Visiting the kingdom of the Butterflies

A couple of years ago I ran across a book that was geared toward kids entitled 101 Places You  Gotta See Before You're 12!  I couldn't resist and picked up a used copy on Amazon.  The kids loved the colorful pictures, and I loved how it was written!  They immediately went to work figuring out what they could cross off and what they still needed to do, according to the author.

One of the places listed in the book was something along the line of checking out the migratory path of some animal.  We were brainstorming about what to do to complete this one, and it occurred to us that the Monarch butterflies gather at Pointe Peele, Canada before heading south to Mexico.  Not long thereafter, we watched the Flight of the Butterflies at The Henry Ford. That solidified our desire to check out the monarchs.  Unfortunately, we just couldn't seem to make it to Canada on one of the fall weekends when the butterflies would be in abundance.  So, we made a point to see them in their winter home, in Mexico.

The there a 5 wildlife preserves in the mountains of Mexico, dedicated to the monarchs' winter home.  The most well known ones are in the state of Michuacan.  Yet there is another reserve, Santuario Piedrea Herrada, which is a little less well known, and about 20 km outside the city of Valle de Bravo (in the Estado de Mexico).  So we made our plans to go in mid-January.  

After making it to the point of disembarkation, we had the choice of hiking up the mountain to where the butterflies make their home in the forest, going most of the way on horseback.  Since two of the four kids had been sick in the car, we opted for the horses.  

And what a beautiful ride it turned out to be.  From astride a horse, you could see the butterflies perched atop tall flowering plants.  You could peer into the valleys and watch the masses of butterflies teeming in the sunlight. We were lucky in that the day was warn and dry; the butterflies were active.

The last stretch up the mountain was on foot.  It was so quiet here, that you could hear the masses of wings flapping.  Butterflies were everywhere, on every surface.  They'd bump into you as they flitted from place to place.  Even with all the activity, there were several trees that were completely encapsulated with the little orange and black bodies.  Our guide told us that sometimes entire limbs will break off of the trees, due to the cumulative weight of the butterflies resting there, one on top of the other.  

Our guide also showed us how to distinguish between male and female monarchs.  He found a little guy with a bad wing, and turned him upside down.  On the lower side of the wing, in the bottom quadrant, he pointed out a single black dot that was on each wing.  This butterfly was male.  Females don't have the dot.  

Our stay in this enchanted forest was quite mystical.  You had to really watch your step so as not to inadvertently crush them.  They landed everywhere including on the kids.  It was really an incredible experience, even for those of us over 12.  Hopefully we will make it to Point Peele down the road to meet our winged friends on the other end of their epic journey.

San Miguel de Allende - Highlights

It seems long overdue that we put together a post about the highlights of our time in San Miguel de Allende.

For starters, we had fun adjusting to life without a car.  We were fortunate that we had lots of little shops nearby: tortilla shop next door, a handful of little corner shops, a paper supplies (papeleria) across the street, 2 bakeries within 5-10 minute walk, a fruit and veggie shop around the corner, as well as a butcher.  If we wanted organic and artisan goodies, there was a shop with farm to table café about 10 minutes away.  A big market and a neighboring premium butcher shop was closer to a 20-30 minute walk, but still manageable.  (For the whole month we were in SMA, we only visited a big box grocery store once, because it was next door to the movie theater, where we had gone to watch the latest Star Wars episode.)  Since this on foot lifestyle also meant carrying everything to feed 6+ back home on foot, we generally bought fresh every day (or near every day).  But it was also quite freeing to buy in smaller quantities, based on the day’s menu. 

Our choice to adopt a pedestrian lifestyle was also due to the fact that in a colonial city like San Miguel, traffic and parking can be an absolute nightmare, especially if one wants to go downtown.  And most cars that fit a big group like ours, don’t always squeeze nicely into small spaces.  So frankly, it was often faster to hike into downtown on foot (20-30 minutes, with kids in tow) and we didn’t have to waste any time getting to where we wanted to go.  The added bonus was that we could pop in to the many little shops and cafés along the way, as we explored our neighborhood.

