The Road to San Miguel

Here in Mexico, we are enjoying a three day weekend.  Constitution Day is observed on the first Monday of February, creating one of the long weekends which Mexicans refer to as "puentes" (bridges).  As I mentioned in yesterday's post, Alejandro and I took a road trip.  We left Mexico City on Saturday morning, and are returning this afternoon.  This year the religious feast day known as Candelaria (Candlemas in English) fell yesterday on the Sunday of the "puente".  As I have mentioned before, it is traditional to eat tamales on Candelaria, and we were invited by our friends Al and Stew, an expat couple who own a beautiful "rancho" outside of San Miguel de Allende, to a "tamalada", a feast of tamales.

We very much enjoy our occasional excursions outside of the city, but the headache of a road trip is just getting out of the Mexico City metropolitan area with its snarl of traffic.  There have been times when we have left on a weekend trip when the stop and go traffic moving at a snail's pace has been nerve wracking.  

We got up early on Saturday morning.  However, by the time we had breakfast at one of our favorite restaurants, returned to the apartment, brushed our teeth, put our suitcases in the trunk, and stopped for gas, it was 10:30 before we were on the road.  I feared that by that time the traffic on the roads heading out of the city would be horrendous with people leaving for the holiday weekend.  To my surprise, the traffic on the highway was light and moving smoothly.

We continued beyond the city limits through the endless urban sprawl to the north without any slowdowns.

The famous towers designed by noted architect Luis Barragán that mark the suburb of Ciudad Satélite.

It seemed to good to be true, and it was.  For a couple of miles the traffic slowed to a crawl in advance of the toll booths for the highway north to Querétaro.

"Reduce you speed.  Toll booth in 2 kilometers."

Ha!  Our speed has already been reduced for at least a mile.

 

After passing the toll booth and entering the toll road, traffic moved along nicely... for a while.  Then we came to a spot where another major highway joins in, and traffic again was reduced to a crawl.

Fortunately, after that, we had no more delays.  We continued along the toll road toward Quetétaro, located 132 miles to the northwest of Mexico City.  

However, before reaching Querétaro, a booming economic center with a population of more than one million people, we turned off onto another highway heading due west to the city of Celaya.  This road had even less traffic.

On the northern industrial outskirts of Celaya, we turned northward on yet another highway which took us to San Miguel de Allende.  At 3:30 in the afternoon, five hours after our departure from Mexico City, we arrived at our hotel in San Miguel.