San Miguel - Day 1

Well, well, well ... here we are ... we flew into Leon about noon Tuesday and were greeted by soldiers with machine guns - I felt right at home.

Customs was a breeze, then a 60-minute drive to San Miquel ... first restaurant me and Warbasse, my handler on this deal, hit was el Rinconcito, where I had four little faugita tacos, muy picante, and a couple of Modelo beers ... I share this detail because the food and drink here are outstanding ... the produce is outstanding, those tortillas are outstanding ... after just 24 hours I can tell my body loves the food ... onions, peppers, salsa, eggs, picante this and picante that, even the limes for the beer and trago are perfect ... I'm serious!!!

The streets are tiny and the sidewalks tinier ... you walk a lot here and you spend a lot of time hopping up and down curbs because the sidewalks are one way and I figure being the new guy I should yield ... Very soon I will be buying new footwear to handle the cobblestone streets - some are smooth and most are not - they dumped a bunch of stone in some areas and called it a street. I'm also going to buy a hat, probably a light fedora ... I could also use a new belt and probably a haircut. I digress.

The trek up the hill to the big plaza where the big church and statue of San Miguel reside is rather steep - you kind of feel like Rocky when you get to the top ... we hit a fine bar and I had Tradicional trago (tequila) and Bohemia beer and limes for each ... the trago is very very smooth ... I really don't drink trago, but I do now I guess ... I had two pulls of each ... Warbasse hired 8 Mariachis (sp?) to sing a couple of songs and they really belt it out - guitars, violins, trumpets, the whole works - I wish Simon could have seen that.

We hit a another bar coming down the hill and - wouldn't you know it - they had the baseball playoffs on ... already know where to go for the Yankees tonight - and more trago ... also, the joint for Saturday's OU/Texas game is right across the street from a really fine breakfast place - where this morning I had eggs/beans/muy picante on tortillas ... restaurant meals are about half price those at home - booze slightly higher than half price. There are convenience stores and groceries and shops crammed on every block in this area.

After siesta today we're going across town in Warbasse's pickup to fetch a month of his mail ... then happy hour!! Warbasse gave me a Spanish handbook and today's lesson will be numbers. Hasta luego!!