Quiroga + Tzintzuntzan

The rather nondescript but still pleasant town of Quiroga near the north shore of Lake Pátzcuaro has served as a marketplace for surrounding towns and villages for more than 500 years. Spanish Bishop Vasco de Quiroga, for whom the town is named, arrived in the early 16th century and assigned different industries to area villages. Tzintzuntzan is a small town and archaeological excavation site in Mexico and is best known as the former capital of the Purépecha. The name of the place comes from the Tarascan word Ts'intsuntsani, which means place of hummingbirds. I visited these two towns on one afternoon with Zzcema whom I got to know in Morelia and we had a lot of fun exploring these places.

Quiroga is most notably known for its carnitas, literally translated as "little meats", the Mexican version of Slow Cooked Pulled Pork, originating from the state of Michoacán. Carnitas are made by braising or simmering pork in oil or preferably lard. The process takes three to four hours, and the result is very tender and juicy meat, which is then typically served with chopped coriander leaves and diced onion, salsa, guacamole and of course tortillas. So the first thing we did in Quiroga was ordering 500g of carnitas with all the mentioned side dishes and had a wonderful lunch. After we had finished our meal we passed by a seller of rompecabezas (literal: headbreakers). He was designing and forming all kinds of metal puzzles where it is always necessary to separate one part from the other.

After that we took a taxi to the nearby city and Pueblo Mágico of Tzintzuntzan. We first visited the archaeological site which is situated on a little hill right next to the city centre. The settlement of Tzintzuntzan was founded around 1325 by the Purépecha. Initially the centre of the Púrépecha Empire was in Pátzcuaro, but in the middle of the 15th century power shifted to Tzintzuntzan. The empire continued to grow and withstood the attacks of the neighbouring Aztec empire until the arrival of the Spaniards. The ruler of this city surrendered to the Spaniards because he wanted to escape the fate of the Aztecs, whose capital Tenochtitlan was destroyed. In its heyday, the town had 40,000 inhabitants. From pre-Hispanic times, only the ruins of seven Yacatas, typical pyramids with slightly stepped side walls and a ground plan formed by a rectangle and a circle on the long side have survived. This complex was once the ceremonial centre of the ancient capital of Purépecha.

In the city of Tzintzuntzan you can find an ex convent with the atrium of olives. It’s a beautiful landscape surrounded by the olive trees planted by the first Spanish evangelists. This is why the gnarled olive trees some of which dating back to the 1500's are said to be the oldest in the American continent. Directly nearby is a large cemetery which houses all kinds of graves. Before returning back to Morelia we also went down to the Pátzcuaro Lake.