The breakfast this morning was typical of past days, eggs plus... I had huevos rancheros and they were very good, but not as exquisite as the dinner last evening. Still, it was a grand breakfast and we said our goodbyes to two great hosts.
Out on the road, Roger uncharacteristically got a bit lost finding the right road out of Zitacuaro to the reserve. Rewind a couple of times and we were finally heading the right way. The reserve was about 20 miles away and after another missed turn, we finally arrived to find Ken already there and wondering where we were.
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| OK, found Ken, found the preserve, parked and ready to go.. |
After stowing our gear in Ken's truck we headed up to the “office” to pay for entrance fee, parking and the horses that would take us up the mountain to the Monarch preserve.
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| The reserve signage.. |
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| Cowboy Tom, ready to rumble, bumble & stumble up the trail |
We each selected an appropriately sized mount(these were smallish mountain ponies) and climbed aboard with aid from the vaqueros, who'd prepared the them. We headed out and endured a pretty steep hour ride that went from about 7200' to 9700'. Those were tough little ponies and the young man who ran up the trail, to help urge them on showed little mercy. On the way up(and down), Don wobbled along and entertained us with his western Wyoming cowboy wisdom. An apropos audio track to the dusty, rocky, bouncing rocking chairs we were clinging on to.
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| The pasture at the preserve viewing area.. |
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| We're all off our steeds and almost ready for the hike.. |
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| Our guides to the viewing area.. Good guys.. |
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| Aha.. found one.. |
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| and another.. |
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| Splotches of orange in the trees, everywhere.. |
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| A single orange splotch.. |
Up at the preserve viewing area, we dismounted and followed another two guides, who'd been on the mountain for a time, on foot another mile or so up into the forest. My bum knee was fine, but my lungs were complaining. Unfortunately, the sun was not cooperating, and the Monarchs need sun and a temp of at least 54 degrees to become active and there was very little activity. They were there, but up in the trees so high, they weren't visible. A shame, but we did get some photos of stragglers and a few hearty souls braving the cold temps.
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| Easying our way back down... |
Mounted, on the way back down, there was some strong sun about 50 yards to our right, and they were swarming around the trees in the sun, so we were able to get a few long distance vids, but nothing close up. Remember, this was taken sitting on the pony, trying to steady the Canon in video mode with no any-pod for support... Oh well, like all observations of natural phenomenon, things don't always go as you'd like. Still and all, a nice morning.
The first 30 or so miles took us through a wonderful pine forested area on some twisty but very rough roads. We followed that up with some rather insane toll roads and at about 2:30, Jim signaled Roger(leading) to pull over. Don had been carrying a custom fuel container on his tail rack. The weight had broken a weld on one of the mounting points and the rack and gas were flopping up and down. We removed the fuel container and lashed up the rack as best we could.
The journey continued. We had voted that morning to take the new toll road around the top of Mexico City, instead of the route Roger had used before that went through parts of the city. The traffic conditions on the latter route were extremely variable and could have been light, or as in one year, where they had to hire a motorcycle courier to escort them through and around traffic, sometimes via sidewalks and medians. The toll road turned out to add about 70 miles to the 240 mile planned trip, so we unfortunately had another night ride experience, but no sidewalk excursions.
After exiting the toll road we still had about 20 miles of rough highway and a few miles of cobblestones, before the Hotel Quinto Sol appeared before us. Relief. We got into our rooms by about 7:30PM. We were able to park the bikes in their convention room, so that was cool. A nice dinner in the hotel(mine was Arrechera, which is a marinated skirt steak and delicious) and we retired for a late arise and trip to the pyramids.
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