I just spent a week in San Miguel de Allende, one of Colonial Mexico's oldest and most charming cities. Having been a travel writer and editor for 10 years, I'm very good at doing research and networking to get the best information about the places I visit. And while I found lots of great things to recommend about San Miguel, I'm only going to share one: Marina von Anrep at SanMiguelConcierge. Whether it's shopping, dining, sightseeing, transportation , entertainment or special requests, Marina knows how to make it happen effortlessly. Her fee is $100 (which covers all phone reservations and communications), plus 20% of the net sightseeing, transportation and miscellaneous services that are conveniently billed through her. She's worth every penny.

Posted April 05, 2006 - Billy Knows Best

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It is well worth the stop! Please call San Miguel Concierge to arrange you appointment. A small demo fee is charged or can be used as a credit against the merchandise which can be purchased to paint yourself or is available finished using high quality oil paints.

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Traveling throughout Mexico can be equally rewarding and dangerous. Rewarding if you experience authentic Mexican food, culture, beautiful scenery, and people; and dangerous if you get lost and end up in an unsafe section, unsure of what to do or how to go about getting help. Tony Cohan explores the remarkable country of Mexico in 18 chapters of his travel narrative, Mexican Days.

Chapter 1: Once Upon a Time in Mexico
“So what do you make of this?” said Xavier. I watched, from behind a cordon of yellow police tape, Antonio Banderas in a mariachi outfit, and Salma Hayek in far less, dangling from cables affixed to the rooftop of the Hotel San Francisco in San Miguel de Allende’s central plaza, el jardin. Walkie-talkies crackled in Spanish and English. A utility van edged slowly past with a card taped to its windshield reading "ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO."

Chapter 2: Invitation to the Voyage
“The next morning I awoke to blessed silence. Dreams of lost luggage, a stolen passport, and an incomplete list diffused into the high beamed recesses of the ceiling. I gazed blearily at my still-packed suitcases on the bedroom floor.

Out the tall window, first sunlight tipped the pergola of the casita. An iridescent hummingbird sipped from a fat orange blossom of the trumpet vine trailing down the patio adobe wall. The deep bell known as La Luz tolled its muffled call to vespers at La Parroquia. I was back.
A volley of small explosions erupted: firecrackers announcing a neighborhood fiesta, that rowdy dawn custom so familiar to San Miguel residents and irritating to visitors. The loud cracks stopped, then began again, in patterned salvos. No, it wasn’t firecrackers but gunshots.
Filming was starting early at the Hotel San Francisco. Struggling up, I went to the kitchen. There was just enough Chiapas coffee left to make a strong cup. Another fusillade of bullets burst forth form the jardin.
I washed, slipped into some clothes, and headed out, thinking I’d mull over the writing proposal over breakfast somewhere in the centro. Stepping out onto Calle Flor, I saw a crowd of extras, dressed as tattered Mexican peasants, surging toward me, urged on by bullhorns, trailed by cameras on dollies. Cornered like a borracho at San Miguel’s yearly September pamplonada, the bull run, I ducked back inside just ahead of their charge and slammed the door. I went to the phone and called the editor back.

Later that morning when the film crew had moved on to their next setup, I left the house. Avoiding the jardin, which still resonated with gunshots, I walked down Pila Seca and flagged a taxi.

“La Gruta,” I said to the driver, climbing in beside him. We bumped own Calle Canal, a street encoded with ghost recollections of fiestas and parades, moles and mariscos, walks taken alone or with friends-textures laid into memory like the coats of lime wash on these old colored walls. The medieval enclosure of the colonial center widened to reveal a glistening strip of lake at the foot of town, la presa, swollen with water from months of summer rains.

The taxista turned north at the two-lane road toward the town of Dolores Hidalgo. Quickly we left behind old San Miguel on its hill, racing past sections of “new” town that grew ceaselessly outward these days in rings - new colonias, little unsurfaced brick neighborhoods with their own names. Soon we hit open campo, windows down, fresh morning air buffeting the cab.

