El Cielo Biosphere

El Cielo (the sky) Biosphere contains a rare Mexican mountaintop cloud forest.  Gomez Farias is a small town at the base of the mountain but is within the Biosphere, according to my Tamaulipas Birding & Butterfly Map.  Guidebooks said one could take a standard vehicle part way up the mountain, to Alta Cima, but that a 4-wheel drive vehicle would be needed to go farther.

As arranged, I met with the family of four and the guide, Estefan, about 7am.  I thought we would be heading up the mountain straightaway, but Estefan had no vehicle.  We were to bird with him in the hotel area until the camionetas (open-sided tourist buses) began their tours at about 9am.  Then we would have to bargain with them independently for a ride.  Estefan had brought three pairs of binoculars for the four family members, but he offered no instructions on how to focus them, so I showed them how.  He began imitating an owl, which brought various birds to the trees overhead.  He pointed out a Red-billed Pigeon, a rarity, but it was barely light and I could hardly identify it.  He spent a lot of time setting up his scope for several Social Flycatchers, a pretty common bird for the area.  I soon realized I would not be content spending a day with beginning birders and explained that to the family.  They were very understanding, despite the fact that I might have cut into their time when we were earlier discussing the day’s arrangements.

I went back to the hotel to see if I could arrange for a camioneta.  The owner was quite willing to rent his—for a very high sum.  When I suggested I would join a group and we could divide the cost he seemed to lose interest.  Most of the group tours were put together by the expensive hotel downtown (Casa de Piedra).  One was to sign up and wait for enough people to fill the bus.  That didn’t really suit me either.  It took 2-4 hours to ascend the mountain.  Who could tell when the bus would be ready to leave?  By that time the best birding would be over.  There was lodging at San Jose near the top of the mountain, but I would have to leave my van with all my belongings behind.  That didn’t suit me either.  I decided to bird up and down the street and try to catch the first camioneta on the way up the mountain.  That didn’t work either.  By the time they got to my hotel they were filled, or else they just ignored my wave to stop—even if only a few people were riding.  I didn’t understand, and my limited Spanish was of no use.

Nevertheless, I had a wonderful time birding along the street, seeing several lifers.  I slung my birding chair over my back and was able to sit and watch whenever I heard lots of birds in an area.  Even without the birds it would have been an enjoyable walk.  Lush vegetation, tropical fruit, exotic flowers, and curious customs caught my attention all along the way.  Houses were nothing more than shacks in most cases, but wide-eyed children ran and played happily in the yards, stopping to stare at this pale-skinned foreigner in strange clothes.  An old man with no legs was sitting in a ragged hammock in one yard.  He saw me looking through my binoculars at a bird and motioned me over.  He pointed to a tree and I understood that he frequently saw a hummingbird there.  I thanked him for letting me know.  A little farther on I saw a huge hog tied up in a yard down a hill (the whole town was very hilly).  That was a first.  One tree with unusual fruit seemed to attract a variety of unusual birds.  I sat watching them for a long time.  A couple passing by handed me an announcement for a Santo Semana celebration at their church the next day and asked me to go with them.  I told them I would.  A vendor was selling huge, golden-yellow mangos for 4.5p.  I had no way to cut it, so he peeled and cut it for me.  It was juicy and delicious.  When I passed a woman filling a bucket with a hose, I asked her to aim the hose at my hands, which were dripping with juice.  Both women and children were sweeping their front walks and yards.  The yards were mostly dirt but were covered every morning with large leaves that fell constantly from the many trees.  The brooms were unique.  They were simply made of twigs from the trees, tied at the top with a piece of rope, a long branch through the middle used as a handle.  They worked well and were easily replaced.

About noon the birds grew quiet and I was hungry.  I intended to eat at the restaurant in my hotel, but for some reason they were not cooking that day.  I went to Casa de Piedra for lunch and to sign up for a camioneta for the morning.  The owner wasn’t extremely friendly since I had declined to stay in her hotel the night before, but she seemed happier after I ordered her 80p lunch.  She cooked the food herself.  It looked attractive but didn’t taste very good.  The view from her terrace, however, was worth the price of the meal.  I signed up on her camioneta list with the understanding that I might change my mind if I found one leaving before her 9am bus.  I left her a “Para Ti” tract and a pen along with my tip.

