Day one of San Miguel de Allende out of the next thirty-one days, the first thirty-one days of our new adventure and we find out our beautiful casita sits on the precipice of a questionable neighborhood.  The neighborhood is called Las Cuevitas which means “little caves” for the caves that people once lived in there. It is a place of extreme poverty and all of the things that come with it including drugs.

Scott and Ashley went to their first Spanish lesson with Alma this morning. The sound of keys and gates alerted me to their return.  I asked Scott how the lesson had gone as Ashley quietly disappeared to her beautiful upstairs lair.  As only Scott can do, he launched right into describing the situation at hand.  “Well, I feel like I’m back on the tennis court with Ashley.  She’s better than I am, but I can still learn.” Then he got to the important stuff. Alma the Spanish teacher is also Alma the realtor, with her husband and brother, and is very familiar with the neighborhoods of San Miguel de Allende (SMA). Scott quickly segued from tennis and Spanish to the current issue “Alma walked with us around downtown, we picked up maps and tourist flyers and then she circled the street we should avoid, the street behind our house.” He showed me the street on the map and then disappeared into our bedroom for a while.  An hour later he wandered back to the table and told me that there had been two deaths on that street in the past year, both drug-related. And then he went upstairs to survey the view from our beautiful rooftop terrace.

You can see the “no go” zone from there.  He came back downstairs to tell me that he felt better because it wasn’t just a vacant field separating the bad hombres from our house, it was two high walls and more good news, when he went to lock the gate outside our door last night a dog started barking, so at least we have a guard dog.

  

This is our “front door” that leads into a maze of more gates and fences.

Oh, and that gate he went to lock last night?  We are staying in a compound of five casitas.  We are Casita Number 5, the house at the back, on the outside of the extra locked gate.  At night there are two locked gates between the bad neighborhood and all but two casitas in our little group.

When darkness falls, we are on our own because on the gate that separates our house from the rest is a sign that says, “lock this gate at night!”

So, there is one locked gate between the bad street and our heavy wooden front door but there are two gates in our house that lead directly into the vacant lot behind the house.

How did I find this place?  It has great reviews, is inexpensive, and it is gorgeous, gorgeous like Scott and I will go home and try and make our house a little more like this one.

There is the clean, comfortable and very pretty master bedroom with bathroom on the first floor.

Ashley has her own floor with a bedroom, bathroom, and den that has a desk, television with satellite channels, and a couch. Her room even has its own terrace and access to the rooftop terrace.

There is a courtyard patio and rooftop terrace with views including the views of the bad area. It may be the prettiest home we have ever stayed in.

This is our street and towards the end on the right is our compound.

This is a view down our street. If you turn left at the last car you can see you will be in the neighborhood of Las Cuevitas.

There was nothing to tip me off about the neighborhood.  The only thing I read about it besides the glowing reviews for the home was that it was a good mix between expats and Mexican families living their lives.  We arrived at our new abode around 5 pm and were met by the absolutely delightful property manager.  She gave us a tour of the house explaining a few important things like keep this door locked, don’t go out this way, go out the front door only.

She opened the back gate and pointed, “That house over there, the people sell Marijuana and will definitely harass women.”  She looked at Ashley and said, “there is never a reason for you to go that way” and then she looked at me and said, “or you either.” Oh, and she continued, there is a mean dog that lives in this field anyway. She laughingly told us that our neighbors weren’t really a problem, but then reiterated the importance of going out of the front door.

This is the front gate and it was a learning curve the first week to figure out which keys worked worked where.

Through the front gate and down this path to the very back of the group of houses is where we lived.

Making friends with one of the guard dogs

I didn’t think much of the keys, locks, gates, and warnings until Scott and Ashley came home from their Spanish lesson.  Then a tiny bit of fear started to creep in and within a few days of arriving, two different neighbors on our street warned us about an incident only a week before we arrived. There was a couple walking back to a vacation rental that was held up by some men with a gun and a machete. One of our neighbors said he had been threatened before and the other neighbor told us to always take a cab after dark. This new information did not make me feel happy, to say the least. I felt a little bit scared and a little bit like I had let my family down.

We’ll see what happens, I have considered trying to find a different place, but Scott is happy to stick it out and just be a little more aware of our surroundings. Last night I thought about the meaning of adventure as I tossed and turned in bed all night listening to our guard dogs bark.

Why is this Part I you might be thinking? Well, I’m sure there will developments over our time in SMA and it could be interesting to find out what happens or changes in the next five weeks. In the meantime, I found a little extra reading for you if you’re interested…

A master project to improve Las Cuevitas