Pátzcuaro

Our drive from the failed hot spring experience was across a fertile agricultural plain south of San Luis Potosí from San Miguel de Allende towards Morelia the capital of Michoacán State, one of our favorite areas.

Squirt is a great van dog even though he needs training obviously. He travels with no problems curled up on his blanket behind our seats with no complaints. When we stop he sits in our seats and grumpy Rusty retires to his bed on our bed which is too high for Squirt to jump up so he has a refuge. 

The countryside was hot though GANNET2 recorded highs bear 85 degrees only.

A lot of the high plains were less fertile and reminded me of the desert southwest with mesquite bushes and dust everywhere. 

I can’t say it was attractive and I’m not sure I want to see it again particularly but I enjoy driving and these backroads have very little traffic. But lots of potholes. 

The stops to stretch our legs seemed to please the boys. I got thorns in my Crocs but they were fine. 

Layne buying fruit while Squirt tries to cross the main road. I am so used to Rusty’s traffic sense I struggle to remember he has no sense at all. How he survived on the streets is a mystery. 

Rusty seeking some solitude. One night he ran off into the darkness and freaked me out. He was just letting me know he was sick of sharing his slave with another dog. This phase of our journey is filled with stress for all of us.

Might as well be Florida…or more likely Arizona! 

Except there were some bits with odd topography. The road surface wasn’t too bad with not many potholes. Of course there were stretches where road maintenance was all patchwork and GANNET2 rattled like the surface was washboard.  

We passed the heroic larger than life representation of Miguel Hidalgo considered to be the first rebel in Mexicos fight in 1810 to throw out Spain. He was born in Guanajuato in  1753 and studied theology and philosophy in Morelia. He became a parish priest in the city of Dolores in 1803, a city known today as Dolores Hidalgo where started several businesses and learned Indian languages not a common thing in those days. 

On September 16th 1810 Hidalgo gathered the citizens in front of the church in Dolores and proclaimed the Cry of Dolores ( “El Grito de Dolores”) “Long Live America! Death to the Goverment! Death to the Gachupines (Spaniards)!” And so began the Mexican Revolution. He was caught in 1811, defrocked and executed. You may celebrate Cinco de Mayo when Mexico defeated France in 1862 at Puebla but for Mexicans the Grito de Dolores on the 16th of September is the big day in the calendar. 

All very well of course but we were driving to Pátzcuaro and night was falling. With perfect timing we found ourselves on the freeway driving past the miserable city of Celaya currently under martial law with the Army and National Guard trying to suppress a more vicious than usual cartel war.

I’m not scared of driving around Mexico but I’m not stupid either. We’d seen the columns of troops and police driving there two days prior and had no illusions. This was real. 

We were looking for a truck stop to spend the night but we weren’t stopping anywhere near Celaya by mutual agreement. 

Apparently the Jalisco Nueva Generacion cartel resents the Rosa da Lima cartel trying to muscle into Celaya and there have been a few massacres in the city lately. They aren’t interested in foreigners passing by but their aim isn’t always that great but their firepower is,  and getting shot in the crossfire is a distinct possibility. We raced the setting sun. 

Obviously we were fine and saw nothing untoward but we breathed easier once we were out in the fields driving the freeway through the countryside. There wasn’t a gas station to be seen for miles as we drove toward Irapuato from Celaya so when finally a small Shell station appeared we pulled over, not for gas but for the cement apron where a couple of trucks had stopped. We joined them. 

My former colleague Keith texted me as I walked the barren field with the dogs and I greatly enjoyed exchanging messages from afar discussing our former lives together, work and Key West. A small connection across a vast world. 

The freeway to Morelia and then Pátzcuaro was an easy drive. Layne tried to contact several boarding organizations in San Miguel de Allende as we drove. It was her brilliant idea to see if we could board Squirt in his future home town until Andrea his new mom could pick him up on Friday.  

We nearly pulled it off but in that very gringo town the only owner had had any room wouldn’t take him because he hasn’t been vaccinated for kennel cough. Huh? In Mexico? Just our continuing streak of bad luck. We are stuck with him till Friday. 

Above you see the sign warning you there is a toll booth coming and to prepare your cash. But they don’t actually show how much that is! Mexico the inexplicable… but there is an electronic sign right at the booth revealing the various amounts as you fumble at the last minute with  your coins and bills. Some brave souls use electronic passes but I’m not sure they are quite reliable just yet. 

Lots of magic third lane in action on the two lane highway. Slow vehicles ride the shoulder and when you want to pass you run down the middle. No problem, no road rage. 

It can get s bit hairy when some people get over enthusiastic but I just hang back and hope for the best. We did nearly get squashed once when a truck driver apparently distracted slammed on his brakes and started fish tailing with clouds of burnt rubber just as I was passing (in s straight stretch). He missed the truck in front by a long way but nearly wiped us out. 

We passed s bad accident too with an 18 wheeler crushing a sedan and knocking a pick up truck into the median.

The pick up was carrying avocados which made a mess but worse than that the sedan driver was whisked off in an ambulance. One oddity at these scenes is you almost always have an insurance company vehicle parked among the police rescue and  tow truck crews. 

Trash clean up. Freeways are operated by private companies in Mexico and your toll fee buys you emergency services if you break down and need a tow truck. Pretty slick actually though I’m glad we’ve not had to used them yet. There are also far fewer speed bumps on toll roads six often not too many pit holes. 

I felt confident driving 60 mph on this smooth highway. Here below I’m on the shoulder and the VW pick up is in the magic third lane as a car cones toward him. 

