Friday, July 17
Vanessa Erazo: I’m not a morning person so getting up at the crack of dawn is only reserved for two things: air travel and imminent danger (a fire might get me up… might.) On Friday morning, when my alarm went off at 4:30 am, I gave myself a pep talk and dragged myself out of bed. Bleary-eyed, I made it to my 6:30 am flight to Dallas and then hopped on another plane headed towards Mexico City. After a long wait in immigration and meeting up with Andrew (one of our staff writers), an almost-five-hour bus trip through D.F.’s clogged roads got us to San Miguel de Allende at close to 10:00 pm. I was working off three hours of sleep and just survived a 14-hour trip so after heading to el centro for a mediocre dinner, I hailed a cab in the rain, headed back to the hotel, and around midnight crashed, hard.
Andrew S. Vargas: Today’s highlight was a sweaty, physically awkward sprint through Mexico’s Terminal Norte bus station. Getting sent digital bus tickets in .pdf format is all well and good and 21st-century — if you have a printer — but otherwise it makes for some pretty desperate maneuvering through throngs of travelers as you follow a litany of contradictory directions toward a mythical computer lab somewhere deep in the belly of the station. Finally printed the tickets and made it to the departures area just as the bus was pulling out, but the driver wasn’t too interested in letting me on. Luckily a timely intervention by one of the ticket agents did the trick.
After that we made it to San Miguel de Allende without a hitch, but it seems we were too late to pick up our tickets to the inaugural bash. Nevertheless, I’ve learned over the years that a lack of tickets should never stop one from pursuing their dreams; todo en la vida se resuelve con un poquito de actitud. A few hours later I was suited up, wining and dining with the beautiful people of the Guanajuato International Film Festival. Films to come tomorrow.