San Miguel to Guanajuato

On the bus ride out of San Miguel this morning we made a brief stop at the old railroad terminal--then crossed the tracks to join the back road to Guanajuato.

This reminded me that the remains of Jack Kerouac's old running buddy, Neal Cassady, were found nearby the tracks in 1968, apparently the victim of an accident, suicide, or otherwise untimely death.

Cassady was Kerouac's inspiration for Dean Moriarty, the anti-hero of his seminal Beat Generation novel On the Road.

Today I fell from the lap of luxury into the rock bottom of grungy hostelries when I relocated from the very excellent value Posada de las Monjas ($42 per night) in San Miguel to an extremely divey $12.50 room in the Hotel Granaditas in downtown Guanjuato--described by the Lonely Planet as "best of the cheapies" in the area.

My edition of the LP is 8-9 years old. . .but this place is a dump!

In all fairness, though, I was looking for something a little cheaper to "average out" my daily budget after a couple days in expensive San Miguel.

The entire ordeal reminds me that Mexico isn't as cheap as it used to be.  Yes, it's nominally cheaper than in the States, but I've found that my budget projections for lodging have fallen quite a bit short of the reality of 2011.

Strangely enough, I've seen that lodging in the capital is perhaps cheaper than in the provinces.  Maybe that's because DF is saturated with hotels, and that glut of hotels runs the entire dive-to-five-star price spectrum.

The Granaditas seems to be run by Jehovah's Witnesses, judging by the piles of The Watchtower at the reception desk.

Again, this is a reminder to me of last Saturday night when I was out and about in Queretaro and made acquaintence with several JWs who were approaching people--me included--with tracts and invitations to their Sunday morning service.  Turns out the JWs were in the midst of their annual convention.

Jehovah's Witnesses around town were easily recognizable by their sharp, conservative dress and their "Hello my name is. . ." name tag lanyards.

Also well dressed and approaching strangers were salespersons of Herbalife, Inc.  I met a few of them, too.  Each one showed me a "before" picture:  sometimes overweight, now these folks were walking/talking cheerful promoters of a product "that really changed my life."  And one young lady wasn't shy about telling me how many thousands of dollars she makes pushing the product.

Back to San Miguel, though:  yes, it's really expensive, so apparently the influx Americans and Europeans is driving up local costs considerably (?).

The cheapest hotel I could find was in the 300 peso range, and in some cases that was without private bath.  I paid 520 pesos ($42) for my room in Las Monjas, which was by far the most luxurious place I've stayed in Mexico so far.  My room was very nice, and for a bonus it had one of the best views of the hilly old town available.

There is a mini real estate boom happening in the old town with For Sale signs everywhere.  Long popular with Euro/American artists and other creative types, San Miguel's old town has many art galleries and expensive antique shops.  Craft stores and touristy gift shops dot the Centro a-plenty.

And yet apparently the local expatriate community doesn't support bookstores.  Both local bookshops, listed in Lonely Planet and described as "very good" and with a great selection of English language titles, either went out of business in the past eight years, or moved somewhere I couldn't find in my two days there.

An older boomer gentleman informed me:  "The best place to find books is the Thursday sale at the Bibliotech."  He was referring to an American lending library which I visited yesterday afternoon.