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Our trip to the mountain town of Pátzcuaro in the state of Michoacán was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for this trip. We started our annual tour of Mexico in Guadalajara where the Herradura Tequila Company acted as our gracious hosts for a busy weekend of fiestas and informational symposia about their fine quality, traditionally made Tequila. But our intended goal for this trip was to return to the mountain town of Patzcuaro perched above the large mountain lake Patzcuaro.

This is the great room at El Mesón de San Antonio in Pátzcuaro www.mesondesanantonio.com  where we stayed for a glorious week and a half.  The proprietor, Don Alfredo Del Río is a warm and welcoming host who is a retired Agronomist. He runs the Mesón with his charming wife Doña Lupita and on occasion one or the other of his five delightful children help out. In the far right-hand corner of this photo a fragrant crackling fire warms the brisk mountain mornings, as Pátzcuaro is almost 7,000 feet above sea level. The inside adobe walls are painted a soft beigey pink and the outside wall facing the street is constructed from the ancient stones from the site. In pre-Columbian times the site was a Purepecha Indian ceremonial platform with temples, a priest’s house and enormous fires for worshiping the sun.  

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Frieda Kahlo is handsomely portrayed in this posthumous portrait hanging in the great room. Looking at the deep window seat you can see how thick the old adobe walls are. The windows at Mesón de San Antonio all have wooden shutters on the inside. Don Alfredo told me when he bought the place 20 years ago the windows had no glass and the hacienda had been abandoned for almost 30 years. There was a forest of weeds choking the patio courtyard and the structure was in jeopardy of general collapse. The collection of papier maché dolls gathered on the window seat is a ubiquitous type found all over Mexico although at this moment I am still researching what to call them and trying to learn their history. Does anyone know more about these little darlings? If so, please elucidate and carry on in the comments section at the end of this article.

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This is a view of the great room looking towards the all tiled kitchen. The picture just begins to give a hint of the spacious traditional design of the kitchen which is intended as a demonstration kitchen for Doña Lupita’s classes. It also is available to the guests who may want to prepare a meal at the Mesón as an alterative to eating in restaurants all the time. Leo is considering organizing a week of traditional Mexican cooking classes next winter for a small group of his customers from Casa Romero. The idea is that our group would stay at Mesón de San Antonio and take  daily classes starting with shopping at the wonderfully colorful market in Pátzcuaro and then using and preparing a meal that all would share. If you are interested in this idea please get in touch through the comment section at the end of this article. 

 

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This is Don Alfredo’s garden courtyard is at the center of his old Hacienda style Mesón. In Vice Regal times the Mesón or inn was host to mule teams and their drivers. Mesón de San Antonio stands beside El Camino Real, the royal road that connected the main cities of Nueva España. The animals would have then been corralled in the courtyard. Some of the surrounding rooms accommodated overnight visitors and others accommodated blacksmiths, carpenters and other skilled craftspeople to help maintain the wagons and equipment. Now the large open court is planted with many unusual specimen plants. The most spectacular of the lot is a tall Monstruo (Brownningia sp) cactus. But my favorites are the deep fuchsia colored Bougainvillea vines hugging the ancient wooden columns that support the arcade surrounding three sides of the court. In this picture you can see one of the balcony style windows that open out from the comfortable rooms onto the central garden. Each room is individually decorated and has a small fireplace which is re-laid with wood every morning. 

   

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The weighted branches of the Mexican Lima tree are heavy with fruit. Don Alfredo explained to me in a recent email about this special fruit, “there are two kinds of such fruit (Lima), one of them with nipple, and the another one without it. Our Lima tree, as you are able to see in the picture is with nipple and it is the more tasty and odoriferous of the two kinds.”

 The Lima is not as tart as our lemon or lime and it has a heavenly scented fruit that is quite unique in flavor. Leo describes it as a sweet lime. It is in fact a distinctive plant and the aromatic wood is also used to make boxes and chests. Because it is such a  fragrant wood it is  effective as a deterrent to insects as cedar wood is. The juice of the Lima is deliciously refreshing and is often mixed with other green vegetable juices such as parsley and cactus. Yummm! 


