March 3rd – visiting towns in the Patzcuaro area

Today we traveled the highway around Lake Patzcuaro visiting the towns surrounding the lake, each known for a specific craft. In the 1500's, Don Vasco de Quiroga established and promoted each village to specialize in a certain craft, many of which survive even today.

What amazes us is that Lake Patzcuaro, similar to Lake Chapala, is a mountain lake but the water is quite muddy looking – not clear or blue like we see in Ontario.

The first town we visited was Tzintzuntzan, pronounced sin-soon-san, (meaning humming bird place) with archeological ruins dating around 1000 AD.  The entrance to town is garnished with local rock carvings.
The old city received tribute from 122 remote towns during the splendor of the imperial epoch, mounted an army of 250,000 warriors and figured as an important religious center.  I can only imagine that the place would have had easily a million people at that time. All that remains at the site today is the foundation of a royal palace and 5 round yacatas (ceremonial platforms) – one can be seen in the following photo, and a small village.

 

Arrowheads recovered in and near the ruins.

  

A stone knife.

 

 A three-legged ceremonial bowl.

After visiting the ruins overlooking the lake and the town, we drove downtown and parked on main street to visit the local artisans.  This town is known for production of straw/reed weavings such as star-shaped mats, animal figures, baskets, lamps and Christmas decorations.  Other crafts produced here are china and copies of pre-hispanic pottery of red clay.

 

We spotted this pot sitting on a bed of wood coals, in a truck wheel rim. The wood is slowly fed into the fire to keep up a steady heat.

In the pot, a favourite Mexican basic of beans is boiling to be ready for the afternoon meal.

The next town was Quiroga known for leather goods.  Good quality lined leather jackets for men, all decorated with logos such as Ferrari, Harley Davidson, etc., were around $1500 pesos (< $130 CAD).  Ladies purses were $90 pesos (< $8 CAD).

Town square in Quiroga.

Santa Fe de la Laguna is famous for its polychrome china.  We spotted an elderly lady hand-painting calla lilies on the china but she put it away when we stopped to watch.  The drive along the highway in this area gave us a great view of the entire length of Lake Patzcuaro and its 5 islands.

Following the highway along the west side of  Lake Patzcuaro, we took the bridge over to the island of Jaracuaro whose artisans are known for weaving with palm to make hats, baskets.  We drove all through the centre of town and around the outlying area and only spotted one man working at the craft. 

We passed by the town of Tocuaro known for the production of carved wooden masks. There was no need to go visit the town. We had seen samples of the masks in Tzintzuntzan and spotted a gentleman carving a mask at one of the stores.

We decided to skip the ferry ride to the island of Janitzio, the prime attraction of the area.  We had intended to climb the statue on the peak of the island to see a view of the lake.  We already had experienced excellent views from high elevations at the ruins and our drive on the highway around the lake. On our next trip to this area, we will put this visit to Janitzio to the top of the list.

Tomorrow we’ll visit town of Santa Clara del Cobre, south of the Patcuaro area known for production of copper products. BTW, cobre translates to copper.