The journey to the village where I went to see the monarch butterflies at their winter home began at the bus terminal. Heading into more remote parts of Mexico with winding narrow roads meant switching from large comfortable buses to cramped rickety minibuses. In many ways, it held similarities to my visit to Nepal.
The first indication I got that things were different was that the driver stopped by the hardware store despite the van being loaded with paying passengers. I’d been in this situation before with my own tourists: passing by a store that I could so easily pop in and pick up something I need, but also knowing I would likely get fired if I did. Yet here it was acceptable.
There may have even been other stops before I boarded for everyone in the van seemed to be carrying bags of supplies, like toilet paper and soap that they’d likely picked up from town and were bringing back to the village.
The woman across from me was breastfeeding her child while the rest of the kids in the van snacked on chips or other unhealthy items served from brightly colored foil bags that are the mainstay of food offered at most convenience stores.
The one exception was the woman who’d boarded with a five gallon bucket filled with freshly picked blackberries and three sticks of sugar cane. Unlike the others who fed their children processed food, she dumped a handful of berries into her son’s hand. Apparently, some of the other children understood nutrition more than their mothers as one of them squirmed from his mothers grasp to reach for the bucket of berries. She pulled him back and forced a sugary lollipop into his mouth as a distraction.
Suddenly all hands went up to make the sign of the cross, which meant we had just passed a church though I couldn’t see it from my cramped position in the back. In Mexico, they finish the sign of the cross by kissing their fingers. Given the number of churches in the country and Covid, this is probably another way in which Mexico is challenged to stop the spread of the virus.
I stopped the driver when we passed by my hotel, and I paid him for the distance I’d traveled. The hotel seemed abandoned as I walked through different rooms looking for a reception area. It wasn’t a traditional hotel; it was more of a resort with a dining room, kitchen, atrium, and reading room. Still, there was no sign of life, and I texted the proprietor that I was waiting.
A couple minutes later, a young woman arrived and walked me to my room. She didn’t bother to ask my name or verify my passport as was traditionally done at check in. Instead, she just showed me to my room and asked if I needed anything. I asked if I was the only one staying at the hotel, and she replied, “yes”. That explained why she didn’t need to know who I was. No one else would be showing up that day.
She asked what time I wanted dinner and informed me that if I wanted a fire in the room, that I would have to pay $4. Since I was already paying four times what I’d paid at any hotel in Mexico, I declined and assured her I would be fine under the covers.
I dropped my bag and headed out to explore the resort. I would normally have headed out to explore the village, but on my way in, I’d seen no town center, and the resort property seemed expansive. I revisited the rooms I’d peeked in when I arrived and discovered nothing new, so I headed out to the garden in the back.
It was a lovely space, divided for different purposes. There were lounge chairs for resting in the sun. There was a vegetable and herb garden with a pen of baby goats behind it. To my right was, I assumed, a meditation area with strategically placed decorative rocks and a statue of Buddha in the middle.
I followed the path past the meditation garden and into a forest with raised treehouses that also reminded me of Asia. Continuing around the property, I found myself once again at the garden. It did seem like a nice destination spot to unplug for a weekend. As is to facilitate that experience, the place didn’t provide WiFi either.
I left the resort to see if I could find the village center. When I asked about restaurants, the woman said there were a couple in town. That ran contrary to both what I’d seen on Google maps and from the mini van. The area in which I found myself, I am confident naming the Mexican Alps. Though there weren’t sharp snow covered peaks, the village was at 9000 feet and most of the country wide open so you could just walk across the land without the hindrance of a fence.
To keep the animals contained, people tethered them to stakes pounded into the ground. The stakes didn’t always hold so it wasn’t uncommon to run into an animal out on its own recognizance trailing rope and a twig behind it.
Not all the animals were secured. Turkeys roamed freely and traveled in small groups unmolested by the dogs which also roamed free. I was surprised the dogs left them alone, but when I saw one of the Turkeys balloon himself into something larger than the accordion centerpiece we’d put in the center of the table for Thanksgiving, I realized the dogs were equally impressed and avoided a confrontation that could end embarrassingly.
