The ability to leave our house & go on foot to find whatever we need need is priceless, not to mention much healthier.  On our block alone there are four different small stores, and within a few blocks there’s pretty much anything you could ever think of.  Carl has barely left the garage since we arrived in Guadalajara, and that feels very nice.  We frequently walk to see the historic areas of the city.  On the other hand, if you’re looking for modern stuff, Guadalajara also has sprawling luxury suburbs.  Over the last few days we’ve taken my parents to see both the old, historic district, and the new ‘burbs with fancy malls and chain restaurants.  They’re both fun to see in their own ways.  There are so many beautiful sides to Mexico that most Americans would never imagine.

The city’s main market is HUGE!  It’s very difficult to describe.  There are multiple stories of vendor after vendor.  It’s divided into categories.  So in shoe land, for example, there are probably 100 vendors that only sell shoes.  There’s electronics land, fruit land, spice land, pet land, musical instrument land, handiwork land, clothes land, and on and on.  You could wander for hours and not see everything.  It’s cool and overwhelming at the same time.

The next day we did a 180 and walked around a fancy mall in a fancy suburb.

We ate dinner at a Chuck E. Cheese sort of place called Peter Piper Pizza.  Again, not what I thought I’d be doing in Mexico, but fun nonetheless.  iola won the 250 ticket jackpot on a game, which we thought was amazing, but then five minutes later she did it again!  The funny part is since she’s never been to a place like this before, from now on she’s going to be disappointed when the machine only gives her four tickets.   I wish I knew how to choose a different freeze-frame preview of a video.

And there’s always time for relaxing at the house.

-Ryan

The Ferguson’s took Tequila, Mexico by storm.  Next time we’ll call ahead so they’re ready for us.  I’ve tallied up the results for the tequila each of us drank, and….wait for it…we officially drank zero ounces of the fermented agave delicacy for which Mexico is known worldwide.  We also bought zero bottles to go, likely making us the most boring and least economically stimulating visitors ever to have visited the town of Tequila.  But Tequila was not the most boring town we’ve ever been visitors to.  The landscape around the town is gorgeous; row after row of dusty blue agave fields with steep mountains as a backdrop.  The town itself is a designated Magic Town by the Mexican government, just like Comala, Mazamitla & Pátzcuaro, and with good reason.  The well-preserved colonial Spanish architecture is charming, to say the least, in addition to the town’s legacy of tequila distilleries.

Did you know Jose Cuervo means “Joseph Crow”?

In perfect fashion for Grandpa & Grandma’s visit, below is the Grandparent’s Tequila Distillery.

Put yourself back in college.  You saved up enough money to stay at a crappy old hotel in Panama City for spring break.  You’re at a bar trying to look cool for the ladies.  The DJ screams in the mic, “DID SOMEONE CALL THE TEQUILA POLICE?!!!!”  That probably never happened, but the real Tequila Police did.  Sorry, I can only think of spring break jokes when I think of tequila, even though I never went on spring break.

Just to prove I had zero drinks of Tequila, here’s my parallel parking job, probably the finest of my time.  I squeezed into a spot just inches longer than the car itself.

-Ryan

 

iola received the best Valentine’s Day present she ever could have hoped for…Grandma & Grandpa Ferguson showed up in Mexico.  There was a brief warming up period, as in about 15 seconds, and then iola was back in her groove of being with her best friends.

Carrie’s been wanting to see as much as possible before baby #2 arrives.  She somehow has more energy than all the rest of us, probably her vibrant desire to see new things.  For example, by writing this post right now I’m holding up the show on leaving the house to go see stuff.

Earlier this week we drove to the west of Guadalajara into agave country.  First stop: Magdalena.  It’s a cute little town known for it’s jewelry stores that sell opals from nearby mines.  We shopped, ate ice cream, and walked around the town.

The beautiful dark black volcanic rock Obsidian is also common, thanks to the now-dormant Tequila Volcano.  That sounds more like a device Señor Frogs would offer crazy spring breakers, but no, there is a real Tequila Volcano.  The rock is so prevalent that at one point most of the cobblestone roads were made of it.  Below it’s used as decorative inlay in Magdalena’s town plaza.

People here love touching iola, the little blondie.  I captured this moment by accident.

-Ryan

After three fantastic months staying by Lake Chapala, we moved this week to Guadalajara to be closer to our wonderful midwives Maria & Lupita at Casa Aramara (link to their Facebook page).  Carrie is due in about two weeks!