I’d never had a car in Mexico. Once I tried to figure the costs of owning one compared to hopping taxis and buses, or renting an occasional car, and decided I’d come out ahead. But the calculation had less to do with economics than with what being here meant: a respite from California driving for life on foot, open to encounters, pauses, the mysteries hidden in slowness. In Mexico I took the stance of a pilgrim, inviting correctives to the limitations of the culture I came from, revelations offered me here as boons.

Twenty minutes outside San Miguel the taxi let me off at small crossroads beside a low running wall with the hand-painted words LA GRUTA. Across from it, a whitewashed sign with an arrow said ATOTONILCO. The taxi sped off, leaving me alone in the empty morning. Tiny insects buzzed about my head. A black crow cawed from the twisted limb of a pirule tree.

The groundwater around the nearby village and penitent shrine of Atotonilco is uniformly hot (in fact the word atotonilco in Nahuatl means “place of hot waters”) and feed the baths of La Gruta, “The Grotto.” On full moon nights La Gruta hosted hedonistic gatherings of San Miguel New Agers, and on weekends tourists took over, but I hoped that on this quiet morning it would be mine alone.

I slipped through the gate onto the untended property. Passing a large swimming pool drained of water, I came to a fence bordering a stream where Chichimecan women scrubbed clothes on rocks. I parted a cluster of tall cane in the middle of the field and stood before a small blue oval pool filled with clear water.

Hidden from the gaze of giggling washerwomen, I slipped out of my clothes, lowered myself over the edge, panting, my chin on my arms, listening to a church bell, a tawdry cock’s crow, a car accelerating on the highway beyond, my mind filling, then emptying, with all it had taken to get here.

"A big spring issue, focusing on Mexico," the editor had said. What’s interesting these days? Take some trips. Look around the country. Not the usual treatment….

The prospect excited me, of course. I found Mexico endlessly alluring. It had been a long while since I’d traveled around; with the years, as I’d settled into San Miguel, inevitably I’d journeyed less to other regions. An article could help finance a trip to South America I’d had in mind. But I’d just set my bags down in San Miguel after a round of travels, barely tasted arrival. And it was hard to think straight with Robert Rodriguez and crew shooting up the town.

I clambered out of the pool, wrapped a towel around me, and walked through an opening in a stone wall to a paved area with old rusty lockers. Leaving my clothes in one, I lowered myself into an open rectangular pool surrounded by banks of palms, cacti, and flowers.

I swam to the far end, where steaming groundwater coursed from a narrow arched tunnel, and waded into the chest-high current. Sliding onto my stomach, I paddled up ascending locks in darkness toward distant dancing beams of light. Rough stone walls brushed my skin; the rising roar of water filled my ears.

I came to a domed brick chamber; the grotto. Shafts of light from pinholes in the roof made little rainbows in the steam. A waterfall surged from an opening high in the dome. Slithering over the rim into the circular pool, I stroked toward the hot, deafening cascade and stood beneath it, eyes closed, shoulders drooped, letting the torrent blast my thoughts into smithereens.

Chapter 8: Dinner With Lauren
Early that November, after my weeks in Oaxaca and Chiapas, I made a series of short trips in and around Mexico City. It was hard to discern, in bustling, smoggy Cuernavaca, an hour distant from the capital, the quiet town under the volcano that had drawn writers, artists, and eccentrics of an earlier era.

In nearby Tepotzlan, birthplace of the Aztec serpent-god Quetzalcoatl, proto-hippies selling crystals and tie-dyed T-shirts in the plaza seemed to have commandeered the erstwhile midcentury artists’ bohemia.

In Valle de Bravo, a popular pine-forested retreat to the north, noise from the boats on the artificial lake, cheesy tourist kiosks along the old cobbled streets, and traffic jams on the road out infected the beauty of the setting. The pressures of the swelling capital had tainted its old getaways, it seemed; after resonant Oaxaca, they felt tinny.

From the window of a Flecha Amarilla bus running north to San Miguel, I gazed out at burning husks of maize, black crows wheeling over fields. Verdant when I traveled this road a month earlier, the earth was brown now, the air dry.

November is a time of special feeling in Mexico, the country’s rich relationship to the subject of mortality coming to the force. All over Mexico a curiously festive dance of death takes place. On the second day of the month, cemeteries throughout the country fill with visitors for Day of the Dead.

