Cecille's Creativity

About 48 miles off themain highway, Uruapan wears an air fo drowsy remoteness. The town is set in a green garden-like landscape, a lush mixture of pine, cedar, oak, ash, with banana, avocado, mango and other tropical plants and trees. Uruapan is sometimes called “the flower garden of Mexico”.

Lacquerware, especially trays and masks is produced in several small shps in Uruapan and in the surrounding territory. The best work has engraved designs an dis filed in with real lacquers. Guitars are made in Paracho, on the highway 15 miles south of the junction town of Carapan.

Uruapan’s pride is its beautiful park, Parque Nacional Licenciado Eduardo Ruiz. Tree-shaded paths lead along a cool, clear river and up to its headwaters – a series of bubbling springs. Local residents often bathe in Bano Azul, on eof the river’s pools.

For another purely relaxing excursion, ride about 6 miles of to Tzarraracua Falls. Its water gush from many points around a natural stone amphitheater and drop about 90 feet into a pool surrounded by tropical trees, plants and flowers. Rustic, circular rest houses on a trail to the pool make cool picnic spots.

There is no activity now at Paricutin, the volcano that sprang from a cornfield in 1943, but you can drive out to view the weird, blackened landscape. It is a 24-mile round trip via cinder-surfaced road.