Chula Cholula: Travel Report 6: San Miguel de Allende

From Guanajuato (G) to San Miguel de Allende (H)

In my travel guide was written that malicious gossip has it that San Miguel is kind of a "Disneyland for retired gringos [US Americans]". This is certainly true.
The city is very nice, but for some reason there are soooo many elderly Americans, incredible. Moreover, they seemed a bit ignorant. I mean, they probably live there already for some years if they have retired there. But when a vendor in a shop said "veinte pesos, por favor" (twenty pesos, please), the gringo just starred at her and had to be shown the bill... Please - learn the numbers up to 20... What really pissed me off were the descendants of these guys. You have some six year old kids who look at you disparagingly and don't make not one step aside. I mean, hey, you just form part of the common herd. So, San Miguel as a city is really nice, but you have to be prepared to hear more English than Spanish and to see a lot of snobbish folks.

We stayed here over Christmas, so it was really interesting to see the festivities in Mexico. Although probably most of the activity takes place inside the homes of the families, we still had the chance to see some "typical" things. For example, everybody carries a plastic baby in his arms (especially on the 25th) and children always play with a huge pencil-like toy, which is filled with air like a balloon. In the Holy mass in the evening, the priest even mentioned the "tourists and foreigners" in his prayer - well ya, San Miguel has quite some of them, indeed.

What was also funny to see, that people continued to have the same weakness as in the former cities: Right-left-confusion. You really have to closely look at people when they tell you directions, because they point to the left and say "turn to the right". During our travel this was like a running gag, because it happend so often.

The gastronomic side of San Miguel is worth mentioning, because one advantage of some many gringos is that there is demand for decent restaurants, which you as a foreigner can still afford (in most cases). So we went to some nice restaurants, for example a French-Canadian-Mexican fusion cuisine. Especially our French speaking companion from Canada enjoyed to talk to the Canadian owner, who came from the same area as she did.
The receptionist of our hostel was also very kind, and as I got up pretty early on the 25th (in contrary to most of the other guests I spared the hangover), she shared some home-made tamales (starchy dough, usually corn-based, which is steamed or boiled in a leaf wrapper and filled with meats, cheeses, fruits, vegetables, chilies or any preparation according to taste) with me. I was never a big fan of them, but the home-made version really was something different and moreover it's very typical to have tamales on the morning of the 25th, so it felt kind of "original". The reason for this custom also has to do with the fact that Mexicans tend to make or buy huuuge quantities of tamales for the night of the 24th, so there are lots of leftovers the next day. The mode of preperation is then to slightly grill them on the comal (a smooth, flat griddle), which gives them a nice crunchy texture at the outside.
Funnily, during that day I also came across a chickpea gordita (kind of a chickpea cookie), which amazingly resembled the taste of Lebkuchen.