In the city of Guanajuato, the plazas brim with puestos, stalls, sporting thousands of the most astounding handmade alfeniques, little sugar or chocolate objects, often in the form of skulls, some with personalized names - also animals, cars, houses, practically anything one could imagine.

In homes and public buildings, altars are erected: tall tables with four wands on each corner, candles, incense, photographs of the deceased-and a profusion of rich gold cempasuchi, the “flower of four hundred petals” that we call marigold.

In that November of 2001, surely a year of death, I’d seen such an altar erected in Mexico City’s Tepito Market in memory of a young man immolated in the World Trade Center attacks, his earnest young eyes gazing out from what looked to be a graduation snapshot.

The landscape outside the bus window mutated from city to suburb to fields of corn, burros, shepherds, and hooded women in rebozos: traveling back in time. I’d chosen a second-class bus over the big, new direct primera classes with their booming television monitors, hoping to allow a dream corridor of transition to unfold at the window - as it had on that first Mexican bus ride to San Miguel sixteen years earlier, altering my course forever.
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Tony Cohan is the award-winning author of On Mexican Time, the memoir Native State, and the novels Opium and Canary. His articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and Condé Nast Traveler. He divides his time between Mexico and California.

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(Mile 3) Take Dr. Moro/San Luis Potosi (SLP) hwy out of San Miguel (two-lane)

(Mile 23) Approximately 20 miles from San Miguel, the road splits (“V”-shaped median). Road will then split again – one road to the right (Hwy 57/Gueretaro) and one road will go over the hwy (left side of fork). Stay on this road for a few yards until you see a small sign on the right-hand side of the lane pointing left (Hwy 57/SLP); do a “U” turn here. Stay right to get to Hwy 57 North.
(NOTE: Never take the hwys marked “Libre”; always take the “Cuota”, or “toll” roads. It will cost approximately $85 dollars round-trip, but well worth it! Always make sure you fill up your gas tank when you can. There is one place enroute to TX where there is a long time between stations.)
(Mile 100) Turn right JUST before the overpass and DO NOT follow signs towards San Luis Potosi (SLP). Follow sign that says “Matehuala/CD Valles Cuota.” (You should be headed towards Matehuala and Saltillo.

(Mile 107) Sign over toll booth says “Caseta de Cobre” (39 pesos). Immediately after the toll booth, take the highway to Matehuala/Hwy 57 straight ahead. (There is a large Pemex station here, as well as a Subway and La Hacienda Restaurant.)

(Mile 116) When you see a small sign (“Matehuala 160km”), just keep going towards Matehuala.

(Mile 209) You will be crossing the Tropic of Cancer – large sign over the road.

(Mile 220) When the road splits, follow the Saltillo (Cuota) sign (Hwy 57) to the right. You’ll be going in the direction of Monterrey also.

(Mile 221) New Pemex and restaurant.

(Mile 225) Toll booth (13 pesos). Go straight towards Saltillo (Matehuala/Dr. A rroyo goes off to right.)

(Mile 300) Saltillo/Monterrey – 214 kms from Monterrey.

(Mile 345) Take right fork (Saltillo/Monterrey Cuota)

(Mile 349) Toll booth (50 pesos)

(Mile 368) Keep following “Cuota”.

(Mile 376) Toll booth (32 pesos)

(Mile 382) (Km marker 21) Exit right towards Monterrey (Hwy 40). This is EASY TO MISS! Don’t go straight to Saltillo.

(Mile 402) Sign on right side of road says “Puente Intl Columbia.”

(Mile 403) Road splits. Follow sign to the right (Nuevo Laredo/Reynosa/M Aleman Cuota”) (Easy to miss this, so look carefully!) (You’re about 230 kms from Nuevo Laredo at this point.)

(Mile 408) The hwy will split. Keep going straight following “Cuota” sign. Sign will say “Nuevo Laredo/Reynosa/Columbia/Monterrey”.

(Mile 409) You will see a small sign saying Nuevo Laredo – 223 (km)

(Mile 412) Sign: “Laredo, Reynosa, Columbia.” Road splits. Keep going straight (don’t go off to the right).

(Mile 413) Toll Booth (101 pesos) “Reynosa/Nuevo Laredo/Columbia/Hwy 40).

