We’ve had an amazing month of November so far. After Day of the Dead in Pátzcuaro, we headed over to what may just be my favorite city so far in Mexico: Morelia. When I lived in Buenos Aires, everyone told me that Buenos Aires is called the Paris of the South. (Of course, the joke is that it’s like the Venice of the South when it rains because of the flooding problem…) Can I call Morelia the Paris of Mexico?
Just to give you some context, when we arrived it was raining. We tried a few hotels to look for either a good deal or a parking lot where we could sleep. The town was full because it was the weekend after the Day of the Dead and the start of the Morelia film festival. We ended up sleeping on the Plaza del Carmen in a neighborhood full of sex workers. The next day we managed to find a hotel–at an establishment that doubled as a bathhouse:
Still, we loved Morelia, rain and all. We were treated to some lingering Day of the Dead displays, which was cool to see after our impressive Day of the Dead experience in Pátzcuaro.
The beauty of Morelia even inspired Juan to do some drawing. I think he has a good eye, don’t you?
I don’t know, I just really liked the look of Morelia. Guadalajara also has a large and beautiful downtown, but we didn’t get to see much of it (ahem, dysentery, ahem) but it wasn’t as peaceful and uniform, I suppose, as Morelia’s. It feels like Paris, except instead of Parisians, it’s full of Mexicans in cowboy hats. It is also one of those cities that I think looks even better at night, and in the rain.
Morelia also has a beautiful acueduct next to a big park that Milo loved. And just as the film festival was beginning, a music festival was starting. Okay, enough raving about Morelia. The day after Obama was re-elected (whew!), we drove out to the Monarch Butterfly Reserve, because it is close by and we are at the beginning of the Monarch butterfly migration. The drive was through a beautiful, winding road (all three of us felt a little carsick) through mountains and valleys, oh my! Incidentally, the Monarch Butterfly is the state insect of Illinois. The town of Angangueo is a town close to the reserve, and it looked like a whole lot of not too much until all of a sudden we were next to these two giant churches.
The next day we drove into the reserve. I knew we were early for the migration, but we were so early that the park wasn’t officially open. We basically had the place to ourselves, and went for a lovely walk. At the peak of the migration period (in March), supposedly there are so many butterflies that the trees look orange. I was supremely disappointed when a man told us that there were muy poco butterflies at the moment. But it turned out to be way more than I had ever seen in my life anyway. When we looked up, we would see scores of butterflies overhead. I wished I could have stayed up top all day watching them flutter by, but alas I was too hungry.
That night, we camped in the parking lot of the reserve. It was nice and quiet, compared to the previous night’s camp in the town square of Angangueo. But the only problem was that it was SO FREAKING COLD. In the morning, there was ice on the inside of the van as well as the outside.
After leaving Michoacán, we drove to Guanjuato, which I am going to call the Florence of Mexico. Until then, more photos from our last days in Michoacán at LIMPIRE. In closing, here is a street photo of a street photographer.
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