Dia de los Muertos

These are the ruins of Tzintzuntzan, of the Purhepechas. Another place I visited in highschool, but didn't know the name of. Jeremy's girlfriend Gama is an archaeologist, and she gave us the inside tour. We arrived early before the site is opened to the public - hence the long shadows - and were free to roam and shoot as we pleased. Then she invited us into the excavation, explaining everything from how the temples were originally shaped and colored, to what they've found so far.

This is a piece of floor they've been working to uncover for six weeks - it's made of obsidian! She also showed us all of the artifacts they've uncovered, including bones, jewelry of all different kinds of precious stones - from necklaces to earrings and lip plugs - tools and pipes, broken jars they reassmble with the original paint.. so many interesting things. They use the stone rubble left at the site to rebuild the rotundas in the original manner, soaking nopales, a type of cactus, for 5 days to use the sticky gluton as a natural adhesive.

That's us!
After exploring the ruins, we went down into the pueblo - tzintzun means hummingbird in Purhepecha, an onomonapeia for the sound it makes! Since it was a couple of days before the Day of the Dead, everyone was small plaza assembling huge altars and blasting music of their favorite dead singer.

On Thursday the markets were packed to the brim with people scrambling to buy flowers and candles to build altars. It inspired us to create our own, in memory of Grace Crumpton, our abuelos, and Stephan's dad.
So we gathered flowers and found trinkets that could remind us of the muertos and built a very modest ofrenda - not bad for having a very vague idea of how to create one.

Here you can't see, but there are candles for each person {we've added more now}, with tiny wooden skulls for each, and a food offering. Today we had to dip out of the house we were staying in {first of the month} so we moved it to the yard. Gama told us that the most important thing to offer, if there's no money for the ofrenda, is a glass of water. We also got some traditional sugar skulls at the market.

This is Gama's altar, for her abuelos and father of David. Clearly she and her family have been doing this since she was a child - a gorgeous ofrenda with bread, marigolds and patterned paper hanging from above, tons of flowers and candles, cigarettes and tequila for the offering, pan de muertos, and a sugar skull for each.

So today there are even more people in Patzcuaro then I've ever seen. We'll go to Janitizio tonight for the traditional festivities.

An another note - Ian is famous in Patzcuaro. We got ice cream in the plaza one day, and while were sitting one of the girls came up to him and asked if he's an artist. Yeah, I'm a photographer. Oh my god it's him! This chica has a poster in her home that she thinks is his - she took a picture with him, and the next day had it printed out with a cute border and all, and had him autograph the back of it. What photographer could look so much like him_creepy coincidence. Now we get ice cream everyday because he likes the attention.