Mile 428) Exit left take Hwy “Mex 85” towards Nuevo Laredo/Columbia. At this point, you can decide whether you want to enter the U.S. through Nuevo Laredo or Columbia. We went through Laredo once (one-hour delay on the bridge), and through Columbia once (searched car, but U.S. Customs did it quickly and efficiently.) No matter which way you go through, look at your gas gauge. If you have a quarter tank or less, be sure to stop in Laredo (if you go through there) or in Encinal (if you go through Columbia, for gasoline!!!

(Mile 429) Staying in the left lane, keep following signs to Nuevo Laredo, Hwy 85 – Cuota.

(Mile 431) “Nuevo Laredo/Cuota” (approx. 190 kms from Nuevo Laredo) - curves to left.

(Mile 477) Keep going straight, following signs to Nuevo Laredo. Toll booth (180 pesos) (approx. 122 kms from Nuevo Laredo)

(Mile 537) Go under overpass (large sign says “Aduana Mexico”)

You’ll see a sign that says “Reynosa / Piedras Negras” just after overpass.

Important**: When you see a sign that says “Puente International /Columbia,” keep in mind

that although they are both in the same direction you’re currently traveling, they

are NOT at the same location! Columbia is further than the International Bridge.

(Mile 538) Next, follow the sign that says “Puente International/Columbia/…” to the right. Keep left because road will split very quickly - follow sign Piedras Negras/Columbia (large overhead sign) – NOT “Reynosa” sign which goes to the right.

At next split, take left to Columbia (50 more km)

(Mile 549) Sign: to Columbia /Puente (Bridge) III – 36 km

(Mile 558) ***If going through Nuevo Laredo, follow the sign that says “Nuevo Laredo, 1km”. If going through Columbia, go past the sign that says “Nuevo Laredo”. Turn right immediately after underpass (big curve) – small sign on overpass. Road splits. Follow the signs towards Piedras Negras/Puente III Columbia – NOT Monterrey (Mex 2). Go approximately 15 miles to large green sign that says “Puente Columbia.” Go right to Columbia Bridge. Pay 20 pesos.

ADDED DEC 2004:
If you’re going through Nuevo Laredo:
It’s about 20 km from the toll booth (Aduana) to Nuevo Laredo. Keep going straight to a sign that says “Puente International I Centro.” Pass large HEB on right. Just after you see that sign, go left (at about 10 o’clock – if you can visualize that direction). You’ll be on Obregon St. Pass Church’s Fried Chicken on left (Paseo Colon St.) Keep going straight. Pass Abraham Lincoln St. Keep following signs to Puente International I until it dead ends; go right, past brick-red-colored fences. Go to left after you see bridge. Get in right lane (goes faster than the left one). Once you’ve crossed into the US, keep going straight until you see a sign for I 35. Turn right on Matamoros, then left when you again see a sign for I-35N.

(Mile 570) Puente International Columbia (Entire trip takes us between 8-9 hours, SMA to Columbia)

IF YOU HAVE A VEHICLE STICKER, BE SURE TO FOLLOW THE “RETURN PERMIT” SIGNS THAT DIRECT YOU TO THE LEFT AND TO THE OFFICE NEXT LOCATED NEXT TO THE LANES WHERE YOU WOULD HAVE ENTERED MEXICO.!! THE AGENT WILL REMOVE THE STICKER AND ISSUE A RECEIPT. BIG PROBLEMS NEXT TIME YOU RETURN, IF YOU DON’T DO IT! (In the for-what-it’s- worth department, the reason for this is that they’ll think you never left Mexico if you don’t turn in your sticker. There’s a big problem with cars being brought over the border and sold in Mexico for far cheaper prices than Mexican cars, so they’re trying to keep track of them.

