Archive for the Michoacan Category
Posted on May 13, 2010 by jason
The morning break at Nexpa was a little more reasonable, but still way too big and powerful for our liking. Besides, we still didn’t have a board. Time to keep moving. First, Bode had to read a book to Luca. Very proud!
We lingered, then drove aimlessly until we saw a pretty good looking arroyo after crossing a bridge. We turned the bus around and followed the dirt path to the beach and a single palapa. Once again, I went inside and asked to camp in my best broken Spanish. “No problema,” with a smile was again the response.
This weird little place was Puente Mexcalhuacan and it is definitely not in any guidebooks.
“?Es suguro?”
“Si. no problema.”
We rearranged the buses and went back to patronize the palapa. “?Tienne cerveza?”
“No… mas tarde…”
There was no one around, but then suddenly kids arrived on the beach and Bode had more instant playmates. Teenagers or whoever, it just doesn’t matter. The kid will walk right up and ask anyone to play or join in the game.
We whipped up some dinner – more sea bass – and the lady at the palapa announced that beer had arrived. We bought a few to seal our camping arrangement and watched the kids chase each other all over the beach for the rest of the evening.
After another quiet night, we kept pushing south. We’re still traveling without a jack and it continues to be a bad idea. I keep thinking I’ll pull over to a yonke and just pick one up, but so far I’ve had no luck. I also continue to ask for “un gato” which I think is correct, but I can’t help thinking that I’m asking for an actual cat.
After a very brief stop in Lázaro Cárdenas for supplies and another brief stop in the sadly dilapidated Playa Azul for sandwiches (our own,) we made our way to La Saladita.
We pulled up and immediately spotted a ’70 Westy. A very good sign that we found the right place and yet another validation of our theory that 2 buses always attracts a third. Not long after, we met Aster and her boyfriend who walked up from their afternoon session carrying their boards. She’s from SoCal via Hong Kong and he’s from Montreal. He likes the big waves and she likes the smaller ones. They’re an interesting match. They’re wrapping up a three-month surfing trip and are slowly heading north again.
We wandered the beach looking for a good place to camp and found one close by. Right off the beach in a shady spot between a coconut grove and a mango grove. This is tough living.
Posted on May 12, 2010 by jason
In the morning I had plans to cook up a huge breakfast (really, I promise) but discovered that I had left my pots and pans on some rocks at the previous camp site. I piled them up planning on washing them after cooking dinner the night before (beach sand and salt water is a great way to scrub camp cookware) but simply forgot and later drove away. Oops.
Since I haven’t seen any cast iron camping cookware in Mexico (haven’t looked either), I decided to back-track up the road and see if I could find them. I left Angela and Bode at the beach. For possibly the first time this trip, I went for a long drive in Red Beard by myself.
And, I found all my stuff right where I left it. Nobody washed it either.
After getting back to Maruata, we decided to keep moving south with Ane, Andres and Luca and go look for another good spot. We took turns leading, but ultimately ended up at Barra de Nexpa – another notorious surf break. It was huge. Over 12 footers. Once again, we weren’t even getting in the water. We parked under the palm trees and watched the surfers for the rest of the evening.
There was quite a crowd here and the whole place is built around surfing. There are multiple places to camp, some cabanas and several restaurants. There’s exactly one surf shop, but they don’t do rentals. Andres has started shopping for a board and we’re starting to wonder if we should do the same. When else will we have the daily opportunity to just paddle out from our front door?
The kids played and played. Angela walked up and discovered Bode was teaching Luca how a dog plays fetch. After a moment of thinking about it, she just started tossing sticks at them to retrieve with their mouths. Pretty sure that wouldn’t have happened 9 months ago. We all went to bed early after an excellent sunset.
Over the past few days Bode has asked if we can go to Madagascar (and pointed to it on a map), Istanbul and now Tibet. I don’t know where this kid is getting his information, but none of those places are on our route. He’s pretty persistent, so we’ll just have to wait and see.
