The sound of bells is heard daily in San Miguel.  In Centro, the bells of the Parroquia ring out the hour.  These church bells resonate as you would expect with deep, rich tones.  Elsewhere around town there are numerous bells (presumably at churches) that ring many times per day for reasons unknown to the uninitiated.  These bells make a clanking sound, as though they are made of something different than the usual bell materials, or are somehow muffled.  Presumably the bells ring as a call to Mass, but it seems more often than Mass alone would require.  They also do not seem to measure time.  It’s a mystery to me.  Another interesting bell ringing occurs multiple times per day around town as the garbage truck rolls through the streets.  Each truck carries two workers standing on the back bumpers, one of which rings a hand bell to notify residents to bring out their trash bags and stand in line with their neighbors to hand the bag(s) to the workers, who throw them into the truck bed.  On busy main streets like Nate’s, residents are allowed to put bags on the curbside when they hear the bell.  This is because the level of traffic on these streets precludes people lining up to hand over trash bags.  At any rate, trash collection appears to happen almost constantly, and it is extremely rare to see any garbage bags sitting on the street.

Ah, in the photo below, I finally caught one of the "clanking" bells in action.  This one does not appear to be related to any church, so I'm even more mystified as to its purpose.