A few months back Ali and I tried to take the kids on a bus from Patzcuaro to Angahuan to see the San Juan Parangaricutiro Church. Not even ten miles down the road they were both sweating bullets and about to puke, so we jumped off the bus and caught a taxi home.
Today they made it.
The church is all that is left of the town that once stood here. In 1943 it disappeared when a volcano suddenly erupted out of a flat cornfield. Nine years later it was done erupting, having buried the town in lava. Only the big stone church was partially spared.
When Ali and I first visited we got lost trying to follow trails through the woods. Today a road in progress leads straight through the woods to the entrance of the church. They are obviously gearing up to really get the tourists in there. Don’t know what that’s going to mean for the twenty guys sitting up at the entrance trying to get people to ride their horses down there. We didn’t help their cause—we walked the twenty minutes down the road, only to discover that another road comes in from the other side and there were a dozen vehicles there already.
I’m trying hard not to sound like an old fuddy-duddy, but it’s not easy—all the adventure is being sucked out of even the smallest side trips.
Not that these two care about any of that. It’s all fun and games when you’re a kid.
Excellent. Well done, family.
Lunch was awesome. These ladies sit there all day patting out the most delicious blue corn tortillas. We were talking about these tacos well into the next day.
6 Comments on “The Lava Church”
Wow! This is very cool. In one of the pictures it looks like the church is sticking up from trees. but of course it is lava.
Any correlation to eating street food and sick kids on the bus 🙂
Mark and Cindy
No, they get motion sick on the buses when they are packed with people and they can’t sit looking out the windows. Especially so on curvy mountain roads. I can’t think of the last time street food has caused us any problems. It’s been quite a while now.
Ahh! What an adventure. Sitting at my desk on a snowy January day in northern New York, your pictures make me absolutely ache with longing to travel.
Thank you for sharing your journey with me.
How do you find these gems to explore? I do Google searches, but I’m obviously not entering the right words… Love this church. We will be venturing up to see the Monarchs in early February. Thanks for the gorgeous photos
I don’t remember how we discovered this church the first time around, but on this trip we had completely forgotten about it until a couple of days before when I mentioned to Ali that we were going to stay in Uruapan (because they had a Holiday Inn that we could book for free with points). Uruapan sparked a memory for her, and then she remembered the church. But in general, we don’t have a specific way to find things. We just hear about them, or read about them, or see a picture somewhere. We most definitely do not go online searching for stuff to do, because we seem to always have more than we can handle to do already. Which may be why we often miss things that were “must dos.”
Pat, Ali and kids, it’s been quite awhile since I checked in on the “Bumfuzzle” crew. You still tickle my adventure bone. Now I’m going to have to find this excellent place. The kids are so big! Looking happy and healthy as usual, and why not with such amazing parents. Keep up the good life. Kisses to the short ones. Hugs to the tall ones.
Lauri and Dois
svAshika