Monday, October 31  Santa Clara de Cobre and Patzcuaro

We meet for breakfast at the hotel terrace restaurant.  We have a big room with a huge table all to ourselves.  It is so big that everyone has a view of the cathedral out the floor to ceiling windows.  We are at the mercy of the waiters to the pace of the breakfast.  It is leisurely.  So much for an early start.  But the view is great and the food is too.  There are several different choices of fresh juices - grapefruit, orange, mandarin orange, carrot, and verde.  They came around with fresh breads that are really good and even better when dipped in hot chocolate.  

We meet our driver, Philipe and are off in our private van.  Santa Clara de Cobre is about 1 1/2 hour drive away.  There is a good 4 lane road most of the way.  We can see several inactive volcanos in the distance and close up see huge green houses for the strawberry plants.

Due to Dia de Muertos, traffic is heavy but Philipe is able to maneuver to drop us off close to the copper museum.  The town is all decked out in marigolds.  

The entrance to the museum has a nice offrenda.  There is a short movie that tells about the history of the town that Juan translates for us.  One of the interesting parts of the movie are shots of Pieto Perez, a local philosopher type, sort of like Don Quixote.  A movie was made about him in the 1950's.    By one of the churches, there is a Day of the dead figure of him.  

After visiting the museum, we have free time to see the 2 churches, shop in the numerous stores and sidewalk tables for anything you every imagined in copper and do some sight-sitting in the square.  

The main aisle of one of the churches had a beautiful design of  marigolds and colored saw dust.  Garlands of marigolds hanging from the ceiling.  The plaza had large painted skulls and a wooden one with the eyes cut out.  Several people posed with their heads through the eye holes.  

For lunch, we had the local tortas which are hot sandwiches made on fresh rolls.  The thing that makes these special and unique to Santa Clara de Cobre is the tostada that is put in the middle.  It gives the sandwich a great crunch.  

We pile back in the van and head for Patzcuaro which is about 45 minutes back toward Moralia.  Patzcuaro once the capital city of the Purepecha people.  It is one of the areas that has celebrated the Dia de Muertos for centuries.  The architecture is white stucco building with red tile roofs.  

Philipe drops us off at a small plaza a few blocks from the main plaza.  There are a few vendors, a group of drummers.  A little poking around and we head to the main square.  There are white tents on all sides of the square with vendors, a big stage is set up ready for night entertainment.  I really liked the marigolds that were hanging from the rafters of the portico and blowing in the wind. Once we went through the tents, we were able to see the main part of the square and the huge decorations.  

Here the group split up and some went on a longer walking tour and others relaxed in the park.  The highlight of the walking tour was seeing a coemption of various crafts.  The most impressive was pictures all made of various feathers.

We watched a performance of  the Danza de los viejitos, traditionally done at this time of year.  There were several very young participants who were really cute and really did the dance well.  

An ice-cream stop was a good picker-upper.  There were some unusual flavors.  The usual vanilla, chocolate, strawberry.  But how about pasta flavored? Corn? Zapote?