Talpa de Allende #1 - Pilgrimages

As I write this, the carillon in Mascota’s church is playing Ave Maria. We are only two blocks from the Central Park where gentle Christmas music is played all day long. It’s lovely. A flautist is making rounds in the street playing Silent Night and other quiet carols.

Chris has taken our laundry to a little laundromat which is on the way to the lookout with the cross, so he will get some exercise going up the mountain while I write.

Yesterday, we decided to go to the pilgrimage town of Talpa de Allende for a little day trip. When we stayed in Ajijic, near Guadalajara, several of our Mexican neighbours had talked about their walk to Talpa. Many walked the 200 km with bad shoes or no shoes. It was a very moving trip for all of them.

Talpa is an old silver mining town founded by the Spanish in 1599 with a population of 10,000 and home to the Virgin of “Rosario of Talpa.” The beautiful Basilica de Nuestra Señora del Rosario de Talpa that houses the relatively small statue of the Virgin was built in 1782 and is one of the most venerated religious sites in all of Mexico.

Mexican Catholics and others regularly walk, ride horses, drive or bus to Talpa to visit the shrine, but especially during four holy festivals. More than 500,000 people visit Talpa annually and at times fill the small town with people, ‘wall to wall.’

Talpa is not far from Mascota. We missed the bus that goes there at 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., so took a taxi. It is only a 1/2 away and the drive took us through a gorgeous mountainous landscape filled with pines. We could ask the driver questions about the area, so our drive became a mini-tour.

As we went over a high ridge, we noticed that the whole valley was covered in an incredibly dense fog. It was a ‘Wow” moment! We couldn’t see the town down below at all, it looked like a sea of clouds. As we descended into the fog, the driver told us that in one hour it will all be gone as the sun burns it off. And that’s what happened.

The first thing that we saw, were the two spires of the cathedral. I will break this footprint into two footprints as I want to talk about the pilgrimage site in this blog and about some of the special workshops we saw in the second footprint.

The small statue, which has seemingly performed many miraculous healings, is the reason that many people have made the pilgrimage to Talpa for the past 200 years. Here is the legend:

“The statue of the Virgin was discovered underground in a small chapel on March 24th, 1644. At that time, she was restored and taken to the church of a distant town. The next morning, the Virgin was back in Talpa. The people were awed; it was humanly impossible that someone could have taken her that far overnight. The faithful saw this as a miracle and claimed she must be alive. The priest took a hot object and put it to her face and there appeared a human-like scar, that still remains on her face to this day. Rosario is dressed somewhat like the Virgin of Zapopan, but she is dressed in blue and carries an infant in her arms.”

As we entered the church, we noticed a young lady who was walking on her knees to pray to the virgin. It was a long distance and I know that I would never have been able to stand up after that trek.

The church is beautiful and all decorated for Christmas. A band was playing religious music near the altar while we were there. Sometimes, I really see why people here flock to churches and I like it.

We walked around the town a bit and then noticed a cross on the hill behind the church. Once again there were about 500 steps and some inclined roads to get to the top. We like doing these walks as the views are usually very rewarding. On the way up, we had a nice chat with a nun who lived in a house on top of the hill. She was complaining a bit about going up and down the stairs for all the masses. Haha. It kept her in shape. Lucky her, the best view in town!

Coming down the hill using a different path, we met an artist who was painting a mural of the town on a building’s wall. Actually the whole little alley was filled with lovely murals showing scenes of the town what a great idea.

We decided to find the bus station in order to buy our bus tickets back to Mascota. Not a difficult thing to do in such a tiny town. Starting to feel a little peckish, we were on the looked out for a clean little restaurant to eat in and in no time, we passed one with 3 laughing ladies in it. We asked where the best restaurant in town was and they laughed even harder and invited us in. We were not disappointed. The shrimp burritos in Puerto Vallarta were amazing but the bbqed meat burrito in this restaurant was out of this world. We had to order a second helping!!

We sat in the centre for a bit people-watching and then walked around town checking out the little stores and the ‘workshops’. Talpa #2 footprint will go into more details about what we learned.

Talpa Walking Stick before they leave here. It is almost like a badge that they have made the pilgrimage. Why these sticks are called Talpa Walking Sticks, I don't know because I've seen them in other parts of Mexico. They are made from a stick of bamboo. The root end is trimmed to form a three-pronged handle, which fits the hand very comfortably. If the bamboo is cut young, the handle fits a young child's hand; left to grow, it will fit a big man's hand. Some people call them burros, and I guess if you have an active imagination, you could see that they resemble a donkey.Read more