Mariposas

The drive from the airport in Toluca to Valle de Bravo is no further than from the Monterrey airport to my home, and it's a similarly dramatic shift from a sprawling industrial area to the mountains; but the taxi fare is more than twice what you will pay for similar trips in other cities. My best guess is that the fare includes time and space travel, because when you arrive in Valle de Bravo your brain arrives a bit scrambled from the twisty mountain roads and altitude and it is easy to believe you've been transported to an alpine village in Europe (albeit one that is clogged with very Mexican traffic).

Valle de Bravo is a weekend escape for the wealthy and well-connected denizens of Mexico City. Elaborate homes perch on tiny, well-manicured plots of land up and down the slopes around a large man-made aquifer that supplies drinking water to the DF. Arriving on a Wednesday, one finds a sleepy village turned out in the town square to socialize, make crafts, and nap in the sunshine. By 10 a.m., the weekday crowd is a buzz of teenagers cutting class, old men in cowboy hats, young women with toddlers, older women gossiping about this and that while they crochet, and vendors with little folding tables of knick-knacks - creating a tiny table-top yard sale in the town's communal space. By evening, street food stalls are packed with local workers stopping to enjoy some tacos or roasted corn on their way home. Most of the restaurants are shuttered.

My friend and I went to Valle de Bravo with one aim - to see the butterflies, las mariposas, in their wintering grounds high above the valley. We headed to Mexico State for Thanksgiving vacation and arrived on a Wednesday, expecting the resort town to have some resort-style options - restaurants, bars, diversions...and it did, but they were mostly closed. Valle is a summer and weekend retreat, and on weekdays in the fall and winter the locals prefer to relax in the sunshine in the plaza rather than open their tienditas for one or two possible customers - there will be more than enough customers at the weekend.

On Thanksgiving Day, we hired a taxi, this one much more reasonable than the airport taxi, to take us to Piedra Herrada, a UNESCO site where we could see the butterflies. We had heard from friends that the hike was difficult, but that the butterflies were worth it. (At this point I should mention that with a bit more research I could have found butterfly viewing sites that were less expensive and easier to get to; but I didn't, I went on with the advice that I'd been given, and that's fine, because the challenge was worth it and we had the site to ourselves, which may not have been possible in other locations.)

When we arrived, there was no one at the site: it wasn't officially 'open' yet when we arrived around 9:30. Our taxi driver agreed to wait for us for two hours and then take us back to Valle...we ended up taking nearly three hours, but he waited anyway and we tipped him well - it ended up costing us roughly $40 for a 90 minute roundtrip drive including a three hour wait.

Yes, three hours. First, we rented horses for 150 pesos each ($10). Rent the horses. The horses will be your friends. The altitude at Piedra Herrada is much higher than one is accustomed to, and over the course of the next 90 minutes, you will climb UP almost another mile; if not for the horses I wouldn't have made it.

The climb is deceiving. It begins on a not-too-steep path with a paved side for walkers, a railing, and a natural side for horseback. It is wide and shady and beautiful and I was wondering why I had hired a horse. Sure it was steep, but it was no steeper than hikes in the Poconos or around my house in Monterrey.

The horses stopped only 5 minutes into the journey, but the beautiful, well-paved trail continued, looking empty and inviting. The men took us off the trail and pointed to a steep incline in the brush. Fabulous, we thought, just one steep hill and we will get to see the butterflies! We were wrong, so very very wrong.

By the time we finished struggling up the first steep incline, my lungs were burning and I was gasping for air. The men with the horses had followed us, despite our protestations, and I am glad they did, for over the next hour and a half we would have to face several physical challenges, and we would need those horses to get us up an enormous hill where they had to switch back and forth over the pine-needle carpet to get us closer to the butterflies.

The horses stopped when the path finally disappeared and we dismounted on a sliver of flat land before climbing higher. Butterflies were flitting in and out of shafts of light between the trees and, despite the stitch in my side and the thin air (and probably because of my lightheadedness) the whole scene took on a fairy-land quality. The end of November is still very early in the season and the sun is still warm enough that the butterflies are not all clumped motionless on the trees, which is what our friends had described. Instead, the sun was shining gloriously and the butterflies were taking advantage of the warmth to collect pollen on their wings to keep them from freezing in winter.

