{"id":299,"date":"2016-07-06T16:42:15","date_gmt":"2016-07-06T16:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/donniemeals.net\/?p=299"},"modified":"2019-12-18T13:47:05","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T13:47:05","slug":"can-i-buy-your-magic-bus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/donniemeals.net\/index.php\/2016\/07\/06\/can-i-buy-your-magic-bus\/","title":{"rendered":"Can I Buy Your Magic Bus?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>3 Minute, 35 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n

July 4th.\u00a0 Once again it was a wonderful abuelita style breakfast that started the day and was followed by absolutely nothing.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t because we were resting for the holiday, plus it\u2019s not exactly\u00a0 an observed holiday down here.\u00a0 No, we just chilled and waited until 11am to load up and go to the Guadalajara airport.\u00a0 Sharon\u2019s nephew, Shawn, (well, my nephew too but\u2026) decided to perform the \u201cHail Mary pass\u201d of travel by hoping we would pick him up in a foreign country.\u00a0 Tony Romo was nowhere to be found.\u00a0 Pass complete.\u00a0 We drove into Ajijic for some tasty empanadas and just showed Shawn the basic lay of the land. Dinner in Ajijic was also in order and we were treated to a \u201ctoken\u201d fireworks display for any 4th of July Americans in the crowd.\u00a0 It consisted of 9 or 10 bottle rockets.\u00a0 Anyway, glad they thought of us.\u00a0 Once back to our room in Chapala, Shawn and I counted geckos and watched a nice lightening storm roll in across the lake.\u00a0 The tequila seemed to mess with my picture taking ability of this beautiful site.\u00a0 I tried.\u00a0 The geckos probably could have done better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

July 5th.  Juanita and her sister Alicia took a liking to Shawn during breakfast.  He seemed to get extra portions of breakfast without asking.  Unfortunately, the motherly love didn\u2019t last as we said goodbye and set the controls for Patzcuaro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The free road was fairly smooth yet still presented opportunities to teach Shawn about the dreaded Mexican \u201ctope\u201d, (Tow\u2019 pay).  Translation: speed bump from hell; placed at places you should slow down and at other random places just because.  Once you hit one, you\u2019ll know what I mean.  Otherwise, the drive was beautiful and lush.  The clouds were low and snaked through the mountain passes along with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In about 4 hours we were approaching the Patzcuaro area and entering the town of Quiroga, where we came upon a road block.  No, not like there was construction and no, not like there was a detour.  We found ourselves in the middle of a full blown political protest.  The locals blocked the road with a Volkswagon bus, which then clogged with 18 wheelers.  The protesters, wearing bandanas to cover their faces waving machetes, further clogging the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well.  Never been in this situation before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got out of the car to survey the situation as Sharon jumped into the driver\u2019s seat and Shawn contemplated whether or not he liked us anymore.  I got to the center of the ruckus and waved to Sharon to drive toward me.  As she approached, a machete wielding masked man stood in front of the car.  It started to get a bit edgy.  For once my Spanish didn\u2019t fail me.  As a small crowd started to encircle our car, I looked at the protester a said, \u201cApoyo la gente\u201d, (\u201cI support the people\u201d).   You would have thought I had personally given each of them a 10 dollar bill.  We shook hands and were allowed to pass.  I felt pretty darn macho.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We entered Patzcuaro, found a room, then caught a collectivo (peoples bus) to the center of town.  Patzcuaro is a lovely community, plenty of local artists and colonial culture.  We introduced Shawn to the local market food and associated smells, then walked the cobbled streets in search of who knows what.  In the central plaza, Sharon and I noticed an artist that we had seen here before.  He seemed overjoyed that we remembered him as our conversation lasted and we poked through a number of his pieces of art.  We exchanged information the headed for our collectivo home.  Or so we thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The little people\u2019s bus ride from hotel to town lasted all of 12 minutes.  The same ride to return took us to parts unknown via a mysteriously convoluted path.  About an hour later, we got off at the first thing we recognized.  Somewhat magically, our hotel was only a short walk away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A weird day like this deserved a night cap.  Apoyo la gente, folks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n

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July 4th.\u00a0 Once again it was a wonderful abuelita style breakfast that started the day and was followed by absolutely nothing.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t because we were resting for the holiday, plus it\u2019s not exactly\u00a0 an observed holiday down here.\u00a0 No, we just chilled and waited until 11am to load up Continue Reading<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-summer-2016"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/donniemeals.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/donniemeals.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/donniemeals.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donniemeals.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donniemeals.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/donniemeals.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":502,"href":"https:\/\/donniemeals.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions\/502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/donniemeals.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donniemeals.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donniemeals.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}