We had been debating whether to visit La Reserva de la Mariposa Monarcas, a mountain sanctuary for Monarch butterflies that migrate south from the US and Canada, for some time. Normally, it wouldn’t be an issue, but it’s in the state of Michoacán, which has been experiencing some problems lately. In a nutshell, the drug cartels moved in and started extracting protection money from local businesses. Frustrated at the lack of help from the police, the locals took matters into their own hands and organized vigilante groups to fight the cartels. The main cartel asserts that the vigilantes are in fact under cover operatives for a rival cartel. The feds finally took notice and sent in the cavalry (or the Mexican equivalent thereof – usually armed guys dressed in black toting machine guns in the back of pickup trucks). The locals still didn’t trust them, so they conscripted the vigilantes into the police force so that they could continue to fight legitimately. The upshot of all of this has been some violence.

We had decided not to go up until the morning we left San Miguel. While saying goodbye to some folks at the RV park, we learned that they had visited the butterfly reserve two weeks before and had had a great time. Gotta love last minute changes of plan.

We diverted South, and spent a fairly long day driving to the tiny mountain town of El Rosario at 9300 feet. We saw one long convoy of the aforementioned Federales on the highway, but no other signs of the problems in Michoacán. To be fair, though, we were only going into the very edge of the large state.

Some farming is still done the old fashioned way.

The next morning we set out to see the butterflies. Since Q has never ridden a horse before, we decided to rent two horses for the ride up. They took us about two thirds of the way up, which was followed by a 15 minute hike. Although the biosphere reserve is large, the butterflies only occupy a small area of forest. It was a truly amazing sight, with monarchs swarming the area and blanketing the trees in black and orange. The story of their migration from the north is pretty fantastic.

These giant succulent plants are everywhere. We thought they’d make a great start to a bad horror film. Watch out Quinn!!

Ride ’em Cowboy! Quinn loved the horse ride, but we were all allergic to the horses and the dust and so we ended out sneezing a lot. We decided to walk back down.

Our next stop was to be at Teotihuacán for more pyramid viewing. We finished lunch in El Rosario at about 1:30pm and decided to try to make it there the same day. We did, but only just, as it was after dark when we arrived. That’s not something we normally like to do, but it worked out. We found the campground, ate some leftovers for dinner, and hit the sack. The next morning we went out to tour the pyramids. They were very impressive, with the temple of the sun being second only to the pyramids in Egypt in size.

Atop the Temple of the Sun. (The Temple of the Moon is visible in the background).

After lunch we set off once again for our next destination, the town of Cholula. Cholula also has a pre-columbian pryamid, and we found it more impressive because it’s only been partially excavated, and because there’s a Catholic church perched on top, possibly built there in ignorance of the pagan temple beneath. Quinn particularly enjoyed exploring the tunnels that were bored into the pyramid by archeologists. As is usually the case, the pyramid wasn’t built all at once. A first one was built, then a subsequent ruler decided he had to out-class his predecessor and ordered his minions to expand it. So there are multiple phases of construction in evidence starting at ~500 B.C. and spanning up to 1500 years.

A model of the temple in Cholula with the Church on top

The Catholic Church that sits atop the pyramid

We ran into several groups of very excited and giggly teenage girls at the top of the pyramid who were taken by Quinn’s blue eyes and blond hair. He’s hiding behind Mom.

Through the thick smog that unfortunately covers this part of Mexico (we’re only 50km or so from Mexico City) we could just make out a volcano that gives off puffs of smoke regularly.

After Comida (the largest meal of the day, eaten between 2-4pm) we spent some time in the town square where Quinn found a playground and a trampoline. The business of trampolines is like that of the little cars he drove in Guadalajara. An enterprising person sets one up in a public area and charges 15 pesos for 15 minutes. Good stuff.

Yay! Balloons!

On Saturday we headed South once again for Oaxaca. We saw Pico de Orizaba, Mexico’s highest peak at 18,491 feet, from the highway. The haze gradually cleared as we headed away from Mexico city, and the road snaked through some impressive mountainous terrain. We really noticed the ongoing power issues in the van when climbing the long grades. We’re hoping that if we can re-produce the problem while in Oaxaca we can find someone to take a look at it. We arrived just in time for Comida (notice a recurring food theme here?) and Jen found us a great restaurant where we enjoyed cold beers, Ceviche, and salmon.

Pico de Orizaba, as seen through Mexico City’s haze.

