El viaje

We are starting to ask ourselves if we will go crazy keeping our current speed. Then again we are not going to stop before we are. So, onwards!

Couple of emails in the unnamed hotel and off we went to Mercado Liberdad. With 40.000 square meters this is the largest indoor market in Latin America.

Its a maze… and you can find everything here:

Slightly overwhelmed Lu settled for a new yellow mobile case and i for a couple of mp3 sticks with Rock and Cumbia classics. 20.000+ songs per 16gb usb stick for 100 pesos . Boom!

I also snatched a black Metallica longsleve with the snake from the black album on the front. Double boom!

Guadalajara was good to us but we could not really hack the city , people , noises etc after having been to such beautiful nature the last couple of days. Plans were quickly changed and we decided to drive to Colima and back to the coast.

20 Minutes out of the City and you are back to the desert.

30 Minutes later higher mountains and Volcanos started to show.

Your occasional bridge.

Blink.

Bye Jalisco, Hi Colima.

The state is called Colima and its capital is also called Colima. Very picturesque, clean little town.

But it was around noon and just way, way too hot and city again, so quick frozen pineapple / tamarindo ice , back in the car and off we went.

Bye Colima, Hi Michoacán.

We thought we saw a lot of fruit in Sinaloa and Jalisco but Michoacán is a different story.

These are massive plantations that sometimes last for 10 maybe 20 kilometers.

Cocos

Bananas

Papayas

And tons of mangos and everything else. Again the pictures do not so it justice but driving for 2 hours and just seeing bananas is ..bananas..

Feeling slightly bonkers again and after seeing bay after bay like this we quickly decided its time for a dip.

Michoacán being Michoacán we had no network coverage anywhere and also no real town in sight or on the map. So the only real thing to do is stop and ask if we can sleep somewhere. This was our first choice:

Unfortunately we could not find anyone to ask around here apart from a little boy who did not like us much and told us to come back later. So we checked out the beach in front.

Something was afoot here.

Something big!

At this point we were both getting super excited. Not only will it be full moon tonight, we also do not have a place to sleep yet and, most probably, there will be ancient giants crawling out of the ocean.

Each of us thinking of very different things we headed onwards since the dude from that ranch obviously didnt show.

But driving down this path:

We got into the next village, called Maruata

And around this corner

We found a little place. Cheap, clean is all we need.

But Colola was the village with the curious beach and also there was some kind of party going on. So we had a very quick power shower, got ourselves a beer and headed back up the road.

From what we understood (and that certainly was not a lot, since the locals of Colola speak a very particular , very local accent that does not have to do a lot with spanish anymore) there was some kind of celebration of a christian saint mixed with some indigenous beliefs.

If you are not welcome at such events , you can usually tell pretty quickly but to us people were friendly. It just did not feel right to make pictures apart from one.

They were very proud of what was being cooked there and practically invited me to do this picture.

All the surrounding villages were there and had gathered in and around the village hall to eat, chat and drink.The hall was full of freshly harvested bananas and papayas and when we got there , there was some sort of chant and dance around a statue of a saint being carried out of the village hall. Mainly kids in their original indigenous outfits, armed with bows and arrows were rhythmically dancing to a hypnotic beat coming from their wooden bows .

Really cool, but we felt out of place.

The party must have started quite early because the majority of the men were really drunk. And when one of those, wearing a big sombrero told us to stay a while and have a beer with him, got really engaged in a one way conversation with us (and we really tried but could only understand every tenth word or so), we felt it was time to leave.

He was some kind of authority because everyone who passed, greeted kindly or had a quick chat. More and more men who stumbled by obviously had more then enough and some of them could not really walk anymore.

At this point we had 3 people anxiously blabbering at us. At no point did we feel threatened or unwell but the sun was getting down and we didn’t understand a word and we are in Michoacán so we made polite excuses and left after around 30-40 mins.

Around two corners away from the drunk mob we found a nice taco stand where we each had 6! tacos with super nicely roasted onions on the side. Lu even ordered a couple more onions. Yum!

Leaving, we felt we could make one or two pics from the road.

I was really really REALLY excited now because this time i took my real camera. First mission was to get a good picture of the full moon.

Unfortunately getting to the beach and setting up everything took too long and by the time i was ready, the moon was almost entirely gone because, what do you know, also lunar eclipse tonight…

The water of the waves spraying up and sky not being super clear did prevent me from getting good pics . They are also a little too big for wordpress but i will upload them when i am out of the car.

There were also more important matters that required my attention.

The ancients.

Their tracks are so big, it looks like tractors made them.

Imagine you are about to give birth and you crawl out of a massive swell, knowing you have to dig a huge hole and the first thing you see is two german tourists…

Not overstaying our welcome here, we went to our place , had another quick beer to process what had happened today and quickly fell asleep, enchanted.

Hex Hex