A lime vendor waits for customers in the market at Patzcuaro, once home to the Purepecha empire, which defeated the Aztecs.: By Lynn Milness, CanWest NewsTowns off the beaten track steeped in rich history and culture

GUANAJUATO, Mexico - Guanajuato and Patzcuaro are off the radar of most tourists, but the colonial towns in the central highlands north and west of Mexico City are richly cultured gems with important roles in the country's history.

Guanajuato is nestled in the Sierra Guanajuato Mountains, 2,008 metres above sea level. Named "place of frogs" in the indigenous dialect for its cool, moist, bowl-like setting, Guanajuato served the Valenciana Mine in the hills above town. It produced two-thirds of the world's silver in the 18th century, and the seam's riches are reflected in Guanajuato's opulent theatre and glorious churches.

A mine-like subterranean main road tunnels along the original course of the Guanajuato River almost three kilometres into the centre of town, where it emerges as the only road in and out of town. A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1988, Guanajuato has no traffic lights or neon signs.

It's a walker's paradise with hundreds of maze-like cobblestone alleyways winding past pastel stucco and stone homes on jumbled, steep hillsides. Alleyways wind past dozens of plazas down to the heart of town, the Jardin de la Union. It's a triangular-shaped, tile-paved park with Trueno trees pruned into a leafy ceiling above elegant, wrought-iron benches that are a perfect spot to watch street entertainers and the rest of Guanajuato stroll by. With its clipped laurels, fountains and plazas, Guanajuato has the flavour of a medieval European town.

Students from the Universidad de Guanajuato comprise almost a quarter of the town's 120,000 population, giving the city a youthful and dynamic ambience.

They're at the heart of the annual International Cervantino Festival in October, a celebration of Cervantes that has grown into arguably Mexico's most important cultural event showcasing plays, poetry, ballet, opera, cinema, music, as well as literature.

Throughout the year, traditional Callejoneadas, wine-fuelled and costumed-student choral groups, serenade the alleyways (or callejons) almost every night. Tourists can join in, but it is equally romantic to lounge in your hotel room with the beautiful music outside your window.

The 1903-built Teatro Juarez on the edge of the Jardin de la Union is an opulent building with four floors of carved and sculpted box seats, an upstairs lobby with glass floors and skylight, and a Greco-Roman portico adorned with bronze lions and lanterns as well as Moorish motifs. Nearby, the Museo de las Momias features naturally mummified corpses created by the special minerals in Guanajuato's soil. Museo Casa de Diego Rivera showcases the family home and furnishings of one of Mexico's greatest artists. During our visit, galleries upstairs featured a photo exhibit by the great Cuban photographer Alberto Korda and a show of German expressionism in addition to a large collection of Diego Rivera's drawings and paintings.

Our visit to Guanajuato was sweetened by our stay at Casa de Pita, a funky and economical B&B with a gregarious English-speaking hostess. We had excellent meals at Posada Santa Fe and Casa Valadez on the main square and Truco 7 nearby. We even caught a Spanish-language version of the King Kong remake at Cines Guanajuato and hung out with a late night crowd listening to a young, fleet-fingered guitarist play Bach and jazz at a bohemian college haunt called Zilch just off the Plaza Mexiamora. We also spent hours in Mercado Hidalgo, a sprawling, 1910-built, indoor warren of a public market.

A long bus ride on a first-class bus took us to Patzcuaro, a town of 75,000 beside an islet-studded lake. The mountains and hills of dry cedar brush and pine around Patzcuaro were home to the Purepecha empire which defeated the Aztecs before the Spanish entered the rich valley in 1521, and some indigenous people in and around Patzcuaro still only speak the native languages.

We spent most of one day in Patzcuaro's huge outdoor market before catching a colectivo (look for the word lego painted on the bus front window) at the nearby Plaza Gertrude Bocanegro for a bus ride to Lake Patzcuaro.

We joined a boatload of Mexican tourists visiting Janitzio, the island site of Mexico's most famous Day of the Dead celebration. On the 30-minute boat trip we saw Mariposas, the lake's famous fishermen dipping their butterfly-shaped nets in search of the region's fabled but almost fished-out white fish.

Once on Janitzio we hiked up a steep lane past dozens of shops and restaurants to the summit and a view of the entire valley from the towering Jose Maria Morelos statue, a tower-trek lined with a continuous mural of scenes from the independence leader's life.

I loved Patzcuaro's relaxed, soulful charm and the echoes of an earlier age. Staying at Hotel Los Escudos, a renovated 17th-century colonial building on the central square with three floors above a serene patio, provided a

comfortable, quiet, and economical home base for our travels in and around Patzcuaro. On the other side of the square at El Patio, we had some memorable meals. Over a leisurely lunch, we savoured the restaurant's daily special of breast of chicken stuffed with mushrooms and a sauce made from Huitzacoche, a fungus that grows only on the kernels of blue corn and is also known as Mexican truffle. With rice, beans, vegetables and bread, the meal was an under-$10 bargain that included live music by a guitarist who sang romantic songs with a dramatic, beautiful voice.

Outside our hotel, a family served homemade coconut, pistachio and a dozen other delicious flavours of ice cream at Neveria Erendira. It was heaven on a cone for less than a dollar. I could happily sit for hours in the main square, entranced by Patzcuaro's simple pleasures, rich history and culture, and deep indigenous spirituality. The old colonial towns of Guanajuato and Patzcuaro are enchanting.

Source:
http://www.canada.com
by Joseph Blake
For Victoria Times Colonist; CanWest News Service