Buses, guns, and the beach

So last Friday, on my way to meet Kurt in Papantla, I was on a nice, 1^st class bus when at about 9:00 at night, 30 min before the next stop, 2 of the passengers pulled out guns, raised them in the air and declared that this was assault and everyone needed to close the curtains and their eyes. They went through the bus for about 20 min looking for the usual, cash, cell phones, jewelry and watches and then told the driver to stop and they hopped off on the side of the highway and we continued on to Papantla. I lost some cash and a ring, but we were lucky that other than one man who got punched, no one was hurt.

But the good news is that I got to spend the rest of the weekend on the Gulf Coast in Tecolutla hanging out on the beach and eating good seafood.

Valsequillo

I normally don’t talk that much about work-related stuff, but here is an update on one of our projects. We are working on a joint development project for a region of the municipality of Puebla called Valsequillo (named for the large reservoir). The Valsequillo Reservoir is one of the most contaminated bodies of water in Mexico. The area surrounding the lake has a tremendous amount of development pressure, as well as some of the most marginalized population of the municipality of Puebla.

Right now we have a fair amount of money from SEMARNAT to apply towards a sustainable development plan for the region. We are working together with the state and municipal government on the project and just met in Mexico City last Wednesday to hear the presentations of prospective consultants. There is rule with federal money in Mexico that dictates that we cannot directly pay a private consultant or university for work. There are two options, the first being to jointly contract a public university and a private consultant, with the public university receiving at least 51% of the funds. The second option, and not the best, is to simply pay a public university for their signature, but for this, they often charge 35% of the total just for filtering the funds. So we ended up contracting a pubic university and 2 international consultants, one from Spain and one from England. The Spanish firm has done a lot of sustainable development from working with the city of Casablanca to doing community based art projects in a small village in Africa. The British company was actually behind the Olympic Stadium and the Water Cube, but also has more environmentally focused projects, like the soon-to-be completed (2010) 1^st carbon neutral city in the world, located in Shanghai China.

So what we’re working on is a series of plans. We have to have a thing called a Partial Program of Sustainable Urban Development to modify the existing land use zoning for the area. The second part is the work leading up to the declaration of a new natural protected area in the south of the municipality. The third will be the creation of a series of sustainable development and ecotourism projects (to be enacted once additional funding is secured). And finally, we are starting on the plans for an example “eco-village” that will demonstrate the use of alternative energy sources, energy and water conservation, green building design, mixed use planning, and many other things. So that is basically the project to date. Last Sunday we went out to the area to get to know the region better and try to find locations for some projects. The following are a series of photos from the Valsequillo Region.

The Valsequillo Reservior

Slight problem with invasive aquatic plant (Eichhornia crassipes or Water Hyacinth)

and with trash

Squash drying on a roof-top

Sunday was also palm Sunday so people were returning from church with their palm weavings (actually a significant threat to the surrounding forests where they are harvested in mass quantities every year for palm sunday)

Many of the streets in the various towns were still covered with remnant flowers from the morning's processions

Oaxaca Part II: Puerto Escondido, Laguna Manialtepec, Puerto Angel

The 1st night after arriving in Puerto Escondido, we released baby sea turtles on the beach at sunset. The funding for this turtle "campamiento" is from the singer Mana and from the cellular company, Moviestar. We released Laud (leatherbacks) and Golfino turtles.

On Thursday morning we went on a boat ride in the near-by Manialtepec Lagoon and saw a bunch of birds and iguanas. Some of the birds are nesting so we were even able to see chicks in the nests.

Woodstork with chicks

Dead sea turtle on the beach

Dead croc that was found the night before in a fishing net

In the afternoon we headed to Puerto Angel for a last afternoon on the beach before heading back to Oaxaca City and finally up to Puebla.

A last cup of coffee in Oaxaca