Posted on May 11, 2010 by jason
There’s nothing like having a few mechanical problems fixed to motivate you to get in the car and go. We were going to explore Colima state a bit more, but we were ready to get moving and put some asphalt behind us. The next stops were the beaches of Michoacan.
We got a tip to go find the km174 marker and that was the extent of the advice. Good enough for us. This turns out to be near El Faro, but not quite there. We turned off the main road and drove a few kilometers to the beach. Here we found a few palapas and a really beautiful beach with white sand and little islands offshore.
There were tenters under some palapas, so we picked one and went to the little shack where we could see women making tortillas in a big steel pan over an open fire.
“Buenas tardes. ¿Podemos acampar aquí?”
“Si! No problema!” she answered with a big smile. “¿dónde está tu coche?”
“Allí. Rojo combi.”
“Si. Si. No problema.”
With that, we had a killer libre camping spot right on the beach. We bought a refresca from her as a simple thanks and went to the bus to start cooking up Bode’s new favorite dinner. Fresh filetes de basa, rolled in flour and fried up in olive oil. Easy camp cooking that tastes great. Even Angela, the seafood skeptic, loves it.
Despite all the weekend tenters, it was a quiet night. The next morning we back-tracked just north to La Ticla. This is a friend’s favorite surf spot, but came with warnings about safety. It’s a sleepy town, but where the road ends at the beach is a huge “bone-crushing” break and lots of stoked surfers. The waves were huge and even the undertow in the shore break was a little scary. We weren’t getting in. We watched a bit and decided we would be better off heading south – not much for us to do here.
Next up was a stop at Maruata. This place was recommended by several people so we knew it had to be good. We drove in to town and followed a car to the north end (they must know where they’re going, right?) and had a look around. We decided there must be more, so we drove back through town and made the turn to the southern beach. Once we found it, it was an obviously better choice.
We cruised along the row of palapas looking for a good place to camp when we spotted a familiar coche. There was Emma and the Bullis. Even more serendipitous – lunch was ready and they had plenty.
It was a great spot and the kids were happy to play together on the beach. It’s a protected beautifully curving cove with warm water and gentle waves. Not much in the way of surfing here, but excellent wading and boogie-boarding for everyone. Total cost to camp on the beach was about 70 pesos for the night – about $5.
There were more tenters here too – weekend tent camping on the beach seems to be a growing popular trend among Mexicans – a good sign. Michoacan is the perfect destination – no hotels or development – just miles and miles of beach and the occasional palapa restaurant. Next door was a restaurant completely filled with tents – no tables or chairs – and happy campers ordering up tacos and tortas all evening.
We met some guys who came over for some hot water. Ramen noodles were on their menu for the evening. 3 pesos per cup, they bragged. They were all students from Colima and they came to the beach to relax. They brought over whiskey and tequila as compensation for boiling their water for them – I had a sip to be nice, but tequila-drinking was not going to happen this evening for anyone in our group.
They were nice enough guys and I got to practice my terrible Spanish with them. One of the guys was an architecture student and the other two were – get this – culinary students. Ramen noodles for dinner and they needed help boiling water? Oh well, they were students after all. I remember. But, back then the Ramen was 10 for a dollar .
Posted on May 10, 2010 by jason
We decided to spend a bit more time in the mountains before heading for the beaches since the weather was so nice and we really wanted to see more of the highlands. We could spend weeks in Michoacan and still not see it all, and decided to save some for next time and head west.
It was a long day of driving over to Mazamitla – just south of Lake Chapala and almost back to Guadalajara. This place was recommended by several folks we’ve met along the way so we thought we may as well check it out.
It’s another nice place and we wandered the streets and had some good tacos at the cleanest and nicest mercado in Mexico. It’s nice, but kinda boring, actually. The town seems almost like a Swiss village, with whitewashed shops full of handmade cheeses and rompope. Let’s face it, when you have a hankering for rompope, you just can’t get good rompope anywhere else.
