on even better in person than we had online.
Tequila
The highlight of our stay in Guadalajara was undoubtedly our day trip to Tequila. Omar and Maribel picked us up early so we could have breakfast in the market before meeting their friend Carmen and joining a tour of the Jose Cuervos distillery. After a wander around town, we made our way to an enormous bar on the outskirts of town for “jarritas” (jars of alcohol) and spent two hours slowly sipping our enormous tequila-based cocktails and becoming more and more merry. This week I read that adults laugh on average only 17 times a day (compared to kids, who average 400 times). Well, we blew that number out of the water in Tequila.
It’s been a great month, full of truly excellent people and beautiful places, and we’re looking forward to returning to Mexico someday. For now, though, it’s time for Costa Rica and Panama!
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Join the sharing economy
We’re really into the sharing economy at the moment: we use AirBnB all the time, occasionally jump in a Blablacar, and have just discovered Uber. Use these codes when you join, and we both get benefits:
Uber: Enter the code craigm5124ue in the promotions tab to get your first ride for free.
AirBnB: Use this link for $20 off your first stay.
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