We climbed higher, now joined by a small, goat-like woman who stared into the distance embarrassed whenever my friend and I stopped to gasp for air. At one point I sat on a stump next to a shaft of light and watched the butterflies dance right up to me, convinced that this was enough, that I didn't need to go any further. I was ready to give up, to lie down in the pine needles for an hour (or eternity) and watch them dance away in the light.

But I am not a quitter.

And so up we went again. And up. And up. And...yellow tape.

We stopped in front of some yellow tape and the guide pointed up. There, just above a barren white stump, thousands of butterflies coasted on the air. He pointed again, a cluster of probably a thousand butterflies hang like a chandelier from a drooping branch. He pointed again, I saw the butterflies dancing mid-air, but it was not until I got home, and regained my senses, that I zoomed in with the camera and realized that what I thought was fall foliage was actually tens of thousands of butterflies obscuring the green leaves of the trees.


Words. Pictures. Videos - none of these is sufficient to describe the beauty of thousands of monarch butterflies swirling above your head, zooming by your nose, and resting near your feet.

The guide gave us an short lecture in Spanish. This is a male butterfly. This is a female butterfly. The journey. The predators. The story of dwindling numbers and the hardships the monarchs will face in the coming months. I understood much of what he said as he spoke with clear, slow Spanish and smiled through his words.

We were only at the top for about 15 minutes, and as we were already at the two-hour taxi mark we hastened down the mountain side, mounting our horses only for the flat track that wound around the mountain for about a mile of the journey. Otherwise, we took to falling in a somewhat controlled manner down the slopes and hills and manicured walking path. On the way down, we passed two or three groups of tourists on their way up, some with small children in tow. They would not have our experience, there were too many of them to enjoy the peace and solitude of five people content to sit and watch in awe with few words passed between them.

San Miguel de Allende - Mexican Independence Day 2014

Mexican Independence Day has the coincidental fortune of falling less than a week before my birthday each year - and it comes with a three-or-four day weekend, so it is one of those 'coincidences' that gives me an excuse to extend my birthday celebrations (other reasons include: the start of the Fall T.V. season, Sophia Loren's birth - just 43 years before my own, good weather and a local Renaissance Faire to visit, Hampdenfest, etc.)

This year, I gathered a few friends and we headed down to San Miguel de Allende to celebrate my birthday/Mexico's independence. A few of my favorite travel buddies, including Awesome A, helped me celebrate in a little rented cottage on a high hill above the San Miguel Centro. The weather was perfect for exploring (a little overcast, cool-but-not-too-cold, clear evenings) the packed little town of artists and expats that is at least 90 minutes from the nearest airport, and yet remains a huge tourist draw.

While I didn't get to enjoy my favorite fall treat (chiles en nogada), I did eat some fabulous locally-sourced, hand-crafted, hippie-gourmet chocolates and drink the most fabulous locally-sourced, hand-roasted, hippie-gourmet coffee at the OrganicVeganGlutenFree100%AllNatural coffee shop next to the hippie chocolate shop - and it was all amazing (and the best cup of coffee I've had in Mexico - take that, Chiapas!) - thanks San Miguel expat-hippie collective!

We also visited the local hot springs at La Gruta - which has a man-made cave / steam room that was super-rejuvenating after two days of hiking the cobblestone streets of San Miguel.

Unfortunately, I was sound asleep before the greeto again this year (I've only stayed awake for the greeto once in three years), after three nights of being woken by our college student neighbors every night/morning at 4am, and the cannons, whiz-bangs, and church bells that had been going off intermittently since 5am; but just hearing the distant celebration day fire-works in my half-sleep made me feel warm and fuzzy - as if the fireworks were going off just for me.

(Warning: San Miguel is SUPER beautiful, so there are a lot of pictures below)

Summer Hike

Last year, a two-year project was completed to replace, upgrade, and improve the road into Huasteca Canyon, just to the west of Monterrey. The original road was wiped-out by a hurricane a few years ago, and today was the first time I have had the opportunity to drive on and use the new road (even though it opened over a year ago, and even though it is less than a ten minute drive from my house).