We got to meet the famous Joni Nichols!  She’s the reason we’re in Guadalajara.  We had planned to travel around Mexico in Norma, then got pregnant and decided not to travel around in Norma but still go to Mexico, and wanted a home-birth option.  Carrie found Joni & her work online, I contacted her, and for the last six months she has sent us email after email of extremely helpful information that has made what we’re doing possible.  She connected us with Maria & Lupita, and we’ll be forever grateful for all that she’s done for us.  She’s visiting Guadalajara at the moment and was kind enough to join us at our midwife visit.

What a great group of women doing great things!  (iola is making her hungry & tired voice heard; don’t question that it’s great.)

I wrote in my last post about Google’s sometimes creepy but sometimes awesome automatic photo features.  This animation wins the prize for the funniest!  Joni is doing some Night at the Roxbury action, iola is furious, and Lupita has a reggaeton song stuck in her head.

Guadalajara is a big city, the 2nd largest in Mexico, and its metro population ranks higher than Boston & Barcelona.  There’s so much stuff going on all around us…street markets, thousands of tiny shops, construction, rich people, poor people, people like us, people not like us.  But inside the new house we’ve rented it feels like a peaceful oasis, especially in the walled patio/garden area.  We can be outside in the midst of the bustle and then step inside to a quiet, relaxing place that makes you feel like you could be out in the country.  That’s good, because we’ll be giving birth here before the month is over!

Oh, the sun and moon, how I don’t envy your position.  Keep those big lips sealed tight.

-Ryan

It’s the beginning of Carnaval, popularized in Brazil but now celebrated in varying degrees worldwide.  We watched the opening ceremonies last night in Chapala.  There was a short night parade with your typical Brazilian Samba & Capoeira dancers, along with crazy lit-up robots on stilts.

The feature of the night, however, was La Quema del Mal Humor, translated as “Burning of the Bad Mood”.  That doesn’t really capture it though.  I’d say “Burning of the Bad Vibes” is a better way to describe it.  Every year they choose something that represents those Bad Vibes, carry it as a surprise in a coffin that leads the parade, then they reveal what’s inside and light it on fire to dispose of the bad vibes.

This year’s choice to represent Bad Vibes…Donald Trump!

Here’s Donald Doll burning.

Next came spinning fireworks on a metal structure seemingly made just for that purpose.  A couple posts ago I commented that Mexican safety rules are much different than in the US, and that I actually like that because I find it leads to self responsibility.  However, the problem is that I’m still conditioned to the safety protections in the US.  So when there’s a huge fireworks display five feet away from me I think, “well, if it weren’t safe they wouldn’t let me stand right here.”  Wrong.  Had we not taken off running at the first sign of sparks flying at us we would have had treatable burns, no exaggeration.  I saw a hunger games helicopter-esque spinning ball of flames flying toward Carrie’s head.  I yelled and she ducked behind a palm tree with the agility of a puma, not an eight month pregnant woman carrying a two-year-old girl.  Nice work, Wife.  We were standing to the right where the ball of flames is.

Next came big fireworks.  Have you ever stood 20 feet from commercial fireworks being lit?  Now I have, and it sounds like bombs going off.  So we moved and got these pictures instead.

And that was the opening night of Carnaval.

On an unrelated topic, Google often weirds me out with what it seems to know about me.  I’ll get back from an outing, like our last one around the state of Michoacán, and Google Photos will notify me they have created a story about my trip to Michoacán, an auto-created scrapbook of sorts.  If that were an ex-girlfriend or something doing that you’d file a restraining order.  “Hey Ryan, I see you and your family went on a trip, so I went ahead and made a scrapbook for you.”  Um, creepy.  Anyway, I will admit once in awhile Google Photos makes really cool animations for me without even having to suggest that I need that in my life.  Here’s an auto-animation below from our recent trip to the Island of Janitzio.

-Ryan

The northeastern part of Michoacán is famous for its Don Vasco Route.  Vasco instituted the idea that each town should have its cultural specialty, something still going strong today.  So one town specializes in furniture, another in ceramics, one in colorful textiles, & yet another in Catrina dolls (the skeleton dolls common during Day of the Dead celebrations).  Read more here about the Don Vasco Route.

We stopped by the town of Paracho on our way from Uruapan back to Chapala.  Paracho specializes in hand-made string instruments, mostly guitars.

