- We are in Mexico's real life version of Whoville,
so I better put on something more appropriate.
Much better.
Welcome to Tlalpujahua Michoacan.
This is the Mexican town where it's Christmas all year long.
Literally 70% of this town's industry is making
Christmas ornaments and half
of the stores of the town are Christmas stores
that are opened year round.
To get to Tlalpujahua from Queretaro,
it was a very easy drive, a little over two hours,
but it was on really nice roads the whole way.
Very few tolls, only like 50 or 60 pesos worth of tolls.
Right now we are in La via de Santa
and although it's totally decked out for Christmas time,
it's actually like this the whole year.
It's open year round and you can come here
at any time because this is what this town is.
This town is all about Christmas.
Within La Via de Santa, they have a bunch
of stores where you can buy various Christmas ornaments,
Christmas decorations, and all sorts of stuff.
At night, they have a light show where they
play Christmas music and the lights move to the music.
And then over here you can grab some popcorn,
or something to drink, or some other snacks as well.
I'll give you guys a quick tour of our AirBnB.
It's a very short walking distance of the
main square in town.
You just go
up that hill a little ways and you're right there.
And then out front they have the white wall painted
with flowers and then these gorgeous wooden blue doors.
But let's go inside.
I love this place, it's so cute.
So coming in the front door to your left here,
you have the living room and it
comes with a beautiful woman.
I'm really happy about that.
Over there, sitting on top
of an old sewing machine is your microwave.
And then here's the stairs going up to the loft
and right under the stairs is a mini fridge.
So I love that we have a microwave, a mini fridge,
oh, and a coffee maker.
They also included a couple of bottles of water,
which is a really nice touch
because after driving you arrive to your AirBnB,
you're always thirsty and just having a couple bottles
of water is really nice.
And then we go down a couple
of stairs and here you have a twin bed.
How's the bed?
It feels pretty comfortable.
I love how it's decorated though with these pillows.
They have these flowery pillows all over the walls.
And then over here is the sink area next to the bathroom.
I love the butterfly tiles, this colorful sink.
And then they also left us some towels tied
up in a little bow, as well as
bath towels with the same, I love those little touches.
And then we actually got some quality products here
so that's a really nice touch,
you don't find that in very many AirBnBs.
We open up these colorful doors
and here is the bathroom and shower, and she said
we're gonna have plenty of hot water.
So I'm really happy about that.
If you saw, saw our last video, you know
I don't like cold showers, ha ha.
Here you can see the beautiful rock wall
with these flowers and leaves painted up there.
I love that so much.
And then right up there is a TV, so you could, I think
watch the TV from the downstairs bed,
but it's actually perfect
for the upstairs bed, watching it from there.
But anyway, let's head upstairs
and go check out the rest of the loft.
So after coming up a few stairs
you can see you're at the perfect height to watch TV
on that wall over here.
Beneath the railing,
there's a little bit of glass, but that doesn't
that feels like a good break at any moment to be honest.
But I love the walls up here and the decorations here,
the pillows, this thing whenever that's called,
I forget what that's called on the bed, ha ha.
But a king size bed up here.
So you have a very large place to sleep.
And again, it feels comfortable just like the downstairs.
I love their taste and design here.
So this place, before AirBnB fees
and taxes, was about $100 US dollars.
But after fees and taxes, we're looking
at like 135, if I remember right.
So it's not a cheap place by any means
but great location here and comfortable beds and hot shower.
So I think I'm gonna like it here.
From October to December
every year they have the Feria de la Esfera,
or the Ornament Fair.
So we're gonna go check it out right now.
It's huge with tons of different vendors inside of here.
Any ornament you've ever dreamed of, they have right here.
I love these.
They have these light up apple ornaments, these are awesome.
They have all these different characters here,
even a Grinch, or a Katrina from Dia De Los Muertos.
Little Grinch ornaments with a Christmas hat,
I love it so much.
For such a small town,
this place has a massive church
with all the super intricate detailing.
This is Parroquia del Carmen.
This was actually constructed
in the first half of the 1700s.
It's one of the prettier churches I've seen around Mexico.
So many amazing details.
In a way, this kind of reminds me
of Taxco Guerrero because of the grandeur of the church.
You can tell like just how much wealth the town once had.
And then from up here at the Parroquia,
you have beautiful views of the town and the mountains
all covered by pine trees, absolutely gorgeous.
When we were driving into town, we actually saw a lot
of businesses where they were cutting up rocks
like into different designs.
Some were animals, a lot of them were fountains.
So I see in town here,
they're selling some of those fountains.
But yeah, as we were driving through the windy roads
into town, they were literally carving
up the rock on the side of the road.
