Conference in Cd. Guzman, Jalisco

On Monday the 25th, we (me, a couple other vols, and their bosses) left Metztitlan, Hidalgo on a semi-cross country adventure for natural protected areas’ best management practices conference in Ciudad Guzman, Jalisco. While the drive was long and we had some slight detours and construction, the van was extremely spacious. We did finally arrive in Ciudad Guzman after about 13.5 hours. After sessions all day on Tuesday, Wednesday we took a field trip back up to the national park called Nevado de Colima (we also went there during training). Unfortunately with the rain and fog, we never really did get to see the full volcano, but we saw some good examples of the park’s reforestation and erosion control activities. Additionally, we got to ride all the way up to mountain in some ecotourism van-thing without windows (fun, but less so in the pouring rain on the way down).

View of Nevado de Colima from the van on the way to the conference (the only view of the volcano the whole week)

Our transport up to the volcano.

Jalisco (but not the part with Puerto Vallerta, the beach, or the town of Tequila)

This week we headed to the state of Jalisco on the Western side of Mexico. We visited a couple natural protected areas (La Primavera, Nevado de Colima, and Sierra de Quila) to learn about different management strategies and things like that. We also had a couple days of seminars and workshops on a variety of topics including: growing mushrooms, building straw bale houses, worms, medicinal plants, forestry programs, and making charcoal. We did get to “ride” horses for a little bit, rigged up a volleyball net, and went to a river with hot (geothermal) water.

The highlight of the trip was the visit to Nevado de Colima, a volcano. We went up to 14,000 feet on the peak of a mountain right next to the volcano and from there you can also see the peak of an adjacent volcano. We spent Friday night “in” Guadalajara (didn’t see anything of the city because we basically were on the side of a highway next to a gas station). Saturday went to a market in a nearby town before heading back to Queretaro.

Coming back was a little bit of a surprise as it seems that Christmas exploded on the city while we were gone. The main garden has about 4 nativity scenes, an elephant that moves, a scene with devils, an Adam and Eve scene, a large cow next to a giant cactus, and the gigantic plastic poinsettias. All the streets are adorned with giant sparkly Christmas shapes and most of the plazas have some of the largest tinsel “Feliz Navidad” signs that I have ever seen.

more picts than you would even care to look at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/daninewcomb/