Important Spanish Translations while on the road
Curva Peligrosa - Dangerous curve

Area de Descansar - Rest Area

Retorno - Place where you can turn around

Guardia su Distancia - Keep your distance from the other vehicles

Maneje con Precaucion - Drive with Caution

Carril Izquierdo Solo Para Rebasar - Left lane for passing only

Respete Limite de Velocidad - Obey the speed limits

Paradero - Bus Stop

Radar en operacion - Radar in operation

Un Solo Carrill - One lane only

Cruce de Peatones - Pedestrian Crossing

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From: San Antonio, Lackland AFB (Exit 3A off of Hwy 410S)
(Obviously not everybody will start from this point but here we go)

Odometer: 0 (“Mile __” indicates the number of miles FROM COLUMBIA. Keep in mind that sometimes the miles will not be ENTIRELY accurate – may be off a bit either more or less.

NOTE: Always take the Toll Roads (“Cuota”), NOT the free (“libre”) roads. It will cost between $40-50 USD each way, but well worth it. Great roads, plenty of Pemex stations, restaurants. Best not to drive at night, unless absolutely necessary.) You can pay in both dollars and pesos.

Take Hwy 35S to Columbia, TX. Probably a good idea to fill up in Encinal (take exit 39 to Love’s Gas Station. They also have a Subway, Chicken, store, etc.) where you can stock up on food and drink for your trip.

Take exit 24 off of I-35 (Columbia/Solidarity International Bridge) Toll: $3.00 USD

Mile 0 This is the point at which you cross into Mexico. The Mexican official will inspect your passport or other ID and direct you to park and enter the building on your right where you will go to the Migracion office to obtain your tourist card (or get your FM-3 stamped) and to the Banjercito window to obtain your vehicle permit. For the tourist card, a passport or certified copy of your birth certificate is required. This agent will note the days you are allowed in Mexico. Be sure you are given enough time (up to 6 months). Next will be the Banjercito window to get your vehicle sticker, if you need one. For your vehicle sticker, the person who will be applying, will need a photo driver’s license, original vehicle registration, major credit card, passport, tourist card ( or FM-3), and the original vehicle title. All must be in the same name. Your permit will have the days date as the start date and an expiration date. Make sure enough time is allowed. There are special conditions to meet if your vehicle has a loan against it. Find out what those are before arriving at the border to ensure you have the correct authorization, as I am not sure. You will not be asked for your Mexican insurance documents but be sure you have them and know how the process works if you should be in an accident. The insurance carrier will give you the details.

Additional notes:

*Make multiple copies of all documents for the officials use. If they want the copies make there, there is a clerk standing by to make them and take your money.

*Always go through “Nothing to Declare” gates or lanes when they are presented.

*You may be required to push (or they will for you) a button to get a Green light or Red light. A Red light may require that some or ALL your possessions be searched. But so far, we haven’t had that problem.

*You may speed the vehicle permit process by applying in advance on the Banjercito Internet site www.Banjercito.com.mx. There you enter your vehicle and personal information. You are then given a completed document to print that contains a “slip” number good for 30 days. When you present the document to the agent, they pull it up and don’t need to slowly review all your papers.

*Sanborn’s internet site has EXCELLENT overviews of the ENTIRE PROCESS. You will find entry requirements, crossing hours and locations, Banjercito location and hours, Gas prices, conversation tables, toll road prices, etc, etc. Check out www.sanbornsinsurance.com. There is even a link to the Banjetcito page. I can’t emphasize how helpful that information can be.

Once out of the building and on the road in Mexico, turn left, then right at the large orange and yellow sculptures.

Mile 2 There is a large Pemex station on the right. Probably a good idea to go ahead and fill up and use restroom. (Incidentally, almost all the restrooms we encountered at Pemex stations or restaurants were very clean, and the majority had toilet paper. But it’s still a good idea to carry a Kleenex packet with you.) Turn left onto a four-lane (sign says “Nuevo Laredo / Monterrey”)

Mile 15 Take Reynosa / Monterrey Hwy 2 lane to the right when highway splits (temporarily it will be a 2-lane road). Keep following signs toward Monterrey. (Nuevo Laredo / Puente International III lane goes off to the left.)

Mile 35 Follow signs to Monterrey / Hwy 85. Will go off to the right (approximately 207 km to Monterrey). When you see a split in the road that directs automobiles and autobuses to take the right lane, and trucks (camiones) to take the left lane, take the right lane.

Mile 37 Mexican inspection station. An official will want to see your documents. You then pass through lanes with Green/Red lights. If they are Green or they wave you on, just keep going straight. If not you will be instructed to proceed to an inspection area. Once completed, you’ll now be on a four-lane road.

