Ephemerica

Between Morelia and Zitacuaro were two pretty tough biking days. Adding to the pain of riding, was the delay of two days in a row with flat tires, including our first mid-ride change The first day we had to climb the Pasa de Mil Cumbres (Pass of 1000 Peaks). We were hemmed in by trees for most of the day, and although that was good for keeping us out of the sun, it obscured most of our views. But when we got up high enough, we could look out across the valley and what you saw was, shockingly, a series of never-ending peaks. And of course, the ride was on one of those roads where around every corner is another climb, never reaching the top. We started our day in Morelia at around 1900 m elevation, climbed to just over 2900 m elevation, and then came back down to around 2300 m elevation to stay outside of the small town of Huajumbaro.

This was our first attempt at camping since coming to mainland Mexico, and we didn’t have quite the same success at sweet-talking the locals into giving us a spot for our tent. After trying a couple of people, we found a house that looked perfect, with lots of lawn space. The owner of the house, however, suggested that we go across the street to an abandoned house and sleep in there. So after crawling through a barbed wire gate we wheeled our bikes past the cows that were grazing right next to the house and went in. The cows had obviously spent some time in the house, and it was also home to several birds; none of the animals were all that happy with our staying in their house. We put out the groundcloth and slept on the floor…It was getting dark and I think we were happy that we couldn’t inspect the area where we were sleeping too well.

The next day we finished our descent from the pass, and although there wasn’t as much climbing as the day before, the roads were in really bad shape (as they were the previous day), and there was a lot of traffic. That, combined with our being tired and unrested, made for a long day to Zitacuaro. But we were able to reward ourselves with a visit to the El Rosario Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary yesterday.

El Rosario is outside the nearby town of Ocampo, which is reachable from Zitacuaro via two public buses. Although you can arrange private rides from places as far away as Morelia (if you are willing to spend the extra money), we decided to try the buses. It was our first “real” experience riding buses in Mexico, and although we were nervous, it went perfectly smoothly. We arrived on one bus in Ocampo, and across the street from where the bus dropped us off was a bus waiting to go to El Rosario. Perfect! Distance-wise, the reserve isn’t that far away, so we had briefly contemplated riding, but as we suspected, the reserve was really high up (over 3000 m elevation) a really bad road, so we were happy for the ride.

WARNING: If you have an unnatural fear of butterflies, you may want to skip the next section

Monarch season is just about officially over now (it runs from December to late March), so we weren’t sure how many butterflies would be there. It turns out we needn’t have worried. When you get to the reserve, you are assigned a guide to take you up the steep path to the trees where the Monarchs are. The first thing we started to see were dead butterflies on the ground. It takes the Monarchs several generations to make their trip from Mexico to the US/Canada, so this is normal (in fact, there is a theory that the dead butterflies help the Monarchs relocate their wintering grounds each year, so there are signs posted telling you not to touch/take the dead butterflies). Then as we climbed up further into the forest, you finally see the trees absolutely FULL of butterflies, with branches sagging under their weight. We got to the reserve just before 11 AM, as the butterflies were starting to get warm enough to take flight. The day was partly cloudy, and every time a sunbreak hit the trees, giant clouds of butterflies would stream from the branches. If you’ve ever seen the Beethoven’s 5th symphony segment from Fantasia 2000, it was a lot like that. We couldn’t get very close to the trees (they keep you 50 m away or so), but we did get close enough to be surrounded by flying butterflies. There were plenty of mating butterflies too, falling out of the trees together helicopter-style, like maple seeds. We kept saying to each other, if this is the end of butterfly season, it must be absoutely crazy during peak season. Of course, we took lots of pics and some video, which we’ll post eventually.

We’re going to take one more rest day in Zitacuaro before heading out on our two-day journey to Toluca. We made contact with someone from CouchSurfing in Toluca, so we’re both excited to make a new friend.

Posted by Matthew on March 23rd, 2007 | Filed under: Mexico