Mexicowoods—An Expatriate Life

Egret-Breeding

Egrets breed this time of year. Many of them choose Parqué Juárez for nesting. They seem to like the tall trees there. Neighbors and park users wish they didn't. Egrets are smelly. They deposit thick coats of white droppings on streets, benches, and decorative plants.

Years of efforts to discourage the birds failed. Finally, the city went to the nuclear option: They lopped the tops off all the centuries-old trees in the park. Ugly, but effective. Today, a small grove alongside the cultural center is all that remains suitable for building nests.

 

Fewer trees means overcrowding. The remaining grove is an egret ghetto. Droppings are more concentrated. The elegant neighborhood near the Cultural Center reeks. Baby egrets falling prematurely out of their nests flop on grounds patrolled by neighborhood cats.

Parent egrets feed their chicks with fish they catch in the presa, the reservoir west of town. Not all of the fish make it into the youngsters' beaks. Some drop on the ground, adding to the noisome litter.

The other day a friend walked past the nesting site when a fish fell to the ground in front of her. She almost stepped on it. It's the last thing anyone would expect from our benign Mexican climate: fish falling from the sky.

Hiking the Yelapa Back Country

I'm good for about a half a day of lying around on a beach; then I have to get out and do something. One day during our mini-vacation in Yelapa, we hiked into the country behind the beach community, where a pair of trails border either side of the river that snakes back into the mountains. 

Quite a few people live back here. Most seem to be subsistence farmers. They live in palapa huts, raise a few crops, keep horses and mules.

They grow corn in small fields, just enough for family use. Scattered fruit trees provide varied diets: mangoes, bananas, and that exotic Indian import, jackfruit. The fruits hanging on this tree are as big as watermelons.

Until a few years ago, the people of the Yelapa back country lived like their forebears a hundred years ago. Then, no infrastructure existed to provide water, electricity or telecommunications. Today the back country is being wired for electrical power. Some homes became connected for the first time just this year.

Absence of roads means everything has to be done using primitive methods. Here a CFE (Comisión Federal de Electricidad) worker floats a power vault across the river on a rubber raft.

Much of the wiring is being installed underground; hence, the vault. I'd like to think CFE's motivation for burying power lines is due to aesthetic or environmental concerns, but I suspect their decision has more to do with protection from Pacific storms.

For people living back in the jungle, electrification means the arrival of technology. There are no phones yet and no television broadcasts or cable. But this tumbledown palapa sports a satellite TV dish.

I once drove through a tiny Mayan village in the southern Yucatán. The community had no electricity, but I spotted a small solar array perched on a pole outside a traditional Mayan hut. Banda music blared out though the doorway. You don't need light, but you gotta have your tunes.

Along the trail there was plenty for nature lovers to see: a vulture sitting in a blooming tree...

...a curious green tree shedding thin orange bark...

...an iguana basking in the sun. This fellow is more than two feet long.

Here as in other Mexican rural localities, people still wash laundry in rivers.

A farmer draws river water to irrigate his crops. He employs found materials: a plastic chair serves as a mount for the pump.

The riverside trails are too narrow and rough to accommodate automobiles or trucks. Transportation is by horse or burro. Tack hangs in shacks along the trail.

High up on the trail we encountered a string of burros dragging fresh-cut lumber travois style. These boards were cut from logs using a chain saw mill—wasteful and inefficient, but requiring little capital investment. Note how the saw cuts terminate before reaching the end of the log, keeping the boards connected in order to simplify transportation.

Small homesteads trigger romantic notions of country living. Far away from technology, wars, and politics, I imagine life would be peaceful and serene in a place like this.

But I'm wedded to technology. I took the photos for this post with a digital camera; I'm writing it on an internet-connected computer. I dragged this gear into the jungle, unable to live without it.

Besides, I'm too old to work as hard as the people who make their homes in this beautiful river valley.

Cotopaxi

After hosting me at his family's dairy farm near Quito, Federico offered to drive me to view one of Ecuador's volcanoes—19,347' Cotopaxi. We approached the mountain via a gravel road that winds through ranch country. Along the way we crossed many streams fed by snowmelt from Cotopaxi's glaciers.

Cotopaxi hasn't erupted in more than a century. When it does, the forces unleashed are amazing. In 1877, an eruption melted the glaciers, creating lahars (mudflows) that reached all the way west to the Pacific Ocean and east to the Amazon Basin. The volcano hurled large stones, scattering them in this field some twenty miles from the mountain.

