Recuerden El Alamo.

Alamo Church San Antonio

The city of San Antonio sprawls shimmering in the heat of southern Texas. During hot summer days it is surrounded by a milky halo of haze that dirties the bottom edge of the endless roof of cloud flecked blue above. Traveling down the US 281 southbound towards the downtown area, the glass of it’s skyscrapers glint like diodes in the distance. 2.23 million people live in the greater metropolitan area making it the 2nd most populous city in Texas, it is 130 miles from the Mexican border across the Rio Grande and it is bisected by the San Antonio River that flows through the city. The watercourse is usually choked by ferries of tourists and pleasure boats motoring slowly under it’s many bridges. The idyllic setting of modern architecture, hot sun and the iron blue water chugging it’s way towards the Guadeloupe River, that pours into San Antonio Bay and the Gulf of Mexico over 100 miles away from the city, has attracted a fringe of fashionable Cafe’s and Restaurants to its twin concrete banks. The city also has a thriving tourist industry, every year 26 million people come from all over the world to see the sights, and not a few of these will be heading there because of one thing, they remembered that the Alamo is in San Antonio. Continue reading “Recuerden El Alamo.”

Castillo’s Oranges.

Bernal Diaz says he planted the first Orange seeds in America.

In his book “A true history of the conquest of New Spain” (Un veridad historia de la conquista de Nueva España) Conquistador Bernal Diaz de Castillo wrote that after experiencing many hardships and battles, Juan de Grijalva’s 1518 expedition to Yucatan, landed in the Tobasco region of Mexico on the 1st of May. There he tells of a very poignant little story, that I found strangely moving, possibly about how the first Oranges came to central America. Continue reading “Castillo’s Oranges.”