Last week I returned from a week in Patzcuaro, Mexico. Friends Chuck and Georgia Conti retired there a year ago. They are building a beautiful home on the side of a mountain on the west side of Lake Patzcuaro. Their home, a labor of love, is an adobe-walled hacienda where Chuck hones his skill for violin making, and Georgia networks her love for birding among native residents and ex-pats alike. Together they have underscored their penchant for hospitality by including two furnished guest rooms, http://patzcuarobirder.blogspot.com/. Enduring the ordinary trials in dealing with local labor and materials in the completion of such a momentous venture will be worth it.
Georgia is training one of her laborers to be a birding guide. Hugo, a genuinely nice man with a good sense of humor, is a gifted tile man. He honed his construction skills in Southern California as an illegal immigrant but returned when his father became ill with cancer. He's been a birder since he was very young when he made sure his father always took him along on fishing and camping trips. I’m sure that accounts in part for his terrific spotting skills.
It’s been a week and I am still exhausted. We birded sun up to sun down. Set at the daunting elevation of 7,000 feet in the State of Michoacan, Patzcuaro is a 45 minute drive west of Morelia. March is the dry season. The Purhepecha farmers burn their fields and ditches. A smoky haze obscures the innate beauty of the grassy steppe geography blending with a rich oak and pine forest. I listed over 130 total species of birds. 49 were new to my life list. Species highlights included both elegant and mountain trogon, blue mockingbird, brown-backed solitaire, clay-collard, painted, and American redstarts all performing their precious ballet, crescent-chested warbler, red warbler, squirrel cuckoo, the sparrow-sized- squeaky-toy sounding blue-throated hummingbird, yellow-eyed juncos, black-chinned sparrow and a very
interesting local hybrid called a collard/ spotted towhee.
I met native peoples and ex-pats alike in my journeys from Patzcuaro
East to San Miguel de Allende. They don't understand why the US news
publishes so many 'BE AFRAID OF MEXICO" stories. They asked me to
convey their hope that more Americans will venture forth to visit
their country. They are already feeling the economic pinch. I can
personally attest to a visit with no "hair standing up on the back of my neck" experiences.
The Patzcuaro experience is a study in contrasts. Newly planted hectares of avocadoes are nourished with state of the art drip irrigation. Then a few kilometers down the road four men and a team of horses and a muleplant a sloping field with corn. The local Spanish is punctuated with the indigenous Tarasco language of the Purepecha Indians. Native women still wear their embroidered white muslin blouses and long pastel skirts. Brightly painted homes cling to the hillsides of humble neighborhoods. Dogs patrol the roads and streets in lieu of any other regulating presence. As you drive the villages and countryside, progress is punctuated by "topes", speed bumps of varying severity. They slow you down before curves, bus stops, busy cross streets and around the city square. In lieu of traffic enforcement, Georgia says traffic rules are better understood as "suggestions".
There was the terrific avian variety/color/texture. Then there was the food and flavors from the street vendors and the market people, scrumptious. One afternoon in Morelia we treated ourselves to Morelia gazpacho. You’re thinking, cold tomato soup? Would you believe a 16 ounce layered cup of diced mango, jichima, pineapple, farmer's cheese, chili powder, salt topped with fresh orange juice. Mmmmmmmmm! One night we BBQ'd at Chuck and Georgia's.
Another night we dined at Cha-Cha- Cha's restaurant. But most meals may as well come from street vendors like the hamberguesa called China Comida Hoy. Depending on the day, they serve Chinese, Italian and or traditional Mexican cuisine. My last meal was his cheese burger; two thin burger patties, a grilled slice of ham, melted cheese, sautéed peppers and onions and spices... Oh, and a cold bottle of beer right out of the ice. After a long hot dusty day of birding, oh my, can you just imagine?
One morning Georgia drove us to humble neighborhood beyond the railroad tracks. We parked and walked a shaded path between two adobe homes with neatly planted container gardens. In the back we walked through a small wooden door into a 10' X 20' room. It is a home bakery called La Espiga (wheat head). A proud man dressed only in his work pants and shoes, carefully wields a long paddle-pole moving and removing golden loaves of bread from his stone oven. For those of you unfamiliar with Mexican bread, make its acquaintance sometime. It makes terrific breakfast food especially with Georgia's ration of butter and marmalade. One day we had to beg him for one each as he had an order for 900 loaves. He charged us the equivalent of 4 cents per loaf.
