Uruapan, Michoacan, Mexico 

As beautiful as peacocks are, when they cry they sound like an animal dying--or a very shrill, angry baby. But they are beautiful, with those feathers that look like made-up eyes or a shimmering Los Vegas waterfall. They wander our urban campground in Uruapan, tied by their ankles to a long rope, under the avocado trees. We set up camp on a great lawn in front of a "100% Ecologico" motel. Between us and the hotel's other, more "legitimate" guests, there's a swimming pool, a gulch and several strange pathways of stone and cement. We're by ourselves.

We string our hammock between the orange trees, mix ourselves charanda cocktails, read out loud. We play Scrabble, take walks through town, munching on every variation of Michoacan street food we can get our grubby little hands on. (Amazing moles, tamales, and--of all things--crepes.) We spend days like this.

In between the long lazy stretches we find time to do things. We went on two hikes, which I'm trying to work into a travel story. We'll see if I can find time in my busy schedule of eating, sleeping, drinking and Scrabbling to get the piece written.

From the pitch:

A male peacock sprays his feathers in a wide fountain of blue and shimmering green. When I get too close, the majestic bird shakes. In motion, his feathers look like a cascading waterfall. All around, the sounds of animals rustling in dry leaves, wind in towering cedars and water flowing through narrow rock canals mingle with the ruckus of urban life: kids playing, planes growling overhead, vendors announcing their wares. In Uruapan, a bustling city in the agricultural heartland of Mexico’s Michoacán State, this interplay between awe-inspiring natural beauty and metropolitan vitality are everywhere. Where else can one set up camp under avocado, orange and cedar trees, just blocks from a major central plaza?

My husband and I, a month and a half into a several month trip through Mexico and Central America, stumbled upon Uruapan mostly on accident. We had heard the lurid tales of decapitated heads being rolled onto dance floors and drug busts gone awry. But the city surprised us. It is not Bogotá. Nor is it or Tijuana. The average visitor to this subdued sub-tropical city is unlikely to see any sign of the battles being waged in Mexico’s war on drugs. Instead, one sees something else: Uruapan is a living city with an expanse of green --the lush Eduardo Ruiz National Park--at its heart. There, rainbow trout swim in crystalline waters, banana leaves grow to the size of waterslides and rocky trails lead to quiet resting places among bougainvillea and giant, white butterflies.

Not only is Uruapan the rare city to be embedded with a national park, it’s also surrounded by places to witness nature’s fury. You can descend hundreds of stone stairs to the pounding Tzararacua falls, then climb steep, dusty paths to a green lake and a second, smaller waterfall. You can wander through pine forests and trails of volcanic ash to the ruins of a 5,000-person city. Only a steeple and an altar--the remnants of a grand Catholic church--remain. In the distance looms Parícutin, the volcano that sprouted from a farmer’s field in 1943, devouring two indigenous towns in 10 years. 

Route 37 from Lazaro Cardenas to Nuevo Italia

Slowly, we climb these hills of straw-dry grass and pine trees that smell exactly of Boonville--of inland Mendocino County--in the summer. Except for the details, which are so distinctly Mexican, the landscape is the same too: those rolling "golden hills," dried up stream beds, green only where the water still runs.

It's in the details that I remember I'm in Mexico: the old men in hammocks on their open porches, cowboy hats over their faces, the little goats chasing mama across the road as we pass, the crosses everywhere marking the toll of the non-toll road we've opted to take. Still, the similarities between here and my home are disorienting, like Mom becoming Dad #2. In my mind, Mexico has never been Boonville and pine trees.

Then, as soon as I'm getting used to the idea, Dolly's dashboard thermometer breaks 100 degrees for the first time on our trip. We're inadvertently in cactus country again. The towns are dusty. One, called La Vinata, smells of decay all the way through--then miles beyond. It stinks so strongly of death, I worry for its inhabitants and fantasize about what could be happening in these little desert towns.

Every man of age in La Vinata, except the one, wears a cowboy hat. They gather around a small, round pen, where a rooster will soon lose his life. Kids play soccer in the dirt and shout (then laugh) as we pass. As we leave, there's a field of black feathers and bald heads--eating whatever they're eating, smelling the way it smells. It's just horrible.

Then Dolly's thermometer climbs to 103, 104, 105...all the way to 108.

We're playing music, loud, trying to keep our minds from the smell, the heat. It's like the Mojave, Tim says. But I wouldn't know. It's like nothing I've ever felt, so dry that my eyes and nose sting and my lips hurt (they hurt for days). But we sing anyway. A piece of Tim's playlist from our desert crossing (click on the list to listen):

Uruapan, Michoacan, Mexico 

There were beaches and more beaches--a wealth of beaches from which to choose and for which we could not possibly have enough time. So we chose.

