When my friend asked me “Why are you going to San Miguel de Allende?” (I’ll call it SMA in this piece) my answer was simply “Because I’ve never been.” I’ve explored quite a lot of Mexico at this point and the Oaxacan coast feels like home after several years here, but Mexico is an enormous country and I’m slowly trying to see as much of it as possible. My visit to San Miguel de Allende was to color in that one little section of the map as a place that I now know.
I picked it specifically, over the many other small towns that remain a mystery to me, because I’ve heard good things. One of my musician friends in Puerto has spent several months there. One of my closest friends spent over a year there earlier in her life. It’s a place that I eventually heard enough about that I needed to know it for myself.
You likely have a few places like that in your mind right now. Maybe book a flight or bus to one!
I booked a flight to Mexico City and organized a 5-hour bus the next day. I’ve lived in CDMX for over a year, so the bus station is when the adventure into the unknown really began.
As you can wrest from the title, the trip wasn’t all rainbows and art galleries. If I had to crystalize the experience and boil down the days into what I will truly remember, it’s a few things—some for better, some for worse.
Better: Smile if you’re a lucky bus rider!
Mexico City is home to around 25 million people give or take a few, so trying to figure out the best bus to get to SMA left me feeling a bit overwhelmed. After a morning of wandering familiar streets and popping into old haunts around Roma Norte and Condesa, I decided I would just Uber to the north bus station and sort it out in person.
There are two bus companies that run direct from CDMX to SMA, Premier Plus and ETN. I found out from the Premier Plus ticket booth that their next bus was running three hours later in the afternoon. The ETN employee I then spoke with said their next bus to SMA was a full four hours later.
I had already taken a 20-minute Uber across town and was starting to beat myself up a bit for letting my optimism put me in this tough spot. It’ll all work out I thought to myself while in the Uber. Now I looked around a bustling bus terminal thinking about how I would be spending the next 3 hours in one of my favorite cities in the world on the hard tile floor of a bus depot.
I went back to the Premier Plus agent saying in my best Spanish “I guess I will take that bus ticket if it’s the next one going?” I smiled at her, looking slightly dejected. Looking at her computer, the agent let me know in a quiet voice like she was telling someone a secret that there was a local leaving in 5 minutes.
She began to tell me that it wasn’t very comfortable, as I said “Yes, yes, I’ll take that bus—I don’t want to wait here for three hours.” I paid the 400 pesos and thanked the woman for selling me a bus ticket for a competitor before speed walking through the massive terminal.
As I walked I thought, I wonder if she would have told me about this bus if I was rude or upset towards her. I’ll never know, but I think simply smiling and trying my best to be kind might have saved me a three-hour wait in the end. This trip taught me a valuable first lesson before I even left the city.
Less than 5 minutes after getting on the bus its engine rumbled on, and we slowly made our way out of Mexico City to parts unknown. I had a massive smile on my face as I looked out of the window with my Kindle on my lap, imagining what I would have been doing in the terminal at the start of my three-hour wait.
Worse: The very last shared hostel room of my life.
The night before leaving I booked a random hostel on Booking.com in the northern part of the old city. It was a four-person dorm room in a cute hostel with good reviews. I walked almost 30 minutes from the bus station and checked in around 8 pm. I dropped my bags, took the key from reception, and took off with music in my ears to find a cold beer and explore this beautiful colonial city.
I wandered around the main square, famous for its gorgeous cathedral that looks like a castle straight out of Disneyland. I listened to the three competing mariachi bands blast trumpet music across the crowded park. I stopped in at a cantina with wooden swinging doors and had a cold Victoria before returning to the hostel around 11 pm. When I arrived, I realized that my keys didn’t work.
After a dozen failed attempts with the two keys I was given, I knocked, I pulled the string on the little bell, and I called from the street. I repeated those three noisy things for twenty minutes until the frustrated-looking receptionist finally opened the door.
“Mis llaves no funcion” I said, which I thought should have been evident by the noise I was making in the street. She took the keys from me, certain I was just an idiot, only to find they actually didn’t work. She still seemed annoyed at the situation. I thought to myself, “You’re annoyed? I paid for a bed and you gave me keys that don’t work… I should be annoyed.”
I thanked her for letting me in and went to my room, where I found my three roommates already in bed. Right away, the size of the man in the bed below me gave me pause. I had the passing thought “I hope he doesn’t snore” and went to brush my teeth. I returned to the sound of a grizzly bear hibernating in the bed below me. This guy didn’t snore, this guy had a medical issue.
I rolled around for a few hours reading my book and wondering if the cacophony of noise from the bed below would ever let up. It did not. I tried playing a white music loop into my AirPods to drown out the grizzly bear, but I could feel his snoring in my bones. Around 4 am I took some old Nyquil pills that I remembered seeing in my bag. Around 5 am I mercifully slid into a dream state, shaking from the sleep apnea vibrations in my top bunk.
In the morning, I found the annoyed receptionist. Now it was my turn to be annoyed. I explained to her that I couldn’t sleep in that room, and she seemed to know before I finished telling the story of my terrible night that the snoring was a problem. The three other roommates were all friends and had been staying there for a few days. One of them didn’t even try to sleep in the room. His bags were there, but he slept on the terrace or in some other corner of the property.
She offered to refund me the cost of the next two nights and I gratefully accepted while urging her to put a block on the room while those guys occupied the only other three beds. “You’re just setting people up to be tortured if you let folks book that bed,” I told her.
