Today we wanted to visit some of the missions around San Antonio. We learned from the hotel concierge about the Viva buses, public buses that go along several tourist attraction routes. For $2.75 one can get a day pass and ride the bus anywhere and hop on, hop off at will. One of the Viva buses is specifically for the missions, so that was our bus.
Just a block from the hotel was the bus stop, so it was very convenient. We boarded the bus and there was only 1 other rider. Sure beats paying an arm and a leg for a crowded tour bus. And, the bus was delightfully air conditioned! We decided to ride to the farthest mission to the south and then make our way back to downtown. The Alamo was, among other things, initially a Spanish mission. The San Fernando Cathedral originally was a mission. Today, we’re visiting San Juan, San Jose and Concepcion missions.
All the Spanish missions were introduced in the early 1700s. Spain controlled much of the area and called the area New Spain. After the early conquistadors and settlers did not find the promise of gold and riches, Spain needed another way to bring Spanish culture to the area. The Franciscan friars served that purpose through establishment of missions. Converting the indigenous people to Catholicism was a big goal, but establishing communities for the new converts and protecting the people from raiding Indians from the north and creating self sufficient compounds were the primary goals. The First Peoples of the area were under attack from Apache and Comanche Indians coming from the north and from deadly diseases coming from the south where European Spaniards settled. Disease wiped out 80% of the First Peoples population. The First Peoples essentially had no choice but to give up their independent identities and move into the missions. In the missions, they had to give up their culture, speak Spanish, convert to Catholicism and work as indentured servants. The men were sent off to large ranches to keep the huge herds of animals needed to feed mission residents and trade with area settlers. Women tended the agricultural fields. The missions lasted less than 75 years, and when it was no longer possible to support the missions, the land was divided up and given to remaining mission residents. But during their existence, while much of the story is grim, the missions served an important function.
The first we visited was San Juan. Not much remains of the compound, but you can see the outline of the walls and get a sense for how much land was involved. The little white mission church is intact as is the main gate. This mission does not permit visitors into any of the remaining buildings, so we had to be satisfied with walking around the grounds. We did take a pretty little nature trail around an area along the Yanaguana River. One of the things the missions did was dam up some of the rivers and dig a huge irrigation project, including building aqueducts and draining trenches, in order to irrigate the agricultural land. The irrigation ditches are quite intact and one can see places where the ditches are dammed up to cause backflow into the fields. Quite an elaborate system that spanned some 15 miles or so connecting the major San Antonio missions.
San Juan Mission
Mission church and convent
Mission bells
Beautiful garden
Mission compound entrance
Main mission gate
Mission walls
Building remnants
Irrigation trench
Place where water can be dammed up
From San Juan Mission we hopped on the Viva bus and rode to the largest mission, San Jose Mission. What I had not realized is that the San Antonio Missions are part of the National Park Service and all are historic parks maintained by the NPS. There is a visitor center at San Jose. We had a guided tour of the mission compound conducted by a NPS volunteer. His narration was really helpful in understanding what happened to the indigenous people, not a pretty story. San Jose is a very large compound. At its height, about 300 people lived within the compound walls. This mission ran large ranches more than 20 miles away and the men would work there. San Jose had a very large granary, which was a really interesting building having buttresses on the outer walls. The mission church, still an active Catholic Church, was very pretty. The convent, where the friars lived in small rooms or cells, had lovely stone arches. There is also a famous baroque window called the Rose Window which supposedly is the best example of baroque carving in the U.S.
San Jose Mission
Lodging for the indentured indians
Mission church and convent
Rose Window
Convento arches
Main church entrance
Beautiful interior
Doorway out to the convento
San Jose was a very large compound and from the narration by the NPS volunteer, one really got a good idea of what life was like. That message was reiterated in the movie we watched at the visitor center. I have very mixed feelings about these missions, especially in light of their goal to strip the native people of their culture. However, the survivors who gained a piece of land when the missions broke up have become important parts of the Texas culture in terms of Spanish/native peoples, the Tejanos.
We stopped in to a Pizza Hut across the highway from the mission for a bite to eat. It was so beastly hot walking around the mission so sitting in a cool place with an icy beverage and a couple of slices of pizza hit the spot. Then, back on the Viva bus to Concepcion Mission.
This seemed to be a much smaller mission, or at least the compound part of the mission was not in much evidence. The church is one of the oldest mission churches. Mission Concepcion was a spiritual center in addition to a mission. The Coahuiltecan Indians were the indigenous tribe to enter the Concepcion Mission. While visiting this mission, stormy weather blew in and a quick downpour came with lots of thunder and lightening. Fortunately, we could find shelter to wait out the storm. We hoped the rain would subside before our bus came, and we were lucky. The rain didn’t last long and we boarded the bus without getting soaked.
Mission Concepcion
Original colors under the plaster
Church altar
We arrived back to the hotel thinking we’d be able to settle in for the late afternoon and evening. That plan went out the window when Christine booted up her computer, but inside of booting, a recovery error message popped up indicating that the operating system was corrupt. To start it she would need recovery tools for the manufacturer. She called Geek Squad at one of the Best Buys in town and got an appointment. We jumped in a cab and went to Best Buys. The reason this computer crash was so devastating is because Christine is to demo her software to an important prospect Thursday morning. Also, she uses her computer at her exhibitor table to show people TQAudit. We spent a couple of hours at the Geek Squad counter while one, then another guy tried to determine the issue. The bad news is that her operating system is corrupt and the computer can not be booted. The good news is that it’s possible that the hard drive is not corrupt and that files will be retrievable. Hopefully, when we return home, she’ll be able to work with a computer repair company to get her files copied off that hard drive. But all this was a very stressful couple of hours for Christine.
We didn’t want to pay the $30 cab fare back to the hotel so we determined that a bus route was possible. Dummy that I am, I had taken our Viva bus tickets out of my wallet thinking we wouldn’t need them again today and in the panic of getting to Best Buys, the tickets remain in the hotel room. But we only had to pay 65 cents (senior rate) each to ride the bus back to the hotel. What a deal!
Back at the hotel, Christine spent the rest of the evening trying to “move in” to my computer and rig up a way to demonstrate TQAudit to the prospect and other conference attendees. That should work out okay. All that drama really took it out of us and we were exhausted for sure.
So, although everything ended well, our nice day touring the San Antonio Missions kind of got superseded by a panicky turn of events.