Rainy weekend in Xalapa, Coatepec, and Xico

Early Saturday morning I got on a bus and went to Xalapa, the capital of the neighboring state of Veracruz. I’ve been to Xalapa numerous for work, but never had a chance to see most of the sites. After dropping my stuff at the hostel, I first headed to the botanic garden. Xalapa is at a lower elevation than Puebla and has a much more tropical climate.

I’ve never seen anything like this before and I’m not sure that it shows up in the picture, but all the thin, black things are spider legs. There was a huge mass of spiders on this tree, more than I have ever seen together at any one time in my life.

After the garden, I went to a town called Xico that is famous for its mole and its July running of the bulls. Before heading into town, I decided to walk out to a nearby waterfall (Cascada de Texolo). The 2ish km walk was on a cute cobble stone road that meandered through banana trees and coffee plants.

Coffee

Cascada Texolo

I got stuck in a full on down pour walking back from the waterfall and ended up having to hide out under a small roof for an hour until it passed. Then it was into the town of Xico to buy some mole before heading to Coatepec.

Coatepec is another small town (and a Pueblo Magico) that is known for its coffee. The whole town pretty much smells like coffee and there is a roaster or a coffee store on every block.

I spent a cold Sunday morning wandering around Xalapa and visiting the anthropology museum that features sculptures, jewelry, and skulls from the various ruins throughout Veracruz.

From Cactus to Rainforest

I left the house on Thursday morning to go down to the Tehuacan offices to continue working on the watershed management proposal with all intentions of returning on Friday night or Saturday. However, it would be late on Tuesday before I would finally get home. While down in Tehuacan, we ended up scheduling meetings with an NGO in Xalapa (capitol of the state of Veracruz) for Monday and Tuesday with an EDT of 5AM on Monday, so I ended up just staying the weekend, good thing I threw in a few extra clothes at the last min.

The offices for the Tehuacan-Cuicatlan Reserve are in Tehuacan. This reserve extends from the state of Puebla into northern Oaxaca and is a mix of desert and forested regions. On Saturday, I went to Zapotitlan where one of the volunteers for the reserve lives. Unlike protected areas in the US, Reservas de la Biosfera in Mexico have people and town within their borders, Zapotitlan is one of these towns. We first went to the town’s botanic gardens and then from there headed out the back of the garden, down to a dry river bed (we’re still in the dry season) which we followed for a while, and finally up a hill to see some basaltic prisms. The landscape in Zapo is spectacular with as far as you can see covered with tall straight cactus. The reserve has an amazing diversity of cactus and a lot of endemic species. Later we came back down the hill and followed the dry river bed all the way to town. The sun and heat were pretty intense on Saturday and being in a dry river bed with cracked, baked, ground does not help cool down at all. It was about all we could do to collapse on the couch and wait for the heat to break after the hike.

Sunday was spent in Tehuacan and then Monday morning 5 of us hopped in one of the reserve trucks and headed for Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz. The drive passes Pico de Orizaba, Mexico’s tallest peak and the volcano Cofre de Perote. The NGO offices are actually in Coatepec, a small town about 5 miles outside of Xalapa and the heart of the Veracruz coffee-growing region. Every 3^rd shop in town sells coffee and the smell of roasting coffee is everywhere.

We ended up staying in an old hacienda about 3 miles outside of town that was filled with gardens, fountains, lush tropical vegetation and flowers (and coffee plants), and tons of mosquitoes. The mosquitoes though are a little different then the normal ones and so when they bite you they leave a large red swollen lump with a red dot (basically a blood blister) in the middle. For some reason they loved me and within an hour my legs were covered to the point that I looked like I had chicken pox or some other strange illness. The hacienda was very cool since part is restored and part is left basically as ruins, complete with the old water wheel that used to help the hacienda function as a mill.

Tuesday we had another meeting in Coatepec and then went to the Institute of Ecology. We didn’t have much time there, but were able to walk around their botanic garden for a little while. Then we went to Xalapa to finish up some other trip business at the municipal palace and finally I headed to the bus station to find a bus for Puebla.