Sixteen Chapel of the Americas

Today, we hit a couple of milestones: first cab ride, first trip out of SMA, first nap, first meal in the marketplace, first walk without the map and it was all good.

We went to the town of Atotonilco, which is only seven miles outside of San Miguel, but if you don't know how to get there it may as well be 70. We hailed a cab which was easy and negotiated a price which was relatively easy and then enjoyed having the cool breeze of open road hit us through the window. After all of those years of having no heat in my bedroom and no AC anywhere in the house, I've grown accustomed to the control and comfort of choosing the exact temperature I want for every room I'm in. Because it's an adventure to be here, I like having nothing but a rickety ceiling fan and white curtains to block out the heat of the afternoon sun; that being said, it makes a car ride doubly refreshing. Like many cities, SMA is charming in the center and becomes nittier and grittier as you work your way to the outskirts. Chris paid careful attention to our routes; he would like to rent a car and do some exploring on our own and return to Atotonilco to visit the hot springs on that venture. Today, we had the driver take us to the Santuario de Atotonilco and we spent all of our time there. One tourism brochure that we picked up called it the Sixteen Chapel of the Americas, because it is renowned for its art. It was built in the 1740s and the entire interior is covered in murals by the indigenous artist Miguel Antonio Martinez de Pocasangre. It is breathtakingly beautiful. There isn't a place to land your eyes where there isn't something to entice them. It is a mixture of pastoral and fiery scenes, many of which Chris took pictures of although it is difficult to recreate the grandeur on film. Also, it was a bit dark and no flash photography is allowed in the sanctuary in an effort to preserve the paintings. (The World Monuments Fund put the church on its list of the world's 100 most endangered monuments.) In many ways, the Santuario is reminiscent of the Sistine Chapel, except that the Sistine Chapel is in the heart of the Apostolic Palace in the heart of Vatican City in the heart of Rome and everywhere else you look there is also something breathtaking to behold. The Santuario is in the middle of nothing. There are outbuildings in ruins behind it and a few stalls across the street where elderly men and women sell religious medals, rosaries and crowns of thorns (they're sharp), but there is little else. When he dropped us off, the cab driver asked if we would like him to stay and wait. We didn't wan't to keep him that long, but he said it was impossible to spend more than 20 minutes seeing the town, because there was nothing to see; he was right. It makes the place more remarkable somehow that it is tucked away in the middle of a speck of a town. I'm so glad we went, and everyone should.

He dropped us back in the center of SMA and we did some more research about day trips. In Panajachel last summer, there were travel agencies everywhere so it was easy to plan trips but it isn't quite so here, and I think we have settled on making our own way. Thursday morning, we'll go to the bus station at the edge of town and if we get there early enough there is supposed to be a relatively comfortable bus to Guanajuato, where we will stay for a few days. At noontime, we went back to the market and wandered through, where we saw a traveling medic checking the blood pressure of the men who worked in the stalls. We stayed in the market for lunch and had simple good soup and tortillas.

We came home when it started to sprinkle and napped and read (book club peeps--I have a lot to say about both books when we meet in August) and watched Rocky II on television. At some point, there is always a Rocky movie: we saw one in Merida and another in Pana.

We had a destination in mind when we headed out for dinner so left the house unencumbered. There was a place with live music we wanted to visit after dinner that was on the same street but at the other end of the neighborhood, but alas no music this evening (despite an advertisement that said live music tonight). On the way back, Chris suggested we turn in and take a different route home. This is not something I could ever do without a map because there are square blocks here and triangular blocks there and streets that run off into nothing, but he has such a strong internal compass, I don't question his turns. He got us home and we had the opportunity to walk through a different neighborhood than I had yet.

Chris is changing his guitar strings right now so I have a feeling there will be some live music yet in our day and just about my favorite kind, but I'm not too terribly far away from a good night's sleep.