As I may have mentioned, Linda did a photography workshop in San Miguel some years ago. She recalled that she enjoyed the Guadalupe district which is known for having a lot of murals and galleries and fewer tourists than the areas we had visited thus far. The whole of San Miguel is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. As a consequence, there are a lot of rules in the downtown Centro area about what you can and can’t do with your building. The Guadalupe residents wanted to have more freedom to express themselves and petitioned to be exempt from those rules in order to allow murals and other forms of art to be more prominent. Once we’d rested up from our very early morning balloon ride, we went to explore that neighborhood.
First stop was the Mercado de Artisanas (Artisan Market). Inside there were some of the schlocky tourist items we’d already seen, but also work by talented silver smiths, basket weavers, sandal makers, weavers etc. So we had a good time poking around and admiring the work of the local craftspeople.
The Mercado is at the base of the neighborhood so we wandered northward from there.
This was one of our favorite murals
And some of the facades and artists’ wares were pretty interesting too
We stopped into a restaurant that specialized in Camarones (shrimp) prepared in aguachiles or ceviches which depend on cooking the shrimp with acids like lime juice and vinegar. The proprietors seemed surprised that these three older gringa ladies had come in to try their wares. I ordered a shrimp tostada and I confess, I was afraid to eat it. It just didn’t seem cooked enough to me and I didn’t trust my Spanish enough to be sure about the process when I asked. I tasted one shrimp and then decided that perhaps experiencing authentic local cuisine was less important than being able to travel home comfortably 2 days later. I decided not to take a picture since I was leaving it otherwise untouched and didn’t want to offend our hosts any further. There was a delicious condiment though - a vinegar and herbs brew called Salsa Bruja (witch’s sauce) that was very tasty on its own and I’m sure would have been great on the shrimp. Maybe if we come back for longer and can go with a local who can explain, I’d try it again. Meanwhile, I might try to see where I could find Salsa Bruja in NYC
