Colima & Comala

Each bus trip we take from one town to the next seems to be three hours. From Tapalpa to Colima we took two slow moving buses that stopped in each little town along the way and anywhere along the two-lane road where someone wanted to jump on or off. The last section of the trip here to Colima was quite beautiful over modern bridges straddling spectacular river gorges. Colima is near two volcanoes, one active and one inactive. There is national park surrounding these mountains, very beautiful green country.

 

Colima is a nice peaceful town. We stayed the first night in a seedy hotel that was Rough Guide’s choice for the city, their second poor choice so far on this trip. I guess rough means rough and I’m now too old (let’s say experienced) to think that’s cool. We changed for the second night to Hotel La Merced, which the previous hotel management warned us was for ‘lovers’.  Of course that’s what we are so it was great for the Brownings. 

 We walked our feet to the bone yesterday visiting Piedra Lisa, a park with a giant piece of obsidian used as a slide. The legend has it that this is part of an asteroid that landed in the crater of the new extinct volcano in the distance. This intrusion upset the volcano causing it to explode sending the huge black rock many miles away into the pueblo. Around the slick rock today you will find families having fun in the various lush parks and eating in the many cafes under the flowering trees. A Casa de Cultura (museum) is across the street, which we also walked through. It was full of archeological treasure from prehispanic times.

 Our big venture yesterday was our trip to Comala, another Mexican ‘Pueblo Magico’, magic village. Here all the buildings were whitewashed adobe structures. It is an artisan town though, luckily, we didn’t find any piece that called out to us. It’s much too early to be collecting souvenirs to display; we don’t want to carry anything extra for two weeks!

Last night at dinner we had a lovely conversation with our waitress. The restaurant was empty so she had time to chat with us. We have yet to meet any Mexican who has seen as much of their country as the two of us have. Their pride of Mexican heritage and culture is remarkable; they are beautiful people with a grateful attitude!