The road was packed with walkers and cyclists this morning, and offered fantastic opportunities for early morning photography of the "Lord of the Rings"-style mountain peaks in that part of the Sierra Madre Oriental.

As I am about to teach a Landscape Photography unit, I wanted to take lots of pictures to have on hand for examples...I managed to take about 100 in the 75 minute walk.

Here is a sampling of my images from the walk:

Mexican Weather

The mythic blue skies and bright yellow sun searing a burnt desert of siestas and sombreros have eluded me since arriving to Mexico two years ago. Even driving across the desert plains, from the high altitudes of the Sierra Madre Oriental to the low, flat dust of border towns in Texas, there is life in the form of ranches and wild flowers. An hour south of McAllen, Texas, a town built on sand and consumerism, the terrain is hilly and majestic - a mix of fenced-in green foliage and cacti, a mix of brown and green and wildflower purple. There the sky is blue and white and stretches forever and you can see storms from several miles away, gray and black smudges against cerulean and sapphire.

In Monterrey, the sky is different, a limited window into the heavens framed by toothed peaks. When the sky is blue, the green and white limestone peaks of the mountains illuminate and create a Tolkeinesque vista (minus the hobbits and dwarves). But today, like most days this summer, the peaks are black and gray shadows against a gray and white sky. There may be a drizzle today, or a storm, or the sky may just lay across the mountains trapping in the pollution, trapping in the heat, making the air a wet blanket through which one must breathe. Just before sundown, a patch of blue will peek under the blanket, to give us hope that tomorrow the air will be clear and make us want to rise early to see the sun.

It's a trick, I know. The sun has abandoned us until autumn to leave us feeling that the box of crayons that paint the sky has run out of colors.

Expat Life

Before I was an expat, I didn't know what an expat was. I thought it had something to do with the French Foreign Legion, or maybe the American Revolution. I didn't really know what it meant - in 2008 people started asking me how I felt, on the verge of expatriating, and I didn't know what they were asking.

I was 31 years old, and I didn't even think to look the term up. I was moving to Egypt, which I naively thought was North Africa, and didn't understand to be as much North Africa as it was the Middle East. I was ready for adventure. I was excited about Pyramids and Camels.

(For the record, in four years in Egypt I never stopped being excited about Pyramids and Camels).

At 31, I considered myself well-traveled for having visited a few spots in the UK and Europe, oh, not to mention that exotic trip to Guatemala (where I climbed Templo 4 in Tikal while suffering from pneumonia, but otherwise spent most of the trip dosed-up on Nyquil, sleeping fitfully in my friend's condo). I had no idea that within six years I would have lived in two countries and traveled to a total of 21 - visiting most of them as a relatively healthy human being - most.

I didn't even know what Thai Chili Sauce was. FYI: Thai Chili Sauce is a revelation.

I thought I 'knew' falafal, and gyros, and Italian food, and tea - I knew nothing. I didn't even drink coffee that didn't come with a foamy milk-topper. Who knew you could add cardamom to coffee? Or that I would be drinking the Bedouin concoction while spending a quiet, tourist-free moment at a monument in Petra (which I didn't even know was real until I became an expat)? Who knew coffee could be rich and thick and syrupy? Or that I would be drinking it beachside in Bali days before attending a beautiful wedding on the tiny island of Nusa Penida in the South Pacific?

The point is, before becoming an expat, I thought I was worldly, cultured, and open-minded. I thought a lot of things that I don't think anymore, and in the process I learned so much about myself.

I learned that I love (LOVE) food.

I learned that I can handle myself in a crisis. Tear gas in Greece, Revolution in Egypt, Riots in Bangkok. I keep my cool, know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, and know when to sit in the restaurant and finish my glass of wine while the angry mob runs from whatever they are running from.

I learned that exploring new places gives me a high that cannot be beaten, even by a 30-meter zipline in the rainforests of Thailand.

I learned that the world is bigger and more volatile and beautiful and changeable than small-town news networks allow us to understand.

I learned that there is still a lot for me to learn.

All Pictures: San Miguel de Allende

All Words

I am making a pledge, here, now, to be a better writer: to describe the red gladiolas shooting like fireworks up from the vase in the center of the lobby where I type this, on a sweltering Valentine's Day afternoon, in a city where hearts drip from the trees like tears for times gone by.