One such place we’d discovered during our last trip to SMA and made a point to revisit, is the “Museo del Jugete Mexicano” or Mexican Toy Museum.  It is a wonderful museum full of artistic children’s toys from the various regions of Mexico.  They are made from whatever resources are prevalent in the area; whether clay, straw, wood, ceramic, recycled soda bottles, cloth, and so on.  Since children’s toys are also often a representation of the life they are living every day, they also serve as a wonderful opportunity to peek into the daily lives of children of different regions and different means.  Doll houses range from a traditional colonial style home to a one-room adobe home.  Cooking utensils often include a molcajete, metate, tortilla press, comal, and many other instruments that are much less common in a US kitchen.  The toy variations of fruits and vegetables include various chilis, chayotes, jicamas, papayas, mamay, guayavas, mangos, incredible variations of squash, corn and beans of all colors under the sun, tortillas, sweet bread conchas, and so on.  Again, not the things you find in your typical Michigan big-box grocery store, but the things that every child here would recognize from their own kitchen and neighborhood market.

Another place on our “must revisit” list was the local botanical garden, El Charco del Ingenio.  We came here several times to enjoy the fresh air, sunshine, and the variety of flora and fauna.  It is a great place to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city, and just be.  The botanical garden includes a greenhouse that provides a more controlled environment for tiny succulents and water plants.  And the expansive outside areas include both sides of a dam that you can walk across.  There is also a ravine that we explored, with the kids and Alex’s parents, just because we could.  It was a really great place for the kids to run and play and explore.

Of course, downtown San Miguel de Allende is a playground in and of itself.  It is chock full of beautiful architecture.  What makes it incredibly special are it’s old buildings, cobble stone streets, parks and plazas. During the holiday season and weekends, more of the streets downtown are closed off to cars, and frankly it becomes much nicer for us pedestrians.  (If we lived here and had our say, we would work hard to develop a more robust non-motorized plan for the city, so that vehicle traffic and non-vehicle traffic can both flourish.)  There are some beautiful parks that extend multiple city blocks and are full of walking paths, playgrounds, basketball courts, fountains, and trees. 

And what colonial city would be complete without copious street vendors of food, toys, arts and crafts, and so on.  One of the kids’ favorites were the guys selling hats.  You could spot them from afar with dozens of hats stacked high upon their heads.  There were also the ladies making dried flower crowns.  This seems to be traditional and specific to San Miguel, as we’d seen them on our previous trip, and had not encountered them anywhere else.  San Miguel is also full of street musicians as well.  At every hour of the day or night, there was always music and entertainment to be found in the main square; whether an organized event or a more ad hoc performance.

 San Miguel is so full of artists and artisans that it is hard to get away without bringing something beautiful along.  Our home happened to also be across the street from Fabrica Aurora, an old textile factory which has been turned into a wide variety of artist galleries, studios, and shops.  Everything sold here is pretty high quality, and high end.  It is a wonderful place to browse (and drool). 

Behind its expansive terrain, is another pedestrian walk that extends well over half a mile, filled with little stands of “artesanias”.  You can find a treasure trove of silver jewelry, Huichol style beaded jewelry, wool rugs, talavera style pottery, colorful hand painted alebrijes, blown glass dishes, embroidered clothing, wall hangings, tablecloths, and anything else one could imagine.  It was fun to watch as the artisans created their handiwork and hawked their wares. And it was good that each kid had their own money to spend on those beautiful items they just couldn’t resist.

