Pinal de Amoles and one Puente de Dios

It was really hard to narrow down the 200-odd pictures I took last weekend down to the just-under 40 that I am showing below. The Río Escanela near Pinal de Amoles in the Sierra Gorda de Querétaro turns out to be just as beautiful as the soon-to-be off-limits Huasteca region in San Luis Potosí. I […]

Beautiful and fun

No, no, I’m not talking about myself, like always, but instead the river, canyon and waterfalls at the Río Escanela near Pinal de Amoles. Saturday was a perfect day for a hike in and besides the river. I didn’t wear the best clothes for swimming, but that didn’t matter when we got to the real […]

Day of the Dead 2012 – Marigolds and Altars

Walking around town this year, I think that the Day of the Dead altars are still beautiful and well-crafted, but they seem smaller or less elaborate. To separate this year’s photos from last year’s, I’m more focused on the marigolds. These are the traditional flowers use to honor the dead and are used on the […]

Nice to have a few days at home

After keeping my fridge mostly empty for the past month while I have been traveling every few days, it is nice to be able to go to the local market to restock. The scene can get a bit wild on the weekends, and I finally had the courage to sneak a bunch of photos with […]

2 days of flowers and work

I mean work and flowers. Definitely in that order. To work on the super-secret, super-awesome soccer ball project, I got to tag along on the practicum visit of a couple of trainees in the natural resource management program. The visit was to the Bosque La Primavera in Guadalajara, and it was definitely worth a second […]

85,000 birds in the sky – the River of Raptors

Or, more specifically, 85,591 including: 33,376 Turkey vultures 7 Swallow-tailed kites 1 Mississippi Kite 8 Norther Harriers 29 Sharp-shinned hawks 39 Cooper’s hawks 2 Gray hawks 5109 Broad-winged hawks 41,864 Swainson’s hawks 16 American kestrels 5 Peregrine falcons 5135 Unknown raptors Details here. See: All of this was in just one day observing the Río […]

2nd Marathon, way better than the first

I mean, I’m stuck on the couch now, but it is totally worth it since I achieved my goal of a sub 4h marathon. I finished right around 3h57m and a bit, and it was so satisfying. I felt great for almost the whole race. Kilometers 33-38 were kind of rough, but I had banked […]

Winning is a lot of fun

With trepidation I went to the Festival Internacional Salva el Diente this weekend outside of Guadalajara. After a late arrival, I wasn’t sure how I was going to be feeling for the 10k trail race early on Saturday morning, but I just wanted to run as a part of my marathon training (which is only three weeks away!). I […]

Yucatan Peninsula – Day 7 – Cenotes

Woulda, shoulda, coulda. Along with everything else, the Yucatan peninsula is also known for its cenotes, or sort of sinkhole caves, resulting from the limestone geology. There are too many to visit, but we had a hard time picking even one to visit. We were driving by them in the middle of our trip and […]

Yucatan Peninsula – Day 6 – Isla Holbox

We were done early after our birding tour in Rio Lagartos, and so we headed for our second relaxing day on the beach on Isla Holbox. It is a quick ferry ride from Chiquila to the island, and then we walked down the sand streets to the beach and found a hotel. This was our […]

Yucatan Peninsula – Day 5 – Rio Lagartos

Birds, birds, birds. Rio Lagartos is another town at the end of the road, but this time on a lagoon. The area is known for birdwatching, and it is another protected Mexican biosphere reserve. Along with Celestun, this is one of the places to find large flamingo colonies. We didn’t see the thousands of flamingos […]

Yucatan Peninsula – Day 4 – Chichen Itza

Since I don’t really count Tulum, this was day 2 with Mayan ruins. I wasn’t expecting much from Chichen Itza, even with its wonder-of-the-world status, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was interesting – not that we took a tour. So, you will have to excuse the lack of information in the picture captions, because […]