Volcanic Craters

This weekend we had to host a new vol who is currently in training so Saturday morning we just wondered around Puebla and then Sunday headed to Tlaxcala, Tlaxcala to spend the night. There is a hiking club in Tlaxcala that one of the other vols is active in so, at 7 am we all met at the bus station and headed out to the north eastern part of the state to a place called Hoyanca, which is basically a giant crater. Someone kept telling us it was formed by a meteor that crashed, but after some investigation when we got back, they think the big hole is actually the result of volcanic activity. Eitherway, we got to climb down into it and then back out, which was pretty fun. Then we spent the rest of the day either on buses or back in Tlaxcala in the historic center.

HOYANCA:




TLAXCALA:

Camping in El Chico

To begin, here's a map that has some of the places from the last couple entries.....

Off on another weekend trip, this weekend I went back to the state of Hidalgo to the national park “El Chico”. One of the other vols works in the park, so Janet, Corey (the vol that works there), and I met up early on Sat morning in Pachuca to head to El Chico for some hiking before some other vols in the area came in for a regional meeting that we were having that night. After dropping our stuff at the camp site, we went on a guided hike with one of the people that works in the park down into a canyon and then up along the ridge. El Chico is at about 9,000 feet and has some amazing rock formations and waterfalls. The one downfall of the park is the lack of marked trails (which is why it was great that Corey´s coworker took us around, allowing us to see a lot more things than if we had just wandered around solo).

By the time we finished the hike and headed back to the campground, the rest of the group had arrived and the temps were starting to drop. Last week had been extremely hot and we’re still in the middle of the dry season, but that definitely changed on Saturday night. We walked into a near by town (Mineral del Chico), a cute old mining town that covers about 5 blocks, for dinner and the fog and clouds began to roll in. Once back at the camp site we were able to get a camp fire going for a while, but then it started to pour, luckily my tent managed to stay completely dry.
Unfortunately it never really stopped raining. So the next morning the forest and everything was wrapped in a dense fog that kept getting thicker and wetter as the day went on. While the rest of the group headed home, Janet and I decided to go to another mining town called Real del Monte.

We took a combi from the park and got dropped off at an intersection in the highway to wait for another combi or a bus. Normally this would have been pretty easy, however with the fog as bad as it was, we were a little hard to spot on the side of the road. We finally did get a bus to stop and arrived at Real del Monte. As I said this was another small mining town and was actually founded by Cornish miners, so there is a fair amount of British influence in some of the streets and the food in the area. In stark contrast to the blazing 90s we´d seen the week before, it was a wet and chilly 45 or 50, making coffee and kaluha an essential accessory for exploring the town and for the wait again on the side of the highway to flag down a bus.

Trying to catch a combi in the fog and rain

More Ruins

This weekend I did 2 day trips from Puebla. Saturday I went to the state of Tlaxcala, just north of Puebla to go to 2 sets of ruins (Cacaxtla and Xochitecatl). One is your average ruins, but the other is supposed to have great colorful murals (Cacaxtla). Unfortunately after getting there I was informed that Cacaxtla it was closed for excavation. At least I wasn’t the only one there who didn’t know. So I ended up only going to Xochitecatl. There was a 2 km path from the one to the other which looked legit, until you got to the other ruins and realized you were exactly on the opposite side of the entrance and now had to walk around the whole fence (not bad expect there were a ton of cactus and I think that might have stretched the limitations of my flip flops).

Sunday went to some fairly unknown ruins (Cantona) given their size and importance, basically on the Veracruz-Puebla border. These ones are over 12 sq km and is the best organized city in all of Mexico, but few people actually know about it or visit it. So I took a bus to Oriental, Puebla, where I was supposed to be able to catch a colectivo to another town and then from there another colectivo to the ruins. However, for some reason, unknown to me and most of the other people in the town, the colectivos were not running that Sunday. Good news is that in Mexico its not too hard to convince taxi drivers take you to obsure places, including taking me to ruins that are 35 minutes away, leaving me there for 3 hours and then coming back to pick me up. Wasn’t sure if I was actually going to see the driver for the return trip, but he showed up. I think that Cantona may now be my new favorite set of ruins in Mexico. It is an immense network of streets, ball courts, and pyramids with a great scenery of mountains and cactus, many of which are blooming now. Plus as an added bonus with the time change Sunday, the whole place was virtually empty.

