Atotonilco and the end of a wonderful trip

Month over...oh well, but we boogied on till the end.  I could not go home without visiting the Sanctuary of Atotonilco one more time. Atotonilco translates as "place of the hot waters"..there are  hot springs nearby.  My sister was with me for this last week and we got Daniel, our wonderful guide and friend to run us out. Situated 15 km outside  the city, it shares World Heritage Site  status  with the historic center of San Miguel.  It dates from the early 18th Century and  is in the small  dusty community of Atotonilco.(500-700 people) The Atotonilco Sanctuary has  plain  high  fortress like walls.  Astonishing art is the hallmark of its interior.The ghostly walls are  completely covered in murals of personages and scenes from the Bible, without much overall structure in how these images were placed. There is very little empty space. The mural work was done by one man over  a thirty year span,and the style is Flemish which was known through Belgian prints that were brought over from Europe by the  Spaniards.  The church has been called the Sistine chapel of America.
Atotonilco has been a pilgrimage site since  the colonial period and still functions as a religious retreat for people who come from all over Mexico for prayer,penance and mortification.(I don't think there is flagellation any more though)  all this is extremely private and the facilities behind the church can house up to  5000 people.  There are nuns there who run the establishment and prepare the meals etc....it is all very simple but funnily they have a large tortilla factory  adjoining which churns out enough tortillas to feed the large numbers of retreatants.
One of the most venerated items in the church is the miraculous statue of Our Lord of The Column. Several miracles have been attributed to this statue of a bloody Christ leaning heavily on a gilded pedestal. Every year, at the beginning of Holy Week celebrations, the statue is carried in a solemn midnight procession from Atotonilco to San Miguel de Allende. The statue will remain in San Miguel until Holy Week observances are finished.
The torchlit procession is one of the most fascinating celebrations in a season of glorious processions and observances.

And so to the packing and one more trip to the main square for the last mole ice cream cone before my  bus  ride to Mexico City and an early flight home!!

Xochimilco..Island of the Dolls

Known as les Islas de la Muneca,this has got to be one of the creepiest tourist destinations I have  been to. I went on a photographic trip with a small group.  The leader has written a book on the dolls and is one of the few people welcomed on the island by the owner and the dolls!!Located within an extensive network of lagoons and canals south of Mexico City,it is a place of mystery and superstition.You feel very disconnected  from todays world as you meander down the lagoons for 2 hours on barges that are painted in vivid colours, are canopied, and manned by a boatman using a pole,like the Venetian gondoliers...Life up and down the canals is worlds removed from what we know. Children go to school on barges..hay is delivered to cattle by barge, the wildlife is beautiful,and finally you reach the Island of the Dolls.

Almost every inch of this island is decorated with old  mutilated dolls..many hanging for  years, exposed to the elements.  There are a couple of sheds full of them as well.  You feel as if you are being watched. The story goes like this: a hermit named don Julian moved here many years ago. Don Julian used to say he was haunted by the ghost of the little girl who had drowned in one of the canals around the island. Some say he used to fish the dolls from the water because he though they were real children, but the truth is he was collecting and placing them around his home as a shrine for the spirit that tormented him.  Ironically, he himself drowned after suffering a fatal heart attack in almost the same spot where the child drowned.  Since his death in 2001,his nephew has been the caretaker of the dolls.  Many people want to bring him dolls, but all he will use are dolls from the river or dumps.  The eyes  follow your every move and I was almost glad to leave.  A very unusual photo trip to say the least.  There were many more of the painted barges on the way back and the atmosphere soon changed to a festive one as there were parties on these boats and  barges with Mariachi players to entertain all the way back.  A very cool experience.

Ghost Town

The day started off with  yet another  knock at the door...we have had the flower lady, the tiny grandmother with her  nopales, and now a man with 2 burros selling potatoes. It is a narrow  one way street and the traffic started backing up,but nobody seemed to mind.  Needless to say I bought potatoes!! This is San Miguel at its best..think about it!! Burro  delivery to your door. Just down the street is an Italian bakery and cafe..It all works. It's all good.
We were just leaving to  visit  Mineral de Pozos,once a very wealthy silver mining area. Today,Pozos is all but deserted,and has been that way for almost a century.  We were with  Daniel our guide and friend of 3 years and he takes you off the beaten track to say the least.  It is an hours drive, the last20 minutes of which  is off road , and you climb up to 8000 feet. At one time Pozos had 70 000 inhabitants,but when the mines were depleted, it simply folded and the once very grand neoclassical buildings stand in  ruin.  There are about 1800 inhabitants now.  There was kind of a run on trying to revive the town and tout it as an artist colony etc..but it is flat out in the middle of nowhere..no bus service and certainly no medical facilities,shopping etc... and  to boot,a great water problem. The developers still push this but it is going nowhere really.  Nonetheless there is a gorgeous hotel(the other one closed)where we had lunch . The rooms which are luxurious beyond belief  start at eighty dollars including breakfast.  The locals work 30 minutes away in a very industrial  town that has some cement industry.
Before heading out to the former mines, we stopped at  a typical Mexican cemetery just outside the town. Those buried there lie under a blazing sun.  It is wide open to the elements  and  quite surreal..from grand  monuments to graves with inscriptions on roofing tin.

