Meeting New Friends in San Miguel de Allende

“One of my rules of travel,” says Paul Theroux, “was to avoid looking up friends of friends.”  The line comes from “The Old Patagonia Express,” a book about his own attempt to reach the end of the Americas, in his case by rail, that I’ve been slowly reading as counterpoint to my road journey. 

For all that’s superb in his book, I’m glad I didn’t follow Mr. Theroux’s advice yesterday, or I wouldn’t have met Shelley Cohee, courtesy of my acquaintance Bob Greenspun in Seattle.  I joined Ms. Cohee at lunch at the Heche en Mexico restaurant, where she was already deep in conversation with a friend of hers, another resident recently returned from Dallas; with a swift flap of introductions she took this shy traveller under her wing for the afternoon, and in the course of a two-hour lunch followed by a zig-zag of errands and accidental encounters around town she offered me finally a peek into the ex-pat—excuse me, RESIDENT—community (“An ex-pat is someone who’s burned their passport”) of San Miguel de Allende. 

  

We parted at dusk as good friends, but that was under par for her course, as Shelley appeared to be friends with almost everybody we met in the little city, and sidelong greetings became sidewalk café interludes.  That's Shelley on the left above; the girl on the right is Jo, a British arrival now teaching English here; the girl from Salamanca in the middle is Jo’s friend, but by the time we left was Shelley’s too.

Not that I’m entitled to the shallowest of conclusions, but I gathered that the American residents here maintain an at best cautious friendship with their Mexican hosts, one that’s currently under extra strain due to the inter-American civil war over the Trump administration.  For every resident who’s proud to stand on this side of the Wall, there are others for whom America’s greatest president has merely unrolled the red carpet to the ideal San Miguel life.  Never the twain shall knowingly issue dinner invitations, was my impression, and meanwhile I was advised to use code words (or the hand signal for a time-out) for He Who Must Not Be Named Before Waiters, or risk spit in my soup. 

So San Miguel de Allende may be a paradise for émigrés, but the old apple still has a bite in it.  And when Shelley took me behind an unassuming door in one street I could see it up close: a step away from pedestrians fighting for space on narrow sidewalks and Mexican workers buying tacos at street stands was unveiled a hidden San Simeon of impeccable hacienda taste and beauty.  Here lay one of the strange ganglia of the modern world, where eight-foot doors of ancient oak and vaulted brick ceilings are made possible by international genetic-modification technology.  “Listen—isn’t it quiet here?” Shelley said in the butter-walled garden.  I was advised not to post photos.  

Thanks to Shelley for a wonderful and eye-opening day, and to Bob for connecting us!