Exploring the highlights of Sierra Gorda, Queretaro y San Luis Potosi

From our home base in San Miguel de Allende, we took a 3-day excursion into the Sierra Gorda mountains, which form part of the Sierra Madre Oriental (Eastern Sierra Madre) mountain range.  The Sierra Gorda contains many square miles of preserve and is highly diverse in terms of flora and fauna.  Because the mountains are high and limit the amount of ambient moisture coming from the Gulf of Mexico from traversing the whole area, the eastern parts of the sierra are generally much more moist and green, while the further west you go, you find the vegetation to generally become scrubbier with arid conditions.  However, it is hard to generalize, as the sierra is full of micro-climates for each hill and valley.  At high altitudes, there is an abundance of evergreen trees, and encino oak trees. 

Day 1 - Driving through the steep mountains on switchback roads, we got the opportunity to watch the change in vegetation first hand as we changed between elevations and from one side of a mountain to another. The vistas were spectacular.  The drive was white-knuckle inducing, depending on the particular curve or traffic nearby.  We left San Miguel early, at about 6:15 AM and had the opportunity to watch the sun rise as we drove from the comparatively flat regions surrounding San Miguel, past the huge monolith of the Peña de Bernal (see our post from 3 years ago), and on into the wild lands of the Sierra.  We made it in to the heart of the Sierra in the late morning.

Our first stop was hiking up to an outlook called “Mirador de Cuatro Palos” near the town of Pinal de Amoles.  This is one of the highest points nearby (2797 M above sea level), and you could look across the Sierra in many directions, including a nice view of the “Montaña de la Media Luna” mountain. 

The company we hired to provide our tour and transportation has a specific mission to support and enhance the environment of the Sierra Gorda, including the preserving the regions ecology.  One of the ways it does so is by educating the people living in the Sierra about their treasures and how to preserve them, as well as by supporting the sustainable businesses that emerge in the area.  They help through bundling of initiatives so that they can receive grant funding, provide continuing educational support and guidance on how to grow and administer a business through different economic cycles and so on.  As part of this mission, we stopped at a local microenterprise for lunch.  It was a cozy adobe building, with light filtering in through various glass bottles placed in the walls.  Lunch was made fresh upon our arrival, based on selection of what the kitchen had on hand.  What we had was incredibly tasty.  And we followed up our lunch with a bag of locally harvested pine nuts, still in their shells.  The kids were fascinated by the hand washing station (a 5 gallon bucket with a spigot) which would drain into a basin for gray water recycling and the composting toilet behind the restaurant.

After lunch, we hiked along a gorge at a lower level of elevation along the Chuveje river to the nearby waterfall.  Vegetation here was quite different: full of wild fruit trees, flowers, poisonous plants, alamo trees along the river (a type of poplar tree), and numerous wild bromeliad plants (flowering plants, related to the pineapple) in the branches of the nearby trees. 

Finally, we ended day 1 in Jalpan de Serra, a medium sized little town in the Sierra, with the first of 3 Franciscan mission churches that we would visit in the Sierra.  The church was built in the mid 1700’s using local labor in an attempt to evangelize the area.  The original inhabitants of the Sierra Gorda were among those most resistant to religious conversion at the time.

We had the opportunity to explore Jalpan de Serra’s picturesque downtown a bit before retiring to our eco cabins for the night.  These cabins, Centro Tierra, are made of local and sustainable materials: adobe, straw, local woods, etc, and share a location with several classrooms and meeting spaces all in support of increasing awareness about sustainability in the area.  They were at the home base of our tour company, Sierra Gorda Ecotours.

Day 2 began with a tasty breakfast at another local microenterprise in the great outdoors.  One thing I personally noticed both at lunch the day before and at breakfast this morning, was that my coffee tasted a little different than at home.  Turns out that in this region, it is common to mix coffee beans with roasted garbanzo beans and other coffee substitutes.  The result is tasty: nuttier and less acidic than straight coffee beans.  Good; just a bit of a surprise for the taste buds, that sparked a curious conversation with our guide.