I managed to find a private room just a block away for nearly the same price as the dorm bed. I checked in, and despite being on around 4 hours of sleep, my entire mood changed as I closed my own door and realized “That might be the last dorm bed I ever book for the rest of my life.”
I love my sleep too much at this point in life to let a stranger steal it from me. It was a painful way to learn this truth, but I think that was it. That was the last night in a hostel dorm. There’s always a first night, and I suppose, there’s always a last.
Better: Compliment strangers, don’t plan too much, and be prepared to run.
My favorite day of the entire trip was a Monday. It was also my last full day in SMA. I woke up with the plan of renting a bike and riding out of town to some hot springs that a friend had mentioned. I walked to the lone bike rental company that a quick search on Google Maps brought up. I was greeted by a lovely middle-aged woman. She told me right away that her brother ran the bike shop and he was out of town.
She invited me inside and said she would call him. She came back with her phone and I said “You have a really beautiful house.” That compliment changed the next 30 minutes and the energy of my entire day. She said that she couldn’t reach her brother, but that this house was built by their parents over 50 years ago and then asked if I wanted a tour. 10 minutes later we were up on her private terrace overlooking beautiful colonial streets, rolling hills further off in the distance. She wasn’t able to get me a bike, but we had a great conversation that switched between English and Spanish, and I left feeling like the day was going to be a special one.
I got back home and looked up directions to the hot springs again. It was still 11 kilometers down a country highway. I had just finished reading David Goggin’s book “Can’t Hurt Me,” and somewhere between the motivation wrested from that incredible true story and the beautiful start of my day, I decided that I would just run there.
I have had three serious knee surgeries, so while I enjoy running, I almost always keep it to under five kilometers. This would be the longest run of my entire 30s. I laced my shoes, charged my phone, and took off into the sun. I made a few turns out of town, and got on the main road to the hot springs, swinging my arms and sweating on the shoulder of the highway.
My body felt good. I was proud of my knees. I glared at the sun and just kept moving my body forward. One hour later I arrived at the gate to the hot springs fully drenched in sweat, smiling from ear to ear, holding my wallet, phone, and AirPods case.
For the next 2 hours, I slowly drank two Heinekens while wading through the various pools of the hot springs. The hottest of all was down a long dark tunnel. When the tunnel opened into a huge circular chamber, steam swirling and mixing in with a few columns of sunlight blasting through holes in the ceiling, I knew that I was making a memory. I knew immediately that this moment would be the highlight of the entire trip.
After finding the hottest pool, I went and lay in the grass drying off, thanking my body, sipping my second beer, and smiling at my good fortune. I was in the best mood I had been in for quite some time—the type of mood that you can’t really improve—and I took a cab back to San Miguel so I could spread that feeling through the streets.
Worse: Food, mood, and Pad Thai, dude!
When I got back to San Miguel, I threw my guitar over my back and took off into the streets. My legs were tired from the run, my skin was kissed from the sun, and my body felt amazing from floating in natural hot springs for the afternoon. I was radiating good vibes and I knew it. People were looking at me like “I want whatever that guy has,” as I happily strolled around SMA with a bounce in my step, smiling like I just lost my virginity.
All the smiling eventually made me hungry. I decided to look for some nearby, well-rated Asian food. I found a Thai restaurant called Orquidea a few blocks from my current location, so I walked in, sat at an empty table, and immediately ordered chicken Pad Thai. Sometimes my bones just desperately want chicken Pad Thai.
When the waiter set down my plate my glowing mood and ear-to-ear smile began to fade. Without dragging the story on too long, here is the review I posted 5 minutes after I yelled toward the kitchen “You should be embarrassed” while walking out of the restaurant.
I don’t think I’ve ever yelled anything toward anyone working in any restaurant in my entire life (I’m a former service industry hustler myself). This plate of food was just that upsetting. It was borderline criminal. I certainly felt robbed of my 200 pesos.
Note: 200 pesos is more money than I’ve paid for any single meal in Puerto Escondido in the past year. I expected to at least be full.
Better: It’s best to have your own opinion, so just book the trip.
One of my favorite expressions of all time is “never try, never know,” (an expression used all over southeast Asia that’s not quite as famous as same same but different), and through the ups and downs—I’m glad to know SMA.
I’m glad I know why so many ex-pats settle here in their swan years. I’m glad to know it’s not my place. I’m glad to know that it might be the right place to spend a week picking out fancy art if I ever get rich in the future.
Basically, I’m glad to have my own opinion.
I want to visit everywhere before I’m put in the ground and become a tree. I plan to spend many more weekends in Puerto Escondido, and I’m extremely grateful to have had the chance to get away and spend this one in SMA.
I’m grateful I got to see something new, to run further than I have in 10 years, and even to get robbed by an old Thai restauranteur. That experience helped me fall even deeper in love with Puerto Escondido when the plane bounced on the tarmac and I felt the sea breeze rush in through the open door upon landing on my return flight from CDMX.
In general, when I’m considering if I should do something or not I think to myself Am I going to remember this? If the answer I find is “yeah, probably” I usually summon the motivation to do it. I’m really glad to know San Miguel de Allende for myself. I’m equally as glad to know it’s not my place. Hopefully, someday I’ll return to take another photo of the castle and to buy an expensive painting. But, if I don’t, I’ll be entirely content with my time spent there.
After all, there are many more places on the map to color in.