We went out  to where the original smelters still stand,(friends photo)alongside open mining pits!! Although the government tries to  put warning signs and wire fences around these deadly shafts, they all disappear and  it becomes treacherous to walk there without someone who knows the way.  Some shafts are 200 feet deep. There is a very old caretaker who lives out there with his extended family.  He is over 85 now. I don't know what he looks after but he is full of stories. He was one of the last workers of that mine and as a child of 8, he would carry wheelbarrows of stones out of the mines. He told  us that the old hacienda(photo) once belonged to Porfirio  Diaz, an important Mexican revolutionary who housed his prisoners of war in the hacienda and made them work in the mines. Its ownership has been in dispute for  many years now , and so it sits, solid as a rock in the middle of the old mine. I checked all the doors and windows in the hopes of getting inside(likely).  Probably full of snakes..lots of rattlers out there too!! It was intriguing. Surprisingly, people do not seem to scavenge all these ruins.  We headed homeward  along some back roads and what struck me were the miles and miles of stone walls marking off the land parameters of each mine owner. Some are 12 feet high.   These were all built by a slave population. Not only did the  European mine owners use the  indigenous population but also imported  slaves from Africa whose lives were abysmal.  This is my third visit to Pozos and next time it might be fun to stay at that hotel and just wander the town for a day. Tomorrow..Mexico city and the Island of the Dolls.  It is an early bus and as I forgot my little clock..my trusty husband is giving me a wake up call  from Montreal via Skype!!

Tuesday Market in San Miguel

El Tianguis is the Tuesday market that comes to an area at the top of San Miguel. The sheer size is paralysing..3 football fields. It is a massive dustbowl when not in use, yet the vendors arrive weekly from all over selling absolutely everything you could possibly imagine. It becomes a massive tarp city with a surprisingly ordered  arrangement of vendors. The smells, sights and sounds overwhelm the senses. By 10am it is gearing up to full tilt and the food kiosques,set up in a square with the cooking going on in the middle,are doing a brusque business..no idea if it is breakfast or lunch.

I became braver a couple of trips ago and now dig in with the best of them..nothing like a freshly made Gordita(Mexican pita pocket) stuffed with your choice of fillings. That's only one of dozens of traditional foods served up. The one I still cannot face is the whole deep fried breaded fish..head eyes the works. You see mainly men at that table..it seems to be a "guy" thing as they crunch off the head in one bite. But leaving that behind, you musn't miss the older gentleman who makes the Churros..this sweet batter is extruded out of an apparatus..and dropped into hot oil where they cook for a couple of minutes,cool, and are rolled in sugar and cinammon. They would be about 7 inches long and as thick as your index finger. They are sold in brown paper bags. If he likes you he will point to the freshest batches..I thought it was a gimmick, but no..warm and ready to devour they were!! One is not enough. Mexican doughnut I guess. There doesn't seem to be any coffee for sale anywhere at the market.You see  exotic fruit drinks blended on the spot and Coca Cola by the truckload. Mexicans drink more Coke per capita than any other place on the planet!

You cannot leave without trying Chicharonnes(see photo)... fried pork rinds..well that is simplifying it a bit..huge slabs of pork fat are sliced thinly and cooked in vats of scalding..wait for it..lard.. and then salted and dusted with spices and broken up into potato chip size pieces.  They are delicious and oh so bad for you.

(see photo) It is a market of the people and the produce is much cheaper and fresher than the supermarkets. Locals simply do not have a lot of income and they can find everything they need here at a price they can afford. You really get to see and feel how people live day to day. There are often  three generations of  one  family shopping together.

One funny thing is  the clothing vendor stalls. The tables are piled high with new and used clothing for men, women and children and are crowded with buyers who end up carrying mounds of clothing over their arm and leave with bags full. These run an average of a dollar fifty per item. There are a couple of dealers who actually have racks and display stands and they sell only designer brands. I am told they buy these by the bale whatever that means. The Gringo ladies(slang term for non Mexican..what can I say??)are there en masse and in kill mode to get what they want. Very crowded and a lot of not so ladylike jostling. Don't ever miss a local market wherever you are. It is an eye to the people around you.

