Cambio

The new bus station in Cueramaro is very nice. It is out near the cemetary and a long way from most people in town, but the bus to Irapuato comes through town and will stop for anyone along the way, so we can catch it two blocks from the house.

Sometimes it is hard to notice the changes around you in the town where you live. Because of my special situation, I get to Cueramaro mainly on weekends when I can leave Morelia and escape to the relative quiet in Cueramaro. On weekends, when I come home, I always walk around town to see my friends and to see what new things I might find. Lately, it seems like I have been seeing something new almost every week. The new bus station is a welcome addition. It took the buses from a casual arrangement where they parked along a street not far from our home to a new station out near the cemetary. For most people, that is a long ways out and since it is on the side near Leon, not heading in the direction we go most of the time. It doesn’t matter though, the buses to and from Irapuato go through town and will stop where ever they need to to pick up passengers so it is still not hard for most people to get to the bus. For me, it is just two blocks or so to the bus each week and since they will also stop where ever you need them to on the return trip, the same distance for the walk home. I was pleased and surprised to see a promotional video that included the inaguration of the new bus station in Cueramaro included in the DVD that was played when the Primera Plus bus left Morelia for Irapuato. I was also pleased that when I needed to I could take the first class bus from Cueramaro to Mexico City without a change of buses.

The new bus station seems to have brought other changes too. We now have a local bus system that runs inside Cueramaro and to the many pueblos in the area where people depend on the markets in Cueramaro for much of their weekly shopping. The jardin, which was increased in size just a couple of years ago, is receiving much attention. The large ficus trees have been protected with a special netting to keep the blackbirds from coming in at nights and leaving a mess. The boulevard on the longest side is being improved with a center island, lighting and plants. The jardin is a point of pride in most towns in Mexico and Cueramaro is no exception.

The improvements for the boulevard on the longest side of the jardin are nearly complete. The lamps will be put in and plants added to the large planters. In the past, this street was wide enough that it was used by trucks or for parking in the center. Now the trucks are routed around the center of town and the planters will block cars from parking in the center.

My friends in Cueramaro tell me sometimes that my fotos of the town look almost too good. “That isn’t what I see when I look at the jardin,” they tell me. I know there is always an element of self-editing when you take pictures of a place you love. But I do love Cueramaro and I do take pictures of what I see. Perhaps it is a lesson in seeing what is right in front of you. We have our problems. Not all change has been welcome. The streets around the jardin, which were designed to be quite wide, have now been set as one way and diagonal parking has been added along one side to accomidate the cars of people who come to the market on Sunday and Monday. It would have been nice to keep our street quieter but it relieves the pressure for parking around the jardin just a block away. We take that change with the good it brings and take pride in the fact that our town is growing and becoming more of a regional center every day.

I have been working on getting this fotoblog back to normal (whatever that means) for some time now. As you can see, I now have a way to post fotos with my writing. It is less than ideal in some ways, but the ideal solution will take more debugging and with the limited time I have, I had to compromise for a while at least. I am still working on the gallery, to get it back to where it should be. I’m not happy with the navigation I have to use for it, it is now less accessible for my regular viewers, but maybe over time I can figure that out too. I have many new fotos to post and some stories to tell, so I will just try to balance things and concentrate on some new material. I am getting many requests for new fotos and I can’t ignore them much longer. So, thanks for stopping by and keep watching. Maybe things will begin to smooth out here before too long.