From there we drove across the sierra to the Mission Church of Concá.  Of the 3 churches we would visit (5 total in the region), this was the oldest.  What distinguishes from the others, is that the indigenous crew creating the carved stone sculptures on the façade created each art piece in accordance to their personal experience and how they understood the bible stories being shared with them.  For example the faces of the saints bear a strong resemblance to the facial features of the indigenous community.  The depiction of the dog-like dragon being slain at the feet of archangel Michael, doesn’t look like other related depictions found in more traditional European artist renditions.  As we went from mission church to mission church, we could see the similarities in each façade, as well as the evolution of the artistic renditions as the (same) crews adopted more and more European traditional looks to the saints depicted within each edifice.

When we read a little more about the building of the missions during this time, it turned out that the Spanish had been attempting to evangelize Mexico from the early 1500’s onward, but the Sierra Gorda had been one of the areas of greatest resistance.  Each time an effort was made to build a church, the locals would tear it down shortly thereafter, and do away with the religious personnel.  Efforts in the area were renewed in the 1700’s, with an attempt to more or less gently convert the population of these mountains to Catholicism, by sending in additional reinforcements along with the clerical personnel.  Here, the efforts were headed by the Franciscan order.  One asks, what made this geographic region, which is so difficult to traverse and which was so resistant, so tremendously important to the distant crown that they would continue the struggle for over 200 years.  It seems to have boiled down to an economic motivation; the natural resources that were (are) beneath its surface.  It is known, that believed that there are several precious metal veins that lie within the mountain range.

Near Concá, there are several natural springs of water.  What was interesting about this particular spot was that you can watch the water bubble to the surface in several spots, all at the roots of an Ahuehuete tree.  This type of tree generally grows near a water source and can become incredibly wide around. 

Our stop at the natural springs got us thinking a bit more about water, so we followed up with a swim in the Concá river.  The particular spot, las adjuntas, that lends itself to bathing and picnics is immediately before the Santa Maria river meets with the Ayutla.  The Santa Maria is warmer, originating in Guanajuato and shallower and is spring fed.  The Ayutla river runs colder, bluer, and deeper, coming from the mountains.

We were ready for lunch after our swim, so our next stop was at “Casa Ecológica”, a series of little ecological cabins on the outskirts of Jalpan.  We had a lovely lunch with the proprietress, all of locally sourced foods, most (if not all) of which were from her property.  We had an opportunity to discuss her life and construction philosophies, as our lunch extended beyond the planned timeframe.

However, it was incredibly interesting.  The cabins of Casa Ecológica are made of adobe, specifically clay, straw and wood shavings.  Wood shavings are used instead of sawdust, as it seems to hold up better over time.  The roof is of corrugated steel, but under the steel are layers of straw, wood shavings, and carrizo (a type of reed, similar to bamboo).  These additional layers, provide significant ceiling insulation, complementing the natural insulating effects of the adobe, and providing a very comfortable environment.  The foundation of the buildings is of river rock, and were built this way with the guidance of an Argentinian architect.  This ancient technique (in lieu of more common concrete options) provides a natural shock absorption and ability to move with any seismic events.  There is lots of natural light through traditional windows, through glass bottles incorporated all over in the construction, and strategic openings to the great outdoors.  The bathrooms are composting toilets.  Water for showers and so on is collected on site.  We toured at least half a dozen structures during our lunch stop, and the kids quickly voted that they would love to come back on a return trip sometime!

Getting out of there a little later than anticipated, we hit the road for San Juan Duran, which were the next set of Eco Cabins which awaited us for the night.  After about a 3 hour drive through the mountains, we arrived after dark in our high altitude abodes.  Our cabins were clean though a bit more rustic than the last.  Our first reality check that we were truly in an eco zone, other than zero cell signal, was when we searched the cabins for a place to plug in our cell phone chargers so that our dying cell phones would have battery for alarm clocks and cameras early the next day.  No outlets to be found.  A bit surprised, we headed to dinner at the main building, where our mystery was quickly solved.