It was a good thing that there were no fences because none of the roads I followed seem to get me any closer to the church I’d seen at the top of the hill. After circling around a couple times and missing it both times, I asked a group of boys how to get there.
I got a fairly long set of directions spoken at a pace I could hardly follow, but I chose to follow the boy’s finger which had pointed up the hill just to the left of us. Sure enough, when I got to the spot he’d been pointing to, I could see a path that wove around a building and brought me to the church. Unfortunately, it turned out to be more remarkable from afar so I took an obligatory picture and headed back towards the resort.
I still hadn’t seen a restaurant. There were several little grocery stores along the way but nothing serving anything but packaged processed foods. To be clear, when I say grocery store, I mean a wooden shack with a sparse selection of potato chips, milk, and cookies. They seemed ideal for a young kid but hardly had something to feed a family. One odd thing they all seemed to sell is inflatable beach balls which usually hung from bags in front of the entrance.
The closest I actually came to finding a restaurant was stumbling upon a family butchering a cow in the driveway of their home. I had to take a second look at the unexpected spectacle and the family waved me in for a closer look. They could tell I was caught by surprise. Even though I’d butchered a sheep the previous spring, I’d never seen something the size of a cow, which in this case splayed out across most of the driveway.
The whole family was involved in the butchering process. The father and older son were rapidly and surgically removing the hide and innards while the younger son and his mother held the legs out of the way. They asked if I wanted to help, but I knew I couldn’t keep up with them and said I’d rather just observe. Within fifteen minutes they had it ready to separate into the different meats we find at the grocery.
The one part that I did find disgusting was the stomach. This is commonly found in foods throughout Mexico, and I have never liked the texture. Now, seeing and smelling it, confirmed that I would never put that organ in my mouth again. I hadn’t considered that the stomach would be full of partially processed food at the time of butchering, and its contents gave off a foul odor when they’d spilled into the wheelbarrow placed to the side to collect them. They immediately washed it inside and out, but it reeked of a smell that overwhelmed the fresh mountain air I’d come for.
I decided to take my leave at that point and continued back towards the resort. As I mentioned earlier, none of the roads seemed to take the direct route to anything I was trying to get to, so I took a shortcut through some woods and found a bridge across a stream that brought me fairly close to home.
I reveled in that, while the roads were never direct, there always seemed to be a footpath to take you wherever you wanted to go. When I returned to the resort, there was a new car in the driveway. It turned out, I would not be alone that night. In fact, when I showed up in the dining room, there was a Mexican family milling about while their three kids played table hockey in the game room.
We talked for a few minutes in Spanish and then switched to English when we found out we were all born in the US. They declared that they shared my winter migratory pattern, spending six months working in the US and retiring to warmer climates for the winter. It was fun to see that they pulled this off with their three children since my friends with kids always use them as their reason for not being able to live a nomadic lifestyle.
They invited me to join them for dinner. There were occasions on my trip that I’ve had to weigh the risks of contamination to the rejection of a kind invitation from a stranger. I’d been dining alone for a couple of weeks so I decided to take a leap of faith and step into their bubble. As regular travelers, they were interesting and had a lot to share.
We had a full meal and their friendly nature with the service staff garnered us all a free dessert crepe with our coffee. When the bill came for dinner, they pointed to me, and we all had a good laugh at the look of panic on my face.
I bade them farewell as they planned to get a later start in the morning, and I expected to head out first thing. I went back to my room and read a little about visiting the butterfly reserve and realized I’d made one mistake already and was about to make a second.
