Friday, December 16, 2016

Back to Mexico

I usually fly to Morelia, the capital of Michoacan state, but this time I flew into Mexico City.  I got in late on December 3rd and spent 2 nights there so that I could check out a bit of the city center.

The cathedral on the main plaza (the Zocalo), with a giant Christmas tree
I strolled around the city for a few hours, checking out the monumental buildings and homing in on several murals by Diego Rivera.  The first ones were in the Palacio Nacional on the Zocalo.

Fountain in the courtyard of the Palacio Nacional
The murals on the second-floor balcony focused on the pre-hispanic history of what is now Mexico City, but was once Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital

View of the city of Tenochtitlán
Market scene
Harvesting cacao
The murals in the grand stairway depict the history of Mexico from the Aztec era through the Spanish conquest and on into the 20th century.

Marx inspiring the people of Mexico
From the Palacio Nacional I walked past the Palace of Fine Arts and through the lovely wooded park of Alameda Central to the Mural Museum.

Palacio de Bellas Artes
Neptune at the center of a fountain in the Alameda
I sat on a bench by the fountain, watching people stroll and roller blade by as I listened to "La Vie en Rosa" being played on a hurdy-gurdy.

The Diego Rivera Mural Museum has - in addition to other paintings - just one large Rivera mural. I sat and focused on this one section:

Traditional death figure, with Frida Kahlo to her left.
Close-up of lovely Frida
I love the gentleman's reaction to the bold indigenous dancer
Four hours of wandering the city was plenty for me.  I went back to my hotel, took a siesta, went out for dinner and had a relaxing evening watching Netflix.

The next morning I made my way via two taxis and two buses to my beautiful little rented casita in Arócutin, outside of Patzcuaro.

My first sighting of Lake Patzcuaro from the bus
The casita I rent on the edge of the pueblo of Arócutin
It was a foggy morning the next day in Arócutin, so there was no view of the lake as I ate my breakfast out on the terrace - but rising from the fog was the island of Janitzio, with it's 131-foot-tall statue of José María Morelos, a hero of Mexico's independence.


The day cleared and I headed out for a hike into Mal Pais, a wilderness area of about 12 square miles right behind my casita . It was covered in lava about 556 years ago when small twin volcanoes erupted. Since then the lava has broken up and a forest has grown.  It's a great place to explore - repeatedly.  And in early December there are still some orchids blooming there (most bloom in the autumn).

View from Mal Pais of one of the twin volcanoes that erupted around 1460
Some orchids I found on my first trips into the area this year:





 There are also lots of bromeliads blooming there this year.


 And there are colorful spiders as well:


The next morning the skies were clearer, so I had a gorgeous view as I ate my breakfast out on the terrace:


With clear skies it was time for another hike.  This time I headed out to some petroglyphs that are a few miles from my casita.

Young Vemilion Flycatcher along the trail

Guy walking back to the pueblo of Uricho


The dirt road to the petroglyphs winds between agricultural field


Spiral Petroglyph
Winged figure
Mortar holes along the nearby stream.  I wonder what they were grinding in them.
Mexican Silverspot - spotted on my way home...
... and some wild Clematis
On the 8th I walked the back lanes to Eronga to have lunch with my friend Charles.  We ate delicious chiles rellenos at Doña Mary's and caught up on each other's lives.

One of the back lanes I take to get to Eronga
Stately prickly pear cactus along the lane
On the evening of December 9th I went to an art opening in Patzcuaro and was happy too see several people I know. And when I introduced myself to several others, they said "Oh, YOU"RE Howie!". Apparently word had gotten around that Howie the hiker was coming back and many folks were hoping I'd take them into Mal Pais (where it's easy to get lost). I had already agreed lead one group on the loop hike on Monday.

I had hiked the loop earlier that day in order to be sure of the route for Monday.   I did have to do some backtracking, and some clearing where the path had gotten a bit overgrown since I left last February, but I found my way through.

View of fields from the lane that leads into the far side of Mal Pais.
White-tailed kite I spotted atop a distant tree
Burro carrying firewood out of Mal Pais for its owner
I spotted several more orchid clumps in the forest
I also saw a wild dahlia growing in an open rocky area of the forest.  Dahlias are plants of the uplands and mountains of Mexico, most frequently at elevations between 4,900-12,100 feet. They usually grow in a vegetation zone described as a “pine-oak woodland".   All that describes the milieu of Mal Pais very well. Dahlias originated in Mexico, Central America and Colombia.


