Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Poor Man's San Miguel


We have a routine when someone comes from afar to visit.

Down to the plaza., the big, the little and the tiny. In Patzcuaro that would be Plaza Grande which is where the some of the city offices are, the great ice cream vendors couple of coffee shops and a few restaurant.

The Small plaza is next to the entrance to the central mercado, which seems like the older part of town, judging from the older buildings and the tiny plaza San Francisco which is the plaza where the Indian merchants sell their flowers and wares every Friday.

Most towns have plazas, which tend to be the central focus some include the central band stand or gazebo, so do not.

All the plazas have vendors. Some good, some not.

A couple of days ago, we took our friend to all the plazas the mercado, the Basilica, and he himself asked to borrow the pickup and check things out on his own.

He found stuff that I hadn't. He showed me!

So, yesterday we showed him Tacambaro!
For those of you not aware of Tacambaro, it's a quaint little town, on the side of the hill in the land of Terra Caliente.
Even though it's only about 40 miles from Patzcuaro, the elevation is in the hot zone, places where the avocado tree can be seen for miles and where great fruit trees that dole out nothing on our land in Patzcuaro, fill boxes upon boxes of rich delicious fruit in this Hot Zone.

We were fortunate to find a parking spot under a nice shady tree on the main plaza there. Maybe we would find a place to grab a bite to eat.

The church was massive and beautiful, the plaza was nice and clean and the taxi's lined up in great procession waiting for a random peso to be tossed.

No food to be found unless you wanted a corn cob on a stick.......kinda hard to enjoy that with a cup of java.

Then someone told my wife that the place to go was the Hotel Molina. You could take a taxi there and back.

Nawww, too much trouble.
So we headed back to Patzcuaro.
But on the way guess what we ran across.
The sign was a Red Coca Cola sign that featured The Hotel Molina.

Lots of history there. Seems the first mill in the area, people from as far a Patzcuaro brought their toils to be ground up.
The mill was brought over from Vera Cruz with burro power. That was several hundred years ago.
Tacambaro has tiny little streets percherd on the side of the hill, kind of like a poor mans San Miguel.

Both are hot, both have tiny almost un maneuverable streets unless you happen to be riding a burro and both have Plazas.

The town dates back to the mid 1500's.

I'm sure you can buy a house a lot cheaper than in San Miguel. And you won't have thousands of Gringos...........

Not that I don't like Gringos.

I just don't want them living in my neighborhood..........

Just Kidding.

More on Tacambaro later.

2 comments:

Michael Dickson said...

So you went to the Hotel Molina or not? It´s not clear.

I have been to Tacambaro just once. It seemed like a poor man´s Pátzcuaro to me, a little tatty. But I would like to go back. It´s not that far.

By the way, there are at least ten coffee shops around the Plaza Grande of Pátzcuaro. Yep, way more than "a couple."

Tancho said...

It does appear poorer than Patzcuaro but at least in Patzcuaro we have half way passable streets on the side of the semi-steep hills. Yep we do have 10 or so coffee shops on the plaza, seems that half of them got serious in the last year or so. More to follow on Tacambaro, Thanks for the prod, I'll be more clear Miguel, it was late.........good excuse?