On the way back to Puebla the taxi driver recommended that I make a detour to the state of Tlaxcala on the bus ride back to Puebla and visit the town of Huamantla, one of the towns at the base of the volcano Maliche (a little too much smog for any good views though). It was a cute little colonial town with some nice churches and a very strange puppet museum.

Metztitlan, Hidalgo

Friday, for the first time, I got to actually leave the city of Puebla for work. Unfortunately it wasn’t for field work, but I did get to go to a ceremony to commemorate the start of a reforestation project sponsored by Volkswagon in the national park for Izta-Popo (two volcanoes, one dormant and one still active). So we got to spend the morning eating breakfast, listing to speeches, and some ceremonial tree planting with the 2 volcanoes as back drops.

Friday night I went to a small town (5,000 people) called Metztitlán which is in the state of Hidalgo to visit Janet, another person in my group. She has the most rural site of anyone in our group. Not really a whole lot going on in Metztitlán, but it is in the Barranca de Metztitlán which is a biosphere reserve (basically a natural protected area) and is gorgeous. The town is set in a valley so it is surrounded by mountains dotted with cactus. There is also a pretty convent and church (as there are in most Mexican towns). The weekend was fairly low-key, with a lot of catching up, some walks around town and up into the roads that lead out of the valley, sampling of some handmade tortillas, and catching a Metztitlán sunset from the roof of Janet’s apartment.

I live in the city, which most people would assume is pretty noisy, and while we do have the gas trucks and traffic in the mornings, it does not even begin to compare to the racket from the roosters (for cock fighting) next door to Janet’s apartment that begins at 3am every morning and never quiets down. Guess that is about it for now, Thursday marked the 6 month mark for the Mexican vacation.

Semana Santa Vacations

With the combination of vacation days for Benito Juarez´s birthday and Holy Week for Easter, I got some time off work to travel. My mom and sister were here visiting so we headed down to Oaxaca, the capital of the state of Oaxaca. Oaxaca is a colonial city with a high level of indigenous influence and is known as the center of indigenous handicrafts in Mexico. Saturday we spent walking around the city doing the normal museums, botanic gardens, markets, and art galleries. Oaxaca is also known for their food which includes a couple different types of moles and a thing called a tlayuda which is basically a tortilla larger than a plate stuffed with any number of things from meats to cheese to veggies.

Sunday we headed for the towns of Tule, Zaachila, and Cuilpan. Tule has a very large tree (some claim it to be the largest tree in biomass in the world, but that has been proven to be false). Either way though, it is a really really big tree that is more than 14 meters in diameter and 636,107 tons.

After the big tree we caught a colectivo (or a communal taxi) to the town of Zaachila. Zaachila has a set of very small ruins, but you can actually go down into a tomb and see the sculptures of 2 vultures, a witch, and 2 kings on the walls of the tombs. Evidently there was a lot of gold and artifacts, but as with most ruins in Mexico, all the treasure ends up in Mexico City.

From Zaachila we headed to Cuilapan to see a monastery that was built in 1560, but never completed, leaving the impressive arches on the interior open to the sky since the roof was never built. Connected to this “building” was another large church which is also the site where Gurerro was executed.

Monday night we returned to Puebla and very early on Tuesday morning left for a day trip to Mexico City (more commonly referred to as DF or Distrito Federal). We visited the national palace (impressive murals inside, some done by Diego Rivera), the huge church on the zocalo, the old post office, the palace of the arts (also a site with some Diego murals including a replica of the one that was commissioned by Rockafeller in NYC, but destroyed for being to communistic), and a museum that houses one of Diego´s most famous murals: Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park (the museum was actually built just to house the mural after the original building was destroyed). We also managed to get slightly caught in the middle of a large demonstration in the zocalo over the privatization of petroleum that made the front page of the paper the next day.