Layers of history

This was an early morning for someone who is NOT a morning person. Traffic,dogs downstairs,bells bells bells,and somewhere a rooster... forced me into the streets at 6:30am.

Okay,those of you in the know,go ahead and laugh. Camera in hand,I decided to start photographing textures which I use a lot in my photographic work. San Miguel is one big texture, layer upon layer reveal yet more secrets on the facades of its ancient architecture.Now it is time for my nap!!Still working on placing the photos properly..bear with me..

A week has already flown by..

This morning there was a knock at the door and when I peeked through the peephole there was a very elderly and tiny lady selling nopales out of a basket. Currently in season, they are an important green vegetable down here. Basically they are prickly pear cacti..flat round leaves and covered in spines. You see women at the markets cleaning the spines and tough ends off for hours on end ...very labour intensive to say the least. I love these and had not had any yet so bought ten for a total of eighty cents. Seems so little somehow, but then off she went to the next house. You simply have to char them for a few minutes. They taste a bit like green beans but with an acid bite. Having the computer with me this time, I checked out recipes...there are thousands!!!

My friend left this a.m. , and now am on my own for a few days before more company. Time to get on with some serious photography. The Holy Week celebrations continue and the Jardin was something to behold on Saturday and Sunday...packed to the gills with celebrating Mexicans..it was "Carnval". It is said that the Jardin is the living room of San Miguel!.

One of the fun events,which can become trying,!! is the very traditional cracking of the eggs over the heads of friends,family, and occasionally strangers...but wait...The eggs are hollowed out and filled with CONFETTI, and glittery cornstarch. How they do it I do not know but these eggs are sold by the thousands. (see photo)It is also quite a rite of passage among the young teens...lots of dressed up giggly girls and suave young men playing the game!! This was at its height during the evening while waiting for the Parroquia light and sound show.At night,it is lit up and that is spectacular enough, but what was to follow had to be seen to be believed.

Basically, the soaring facade is used as a huge projection screen. To put some context to this, September 4th 2010 was the bicentennial of Mexico's independence from the Spanish. The light show depicted the mix of strong Catholicism that exists within the Mexican culture,followed by the struggle with the insurgents, culminating in the final victory for Mexico.The techno part of this boggles the mind.. The accompanying sound track was very powerful and it was hard not to get caught up in the emotion of this event. As one can imagine the area was ankle deep in confetti etc..but by Monday at 10am,it had pretty well been cleaned up, and Jardin life was back to its regular pace.

The Sunday home tours this week took us to one wayyyyyyy out of town, which wouldn't be my cup of tea,far too isolated,but this gal runs a famous cooking school,does her famous Sunday brunches and has carved out an amazing oasis from NOTHING. It certainly must require a very large workforce is all I can say. The photo shows one of her many dining areas. The second was right downtown behind the Artisan market. The Cross' purchased it as an old rundown 14 room hotel many years ago..the beds were concrete!! Well baby you should see it now!! Caren Cross produced an award winning documentary on their process of choosing San Miguel to live in called Lost and Found in Mexico. She was a first time film maker to boot!!
Tomorrow has got to be an ice cream day..I have resisted but now I'm weak!! I hear one of the cafes at the Jardin has a"to die for" toasted coconut gelato on the menu.

Discovering San Miguel again..

More than one hundred dancers dressed in pre Hispanic costumes fill the Jardin this weekend to honour one of the city's most venerated religious figures, Our Lord of the Conquest. Religious traditions take place in the Parroquia, and then they go out to dance in the streets for hours on end to the beat of tradtional drum rhythms. The dancers come from all over the country and the costumes are very colourful and intricately decorated often with beading. Many wear massive feather headdresses....

Our little neighbourhood has turned up some neat surprises which partially compensates for the noise!! We old ladies measure everything by the steepness of the hills..big criteria in renting a property. We count steps too.

At the corner(about 40 steps) is a little tiende(very tiny convenience stores)They sell mainly junky stuff but occasionally they bake or cook a little specialty on the side, and our Senora makes delicious tortillas. We went to get some water and saw the big machine and put two and two together. She has a warming container and just reaches in and pulls out a handful, throws them on a scale and says 10 pesos(less than a dollar.)!! She also had some green tomatillo salsa, so tomorrows breakfast will be scrambled eggs wrapped in fresh tortillas, liberally doused with salsa.

