Morellia, MX
Continued from my previous post…
Making money: Morellia is a place where some Mexicans come to be tourists, which was a refreshing experience for Tiffany and I because, as you might guess, most of the tourism industry of the coastal cities we had visited up to now operated on a single premise: gringo = money. So this town included us as visitors without overwhelmingly targeting us as ripe chickens ready for the plucking. A word here should also be said for the Mexican entrepreneur. Perhaps it has to do with less industry or infrastructure in Mexico, or maybe I notice it more because I own a business myself. Regardless, I have found that Mexicans, as a people, seem far more entrepreneurial than people in the United States. By that I mean it is not as unusual for someone to make their living here by working for themselves (be it street taco stand, selling ponchos, or painting boats) as it is in the States, where the average person works for someone else. One thing about entrepreneurs, no matter what language they speak, they are always looking for an edge on the market. This guy found one that really impressed me:
Living life / culture: For those of you who have been following the blog, you will remember that I have on a few occasions encountered the giant mutant bugs of Mexico. Here, yet again, is another installment of “bugs the size of my hand.” I have no idea how these people live coexist with these things.
Also, we’re in Mexico, they do football here and Morellia has a very large student population (think like Boston, a very large town that also happens to contain a lot of universities). Apparently the local team, the Monarchs (remember why we came out here in the first place?) won a big game while we were in town:
The saying in Morellia is that “all roads lead to God.” Which is a literal truth here because just about every road in the downtown area passes about 3 churches before ending at another church. You could spend months going to daily mass here and never have to go to the same place twice. The city’s symbol is the twin spires of the cathedral located in the center of the city, which is a truly epic building. You have to give it to us Catholics, we know how to build a freaking house of God that lets people in the next tri-state area know where they can come to talk to the big man.
We managed to show up in town while a local cultural festival was in full swing and were lucky enough to catch a dance practiced by local natives (as in pre-Spanish influence) called “the dance of the old men”, where the dancers dress up as – guess what? – old men, including masks with wrinkles, and bust out some crazy tap dancing skills. I don’t know the history of the dance, and it sure was interesting to watch! (It was supposed to be in Patzcuarto though! ~ Tiffany)
(What may not be so obvious is that the 2 farthest away in the video couldn’t have been much more than 10 years old! ~ Tiffany)
It was hard to rip ourselves away from this fun town in the middle of Mexico but the butterflies are supposed to be out there somewhere and Tiffany is dead set on finding them.
-Greg
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