photography, San Miguel de Allende

Colorful cascade

This is the San Miguel de Allende version of “Surf’s Up!”

Bougainvillea soars skyward on spindly legs during the rainy season and bursts outward like technicolor mushroom clouds, surging over walls as their own weight and gravity pulls the blooms toward the ground.

This one is one of San Miguel’s best displays of a bougainvillea canopy.

As it is every year. (Mostly bougainvillea. The blue flowers are something else.)

Only this year, the bloom seems more vivacious than ever.

It is between the Villa Santa Monica property on Jose Guadalupe Mojica (Calle Baeza?) and Calle Santa Elena — right across from Parque Juarez and close to the Lavaderos del Chorro.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

The evolving physics of the Parroquia

Every time I think that I’ve photographed the Parroquia San Miguel de Arcangel from every conceivable angle during the past five years, something new comes along.

It’s like in physics. Scientists were pretty sure that the Standard Model that addresses all “of nature’s known particles and forces” was The Overall Encompassing Answer to Everything.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende

Bonus: Closing night fireworks (now, with stunning video!)

After two weeks of festivities ramping up to the Feast of Saint Anthony and the Convite de Locos on Sunday, the closing night fireworks were spectacular. Flashes, flames, arcs of brilliant light, cascades of incandescence, strobes of white heat, yellow flamethrowers, whistles, and booms all danced around the Parroquia San Antonio de Padua in Colonia San Antonio.

A stunning display of pyrotechnics set to beguiling classical music.

Crank up the volume!

Click on any image to enlarge:

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Colonia San Antonio, photography, Reviews, San Miguel de Allende

One … more … time. Before things get really crazy … on Sunday.

Tonight’s pilgrimage to the Parroquia de San Antonio de Padua was the last before Sunday’s massive Confite de Locos parade.

It was probably the most poignant.

Tonight, pilgrims walked to the church on their knees. There were nearly a dozen. And it gets me every year.

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photography, Reviews, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

A rock concert in the park

You know that feeling? Like you are being watched by somebody in the park? Somebody you can’t see. But those eyes …

This morning while walking the gentle philosophy dog, Moppit, in Parque Guadiana I couldn’t shake the feeling there there were eyes upon me.

Well, I wasn’t completely wrong.

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Colonia San Antonio, photography, San Miguel de Allende

Dance! Dance! Dance!

The locos danced through the afternoon under a hot and humid sun, made more challenging by the layers of costuming and bulky headpieces. After hours of parading and trance-like dance, catharsis must come, a cleansing, a purifying, exhaustion.

I don’t know how they do it.

Still, as the sun began to dip behind the San Antonio church, the locos gave way to the folkloricos.

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Colonia San Antonio, photography, Reviews, San Miguel de Allende

Mean girls, marching mice, and mad hatters — season of the Locos launches in San Miguel

What’s a Sunday morning without a few crazies parading through the neighborhood?

Empty indeed.

We got our share today. The first of three parades around San Miguel de Allende began at the Parroquia an Antonio de Padua around 10 a.m. and danced down Callejohn San Antonio before hanging a left on the Ancha and heading for Centro.

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photography, San Miguel de Allende

Off to work

Guitarists walk down Callejon de los Suspiros on a warm San Miguel de Allende morning.

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photography, Rants and raves, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

In San Miguel de Allende, give us this day our daily miracle

I say it often, perhaps insufferably often for some people, but every day that I step out the front door in San Miguel de Allende, I expect a miracle to happen.

Oh, not a big miracle. Not always.

Just little miracles.

Like the smile on the face of a mother herding her three children toward the church.

Like the carpet of lavender jacaranda flowers worked into a patch of cobblestones.

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photography, Reviews, San Miguel de Allende

Catharsis: Blowing up stuff on Easter Sunday

Maybe if every place had a day when you could blow up life-size papier-mâché effigies of bad people, the world would be a happier place.

I was definitely in a happier place after watching San Miguelians blow up about two-dozen effigies on Easter Sunday. They call them Judases.

I know, not your typical Easter Sunday celebration. Just roll with it and enjoy.

All week San Miguel de Allende has been observing the tragic (or glorious) end of Jesus Christ, reliving his life and death in an almost real-time series of processions and pageantry. By Easter Sunday, the story is largely played out.

Time for some catharsis.

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