San Miguel, the 'Heart' of Mexico, is an Italian landscape of Mexican colonial architecture on rolling hills over an hour from anywhere (well, anywhere a plane can land). A spindly-sandcastle of a church stands in the Centro, while nearby the domes of other churches peak above the tall, thin pines potted on the roofs of colorful houses that crowd cobblestone streets - simultaneously shady and bright.

I am not in Monterrey freezing in the rain and cold that has plagued us, and instead have gotten a temporary reprieve from teaching and shivering to attend the San Miguel Writer's Conference, a collection of professional writers, teachers, artists, poets, and lovers of the written word.

Last night I listened to Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi (a book I can never get through), speak about how he purposefully wanted the reader to lose faith in the story part way through. Unfortunately, it seems he lost me about 40 pages before the point where he means to pull you back in. Still, he was interesting and had fascinating insights into the Harlequin Romance genre.

Today, I sat in sessions with talented writers, and in the Young Adult Crossover-Novel writing session  I felt I finally found my writing voice, the voice I've been looking for, while listening, writing, and sharing in a group of 10 or so men and women aged 18 - 69. I'm looking forward to stretching it and seeing where it takes me.

The travel writing course, led by a travel writer and editor, confirmed my beliefs about travelling and opened my eyes about how to better approach this blog. Also, it gave me some ideas for posts to rework and maybe submit for publication...and where to submit them.

The memoir course brought up memories of backyard badminton with imaginary nets and chocolate cokes and visits to the pediatricians' office in Catonsville where I knew which exam rooms had which Dr. Seuss books.

The Keats course reminded me why I became an English teacher. I spent 90 minutes enthralled by a college English professor as he brought Keats to life for us - I had forgotten how much I love simply learning and listening and absorbing knowledge.

Tonight, I will have the opportunity to see Laura Esquivel, my favorite Mexican writer of all time, and am determined, even if they run out of translation-earphones, to absorb as much information as possible. (**update: Laura Esquivel's talk tonight was about love and how the world needs more of it. She said we are light, we are stars, we are the universe, but when we are being created, the first thing we are is a heart; and when we've given all the love we are meant to give, only then can we die and our hearts go back to the earth. She encouraged us to rethink everything in our lives - from possessions to actions to the way we think about money, to look at it all through the lens of love, and if we find we aren't acting out of love, to make a change for the betterment, not of the self, but of the world.

If I could sit around a fire for a night and sip tequila and talk about the universe with Fada and Laura Esquivel and Maryann-the-horse lady and the Lovely Rebecca and ... this list is getting long, anyway I think it would be an amazing night. )

I am so excited I still have two more days of learning to go!

To conclude, I wanted to post something I wrote in my memoir session today so that I can come back to it later and work it in somehow, somewhere else.

The Pediatricians' Office

Today, I'm on the well-side. I've never been to the well-side before. Walking through the doors to the lobby of the pediatricians' office, I automatically begin to turn toward the left side of the check-in desk, the sick-child registration, but Mom steers me to the right. The well-side nurse is unfamiliar to me, but knows Mom, so maybe my brother, Michael, has been to the well-side before - but not me.

The nurses all share a big open square enclosed by a wood structure that is part desk, part barrier that says "Children are not allowed back here" without even needing a sign. Behind the fortress of dark paneling, several nurses pace, answer ringing phones, and come and go with yellow files that bear the patients' names. Some of those files are very very narrow, flimsy even, but mine is approaching the girth of the Readers' Digest compilations that sit on my Granny's bookshelves - something I take a great deal of pride in, a file that signals to new nurses that I'm a regular. 

I take in the well-side. It is separated from the sick-side by the eight-feet of light brown carpet that runs in front of the fortress of nurses, but is nearly identical to the sick-side in size and furnishings. Unlike the sick-side, there are more toys here for babies and toddlers than big kids. I am not a baby or a toddler, so the toys here do not hold the same interest for me as those on the sick-side and I find nothing worth playing with in the Land of Well Children.

