San Miguel to Queretaro

We paid about $41 for our hotel in San Miguel that also came with a free breakfast. The breakfast was offered at a restaurant 5 blocks or so away, so we woke up and headed towards that direction. It was cold in San Miguel that morning, with a low of 39 degrees. We headed over to La Cocina where we had a nice Mexican breakfast with coffee, fruit and juice. The only problem with this place was that we were seated next to an open door, which didn’t help my cold toes in my keens; my fault for wearing summer shoes in such cold weather.

After breakfast we packed and got back on the bike to take the once again short tide to Queretaro. I was beginning to really enjoy these short rides as they are much easier on the butt.

Our plan was to stay in Queretaro one night and then fly out of Queretaro the following morning since they had an international airport. We arrived in Queretaro early and had planned on going to the airport before finding a hotel but got lost in the process and ended up just going downtown to look for a hotel. After finding out that not many places in centro had private parking on site, we decided to find the airport after all and check out their parking situation. Our goal was to leave the bike for 5 days in the most secure area that we could find.

Queretaro airport is far away from town, and is the only thing in its immediate location. The parking lot at the airport wasn’t gated, but it had a 24 hour security guard on staff who promised our bike would be watch at all times and we wouldn’t have to worry about theft. We agreed that parking the bike at the airport was the better option; we would have someone watching our bike at all times instead of leaving it in a hotel garage and we wouldn’t have to pay for a taxi ride to and from the airport when getting back into town. We got back on the bike and headed back to centro to look for a hotel. After driving around for about an hour we finally decided on hostal Galerie which was close to the main strip and cost only about $35 a night. While the room was decent, the traffic ended up being extremely loud and there was not hot water even though we complained to management about it. After all, they did promise hot water upon arrival.

The rest of the night we walked around town, enjoyed the free bands playing in almost every town square, took advantage of the free wifi offered in every town square, ate tacos for dinner, and just relaxed as we sat "people watching" all night.

Talk about manual labor? 

Guanajuato to San Miguel

We would only have a little over an hours drive today, so we explored Guanajuato a bit more before leaving. We went to a market, ordered some juice, walked around, took more pictures, and then headed back to the bike by shortly after noon. Before checking out, we chatted with a couple guys who had just spent a few months in Zipolite, a beach we had been planning to go to, and confirmed that it was a great backpackers beach to go to. They were travelling by van and had been surfing through Central America for the last 6 months.

We wanted to see the town from a popular viewpoint, so we drove the bike up the mountain to take some pictures before heading out.

Driving over to San Miguel was an easy, fun drive. The area reminded me very  much of Southern California, with Alamos type trees and brown, tall grass.

We come across these things often, which appear to be stack of dead corn or hay,  and quite frankly they creep me out a little bit. To me, they are the Blair With Project of Mexico..

We already had a place in mind when arriving in San Miguel. After confirming that they had private parking, we unloaded into our private B&B hotel. By private, I mean we had the whole hotel to ourselves. We were the only guests there! Though alone, the hotel was nice, clean, and spacious. We even had our own little patio area. Soon after walking around town we realized San Miguel had little to offer us. It is a pretty town, and home to one of the most beautiful churches I have seen thus far; but it is also a sleepy town with more tourists than locals. The restaurants were expensive and the bars were even higher. We ended up eating dinner in the market, and buying fruit to eat in the town square while we watched some teens break dance until bedtime. All in all, San Miguel is a cute town, but probably only worth a day trip.