Mexican Travel Has Become More Affordable

According to travel professionals, tourism to Mexico has dropped considerably since the swine flu scare earlier this year. Some airlines have advertised lower fares and the dollar has increased in value. (The Mexican peso is now 13.5 pesos to the dollar compared to 12.5 pesos last year.) And the weather is always mild and warm compared to our cold and frigid winters.

As a matter of fact, the luxurious Four Seasons Hotel room rate with many extras in exciting Mexico City is much less costly than a comparable room in Austin, Texas, without the extras. Mexico City has an awesome Diego Rivera Mural in the Town Hall, and many exciting museums. And just three hours northwest of Mexico City by auto is San Miguel de Allende nestled in the heart of the colonial highlands, Mexico’s Independent Country. It is named for Ignacio Allende, a leader of the war for independence from Spain. I found it to have a unique charm unlike any other in all of Mexico. The tree-shaded plaza (zocolo) with its unusual neo-Gothic parish church was reminiscent to me of Paris’ Left Bank.

The parish church, La Parroquia, is another treasure that sets the town of San Miguel apart from its neighboring towns. Local historians told me that the church’s builder, Cefferino Gutierrez, was inspired by a European postcard, and sketched outlines in the sand and directed his workers to build a Mexican-Indian version of a Gothic cathedral. Indeed, the bluesy overhead was ablaze with the pink spires of the church. The plaza has the flavor of an international town in a Colonial Mexico setting with beautifully restored buildings, including the home where the patriot Ignacio Allende was born. The Allende house is a stately and graceful building, with sunlit patios, the perfect model of a San Miguel colonial mansion.

Also, of particular interest to me were no neon signs, no billboards, no annoying guides and vendors and no mobs of tourists either Mexican or foreign (except on the biggest fiesta weekends) and of course no McDonald’s Golden Arches. San Miguel remains an unspoiled Mexican provincial town with an outstanding university that attracts many students from the United States for their art, and language courses.

I found that in addition to Mexico’s many national holidays, there is a festival celebration just about every month in Sam Miguel with processions, parades, bullfights, and fireworks. The month of June has a special day, the Feast Day of St. Anthony of Padua. St. Anthony is Mexico’s Catholic Cupid when young men and women dress up in crazy costumes for the Fiesta de Los Locos Lunatics Fiesta). Men dress up as women and women masquerade as men. Some dress up as fantasy figures and others lampoon politicians and politics. The festivities begin a few days earlier and end on the 13th with a parade with a parade through the main streets of town.

September has the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel, San Miguel honors its patron saint with bull runs Pamplona style, fireworks, concerts, religious processions and colorfully costumed folk dancing. There is a night-long festival on the eve of St. Michael Day with a parade of mojigangas (huge papier-mâché dolls), followed by fireworks in front of the parish church.

August is the month for classical music. For more than 27 years the town has hosted the San Miguel Chamber Music Festival. It is claimed that music aficionados from all over the world invade San Miguel to hear the internationally renowned ensembles that participate in this event. Year-round, band music is played in the late afternoon and evenings in the plaza. Mexicans also do not dine until after 10 p.m. and it is not unusual to find lines of restaurant waiting to be seated for dinner at midnight.

Shopping for arts and crafts was a bonanza for me. I am a collector of the unique hammered tin mirror frames. San Miguel is recognized as a field day for arts and crafts collectors of all kinds of Mexicana. Excellent buys include lamps, boxes, masks, hammered tin, brass and copper house wares. I learned that many shopkeepers throughout Mexico come to San Miguel to do their wholesale buying in the plaza shops.

I ended my visit to San Miguel with lunch and a tour of the city of Guanajuanto (pronounced Wanawantoe). San Miguel is actually in the state of Guanajuanto) which is only an hour’s drive away. The state capital was once a prosperous mining town and the town is studded with monuments representing its colonial era glory days. The winding cobble stone streets are filled with souvenir bell stands and lead to the town hall where the bells were rung to alert the “independence volunteers” that the Spanish fighters had arrived and the fighting had started. Guanajuanto also is the site of the magnificent architectural University of Guanajuanto.

Our guide also drove us through the nearby little town of Dolores Hidalgo, acclaimed for its Talavera tile and pottery center. This town is known throughout Mexico as being where the Mexican independence movement began, and before the ringing of the bells at the town hall of Guanajuanto.

Copyright by Marcia Abramson