 

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This is a deceptive photo because the center plant is really a variegated leafy bush that supports a scarlet bougainvillea vine growing throughout its branches. The bright reds and greens are a perfect foil to the adobe walls rubbed with soft tan color.

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The elegantly slim wooden pillars supporting the tiled roof of Mesón de San Antonio are shaped with reverse fluting and finished by an attractive capital that in turn supports a scrolled bracket. The ceiling of the arcade has sturdy hand honed beams with thin cedar slats arranged in a herring bone pattern. This is the traditional building form that makes an appealing textural patterning.  

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One of the myriad details that Mesón de San Antonio abounds with is this bunch of corn tacked to an ancient ceiling beam that protrudes from the adobe wall. The ears of corn incorporate all the beautiful warm colors of a Persian carpet. A small cast bronze bell crowns the ensemble.
 

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Here are the handsome del Río Family L to R; Don Alfredo, Doña Lupita, and their beloved daughter Edaín who has just graduated from the University of Morelia with a degree in biology. Edaín’s has four brothers and sisters. The two eldest are General Practitioner MDs in Quretero, an important colonial city nearby in central Mexico.  I added the frame from a picture I took in Uruápan, a nearby town. I think the frame lends them all a proper dignity.

 Doña Lupita is a terrific cook and while we were visiting she gave a demonstration to a group of her guests on preparing mole. She used many varieties of roasted and ground chilies, nuts and chocolate to create her own family recipe. Doña Lupita and Edaín started at 2pm and the party sat down to eat at 8:00. She sacrificed one of her own turkeys for the repast (a much discussed event recounted with respect, concern and humor). The turkey mole was enjoyed by all and a grand success. 

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And here is the little devil himself, Mr. Leo looking rather fetching in one of his new Mexican shirts photographed against my favorite bougainvillea vine in the courtyard.

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In this photograph we are looking diagonally across the courtyard at the towering cactus. Don Alfredo identified this remarkable specimen which is well known in town. “Our big cactus, dubbed Monstruo (Brownningia sp) originally came from Peru, now it is offered in a lot of nurseries in Mexico because of its big and odd shape and its blue hue.”

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This is the front door of the Museo de Popular which is right around the corner from our hotel. This absolutely charming museum is dedicated to the local ceramics, textiles, lacquer ware, masks and furniture made in that area. In the back of the museum is an archeological site of the Purépecha Indians. The Purépecha’s built ceremonial platforms where they had huge bonfires to worship the sun. There are also ruins of a native priest’s house. The ruins beneath Mesón de San Antonio are part of the same ceremonial site just one long block away on the same hill above the town of Patzcuaro and the lake.

 The Museum building was built by Don Vasco de Quiroga, the first bishop of Michoaćan in 1540 as the Royal College of St Nicholas. Bishop Quiroga taught the indigenous populations the crafts of firing and glazing pottery as well as spinning and weaving cloth and the production of lacquer ware. He is generally credited with teaching the native populations income producing craft professions that are still practiced today.   At the center of the Museum building is an oasis of greenery with a sleepy fountain and some of the most fragrant irises I have ever stuck my nose in.
 

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This spoon wrack is of special interest to us because we collect spoons for our kitchen back home in Boston. We struggled with the question of buying one of the enticing ensembles that we saw in several of the better shops in Patzcuaro but our home is already so jammed packed that we are trying not to accumulate anymore stuff. As a compromise we bought four large spoons that were attractively painted and lacquered, rather than the wrack with a whole collection of new spoons.


 

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The displays at Museo Popular are an act of thoughtful love with an appreciation for the artistry and function of the pieces in the collection. In one corner of the “Kitchen” display is this magnificent wooden arch carved with a decoration of blossoming flowers that displays, to great advantage, a collection of pottery. This type of ware leaves the bisque fired clay body exposed glazing only the interior of the vessels and the serving surfaces of plates. The dripping glaze becomes part of the simple design.
 

