Forced to Slow Down

San Miguel doesn’t ask you to slow down. It requires it. There are a few strategies that the town employs to ensure this happens:

Colors – San Miguel is full of vibrant color that steals your eyes. The streets are bookended with plastered cement covered with blues, oranges, pinks, maroons and greens. If it is not a plastered wall, it is a crumbling stone wall that holds up the climbing bunganvilla of vibrant pink and purple. Other tiny yellow blooms and giant red ones vie for your attention. In the morning I am always struck by the sky blue sky that looks like God literally stole that color out of every Crayola box and melted them right across the canvas.

Walking – San Miguel is a walking town. The cobblestone streets wreak havoc on a suspension system. And the traffic in this “city without a streetlight” (advertised this way, but there are a couple that I’ve seen) literally means you can get out of the cab and make better progress on many days. So, you walk most places. Of course, that slows you down. So it takes you a bit longer to get anywhere.

Driving – So, you do have to get in the car sometimes. I’ve made two trips to Queretaro to the Honda dealership (guess why!). 2/3’s of the trip is a two lane highway that then joins a four lane divided highway. On the first trip, an overturned truck on the 4 lane highway had traffic slowed to a crawl. It took 30 minutes to get around it. On the second trip, I had about 10km left on the two lane road when I found myself behind a wide load, as in, the trailer took up both of the two lanes. That means lead trucks were ahead of the trailer stopping traffic in the opposite direction and follower trucks were behind the trailer keeping us from passing. So what do you do? You slow down. You realize that you get there when you get there.

There are obviously many advantages to slowing down. I'll let you respond with your favorite in your comments. One of my favorites down here is that people don't mind when you are late. In fact, they get it. They understand. It's Mexican time.

And then, you get it, too.