Mile 66 When you see a sign that says “Monterrey / Autopista de Cuota”, take the left lane. This is the TOLL ROAD towards Monterrey. You’ll see a small green sign on the right side of the road that says “Monterrey 145 (km)”

Mile 96 Toll booth. Cars charged 180 pesos. Keep going towards Monterrey/Hwy 85, After you go under the overpass, you’ll see a large Pemex station on the left immediately after the overpass. El Rancho Express Hotel, Subway and Churches Chicken are here. This is located about 1 ½ hours from Mexican Customs at the border bridge crossing.

Mile 146 Road splits: Take the highway to the right marked “Mexico / Saltillo / Hwy 40 / Cuota”). (The highway to Monterrey goes off to the left. DON’T take that one.)

Mile 150 Road splits again. Keep following the highway towards Saltillo (Hwy 40) to the left. (Highway to Monterrey goes off to the right.) This highway takes you around Monterrey (not THROUGH it), towards Hwy 57.

Mile 161 Toll booth (101 pesos). Stay on Hwy 40 towards “Saltillo / Mexico”

Mile 188 You cross a well-marked state line.

Mile 190 Pemex.

Mile 191 Highway splits again. Take the lane to the left, marked “Matehuala / Hwy 57. THIS IS EASY TO MISS, so pay close attention! We missed it the last time we went, and had to do a U-turn, but only set us back a mile or two…

Mile 197 Toll booths (32 pesos)

Mile 205 Road splits again. Follow left-hand lane towards Mexico/ Matehuala, Hwy 57 (lane to Saltillo goes off to the right.)

Mile 206 Pemex and OXXO (7 Eleven-type store).

Mile 226 Toll booth (50 pesos). About 200 km from Matehuala.

Mile 227 “Mexico/Matehuala” sign – take left side of “Y”

Mile 320 Pemex.

Mile 342 At Matehuala, the road splits again. Take the left lane towards San Luis Potosi (SLP)/Gueretaro/Cuota.

Mile 350 Follow SLP (straight ahead). Toll 13 pesos.

Note: Take the Matehuala Centro exit (Mile 356) ONLY if you want to go into

Matehuala for a hotel stay.

Mile 454 Follow the hwy 57 straight, in left lane to Queretaro when road splits and SLP exits to the right (approx 217 kms from Queretaro.

Mile 468 Toll booth (39 pesos) - Follow Hwy 57 (“Queretaro/Lagos de Moreno”). Pemex on left before toll booth.

Just before the road splits to San Miguel (see below), look for a small white sign on the right-hand side of the road that says “Puente Ferrocarril (railroad bridge). The turnoff to San Miguel is very close.

Mile 475 Follow to left sign that says “Mexico/Gueretaro” Caution, sharp curve.

Mile 476 Continue straight on highway 57, sign says Mexico/Queretero. (San Luis Potosi exits to the right).

Mile 496 Pemex.

Mile 557 Road splits. Take the road marked “San Miguel de Allende / Dr. Moro” / Hwy 57 (HWY 57 actually continues on South toward Queretaro and you want to go West toward San Miguel). This is a NARROW, two-lane road that takes you in to San Miguel. Keep following signs towards San Miguel – around ½ half an hour but don’t bank on that due to traffic!

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The birthplace of modern Mexico is a humdrum little town 130 miles north of Mexico City. It was called Dolores until September 15, 1810, when a local priest, Miguel Hidalgo y Costillo, performed the famous grito - or cry - of "¡Independencia!". It has been Dolores Hidalgo, the "Cradle of Independence", ever since. Even today, a mansion is kept permanently empty, solely to accommodate the president when he arrives on the night of September 14 to re-enact the grito.

My visit coincided with the run-up to this ?esta, so Dolores Hidalgo was awash with red, white and green bunting. At the church I stopped to chat to Don Lupe, a wizened octogenarian who was ringing the bell that Hidalgo had used to summon the people to revolt. After his session, Don Lupe told me he had been rehearsing for the main gig - and that although he did it every year, he was still excited about the celebrations.

