November 16, 2023. Tocuaro

 November 16, 2023. Tocuaro

Before jumping into our day in Tocuaro, I’ll give a little back story.

Last winter, the Museum of Arts and Culture (MAC) had a fabulous exhibit on Mexican Masks. It was curated by a professor at Gonzaga, Pavel Shlossberg. The master mask maker, Felipe Horta, and many other people and mask makers in his village, were featured in little videos in the exhibit along with these very ornate masks that are part of the Pastorela Dances in Michoacán in February every year. Felipe came several times to the museum and did workshops and demonstrated his masks and showed some of the ones he had for sale. In March, Michele and I went to a mask-making workshop done by Felipe Horta where we got to know him a little. Then on the very last day of the exhibition, I commissioned one of his masks. 

It was sent to Pavel, the curator. When I picked up the mask, Pavel said that Felipe would like us to visit his workshop in Tocuaro so if we ever go to Mexico, we should drop by. When I told this to Michele, she said, “Let’s go to Mexico to see Felipe in Tocuaro.” I thought this was a good idea so plans were laid. We had some communication delays with Pavel, who was giving us information about visiting Felipe so as it turned out, Felipe was at an exhibition in Mexico City when we went to Tocuaro. In truth, this turned out to be a good thing because we met other people and had a very fine time. So read on.

On Thursday, our 2nd day in Patzcuaro, we took a combi to what we thought was a bus station (Combi: a kind of special van that picks up people and takes them to places around a town or between towns.) At the place where the combi driver said was the bus station, we wandered around trying to find a “bus station” when in fact, we were let out at a “bus stop” and all we had to do was stand on the corner where the combi let us off and wait for another combi. With the help of a nice young man, we got straightened out and finally got on a combi for Tocuaro. People are so helpful here. On almost every combi we have been on, we’ve found helpful people steering us in the right direction.

Back to getting to Tocuaro. It took about 30 minutes to get there. We were dropped off at the edge of town and walked a few blocks to get to the houses. Tocuaro is a village. We didn’t see a church or a square of a store or anything. We did not have an address for Felipe’s house and, at first, we didn’t see any people. BUT As we walked along, we met an old man and asked him about Felipe’s house. I’m not sure how it happened, but, we ended up at the house of Juan Horta, the cousin of the famous Felipe Horta. We knocked on his door and he invited us in and showed us his workshop of wonderful masks which were very good but of a different style than Felipe. We even bought some. Here’s a photo of part of his display. And a photo of him, Juan Horta.

Juan pointed out Felipe’s house down the street and we trotted down there and knocked on that door.

Felipe’s daughter was expecting us and let us in. We immediately saw some unfinished masks on the ground. They were drying in the sun. Then we saw his workshop which was quite small and had only a few masks. I guess his masks were at the exhibition in Mexico City. 

We also saw some costumes that were made by his wife and daughter. These are ones used in the Pastorales. 

I was most impressed with the variety of masks in a special room off of the workshop. Felipe has a collection of masks from around the world. Most of them have been given to him. Some are very very old masks from Mexico. At least two of them are from the American Southwest but I forgot which tribes. Take a look.

After leaving Felipe’s house, we wandered a bit but soon came upon the Artesanias Puerta Del Sol….

This is a little shop of carved masks and other carved things like birds. Gustavo Horta lives there and he has this little shop. Another cousin? He’s younger than Juan and Felipe so his work is much simpler. Why don’t I have a picture of his stuff? I don’t know.

We wandered a bit more and saw the streets and some houses and the water tower(?) of Tocuaro. …even a Chinese style house with a Buddha(?) on the roof. (Zoom in)

We walked back to the main road and caught a combi back to Patzcuaro.

Thus ends the saga of the masks.

November 15, 2023 Patzcuaro

 November 15, 2023 Patzcuaro

We left our B&B and got an Uber to breakfast. As we waited, I noticed that there was a hardware store next door and they were stocking new merchandise. A man was unwrapping hoses and hoisting them with a pole to hang on a hood near the second floor. Take a close look…

Near the restaurant where we had breakfast, we visited Romance Alley. People attach locks to the heart sculpture before wandering down the alley to do…what lovers do, I guess.

We took an Uber to Patzcuaro which took about an hour. We found an …ahem… interesting ice cream shop with some interesting …ahem… sculptures….

The ice cream was heavenly.

Next we decided to visit the “Casa de Los Once Patios” (House of 11 Patios). This is touted as an area where one can see artisans at work. Yes, we saw artisans at work BUt they were all making lacquer boxes and lacquer bowls and lacquer jewelry and lacquer, laquer, laquer…. We went through shop after shop of exactly the same stuff made of black lacquer with colorful designs. Sorry, no photos of the 11 patios of lacquerware.

Next, we decided to look for the restaurant that my friend Dru suggested we go to that overlooks the “Once Patios” (11 Patios). We knew we needed to go UP to get to a restaurant overlooking the patios so we kept going up and up and up….

At the top of the stairs, we rested and enjoyed the view.  

On the way down, we looked for a restaurant on the second level that we had missed. Even the stairs to nowhere didn’t help us.

 

We gave up. I wondered what Dru was talking about so I went back to her email and discovered that the restaurant was overlooking the central plaza on the patios side. Oh well, we saw a beautiful view of the area and lots of lacquerware.

So here are a few random photos for your viewing… including some murals and the chocolate shop where I bought my cousin, Sally, some chocolate.

