Casa Ecologíca

As a side project for one of the regional land use planning projects we are working on, we are looking to develop a sustainable community project that involves the use of eco-technologies. On Tuesday, we went to visit IMTA (Instituto Mexicano de Tecnología del Agua = Mexican Institute of Water Technology) in Jiutepec, Morelos to see their ecological house and talk to them about the huge community based eco-technology project that are currently promoting in Patzcuaro. The website for their model house can be found here…..
http://www.imta.gob.mx/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=447&Itemid=55.

This is a general diagram of the system (if you can make it out)

Obviously in communities, the project focuses on retrofitting existing houses, but for the model at IMTA, they built a brand new house out of adobe. So the house features solar panels for electricity and for heating water, rainwater capture, an ecological bathroom, and ecological sink and place to wash clothes, a mini-wetland treatment system, and finally a family orchard that receives the treated grey water from the house. The treated water is pumped into the orchard through an irrigation system powered by a bicycle.

Water heater

Treatment for the water from the sink and from washing clothes
Me on the bicycle pump (bicibomba)
The "orchard". They had just finished harvesting so it looks a little bare (and flooded from the storm the night before)
Solar disinfector for drinking water

Tepoztlán, Cuernavaca, Taxco, and las Grutas de Cacahuamilpa

I visted places in two new states this weekend, Morelos and Guerrero. Saturday morning I first went to Tepoztlán via Cuernavaca. Tepoztlán is a small town in the middle of some oddly shaped rock formations. It is considered to be the birthplace of the náhuatl language (still widely spoken among some indigenous people) and Quetzalcoatl (extremely important Aztec god). The pyramid of Teoztécatl is located on the summit of the Cerro (hill) del Tepozteco that rises up above the town. Many also consider it to be the center of mysticism in Mexico, and that, along with its close proximity to Mexico City, leads to an interesting mix of people from hippies to tourists (Mexican and foreign) to indigenous people. The temple, up about 1200ft of stone steps, is perched on top of the hill and has amazing views of the valley and the strange rock formations that make up the surrounding hills.

Back in town, there is an old convent with well preserved murals. The archway for the entrance to the ground of the convent and church is made entirely out of seeds and is redesigned every year by local artists.

From Tepoztlán, I backtracked to Cuernavaca, with just enough time between buses to see a couple of the major churches in town.

From there, it was about a 1.5hr bus ride to Taxco. Taxco is an old silver mining town and the heart of silver in Mexico. I have spent a lot of time on buses in Mexico, and for the most part felt safe on all those trips, however, the bus ride from Cuernavaca to Taxco was a little different. Since you are climbing into the mountains, the roads are winding with large drop offs. Our bus driver took these curves faster than I ever though possible without flipping over. Everything was flying out of the overhead bins and honestly I think the bus was on 2 wheels on several occasions, but we arrived in the end. Taxco is a small town with narrow cobblestone streets that twist through town and up and down the hills. The already chaotic streets (think no sidewalks, very narrow, and lots of blind turns) were every more so as a movie was being filmed in town that night and trucks and equipment were having major issues navigating to the center of town.

Sunday morning, after a little more time wandering around in Taxco, I caught a bus to the Grutas de Cacahuamilpa, the largest caves in Mexico, located in a karst area about 50 km from Taxco. Some of the caverns within the caves are over 70 meters tall. The area that is accessible to the public is a 2km (one direction) pathway that leads through several huge caverns and countless gigantic stalactite and stalagmite formations though there are said to be over 70km of passages in the caves.