We camped just outside of town, but it didn’t take us long to tire of Mazamitla and hit the road again. Time to bag another state – on to Colima. It’s a small state, so we didn’t have much on the itinerary – lounge in Comala and eat lots of tapas. Maybe head up to the volcano or find a waterfall.
The drive to Comala was a little more exciting than we expected. The libre road was sinuous and we ascended and descended continuously. For the fist time ever, we saw signs that said to use engine braking, “Frenos con motor!” After a while, we could see the barely-visible and still-active volcano hovering above us. The entire cinder cone is a gray-white color, so it blends into even a perfectly clear sky.
We did use engine braking on the steep descents, but once again we learned that we could boil brake fluid… twice. The first time, the pedal went to the floor and we stopped with the emergency brake and let things cool off with no other problems. The second time was the killer. This time, even after cooling and lot’s of bleeding, the pedal was extremely stiff and braking was tough. Fortunately, we were only about 5 km from Comala. We coasted slowly into town and grabbed a hostal for the evening to figure things out.
The next day I found the local parts place and ordered up a new maestro cylindro. My assumption was that the valve that lets fluid back into the reservoir was toast and that’s why the pedal was so hard. I could bleed the brakes easily, but the pedal stayed high and stiff with minimal braking no matter what. It was a heating issue, so the booster shouldn’t have been affected.
We only had to wait a few hours for the part to come from Colima city, so we went to find those tapas. Comala is a quiet little town with the usual town square and big church. The difference here was palm trees – we’re definitely closer to the coast. One side of the town square is a row of tapas restaurants where you sit down and order a limonada and the plates of food just start arriving. All good stuff.
Later, I picked up the part and decided to wait until the cool morning to get filthy and install it. In the morning, I took the old one out it wasn’t hard to notice that the new master cylinder wasn’t quite right. First, the reservoir ports were the wrong size. Second, two of the fluid lines were in different locations. I headed back to the parts guy and took both maestros. “No problema,” he said. Come back in a few hours.
Time for more tapas.
I came back and there were the correct rubber seals in the reservoir ports, but it was the same master. That’s the best he could do. I had no choice but to try it and do some brake line bending.
After much effort, the new master went in and I commenced bleeding a ridiculous amount of fluid through the system. The pedal stayed unusually high, but the brakes bled well and had the usual sponginess. I took it for a test drive and it did brake, but not as well as before. Now it felt like I had no booster. More checking and more bleeding, but there wasn’t much I could do. We decided to drive it the 10 km to the capital city of Colima, where maybe we would have more luck with parts once we figured it out.
We barely made it out of Comala when the magic event occurred… “Pop!” Some sort of mechanical sounding thud and the pedal went almost to the floor again… and now I could feel the booster kick in. We pulled over and did more bleeding with no change. Now the pedal goes almost to the floor before braking, but it does brake fairly well. I’d been working on my brakes on cobblestone and dirt roads all day and was completely filthy. Brake fluid in the eye twice. This sucks.
I’m still scratching my head over this one, but now I figured the original problem of the high stiff pedal resolved itself (stuck caliper piston?) and now the new (likely incorrect) master was the problem. We pulled over to a gloriously paved Soriana parking lot in Colima and I went to work. Out came the new master and in went the old one (never throw away the old part until everything works!) A very quick bleed and the brakes were completely back to normal. Perfect braking exactly as it was a few days earlier.
I’ve thought about it some more, but have now decided to not think about it anymore. It’s fixed. On to the beach.
Also, I’ve got slightly used weird Mexican master cylinder if anyone wants it.
Posted on May 9, 2010 by angela
We said our goodbyes to our friends Ane, Andres and Luca. They were heading straight to the beach. We planned to catch up somewhere down the coast if we could. We drove a short distance to Paracho, home of the makers of Mexican stringed instruments. We had planned to take a guitar on the road, but in the end had no room. I wanted to see the luthiers making the instruments and Jason wanted to buy something to noodle around with in the van.
