Feb 28, 2006 — We just got back a few hours ago from a five-day trip to the town of Bernal, near the city of Queretaro and an hour and a half from San Miguel de Allende. It took us, in our slow motorhome and with heavy traffic last Friday afternoon, about ten hours to get there from the Lake Chapala area, and somewhat less coming back today. The Guadalajara-Mexico City autopista (toll freeway) was very pleasant traveling, though extremely sparse in the number of gas stations and rather pricey on tolls with the motorhome.

Our first evening in Bernal was a bit surreal. When we left there nine months ago, we thought we would be back to live in our rented house within three or four months. Now we won’t be living there at all. It was like a dream, a visit to a might-have-been reality.

We had left our cat in the care of our landlord, with various friends promising to pop in on her from time to time. The minute we arrived, I went looking for her. She wouldn’t look at me. Oh well, not too surprising even if disappointing.

We had dinner in one of our favorite Bernal restaurants and chatted with the owner, then went for a walk around town. The surreal feeling was heightened by the eerie blue light shining on the pena, the rock outcropping above the town. It’s something the town had experimented with before we left, and now they do it on weekends.

The cat pointedly ignored us till the next afternoon, then she let me pet her and deigned to purr a little. She got friendlier as the weekend wore on. We had a small cat carrier with us, and she was a very good traveler today. Now she’s ruling over the bathroom. We’ll get her spayed and examined in a couple of days, and there will eventually be pictures. It’s great to be back with her!

Back to Bernal. We packed up our stuff and filled up the motorhome, alternating those task with visiting with friends in Bernal and Queretaro, having several wonderful meals and many wonderful conversations. It was bittersweet, to get a taste of the life we might have continued. But both Kelly and I have an inner sense that we made the right choice for us. I thought many times of Robert Frost’s poem which begins:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

He ends the poem,

I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

In this case, living near Lake Chapala seems like we are (uncharacteristically!) choosing the road more traveled, in the sense that it’s an area with a huge expat population. We’ll see what roads lie ahead. I’ve certainly had enough travel for a while.

2 Comments from the old blog:

• At March 02, 2006 11:14 PM, macmember said…

  I am so glad to hear that you brought Misty home with you. While you were gone, did she have any kittens?

  Beverly

• At March 03, 2006 9:57 PM, Rosana Hart said…

  No, she didn’t have any kittens. She was pretty well confined. There are birth-control shots available for cats in Mexico and Europe and most countries other than the US, and she had those before we left, though the vet who was supposed to come one more time never did. (I forget the name of the product.)

  Yesterday she was spayed and today she is amazingly perky, busy telling our dog Larry who’s boss (not him) and checking out the house. She was about to see how far up the chimney she could get a few minutes ago when I decided I didn’t want a sooty cat and pulled her out.