Morelia,
Mexico
Sunday, February 19, 2006
We spent two nights in Morelia, a colonial city in Minochoacan, our gateway to the Monarchs. In itself Morelia is a nice enough city but next time we will stay in Patzcauro, see another entry, or closer to the Monarchs. We got to Morelia, by bus, on a Sunday afternoon so all the museums were closed and the infrastructure for tourism if you don't speak Spanish is not all that developed. The governor of Minachocan is very pro tourism and has apparently cleaned up the central historic district and obtained lots of funding to restore and provide improvements in the main zocala area. We just wandered around without much direction for the afternoon, but did come across the ubiquitous street dancers in the main square. With wooden outer soles on their shoes to clack and with canes and masks they did a sort of crack the whip dance that was colorful. The next day we got an explanation--the indigenous people remained erect in their posture as they aged but the Spanish grew stooped so the indigenous developed a satiric dance in which they hunched over and scurried around with canes wearing white masks, but since they wore traditional garb the Spanish apparently didn't get the joke.
The pictures show the beautiful main cathedral and the dancers. Be sure to go to the zocalo at night as the main buildings have been beautifully lit thanks to all the new money.
