Tlalpujahua, the Christmas town

Up at 6:00am to say goodbye to Adrian and Roman. Adrian drives Roman to school at 6:45am, and then he heads to work. Brenda is currently a homemaker because she has a bad wrist and is awaiting surgery.

But she made us a delicious breakfast, and then we had showers and did some laundry. Always nice to set out fresh again! Thanks for looking after us!

We look forward to seeing them again someday. Brenda said that if we are in Guadalajara, her mother would love us to visit, and they have space for Igor. So you never know, maybe we will take her up on that when we are out that way in January or February.

Hugs and goodbyes, and then we stopped at a Walmart for groceries, and a Pemex for gasoline. That will be the last time this month, as we now have enough fuel to get to Valle de Bravo, and Igor will be hanging out there until after Christmas.

Scenery from the back roads.

Many RV'ers in Mexico insist on sticking to the toll roads, but we like the back roads for a variety of reasons. It's so much more relaxing puttering along at 80 km/h, and of course we're in no rush. And, the toll roads are very expensive.

More scenery.

One of the possible problems with taking the back roads is that they lead through towns and villages that might have some tight corners. It's one of the reasons we think that smaller is better in Mexico. And we got to prove that when we went through the town of Coroneo just before lunch.

Monday is market day in Coroneo, and they had part of our route blocked off. The detour itself was a bit tight, and then there was a big garbage truck coming our way, right in the center of town. I couldn't back up, and either could he... but we managed to just squeeze by with inches to spare on my side, and Ruth had to pull the mirror in on her side.

Ruth had taken this photo maybe a minute before the garbage truck came our way.

More scenery.

This is where we stopped for lunch.

We passed through an area that had a lot of greenhouses.

It looked like it was all strawberries.

It looked like there may have been an interesting canyon down there.

The truck on the left is parked selling hats and belts.

It is covered in them!

We pulled up to the town of Tlalpujahua at about 2:30pm.

We parked at the Hotel Rincon Minero.

It's nothing fancy... for 200 pesos ($13.75 CAD, $9.75 USD) to park for the night.

But we don't get a good cell signal up here, so at least we get to use the hotel WiFi.

We've been to Tlalpujahua before, but it's a kind of a neat town. In fact, I went back and checked... this is the 4th time we've been here! The town has an interesting story...

It was originally a gold mining town, and there was a very productive mine between the late 1800's, and the 1930's. The mine was nationalized by the government (always a bad idea, since governments don't know very much about mining!) and this led to decreased investment and lack of modernization leading the mine to close in 1959. This devasted the local economy, and one man started a business making Christmas tree ornaments. This took off in the 1960's, and there are now five different factories producing ornaments.

Now, there are permanent shops selling ornaments year round, but of course at this time of year almost everybody in town is selling Christmas decorations. It's super busy on weekends, to the point where there is a lack of parking. We were lucky that our visit was on a Monday when things are a bit quieter.

Yes, Christmas clothing as well.

This one booth was selling these handmade owls. 

Nothing to do with Christmas, but we thought they were cute!

Every different type of Christmas decoration you can imagine!

We took a walk up to the church.

It's very impressive.

View from the base of the church.

The facade is also impressive.

The last time we were here was on a Saturday and there was a big wedding taking place so we couldn't go inside. But this time, there was hardly anybody around!

The inside is very ornate.

Don't forget to look up!

Pretty fancy.

Look up again!

We went into a really big Christmas shop.

Pick your Santa.

Me, with the big guy himself!

Time to head back to Igor.

Colorful buildings.

There is another church down below. Plain on the outside, but still quite fancy inside.

Church courtyard.

Ruth peeked into the entrance to this hotel.

It's really well done.

Another older hotel in town.

The town Christmas tree!

It went down to -1C (30F) last night! We are at 2,600 meters (8,500') right now, so it gets quite chilly at night. I tested our fancy new furnace last night so that it would be working this morning when we got up, and it fired up after two tries. (The lines would have been drained when they removed the gas tank to replace the fuel pump.)

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