Off to Mexico — before ‘The Wall’ gets built

The idea of a trip to Mexico didn’t occur to me until I learned that more than a couple thousand Air Miles I’ve collected over the years were about to expire at the end of the year. That’s right, they’ll vanish without a trace unless I use them before Dec. 31, 2016.

I began last spring searching for destinations my miles could get me to, but I couldn’t find anything that worked.

It seemed a waste to use them to travel to northern B.C. in the summer, because I would need a car and I could drive there in a day or two anyway.

I didn’t have enough to visit family in eastern Canada, or to take a trip to Mexico or elsewhere abroad, and many of the destinations in the U.S. that I considered were unavailable.

As the summer ticked by, it suddenly dawned on me that I had enough miles to get to San Diego, California, and this destination was actually available in November. It would just be a skip and a hop from there to the airport in Tijuana, Mexico, and from there many cheap flights to Mexican destinations were available.

I have a special relationship with Mexico. I’ve been eight times, más o menos, covering much of the country. I took several courses on the politics and history of Mexico while I was earning my bachelor’s degree, and my major essay for my master’s degree was a study about how Spanish colonialism and its treatment of Indigenous peoples shaped the culture and politics of Mexico into the present day.

The racial mixing, known in Spanish as “mestizaje,” led to a dominant culture that is neither Iberian nor Indigenous, but a blend of the two. And, unfortunately, even today, a person’s social status is heavily influenced by where on the sliding scale between Indigenous and European their ancestry falls.

I plan to visit two Mexican states: Guanajuato and Michoacán, north and west of Mexico City and both with rich histories in the colonial period and in the struggle for independence from Spain.

I’m not a resort person. The idea of lying on a beach and drinking all day doesn’t interest me, though a day or two of that can be fun. No time for that this trip. My interests are in photography and exploring the history and culture. So, I plan to stay in just four colonial cities (not counting Tijuana), all of which I’ve been to either in 1993 or 2003: Guanajuato, Dolores Hidalgo, San Miguel de Allende and Pátzcuaro.

The only place I’ve never been to that is on my itinerary is a sanctuary high in the mountains of Michoacán that is the winter home of the monarch butterflies, who migrate there all the way from eastern Canada.

On Monday, I’ll be driving over the Allison Pass to the B.C. Lower Mainland, then getting my flight out very early Tuesday morning. A stopover in Salt Lake City then on to San Diego, crossing to Mexico Wednesday morning. I’d better get there before “The Wall” is built.