Taxco - Steep and Narrow Roads

Taxco was founded around 1530 and is an old silver mining city and Colonial gem. It was placed on the list of World Heritage sites about twenty years ago. We had a guide tour us arounf for a day so we could get the general lay of the city. The ride around town in the volkswagon bug was very cool a kind of rollercoaster ride. There are thousands of "bugs" in the city one of the few vehicles able to negatiate the narrow roads. When it looks like a one lane street it is actually two and if it looks like a walkway it's a one way. Glad we found a place to leave the RV at the edge of town.

Taxco - So its is Possible

Taxco is the Mexican silver city with hundred of workshops. There are no Rv campgrounds within 3 hours of the city so we had to get creative. We researched every hotel/motel looking for one out of town and with a parking lot. Our room had a huge tiled bath sitting room and views from the balcony were simply awesome if somewhat virtigo inducing. At $46 per night on a busy pre-Chritmas weekend just after the silver fair we feel we chose wisely....

Festival of the Virgin of Health - Patzcuaro

The local festival honors the Virgin of Health and She is revered by the local indiginous people. On the eighth of each month pigrims make penitental offerings (ie crawling across the plaza and to the alter) and on December eight the whole parish and town joins in. It is one Mass after another in the Church and outside it is a big fair complete with midway and fireworks. Thousands of people press into the narrow streets for a fun party. The sounds are hard to desribe purhaps simply describing it a cacaphony of sound - I now know exactly what that word means.

El Rosario Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary

Many people have heard about the amazing lifecycle and migration of the Monarch Butterfly from the Great Lakes region of North America to its winters in the mountains of Michoacan in Central Mexico. The amazing thing is this annual cycle takes five generations of the butterfly so there is no direct connection to the wintering grounds in Mexico. Deb and I hired a guide to take us to them. Altitude 3300 meters - temperature that night 2C. It was frosty but the hike up definately put a sweat on our brow. We hung out with the butterflys for a couple of hours and took tons of pix and video. The thing that is difficult to fathom from these pix is that the area is huge with hundreds and thousands of trees covered just like these. A final note, President Calderon of Mexico has budgeted some 35 million dollars toward the protection of this species and its environment. Ironically the butterflies greatest threat is the irradication of common milkweed throughout Canada and the States as this is the butterflies main food source during its migration.

Dance of the Old Men - Patzcuaro

This dance called Dance of the Old Men is a Purpecha dance hundreds of years old. Today the Purpecha people perform it with modern instruments bass, guitar and fiddle (sometimes mandolin). The dancers are boys and young men usually from the same family. They wear masks and costume and special clapping wood shoes. The dancers perform with great vigor leaping about and in all is extremely funny. There is some kind of message here as well in that the elderly still have life and spirit in them. This is but one sample of folk dances from around Lake Patzcuaro in the Michoacan highlands of central Mexico.

Patzcuaro - San Francisco Friday Market

Patzcuaro is a lovely town with winding cobblestone streets, whitewashed buildings with orchre trim and lively markets. The main market is huge comprising several streets and buildings and hundreds if not thousands of small stalls. On Fridays in the San Francisco Plaza a small outdoor market is held highlighting prodominately inexpensive ceramics and small handcrafted items. We noticed that most of the people using the market were older than the general population. Here is but a small sample of the people of this town.

Copper Pots

Santa Clara del Cobre - Coppersmithing

This was a very interesting day visiting the town known for its copper work. This area was known for coppersmithing since pre-hipanic times - that means Aztec and before. The pine forest provided the energy for smelting and the ore came from mines about 40km away. The mines were exhausted about 50 years ago but the metalwork continued using recycled copper brought into the area from abroad. This recyled source continues today - the streetfolks that scrounge copper at home may continue the journey of the metal ending up here and becomg a beautiful water jug. Apparently there are dozens of studios in the town and we visited one and saw the process of working copper completely by hand. We bought some items but that will be another later post on the blog. There were five guys in the studio, four workers and the jefe and with broken spanish and a smattering of english we followed the process through. I think you'll get the idea with the pictures - remember all by hand - no elecrtic tools whatsoever - very cool!

Bricks, Bricks, and more Bricks

In between Zamora and Patzcuaro we started to notice that most of the buildings were made of red bricks and mortor. We were also seeing trucks of all sizes and descriptions loaded down with these bricks. Somewhere in the pine forest we passed through a small town with dozens of clay brickworks beside the highway. The clay is at the site or sometimes is trucked in from elsewhere. The clay soil is mixed with water and molded with small wooden forms and then stacked for drying. Finally the bricks are stacked in a simple brick-built kiln and fired from the offcuts of the local logging and sawmill industry. We never know quite what to expect as we drive down the highway.

Heading Inland - Agriculture

Deb and I spent a month on the beach tuning up our spanish before heading inland to the Michoacan highlands and our first true experience with colonial Mexico. Along our way we passed huge regions of agricultural land - miles of blue agave around the town of Tequila east of Guadalajara. South of Lake Chapala along highway 15 it was miles of strawberries and raspberries in gigantic but simple greenhouses and as we turned away from the lake it was a checkerboard of mixed crops. In the highlands we would often see evidence of small scale farming primarily corn with perhaps some evidence of a vegetable garden in predominately pine forest. Much cooler at altitude and the cropland is now dormant for a few months. The high today is forecast to be 19C with a low of 3C - brrrrrr.

The Evening Parade of Ants

Every evening just after dusk leafcutter ants come out of their hole and march beside our patio pad to a bush out front to harvest its leaves and flowers. I can't get that stupid song out of my head while watching them. Some of you know the song I mean...

Puerto Vallarta

We had the opportunity to head into Vallarta for the day and basically walked around looking at tons of tourist souvenirs and dozens of bars and resturants. One highlight ironically was the trip to Wal-Mart where we stocked up on some essential items like a couple of new bathing suits for Deb and a relatively decent map of Mexico.

Mexican Rodeo

The Rodeo is a little different than the CPRA in that it is done with a team of five against two other teams. The teams have to present the horses for inspection and to demonstrate that they and the horse are skilled enough to procede. All the baqueros are skilled in roping. At one point the baquero had a big lassoo circling around himself then he turned it 90 degrees and jumped through it twice and then got to throw the lassoo out to rope a stampeding horse. It was amazing. It was quite dark so I don't have many photos, but I do have VDO that I will try and post in the future.

Revolution Day Parade 5 - La Penita

November 20th is Revolution Day in Mexico and all over the country in small towns and large cities parades are held celebrating the event. La Penita is a village of about 1000 people and is located 60 kilometers north of Puerto Vallarta on the Pacific coast. For the most part this parade is organized by the schools in the area and includes colourful costumes, dancing, and skits demonstrating events from the revolution. The parade travels about eight blocks in total, down the main avenue and takes about four hours to pass. I can't imagine how long the staging area must be. This really is a community event in some parts of the route the crowd spilled off the curb and into the street twelve or fourteen deep. Oh by the way the temperature was 32C - these are some resiliant kids