Monarchs in Michoacán

Millions of monarch butterflies migrate from the U.S. and Canada each fall to a mountaintop in central Mexico. They navigate to an evergreen grove they’ve never seen before: the same one that sheltered their ancestors. How do they do it? Scientists are researching this intriguing question, but they don’t have definite answers. (See http://www.monarchwatch.org/.)

A trip to Michoacán to see the monarchs has been on our places-to-go-in-Mexico list for years. This year we finally did it. An expedition to the preserve -- El Rosario Sanctuary in Ocampo -- has to be timed just right. Late February and early March are best because the butterflies come out of their semi-dormant state as the temperature rises. The weather on the day of the visit should be warm and sunny. If it’s too cold, the butterflies hang from the trees, wings folded, to conserve energy.

Hiking up the mountain to the butterflies’ grove was strenuous. I’m used to aerobic walks in San Pancho’s hills, but my husband Skip…. Let’s just say it wasn’t realistic to expect he’d be thrilled by a steep trek to 10,000 feet.

He and I agreed, though, that what we saw at the top of the mountain was worth our effort: orange and black monarchs wafting in the sunlight, clustering in rivulets of water, mating delicately, clinging to pine and fir trees. When I listened closely, I could hear a faint swishing sound: not wind in the pines, but the fluttering of butterfly wings.

The monarchs’ winter habitat is protected under Mexican law. However, experts say that local people are destroying the preserve by logging illegally and clearing land for crops. I’m not surprised. Three-year old children begged us for money as we climbed the trail to El Rosario’s entrance. If my kids were hungry, and I could get hundreds of dollars for a pine tree, I’d probably cut it down, too.

The Golf Cart

When a neighbor in New Mexico offered an electric golf cart for sale at the bargain price of $275, my husband and I thought it would be perfect for running around San Pancho. It was the original Westinghouse battery-operated model, pushing 50. Along with solar panels to charge the batteries, we loaded it in the back of our old pickup and headed south. Getting it across the border was tricky—officials demanding non-existent VIN or registration—and that only the start of the trouble. In retrospect, it might have been better to have gone north, put it on an ice floe and pushed it out to sea.


Our golf cart is all steel, thick step plate bent in flat surfaces around the three wheels. Dents are not a problem. We’ve had it painted an electric green by the local body shop and had the shabby seat upholstered in oil cloth with orange sunflowers—you might call it an admission that it is a preposterous vehicle. It creaks loudly over the speed bumps, metal rubbing against metal, the broken right front spring causing it to list wildly and making the passenger hold on for dear life.

It wasn’t long before the old batteries had to be replaced, for $800, and the solar cells up-graded to the tune of $1300. The batteries charge strongly enough in a day to take us all the way out the jungle road and back, but an iffy cable, and then an intermittently faulty throttle switch have caused us to be dumped time and again, cart abandoned at the side of the road while passengers walk home. Only Green Pride keeps us careening around on it, that and getting to park right up front, and seeing the smiles on each face as we bounce by.

A friend recently moved down to Mexico and changed his name to Lorenzo for the ease of his Spanish-speaking neighbors. A vaguely bilingual worker he hired tried to explain to him that the name “Lorenzo” has some unfortunate connotations. “What does it mean?” the new Lorenzo asked. “Well, it’s like…it’s like…well, you know that guy who rides around on that green carrito? He’s Lorenzo.”

Porch-sitting

This has been my longest time away from home in twelve years of living in Mexico. I’ve spent the last ten months in California, helping my daughter with childcare while she gets a home renovation business off the ground. It’s nice to be needed, and I’ve grown that much closer to granddaughters Lily, almost 10, and Anna, 8. But still, I miss my life, my friends, and my house in San Pancho.

People ask all the time, “What exactly do you DO in San Pancho?” and the short answer is “Not much.” So what is it that I miss?

That answer, “not much,” holds the key, I think. Life slows to a crawl there, and you adapt to a pace that keeps you calm. You go to bed early and sleep in late. Every other day you knock off a few items on a to-do list of relative inconsequentials, mostly involving a hardware store. You take time for long leisurely chats with friends you meet on the street. You resign yourself to phone and internet and satellite TV outages that can go on for days (plus come to realize that your being incommunicado has not made much of a difference to anyone but you). You make a big deal out of small events, milking them for every drop of enjoyment. In my case, that means cooking elaborate meals for friends and treating myself to hours of quiet prep time in my beautiful kitchen.