We were welcomed into town by a giant guitar, but we didn’t immediately find the guitar district.  First we wandered around the huge street market going on.  The locals look very indigenous, both in features & dress.  Almost every woman is wearing a rebozo wrap for carrying babies, goods to sell, or just as a scarf.  We were the only outsiders we saw all day, and wow do we get the stares!  They’re kind stares, though, sometimes fascinated by my height, but mostly by iola.  If I had a dollar for every time we were told she looks like a doll!  People will literally stop what they’re doing, tell their friends what they just saw, and the whole group will try to catch a glimpse of iola.  They love feeling her hair and skin, which iola isn’t always a fan of!  A group stopped and asked to take her picture, and we obliged.  She’s like a celebrity here, it’s so funny.

Locals kept pointing me toward the guitar zone but we weren’t finding it.  I asked one older gentleman, and without saying a word, he waved us to follow him.  He led us to blue house, rang the bell, and motioned us to go inside with the lady that opened the door (who turned out to be his sister).  She welcomed us in, we still not knowing why we were there exactly.  She called her husband in.  We started chatting in their living room and he brought in guitars he had made.  To be honest I was quite skeptical at first, thinking maybe the locals ride the fame of Paracho being a guitar making town but really just import them from China.  Part of my doubt came from him pulling the guitars out of plastic bags to show them to me.  But then he proved me entirely wrong by taking me to his workshop!  He makes all sorts of cool instruments, all by hand.  He meticulously cuts out pieces of stained wood to create decorative inlays.  They’re like works of art.  I ask if he makes ukuleles, and sure enough, he goes and gets one that he made.  At this point we’ve talked nothing about prices.  I was assuming for sure a hand-made guitar or ukulele must cost hundreds of dollars.  I was wrong again.  He asked 500 pesos for the ukulele, about $30 US.  I couldn’t believe it!  I happily paid his price with no bargaining involved and now own a beautiful ukulele.  His guitars were about double, $60 US, or $180 for very intricate ones with seashell inlays.  If our car weren’t already jam-packed I would have bought every instrument he had.  In the background you can see his patterns for different kinds of guitars.  Check out the baby guitar he’s making behind iola on the workbench.

We said goodbye to the luthier (my newest vocabulary word), his wife, and her 102 year old mother sitting in their small courtyard.  We then found the main strip of guitar makers, with all sorts of gorgeous instruments.  My favorite was the “bajo sexto” a six string (double strung, so actually 12) bass guitar.

UPDATE!  Remember when on Unsolved Mysteries they’d show the mystery but then surprise you with an UPDATE at the end?

I got home that night excited to play my new ukulele.  It was strung for left-handed players, so I took all the strings out to restring it.  In attempting to tune it I snapped one of my strings.  The next morning Carrie starts researching for me where I can buy new strings in the area and stumbles across a ukulele group in Ajijic, not far from where we’re staying.  I emailed the group, and members were fast to respond and very helpful.  Turns out they were meeting that very day, so I showed up to see what I could learn!  A nice guy Tim gave me a replacement string, I bought their song book to follow along, and had an awesome time. [Side note: being a small world as it is, Tim knows Castagna, the new owner of our 1968 RV Norma].  It’s such a fun instrument.  I didn’t go pro in a day but I was able to follow along a bit and learned a lot in just a couple hours.  It’s turning out to be probably the most fun $30 I’ve ever spent.

-Ryan

 

 

Uruapan is another fine city in picturesque Michoacán.  We stayed at a bed & breakfast where iola mostly loved the “kitty-cats” and (very old) “puppy”.

Our favorite part of town is the Barranca del Cupatitzio National Park.  It was only a five block walk from our hotel.  How often can you just walk over to a national park?  The city has surrounded the park entirely by now, which makes it unique.  There’s this oasis right in the middle of lots of urban craziness.  So when viewing the pictures below, just remember, this is all within a big city.  But whatever you do, don’t take a dump in the woods!

Despite being prohibited, guys do cliff diving and then spectators give them tips.  The water is very cold as you can see by his expeditious departure from the water.

I find the United States in general to be overly protective.  Handrails have to be at just the right height, steps must be uniform, there of course can’t be any unguarded ledges, etc.  Mexican public areas, for example sidewalks, and commercial spaces, such hotels and restaurants, would almost unanimously fail at passing any sort of US code inspection.  I’m not saying that as a positive necessarily for the US though.  I sense the US is working on taking away all opportunities for us to have to make decisions & use common sense.  But FINALLY, we found something Mexico is more stringent on!  Wait for it…you must wear a helmet when skating in the roller rink they’ve set up in Uruapan’s plaza.  It’s very rare to see a child in a car seat here and kids are frequently seen riding in the back of trucks going down major highways, so we thought it was funny that of all things they’d be concerned about helmets when skating.

