After a month and a half in Guanajuato, we decided to take a couple weeks to travel. We started our nine-day trip through the nearby state of Michoacán with a visit to the capital city of Morelia.
We've wanted to visit Michoacán, where O's father's family came from, for many years, but O never felt quite ready. Now the time was right.
Morelia is a charming, vibrant city of about 750.000. Founded in 1541, it still retains much of its historical core. The colonial center is surrounded by more modern neighborhoods. But the old zocalo is still crowded in the evenings and on weekends, mainly with locals and Mexican tourists.
There are tranquil parks, a colonial era aqueduct, a zoo, and lots of trees. Quite a lovely city. At 6,300 feet, its climate is mild and dry.
We visited the Colonial Museum thinking we could check out some historical art and artifacts, only to find that the whole place was only room after room of crucified Jesii of every description.
White Jesii.
Black Jesii.
Hippie Jesii.
The colonial past is pretty much omnipresent, which probably explains why most Mexican people seem to be resolutely anti colonial. This poster, created by the local Zapatistas reads: "The same in Mexico and Palestine, they have stolen much land. The United States and Israel always criminals and colonialists. Palestinian children are not terrorists!"
Political and civil turmoil is simmering under the tranquil surface. Throughout the state we saw many convoys of police and army trucks with heavily armed men manning mounted automatic weapons. A show of force to keep the peace I suppose.
Still the general atmosphere is of calm and beauty.
We both miss bougainvillea, so common to our childhoods in Southern California and so missing in the colder climate of Idaho. This vine has completely colonized two large trees. That's colonization I can support, though the trees might feel differently.
Just look at the size of the roots. A old and hearty vine.
Agave is one of the major crops here. Tequila production is booming throughout central Mexico and so agave cultivation has spread from the neighboring state of Jalisco to Michoacán. Distilleries have proliferated as well, producing mezcals and other agave-based liquors as well as tequila.
Here's a little samplings of the local wares.
Michoacán is also the carnitas capital of the world. The pig is revered here. And there are dinosaurios!
We stayed in a little boutique hotel on a hill overlooking the city and enjoyed a romantic dinner in the hotel restaurant.
Our next stop was the small village of Pátzcuaro, home the indigenous Purépecha people and one of the largest celebrations of El Dia de los Muertos in Mexico. Pátzcuaro means the door to heaven in the Purépecha language.
Founded around 1300, Pátzcuaro was the religious center of the Purépecha empire, one of the main rivals of the Aztec empire. The two empires were pretty much constantly at war with each other until the arrival of the Spanish. The Purépechas sided with the Spanish against the hated Aztecs, a decision they would later regret.
The island of Janitzio (the most distant in the photo) in Lake Pátzcuaro is the center of the local Dia de los Muertos celebration. Thousands of tourists from all over the world try to squeeze into a very small cemetery on the island. Most don't make it. As much as we adore observing El Dia in Mexico, we've crossed that off our list.
Pátzcuaro is an artistic center. We found some lovely arts and crafts in town.
Including this unique hand-carved fly.
And much more.
I especially like the devil embracing the angel and, of course, the nearby goat.
The Lake Pátzcuaro salamander, or achoque, is found only in Lake Pátzcuaro. Similar to the axolotl, it has been a local delicacy and an ingredient in traditional medicine for thousands of years. It's now endangered by overfishing and habitat loss, but conservation efforts have brought the species back from the brink.
One of the many indigenous villages around the lake, Ihuatzio, which means the land of coyotes in the Purépecha language, howled a greeting to O.
On the outskirts of Ihuatzio there are some little-visited ruins. This was once the capital of the Purépechan empire.
There's an art to stacking stones this precisely.
After the fall of Ihuatzio, the empire's capital moved to Tzintzuntzan, the Place of the Hummingbirds.
The local cemetery is the site of a large celebration of El Dia de los Muertos. Many of the graves were still covered with wilted offerings from last year's festivities.
Next stop was La Piedad, a rather dusty, nondescript town that we chose because it offered the closest accommodations to the small village of Cañada de Ramirez, where O's father grew up. All over Michoacán menus boasted pork from La Piedad, so we weren't surprised to be greeted at the Holiday Inn by these large porcine emissaries.
The next day, we hired a taxi to drive us about half an hour east to Cañada de Ramirez. When Victor, our driver, found out that O's family came from there, he bent over backwards trying to help her find any trace of her kin. He talked to various people on the street and finally to a local shop owner named Pasqual Ramirez, which was the name of O's grandfather. He turned out not to be any relation that we could pinpoint. Just too much time had passed, and even the persistent Victor could find no trace of O's family.
Still it was a very emotional passage for O, and she left content.
The main square in Cañada de Ramirez. The statue commemorates two sisters, singers who became local and statewide celebrities, putting the little town on the map.
The town is surrounded by fields of corn and agave.
The next day we caught a bus for the four-hour trip to Mexico City, saying farewell to the lovely lakes of Michoacán. At least for now.
P.