When a town in Mexico is known for making something, they go all out. Whether it’s tequila, copper, baskets or stringed instruments, every store in the town sells the product. Paracho was no exception. Quality was the only difference. Every few stores was an instrument maker carefully putting together a beautiful guitar, Mexican bass or mandolin. Jason would go into the shop for a look and the the maker would get up from his workbench and choose a guitar that represented his work and tune it up and play for us. They were amazing instruments and although generally out of our budget, relatively inexpensive for something handmade.
I was keen on finding a mandolin, but it was tough shopping since we were only here for a little while and every shop in town is full on instruments. Jason settled for a 3/4-size guitar that was impossibly cheap ($23 USD) and may pack a little easier. We actually feel bad about not supporting the master craftsmen in the town and buying what is essentially cheap junk, but we know this thing is going to get destroyed… soon.
The problem with living in a tight space with a 5 year old is that there is no way to be careful with anything. Jason figured that the guitar would end up strapped to the roof at some point and banged around by Bode. We didn’t even make it back to the van before Bode asked if it could be his guitar and insisted on carrying it. Perhaps on the way back up to the states we can stop by again and better support the master craftsmen of the town, but for now this seems like a good match for our current lifestyle.
Oh, and this is our 200th post. Yikes.
Oh, and happy Mother’s Day!
Posted on May 7, 2010 by angela
We made it to the outskirts of Volcan Paricutin in the mountains of northern Michocan. We camped in the small town of Angahuan. The people there are Purepetcha and speak a different language. The women wear wonderful jeweled colored satin-like blouses, and full pleated skirts. They look as if they are dressed up for an event, but they are doing their daily chores, cooking, carrying water down the street, usually with a kid strapped on for the ride. They wear their hair in long braids. Their clothes were so beautiful I wanted to get some, but this isn’t the type of place that has retail stores. These were all handmade clothes and I didn’t even get a picture. I was too embarrased to ask – besides, it’s better to just admire then put a camera in someone’s face.
The men all have horses and want to rent them for the trek to the steeple or volcano. They easily rode alongside the bus and tried to make a deal while we were driving through town. The volcano was 8 hours by horse and seemed a bit too ambitious with the kids. We were there to hike to the church anyway.
It was already late in the day, so we decided to do an evening hike and get to the church at sunset (we’ve hiked in a lava field in the blazing sun before and it wasn’t the most fun.) The hike was only about an hour and mostly downhill, so we made it just at sunset.
In 1943 the volcano started rumbling and within a few weeks there were explosions and smoke fuming out. Six months later lava was oozing, slow enough for people to escape. It flowed 10 feet deep and buried the forest and 3 villages. The fires finally went out in 1952. In the 100,000 acres of volcanic ash, the only remaining building is the church. The lava flowed right up to the alter. It’s really something amazing to see.
After scrambling over the remains of the church we had a quick snack and headed back. The kids did fantastic on the walk home, considering it was dark and uphill. The sun set on one side of us, the full moon rising on the other. Hundreds of bats were flying over our heads with the steeple of the volcanic rock covered church still visible behind us. It’s one of those evenings I will never forget.
Posted on May 6, 2010 by angela
We camped just outside of Patzcuaro and checked out the town. It’s a very cool place up in the mountains (about 7000 ft) surrounded by pine trees and it has absolutely perfect weather. Most of the towns around here follow a pretty strict theme of white/red buildings with red clay tile roofs and this is city is a prime example. Most of the businesses even use the same typeface on the building exteriors. I imagine a trip to the paint store is a pretty boring adventure. What color do you want – white, red, or black?
There are lots of handicrafts and art, but the town doesn’t seem very touristy at all. Hand-woven baskets seem to be a big deal here. We lingered at a cafe and sipped a few micheladas and pondered why we might need a basket.