The website for the reserve said that the butterflies are most active in March when temperatures warm up. While that made sense, I wondered why they had chosen, as their place for winter hibernation, a forest that was 9000 feet above sea level. Being mid-January, the morning temperature was forecast to be about 34 degrees, and this is where I made my second mistake:
I’d told the kitchen staff that I wanted my breakfast at 8am, seeing as I usually wake up naturally between 6 and 7. I typically like to get a full day of exploration in, but according to the website, the butterflies wouldn’t be very active until later in the afternoon.
The problem was that it was freezing when I woke up in the morning, so I figured it was better to walk in the morning to warm up and sit on my balcony in the afternoon when it was already warm instead of doing it the other way around, freezing in my room until the afternoon. Since I’d paid so much for the room, I wanted to get my money’s worth by spending some time in it.
The one hour hike up to the entrance of the butterfly reserve did the trick to warm me up. By the time I reached it, I was down to a t-shirt and had removed my hat. I decided to kill a little time to give the butterflies a chance to warm up by grabbing a coffee from one of the vendors encircling the parking lot.
As I sat drinking my coffee, I realized that the flaggers in the parking lot actually worked for the food vendors as they attempted to direct any approaching vehicles to the parking spot nearest where they could collect a commission. As soon as the car was parked, a flock of women from the closest vendors descended upon the occupants of the car to present them with plastic laminated menus listing all the things they could consume before heading into the reserve.
I practically dumped the rest of my coffee so I could dart towards the entrance in order to get ahead of a group of about 40 people heading into the reserve, but then I noticed that they were all men dressed in black and wearing white collars. They’d just come out of mass from a chapel at the far end or the parking lot and were simply taking a group photo before heading back to their vans to change into casual wear.
I decided to take advantage of the time they needed to change by paying my bill and heading into the reserve. Fortunately my reading had informed me that a guide was required in addition to admission. It was a bit of an irritant since the path was well marked and there was absolutely no need for an escort. What he shared along the way was also not worth paying for. While I like the idea of supporting the locals, this seemed like a superfluous bit of extortion.
To his credit, he was in exceptional shape despite his age, and I had to ask him to slow down so that I could catch my breath. While my muscles were strong enough to power me along the one hour ascent, my lungs were not used to operating at this elevation. I also found out from my guide that he did the trek at least four times a day.
It was made clear that we were getting close to the butterfly hibernation spot by signs that began to appear counting down the number of meters in descending increments of 100 meters that started at 1 km. I found it comical that humans thought they could so predictably place the location of the butterflies. As it turns out, according to my guide, the butterflies do in fact return to the exact same trees every year!
He pointed up to large brown clumps which looked to me more like ivy that had grown up the tree trunks. As I strained to look more closely, the clumps did begin to take the shape of colonies of butterflies, but without a sign telling me that this was the location, I would have completely missed it.
There were some butterflies fluttering in the early rays of sunlight, and I did my best to take pictures and video. Even as I was doing both I realized there would really be no way to impress someone with the images so I just stood for a few minutes and watched.
It was clear that the scene was not likely to become any more dramatic, and I began to wonder how much time I was expected to stand there looking at the clumps based on the level of effort it had taken to get there. I decided I’d reached the point of diminishing returns about two minutes after arriving at the spot and told the guide I was ready to head back, hoping he wouldn’t be too offended by my lack of interest.
I decided I would try to salvage my visit and asked my guide how much it was to return on horseback. As an alternative to hiring a walking guide, I read that you could go by horseback with a guide. I had ignored the horseback guides on my way in because I figured they’d be more expensive, and I wanted to go up the hill under my own power.
The guide said the horseback trip was 150 pesos ($7.50) one way and 300 pesos round trip, and I decided it would be totally worth it to salvage my experience by enjoying a horseback ride through the alpine forest. The guide who escorted me turned out to be much more informative, and I’d wished I’d gone with him for the whole round trip.
When I returned to the parking lot, it was just before lunch so I decided to spend a little more money at the vendor who’d made me coffee that morning. Times being tight, I always feel bad when I order something small, so I figured I’d contribute some more to their income for the day even though I wasn’t that hungry.
