Ario de Rosales y Uruapan

Today, we actually went to a town at the top of the mountain called Ario de Rosales. This town is much bigger than La Huacana and here is where I got my first taste of Mexican life. When we got to the town we had to drive around a lot before actually finding the square. It was in the morning and there were so many people out preparing their stores for the day. There was so much commotion everywhere and the people truly are a working people, even the elderly people were hauling carts and setting up tables. It made me with the elderly in the United States were more active, it makes for a much healthier life. But, back to the town. We finally arrived in the plaza and started walking around (this was actually the day that me and Ulises both got sick in the car and while we were in Ario, but I will fast forward to the part where we were feeling better). While we were walking around I noticed that people noticed me a lot less here than they did in La Huacana, I would assume its because it is a bigger city and they may have seen more tourists before. Even if they were looking though, I was too busy looking at anything and everything. There were so many people and shops around and the smell of food was in the air. I hadn't had a restaurant or food stand meal yet and I was very excited. Unfortunately I would have to wait because my stomach was still a little upset and all of the chile in the food might have upset it again. So, me and Ulises got some lime ice cream and sat on some stairs and just people watched for a while. The lime ice cream was seriously the best ice cream I have ever had. After eating the ice cream we went to eat a a taco stand that the family eats at every time they come to Ario. They were chopped beef or pork (I'm not sure) with tomatoes, onions, and you squeeze lime all over them. These easily became my second favorite (maybe even 1st) food from the entire trip. These were the most flavorful tacos that I had ever eaten and I now understood what real Mexican food was, Tex-mex would never be the same to me.

It seemed that todays purpose was to eat all kinds of food and then just hang around the square. We didn't really go into any shops or anything but I was completely happy with just eating because the food was amazing!

The next day we visited the city of Uruapan, it is an even larger city located about an hour and a half from La Huacana. It is a city of about 250,000 people, so it has been the largest city we have actually visited so far! When we got there we actually ended up eating at a McDonalds. It actually wasn't good at all and it was very strange to see Ulises's Grandparents eating that food because they are used to eating traditional home cooked Mexican food. I was wondering if they had ever even eaten at a McDonalds before. We then drove into the town square and parked for the day. The first place we went was the mercado. Just think of it as being the biggest flea market you have ever seen. It is divided into a male and female section and sells everything from clothing to spices. I actually really enjoyed this market because they had a lot of really nice clothing and things that were very inexpensive. I wish that I would have tried some of the snacks there...they had fruit in a cup and chicharones...mmm

After we left the mercado we went out to the town square to look around at the shops and buildings. They had a variety of clothing stores that I bought some really nice clothing for! I was really excited to see the prices were so cheap. Ulises said that clothing is so inexpensive in Mexico because a lot of the factories (especially jeans) are located there and don't have to be shipped out. They had mostly clothing and music shops out in the plaza and we spent a lot of our time just looking around there. After walking around the town square we were all very tired but decided to go the parque nacional Eduardo Ruiz. This park is a rainforest national park located right off of the plaza in Uruapan. It was probably the closest I will ever get to the rain forest! I can't really even describe it, I will post some pictures of it down at the end of this post. It was really wonderful to see and was a very peaceful area.

La Huacana

Like I said in the previous post, I woke up and felt great. I guess something inside myself changed overnight and I was able to just take everything in and was ready to experience this country! The first thing I did when I woke up was look around at the house and see it in the daylight. It looked much different and there were palm trees and flowered plants everywhere! It was beautiful! The next thing I did was take a shower...this was an interesting experience. There is running water at the house but there is no hot water so Doña Sofia boiled water for me on the stove and poured it into a large plastic bucket. The shower only had a curtain and was "outside." I got into the shower and had to take water and pour it over me from a cup, needless to say this proved itself difficult when washing out my hair, not to mention that I was so paranoid the curtain would blow open that I had one hand on it at all times =0) ! After this interesting experience, we ate some breakfast. We had chocolaté with pan dulce (sweet bread). You dip the pan into the chocolaté , it was very delicious. I have had similar things at Ulises's house in the US before though so it wasn't too surprising. The bread did taste way better though! Everything is fresh!
After breakfast we just hung around the house because we were tired and we were unpacking and things. I was slightly disappointed because I was so anxious to look around the town. We ended up leaving the house eventually to go to the store on the corner (the one that is apart of his house) and got some snacks. We went over to a family friend's house and got Popsicles. I got a vanilla one; they are made with milk and are all homemade. It was delicious (of course at the time I wasn't even thinking that they had water in them as well and I wasn't supposed to drink the water!) I also got incognito doritos, which are a flavor only available in Mexico, they were the best flavor I have ever had! The chips and sodas taste way different there too, the chips are made with a different blend of corn and all of the factories that make them are in Mexico so the chips are fresh. The cokes are made with a more pure form of sugar and so they are less carbonated and taste way way better than the ones here. We didn't get to try anything else that was too different yet because we were all trying to ease into the change in food. They told me if I started eating too much that I would be sick. The first picture is of the lot that his house is on. The house that is actually pictured in the corner is where the woman and her daughter stay as well as where the convenience store is. The next picture is of the courtyard to the house.

