Stone Carving
One of the crafts practiced here is stone carving. This stretch of highway is occupied by Artesanias "Hnos. Lopez," the Lopez Brothers.
The brothers are unconcerned about inventory control. Both sides of the highway are lined with hundreds of carvings. Some are mossy with age. I'd say they're lucky if they manage to turn their inventory in ten years.
But that's not what the Hermanos Lopez are about. They're about the pleasure of turning chunks of stone into art. You wanna buy one? OK. You don't? OK. Go away. I got another rock to carve.
(By the way, if you think the scene above is ugly, what with the tangle of power lines, I agree with you. Where is Ladybird Johnson when we need her? Marta Sahagún, President Vicente Fox's wife, could have taken a shot at cleaning up the landscape, but she was too busy enriching her sons through her influence.)
Along with columns and Guadalupes and stone spheres, there are many fantastic figures: A monkey seeing no evil, Neptune peering over the tentacles of an octopus, Bacchus's face intended for use in a fountain, a reproduction of an Olmec head. Most of the figures are quite large. I'd have a hard time finding space for one of them in my small house.
A figure of Chac Mool reclines beneath a directional sign. The pyramid designates the presence of prehispanic ruins.
Someone scraped away the arrowhead pointing the way to Tzintzuntzan. An alert motorist might notice the alteration and incorporate the data into his navigation. I didn't.
Sure enough, taking that right turn leads to a road that peters out into a muddy track a kilometer or so on. We performed a K-turn at a wide spot where tire tracks indicated many others had done the same, and took the other, correct fork in the road.
For any who haven't driven in Mexico yet, please understand that this kind of official misdirection is normal. Directional signs, when present at all, are often misleading and sometimes flat wrong. Rarely have I driven in a new place without getting lost at least once. It used to frustrate me. Now it's just part of the experience. Ho hum. Lost again. Big deal.