San Miguel de Allende is a destination vacation for USers and Mexicans alike. It is near the top of the “Retire to Mexico” list for just about everyone, certainly for our hairdresser in Austin. SMdA is a quaint little colonial town, narrow cobblestone streets winding around beautiful churches, antique shops and artisan markets, nestled in the mountains north of Mexico City. Something that you don’t know until you’ve accidentally found yourself lost in SMdA is that the quaint narrow streets were built for donkey carts, NOT the traffic that clogs due to all those damn turistas and retirees. There are automobiles parked nose to tail along every high walled street with taxis and buses passing slow-moving, truck drawn remulques at unbelievable speeds. Lisa quit breathing when we pulled into town.
We learned so much from this trip of 1800 miles and endless speed bumps (topes). When Google told us that point A to point B would take us five hours, it took more like 8.5 which is quite descriptive of the entire moving to Mexico process. Lisa’s Spanish grew by learning road signs, “No tire la basura” (don’t throw trash). I learned that we should NOT drive for eight hours in Mexican traffic and then look for a hotel where we can park securely and not have to back up a trailer.
Most of all we learned that this has been TOTALLY worth it. We arrived in Bacalar on Friday and have been taking it easy ever since. It feels like we’re on vacation, which of course we are, a permanent vacation.
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