October 31- November 3rd
Patzcuaro
Patzcuaro is normally a sleepy little town from what I can tell but for Dia de los Muertos, it has a whole other personality. The town itself is made up of two squares and these are where you’ll find the holiday markets. Both squares were taken over by vendors selling everything from beautiful hand made crafts to lighters and cheap chinese made tools. A little of everything. One square has the cheap mass produced goods and the other the crafts. I was quite tempted by the most beautiful hand painted pottery I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the presence of mind to photograph it. Davis and I spent much of our time simply walking around looking at vendor stalls and sitting in restaurants along the squares drinking and eating, waiting for the time when we were to go to the cemetery to see everyone’s decorations. November 2nd is the night when everyone congregates in the cemeteries just outside of town. There are three main sites that people visit but one was enough for us. The night of the 2nd we jumped on the Yamaha and followed the traffic out of town to the little village of Tzintzuntzan. We arrived about an hour after dark and already the crowds were quite thick.
The Noche de los Muertos derives from the mixture of Purépecha Indians religious traditions and Catholicism. Basically, people believe that one night a year their loved ones who have passed on travel from their world to our world to spend time with their families. The journey is supposed to be a long and hard one and so living family members always offer water- to quench the thirst, food- to quench the hunger, and candles- to light the way back to their graves where the family waits for their arrival and stays to visit all night long. If there are no candles, it is believed that the dead must light their finger on fire to see the way - so you better have candles! Additionally, there are masses of flowers and decorations to welcome and commemorate the visit. Everything has significance, including the color of most of the flowers (golden crysthanamums) much of it was lost on me but the whole thing is fascinating.
The whole experience was amazing but much more sad that I had anticipated. I didn’t really know what to expect but it certainly wasn’t the uncomfortable mix of emotions that I found. There were kids running around the cemetery having a blast and obviously excited to be allowed up all night, there were people chatting quietly by their family member’s graves and there were those who were obviously grieving. I never saw anyone in the throws of horrible grief but there were certainly new graves with ornate decorations of flowers and candles and multitudes of family members. D and I had been warned earlier that day that the most ornate graves were usually those with the most recent deaths and that we should not bother these people as they were still grieving. In all it was a beautiful if somewhat uncomfortable experience. Davis was quite concerned with our presence there, he didn’t feel that it was a place that we should be, intruding on these people’s intimate traditions. That feeling was strong for myself as well but the dichotomy is that Dia (or Noche) de los Muertos is a huge tourism draw for the area, there were tons of people there, mostly Mexican tourists. At the end of the evening, I was relieved to go back to our room and snuggle up with a fire but very glad to have experienced it.
The next day we moved from Villa Patzcuaro to Casa Encantada, an absolutely lovely little guest house in the middle of town. The place is a delight, the owners are two warm and friendly women and there were many interesting guests that we spent a delightful evening with including Thomas and Richard- a lovely couple who were celebrating a 50th birthday.
As beautiful and welcoming as Casa Encantada was, we really did need to get to Guadalajara and to the mechanic to fix Davis’s bike. With a bit of reluctance, we left the morning of the third after D added yet more preload to his shock.
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