Morelia and villages around Lago de Patzcauro

Last week we visited our 4^th state in Mexico – Michoacán. It has a reputation as a lush and beautiful state, though on the bus ride I gotta say it looked about the same – cacti, small scrubby trees. It is the dry season here now, so maybe that's why.

Morelia is a much bigger city than San Miguel but it is colonial as well, and seemed similar.  The architecture in el centro where we stayed is more muted in color than SM, with many buildings of stone, rather than painted stucco. The central buildings are very elegant, with elaborate baroque facades that made me think I was in Paris or Prague. We appreciated that this city was much easier to walk around in. The sidewalks are wide enough for us to all walk together, the city is flat, and there are no scenic, but troublesome cobblestones to trip you up. 

Maybe 1 mile away from the central Jardin y Catedral was a quiet area with lots of trees, and a small modern art museum. First we walked down a beautiful pedestrian esplanade lined with big trees on both sides. Michael was thrilled to find a place serving coffee, and there was a hotel or two, but the rest seemed to be part of a university, which was closed for the weekend. Parallel to this alameda was the city’s old aqueduct, a grand procession of arches that extends something like 7 miles to a fresh water source in the countryside. 

The aqueduct ends in a large fountain, with 3 huge statues of Tarascan (the native people of this area) women holding a giant fruit bowl. It’s strikingly similar to the aqueduct and fountain in Queretero. Maybe designed by the same person / people? We looked and hunted and looked some more and finally found the church La Virgen de la Soledad, recommended by the guide book. In contrast to most churches around here it is very plain on the outside. But, oh my god, the inside looks sculpted in golden frosting. It was way over the top and yet impressive how the excess was carried to excess. 

On to the art museum which had an great display of surrealist photos by a Mexican artist, Pedro ?.

  

Later we went to two houses of Morelos, the revolutionary war hero for which Morelia is named. Like Hidalgo, Morelos was a priest turned warrior. His reputation is that of a much superior tactician than Hidalgo. He lead the war for about 5 years before being captured and killed.

            Unfortunately on this trip we had bad food karma. Sometimes as a traveler you are starving and just can’t make it to the places on the guidebook’s list. That’s what happened to us. I know there is good food in Morelia, but we were just winging it. We happened upon a sushi place that was quite popular among the youth, but wow, was it funky. They only served rolls so that’s what we got. Half the rolls on the list were served breaded and fried, ugh, but we didn’t try them.  Ours were served warm, with plain white rice without any of the sour and sweet seasonings that make it sushi rice. Each roll featured a generous serving of warm cream cheese, bleech.

Earlier that day we had another bizarre food when we treated ourselves to ice cream. We passed this place that looked very fancy. The cones were dipped in chocolate with sprinkles or cookie crumbs on the outside. After you picked out your scoop they put that chocolate shell stuff that hardens and then you picked another topping like sprinkle or nuts or whatever. Before you could order you paid at a little booth at the back of the shop. As we walked to the booth I noticed the rest of the store was a health food sort of place, but didn’t think much of it. Well, when we began eating our amazing looking treats we all began noticed that everything tasted off. The chocolate shell was weird, the topping was weird, the ice cream itself was weird too. It was all too sweet, and not like sugar sweet. What is this stuff?  Nataly and I threw away a good chunk of ours, and we don’t throw away dessert! Thinking it over I’m guessing we had some “healthy alternative” maybe made with alternative sweeteners or not milk ice-cream. It was awful!

The next day we got some bad advice from a super sweet taxi driver. I was chatting him up, telling him we were going to Patzcauro, which is the biggest town around Patzcauro Lake. He told me about all these other villages and how each one has its own craft artisans and that it would be easy to hop on and off the bus at each town. So we decided to follow this plan. We had a very slow bus ride, that was enlivened by bad singers coming on board to serenade us.

 Finally we arrived in Quiroga, which was crammed with tourists and stuff for sale, but the things were very junky, not fine artisan crafts. Then it took us forever to get out of this unattractive town and get to the next one, with the awesome name - Tzintzuntzan.  We walked above the little town to the pre-hispanic ruins. From there we had a view of the beautiful Lago de Patzcauro. 

The ruins are of particular interest because they are totally unique in having round sections rather than the usual square stepped pyramid. 

Nataly overcame her fear of grasshoppers here. For about the last month the grasshoppers have been plentiful wherever there are fields. Nataly’s been really spooked by them and I’ve even had to carry her past areas.  The ruins were set in grass and hopping with grasshoppers. Literally every step you took they would be popping out of the grass. Oh no! But for some reason it finally clicked with her that it could be a fun game to run along and watch them pop out.

Back down in the village of Tzintzuntzan, we found a huge former monastery with actual GRASS (there is not one speck of grass in SMA) and trees for a cool stroll.

In the church we got to see groups of people receiving an incense blessing.  This village had a large parking lot filled to the brim with crafts, which were of a much better quality than in nearby Quiroga.

The taxis around here have pictures of monarch butterflies, as there is a nearby sanctuary where they spend their winters. 

Synchronicity! Santa Cruz back home has a monarch sanctuary and Nataly's school is named Monarch. We hope to get back to see them before we leave.

Back on the bus to get to Patzcauro, then a taxi to the lake itself. The embarcadero looked a lot like the one at Xochimilco in Mexico city. I guess we’ve now got the hang of the look of Mexican embarcaderos. 

Tons of vendors were selling cups of whole little fried fish about 2 inches long. Not bad for a little snack, especially when covered in chile lime flakes, like nearly everything in this country. We took a powered lancha  to the isla Janitza. 

This lake is famous for its beauty and for its fishermen, who used to fish with big butterfly nets. Now the lake is over fished and the only use of butterfly nets is to catch money from tourists.  The people are very poor and the island is a complete tourist trap, as that is apparently the only industry. It still is very scenic as the island is a hill and there are no cars, just stairs ways winding up through souvenir shops and restaurants. 

At the top is the Mexican equivalent of the statue of liberty – a huge stone statue of the hero Morelos with his fist raised to the sky. We enjoyed climbing up the inside of the statue and viewing the murals of his life. The view from the top was spectacular and we noticed how everything looked more elegant from farther away. 

Nearby was a ratty, but ingenious kids playground that Nataly enjoyed playing in. Playgrounds are a real rarity here in Mexico.  The highlight of the day was the boat ride back to the mainland. We lucked out and timed it just perfectly for an amazing sunset cruise. 

The day did not turn out as planned as we had now run out of time to ever get to the village of Patzcauro itself, which is supposed to be the most beautiful and interesting town around. Oh well, another day, ojala!