Ups and downs getting to San Miguel Allende

Hola everyone;
Saturday morning, St. Patrick's day we turned over our home and Ollie to Mike and Sandie, loaded the car and started our trip to Southern and Central Mexico.

Agave fields every where you look.

We are on our way to the town of Tequila, where the agave gods

are brewing up the main ingredient of margaritas.

Statues and fountains of all sizes made by chipping away at large rocks.

We left around 8:30 a.m. had an uneventful drive on the autopista to Tequila, Mexico. Our hotel was close to Jose Cuevo, so after checking in we strolled over to Cuevo's and enjoyed a free blue agave drink. It was pleasant, but didn't have much of a kick to it. After we walked down the main street of Tequila and tasted some Tequila and just had to buy some. There was a festival on the square by our hotel and there were tents open with a lots of services offered. The event was for women and their health. So everything there was geared toward that. In the evening we ate a good Mexican meal and then walked back to our hotel. On the way, there was a musical group performing. They all wore white suits and played guitars and horns. The leader also did comic relief, but as our Spanish is spotty we understood about 1/4 our it, but enjoyed the kids and grown-up reactions. The following are a few pictures from our first 24 hours.
On Sunday morning we ate a good breakfast and headed out to Guadalajara, but Joel chose the wrong road and it took us 2 hours instead of 45 minutes to clear Guadalajara, a city of 8 million people. We then took a scenic route to San Miguel that took longer, but we saw great small towns and agricultural lands of Mexico. The soil was black and the crops and cattle reminded Joel of Iowa. You could tell the farmers were prosperous there. We stopped in a small town and had a great Chinese lunch. Yup, in the middle of Mexico we enjoyed Chinese food. We finally arrived in San Miguel Allende, drove around and then spent an hour stuck on narrow, cobble stone streets until we finally, with the help of Janice's phone calls to discover our place.

Our place turned out to put new meaning to the word "Ghetto. The first thing you saw walking in was a bar with wood chipping and paint peeling. The floor was concrete. The walls were plain. Janice e-mailed and complained that the place was nothing like the internet pictures and description represented. They offered to show us another one next door, but the location was also terrible. We went out for a walk and looked at several hotels. We finally found one we liked and decided to talk about it. We went to a Cuban restaurant and ordered Cuban food and listened to Cuban music. The band displayed the Cuban flag. There were some dancers that were a show in themselves. We were the only gringos there and enjoyed ourselves. We decided to go back to the hotel and make a reservation for the next day for us to stay the rest of this week.

The next day we woke up to find our apartment had no water. It let us know our decision to change residences was a good decision. We went out to breakfast and located our new hotel's parking. Joel packed up and we drove to the hotel's parking. We took our luggage and stowed it behind the front desk of the hotel as it was still to early to check in. We then walked the centro of San Miguel Allende. We both fell in love with city. There were cobbled stones streets, beautiful churches, and many shops and art galleries. At 3:00 we checked into our hotel. Our fates changed 180 degrees from yesterday. Before we weren't given what we paid for, today we were given a suite, it was two floors. The lower floor has a beautiful kitchen, living room and full bathroom, dining area and fireplace. The second floor has a king sized bed  and a full bath. Also there is a private patio a couple steps up. We enjoyed settling into our new digs and enjoyed some cerveza, vino and some food on the patio. We've taken many pictures of the view from our patio.

Our private patio off our bedroom in our hotel room.

We have made reservations for a trip to Guanajuato for Wednesday. We will explore Fabrica de Aurora on Thursday.  We have many places we want to see in this very short time.  We will post again on Friday.