This is the year of visiting Mexico. People get used to the appearance of the border cities. The common opinion is that they are dirty but that is not true in the cities I visited away from the border. They were clean and the people were honest. In the Morelia airport, I was asked if I could change a $500 peso note and I said that I could. I was so tired from getting up really early for the flight to Houston that I included a $100 dollar US bill for a $100 peso note. That meant the change was $500 pesos for $1400. The lady pointed out my mistake and I traded the $100 US for a $100 peso note. There were muchas gracias going around.
I have had a passport for 2 years and now I have been there once. It wasn't like a vacation but more like I was visiting relatives. There were many things I wanted to see. I have to visit the churches in Morelia again because the natural light shooting made photography very difficult. About half of my photos were not sharp because of movement. It is too easy for the camera to move and the old churches deserve a better attempt at photography than my first attempt. The next time I will have a tripod with me.
Everywhere I went where items were sold in the village of Zinapécuaro, there were indigenous people from Patzcuaro. A dental appointment on Sunday prevented me from visiting that region. A tour would cost me $670 pesos. That is $300 pesos for the bus ride from Zinapécuaro to Morelia and $370 pesos for an 8 hour tour. I purchased a Patzcuaro doll to show to my Spanish class.
The first night I was there, I set a level. I was taken to the local taco place on the street corner off of the town square for tacos. They told me their salsa was muy picante but it was just right for me. I was a gringo who likes food just as they prepared it. They remember you. They also couldn't understand why I was down there. I think everyone thought that I was a husband or prospective one and not just a friend of the family.
The trip and the altitude wiped me out for a couple of days. I went from 100 meters to over 1,800 meters and the lack of oxygen wiped me out. There is a lot of vertical movement in the village and I was not used to that. I would have people come up and ask me where I was from in English. They wanted to practice. I have 100´s of photos and I will have to add the best ones slowly. The following image is a link to the photos taken around Zinapécuaro.
Note: All of the photos started out as 10 megapixel images at 480 dpi and were reduced to 72 dpi for display. The 1st and 3rd images are links to pages with more images.
While I was there, one of the tios had a problem with leukemia. He was in the Morelia hospital and looked like he had a couple of days left. That was when we all got in a bus and went to Morelia. The farms looked so close to our farm in Utah, that I tried to take some photos to show my brother. The crops close to the road looked like barley with a few trees around the fields. Some of the trees were different and the cactus really changed the appearance. They had a few pine trees where as our farm does not. I have showed the following photo to a number of people. It could be on the Pasco side of the Columbia River heading North. Rattlesnake looks like that from some distance away. Especially when 395 was a 2-lane highway. The field is a little large for one of the fields west of the irrigation ditch on our farm in Utah. You also have to ignore the bus being where there isn't a road and the fact that the trees are larger on the farm. You can see the trees on our farm using Google Earth if you search on N41.284933 W112.1276361.
The taxis in Mexcio are cheap and the drivers seemed to play chicken in the narrow roads better than the other drivers. Two of them in Morelia nailed spots in intersections so well you wanted to cheer for them. Most corners have signs saying "Uno y Uno" or one by one. Latter, the youngest son and I went to visit Morelia. You have a very old city with incredible structures. The tour people would ask me if I understood Spanish. My usual response was "un poco" but I was really better than that. A pretty, very friendly guide from the tour bus spoke so fast that I was surprised that I understood her. She didn't seem to combine the words into one long one. That helped a lot. What caused problems were the dates. The cathederals all had multiple 100 year construction dates and my mind just seemed to freeze with the multiple 2 to 4-digit numbers. This wasn't a new problem. I would ask about them when there was spots available. She was as facinated with the older cultures as I seem to be. At the end of the tour, you were dropped off at a indigenous candy factory where they prepared candy the old way. It was hard to walk by samples. They tasted so good but I control my diabetes with diet and it doesn't allow many things. The following image is a link to a webpage on Morelia.
La madre, when we were packed 4 to a back seat, said that she felt like a taco. I said that thought that chorizos was closer. A sausage is packed much tighter than a taco.
In very old villages, the introduction of automobiles has caused problems. When you live on a narrow street, where do you park your auto. The typical modification was to add a metal door, which let them park the car close to or as part of their dining room or living room. It was kind of funny until I decided that it was really clever. No available parking makes for strange compromises.
If I was interested in something, someone would come up to show me more. There is a hot springs between Zinapécuaro de Figueroa de Michoacán and Acámbaro de Guanajuato. Rodolfo was going to show me more of the features and an employee came up and gave both of us a tour. There were hot rocks very close to the surface that were producing 95oC water.