So aside from the Christmas stuff, it seems
like the carving of rocks are one
of the main products that the town produces.
One of the many Christmas stores
in this town is La Casa Santa Claus.
So let's go in and check it out.
I don't know if in my whole life I've been
to a place that's as festive as this town is for Christmas.
This is insane, Christmas everywhere.
Christmas decorations, Christmas music.
Here in this store you can buy polar bears,
countless ornaments.
There's whatever you call these like not wreaths,
but the things that wrap around the doorway,
all sorts of Christmas lights.
And in this town there's like 10,000 people
that are employed making Christmas ornaments
and all sorts of different Christmas decorations.
So I would bet that just about everything you see here,
if not absolutely everything, is made here in Tlalpujahua.
I love this little gopher, so cute.
And then here we have softball size ornaments for 28 pesos.
They have grapes here, a grape ornament
and every single one of these grapes is an ornament
of its own, but this whole thing, 60 pesos.
These are amazing, I love them.
Also in this town you'll find many things
showcasing the monarch butterflies.
And that's because just about 20 minutes away
from here is where like the Monarch Butterfly sanctuary is.
It's where the monarchs migrate to.
And you can go there
and see millions of the monarch butterflies.
This town hasn't always been all about Christmas.
It actually used to be a mining town
and there's a museum here that showcases all
of its mining history, and that is
El Museo Hermanos Lopez Rayon.
So let's go check it out.
I'm going to tell you
about the 460 year history of this town in 30 seconds.
Editor, start the timer.
(beeping)
Okay, so this town was founded in 1560.
It was actually a very wealthy town at one point
dependent totally on the local mine.
And this four wheeler is going to ruin my 30 seconds.
Okay, editor start the timer over.
(beeping)
This town was founded
in the year 1560, almost 500 years ago.
It used to be a very, very wealthy mining town.
But then in about 1930,
the government of Mexico nationalized the mine.
And that ended up leading to the demise of the town.
But in about the year 1960,
they started making ornaments here, Christmas ornaments
and that turned into the industry of the whole town.
And now 70% of the town's industry is based
on making Christmas ornaments.
And there's over 150 workshops in this town.
So if you're interested in learning about the history
of the mine, you can go in there and see the mine plans,
a whole bunch of photos of different stuff,
some of their machinery, and all sorts of things like that.
There are so many people in this town today
that although I have full bars of 4G on my phone,
I can barely get any reception because there's
just so many people trying to use the same towers.
When we were looking for places to stay this weekend
literally every hotel in the entire town was sold out
for Saturday night and there were only a couple options left
in the entire town for AirBnBs.
So I knew Saturday was going to be busy,
but Saturday here is crazy.
Like driving to get into town,
you literally could not even do it if you came
in the afternoon because the traffic was not moving at all
because there just wasn't enough space for all
of the cars trying to come into town.
For breakfast, we came
to this really cute place called Restaurante Del Carmen
and it's right next to Hotel Del Carmen.
I got this fruit plate for 60 pesos.
I love it with the amaranth and the pumpkin seeds
and few different kinds of fruit that I like.
Mmmmm, little bit of honey drizzled on top as well.
- So today I got the Desayuno del Carmen,
which is basically a pair of molletes.
Here molletes, it's a bolillo or kind of bread
which is a cut by its slices and it has beans and cheese.
And in this case you could choose between cheese and ham.
So this is pretty good
because actually I've tried molletes in some other places.
I'm not a huge fan, but here at Michoacan, bollilo
it's totally different from the one that
we have in Queretaro.
And in this case, I think they add some kind of fine herbs
over it and it give it like a taste of a pizza.
So I'm loving it.
- And I got the Chilaquiles del Carmen, which are chips
in this case with their special house salsa
and then cheese and onions.
And then there's also scrambled eggs on top.
And then there's some cream that I can drizzle
on if I want to.
(soft music)
For to drink, I got this green smoothie.
It has matcha, banana, and spinach.
One thing that seems to be hard to find
in this town is a good restaurant
but I can highly recommend Restaurante Del Carmen.
So after five years living in Mexico,
I just found out that Rudolph's name is Rodolfo, ha ha.
Rodolfo the Red Nose Reindeer.
(laughing)
I don't know why, but I find that funny.
We found Laska, (laughing) I'm so happy, $100 pesos.
So after walking all around the town, we figured out
that we want to buy our ornaments at the Feria de la Esfera.
So we're headed back to that big old building.
I actually found out that at the Feria they sell about 5%
of their ornaments for the year.
So the Feria that lasts three months
and then like 70% of the ornaments
or like 75% are exported to other countries.
And then like the remaining 20% are sold
other places in Mexico.
There's seriously so many stores
selling ornaments and Christmas stuff.
