GENTLE AND JOYOUS CITY

QUERETARO: MARCH 1
Morelia is a harsh city built to impress and subjugate. Queretaro is joyous. Only the paving is gray. Walls are deep rose, ocher and faded buttercup.
Lovely parks on the periphery are safe. Pedestrian streets connect four squares in the center. Cloisters of clipped trees surround the squares. Miracle of miracles, water jets from every fountain.
Late in the evening I share a wrought-iron bench in the Plaza de Independencia with two elderly men and listen to a guitarist and vocalist perform at a sidewalk restaurant. The vocalist is brilliant. I listen to two sets before guilt forces me to sit at a table and sip a cold Corrona. Guilt? Why is guilt so predominant an emotion? Catholic heritage is too easy an answer.

DELIGHT

ROAD TO QUERETARO: FEBRUARY 29
Lakes fill much of a valley. White houses spot a conical hill. The hill is an island. A dike carries the expressway. The Honda cruises at 90 kph on a perfect surface. Two grey heron play at sentry amongst patches of tall reed. Two lines of white pelican intersect to form a rightangle. Are they squatting on a fish trap - or on a breeding pen for talapia?

ROAD TO QUERETARO: FEBRUARY 29
I have been lost, since leaving Colombia, in a limbo peopled mostly by foreigners. I am miserable amongst foreigners: they are reminders of Bernadette and my sons. The sense of loss becomes almost unbearable. Today is joyous. I have rediscovered within myself that land through which I intended to travel and wished to travel: Hispanic America.
I stop beside a red 4x4 at a traffic light and ask directions for the road to Queretaro. I am lead through town to the expressway. I exchange cards with my guide: Eduardo Arredondo Gonzalez, Asesor Juridico. My thanks, Eduardo, for your kindness.
The sun is fierce on hills of harsh rock and dry dirt. In valleys gleam emerald oasis of rice paddy patterned with narrow canals. Those first Spaniards came from a similar land...Extremadura. As did the Moors...
Water is the treasure that toil with hoe and mattock husbanded.
Men are redundant now. Machines accomplish a centuries work in a few days.
In doing so, they bury memories of how it was.
How it was is the fascination – who those first Spaniards were and what they found.

EXECUTIVE PARKING

MORELIA: FEBRUARY 29
I wrote in the previous BLOG that Morelia is grand. The baby Honda slept in 17th century splendour. Early this morning I walked a while in search of breakfast and discovered a late 16th century car park.

TWO MORELIAS

MORELIA: FEBRUARY 29
Forgive me, Morelia. I walk your streets and sidewalks of gray pave. I try to admire your great buildings, gray granite, perfect in proportion. I am reminded of Scotland's oil capital, Aberdeen, cold in its Victorian grandeur, built to impress and dominate. I feel no love. This is Spain of the Inquisition.
I park the Honda in the patio of the Hotel Colonial. I find a restaurant on the main street. Downstairs is dimly lit (romantic?). I need light to write. A waiter leads me to an upstairs dinning room where I sit in solitary command of windows that open to the twin towers of the cathedral. Yes, they are marvelous, impressive, beautifully lit.
I take joy in another Morelia high in Spain's sierra Maeztrazgo. I visited on my return from Tierra del Fuego in 2006 as the guest of the city. We were celebrating the bicentenary of my Spanish great-grandfather, Marshal Ramon Cabrera, Marques del Ter and further enobled as Conde de Morelia for blasting a massive hole in walls that are now a national monument. Twenty or more of my Spanish cousins attended the celebration. I was required to make a speech. The Spanish are polite. People clapped.

HOLLYWOOD MEXICO

ROAD TO MORELIA: FEBRUARY 29
The temperature drops. I pull onto the hard shoulder and struggle into my leather bomber jacket. The expressway is a toll road. Vending machines at toll gates offer the only refreshments. I loathe vending machines; they swallow coins and don't deliver. Better leave the highway.
I ride into a small town. Streets are cobbled. The small central square is exquisite in its simplicity. Buildings are low; walls are washed in white and ocher and dusky pink and shaded by pantiled roofs supported on wooden pillars.
I inquire for a restaurant and am directed to a house where one long table occupies the front room. Lunch is bean soup and a slice of beef sweated with onions and chili. Three policeman join me. Family men in middle-age, they speak quietly and slowly. Perhaps they are corrupt - this is the Hollywood image. How would I know? I am merely passing through, grateful for company and grateful to be inhabiting a different reality to Zihuataneje.