Into the wild(er) slightly more northern parts

I had a spur-of-the-moment chance to make a quick visit to the lovely state of Aguascalientes recently. I’ve been meaning to visit the Volunteer living up there, but scheduling these trips is tricky, unless you can just go with the flow and take the last-minute opportunity. This is now the most northerly part of Mexico […]

Lessons from the Ancients

I finally made it to the famous National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. It is an overwhelmingly impressive collection, so of course I’m going to have to make light of it. But really, it was great and a must see like everyone says. I probably should have paid for the audio guide, but I […]

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 […]

The Long View

From the state of Hidalgo, looking out from Grutas Xoxafi.

Don’t forget me.

One more soccer ball distribution trip. One more soccer ball distribution trip! Whew. The end is in sight. Actually, I will probably be more sad than glad that the project is coming to a close. It has been a lot of fun traveling around and visiting all the different Volunteer sites to cause chaos (with […]

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 […]

Getting out more

From the Sierra Gorda de Guanajuato where I spent the last 2 days working, although it doesn’t feel like work when the setting is so beautiful.      

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 […]