Hola and Great Day! Higherside Chatters. I am speaking to you from the central highlands of Mexico from the lovely colonial city of Morelia, Michoacán. Sure, that's it! We all remember Cheech Marin in the classroom when that detective visited their school and held up a bag asking if anyone knew what this was. "That's Michoacán, man! That's Michoacán!" He knew what was happening.
We've got wonderful weather here in this 6,300 ft. high city, exquisite pink quarry stone buildings, concerts in the partks, beautiful gals and some great guys, and a terrific internet connection so we can listen to The Higherside Chats. What more could you want? Oh, yeah, cervezas too, lots of them. So you all can just kick back with me and listen to Greg chat with some of the most interesting folks to be found anywhere on this planet and maybe beyond. I'm glad to be sharing these moments with all of you and many more of them to come.
My Mexican wife and I love visiting Ajijic. I first took here there a few years ago and she was just blown away that there was an American enclave with American food and culture right there in her own country. We spend a few days there every year mostly to take in the food - where else in Mexico are you going to get biscuits and gravy for breakfast and BBQ pulled-pork sandwiches for comida?
There were some rough incidents during the Felipe Calderón presidency when he went full-on with the US drug war with US 'advisors' over here calling the shots (literally). We know what a scam drug prohibition is and to what end it is being founght - to jack prices of an otherwise low-value commodity if it were a free market into a black-market worth-more-than-gold undocumented and unregulated (officially) cash cow. Remember, the Drug War was NEVER about stopping drug traffic but always about controlling it. Morelia was Felipe Calderón's home town so we experienced a few incidents here - but really, if we didn't watch the news we probably never would have known anything had happened.
Mexico is a beautiful place for sure. Personal freedom is one reason I have not left here even for a day visit since 2007. But life in Mexico is living life without the training wheels. We are still allowed to do things here that we could possibly hurt ourselves with if we don't exercise caution. A lot of those things that were once common up north in the US have mostly all gone away now, but not here. Kids still have playgrounds with swing sets and merry-go-rounds, we just accept that kids can get hurt if they try hard enough but that is no reason to take away all the fun stuff.
Don't believe what you see in the media, you know that. Just come down here and have a good time. Don't make yourself a public nuisance and you will stay out of trouble. You've been here, you know the score. There is a lot of good-living to be done here.