The First Night

We had already been in the car for over 15 hours and I was ready to get there and go to sleep! We passed Ario and I was told it would only be about an hour until we got to La Huacana. La Huacana sits at the bottom of a mountain so it was going to be a bumpy drive. Let me just say that the roads on this mountain are paved BUT there is no railing to prevent your car from flying off of it, the roads are narrow, and the people drive like maniacs! They speed around the corners and if you are going to slow they will just pass around you on a blind curve. People would even speed around you when another car was less than 200 feet away, it was insane!!! My heart was beating so fast. Oh, and it was raining and pitch black also!

The trip down the mountain was very scary and my ears were popping so badly. Then I started feeling sick (I get motion sickness in the car sometimes) so I had to lay down in the back.

I think this was actually better than looking out the window because I don't like heights either!! We finally got to his town and it was probably 2 or 3 in the morning. We were greeted by Doña Alejandra and Ulises's Grandma. They were very enthusiastic in meeting everyone and when they saw me Doña Alejandra jumped up and gave me a huge hug. His Grandma Doña Noni also gave me an instant hug while she said things in Spanish to me. They told me that they had both said I was very pretty.

We actually were staying at the house that Ulises grew up in and his grandma owns the property. The houses are set up in Mexico by square lots. So, Doña Noni owns the whole square lot. There is a brick wall that surrounds the lot and in the lot there are two houses and a shop. Ulises's house is on one side and his Grandma and another woman and her child live in the other house on the lot. His Grandma also owns the shop, which sells convenience store type things.

The two of them left to go to their rooms and we loaded in the luggage. I walked around the house looking at everything, it was so different that I didn't even register it was a house. I started getting extreme culture shock and had to sit down to realize where I was. When we went to sleep that night I cried because I was so overwhelmed, I wasn't sure if I could handle it. But, I talked myself through it and decided to make this an awesome experience. I really had to forget about how I live and my routines and learn all over again. I woke up the next morning and I felt great and excited about this trip.

On the Road to La Huacana

I forgot to say that we ate at a restaurant (one that the family goes to every time they come to Mexico) It was my first real Mexican meal and I ate Tacos de Pollo and strangely enough, the meal came with french fries covered in Mexican queso. It was very delicious but very odd that my first meal in Mexico had french fries with it!