Around the corner and down a block or so is a cafe with an attached bakery.(see photo)

It is just far enough away from the madding crowd down at the Jardin. In fact,almost everything you need is down that little calle. Every street holds a surprise. Doors open and inside are beautiful courtyards leading to hotels or B and B's.. The residents are friendly and impeccably polite. Children are very beautiful and are carried by their parents until they can walk..no strollers..sidewalks too narrow. You would never have room to pass and the curbs can be very high. There is a strict directional protocol as to who steps off the curb to let who pass. (That is my friend walking down the street. I was right behind photographing door knockers)

The weekly Bibliotecca's House and Garden tour is tomorrow. This funds educational projects and scholarships for local children. It is fifteen dollars and the city provides buses and drivers (did I say buses??they are small,about 21 seats))You visit two homes,generously made available by local residents. I always attend and have not been to the same house twice. Fascinating..such wonderful abodes. It is carefully supervised of course and you have a volunteer guide to do the local commentary. Most people turn up at the Bibliotecca at ten when the Mariachi bands entertain until the tours start at 11:30. Weather continues to be hot and sunny. Sorry!! As our friend and guide Daniel says , the last thing people worry about in San Miguel is the weather. His eyes pop when we lay on the winter snow and temperature stories.

Not a flake of snow in sight...

I arrived after a good flight, in Mexico City and was met by Dan,who is a guide,property manager and driver all rolled into one. We became friends when we first started coming to San Miguel a few years ago. It is a 3-3 1/2 hour drove to SM and a good hour of that is simply getting out of Mexico City. It is the largest city in the world with a population of 30 000 000..yes that is about the total population of Canada!!!

The roads are good but the drivers are fast with numerous transport trucks speeding wildly.The lanes are narrower than what we are used to, and you really feel hemmed in. This main route passes through many small and rather poor looking villages built on both sides of the highway. You are driving along and suddenly you have to slow down as the stretch through the village has many speed bumps..no traffic signs..you just have to know they are there. This is a national highway!! These villages have been there for centuries and the roads disrupted their lives...many children were killed going back and forth, so they put up roadblocks and paralysed the traffic till they got their speed bumps.

The cobbled streets of San Miguel are impossibly steep and narrow . It is a little city without stop signs or traffic lights. You just have to look as if you might be crossing the street and the cars stop, and the driver smiles and waves you on..drivers also extend the same courtesy to each other.

So at 6:30 pm, there I was at 5 Barranca, a very narrow calle(street) with a lot of traffic which surprised me as the agent told us it was a one way quiet little street. The house itself is very charming and you step into the living room from the street. I guess what I am trying to say is the front of the house (which includes my bedroom) is 3 feet 7 inches from the road..

So very NOISY...aieeeeee..what can you do..earplugs..Tequilla..you can hear people walking by...they are practically in bed with you!!! There is a modicum of quiet between 11pm and 5 am..that's it!

We met the owner who lives downstairs(the house is terraced) and she has owned it for only three months..delightful lady and when she bought it, they were working on Barranca higher up, and of course the main traffic was diverted, so she thought it was delightfully tranquil. There is a studio bedroom downstairs which she has offered us if we go nuts...may be going down soon!! She is all hot keen on redecorating. Soundproofing might be the way to start!

I have been revisiting old haunts and soaking up the warm weather. Nothing beats walking down, then inevitably up, the narrow cobblestoned streets .Taxis are in abundance and there is a flat rate anywhere in town for $2.50. That's my ace card!!This is a good month..starts to get hot in April, but now..just perfect.

The town has many visitors, yet somehow the rhythm is not disturbed. You can walk a different route every morning and come out somewhere new, yet all roads lead back to the Jardin(pronounced hardeen), the central historic square, which has been the meeting place of visitors and locals alike since 1737.

It is dominated by the famous Parroquia de San Miguel Arcangel church. Its construction was started in 1689 with a purse of 1000 pesos.It was built over many years in an exuberant neogothic style which has made it an internationally recognized landmark.(photo soon).

This weekend starts the Semana Santa Holy Week. Tomorrow is the dancing of the Concheros..these colourfully costumed and exuberant indigenous dancers will entertain for hours in the Jardin and surrounding streets...although these ritualistic dances sprang up after the Spanish conquest,they incorporate many pre Columbian religious symbols. I don't pretend to know much about it, but it is a very important cultural aspect of Mexico.

The cynical side of me suspects these dances and elaborate costumes are underwritten by Canon,Nikon and the like!! Who could resist hauling all one's photo equipment to shoot these costumes of leather,satin,feathers jewels and sequins!! Besides, these flimsy garments adorn oh-so photogenic muscular bronzed bodies!!

The Jardin with rows of people ten deep is the place to be tomorrow!!