Cycling with Kevin

Well... check this out. I'm not dead. Way behind yes...but still alive. I can't really explain why this is true, but as I get close to a big destination, somehow instagram gets harder. Anyway. Heres a catch-up. Probably will be 2 catch-up posts, then 1 of our time in CDMX.

We left off in Zamora. Out of Zamora, we took a little detour down south to see this church. It is outside the town of Angahuan. This church and the surroundings town of San Juan was destroyed by a volcano in 1943. We had a fun little time crawling around the rocks and basically climbing the church.

From there, we went through Uruapan, where we planned to stay with a warmshowers host for 1 day. We ended up being there almost a week as I got food poisoning, then tess followed right behind me. I can not say enough about the hospitality we received. Never were rushed to leave. They made us soup. And sent us off with some fruit. There are no pictures above from being sick... you're welcome

Next was the colonial town of Patzcuaro and the prehispanic ruins of Tzintzuntzan. We toured around Patzcuaro. I was a cute little town, but we didn't really spend a ton of time there. A quick little tour through town to hit the highlights then on the ruins. These ruins are a little hard to see/take pictures of. They are like a pyramid on one side and a round base on the other. Apparently, on the round portion, there were fires that basically never went out.

Finally was Morelia. Morelia is another very nice colonial town, this one much bigger, though. Several huge churches and big governmental buildings. I think this is where the rush to get to CDMX started. We toured around Morelia for half a day, then kept going. He probably didn't do it justice, but hey. That's life.

So one more to get us to CDMX, or maybe even a little of the first days here, then one to catch up on what we've been doing and maybe some future plans. Alright.

Mexico Day 55 - Guadalajara to Zamora

I'm trying to catch up a bit here. I've been in Uruapan for a few days but knocked out with food poisoning, so I haven't had the energy to put anything together.

We did a whirlwind tour through Guadalajara. Part of me wishes I had stayed longer and seen a little more depth and beauty there. But I also felt the need to keep moving at the time, so we did. I'll just have to come back. We did get to see some amazing gothic churches, museums, and one beautiful library. We stayed with a warmshowers host and went for a night ride with his son and a few Hu died other folks. That was a lot of fun and a nice change of pace for us. Usually, we are locked up inside and maybe even in bed by dark.

On from GDL, we went from Jamay to Zamora. Jamay is situated right on Lake Chapala. It is currently Mexico's largest lake (since draining Texcoco). From our warmshowers host in Jamay, you get the feeling people like the lake but at the same time are a little wary about it. It has been shrinking significantly due to extracting water for GDL, erosion, and temperature rise. It is also apparently highly polluted with heavy metals from industry in the river upstream. While threatened, it is still beautiful and made for a wonderful walk around the city on the malecon.

Next was Zamora. Our warmshowers host took us to the Camecuaro National Park. Its name means "place of bathing" in the native Purépecha, and visiting you can see why. Still, kids are playing near naked in the fresh clean waters of the spring fed lake. Along the shore, and even on an island in the middle, there were huge old cypress tress casting shades over the area. To cap off the natural beauty our hosts' young son was with us so we got to get a dose of the childish glee out being out and exploring.

Just in case anyone cares as much as I do about ancient Mexican languages....the name of these trees is Ahuehuete which rough translates to "old man of the water" in Nahuatl, the language of the Mexica(Aztec)