WITNESSING MARIPOSA MAGIC HIGH UP IN THE MEXICAN HIGHLANDS
It’s a cool January way up in the rain forests of central Mexico. No. Scrape that. It’s cold. Damn cold, and foggy, and drizzling. This is NOT what I had in mind when Continental Airways (Now United) and the Mexican Ministry of Tourism invited me to visit the secret winter hideaway of the Mariposa. Yet, for countless royalties, this forgotten patch of dark pine grove, 3,300 meters high, is the perfect idea of a winter resort. Some of them flew over 7,000 Kilometers from Southern Canada just to get here. I’m just waiting to get back down and into the relatively warmer van. Go figure.
The insect Iron Man
I’m in Michoacán a state just west of the Capital (like the US, Mexico is also divided into states). This is a place of true magic, full of volcanos, and lost cities. You can read more about it in the post “dead, and loving it”. If its name sounds alike the US state of Michigan, that’s because both mean the same – Land between lakes. If you’d had been following Breaking Bad and its prequel – Better Call Saul, you’d know it also as a hub of Mexican drug cartels. But we’re not here for a sniff of Cocaine, but to see the king of kings – the Monarch Butterfly.
This record-breaking insect is not just beautiful, it’s is also a winged “Iron Man”. It lives 9 months, covers a distance of 7,000Km from as far away as southern Canada to this tiny dark grove in the Mariposa Biosphere Reserve. This arduous journey may not sound much to a modern jet-age traveler. It is quite unbelievable for a butterfly. As a reporter of Forbs Magazine, I’ve taken the task of traveling eastern Michoacán just to see them. It’s not that I suddenly became a National Geographic explorer in residence. This was a way of Continental and the Mexican Tourism Ministry to encourage travelers to choose Mexico over other destinations. Naturally, they took great care in pampering their guests to the max. Thank you, but no need to feel sorry. Never-the-less Was it worth it?
Up into the clouds
We meet Jose the park’s warden down in the small parking lot at the end of the poorly kept road and start climbing up a wooden staircase into the clouds above. Reserva de Biosfera de la Mariposa Monarca is a UNESCO World Heritage Site containing most of the over-wintering sites of the Monarch Butterfly (or Mariposa in Spanish). 100Km northwest of Mexico City and some 3,300m high it contains millions of butterflies arriving annually to inhibit just a few selected trees from October to March.
The climbing isn’t easy as we grasp for air in the oxygen-poor elevation.
For decades researchers have tried to understand where does all the population of Monarchs in Eastern North Americadiscoverto and reemerges from. It wasn’t until1975thatDr. Fred Urquhart discovered the location of the monarch overwintering sites in Mexico, after pursuing migrating monarchs for nearly 40 years, and published it in the August 1976 issue of National Geographic magazine. Presidential decrees in the 1980s designated these still privately held areas as a federal reserve. The Reserve was declared a Biosphere Reserve in 1980 and a World Heritage Site in 2008.
Meeting the kings
We try to regain our breath as we reach a plateau. Overtaken by fatigue and fog, we try to make out the strange-looking trees in-front of us. Their branches look as if wrapped by heavy lumps of gray goo. The land below is carpeted by fluttering faltering big yellow butterflies, wavering around as if trying to figure out where they are and how to get back to the trees above.
We look up again, and now we GET IT! The heavy gray lumps are, in-fact, congregations of hundreds of thousands of dormant butterflies! Keeping together help them keep warm during the cold, sunless, winters of the high central-Mexican range of mountains.
Jose picks up one of the butterflies in his hand. They can barely move, and instead of flying off, keep it steady on his big palm. Only the warmth of a sunny day will enable these big insects to move about, but not for much. During the winter months, the Mariposa don’t eat and survive solely on their accumulated fat.
It’s easy to understand why it took so long to discover this remote spot, and now once discovered, it is easy to understand why this place should be closely protected. Being up on the tiny, cold, foggy pine grove on the western edges of Michoacán, the fragility of this planet wildlife becomes self-apparent.
I climbed up the mountains of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve as a spoiled tourist on an all-included, fully-sponsored, Mexican journey. I came down a supporter of wildlife protection and an environmentalist.
Was the journey worth it?
Isn’t it obvious?