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 Travel & Outdoors | October 2006 
Winter with the Monarchs in Mexico
 Hugh Dellios - Chicago Tribune
| | Butterflies alight on the ground and on bushes all around El Rosario Butterfly Sanctuary near Angangueo, Michoacan, Mexico. (Judy Wiley/Fort Worth Star-Telegram) |
Cerro Pelon, Mexico - Down the trail, straight at us, fluttered a stream of orange wings. They were monarch butterflies, one behind the other, flickering down the mountain by the hundreds in the morning sunshine to find water.
It was a colorful welcome to our visit to Bald Mountain in central Mexico, but it raised a suddenly worrisome question: We were on horseback, hoofing up the mountain to see a sanctuary where the monarchs spend the winter. But if they were all coming down the hill through the woods, how many would be left for us to see up top?
"Oh, don't worry," said José Luis Juarez, the farmer serving as our guide. "There's millions."
And so there were. Over the ridge, a 300-foot-deep ravine was orange with them, clustered on cedar trunks and clinging to branches like mussels on seashore rocks. In the air, they bobbed like aimless acrobats. Our backs to one of the ravine walls, the entire vista was alive as if we were watching a wrap-around IMAX movie.
The whisper of thousands of dancing wings sounds like a soft alpine wind through the trees. No, more like a storm of soft snow touching down on a quiet December night. Then a branch breaks and thousands pour out of a tree, making a sound like a giant cola bottle fizzing over.
"It's the eighth wonder of the world, I swear," said another tourist on her hike back up the ravine trail.
The monarchs live here in the forested hills between November and March every year, and I was visiting with my mother, Patricia, who had always wanted to see them. Her 70th birthday in March gave us a good excuse, and she didn't hesitate for a second before mounting the horse.
The sanctuaries are about 75 miles west of Mexico City in Michoacan State, a two-hour drive if you can escape the metropolis without getting caught in traffic. Seeing the butterflies is an annual excursion for Mexico City residents, but it also is a great side trip for anyone passing through the capital.
While there are eight sanctuaries in the area, locals say the Cerro Pelon sanctuary we visited is something special. The villagers have not logged the hillsides as much as in other places, so there is more shelter for more monarchs.
In fact, Cerro Pelon is the only place that Pablo and Lisette Span will send the guests who stay at their lovely little hotel in the town of Zitacuaro. The hotel, called Rancho San Cayetano, has 12 comfortable rooms, including three cabin-like suites spread out on the family's 13 acres.
While there are more rustic hotels in the area, this is like spending a few days at a hacienda. The decorations feature local Mexican crafts like pine-needle baskets. The groomed lawns include a pen with geese, beehives and raspberry bushes from which Lisette Span, who is French, makes honey and marmalade.
The dining room is a communal affair, where guests share tables, swap stories around the big stone fireplace and watch the Spans' videos about the monarchs. They also have a DVD of Humphrey Bogart's "Treasure of the Sierra Madre," which Pablo says was mostly filmed in the area in 1948.
The butterflies are most active in the midday warmth, so you can sleep in. And Pablo Span, a retired engineer, makes getting to the sanctuary easy by drawing a map of the backroads, where to find a roast-trout lunch and the exact number of speed bumps you pass (17).
On Cerro Pelon, the village families share the tourist business, taking turns guiding the visitors and renting out their horses. A half-day visit is remarkably cheap: $10 per horse, $10 for the guide, $3.50 per adult to enter the sanctuary and $1.50 parking.
And it's all for a good cause: The more tourists who come, the more money the villagers make, the less they will need to log trees for a living, the better chance that the monarchs will always have a home in the winter.
"I suggest just sitting up there with your hands behind your head," Pablo Span said. "You'll find an inner peace with yourself."
And so we did.
* Rental cars are available through most Mexico City hotels for the 75-mile drive to the sanctuaries. Be sure to pick off-hours to get through the western half of the city or traffic could be difficult.
* Hotel Rancho San Cayetano in Zitacuaro (011-52-715-153-1926; http://www.ranchosancayetano.com) has single rooms for $80 and double rooms for $95. Three cabins also are available, from $140.
Information
* Before going, check to see how many butterflies have arrived, and when they are expected to be most abundant. For more details, contact the Mexico Tourism Board: 800-44-MEXICO or http://www.visitmexico.com. |
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