We stayed two days in Tenacatita, which was wild on the weekend, then quiet when Monday came. It's still recovering from earthquakes and tidal waves in ‘95, but building itself back fast--hopefully not too fast. We camped for free and splurged on incidentals: ice, internet access, roasted chicken for Tim, who has a sweet weakness for a well-cooked bird.

Then there was a night in Barra de Navidad, a town my brother and I loved when we were young and it was Christmas time. Dad tried to drag us away, but we convinced him to turn that boat around. Good man. All these years later, it’s still a sleepy, charming little town. We stayed at Hotel Jalisco, run by a family with kids and dogs to spare. The man washed our van, free of charge. When we asked what we owed, he insisted a carwash was included in the room price. There’s no way that our $10 /person, bugs-coming-from-the-walls room, always included this lavish treatment. He must have felt sorry for our dust-encrusted Dolly.

Then there were more beaches: Playa Ticla, the surfer haven to crush all others. There we met Stew and Kelly, a Australian-American couple with a newly adopted Mexican canine named Negro and an Irish-Brooklinite surfer friend in tow. They’d left jobs and lives behind, like Tim and I, and are setting off on a similar trip. Tim was amazed that someone managed to adopt a Mexican dog quicker than me. Little does he know I stole Negro and have him stuffed in our overhead compartment, with goggles and plenty of water. Yes, it’s true, I love these Mexican dogs enough to steal them from perfectly devoted homes. They are such beautiful, mangy, mutty beasts.

In Ticla, the news was all surf all the time. Tim borrowed a board and paddled around, like a kid on a bicycle (his words, not mine). A natural, he succeeded in only getting crumpled once by those Ticla waves. Now, of course, he has the surf bug.

We had one more night on the coast, in Nexpa--another little surfer spot--before we decided we needed to break free from the beach bum life we’d come to love and get on with the “serious” work of inland Mexico. So far this includes hiking to waterfalls, drinking Charanda (a deeply satisfying cane liquor), practicing Spanish to amusing ends and “urban camping” on a lawn in a city where heads roll (literally).

Playa Ticla, Michoacan

I woke up early. The sun hasn't yet pulled itself above the big coastal mountains. Finally, it's light is already starting to spill over, gently. The moon's still up, no longer as imposing as it was a few days ago, but still a presence. Somewhere nearby, as everywhere here, a rooster's calling.

But it wasn't the rooster that woke me, it was the churning in my stomach. Maybe it's my insistence on eating almost exclusively at street stalls (the food, really, is just too good not to...I cannot resist), but there's almost always something amiss in my belly, my bowels. I drink Pepto like it's Coke in a bottle and pop chalky, candy flavored Tums. It helps, but only until my next of $5 peso (.50 cent) tacos, smothered in picante. I take full responsibility.

I'm sitting on the beach, in a while plastic chair, wearing a towell and one of Tim's button-downs to keep warm. It can get cool in the mornings. Tim's still asleep. I thought the surfers would be in the water already, doing their thing. Like the pelicans, they're fun to watch. But nobody's up--not the surfers, not the pelicans, just me with my churning stomach. Maybe the pig tied up beside the ever-popular Ticla taco stand is awake as well. He's probably pacing on his rope. He's scheduled to be slaughtered today.

-- 

So, an incomplete note on why I cannot stay away from Mexican street food, comida corrida, central markets and the like:

Aguas Frescas / Jugos / Licuados: Increasingly, it's served in clear plastic bags tied at the top and served with a straw, for $5-$10 pesos ($.50 cents to a dollar). Fresh, cold, with chucks of fruit. It comes in every imagineable variety of seasonal fruit / veggie: beet, pina colada, strawberry, horchata (rice milk), guava, lime, regional fruits I've never seen or tasted before. Tim loves alfalfa, I'm more of a sandia (watermelon) girl.

Fruit: Vendors sell large plastic cups packed with fresh, perfect fruit, squeezed with lime and sprinkled with salt and chile. Don't knock it 'til you've tried it. It's the most delicious thing on a hot afternoon. If the chile seems like a bad idea, consider this: the heat keeps the heat at bay. I like a mix of watermelon, cucumber and mango. But they also come with jicama, pineapple, orange, strawberry, papaya and more...($10-$20 pesos)

Desayunos: Sometimes I think I could eat huevos rancheros every morning for the rest of my life.

Scenes: The people on our path. They're characters, all. Not just any beach bum, drop-out can cut it down here. You need initiative, wherewithal.