Walking Around San Miguel

At least once a week I try to escape from the work around the rancho to head into San Miguel with my camera.  Having lived in many large and smaller cities, I am always amazed at the activity and congregating that occurs in San Miguel.  In Los Angeles you are always in your car and you can never just stumble upon some gathering.  In Chicago, we walked everywhere but the city is so large that at the end of the day we would hear about some great concert or street festival, but we never were even close to being there.  In San Francisco we lived across the bay on the west side of Marin County and it was a long drive (not distance, just time) to get into the city.  Then of course in Mendocino and Northern Minnesota the locations were so small and thinly populated that there never seemed to be anything going on.

But that is sure not the case in this town.  A lot of times I will come with camera in hand and just walk about the centro part of town and shoot tourists, vendors, or anything else that captures my eye.  Then there are days that I will walk up to the main jardín outside the Parroquia and be surprised at the activity going on.

Two weeks ago I was walking up Aldama to the centro jardín and I spied this man totally focused on his painting.

Upon arriving at the jardín, I found out that there was a food festival

and a rock concert by some of the young students in town.

Then walking back down to my car with all my groceries I shot a couple of other photos of people just getting around town.

Here is a vendor selling some food products

a lady walking her dog

these girls heading out after school to play some fütball

and this man also walking home after his daily shopping trip.

However, there is so much going on at our rancho and so much going on in town that I sometimes miss really good festivals and events.  This happened to me yesterday when one of my friends, Jennifer, sent me a great photo of this man in costume and head dress for the celebration of El Señor de la Conquista, that she took on Friday.  Oh boy did I miss a great photo op but it will be here again next year and there will probably a good photo op tomorrow, such is life in San Miguel.