We’re staying at a very friendly campground outside of town called the Overlander Oasis that is run by a Canadian couple. We’ve signed up for more Spanish classes starting Monday, and we’ve got some volunteer work to do here, so we’ll be stationary for another week.

Muchos Gringos!

San Miguel is a great example of a picturesque Spanish colonial town, and lots of tourists know it! It’s a great place to come to buy art, ceramics, and just about anything else you might want. It feels much less “Mexican” than anywhere else we’ve been; nevertheless the attractions and the fantastic food kept us in town for a full week.

The town’s centerpiece is the Parroquia, with it’s soaring towers which were added on to an older church in the late 19th century.

Brightly colored buidings and narrow cobblestone streets are part of what gives San Miguel its appeal.

Part of the reason for our extended stay is the very nice RV park that is walking distance to the center of town. Our first day was spent exploring the town and hitting a couple of the museums, plazas, and cathedrals.

The next day we headed out to Cañada de la Virgen, a pre-columbian site nearby. Our guide was an archeologist who participated in excavating the site. We learned a lot about the history of the region, including a colorful local landowner and her involvement with the development of the site. The people who built the site had an amazing knowledge of astronomy, including some that would seemingly be impossible to acquire without telescopes. It remains a mystery how they acquired that knowledge and that’s where the theories of extraterrestrial encounters come in. I won’t go any further into that, but rest assured that we weren’t visited by any aliens. At least not that we know of.

On Saturday we went to a nearby hot spring where we met with Katie and her family, who we spent some time with in Guanajuato. We enjoyed a relaxing day and Quinn got some much needed pool time.

The temple at Cañada de la Virgen

One of the benefits of a tourist town is that there’s lots of touristy stuff to do, and on Sunday I got to go mountain biking for the first time since leaving Colorado in November! I went with a local guide who took me and 3 other guests on a 40km ride through the countryside near San Miguel. One highlight was a visit to an unexcavated pre-columbian ruin. It was fascinating to see one in it’s natural state and to know that there was probably at least one or two people buried beneath our feet 500 or more years ago.

This is what one of those temples looks like before it gets excavated and restored.

I rode with Michael, a Swiss guy we met in Guanajuato. He and his wife are traveling to South America in a Land Rover similar to the one we had in Africa.

We stopped in a tiny village for snacks.

The ride took us through some farmers’ fields

Warning: Pictures of Quinn below:

Yum! Grapes!

San Miguel has a great, modern playground. It’s even equipped with soft surfaces rather than packed earth. And there were no re-welded joints on any of the equipment!

For our second week in Guanajuato we moved into an apartment next to the Plaza del Baratillo in the center (El Centro) of town. For $25 per night we had a really nice place with a full kitchen, a breakfast bar, dining area, living room, bathroom and lofted bedroom. We also had terrific views of town from our new digs, the use of a beautiful terrace and superfast wifi. We were amazed at how quiet it was there (with the exception of ringing church bells 2-3 times a day).

The best part was that we were within easy walking distance to just about everything. Within our little plaza, for example, we had access to about 4 different coffee shops (with wifi), 2 internet cafes, a place where we could get freshly-squeezed fruit juice, and a produce vendor with an incredible selection of fruits and vegetables (and where they will chop up any combination of veggies for you to take home for soup or a stir fry). In addition, there were numerous excellent restaurants and sidewalk vendors nearby offering a wide variety of delectable treats. It was always hard to decide whether to buy fresh food at the market and cook in our kitchen or sample the wonderful food on offer on the street and in restaurants!

The university campus in Guanajuato

We had about a 5-minute walk from our apartment to Escuela Falcon for our second week of Spanish lessons. With the help of the wonderful instructors at the school, Quinn has really increased his vocabulary and can now understand random conversations that he hears around town. His pronunciation of words is much better than that of either Witt or I and he corrects us when we don’t say things quite right.

Witt & I focused on learning past tense of verbs (Pretérito and Imperfecto for those of our friends that are already familiar with Español). We found that topic to be fairly confusing at first and we definitely need more practice with it. However, our ability to communicate has improved tremendously, and since the number of English speakers around us is likely to decrease as we go south, speaking a passing version of Español will become more and more important.

We also spent quite a bit of time on our first Spanish installation of KA Lite. We plan to dedicate a separate blog post to this topic, but our volunteer work added something special to our visit here. We were able to meet so many amazing people through our volunteer effort. We even got to the point where we would run into one or more of our new friends while walking around town. We’ve started to feel like an authentic part of the community.