I look forward to re-adapting in April, when I’ll spend the month at home at Quinta Elena. I will sit on my porch, drinking cup after cup of café moka, listening to the palm fronds swishing in the Pacific breeze, taking in the solitary hawks and the flocks of wild parakeets that swoop across my field of vision as I stare out to sea. Doing nothing---it will be an excellent use of my time.

The Life of a Garden

Before I came to live in tropical San Pancho, I made my home in the high desert of New Mexico. Our little farm town was in a river valley and our properties, lined up on either side of the river, were irrigated by an acequia system. An acequia (irrigation ditch) takes water from the river high upstream and brings it in decline, gentler than the river, to gates above the fields. When a gate is opened, water tumbles down on crops and gardens.

One never finished lowering this part of the land and raising that, making channels, trying to keep driveways dry, houses, too, getting water to new trees, giving up on hopeless corners. I lived there thirty-six years, and the irrigation work was never done. The winters were cold, and there was snow, but never quite enough melt to fill the river so that everyone in the valley could irrigate at will. The summers were hot and plants could wither in hours. Hail storms, late freezes, locusts…there was a lot of shaking fists at the heavens. It was only in my last years that I could look out on what had been a wasteland of cactus and burrs and see a lawn, large trees, flowers, vineyard, and orchard—a mature garden at last.

Things are different in San Pancho. Start with nurseries where a big day’s shopping might run you twelve dollars. Bananas can hit twenty-five feet in six months. Shade trees require no more than a couple of year’s patience. The birds-of-paradise fill in every empty spot. Philodendron grows leaves bigger than turkey platters. Bougainvillea reaches the roof and beyond. Bright birds come for the papayas. All is lush and the temperature drops fifteen degrees when you come in from the street. Your wrinkles are set back ten years and you could sit all day in contented viewing—a mature garden in time lapse.

Ah, but what comes after mature? Old. These days, philodendrons are choking the philodendrons. The bougainvillea is up on the roof throwing down the tiles. The birds-of-paradise don’t bloom under the shade of the trees. Plants which were intended to settle at different heights are all up there out of sight. Leaf mulch has raised the ground at least six inches. My house is disappearing into the vegetation like Angkor Wat.

To say that the garden needs “pruning” is to understate the problem. Daily, I, my husband, or my sometime gardener, cut, clip, chop and pull. Machete and chain saw. The pile grows in the parking area until the car won’t fit and we call on our neighbor to haul the stuff away in his pickup—for a handsome fee. By the next day the pile will be growing again. Twelve loads since December. Perhaps it is the excess of oxygen that keeps us happy anyway.

The Candelaria Party

Chely, at the party

This year I gave a party to celebrate Candelaria, which falls on February 2. I had no idea of the religious or secular meaning of the day, and I’d never made a tamale, the essential menu item at Candelaria parties.

I said I’d host the party because I found the baby Jesus figurine in my piece of Rosca de Reyes, the special sweet bread served at my friend Lynn’s Three Kings’ Day party. According to Mexican tradition, the person who finds the plastic baby is supposed to invite all the same guests for Candelaria. I wanted to be a good sport; it was a way to learn about a Mexican tradition; and Lynn and Chely, one of Lynn’s Mexican guests, said they’d help.

The preparation of tamales sounded complex. Little loaves of masa, a corn-based dough, are formed around a filling of chicken, pork or cheese, tied up in a corn husk, and steamed in a deep pot. Not something I wanted to try for the first time when 20 people from Chely’s family were coming for dinner. I knew that Eva, proprietor of a popular taco stand, makes fine tamales, so I decided to contract out the job to her. Chely said she’d bring atole, a thick, warm drink that traditionally accompanies tamales, and refried beans. Lynn signed up for dessert.

The party food was four-star. Eva did a great job with tamales of chicken, pork rib, and strips of poblano chile with cheese. And even the people who don’t like atole liked Chely’s specialty, which was flavored with sweet, perfumey guayaba. Lynn’s made-from-scratch cupcakes were the perfect high-carb finish for the meal.

