On Valentine's evening we rolled into the beautiful colonial town of Pátzcuaro and the next morning unloaded “Mike” (the motorbike) so we could go explore the town and the Lake that it sits on. We set ourselves on an intense agenda of sightseeing so our first stop was a beautiful sidewalk café outside the Basillica. Tea, juice, eggs, beans, tortillas for $4. Heaven.
John led the walking tour of the city that was once the capitol of the indigenous Tarasco people, who were oppressed by the savage Spaniard Guzmán, and then rescued and organized into village cooperatives by Bishop Vaxco de Quiroga. The craft specialties that he introduced to many of the villages are still practiced today and there are wonderful finds in the markets in the area. We mostly go to the markets to buy fruits and veggies, have a few (read 5) tacos for lunch, and then cruise the endless stalls. John’s favorite market so far is in Pátzcuaro, crowded, but not too huge, great weaving and furniture and dogs who lie on tools.
We decided to make the most of our day so we went to the “not to be missed” spot, which is an island in the lake called Janitzio, on a local “lancha”. There was food being sold and music being sung on the small boat so that not a moment was missed to “entertain and gain” from the tourists and locals. Its true people are always coming around to tables where you sit, or stepping on buses to sing or play something (guitar, accordion, drum, rain stick…) but I have noticed that the locals give them their due as well as the tourists, and the artist is probably hoping that some great record producer will pick them out one day, or maybe they just like to play. Anyway, on this island is a huge statue of another great Mexican liberator, Morelos. The size of the memorial says one thing (40m), but when you walk up inside of it there is a mural running all the way up to the top that depicts his life. Fascinating. No cars on the island, just a lot more souvenir shops and food stalls. As we were leaving we saw some local boys out on some spiffy looking surf kayaks practicing their moves. Nice boats, good paddlers, where did they come from? Mexico. Never fails to surprise.
And then the best surprise of the day! We still had daylight and a whole mountain right behind our in-town trailer park to go for an evening bike ride! It was fabulous! Lobo ran along side us up the miles of trails that wound up to the “Cerro Blanco” passing runners, hikers and horses (couldn’t help a bark at those). Ending the day with a ride that took no effort to find? Priceless.
At this particular trailer park in Pátzcuaro almost everyone had a dog and Lobo had morning Frisbee dates with Zoe the heeler, and wrestling matches with a big dog named Ned. Turns out Ned’s owners “Dale and Gail” were avid bikers from Vancouver so they were very excited to meet “John and Julie” and go for a ride. They led us on a dusty dusty route up into the mountains that a local had shown them the last time they were in town. It felt great to follow some good riders and be shown around some fun routes in the pine forest that we would have otherwise never found. After we got back and cleaned out the dust from unspeakable places, we had a special event to get to; the guitar concert for “Enarmorados” by the award winning Patzcuaro guitar ensemble. When you think of hugely romantic latin guitar music, this was it, played by 12 men with a lot of love to give. Following the concerts we went to one of the oldest coffee shops on the square. The specialty of the house: hot chocolate! Que bueno!
Another morning of a great breakfast and we were on our way. Well sort of, we had to do a few errands first, and then we did a nice driving tour of the local area, by mistake, but we did end up setting up camp at sunset overlooking the Tarasco ruins of Ihuatzio.
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