Our hosts have no electricity running to the establishment.  Instead they rely exclusively on solar power, and have a small battery backup.  When the battery is dead, everything goes dark.  They graciously agreed to let us charge our electronic lifelines on their battery during dinner.  Dinner was incredibly tasty and served by candlelight.  The back kitchen had just a dim LED bulb or two to supplement the candles.  The side kitchen was on candles only.  The warmth of the staff was first class!  Dinner was followed up with a campfire.   We had a very early morning start planned for the next day, so the younger kiddos and mom headed to bed first.  (By this time, the lights in the cabin had run out of battery and we got ready for bed in the dark.)  The older kids hung with dad at the campfire a little longer.  They were having a great time until an unexpected (and unseen in the dark) neighbor noisily joined the conversation.  Juliana and Joshua both flew out of their seats as though their pants had been lit afire, when a donkey started braying immediately behind them.  We were just lucky that it didn’t result in soiled pants.  J  After the initial shock, it provided lots of laughs.

Day 3 – Our third and final day in the Sierra Gorda began well before dawn.  Everyone was up and suitcases packed (in the dark again) in time for a 5AM breakfast appointment.  The clouds had cleared from the sky overnight, providing us with an unprecedented view of the stars.  We headed to a candlelight breakfast of hot coffee, hot chocolate, and hot punch along with sweet breads and said goodbye to our lovely hosts.  We needed to get to a vertical cave in the neighboring state of San Luis Potosi before the cave sparrows would awaken and leave for the day.

After about another hour or two down a set of really rough roads, we arrived to the embarkation point, where we had to hike down about 500 stairs (and boulders) to the mouth of the vertical cave.  There a crowd gathered in near silence waiting for the birds to awaken and take flight for their daily trip to the coast.  This particular vertical cave is home to thousands of cave swallows.  We could hear them in the depths, but you couldn’t see them until they began circling in a corkscrew spiral around the perimeter of the cave on their way up.  Their wings moved so fast, that in our attempts to take their photos, they appear like bugs in the sky.  Only a slow-motion video allowed us to truly watch their movements.  In between the flocks of birds, we had another special treat, and watched a flock of green parakeets exit the cave as well.  After hiking back up to the main road, we headed to our last few stops before heading home.

First was a stop at the Sir Edward James Sculpture Park in Xilitla.  Edward James inherited a fortune during his youth and was a great philanthropist in the area.  It is said he had a very difficult childhood and in his 40’s decided to create a childhood fantasy garden of sculptures.  He kept a large staff of workers busy for many years, paying them many times more than any other employer in the area.  

The garden itself is a work of surrealist art, and it reminds you very much of Alice in Wonderland.  The influence of his friends and contemporaries, such as Dali, Picasso, Escher, as well as Sigmund Freud are abundant.  The park is filled with a wide variety of fantastic plants and the structures are covered in moss and plants, giving them the effect of an ancient and fantastical ruin.

On the way from Xilitla toward our final stop of Landa de Matamoros, at the edge of the Sierra Gorda, there is a spot along the edge of the highway filled with marine fossils.  We made a quick stop to explore the red earth and look for a few fossils along the way.

Our last stop in the Sierra Gorda was the Mission Church of Landa de Matamoros.  Of the 3 mission churches we saw this trip, this was the last of the 3 constructed.  The development of the workmanship is apparent, as the statues on the façade are much more consistent with typical European depictions of the saints.  A lot of the same features and symbols are incorporated into the façade, and each church is uniquely beautiful.

Heading out of the Sierra Gorda, we came away with the realization that this is just yet another of the many hidden treasures available in the region.  It is definitely off the beaten path for the standard tourist, and even many locals in the nearby big cities have never explored the Sierra in depth.  It is another of the places where we felt we had only scratched the surface, and where one could most certainly spend additional time.