My buddy Mike Morrison and I are going back the end of October on an expedition to photograph the Day of the Dead festival and the monarch butterflies, their long tresses hanging among the old growth forest in. And more birds, of course more birds.
Georgia is training one of her laborers to be a birding guide. Hugo, a genuinely nice man with a good sense of humor, is a gifted tile man. He honed his construction skills in Southern California as an illegal immigrant but returned when his father became ill with cancer. He's been a birder since he was very young when he made sure his father always took him along on fishing and camping trips. I’m sure that accounts in part for his terrific spotting skills.
It’s been a week and I am still exhausted. We birded sun up to sun down. Set at the daunting elevation of 7,000 feet in the State of Michoacan, Patzcuaro is a 45 minute drive west of Morelia. March is the dry season. The Purhepecha farmers burn their fields and ditches. A smoky haze obscures the innate beauty of the grassy steppe geography blending with a rich oak and pine forest. I listed over 130 total species of birds. 49 were new to my life list. Species highlights included both elegant and mountain trogon, blue mockingbird, brown-backed solitaire, clay-collard, painted, and American redstarts all performing their precious ballet, crescent-chested warbler, red warbler, squirrel cuckoo, the sparrow-sized- squeaky-toy sounding blue-throated hummingbird, yellow-eyed juncos, black-chinned sparrow and a very
interesting local hybrid called a collard/ spotted towhee.
I met native peoples and ex-pats alike in my journeys from Patzcuaro
East to San Miguel de Allende. They don't understand why the US news
publishes so many 'BE AFRAID OF MEXICO" stories. They asked me to
convey their hope that more Americans will venture forth to visit
their country. They are already feeling the economic pinch. I can
personally attest to a visit with no "hair standing up on the back of my neck" experiences.
The Patzcuaro experience is a study in contrasts. Newly planted hectares of avocadoes are nourished with state of the art drip irrigation. Then a few kilometers down the road four men and a team of horses and a muleplant a sloping field with corn. The local Spanish is punctuated with the indigenous Tarasco language of the Purepecha Indians. Native women still wear their embroidered white muslin blouses and long pastel skirts. Brightly painted homes cling to the hillsides of humble neighborhoods. Dogs patrol the roads and streets in lieu of any other regulating presence. As you drive the villages and countryside, progress is punctuated by "topes", speed bumps of varying severity. They slow you down before curves, bus stops, busy cross streets and around the city square. In lieu of traffic enforcement, Georgia says traffic rules are better understood as "suggestions".
There was the terrific avian variety/color/texture. Then there was the food and flavors from the street vendors and the market people, scrumptious. One afternoon in Morelia we treated ourselves to Morelia gazpacho. You’re thinking, cold tomato soup? Would you believe a 16 ounce layered cup of diced mango, jichima, pineapple, farmer's cheese, chili powder, salt topped with fresh orange juice. Mmmmmmmmm! One night we BBQ'd at Chuck and Georgia's.
Another night we dined at Cha-Cha- Cha's restaurant. But most meals may as well come from street vendors like the hamberguesa called China Comida Hoy. Depending on the day, they serve Chinese, Italian and or traditional Mexican cuisine. My last meal was his cheese burger; two thin burger patties, a grilled slice of ham, melted cheese, sautéed peppers and onions and spices... Oh, and a cold bottle of beer right out of the ice. After a long hot dusty day of birding, oh my, can you just imagine?
One morning Georgia drove us to humble neighborhood beyond the railroad tracks. We parked and walked a shaded path between two adobe homes with neatly planted container gardens. In the back we walked through a small wooden door into a 10' X 20' room. It is a home bakery called La Espiga (wheat head). A proud man dressed only in his work pants and shoes, carefully wields a long paddle-pole moving and removing golden loaves of bread from his stone oven. For those of you unfamiliar with Mexican bread, make its acquaintance sometime. It makes terrific breakfast food especially with Georgia's ration of butter and marmalade. One day we had to beg him for one each as he had an order for 900 loaves. He charged us the equivalent of 4 cents per loaf.
My buddy Mike Morrison and I are going back the end of October on an expedition to photograph the Day of the Dead festival and the monarch butterflies, their long tresses hanging among the old growth forest in. And more birds, of course more birds.
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