It's like literally every direction you look
there's another place to walk into.
So we could probably walk around here
for a week and keep finding new places to shop.
All right, it's time to go shopping
for some ornaments.
After shopping all around the Feria,
there was one vendor that really stood
out for having like higher quality.
When you feel them, they're heavier, they're thicker,
like prettier designs, they're a little bit more expensive
but they're still honestly quite affordable.
Like these, they're 130 pesos
for a dozen or about 11 pesos per ornament.
So right now Mai is choosing a dozen
of perhaps the fanciest ornaments here.
These are really pretty, but these are 360 pesos
for a dozen or 30 pesos each.
(mumbling)
For lunch we came to Minero Grill and Beer.
People say they have really great hamburgers here.
So I'm excited to try that because
after walking around all day, I've worked up an appetite.
But I love, I love, love, love the view out the window here.
What'd you get, what'd you get?
- Pay de Queso. - Pay de Queso.
- Cheesecake.
- Oh, it's a little cheesecake.
Oh, I didn't know that.
- I love them because it's like a cheesecake,
a like muffin cheesecake.
- Yeah, I'll give you a quick tour
of where we stayed our second night here.
It's just a private room in a house, so let's go inside.
So you walk in the front door here,
to the left is your bathroom.
The shower was amazing, but other than that
I didn't really like staying here.
The beds weren't uncomfortable.
There was a lot of light coming in through those windows.
There's a little bit of seating area,
nowhere to put your bags or store your clothes or anything.
Very basic.
And this place, booked
on AirBnB was $68 a night after all taxes and AirBnB fees.
And it's about a 20 minute walk into town and you have to go
down the highway like walking right next to a busy road.
So I don't love that walk either.
So overall I'd much rather pay more
and stay at that other place we stayed at than this one.
However, the city was just so busy
there were no options available.
We were lucky to find this brand new listing
that had no reviews, so that was a risk,
but at least it gave us a place to stay for the night.
So there's that.
If you're thinking about coming to the magic town
of Tlalpujahua, I have a couple of quick tips for you.
Number one, is if you're driving here from Queretaro,
you're going through the states of Guanajuato and Michoacan,
which are two of the more dangerous states in Mexico.
So make sure you drive during the days.
Although the roads are nice, these are areas that are known
for more bad things to happen
like carjackings and things like that.
And number two, is try to avoid coming on a Saturday
around Christmas time.
Friday was way more chill than Saturday was.
Saturday was insane with the number of people
and how hard it was to find a hotel or AirBnB.
So those two tips will go a long way for you on your trip.
And also there's this awesome little town nearby
called El Oro de Hidalgo and we're headed there now.
It's another magic town and this is in the state of Mexico.
It's only like a 15 or 20 minute drive from Tlalpujahua.
So it's super easy to get to and it looks really cool.
So we're gonna go there and show you it right now.
We decide to come to El Oro de Hidalgo for breakfast,
which is only like 15 minutes away from Tlalpujahua.
It's a very short drive to get here,
but this is actually another Pueblo Mexico
but it's not in the state of Hidalgo.
Don't let the name confuse you.
It's actually in the state of Mexico.
For breakfast we came to Bistro Norte
and we were driving all
through the town trying to find a place to park
which is a a little bit difficult.
Have you been here before?
- No, actually not.
- Really? - Yeah.
I just saw that it was so close to
Tlalpujahua and it immediately got my attention because it
looked really pretty.
- And it's so close to Queretaro,
so I'm a little surprised you haven't been here.
- Two hours and a half or something like that.
- Our table on the patio
of this restaurant is actually right next to like one
of the main landmarks of El Oro de Hidalgo.
Like Tlalpujahua, this is a former mining town
and next to this restaurant is
as a big red thing, which I believe based
on my knowledge of mining, is a mine shaft.
So if like the ore body is way underground,
they'll build a mine shaft that allows them to
access that ore way underground and then hoist it up.
So we were going to go explore the town after breakfast
but it took forever and we don't want to get back too late.
But we decided we'll come back here another time
and spend a weekend here or something staying
in this town because it looks really nice
and I really want to check it out.
So we got our ornaments home and got the tree set up.
I think it looks amazing.
I have a couple more tips
for you about your next trip to Tlalpujahua.
Number one, is that
if you're planning on buying any ornaments
be sure to bring your own packing materials
because what they give you,
what the vendors give you when you buy them are
really inadequate for making sure you get them home safely.
And number two, it turns
out Sunday was just as crazy as Saturday was.
So if you're coming around Christmas time,
try to go from Monday through Friday.
Merry Christmas, or if you're celebrating something else
this year, happy holidays.
This isn't goodbye because I'll see you
over in one of these videos, next.