Gross little fish with eyes staring


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North America » Mexico » Michoacán
November 22nd 2007
Published: November 27th 2007
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Megan here.......so after a day in Morelia, we took the bus to Patzcuaro. If you´ve never been on a bus in Mexico, here is a brief description. If it is a first class bus, you are provided with the following, a snack and drink before boarding, comfortable seats, B American movies dubbed in Spanish, a door separating you from the driver so you don´t have to hear his cell phone conversations, and a lovely buzzer that goes off every time the driver exceeds the speed limit. A local bus has none of the above. Instead, you get a driver who goes as fast as he can especially on winding, hilly roads leading to inevitable motion sickness, stops in the middle of nowhere so that locals can give items to the driver to pass on to someone in the next town, locals that get on the bust at each stop selling candy, drinks, tacos, pizza, etc. Therefore, what could be a 30 min trip from Morelia to Patzcuaro took an hour.

Patzcuaro is a quiet little town with nothing outside of 5 minutes walking distance with the exception of the bus station (which really isn´t a station, just an intersection where buses stop). After finding our hostel and lunch, a delicous menu del dia of Sopa de Tarasca(a local specialty), rice, and enchiladas, we headed to Lake Patzcuaro. We climbed into a boat to take us to Janitzio, the largest of 3 islands on the lake. The boat ride was about 30 minutes of beautiful views of the clouds, surrounding hills, and birds, until you looked down and saw the muddy brown water. Janitzio used to be a fishing village, but with the deciline of the fish poplulation now survives on tourism. From the moment we arrived we were harassed by people trying to sell us souveniers, drinks, or inviting us to sit and eat the specialty, pescado blanco. As you can imagine it got old fast. Nevermind that the smell of the 3 inch long deep fried pescado blanco permiated our noses.

The island is a hill and on the top is a monument dedicated to Jose Morelos, a Mexican independce leader. There is a giant statue of him and inside are 4 spiraling floors of murals depicting his life from childhood through his heroic moments. As you can imagine, after hiking the hill we were pretty tired, so I am sad to say we did not climb the statue, but we did peak inside. On the boat ride back accross the lake we enjoyed the beautiful evening sky.

We went back to the town and to the Museo de Artes Populares. It is a museum for the crafts made in Patzcuarro and other sourrounding villages. Since we speak Spanish, we got a personal tour of the museum. We learned that each village has a color for it's ceramics, the various techniques used to produce the colorful wooden plates and objects we saw in all the shops, and behind the museum were the ruins of a Tarascan pyramid.

Patzcuaro, as you can imagine in any small town, is not known for it's nightlife. So we settled into the hostel at about 9pm and were happy to discover that we had 100 chanels of TV!

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