Guanajuato is a fabulous place to wander around. There are numerous plazas with beautiful fountains, trees, flowers and green plants. Here also there is about 500 years worth of interesting architecture to admire. (That is not an exaggeration – this is one of the oldest cities in México – started in 1520 – and there are buildings here with 15xx written on the side of them.) The university here – Universidad de Guanajuato – dates back to 1732 and is known for its outstanding academics, research and outreach. There are several large theaters where plays, musicals and symphonies are shown. Dozens of museums are sprinkled through town, both historical (this was the site of the first battle of independence from Spain) and artistic (this was the birthplace of Diego Rivera, for example).

One of the many pleasant plazas in town.

Since “La Comida” – the big meal of the day – is usually held from around 3-5pm, evenings are the time for families and students to walk around town. Entertainment is everywhere here in the form of very good street performers. We were lucky enough to be in town for the annual street entertainers festival, and saw comedians, jugglers, mimes, musicians, and several people pretending – rather convincingly – to be statues. We had a blast just wandering around and taking it all in.

Mmmm. Enchiladas.

A couple of evenings were spent watching street entertainers.

Quinn got a big kick out of them!

Quinn has made a few friends here too. He especially enjoyed admiring and playing with all of his new friends’ toys. Our landlord this week has a young son (~3 years old) who has a brand new full-suspension mountain bike with training wheels! Of course it was his train set that really got Quinn’s attention. The two boys played really well together and it was a teary farewell when the time came to move back into our van.

Quinn and Reuben busy playing trains

Today we are (reluctantly) leaving Guanajuato for San Miguel de Allende, which is about a 1-hour drive east of here. I think though that the city of Guanajuato, with its sunny, warm days and cool, clear nights, has earned a special place in our hearts. It might only be a matter of time before we return.

To reward Quinn for studying hard all week, we got him a little toy helicopter.

Guanajuato is a pretty crazy town. It started out as a mining town, and is built into a narrow valley with steep sides. After the whole city flooded out a couple of hundred years ago they dug tunnels under the city to divert floodwater. After they built a dam to control runoff, they didn’t need the tunnels anymore and converted them to roads. So a lot of the traffic is underground. Hop in a cab, ask the driver to take you somewhere, and you’ll disappear into a tunnel and pop out on the other side of town. The surface streets are few, and the best way to get around is by walking the convoluted alley ways that wind up and down the hillsides. We’ve definitely been getting our exercise! You can read more about it on Wikipedia.

There are a lot of very old churches in Guanajuato

… And the same one by night.

The streets have a very European feel to them.

Looking over the city.

We stayed with the Hortensia family during our first week here. We had our own room with a bathroom in a separate building that the family built to make extra money from housing students. Señora Hortensia made us breakfast each morning, and “La Comida,” which is the traditional large meal in Mexico, eaten with the family at around 2-4pm. It was great to sample Mexican home cooking and we all really enjoyed the food, especially the sometimes picky Quinn!

Anni, Señora Hortensia’s daughter, brought her 7 year old son to lunch at the house most days, and he and Quinn had a great time playing together.

Quinn and Victor playing on the patio at our host family’s house

The downside was the 20 minute walk up and down some steep hills to get from the house to our Spanish school each day. The walk was good exercise, but after we got home in the afternoon, we really didn’t want to go out exploring. So for our second week here we rented an apartment closer to the school and downtown.

Spanish classes have been very good (especially after we changed from four to three hours per day of classes) and we are all learning a lot. The school coordinates activities, and we got to make traditional Mexican kites one evening.

Making Papalotes

We also met with Katie, the volunteer coordinator who works with Do Good As You Go, the volunteer organization we’re working with. She has connections with a girls’ school here in town, and we’re planning to install KA-Lite there.

On Saturday we made the big move, hauling all of our stuff to our new digs, and moving the van to a less expensive parking place. Katie invited us to a mural-making party that afternoon that she had arranged to decorate a wall along one of the alley ways. Quinn had a great time painting!

Mural painting

We slept in Sunday morning and took advantage of our real, full-size kitchen to make pancakes. In the afternoon we went to a local park and paddled a boat around the small lake feeding bread to the ducks. We sampled some local street food, then went back to the center of town to hang out at a bar and watch the superbowl. No need to say any more about that.

Our new digs

Feeding the ducks