Uruapan must have an affinity for skinny buildings.  Here’s a house sandwiched between two normal houses.  It was at one time listed by Guinness as the narrowest house in the world, although I think it’s been surpassed (or undercut?) by a narrow-er house in Poland.  And then there’s the smallest McDonald’s I’ve ever seen.  They only sell desserts.

We ate one last great dinner in Uruapan at an outdoor restaurant area with probably 20 “restaurants”, each with its own menu, a small, open kitchen, and seating for probably 15 people.  The food is awesome in Mexico.  I think most people would be shocked if they went into kitchens at restaurants in the US, especially chain ones.  Here you almost always see your food being cooked right in front of you, with fresh ingredients, and I’ve only ever been shocked in a good way (like, wow, they’re making iola’s hot chocolate by heating milk in an old-timey kettle on the stove…not a microwave).

-Ryan

On the way out of Pátzcuaro we went to the pier to catch a boat to Janitzio Island.  It’s the southernmost of a series of islands in the middle of Lake Pátzcuaro.  Our boat to the island carried about 30 humans plus hundreds of rolls, buns, and other various kinds of bread that smelled delicious.  I was hungry, and to my delight different food vendors hopped on board to sell treats before the boat left.  I bought honey roasted peanuts and tres leches flavor ice cream.

The boat ride took about 30 minutes each way, with a few minor splashes of waves over the low sides of the boat.  There’s a huge statue (about 130 feet tall) on top of the island of José María Morelos, the guy the city of Morelia was named after (a leader of the Mexican struggle for independence from Spain).  What I wasn’t expecting was for the island to be so inhabited…it definitely was.

Here’s the statue as we neared the island in the boat and then hiked up the steep incline of the island toward the base of the statue.

 

Vendors lined all the routes going to & from the statue.  We just kept talking about how almost everything you see must have come on a boat…clothes, trinkets, ceramic mugs, etc., with the funny part being that most of that stuff will end up back on a boat leaving the island in tourists’ hands.  Then there’s all the materials to make the houses built with concrete walls and clay tile roofs.  Crazy.

This is the inside of the base of the statue looking straight up.  I’m not a fan of “open” heights.  If there’s a wall, even a glass one, I’m fine, but once there’s open space between me and a big fall my knees start shaking.  I was nervous before I even went up the first step.  I carried iola in the carrier on my chest, where she’d been passed out asleep since we stepped foot on the island.  It didn’t make me any less nervous having a baby strapped to me while climbing, however the railings left quite a bit to be desired and there’s no way I would have let iola walk even if she had been awake.

Once at the top of the open part, there was a small spiral staircase leading up into the raised fist of the statue, where an observation area awaits at the top.

The views were stunning for sure and I’m glad we did it, but would I climb up it again?  No way in hell.

There was an open air connection via tiny doors across the statue’s shoulder in order to walk from the arm over to inside the head, where there was just a small room with a shrine of sorts for Morelos.  Look at the pictures above from the outside of the statue and you can see the outside portion.  Below is Carrie standing on it.

Relieved to be back down, we had a leisurely walk back down the island incline and toward the pier.  More snacks were offered before the boat ride back to the mainland.  I went for potato chips with salt & lime, although I pass on the chile powder most Mexicans would also add.

-Ryan

There are so many sides to Mexico, way more than we had ever imagined!  Of course we northerners love to think about the Mexican beaches, which are indeed wonderful, however what we’ve been most pleasantly surprised by are the cool mountain towns, like Mazamitla, where we’ve been twice since we loved it so much the first time.

But this time it was the town of Pátzcuaro, Michoacán.  It’s yet another fun mountain town with tons of charm.

iola insisted on carrying her monkey in the baby carrier…really her scarf with clever design by Carrie.

Most time in these towns is spent wandering around, seeing the nice plazas, admiring cool buildings, perusing neat little stores, and eating at small, mostly empty restaurants or trying street food.  We usually find time to warm up with a hot cocoa.  99% of the shops & restaurants we see are what we’d call good ol’ ma & pa establishments.

Pátzcuaro’s city market.  It doesn’t get any more ma & pa than this!

Carrie loves libraries.  Pátzcuaro’s is in an old church.  Unfortunately libraries aren’t as common in Mexico and even when found, they appear to be hardly used.

This is a funeral procession, much livelier than our “drive in a line but turn on our headlights” ritual in the US.  The casket is being carried on shoulders down the street.  There are large puppets being carried in an almost dancing sort of fashion, arms swaying all around.  A member of the group was shooting off loud fireworks.  Note to anyone who might attend my funeral if I die before you:  please, please, please, please, PLEASE show up with gigantic puppets & fireworks and don’t feel one ounce of shame!

-Ryan