A couple of other interesting things I’ve noticed is that the streets are very clean and there are not any tents of homeless people anywhere. (I discovered that they live at the dump.) Everyone works. Maybe they sell a few treats in the square or wash windows at a stoplight or any number of things. At one small square, I saw a man washing car after car parked alongside the square. Then there are the recyclers. They pick up the garbage around town and separate it right on sight. Here are a couple of pics of that….

One last interesting thing was the sign over the door of the basilica. If you are from the old Catholic church, you will understand it.

It says: 

How to earn a plenary indulgence. (Forgiveness of all sins. A free pass to heaven…until you sin again)

    1 Visit this Basilica

    2 To be in grace or go to confession

    3 Participate in Communion at Mass

    4 Pray for Pope Francis

The next entry will be about going to Tocuaro to visit the mask-maker. 

Final note: This blog is taking a long long long time to write because #1- We are always busy experiencing stuff, and, #2- the only place I can get adequate wifi to upload photos into this blog is on the toilet tank in the bathroom of this hotel room…. sometimes. It’s a rather uncomfortable place if you think about it. So, and therefore, it could be awhile before I can get to this. Again. Stay tuned!!!

Getting to Morelia

 November 13-14, 2023 Morelia

Michele and I planned to take separate flights on separate airlines and arrive at different times in Morelia so I flew solo. My day started with a rise and shine (#$&#!) at 2:30 am. Spokane to Denver then a 3 hour layover. Denver to Houston then…. but wait….when I got off the plane in Houston, there was Michele waiting for me.  Whaaaa…? I was beyond surprised. She was supposed to already be in Morelia. It seems that her flight into Seattle was delayed which caused her to miss all her other connections. So, Alaska rerouted her through Houston and on to my flight to Morelia. For some strange reason, I was upgraded to 1st class on that flight. Yay! At the airport in Morelia it was the usual thing to get through customs. We found an ATM whereupon I got a few pesos BUT the machine ate my debit card…or maybe I didn’t retrieve it? Or whatever. It’s a good thing I have backups to my backups so it’s an inconvenience, only. Not a tragedy. We took an Uber to our place of repose. It was my first attempt at speaking Spanish this trip. The Uber driver was a young man who seemed to understand me. 

We are staying at a house that rents rooms through Booking.com. It’s called El Laberinto Hospedaje en Casa. One must go through a labyrinth of sorts to get to the room. The door into the labyrinth is only 18 inches wide so we had to turn sideways to get through the door. Here’s Michele and I squeezing through. 

Through the door, there is a hall, (Michele is walking toward the little door)… then a turn, then some stairs to the second level…

then another turn and a long hallway to the room. The stairs are at the end of this hall.

Our bags? Ana Laura had to shove our bags through a window onto the stairs at the first turn for us to pick up on our way through the labrynth. 

November 14, 2023

Tuesday started off with finding a place for breakfast. We ask Analaura where to go and she gave us good directions. Along the way , we talked to two old guys with their dogs and asked them to verify the directions. I used my excellent Spanish (?). Michele did too. We found a lovely and large market and wandered.

We didn’t find a breakfast place at the market so between Google and asking directions, we made it to a place with good coffee (!!) and breakfast. Michele had « divorced eggs. »

After breakfast, we were ready to start our adventures.  We went to a convent and church— one and the same.

As we wandered through the streets we came across a march, a kind of protest. I don’t know exactly what they were protesting but the sign they carried seemed to call people to a revolution.

 

I noticed that they marched in 2 lines. Most of the men were on one side of the street and the women were on the other side. They marched far apart so it looked like a larger crowd than you’d think. Police monitored the onlookers along the way. We saw other protesters throughout the day as we wandered.

Near the cathedral we saw interesting art of various genres. First there were interesting murals. Take a

look….

       

We also saw some interesting classical art. It was like since people don’t go to classical art museums, they brought the museum to the people.

We wandered awhile and saw a few random sites in Morelia.

             

Later in the afternoon, Terry, joined us. She is Michele.s friend from Canada who snowbirds in San Miguel de Allende. In Canada, she lives about 30 minutes from High River, near Calgary, where my father was born.

We found a place for drinks in a place where the bartender was the only one there…along with the blaring music. We had to insist that he turn the music off so we could hear well enough to order drinks. We had

the happy hour special with beers and mezcal, Terry asked him about the mezcal and he pulled a generic bottle from behind the bar. Hooch, perhaps?? Terry mentioned that she hoped we didn’t go blind from drinking it. Later on, this young bartender brought us the real bottle of metzcal which had the cutest little mask hanging from its neck. 

He gave me the cute little wooden mask..

Cheers….Salut.

         After drinks, we went to a restaurant featuring food from Oaxaca and Michoacán. 

I had stone soup with fish. I mean it was literally cooked with a hot stone inside. The shrimp had been tossed in live so I had to spend a lot of time pulling off their little heads and crunchy tails. It was mighty savory once I got going on it. The first photo is the soup with additives— avocado, onion, lime, cilantro….

The second photo is the stone. (It was dark inside so the photos didn’t turn out too well.)

The next day, after a long leisurely breakfast, the three of us took an Uber to Patzcuaro. It took almost an hour. When we got there, Google steered us wrong and we had a bit of a time finding our B&B but we finally checked in. 

I’d better stop now. I’ve only gotten through the first 2 days. Writing this on my iPad mini without a real keyboard is taking forever and of course, we are going, going, going. Stay tuned for our time in Patzcuaro. It’s a very fascinating and typical colonial Mexican town.