I did my best to make the Mexican family feel welcome. The women were interested in a house tour, and the kids occupied themselves with my grandchildren’s Lego blocks. I enjoyed myself, though it was hard for me to keep up with my guests’ fast-paced Spanish.

At the Three Kings’ Day party there had been a lot of talk about the kings’ names and which king brought which gift -- gold, frankincense and myrrh -- to the baby Jesus. But what was Candelaria about? No one mentioned it the night of my party. I checked on the web and found out that in English it’s called Candlemas, when Christ was presented at the temple 40 days after his birth, and when candles were blessed. It falls at the mid-point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox -- what I know as Groundhog Day. I’m glad I didn’t try to bridge the cultural gap by explaining Punxsutawney Phil to the Mexicans.

Hacienda San Angel

Hacienda San Angel

There’s no need to drive to Vallarta for a great meal, given the number of first class restaurants right in San Pancho. (Café del Mar will always be my favorite, if only for sentimental reasons. Picture my 14-month old granddaughter, Anna, asleep on its stone steps, head on chubby arms. And now the head chef is another Ana, my house administrator, the talented whirlwind Ana Ruiz.)

But an evening at Hacienda San Angel is so special, you owe it to yourself to make the trip. A B&B in the heart of Vallarta’s Old Town and one of Mexico’s premier boutique hotels, it also is open to the public for dinner (reservation required; http://www.haciendasanangel.com/).

My house guests and I dress up for the occasion, which begins with complimentary cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, served in the main salon. It’s a stunning space: a long wall of niches filled with colonial antiques; another wall covered with indigo and cream talavera tiles from ceiling to floor. Throw in strumming musicians, flowing fountains, and scores of flickering squat candles, and the effect is magical. “I half expect to see Zorro swing down on the chandelier,” my son-in-law Eddie said one visit.

We are free to roam around and take a look at the indoor and outdoor swimming pools, the tropical garden, and my personal favorite, the colonial-style back kitchen I love to revisit. Then it’s upstairs for dinner in one of the open-air living rooms or outdoor terraces, overlooking the town and the crowned dome of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. The food and service are excellent, the ambience sophisticated but comfortable, the price comparable to San Pancho’s better spots. Some of my friends and family enjoy San Angel so much, they now make dinner there an annual event.

Chuy and the Empanadas

Chuy, our housekeeper Irma’s son, wants a Play Station 3. We’ve known Chuy since he was five years old; he’s eleven now. When he was about eight he and my husband Bill used to go to the soccer field to “play golf.” Chuy doesn’t speak English, and Bill doesn’t speak Spanish, but off they’d go for hours, chatting as if they understood each other. They hit golf balls from one end of the field to the other and back again. Afterward they bought bags of treats to eat on the way home.

Chuy outgrew golf. He preferred surfing instead, surfing his favorite web sites on our computer, that is. He looked at hundreds of photos of the Lucha Libre (free wrestling) performers called luchadores. Famous for their high flying moves, colorful masks and costumes, luchadores are legendary characters celebrated by their fans all over Mexico. After serious consideration, Chuy selected three new performers to add to his collection. He showed us his choices naming each one, “Blue Panther, Atlantis, and Mistico.”

“Puedo imprimirlos? Can I print these?” he asked each time. We always said yes. He knew he could print three in full color each visit. Before going home, he put them neatly in his special folder.

But the time for childish things has passed. Chuy has a job. Determined to earn the money for the Play Station, he goes door to door in the pueblo selling empanadas, flaky sweet-filled turnovers, that Irma makes. Because we’re neighbors, our house is always his first stop.

Carrying a cloth-covered basket filled with fragrant warm-from-the-oven empanadas, Chuy appears at our door. He is ready for serious business.

“Cuestan cinco pesos, the cost is five pesos,” Chuy explains. “Estos son de vainilla, these are vanilla.”

He waits while I ponder how many to buy. I decide on ten, but then I always buy ten. Quietly counting to himself, Chuy selects each one and places it carefully on the plate for me. I, in turn, count out the correct amount of pesos for my purchase.

“Gracias, adios,” he says. No time for chit-chat now. Chuy has work to do.