Morelia & Patzcuaro

Downtown Morelia at night.

I just love how dramatic the main cathedral is at night.

Mountain roadside stand with homemade canned goods.  Of course we walked away with pickled cactus.

Grrrr...

Natural hot springs in the mountains east of Morelia... strangely reminiscent of Colorado.



Mole enchiladas at the market.  Yum.

Morelia sunset.

This was surely a painstaking process.

During the ¨little bull¨ parade, fake bulls dressed in colorful decor are carried through the streets while different characters dance around them.  I gather that traditionally the men would dress as women in the brightly died, handmade dresses, but these days they seem more modern.  In other words, those are men posing with Griffin.  Children ran around selling cascarones*, or egg shells stuffed with confetti for cracking on people´s heads (good fun and also popular at Easter).

*In researching the significance of cascarones, I turned up this:
¨Their empty shell represents the empty tomb of our Lord Jesus. The colorful confetti inside represents the joyful celebration over Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead. Cascarones represent the good news of Easter: The Lord is risen!¨  One site even said that having a cascarone cracked over your head brings good luck and shows you are loved.

Lago Patzcuaro with traditional dugout canoes.

Morelia is the capital of Michoacan and an enchantingly old city, founded in 1541.  With it´s open air cafes and ancient baroque architecture, it´s easy to feel like you´re in a european city... until you examine the buildings closer and P´urhepecha and Matlazinca gods begin to jump out of carved doors and off of cathedrals.  The streets are full of rich mole and bright flower markets, hand painted pottery and hand embroidered clothing... it´s an art and food appreciator´s dream.

Patzcuaro, an even older city and at one time the rival for the capital of Michoacan, is said to have been founded before Spanish invasion sometime in the 1320s as a capital for the indigenous populations in the area at the time (P´urhepecha and Matlazinca).  The buildings are consistently painted red and white with the red-clay color lining the walkways.   Adobe brick buildings are common and next door to where we are staying they are making new bricks each day.  Patzcuaro has evidently been named one of the 100 Historic World Treasure Cities by the United Nations and is well known for it´s Day of the Dead celebrations.  In fact, the celebrated skeletons of the deceased are prevalent everywhere.  Brightly painted ¨Catrina´s¨ (skeleton women in elegant garb, often shaped after the popular artist Frida Kahlo) are so popular I wasn¨t even permited to photograph them, for fear someone might copy the artist´s creation.