We arrived in good order and decided to spend the week in Pátzcuaro with the dogs until we can drive back to San Miguel Allende (bypassing the cartels of Celaya again) to drop off Squirt. Then we will drive north to finally fix Layne’s teeth in Los Algodones before we return to the States for a brief summer tour. Something like this over ten days:

Butterflies At Altitude

I might as well get it out of the way. We saw no butterflies. It was absurd coming all this way on crappy roads, climbing high in the mountains…

…and we saw no monarchs. Layne was worried about my state of health at these altitudes and she wanted to get back down as soon as possible. I couldn’t argue with that and I was glad she agreed to drive over the high passes exploring the monarch habitats from the road. Next time we will spend more time acclimating at lower altitudes before coming up here. It’s funny as I’ve not felt this before and we drove mountain passes up to 11,000 feet in Colorado and Idaho last summer with no ill effects. The red line was our route, the yellow line I added for emphasis marking the state line between Michoacán and Mexico State. 

The villagers in El Rosario got a special treat that day: two Martians dropped in on them to share the splendidly refreshing morning at their market. They stared and stared in slack jawed silence as we three approached. I might as well have been Gary Cooper in High Noon had I been taller and thinner and armed and at the OK corral. As it was I felt like an intruder. Which was weird really as the monarchs and their annual migrations are a world famous phenomenon and you’d have thought gabachos (gringos in a newer derogatory term) would be a common sight. As it was I saw a nice lady selling coffee and pastries so I peeled off from the vegetable expedition ( wouldn’t you?) and got busy. I asked for a coffee and a concha. Her son forgot his own breakfast and gawked at me as though I had asked for the head of Marie Antoinette on a platter. “Do you speak Spanish?” I asked a not unreasonable question because sometimes Indio tribes  speak  only their own unintelligible language. He nodded slowly fearful of what was to come. Buenas dias I said. He remained tongue tied. His mother crossed herself. I then further confounded their morning by speaking double dutch to my dog who actually  understood me and obeyed. Had I levitated myself into the cloudless sky I could not have produced more astonishment. 

The photo is from an excellent page discussing the history of conchas but also the balance between corn and wheat in Mexican history. Surprisingly interesting. 
https://www.eater.com/2016/2/19/11054298/conchas-mexico-pastry

Under these trying circumstances my usual ploy of engaging in some light banter, asking about their kids and asking for a smile for the camera did not seem appropriate so we neither of us got any pictures of the market. I did manage to get a snap of the guy in the “built for the craft” (!) t-shirt who between using his three words of English on me was working with his wife to set up their restaurant stall for market day. I wish we had been there later in the day  to do a taste test. 

There it is, still standing after the alien invasion. 

Never mind the monarchs, this is very much rural Mexico as we ourselves discovered. 

With much regret and only a small headache I drove us past the butterfly parking lot on up the hill overlooking the valley. 

This was a winding mountain road I wanted to explore before we descended below 8,000 feet to the city of Toluca, several hours drive away. 

Actually I was glad Layne agreed to this deviation as she was quite surprised about me feeling so ill, and she insisted we get a wriggle on. The scenery was spectacular at ten thousand feet. 

This is the road from El Rosario to the delightfully named town of An-gang-gay-oh in the next valley. Luckily we took this little used road in the down  hill direction and you will see, I hope, how steep it was. Photos don’t do grades justice but trust me when I tell you it was steep! 

This weird strip road actually works quite well as long as you keep your wheels in the strips. 

Water tanks on roofs are universal in Mexico and it’s time I bought shares in Rotoplex. This yellow water tank is rather more fancy than the usual rotomolded plastic. 

New construction everywhere. Until your house is completed you pay no property taxes I’m told so you will often see crafty home owners with rebar out of the roof. 

Cows on the road. The protocol when you meet livestock is to be nice and not push. For retirees in a van that’s easy. 

The farmer plodded in the road to protect his animals which knew the way home and turned in at the fence. We waved, he smiled and we were on our way. 

The next time you have a crappy day in the office think about these fields, nearly vertical and neatly cultivated. At ten thousand feet. 

The road deteriorated into a Roman style cobblestone that would shake your fillings loose at anything more ambitious than walking speed. So I stuck Gannet2 into manual first gear and we bounced along.

What I would really like in my six speed Promaster is a crawler gear for those roads where I want slow speed and more power but as it is this is a delivery van conversion not designed for rough back roads necessarily. 

As it was I stopped from time to time to give the brakes a chance to cool. It was here I spotted a lone monarch. Layne wanted a picture; it was long gone. Here beginneth and endeth our monarch encounter! 

Here’s a close up of the Roman road that was making me crazy. Worse was to come as we got off the mountains but I didn’t know that yet. 

And this is where it got extremely steep. I was glad we were going downhill and the brakes were fine. 

Believe me if it isn’t clear in the pictures that this is steep. In the rain these cobbles would be like slime. I’ve met their ilk before in Mexico and it’s a slippery surface like ice when wet. 

Finally Angangueo and a few tiny alleys, one more stop to cool the brakes and we were in the main road  again. 

The Main Street had an Alpine air and I was out in mind of Switzerland. 

It’s not actually Switzerland of course. Mexico is its own inimitable world, firewood and smart phone arm in arm. 

I don’t know where Cassville is but I assume they traded these trailers onto the used market and they end up improbably in Angangueo.

Climbing up to the pass at the stateline with Mexico. 

I hope this odd tour of back country Michoacán explains a little why I like driving Mexico. Not a single foreign tagged vehicle did we see since we left the campground in Pátzcuaro and our journey across Michoacán has been all to ourselves, the good roads and the bad, the road food and the awful altitude sickness soon to get worse. 

Up next Mexico State, poverty, terrible roads and lots of dead cell phone areas. I ended up missing Michoacán.