Michoacán: Tzaráracua, Paricutín y Pátzcuaro

This is in the plaza in Pátzcuaro. It appears to be some kind of native old man dance.

On Sunday we went to Pátzcuaro, this is the main plaza.

There is a near by lake where the people fish with butterfly nets (they look like butterflies). Also during a certain time of the year there is an area near the town that gets flooded with monarch butterflies.

This is the base of the volcano where we parked our horses and started hiking. The volcano doesn't look very big in the picture, but if you look at the person in the middle, and then the light blue spot at the top, which is also a person, you can see that it really was kind of big. As for climbing it, it was just volcanic dust the whole way up, so I would take a step and then my foot would slide like 1/3 of the step back down. We got down by taking that path that runs down the center... it was REALLY steep. You basically took a step and then continued sliding like another foot.

This was my horse. He carried me for about 6 hours total, I was really sore the next day, I don't know how he felt about the whole thing.

On Saturday we drove up a long dirt road into a native village where we were given horses, with wood saddles (ouch), and rode, first down to the little white spot on the right side of the picture, which is a church. Then we rode to the volcano Paricutín, which is the flat mountain on the left.

This last weekend our group went to the state of Michoacán. On Friday we went to an area or park called Tzaráracua.

We parked and hiked down to two waterfalls, as you can see it was really pretty.

I've heard Michoacán referred to as the Washington of Mexico.