I like Morelia, for a big city it’s surprisingly approachable and it has tons of culture from Spanish language and cooking classes to fabulous museums, art and history. And narrow streets. We drove back through Morelia after our hot showers and creature comforts of the campground stop in nearby Pátzcuaro. I had to turn in my mirrors more than once as Google maps picked some daft back alley roads out of the capital city of Michoacán.
At intersections you’ll find people looking to earn a van living selling stuff as the best works they can find and I try to always spend a dollar or two to help out. We were ready for a clean windshield so we skipped the nut and fruit sellers and nodded to this guy. He did a brilliant job.
Personally I’d rather see Mexico give people proper jobs with regular pay. I’m always aware of the fact these people are doing what they must to earn a living a buck at a time. Decent regular work would keep more Mexicans at home as well. Better for us.
We were driving south from Morelia to visit the monarch butterfly sanctuary high in the mountains on the edge of Michoacán and Mexico states. Mexico is a city, a state and a country! When Mexicans in Mexico talk of “Mexico” they usually mean the capital city.
I like to try to show a few snapshots of the countryside we drove through because Mexico is not only huge but is varied too. We drive through farmland in all stages of cultivation, dotted with small villages and towns filled with damned topes (“toe-pays”). On the one hand topes are a ghastly nuisance as you will bounce badly if you hit than at speed, on the other hand Mexicans ignore speed limits. I just wish they were all painted and marked with signs.
Our route took us past an artificial Lake Villa Victoria on which we saw no fishing activity and which looked stagnant. And yet the eye is always attracted to bodies of water for some reason. This place was damned to collect water draining from the hills of the Monarch Butterfly Reserve and since 1982 supplies water to five million residents of Toluca and Mexico (City). They flooded 15 agricultural communities for the hydro electric project.
Rainy season is in summer and the countryside looks dry in February. You would also consider these to be summer temperatures considering the winter the US is going through. 85 degrees anybody?
Layne needed to use our handy sandy toilet, Rusty wanted a sniff around and I wanted to take some pictures so we stopped. The advantages of traveling with our own home are innumerable. Usually but sometimes it gets rough as we shall see.
The landscape was becoming mountainous and the trees were becoming coniferous in the crisper mountain air.
Layne was busy in the passenger seat snapping away with her camera as the countryside passed by.
And it was obvious we were entering the winter home of the monarch butterflies. They gather in these mountains in winter and trek north as far as Canada in the summer.
I was kept busy avoiding potholes and watching for topes.
You’d think the roads to an internationally famous tourist spectacle would be freshly paved and signposted and advertised. Mexico expects you to be able to manage on your own. We were up to the challenge. More or less.
Ejido El Rosario is the best known community that offers tours and horseback rides through the hanging monarch colonies. An “ejido” (“eh-he-dough”) is a peculiarly Mexican form of land distribution created after the 1910 revolution whereby the government owns the land which can never be sold, theoretically, but the people who live on it get to benefit from its worth, be it in tourism or in coastal areas sun fishing or agriculture. It’s a system under attack of course by people who want the land but so far it’s a system that gives poor people a toehold on the economy.
And the schools of course are named after revolutionary heroes, tons of Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa schools but also local heroes you’ve never heard of like the revolutionary priest Miguel Hidalgo who was a leader of the original 1810 revolution that overthrew Spanish rule. A Mexican founding father with a whole state named for him. And monarch butterflies now a source of cash.
It really is glorious being retired. We choose a destination, we set Google maps on our phone and with very few glitches the phone on the dashboard gets us there. Just like you do at home. You can try it yourself for fun. Use Morelia as your starting point and El Rosario Monarch Butterflies as your destination. Don’t bother to avoid highways as there none. And there your blue line.
If you look carefully below you’ll see the cursed Tope. Right in front of the approaching car. In Mexico if you see cars bouncing there’s a tope. If they swerve unaccountably they are probably avoiding a known giant pothole. Be alert! It’s tiring too let me tell you.
We stopped for a late lunch. I was tired and hungry and Rusty was ready for a walk. I spotted a turn out in the woods and we pulled off the road about twenty minutes before El Rosario at around 9,000 feet elevation.
We were on a logging road with a small turn out large enough to fit GANNET2 out of the way of any traffic. It felt remote as hell to us but there is always someone around in Mexico and over Laynes’s objections I pulled back off the torn up dirt road. She was afraid of sinking but I was confident the ground was solid. I could hear chain saws up above us and sure enough a car went bouncing by later!
Rusty loved the spot but I had trouble keeping up. I carry my walking stick the one I got after my motorcycle accident and it came in handy here as I found I couldn’t catch my breath. I was wheezing like I had emphysema. It was awful.
A short walk, normally a breeze, was a huge effort. Rusty, who normally is never as ambitious as me, had to hold back to let me catch up as best I could.
There was tons of traffic back and forth on the road. I forced down some food and went to take a nap. I woke up two hours later to find Layne and Rusty passed out. I read in bed and finished my book on the Magdalena River in Colombia. Clearly I was going to need acclimation at altitude. I had a migraine headache and was still breathing shallowly.
Layne said I looked terrible and wanted to backtrack. I took some Tylenol and insisted we sorbs the night and see what morning might bring. We decided to spend the night here. The spontaneity of van travel.
It turned out to be a good spot for us, no local dogs to intimidate Rusty, not much noise after traffic died down in the night. Before dark a pick up came down the track with a load of cut logs. They waved but didn’t stop as they bounced by and drove off down the road.
We had the place to ourselves. Too bad I felt so crappy. Layne looked at me like she didn’t like what she saw but I said in the morning I’d like to see how I felt. Having got this far I wanted to see some damned butterflies. The night was uneventful after we saw a flashlight coming down through the woods around 7:30 pm in pitch darkness. Some wood cutter walking home through woods as familiar to him as they were remote to us, no doubt. He must have been surprised to see our van! The light went by and we saw no one else.
I didn’t sleep soundly despite the breathing assist I got from my CPAP but when daylight cane I got up to let Rusty out into the cool morning air. I heard shouting and rustling up the hill and suddenly we had neighbors. “Photograph the white one - she’s pretty” the leader of the cow herders called out. I admired his cattle and told him I couldn’t breathe and they were walking the woods. He got a big grin on his face and said “Watch me,” as he ran up the hillside twirling his machete and laughing at me. I cheered him on breathless as I was.
They didn’t worry about traffic as they walked up the road before plunging back into the wood on the opposite side. A wave of the machete and they were gone, just like that.
Layne agreed to drive up to El Rosario to check the place out. More altitude for me!
