I'm going to leave you in Gwenda's capable hands to get the real dish about our recent trip to San Miguel de Allende, and just concentrate on my favorite bit. That would be when Scott Westerfeld and I rented some bicycles from this dog...



...rode to El Charco del Ingenio jardín botánico arrayed around this canyon...



...made our way through the desert...



...to this abandoned hacienda...



...which I proceeded to clamber up...



...so that I could survey the surrounding countryside, gringo buddha style.



We stopped taking pictures soon after that, when we discovered that the trails goats leave through cactus forests look a lot like bicycle trails, except that goats can't find their way back to town worth a damn, apparently. There was only one vulture, and it gave up on us right after we got to the point in the dry stream bed where we could get the bikes over the fence. Really, the parts of the ride shown above are by far the most interesting.

Anyway, we did make it back to more comfortable and civilized surroundings eventually.