Striking-out on the toy front, I plop down in a brown-upholstered chair and pick up a magazine and quickly notice that the well-side kids get to read the current, most up-to-date issues of Highlights! The used-up magazines must get moved over to the sick side after a couple of months - that's why they are always written in! So, I guess the well-side kids have it better than the sick-side kids in more than one way: they have better reading material and  they aren't sick.

I flip through the latest Highlights and fail to get drawn in to the games, riddles, and stories that usually distract me while I wait, even though they are unblemished by crayon scribbles and misspelled names. I am too nervous to let myself be drawn-in by this trick, this obvious bamboozle. 

The phones ring, the nurses prattle on in their quiet, upbeat voices, Mom laughs and I distractedly glance around for escape. Something is seriously wrong: I mean, why does a kid need to come to the doctor if they're not sick?

Travel 2013 - My First Year in Mexico

Every year I do a year-in-review of my travels; mostly it's to remind me where I've been, but it also serves as a personal wrap-up photo album of my favorite travel photos from the year.

New Year's Eve 2012-2013: New Orleans, my favorite city in the world. There's the live music at Fritzel's, the great food (Restaurant August, Emeril's, New Orlean's Bistro), and the history. I even caught the Sugar Bowl parade! New Orleans is the city I always go back to when I can, and I can't wait to go again for Jazz Fest this year!

March 2013: For the first week of Semana Santa I was off to Merida for the second time! This time, the trip included a tour of the Yucatan to the pyramids of Uxmal and Kabah, and a trip to Celestun to see the flamingos. Despite the clouds and occasional rain, the sites were amazing and Merida was as laid back and fun as usual: I rode bikes on their Sunday Paseo, ate Panuchas and Cocinita Pibil, and got lots of sun and rest.

April 2013: For the second week of Semana Santa, it was time to explore Oaxaca in the South of Mexico. Oaxaca was full of great food and great shopping. I got to take a cooking class (where I cooked with agave worms, crickets, squash blossoms and local ingredients from the market), visit ruins at Monte Alban and elsewhere in the state, and dipped my toes in the natural mineral springs at Hievere de Agua.

Ceviche made by my cooking class

The Semana Santa trip ended with a two-day trip to Mexico City (just so I could try the food at Pujol, one of the top ten restaurants in the world); which led to the discovery of some surprising treasures, like the gorgeous deco Palace de Beaux Artes below and some amazing Diego Rivera murals.

June 2013: A week in Baltimore and a trip to Hershey Park with my second-family was a nice break after a long school year.  Then it was off to Florida for a few days to prepare for my European tour.

July 2013:  A flight to London and two weeks in England seeing dear friends and touring around places like:

Belton House:

Skeggness:

Tattershall Castle:

Birmingham & London:

My drink at VOC in London came with a six-shooter cap gun 

Then there was a quick ride on the chunnel to the the chaos of Paris:

and a day's escape from Paris to Chantilly.

From Paris there was a 12-hour, several train ride to the Cinque Terre in Italy (one of my favorite places on Earth) for nearly a week of eating Italian seafood dishes and exploring the coastal towns of Linguaria.

From the Cinque Terre another multi-train journey (and one sprint from train-to-train in Milan) took me to Venice.

From Venice, a vaporetti took my friend and I to Murano:

and Burano:

Then a ferry boat took us to Croatia, where we met up with another colleague and her friend and spent a week relaxing by the sea and exploring the old towns of Porec and Rovinj.

It was back to school time in August, but it wasn't too long before it was time to travel again...

In September, two friends and I went back to Merida for Mexican Independence Day (I even stayed up for the fireworks this time!).

October 2013: a shopping weekend in Guadalajara led to a great find: the Mile-long market at Tonala!

 

In November, a cheap flight to Chiapas (in the South of Mexico) lead to a great four-day vacation in San Cristobal des las Casas, though it was cold and gray. Thanksgiving was spent with a large group of friends at an Argentinian Steak House.

From San Cristobal, a friend and I took an all-day tour of two waterfalls (Misol-Ha and Agua Azul) and the ruins of Palenque.

Finally, it was off to America for Christmas and New Year. A few days on the beach and a few days in the cold with family and friends was a great way to wrap-up my first full-year living in Mexico.