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If you can picture it, this gracefully curved counter at the center of the “Kitchen” display is actually the stove/cooking range. First of all I have to mention that I love the beautiful shape of this structure that allows for four cooking places with ample tile top counter space in the center. At the butt end facing out, the small black square is one of the fire chambers and the cooking pot sits above it with a rounded bottom for even heat distribution. The pot nestles into a round opening at the top of the stove, fitting snugly. They use either charcoal or small evenly split logs of a hot burning core wood from the local trees that are highly resinous. What-ever smoke arises from these fires rises to the high ceilings of the kitchen and is vented out the eaves of the roof.


 

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In a corner of the museum an open door leads to the back garden where the archeological excavation is revealed. You can get an idea of the attractive displays throughout the museum arranged on tables and fascinating open shelf cupboards and wooden niches. There are also occasional glassed wall shelves with special collections and in the glass you can see the reflection of the museum’s central patio garden. . This room is dedicated to a distinctive kind of green glazed pottery.

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The two matching cupboards on either side of the central wooden niche have an interesting detail where the legged cupboards stand on low benches. The benches are part of the cupboards carefully joined together with mortise and tendon joinery. 

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This is part of the mask collection at the Museo Popular and nothing could be more of a popular art than masks in Mexico. All over the country the various peoples of different regions make and use masks in their ceremonies. Some of the characters are classic individuals and some are generic types and a lot of them are mixtures of human and beast. These zoomorphic cross species express the universal connectivity between all beings and the transformative aspect of evolving life.  

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This picture of St. Francis shaking the hand of a wolf is created with feathers. I am a sucker for St. Francis; I mean the guy talked with the animals just like Mary Poppins so how much better can it get? I’ll bet he had some interesting conversations actually listening to what the critters had to say. I am also a sucker for feathers because they are so beautiful. The art of feather embroidery is called Amantecas in the Nahuatl language. It is a decorative technique that has been practiced in Mexico throughout history. This picture is decidedly European and Christian to boot, but the subject is remarkably gentle and intelligent. We all need to converse with our fellow creatures and care for each other. Evolution is cooperation not competition! 

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This ensemble of pottery is displayed on a fairly simple shelf arrangement. The central unit is inset into the wall in an attractively peeked niche which becomes a finished piece of furniture by the addition of the scalloped wooden border that culminates in a finial that looks to be a cross between a pineapple and a pomegranate. The peaked arches of the little side niches culminate, on the left, with two rabbits kissing and on the right, a quail with her top knot feathers.


    

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The style of the pottery on this table is one of my favorites. The designs are created by tiny dots of glaze in harmonious shades of color in subdued tones. I think the proportions of the large covered urn are especially attractive


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Outside in the patio garden, bird of paradise flowers seem to take flight, animated by a shower of silver water beads from a sprinkler hose.
 

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Sky blue agapanthus flower clusters huddle together with pink azalea blossoms in a corner of the patio garden.
 

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Red and white stripped amaryllis trumpets wag long tongues tempting the patrolling bees to take a dip.
 

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I am not sure what to call this beautiful Lilly variety with its complex flower structure except “Elegantly Lovely.”

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This is the bell tower of the Basilica of Nuestra Señora de la Salud, which Bishop Vasco de Quiroga started to build around 1543. He had hopes that this would become a great cathedral, but the original plan - an edifice comprised of five naves, capable of holding about 30,000 people at a time was never completed. The Basilica has recently undergone a marvelous restoration. The Virgen de la Salud (Our Lady of Health), made of pasta de caña, graces the main altar. Pasta de caña is corn cane paste bound with honey. Vasco de Quiroga's remains are located in a mausoleum at its entrance.

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I am very attracted to the antique windows and ancient doorways of Mexico. In the wiggly old glass of the convent adjoining the basilica you can see the reflection of the big bells in the tower. These mellow old bells mark the passage of time in Patzcuaro resounding inside the adobe walls of the patio at Mesón de San Antonio which is a half a block away.  The cast iron grill at the base of this window has a particularly pleasing neo classical design with its series of bisecting oval shapes decorated with foliage wreaths.

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Every morning quite early this man and his pert burro trotted briskly by Mason de San Antonio. Whether he was coming or going from his daily work to home I have no idea but he was definitely not lingering long in one place.