Once we got past the Northern part of Mexico and really started getting into the central and southern parts the landscape and scenery really changed. The vegetation started getting thicker and more tropical, and the highways became more packed. We also started seeing some cities instead of just random houses on the side of the highway. The first city we had to go into was Queretaro. The road that we had to take took us straight into the middle of the city. As we traveled into the city there were cars and people everywhere going about their day. There were tons of cafes and restaurants, movie theaters, and shopping centers. Then, we got to the middle of the city and took a wrong turn...
This was when it got scary. People in Mexico are INSANE drivers and they are very reckless. They would cut in front of you, turn into you, honk their horns constantly, and speed like crazy! We got lost and went straight instead of exiting where we were supposed to go so we ended up in the heart of the city. We went into a tunnel once and turned on the wrong side of the road because there were 3 city buses next to us and they seemed like they were trying to hit us. So, we were stuck in the tunnel with buses and various cars honking at us. The buses are the WORST drivers and they will just hit you, its like they don't care. We almost got in a wreck probably about 4 times, and I don't mean it just might have been a wreck, it would have been one, I am talking like an inch away. The picture that I posted below this is a picture right before our first almost wreck with the bus. You can see the buses ahead of us...So, like I said we were lost. Somehow we made it back to the right exit and Ulises's dad started second guessing himself and decided not to take it. Everyone sighed and said "you should have taken that exit!" He was sure that wasn't it though. So, we found ourselves yet again in the same part of the city, in the middle with all of the crazed drivers. It was very neat to get to see the city, but at the same time we were lost. We yet again almost got in some wrecks and eventually made it to the same exit again. His dad started saying he wasn't going to take it because he didn't think it was the right one and everyone started yelling "take it!" He continued second guessing and almost didn't take the exit again! But, everyone kept yelling and he swerved over to take it right before it was too late. I will post some pics of Queretaro, it was a very pretty city! There were many very nice things there as well as some modern features. One of the first things downtown that I saw was unfortunately McDonalds.










Once we made it out of Queretaro we eventually made it into another smaller city. Ulises told me this city was very large but it was more suburban than Queretaro, he also told me this city was much larger than La Huacana but it looked similar. We got lost in this city too. We spent much more time in this city than we did in the previous and asked directions from probably 5 different people. They all told us different things and we started getting into the residential roads which meant we were very lost. Thank goodness that we made it out and back onto the highway, I was starting to feel like we would be there all day! We were still very far away from La Huacana but everyone was getting excited and we were all talking and laughing! We played UNO and ate Mexican snacks. People here snack so much! (I love it!).

Oh and they pump your gas here, but you have to pay to use the bathroom and sometimes they give you a sheet of toilet paper. Definitely always bring your own toilet paper and seat covers! I saw some horrors in those bathrooms and it was lucky to find a nice one. (Just a little tip if you ever go here) In bigger cities its better because there are stores and restaurants but, good luck in towns.

The Trip Begins!

Ulises's family takes this trip every summer to visit their family. I have been invited twice before, but I didn't feel ready to go. His sisters had told me all kinds of stories, good and bad, about their home and country in the past and some of them made me feel scared that I wouldn't be able to handle the trip, but I this year was different. I wanted to go and meet Ulises's family and experience where he lived, but more importantly I wanted to see the place that made him who he is today.

We crossed the border at about 3 am, so there weren't many people around. Yet, even with no people to distinguish Mexico from the U.S. it was still very easy to see the difference. I was expecting Nuevo Laredo in Mexico to be pretty much the same thing as Laredo in the US, but I was very wrong. Everything about Nuevo Laredo was different; the streets, cars, stores, houses, and even the smell (not in a gross way though). The minute we crossed over, the streets became narrow, the buildings flattened out, and became much shorter and of course everything was in Spanish.



I was so surprised that there was a difference and it made me even more anxious to go further south to see even more change. I woke up when the sun came up and this is what I saw:

It was actually kind of creepy because that mist was covering everything and there were these enormous cactus's that looked like twisted hands popping out of the ground. It was very eerie!

When the fog cleared and the sun came out I could really see the country. Along the highway were abandoned houses and stores, some still with cars and furniture. There were also houses where families lived and sold fruit and vegetables on the side of the highway. There was a state we passed through that was known for their tunas (prickly pears), and because the fruit was in such abundance, there were maybe 100's of tuna stands along the highway. The fathers, mothers, children, and pets all sat at the booth in the 95+ degree weather hoping that they would be the stand that someone would stop at. We ended up stopping at a stand with a father and very young son. They were both wearing very dirty clothing and were so tan they looked black. We bought a crate of tunas and gave them water, drinkable yogurt, and chips. It was just so sad to see so many families out in the sun with their crates and crates of fruit that may never get sold because of the 100 other people selling it down the road.

The sights of small children and parents at those stands really tore at my heart, I think I may have even cried a little. This short experience made me wonder what the rest of the country would be like and if I could handle it emotionally.

The Start of a Blog

After some friends decided to make a blog about their experiences abroad I decided why not and created one. I will use this blog to post experiences from my recent trip to La Huacana, Michoacan, Mexico! I went there this past summer of 2007 with my boyfriend Ulises, and his family.