Cotoaxi receives many visitors. Small hotels and campgrounds provide rustic lodgings

A charming practice: protecting signs with thatch roofs.

Ordinarily you can see Cotopaxi from Quito, but I hadn't been able to because of persistent cloudiness. On this excursion, the clouds briefly lifted—fortunate for me.

A billboard image from a few years ago shows more extensive ice cover on Cotopaxi than today. Federico says global warming is causing the glacier to shrink.

Scores of Quiteños and foreigners climb the volcano every week. Unequipped and without time for such a venture, Federico and I instead found a cozy mountain inn. We sat before a fire sipping cinnamon tea and talking about mountain climbing. These days, I'm better at discussing than climbing. A twenty-something athlete, Federico intends to scale the volcano some day.

Diving a Cenote

The couple whose wedding we are attending are avid scuba divers. So for their wedding guests—who traveled to Tulum from all over the world—they organized diving expeditions. But not to coral reefs. Too ordinary. They set out to dive the underground lakes called cenotes.

 

The Yucatán Peninsula can be thought of as a vast limestone shelf atop a network of underground rivers. Where the limestone roof has collapsed, natural swimming holes have formed some thirty feet or so below the ground surface. Cenotes make for a refreshing dip in the hot tropical jungle. More adventurous people, those who want to explore the caves and tunnels that branch out from the hole, need scuba gear and specialized instructor guides. Swimming underground away from light and air is not for the faint-hearted.

Laura is PADI certified and she's adventurous, so she's going diving with the big kids. Here she gets help with a balky flipper before venturing into the darkness with her group.

I have to be satisfied snorkeling in the waters near the cave opening. An implanted defibrillator guarantees no doctor will ever clear me for PADI certification.

These pictures are of Gran Cenote, about three kilometers west of Tulum. The owners keep it up much better than the ones I swam in ten years ago: less trash, better facilities. I didn't enjoy visiting cenotes back then. On this trip, I found them delightful.

Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve

Our beach house in Tulum is located less than two miles from the northern border of the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve, a large tract of jungle, lagoons, lakes, beach, and coral reef that extends for nearly a quarter of the Quintana Roo coast. That it exists at all is a miracle. A group of conservationists got to it before developers managed to gobble up all of the Maya Riviera. Today it is a Mexican National Park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We rented our house at a tiny eco-resort named Playa Selva. When we discovered that our host, Mauricio Roman, has been a guide at Sian Ka'an for fifteen years, we lost no time engaging him for a day of exploration.

Part of our excursion was to be by boat. We launched from this ramshackle outpost on freshwater Laguna Muyil. (Here laguna means lake.)

The lagoon is shallow, fringed by marsh grasses. Occasional areas of high ground support small patches of tropical jungle.

This land was occupied by ancient Mayans who fished in these waters and in the Caribbean Sea beyond. They dug a canal through the wetlands in order to float their catches inland to places like Cobá. Our boatman uses their canal to transport us from Laguna Muyil to Laguna Chunyaxché.

Laguna Chunyaxché drains via a natural river to the Caribbean Sea. We boated across the lake and down the river until reaching this dock, where our boatman proceeded ahead of us while we floated along in the water, sitting on our life jackets.

How I wanted to photograph that part of the journey! But I don't have a waterproof camera. Yet.

We jumped into the water amidst a cloud of minnows. We floated through wetlands where the boundary between river and grassland blurred. Then we entered a region of mangroves. Bromeliads and orchids grew on aerial roots. Blooming, fruit bearing branches arched overhead. This place is primeval, a nursery for so many kinds of plants and animals.

We also explored nearby jungle on foot. Overnight rains brought out mosquitoes in droves, overwhelming our repellent. We pressed on anyway, slapping and scratching.

Flying termites build nests in these parts. Mauricio told us Mayans call them "gardeners of the forest" because they prune away deadwood, making room for new growth. This nest is about three feet long.

We got to know termites intimately when a colony set up housekeeping just outside our beach house. One morning we awakened to find our rooms full of flying ants. "Gardeners of the forest" or not, Mauricio's gardener encouraged them to build their nest elsewhere.

The Yucatán Peninsula consists of a flat limestone shelf that slopes gently to the sea. Once sea bottom itself, the peninsula emerged as dry land when the ocean receded. In the jungle we found shells embedded in the limestone, proving the land's marine origins.

Shallow soils underlain by limestone provide poor anchorage for roots. Tall trees compensate by throwing out massive buttress roots.

