epic monsoon fall

I had a great weekend!! Morelia is a great place, and I had wonderful company to travel with.

Friday, we came home from work (which was a really fun day, actually) and had already done our laundry so we were nowhere near as rushed to pack as our trip to Guanajuato. Concha helped me make dinner for us to pack and take on the bus. We ate lunch and headed over to the PA office where we met up with Heather, who was finishing up her workday, and Andy. Andy is brand-new to Mexico and just arrived early last week. He is a college student from Scotland going back to get a new degree in Physio Therapy, so he is working at a local hospital here in the PT unit. After we all met up, we went to the bus station and had a 3.5 hour ride to Morelia, the capital of the Mexican state of Michocán. We finally arrived at our hostel around 10pm.
Saturday we spent the day doing a whirlwind tour of Morelia’s historic downtown. There is this really neat aqueduct that runs down the middle of the entire city and our hostel was on the road that it runs on, so we walked the 10 blocks to the center guided by the aqueduct. Once in the center, we had a lovely breakfast and grabbed a few tourist maps. We saw the cathedral (a cathedral in a Mexican city?!), many museums, tons of great art work, traditional Michocán dance groups, etc. Andy’s guide book told us that at 9pm on every Saturday the main road by the cathedral is closed and there is a big fireworks show. We knew we’d need dinner around 8 anyways, so we found an adorable restaurant and sat outside on the square by the cathedral so we could see the fireworks. Before the fireworks, there were a lot of street vendors and tourists walking along the avenue, etc. It was really fun, and dinner was great (more enchiladas…). We also took advantage of Michocán being the ice cream capital of Mexico and had some amazing ice cream. For a huge waffle cone and 2 gigantic scoops of ice cream, it was only $14 MXN ($1.40 USD). I love a good ice cream deal! After our busy day, we dragged ourselves back to the hostel, 14 hours since we had left it, and collapsed.

We started Sunday off bright and early. We checked out of the hostel at 9a and the “concierge” (for lack of a better term) called us a taxi so we could get to the bus station and catch a bus to Pátzacuaro, a small town an hour away. We took a cheap bus an hour and arrived there, not having a clue as to what we were going to do. The “downtown” of Pátzacuaro consists of 2 plazas, so the taxi dropped us off at one and we walked around the artisan shops and touristy things on the plazas. Then we headed out for the cathedral (I think my Mexican church count is over 50 at this point) and found a lovely open air market. We were given so many free samples of good food and it is very easy to talk the vendors down, so we all did some great shopping. We saw the cathedral, but there was mass still going on so we couldn’t get into it. But we headed back to the main plaza and ate lunch at an outdoor restaurant. Thankfully we were under the cover of an awning because it started to rain. When it let up, we caught a taxi down to the lake shore of Lake Pátzacuaro. There we did more shopping and caught a boat to the island city of Janitzio. Janitzio is almost a mountain, it is so sloped. It is situated on an island in the middle of Lake Pátzacuaro. Many of the older residents of the island have never been to the main land and don’t even speak Spanish, but keep to their traditional indigenous language. We did the 30 minute trek to the top of the island, with the cutest little shops on the way up, and as we all caught our breath, we took amazing pictures of the statue that is the peak of the island and the panoramic view of Lake Pátzacuaro. It was a once in a life time experience. There are not many non-Mexican tourists who go to places like that, because many Americans prefer bigger towns or beaches of Mexico. It was beautiful and a place I highly recommend to everyone. We got back on the boat as it started to rain again and headed back to shore. We realized, in the 20 minute boat ride, that we were almost out of time to catch a bus back to Morelia so we could catch another bus back to Guadalajara. The monsoon started just as we docked and we decided to brave it so that we could catch the bus. This ended up as a catastrophe.

I had flip flops on that get really slippery when they are wet, so I yelled to my friends to slow down and not run because I would slip. Just as that sentence came out of my mouth, I fell. I fell up rickety wooden stairs. My sandals fell off and were dangerously close to falling into the lake (thank God they did not!) and I was sitting in a mud puddle. I got up after the shock of it, and saw Heather and Emily still running. Andy saw me fall and stayed behind to help me up. I was COVERED in mud and bleeding from several places. He was wearing two shirts, so he stripped off his top one (reminder: middle of a torrential down pour) and gave it to me to wipe my blood and mud off as I whimpered and walked to the taxi waiting for us. My umbrella was also a casualty of the fall and I have to buy a new one now. It is toast.

We got to the bus station 2 minutes before our bus was supposed to leave and ran to buy our tickets and hop on the bus. I was planning on cleaning up in the bathroom on the bus, but our ghetto bus line we took between Morelia and Pátzacuaro didn’t have a bathroom. Emily and Heather travel with baby wipes so I cleaned up with that and then was supplied with Neosporin from Emily. I thankfully had brought Advil and bandaids. After the initial upsetting fall, it has become a fun thing to laugh at. It was pretty epic, and, as a bonus, in front of about 100 Mexican tourists. I looked like a fool.

We missed the 6p connecting bus to Guadalajara by 10 minutes, so we had to hang out in the bus station until 8p when the next one left. We finally got back to Guadalajara and in bed around 12:30a this morning.

I ended up skipping work today because I was so exhausted and the quesadillas I ate in the bus station were not sitting well with my stomach at all. But I am feeling better now and Emily and I have a relaxing afternoon planned, including a scheduled nap. I hope everyone at home is doing well and at least gets a good laugh out of my epic Mexican monsoon fall. It was pretty hilarious.