Turkey Vulture in the lane beyond where I emerged from the forest
Saturday the 10th I joined the Patzcuaro hiking group for a walk through open country below El Esttribo (a small volcano on the outskirts of Patzcuaro) , then took care of business in town: a little shopping; a corunda (like a tamale) and a warm guava drink by the basilica; a coffee under the arcade by the plaza; and a $2.50 haircut.

Gentleman farmer tending his cows below El Estribo
The Plaza Grande decorated for the holidays.  I figure there are at least 500 poinsettias in the park!
View as I sat sipping a 75-cent cup of good coffee, watching the world go by.

It was another foggy morning on the 11th.  After it cleared I walked to the neighboring town of Jaracuaro to buy a new sombrero in the village where they're made. I didn't find the hat I wanted, but it was a lovely walk.

Out in the Pasture on a Foggy Morning
My village of Arócutin - with the church on the right at the top of the hill and the twin volcanoes of Mal Pais in the background. In the foreground is the road out to Jaracuaro. Great wetland bird viewing is available from the bridge.
A causeway connects to Jaracuaro over wetlands that used to be part of Lake Patzcuaro before the water level receded
Great Blue Heron in the wetlands along the causeway that leads to Jaracuro
Snowy Egret and White-faced Ibis
Great Egret

The brown in these decorations in the Jaracuaro cemetery comes from dried out marigolds, which for the Day of the Dead on November 1st would have been bright orange.
Little chapel in Jaracuaro well-decorated for the season.
On my way back to Arócutin, enjoyed the view of wild marigolds, barbed wire and mountains
 This little guy greeted me as I ate breakfast the next morning:

Female Black-headed Grosbeak
As promised, I took my friend Kurt and his buddy Bruce on the loop hike through Mal Pais that morning.

Bruce and Kurt
I managed to get a photo of a male Vermilion Flycatcher as we passed by a corn field:


I was showing the guys an especially nice orchid I had spotted on a previous excursion when I noticed another one on a rocky ridge on the other side of the trail - and then we saw more of them up there.  I scrambled up the slope (the guys didn't follow because of all the poison oak, which I'm not allergic to) and spotted 18 clumps in all!  That brought my total for this season to about 36 - a record for me!

One of the clumps up on the rocky ridge
And the guys were impressed that I didn't get them lost when they were hard-pressed to figure out where the trail went!

On the 13th, after the Men's Breakfast (a weekly gathering of mostly expat guys), I went to the market in Patzcuaro.  I love these little avocados that I've been buying there. They're just the right size for a single serving.  I included the fork for perspective. And at a nickel (1 peso) apiece, how could I go wrong?


That night there was a lovely full supermoon:


And the next morning it added a nice touch to my view of the mountains:
Morning Moon o'er the Mountains - from my terrace.
My friend John had asked me to lead him out to the petroglyphs so that he could check out the trip as a possibility for the expat hiking group.  So on the 14th I took him and a few other friends there, starting from the village of Uricho.

Cowboy taking his cattle out to pasture in the valley of the petroglyphs
John, Bruce, Laura and Kurt at the petroglyphs
Prickly Poppy along the lane
Yesterday, December 15th,  I took a shared van ride to Erongaricuaro and walked out to the old abandoned train station, which is quite a ways outside town.  On the way there were lovely wildflowers along the road:







And as usual for that area, I spotted some beautiful birds:

Golden-fronted woodpecker

Berylline Hummingbird
The ruins of the railroad station.  Only freight trains pass by now
Me - waiting for a train that will never come...

Not far from the station is an orchard of newly planted avocado trees - temporarily protected by little thatched roofs


On the way back I passed the Eronga landfill - which was a mess - but this piece of cloth on the fence prettied it up.
View over fields to Lake Patzcuaro as I headed back to Eronga
Buggy by a house on the outskirts of Eronga
Adobe wall with window - in Eronga
This morning - December 16th - I watched cattle heading home across the wetlands for their cornstalk rations:



Then I spent a good part of the day working on this blog post, with breaks for lunch and to enjoy a brief thunderstorm outside my window.

Parting Shot:
White pelicans out on the wetlands after the rain