Wedensday, we went to Cholula, a small town just east of Puebla that is known for its churches and is home to the world´s largest pyramid. However, by now the pyramid kinda just looks like a big grassy hill and the missionaries even mistakenly (?) built a church on top of it. However, there are a series of ruins that have been excavated and you can walk through some of the tunnels inside the pyramid.

Thursday was more ruins in Teotihuacan, about an hour north of Mexico City, and some of the largest in Mexico. The city covered more than 83 km2. The largest of the pyramids is called Pyramid of the Sun and is over 75 meters tall, making it the 3rd largest in the world (behind the one from the pervious day at Cholula and the Great Pyramid in Egypt). There is still debate as to who exactly built Teotihuacan, but it is believed to have been the Toltec or the Totonac. The name Teotihuacan was later given by the Aztecs.

That pretty much sums up the traveling over the break. The rest of it was spent in Puebla doing some important things like finally attaching my stove so that there is no gas leaking, watching the Good Friday procession, and trying to watch some Mexican wrestling.

My Mexican Apartment

I finally moved into an apartment on the 15th of Feb and it is slowly starting to look inhabited. I successfully hooked up my gas tank so there’s hot water, got a fridge, have a stove (still trying to figure out what is wrong with the gas line, so that isn’t quite functioning yet) and most of the time there is water and electricity. I’m in the process of attempting to construct all non-weight bearing furniture from fruit crates, so we’ll see how long before all that falls apart. So here’s some picts from the first night of the very empty apartment and then what it looks like now. It’s funny to move into a place with 2 bags of clothes and nothing else. My place is huge and different from what I originally wanted (was looking for something a little more historic), but it has great views from the room of the apartment building of 2 volcanoes and there is plenty of room for whoever wants to come visit!

Before…..

After….(but still a work in progress)

Monarch Butterflies

This weekend (and yes I do work during the week) I went to see the winter home for the monarch butterflies in the Monarch Reserve in the state of Michoacán (part is also in the state of Mexico). The theme of this weekend was different modes of transport. I started off Saturday morning on a city bus to Puebla’s bus station, followed by a long distance bus to one of Mexico City’s bus stations. We then used the metro to switch bus stations, hopped on another long distance bus (trip was a little longer than expected due to a flat tire) to arrive in the city of Zitacuaro in Michocán. From there we grabbed groceries for the cabin and hopped in a combi (basically a mini-bus) until we reached the state line with Mexico. From there we had to take a taxi to get to the cabins. However, we were a little late and were informed by the cab driver that he was probably the last taxi we were going to see for a while, which meant we had an interesting lesson on how to fit 9 people in 1 taxi (hence the following photo).

We finally got to the cabin, spent the night, and then headed out the next morning on horses to see the butterflies. The end of February is the best time to see them because they have recovered from their long migration and are ready to head back to the US and Canada. They mate right before they start the spring migration, the males die, and the females migrate and lay their eggs. After about 2 hours on the horses, crossing back into the state of Michocán (the butterflies tend to move a fair amount this time of year and some had already headed back), we arrived.

Literally everywhere you looked was orange with monarchs, the sky, the trees, and the ground (dead males). It sounded like it was a windy day, but the noise was actually the beating of the wings. There’s not too much that can be said about it, it’s pretty hard to describe or capture in pictures, but imagine a windy fall day where all the leaves have changed colors and are swirling in the air, but substitute butterflies for leaves.

So after the magical butterfly experience, we got to repeat the horse-taxi-combi-bus-metro-bus-bus route to return. When we got to the combi leg of the journey, the combi arrived pretty much full, but had to get back to Zitacuaro to catch the bus, so we piled in, there were people on laps with people on their laps and arms and legs everywhere.