Michoacán

As promised, this entry will include ample photos from this weekend’s trip to Michoacán. However, that means I’ll likely skimp a little on text today. Enjoy the photos!

We left Guadalajara heading for Morelia, the capital of Michoacán and about a four-and-a-half hour drive. Once we got out of the city we passed miles and miles of verdant countryside, criss-crossed by rails, rivers, lakes, low-growing forest, and tiny ancient towns. The mountains around us got higher and more defined as we moved closer to Michoacán.

Once in Morelia, we checked into an old colonial hotel (reputedly haunted, but I didn’t see or hear anything except military helicopters flying low over the city in the middle of the night—maybe they drowned out the spirits).

We headed to a traditional restaurant (also very old) where we enjoyed enchiladas and serenades. The singer bore a striking resemblance to my great-aunts on the Crespín side.

Morelia is old. Around the same time as Guadalajara, the Spaniards established it as a colony in an area already populated and developed by indigenous peoples, but Morelia (formerly Valladolid) has maintained its colonial beauty while Guadalajara has given way to boxy architecture and modern urban sprawl.

I don’t mean to say Guad isn’t pretty, but it’s not as charming as Morelia, and the pace of life is more relaxed there.

Older than them both are the ruins of Tzintzuntzan, a ceremonial center on a bluff overlooking Lago Pátzcuaro. It was built centuries ago by the ancestors of the Pu’rhechpah (Tarasco) people. The site is impressive, but the most striking thing about the place is the view. The lake is spotted with small islands, many of the inhabited. One of them, Janitzio, is the center of the world-famous festival Día de los Muertos (a big event all around the lake, including the town of Pátzcuaro). Pu’rhechepah hold the waters sacred for many reasons, among them the belief that the barrier between the worlds of the living and the dead is much thinner on and around the lake.

After Tzintzuntzan we went on to Pátzcuaro itself, and I fell in love. It’s a charming place—red tile roofs over white-washed plaster, worn-down cobble streets giving way to narrow alleys as they wind upward into the hills—with a gentler pace of life that doesn’t lose its gusto for it.

In the tree-lined main plaza, children perform a traditional dance called “Los Viejitos”, that pokes fun at the pains of old age while paying tribute to “Tata Vasco”. An administrator and church official in New Spain, Bishop Vasco de Quiroga was beloved of the indigenous people for stepping in to spare them from the further ravages of his predecessor’s reign of terror, and for subsequently establishing schools, hospitals, and promoting cultivation and preservation of native culture (at least the parts that didn’t conflict too much with Catholicism). Many things in Pátzcuaro are still named and done in honor of Tata Vasco.

Pátzcuaro is a wonderful place to wander, talk to the friendly locals, eat too much, and lose track of time. My day in Pátzcuaro, though had the (unfortunate?) effect of making me miss my husband even more. I was sitting in a restaurant on a tiny terrace overlooking the plaza, waiting for my bowl of sopa tarasca (my new love) and breathing the mountain air when in an instant I wanted so very badly, more than usual, to have my husband in that empty chair across the table, sharing this moment. The sudden weight and power of the emotion caught me off guard. The solution of course, is to bring him back to Pátzcuaro with me in a few weeks. The short term solution was to finish lunch, have some chocolate and find him the perfect silly present in the shops selling catrinas and other Day of the Dead figures, something just for him.

We got back to Morelia in time for the fireworks in front of the cathedral. On summer weekend nights they close off the main street and the crowds pour in for the show. I was hungry by this time but resisted the cotton candy, knowing that we’d find real food after the fireworks.

As proof that Morelia, despite its colonial charm, holds its own as a modern city, some of the girls and I found an amazing menu at a decidedly trendy spot downtown.

We wandered through town a little more this morning, and then headed back to Guadalajara. I do love this city, and I’m comfortable here, but it was nice to get away for the weekend. It’ll be easier to fall back into the routine tomorrow. Lola says enjoy the moment!