There were occasions when foolishing things happened. Jesús and I were driving to the town where a friends mother lives. It was dark and all of a sudden a blue flashlight waved us to the side of the road. It was a Mexican army roadblock. You had soldiers with flashlights that looked over the truck after we got out of it. You had the soldiers off to the side with black face masks and automatic weapons. It was really surreal. They were really casual and I didn´t get nervous like I do when a American policeman stops me. They tell us we can go, we got back in, and he drove around the town he wanted to show me. Then, we headed back to Zinapécuaro and, of course, we had to go through the roadblock again. It wasn´t any different, they looked, told us we could go and we left. Later, when we were close to the house, I told Jesús that I didn´t have my passport with me. He made some comment that amounted to that was a bad idea and I alway remembered it after that.
On Tuesday, we went to Acámbaro, Guanajuato to shop for botas y un gorro. I found a pair of cowboy boots that were made with deer skin. They feel pretty good. Getting them on was kind of strange. You put your foot in a thin plastic bag and the boots slide over your foot like it is lubricated. My feet always went through the bags, which you could pull out of the boot and then slide down over the top. We looked for a hat of some type that had Michoacán or Zinapécuaro on it but all I got was sunburned. I bought a couple of bottles of tequila as presents for some friends. Later we met up with people that Jesús worked with and went out to a farm that had a power problem. It looked like a fuse had blown on a main line and they didn´t find it before it was dark. We had an argument about mosquitos y moscas. I was being bitten by mosquitos and Jesús said they were moscas. I didn´t find the name zancudo until I got home and told the story in my Spanish class. Wikipedia has an article on Mosquitos with an image. As the sun set, it did turn into an interesting sunset. The line with the problem is the one in the photo.
The trip back was traumatic. I got to the airport 2 hours a head of time like you are supposed to. I was just glad that I wasn't leaving from Mexico City because you have to check-in 3-hours before your flight. They took my FMT tourist visa and then told me my flight could be 3 hours late. The check-in person restructured the rest of the flight so that I was protected. Then, all I could do was wait. The time on the schedule listed "estimado 0800" and finally "0900". By then, I was so tired that I had to stand up other wise I would fall asleep and miss my flight. I wasn't the only one. After I got on the airplane, there was a pretty lady sitting across the aisle from me who was really tired. The guy that was sitting next to her moved to the seat in front of me and we finally took off around 0930. The lady spent most of the trip to Houston asleep. I was in the aisle seat because I have room there but everyone wakes you up when they go by. I don't like airplane landings. I was blown off of a runway one time and they have bothered me ever since. The landing at Houston got especially rough and I sat straight up in my seat. The hair on the back of my neck was also probably sticking straight out. I had recently watched a video of a plane in Europe rubbing the tip of its wing on the runway and that thought probably popped into my mind. Once the pilot touched down and wobbled a bit, the plane straightened out and the rest of the landing went just fine.
They announced that we would have to take our luggage through American Customs in Houston. I had two large bags and a carryon. They were really awkward. In addition, almost everytime I have come through American customs from Canada, they have checked my luggage. This time, I thought that if they checked them, I could be late for my flight to Seattle. I am not a trinket buying person. I went down there with $800 mostly in travelers checks because that is the limit you can bring back. I made sure I was out of the plane really fast and lined up on the luggage carousel. I got my bags and headed for Customs. It is a huge room with a number of lanes. I was number 4 or 5 in my line but one of the first people triggered some response and he was shuttled off for a larger examination. I get to the Customs guy and he asks me how I am. I commented that I was glad to be out of Mexico. I wasn't sure if I was going to fly out today. I had also been really worried about making my connecting flights. He told me to have a good day and let me go. He had a French accent and I started to say "Gracias".
After passing through Customs, you have to recheck them into the Continental baggage system. All of this went really fast. They may have 10 to 15 lines and checking your stuff back in is a snap. In comparison, Mexico City only had two lines for Customs. You have to go through an inspection of your personal effects but I was getting used to even that inspection. One of the Spanish speaking ladies behind me commented to the other lady ¿Zapatos?. I told her "Sí, no zapatos y no cinturón". She had a rope belt and that didn't count. From that moment on, everything slowed down. I was always early for the next flight but was still too tired to sit down without falling asleep and possibly missing my flight. The best part of going through customs in Houston was not going through it at the Pasco Airport. I could go straight home. By the time I was dropped off and I got to bed, I had been up for more than 24 hours. The following Sunday, I had someone call me and I talked to them in my sleep. Somewhere around the middle of the week, I finally caught up with my sleep and my brain seemed to start working again. A few more days and I finally stopped automatically saying "Sí" and "Gracias".
