The annual spring break flight from Telluride bears some resemblance to ancient pilgrimages to holy sites — Santiago De Compostela, Canterbury, Mecca and the like.
In modern times, it may be compared to the mass exodus from France’s urban centers during the month of August. Here in Telluride, having paid final homage to the snow gods, we rise as one, the incantation, “beach, sun; beach, sun” emanating from the mouths of all. En masse, we flee, each on our own pilgrimage.

Our family follows the same ritual, but we have often strayed in our choice of destinations. Beach and sun have certainly played their part over 19 years, but more often we … OK, I, the bully boy… have chosen destinations for their cultural and historical appeal.

These choices have not always met with applause from the troops, possibly because they have frequently been accompanied by weather so hideous that… well, let’s just say that mutiny was more than once contemplated by wife and son. “If I’d wanted snow and freezing temperatures, I could have stayed home.” Whiners. Wimps. Sometimes, it was all I could do to keep them focused on the exterior details of an exquisite Gothic cathedral in the middle of a sleet storm.

This year, the stars aligned to produce a spring break interlude that met the needs of each of us in its own way. The young scion, Walker, seized the opportunity to go to Switzerland with a team of southwest Colorado hockey lads and play a series of games in a small ski town not far from Luzern. Sight-seeing, skiing, and the odd beer or two were part of the bargain. (Switzerland, like the rest of Europe, holds to the shockingly reckless notion that a 16 or 17 year old is mature enough to drink beer. Here, we know better. A young man who joins the Army is old enough to handle heavy artillery, hand grenades, and automatic weapons, but he can go to jail if he drinks a beer.)

We could have tagged along as totally extraneous parents on our son’s alpine junket, but I’m not so old that I don’t remember being 16 once. Our son was too polite to make the point explicit, but he didn’t need to. The last thing a young buck of that age wants on such an adventure is parents lurking in the background.

Not that his parents harbored a strong desire to lurk in the background. Engelberg, Switzerland, looked to be a rough approximation of Telluride — a small ski town butted up against dramatic mountains. More bratwurst, wiernerschnitzel and better beer, perhaps, but basically, a Germanic iteration of our home base. The guiding principle for a Tellurider faced with spring break is to bat the ball well into left field, far away from snow, mountains and cute little ski towns. The operative word is “break.” Thus, I was scouring the global map for an alternative destination when my wife decided to play her Mexico card.

Ah, Mexico. It is the point on the map where she and I have always differed when choosing vacation destinations. Our divergent attitudes toward Mexico were formed long before we knew each other. My wife, aka Ms. Mexico, grew up in Kansas City, but she fled that epitome of white bread America early, and got her undergraduate and graduate degrees in San Antonio. She learned Spanish, spent time in Mexico as a student, and by the time I met her was well-rooted in San Antonio. Based on political boundaries, it belongs to this country, but over two-thirds of its populace is Hispanic and two-thirds of its cultural flavor tastes like Mexico. She loved it; it was home.

I grew up in West Texas where Mexico was a drop-kick away but still a foreign country and not a particularly interesting one. Think Minnesota and Canada. My early impressions of Mexico were formed by occasional visits to border towns like Juarez. It was simply a scruffy southern neighbor and certainly no place for an exotic vacation. At most, it was a beach resort get away, little different from southern California. Mexico was, in my youthful ignorance, too close, too ordinary, and deficient in cultural thrills that a kid’s romantic imagination attached to places like London, Paris or Rome.

I carried this prejudice into adulthood. Why, I reasoned, would I waste precious vacation time in Mexico when all of the significant cultural wonders of western civilization — the art, architectural features and historical reference points of my civilization — lay in an arc from Greece to Great Britain? Life is short and the time available to touch the grandeur of such fantastic wonders even shorter.

At the same time, because I have an interest in extremely old stones wherever they lie, I consider Mexico’s pre-Colombian treasures very intriguing. My only two trips to Mexico’s interior were in the Yucatan, where I happily wallowed in the Mayan ruins of that area. They have so much that 80 percent of it will never see the spade of an archeologist. Most recently, in 2002, I went there with Ms. Mexico and Junior, and we managed to include some beach diversions along with the ruins wallow. That trip, I thought at the time, ought to satisfy the little lady, but I underestimated her insatiable appetite for all things Mexico. Here she was again, pumping for yet another trip to mariachi land even though large swaths of Europe remained untouched.

“Where, exactly, did you have in mind? Mexico’s a big country, cupcake, and certain parts of it come with a high probability of being robbed at gun point.” That didn’t scare her one bit. Apparently, any location would do, just so long as she could indulge in her own form of wallowing — schmoozing with the locals and wandering the streets of a country she loved. My God, I thought, if I don’t humor this woman now, I might end up having to live down there someday.

My wife deserved to call the tune this time. But since she was indifferent as to where in Mexico, I dived into the guidebooks to find some location that might hold some appeal to an old stones/history nerd. (That would be me). I found Guanajuato, a city which met her requirements in every detail and which also threw a good many meaty bones to me, although my chief pleasure was to observe Ms. Mexico happily engaged in her element.