On Photography 
By Robert de Gast, March 23, 2007

The road to Jalpa…

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,

Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;

Along the cool sequester’d vale of life

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.



Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Thomas Gray (1716-1771)

It is good to be out on the road, and going one knows not where.

Tewkesbury Road
John Masefield (1874-1967)


Travel and photography go hand-in-glove. When I was a very young photographer I thought that in order to make great pictures you had to travel to obscure, faraway places. After all, Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa were always shooting in some exotic location. There was no way you could produce anything worthwhile in Holland. In Holland? Flat, homogenous, boring!

Of course, that notion turned out to be a snare and a delusion. To begin with, you don’t set out to make great pictures. You set out to make pictures. And you don’t have to go far. You certainly don’t have to in San Miguel: it’s all here.

But if you want to get away from the madding crowd you could do worse than go to a little village called Jalpa. The municipio, the county of San Miguel covers only about 400 square miles. Within are more than 500 named communities, some with as little as a dozen inhabitants and one (Los Rodriguez) with more than 5,000. Jalpa is at the far southeastern reaches of the county, and has, perhaps, a thousand inhabitants, although if all the men (and some women) returned from working in El Norte, there might be half again that many. The trip is beautiful, through a valley between two mountain ranges, and it’s only ten miles off the main road!

I’ll describe two ways of getting there.

By car:

Head east out of town for Querétaro. The turn-off to Jalpa from comes at exactly 4.4. miles from the traffic circle, the glorieta at Gigante, the one with the statue of General Allende on his horse. Turn right at the sign that says “Jalpa 15 km.” The road is paved and straight, but pot holes abound. You’ll pass a few villages on your right and then, at about 3.5 miles from the turn-off you’ll see a huge bright-green house on your left. No, this is not Jalpa, but if you turn off just beyond the mansion, a dirt road will lead you in less than a thousand feet to a beautiful little chapel called La Biznaga de Jaral, where mass is served about once a month, a great spot for a picnic lunch or some romantic photographs. Continuing on, at Mile 7 you will, in the distance see Jalpa’s large reservoir, the presa, a few miles ahead. You’ll also see, at an S-curve in the road, a tiny and homey restaurant called El Vaquero that serves almuerzos and comidas most every day. Worth a stop. And then, at Mile 9, you’ll be in Ja
lpa!

What to do? Well, you can visit the church, incongruously large. You can walk along the reservoir. You can amble along the few unpaved streets. You can talk to the folks, you can buy a refresco at the tienda. If you’re there on an early afternoon on Saturday, especially during the Christmas season (when many of the men return from the States) you’ll be party to a wedding.

Or you could keep going: the road continues, now not paved, but not bad, to the outskirts of Querétaro, another 30 minutes. The trip is beautiful. I am convinced that this road was the original Camino Real a Querétaro, the Royal Road, which carried silver bullion from Zacatecas, San Louis Potosi and Guanajuato, to Mexico City, and eventually to the ships at Veracruz.

By bus:

Many isolated communities can be reached by bus from San Miguel. One of the great bargains, I think, is the ten-peso ride to Jalpa. The Jalpa bus begins its jaunt at an unmarked, unpaved parking lot at the beginning of the Calzada de la Estacion a few hundred feet past the Guanajuato Bridge at the end of Canal. It makes its way out of town past the bus station and around the periferico, the beltway, offering some great views of San Miguel as it makes its way around the city. Then, a few miles past the new city hall it makes a right turn on the Jalpa Road, and stays on it until its destination.

There are five buses to Jalpa every day. The journey takes one hour, but the driver turns right around so that if you want to spend some time wandering around you need to wait for the next bus, which may take several hours. . The first bus in the morning leaves at 7:15am. There are buses at intervals but you should check these times since the times change depending on the day of the week.

The best bus is the 7:15 bus because it leaves you with about an hour to wander around Jalpa before the next departure. The bus seats 36 people but on my last trip, on the way back, 28 people had to stand for the journey into town. Mostly maids, teachers, and day laborers heading into San Miguel for the day. If you take the 2pm bus you have half an hour before you catch your return bus. And half an hour is just enough to wander around town and in the enormous church and explore some abandoned buildings on the edge of the church property. You’ll likely see women washing clothes in the reservoir and boys at the well filling water barrels on the backs of donkeys. Somebody will be making tortillas, and the tiny store will always have refrescos.

It makes for a wonderful excursion into the countryside and there are lots of photographic opportunities along the way, not least of which might be with the friendly people you’ll encounter on the bus or in the town.