I asked for a quesadilla with mushrooms and pumpkin flowers, which were readily available in this region. This would have been a tasty combination, however, I was informed that they didn’t have any pumpkin flowers. I asked for another vegetable option and she recommended huitlacoche.
I’d had huitlacoche before and thought it to be a redundant addition to a mushroom quesadilla. The most simple translation of huitlacoche is “corn smut”. It is the gray fungus that grows on corn that is not picked on time and left to rot on the stalk. Like many foods, I had no idea who the first person was to try this, but it’s actually sweet and tasty, especially when served with melted cheese.
I guess the cook also thought it was redundant because instead of bringing me a quesadilla with mushroom and huitlacoche, she brought me one of each. Not being hungry to begin with, two quesadillas were much more than I wanted, but at least I knew they would keep me full until dinner time.
It was just past noon when I finished my quesadillas, and I still had half a day in front of me. I decided to walk a different way back to the resort than I’d taken getting there. The previous day, I saw another interesting looking church on the opposite side of the valley so I decided to try to work my way around to it.
In addition to being the most obvious choice, the road that followed the mountain ridge provided a constant view of the valley below so I was easily able to scout the best route to descend. Along the way, I passed a pick up truck with its tailgate down and a woman chopping something with a cleaver. It turned out to be a chicken delivery truck that provided freshly butchered chickens to your door, or at the top of the footpath closest to your door, as was the case in this instance.
It seemed that on this mountain, all services were brought to the customer because just a few minutes later I passed a pickup truck also with its tailgate down, and the owner was making spare keys. That was followed by a pickup driving around collecting recyclables.
It wasn’t just pick ups either. I witnessed two horses strapped with heavy bundles as their owners went door to door selling firewood. Each seller had a distinctive call. The chicken truck blared mariachi music out of a giant speaker mounted on top of its cab, while the firewood delivery guy rocked a cow bell back and forth in his hands. It was like a dozen variations of the ice cream man, only for adults.
It continued like this as I descended a steep windy road towards the church below. Like the one I’d discovered the day before, this one was more striking from the bottom of the hill, sticking up from the town on the mountainside, than it was up close and I continued on without even taking a picture.
The road I’d chosen took a sharp right and began to head away from my destination so I transferred to another mountain pathway that took me past several pastures and a river where a cowboy was watering his horses. I had to cross the river balancing on rocks before climbing up the other bank and making my way back to the resort.
I made it back in time to nap on the balcony outside my room while there were still a couple of hours of sunlight. I basked beneath my wool blanket until the sun set and the air quickly chilled. That night I did eat alone and opted to buy the bundle of firewood since I returned to my room well before bedtime.
What I wish I’d known the night before is that purchasing the firewood includes having the staff light the fire for you. I won’t lie, I entertained a fantasy of one of the women from the kitchen staff coming to light my fire, but when I answered the door, a burly man wearing a camouflage jacket walked in without a word and began the process of building the fire. Minutes later it roared into an inferno.
I thanked him, and he walked out with as many words as he entered with. I was impressed by the way it quickly took the chill out of the room and wondered if it was the shape of the fireplace that made it particularly efficient at directing heat into the room and not up the chimney. I guessed by the amount of smoke accumulating in the room that perhaps that wasn’t getting out the chimney either. I didn’t care. I was warm, and I fell asleep easily.
The next morning, I awoke early. It was to be a day of bus travel I could not research online so I thought it best to get on the road as soon as possible. Really, the only mysteries were what time the first minivan started and how frequently they ran. I knew once I got to the bus terminal things would be fairly regular, but I was trying a route not normally traveled, and there was a possibility of only a couple of buses running that route each day.
I waited about forty minutes as the village awoke, serenaded by a cacophony of roosters whose crowing echoed throughout the valley in the misty morning air. Suddenly a pair of headlights lumbered around the corner and I raised my hand. The mini bus pulled up next to me and I opened up the door to a human chorus of Buenos Dias. Indeed it was to be a good day.