As we talked, another man introduced himself as "Don Federico Acatorre Martínez, son-in-law of the famous singer-songwriter José Alfredo Jiménez". I thought at ?rst he was touting for business as a guide, but he just wanted to show me round his town out of pride and a liking for company. After we had glanced inside the church and had an icecream on the plaza - Dolores is famous for its ices, which are made from tropical fruit, vegetables and even sea food - he took me to the Museo Casa de Hidalgo. "This," he said, pointing, "is the bill of rights signed by all the revolutionaries on that fateful day. This is Hidalgo's pen, and here are his chair and dog-collar."

With its priestly furniture and genteel façade, at ?rst the house seems an unlikely revolutionary vipers' nest. But Hidalgo and his fellow freedom-?ghters were middle-class liberals and, as in other independence movements in Latin America, it was bourgeois Creoles who led the way.

To get the background to the revolution I had to travel to the towns of Guanajuato and San Miguel de Allende. These are Mexico's famed "silver cities", built on the riches that were discovered in the 16th century and mined for the next two centuries at the behest of the Spanish crown.

Guanajuato is a Unesco World Heritage Site, and on a sunny day its narrow streets heave with tourists (most of them Mexican) and locals out shopping. Architecture buffs can't get enough of the colonial buildings and elegant plazas, but I tripped out to the Museo de las Momias on the edge of town. I was not disappointed. The mummies, with their gaping mouths and rigor mortis poses, were straight out of a zombie nightmare.

Their display is not related to any ethnological pursuit, they are there because Mexicans are fascinated by death. Pasted up between the cabinets were grim cartoons about the after life. One showed a skeleton smiling and warning "Como te ves me ví, como me ves te verás" or "As you see yourself I saw myself, as you see me you shall see yourself". Another featured a young girl coyly eyeing a handsome youth and telling her mother, "Mama, I'd die for him". She is, of course, already a corpse.

On the outskirts of Guanajuato is the Hacienda San Gabriel de Barrera, where you can see how a 17th-century Spanish silver baron lived. The heavy wooden furniture from Spain, France and England, vast reception rooms and close attention to detail throughout suggest that the relocation fantasy was well established by colonial times.

But it is in San Miguel de Allende that contemporary barons - including oil billionaires from Houston - prefer to live out their Hispanic fantasies. To middle-class Americans, this is one of the best-known towns in Latin America. George W Bush even namechecked San Miguel, along with Santiago and San Juan, in a speech to Latino voters. It is viewed Stateside as authentic Mexico without any of the hassles.

The town lends itself to this idealism. Its ochre and rose façades are artfully distressed, its streets are quaintly cobbled, and it manages to be both chic and traditional. Aromas of coriander and lime ooze from cool eateries, and shops selling organic coffee from Chiapas - the tropical southern province better known for Comandante Marcos and his Zapatista followers - share the pavements with emporia piled with religious artifacts. After dark, bars stage jazz and mariachi concerts, and you can dine out on sushi and pizza as well as Tex-Mex standards.

Both my hotels were beautiful: one a colonial-style palace with its own art gallery; the other a whole block turned into a leafy refuge, hidden behind thick walls that cut out the rumble of the SUVs. My guide, Horacio, said San Miguel would never become an American theme park because it had a Beatnik heart.
Rich and restive

"Artists came to study alongside the likes of David Alfaro Siqueiros [a leading muralist and friend of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo ] in the 1930s and '40s. Then came the Beats. Both groups were fascinated by the magical, chaotic, Catholic soul of the place."

Instead of discontent and cultural friction, he said, the period "gave rise to a mutual empathy and admiration between local people and gringo intellectuals".

Horacio took me through the muraled galleries of the Instituto Allende, still a centre of learning for aspiring artists. Neal Cassady - Jack Kerouac's co-driver and the inspiration for Sal Paradise in On the Road - died in San Miguel in 1968: he is said to have walked under a train while on a bender.

The Beats had also come to explore the spirit-freeing potions and guidance provided by local healers. Nowadays, going to a curandero (healer) is as normal as popping to the dentist, and this applies to middle-class urbanites - and expats - as well as to the peasant classes. An American woman who ran a local spa recommended her curandero, Jesús, and though I was sceptical - and a little uneasy - I went for a session.

