Oddly enough, we couldn’t find Patamban in any of our guidebooks but when we went there on that late October weekend we found that, somehow, about a hundred thousand people had managed to congregate for the town’s annual Fiesta de Cristo Rey parade and festivities. I’m guessing at that number but, judging from the square […]
Continue ReadingI’m not what you would consider one of those mystical psychic types, well versed in the mumbo jumbo of the supernatural. But I’m not a skeptic, either. All I can do is simply accept what happens to me, that which I experience, and write some things off as unexplainable. Such was the case with the […]
Continue ReadingPara Julie Black © 1999 Todos Derechos Reservados. No me considero de esas personas muy místicas y psíquicas, bien versada en la jerga de lo sobrenatural. Pero tampoco soy escéptica. Solo puedo aceptar lo que me sucede en el mundo y guardar algunas cosas como recuerdos inexplicables. Así es el caso con el fantasma de […]
Continue ReadingTexas has the Alamo, New York has its Empire State Building, but only Michoacán has Pátzcuaro. Every travel poster extolling Michoacán has a shot of fisherman wielding the famous butterfly net. Look closely, and you’ll spy a tiny cone-shaped island, topped by a statue of José María Morelos, hand reaching to the sky. That’s Pátzcuaro’s […]
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James Metcalf, Stephen and Maureen Rosenthal and Vasco de Quiroga have a lot in common. Each was a foreigner who came to Michoacan’s hills and dales surrounding Lake Patzcuaro, married art with commerce, infused heritages from around the world with local custom, emphasized training of artisans, and raised the utility of ordinary objects to art […]
Continue ReadingWe weren’t sure what to expect as we wheeled into Hacienda Mariposa’s entrance, greeted by German Shepherds. Of course, we’d visited the website, https://www.haciendamariposas.com, but we knew how deceptive some sites can be. Rounding the bend past the nursery, the property came into full view, and sure enough, the website was deceptively understated. What lay before […]
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The town had been sort of a laughing stock, ignored by outsiders,one of those dusty lonely little burgs where no one seemed particularly interested in much beyond survival. Like sad and decrepit towns scattered across rural America – towns named Promise City, Gravity, and Dumas – its inhabitants bore looks of quiet desperation. Tzurumútaro was […]
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They call it “the place where the flowers bloom,” this steamy edge of subtropical landscape, as rich in history as it is in surprise and beauty where superlatives and contrasts abound. It was the early 80s, and Uruapan was merely a waystation on the road between Morelia and Ixtapa. It struck me as a nice […]
Continue ReadingI always knew I’d end up in Mexico, but I didn’t know where. Mexico City holds world-class fascination, but there’s a reason even the idle rich have second homes elsewhere. Chapala had just too many gringos, amenities be damned. San Miguel de Allende struck me as full of artistes etching, sculpting, and writing odes to […]
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A short kilometer from Santa Clara de Cobre, on the way to Ario de Rosales, a bust of a young Lazaro Cardenas nods toward Zirahuen. “I’m sort of proud of this road, now that it has been improved,” I remarked to Hank, my travelling companion of the day. He shot me one of those incredulous […]
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