The Bulli’s spent the afternoon getting some locks welded into their van (no goggles – just aim and close eyes) and tried to find some new lock cylinders for the doors (my key works in their lock!) We met a strange guy the other day at a camp site and he had the entire interior of his car encased in a steel cage. A bit extreme. Of course, all this security activity has got us wondering if we should add some anti-theft measures… but so far we think not. We’ll keep thinking about it.
We headed up to the lake and to go find the ruins at Tzintzuntzan. The name means ‘place of the hummingbirds,’ so we figured it must be nice. We thought we would just find somewhere to camp when we got there and the lot in front of the ruins was a perfect spot. High up on a hill and overlooking the lake for a nice sunset. Just us and a few farmers wandering through with their cows.
In the morning, we checked out the ruins built in 900 A.D. The town fell with the Spanish conquest in the 1500′s. It was interesting to visit with a German couple, since they noted there were still occupied houses in their village older than these ruins. Also, Ane being a stone carver gave a whole new perspective on some of the details. Unfortunately, a lot of these ruins seemed to have been rebuilt.
On the road outside of town was a stone carvers workshop with thousands of stone figures displayed for sale. We stopped for some pictures and Ane talked with the owner. She actually brought some of her tools with her on their trip, so they compared tools and discussed technique the best they could.
We heard good things about Lago Zirahuen, just south of Patzcuaro, so we drove down to go have a look. It’s a beautiful lake and a few of us got in to clean off in the cold water. An idylic place with farmland rolling right down to the lake shore. Some kids came by on horses and offered to let us ride them. “No cuesta nada,” they said.
We camped just outside of Patzcuaro and checked out the town. It’s a very cool place up in the mountains (about 7000 ft) surrounded by pine trees and it has absolutely perfect weather. Most of the towns around here follow a pretty strict theme of white/red buildings with red clay tile roofs and this is city is a prime example. Most of the businesses even use the same typeface on the building exteriors. I imagine a trip to the paint store is a pretty boring adventure. What color do you want – white, red, or black?
There are lots of handicrafts and art, but the town doesn’t seem very touristy at all. Hand-woven baskets seem to be a big deal here. We lingered at a cafe and sipped a few micheladas and pondered why we might need a basket.
The Bulli’s spent the afternoon getting some locks welded into their van (no goggles – just aim and close eyes) and tried to find some new lock cylinders for the doors (my key works in their lock!) We met a strange guy the other day at a camp site and he had the entire interior of his car encased in a steel cage. A bit extreme. Of course, all this security activity has got us wondering if we should add some anti-theft measures… but so far we think not. We’ll keep thinking about it.
We headed up to the lake and to go find the ruins at Tzintzuntzan. The name means ‘place of the hummingbirds,’ so we figured it must be nice. We thought we would just find somewhere to camp when we got there and the lot in front of the ruins was a perfect spot. High up on a hill and overlooking the lake for a nice sunset. Just us and a few farmers wandering through with their cows.
In the morning, we checked out the ruins built in 900 A.D. The town fell with the Spanish conquest in the 1500′s. It was interesting to visit with a German couple, since they noted there were still occupied houses in their village older than these ruins. Also, Ane being a stone carver gave a whole new perspective on some of the details. Unfortunately, a lot of these ruins seemed to have been rebuilt.
On the road outside of town was a stone carvers workshop with thousands of stone figures displayed for sale. We stopped for some pictures and Ane talked with the owner. She actually brought some of her tools with her on their trip, so they compared tools and discussed technique the best they could.
We heard good things about Lago Zirahuen, just south of Patzcuaro, so we drove down to go have a look. It’s a beautiful lake and a few of us got in to clean off in the cold water. An idylic place with farmland rolling right down to the lake shore. Some kids came by on horses and offered to let us ride them. “No cuesta nada,” they said.
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