Horacio joined me, partly to protect me from any spells, but also out of curiosity. He told me he had a regular shaman, a woman, and wanted to compare Jesús's style with hers. Expecting a hirsute warlock, I was disappointed to be met by a tall man in his forties wearing a denim shirt and a mobile phone headset. I noticed some Dan Brown books amid the piles of dodgy literature, and when he asked me to feel some forces coming from the table, I was sure carefully placed magnets were generating the otherworldly currents.

We were soon deep in lively debate. Subjects under discussion included the bad energies that ?owed down certain streets in San Miguel and how many of our seeming woes are simply the ghosts of lizards holding on to our shoulder blades. Horacio complained that he was routinely pestered by malevolent ghosts and Jesús said this was because he had many past lives. In contrast, he said that I was "young on this planet", so enjoyed little intercourse with the spirit world, but suffered the constant shock of the new.

It was time, then, for me to get some ghosts. I drove 200 miles through a cactus-strewn desert to a higher, drier, brighter hamlet that enjoys legendary status in Mexico. Real de Catorce is often described as a "pueblo mágico". After the silver ran dry and the land proved too hostile for cultivation, the town remained empty for decades. Many of its stone buildings are still bereft of their windows and roofs, making the back streets resemble a ?lm set. The only solid-looking building in town is the church, which you can see in all its girth and grandeur from any of the streets further up the hill.

Sunday in Real was buzzing: a market had been set up around the church, where you could buy everything from kitsch clocks decorated with images of saints to native handicrafts and tasty maize pies. The older cowboys sat round a small plaza, the younger guns shot pool in a dusty saloon that stood at one side. We shared some bargainrate mezcal liquor. They told me about the time Gene Hackman and Julia Roberts came to town to make a ?lm; how Brad Pitt had come too, and been friendly with everyone; and how mezcal was great, but if I wanted the real thing I'd have to join the Huicholes natives and get hold of some hallucinogenic peyote cactus. . .

As we got further down the bottle and opened the next, the narrative blurred into a stream of semi-consciousness. On Monday morning I woke to a ghost town: not a soul on the streets, no shops open and my hotel restaurant closed. I hired a horse and guide, and rode to a "pueblo fantasma ", a true "ghost village" to the east of the town. On the way, I saw the stone vats where the silver ore was once washed, as well as what had once been corrals and accommodation for the workers. The small wagons used in the mine lay abandoned beside a broken track, keeled over and rusting. The village itself was a ruin, left to a few goats and skinny vultures.

As we descended, by way of another abandoned site, a storm was rumbling over Real. The light was cold and eerie, and the few souls around had retired for the siesta. It is said that the Huicholes use peyote to commune with their ancestors. But out in that loneliness, under the black and turbulent sky, I didn't need anything to imagine spirits. Perhaps the natives look up their forbears in druggy dreams for company and consolation.

If Real is a font of ancient Indian wisdom, Zacatecas is the primary source of Spanish wealth. With another well-preserved Unesco site at its centre, it is the only "silver city" that actually feels like a city - big, bold and full of smart shops and restaurants. It was here that the ?rst seam of silver in the Americas was discovered, in 1546. Real's vast mine, El Edén , is open to visitors, so I put on a hard hat to explore the veins of the mountain. The dank, cold pit was a potent minder of the brutal effort required to power Spain's imperial machine. If death and sacri?ce had dominated the rituals of so many Meso-American tribes, European rulers had brought no reprieve, continuing to offer up human life for the bene?t of God and Mammon.

Back above ground, the sun was setting on the churrigueresque façade of the cathedral - a homage to late Mexican baroque and an embodiment of the ecclesiastical grandeur available in the 18th century when your pockets were full of silver. Dancers were practising their steps for the grito celebrations and couples were strolling out on their evening paseo. Zacatecas, like Dolores, San Miguel and Guanajuato, seemed idyllic. In many ways these small, convivial towns constitute the visible riches left by centuries of colonisation. It was also the constant stream of silver that spurred less materialistic men to stake a claim on the destiny of the nation. As I left Zacatecas, they were crying "¡Independencia, Viva Mexico!" to remind themselves of that other great prize.