Modern Mayan chicleros scarred this Manilkara chicle while collecting the sap to make natural chewing gum. Almost no chewing gum is made this way anymore. It's cheaper to make it from synthetic rubber. Think about that the next time you pop a Chiclet into your mouth.

From all the fungus growing here, one might think these pictures were taken in the Pacific Northwest.

Sian Ka'an encompasses some 23 known Mayan archaeological sites, all of them undiscovered by the big tour companies. This small building is located along the river connecting Laguna Chunyaxché with the sea. Mauricio calls it a temple. From its size and remote location, I think maybe it more likely a field office than a religious site.

Little restoration work has been done on Sian Ka'an ruins, giving us an idea of what they looked like when they were discovered.

This structure, called El Castillo, weathered the centuries well. The darker stonework areas are parts of the building left unrestored to demonstrate the original appearance.

The reserve is a great gift to us all. Hopefully it won't become overused; after all, it isn't spectacular. But its quiet beauty and the wealth of discovery it contains remain waiting for those who will appreciate it.

Hiking the Blue Ridge Mountains

We are hiking mountain trails near Cashiers, North Carolina: Whiteside Mountain, Rock Mountain, Silver Run Falls. The woods we walk through are cool and serene.

None of the paths are flat. All have steps cut into them. Good thing we're conditioned from scampering up and down San Miguel's hills every day. Our cardiovascular systems are acclimated to 6000'—we don't get winded at Cashiers wimpy 4500'.

It's said that long ago, a squirrel could travel from Georgia to Maine jumping from one American Chestnut tree to another. Chinese Chestnut trees, introduced at the beginning of the 20th Century, carried with them a blight that killed more than three billion trees throughout their Appalachian Mountain range. All that remain today are shoots from old roots. The photo shows two live sprouts and a dead 4" sapling. Sad. A Nantahala National Forest brochure encourages hikers to report any tree at least 10" in diameter in the hopes of finding blight-resistant varieties.

Details seen along the trail: a granite outcrop encrusted with an unknown green mineral. Can anyone identify it?

Fungi sprout from a dead snag. I don't know enough about them to pick and eat them. These looked good to me, though.

The season is fall—and lucky us, we caught the peak of the color change.

Autumn leaf color is more muted here than in New England, but gorgeous nonetheless.

Atop Whiteside Mountain, Laura and her Uncle Jon read all about the granite formation they're standing on. Part of our oldest mountain chain, it's a mere nub compared with the Himalaya-like peaks that existed here 450 million years ago.

From the mountaintops, we look out over the Cashiers Valley, our view enhanced by all that fall foliage. This view is from Rock Mountain, looking toward Whiteside.

I found myself drawn to this old land, its gentle mountains more nurturing, more inviting than California's Sierra Nevada where I used to backpack. Unlike the high sierra, I could find a home here.

Others feel this way: this area is home to retiring boomers. Land values inflate, mountain cabins give way to elegant lakefront homes, chi-chi restaurants line the main streets. The Cashiers area, with its moderate climate and beautiful setting, is becoming a haven for the well-to-do. We who live in San Miguel know this story all too well.

On the Rock Mountain trail, we met only one group of hikers (although the trail had recently been detoured to bypass a new housing development). On Whiteside Mountain, we ran into hundreds. Whether we shared the trails with others or had them all to ourselves, our experience was exhilarating and memorable.

A Nature Walk

Laura's dad is a professor at the University of West Florida. We went there to sit in on his course on the works of Cormac McCarthy, and arriving early, took a walk through the 1600-acre campus, much of which has been set aside as a nature reserve.

A boardwalk gives access to extensive wetlands.

A small, slow river meanders through, reminding me of Rancocas Creek in southern New Jersey, where my parents would take me canoeing when I was very small. The smell of brown water, the hum of insects, the warm sun on my back enfold me in a benign, lazy world.

Few plants flower in this late season; berries are the main source of color.

Snapping turtles, some quite large, lurk in murky waters. Their scummy shells could use a good scrub, an issue the groundskeepers at UWF may want to consider. Familiar with these creatures from my boyhood days in the Eastern United States, I don't even consider reaching into the water to pick one up.

Here in Western Florida I encounter my first Red Velvet Ant. It's a large insect—¾" long. It's not actually an ant, but a wingless wasp. Another creature to avoid touching.

A sign at the entrance hints at the prospect of somewhat more interesting wildlife, but we don't run across any, more's the pity.

 

UWF is a center of excellence for environmental studies. It prepares students for careers in environmental restoration. The wetlands we walk through are a model project, a demonstration that environmental destruction is not irreversible, a sign of hope that the planet can indeed be saved.