I returned to my hotel for the van.  If the guidebooks said I could make it half way without a 4wd I was willing to try.  The bottom of the mountain was only about a city block from my hotel.  I soon understood why most everyone had discouraged me from the climb.  The road was paved with huge, uneven stones, and it was only wide enough for a car and a half, as well as being very steep.  If someone were to come from the opposite direction, one vehicle would have to back up to a spot that had a bit of a shoulder.  I only saw one such place, which I had to use when a truck came down the mountain.  I asked the driver if there was a place I could turn around and he said there was one a little farther up.  I was relieved to turn around.  Perhaps a 4wd wasn’t absolutely necessary, but a vehicle with a higher clearance than mine was.

I drove up the steep hill to the internet café this time, since I could barely make it on foot, but they still weren’t able to get a signal.  I went back to my hotel and handed out tracts and gifts to the owners, the workers, and all of their children.  A roofing contractor from Tampico had a crew working on one of the hotel roofs.  He overheard me trying to convince the hotel staff to let me use my pre-paid phone card, to no avail, and offered to translate.  His English was pretty good, but he had no greater success than I with the phone situation.  It was nice, though, to speak my native tongue and to have someone explain to me certain signs and conversations. 

Since it was very hot and I had nothing else to do, I thought I would brave the showers.  Each of the two showers was just a small wooden box with a showerhead on one side.  On the other side of the showers were the washers where the staff did the laundry.  A common metal roof was over all.

At least one had a few hooks to hang a towel and clothes.  I chose that one despite the other two residents:  a huge spider on one wall, and a huge wasp beginning to build a nest on the other wall.  I was smugly satisfied to know that my family would never have dared to shower there.

Another trip to the internet café was finally successful.  I was able to send a long email to my family.  On the way back I was approached by a camioneta driver who wanted me to rent his bus for the morning.  I decided to pay the high price so that I could leave and return when I wanted.  The driver agreed to meet me at my hotel at 7am, for an early start.  I took his business card so I could call him if necessary.  Happy to have that taken care of, I returned to the hotel.  Another van was parked at the hotel and the driver had what looked like a short-handled dust mop, cleaning the van without water.  The dry mop did a very good job, and I asked if I could borrow it.  My van was covered with dust and I would get dirty hands just opening the doors or trunk.  The dry mop really helped.

I took a short walk at dusk, since birds are usually active again at that time.  They were hard to see, though, in the dense foliage with low light.  I did snap a photo of a Plain Chachalaca in one of the trees.  It’s the size of a female turkey, and its silhouette was clear against the night sky.  After that I just hung out around the hotel, trying out their several hammocks and exploring the area.  When the mosquitoes began biting I went to bed.

The next morning I was up early to eat breakfast, read the Bible, and get my small pack ready for my day’s birding.  I never doubted the driver would show up, but I was wrong.  By 8am I knew he wasn’t coming.  I explained the situation to the owner and the clerk in the lobby, but they said they couldn’t even call the driver for me since he lived out of town.  I drove up the hill to Casa de Piedra to arrange for a seat on one of their buses that was about to leave.  They agreed but then asked me to wait for a second bus, for a reason I couldn’t understand.  I didn’t want to leave my van in town all day, so I asked the driver if he could pick me up as they drove past my hotel.  He must have misunderstood, because he followed me to my hotel, expecting to drive me back to town.  I didn’t want to do that, in case the wait for the second bus was so long that good birding would be over.  In the end, we were not able to agree—most likely because we couldn’t understand one another—so I again failed to get to Alta Cima.  I decided to skip it.  Arrangements were too hard to make, the price was high, and I didn’t look forward to a 2-3-hour bumpy ride.  I’d been to Guatemala’s cloud forest in 2006 and supposed the birds here would be about the same anyway.

I decided to bird outside of town and went to do so when my gas light came on.  I returned to Gomez Farias but they had no station there.  At the small tourist office they told me it was 15km to the nearest station.  It turned out to be 30km before I saw the Pemex sign.  While the attendant filled my tank (no self-service in Mexico), a boy washed my windshield.  I had him do the rear and side windows as well and gave him 10p.  It is common for boys (and men) to walk up and spray your windows at stoplights and then began cleaning them without being asked.  They expect a tip.  I don’t know what they would do if they weren’t given one.  It was so dry and dusty that my van was always filthy, so I appreciated the clean windows.

I birded a few sites in the countryside around Gomez Farias, including Balneario La Florida.  It was packed with vacationing families, swimming and picnicking, and there were few birds to be seen.  A balneario is simply a section of a river where admission is charged to swim.  I wondered if people had always swum there without paying, before someone got the idea to install a rope across the entrance road and charge a fee.  A few women were cooking over grills—some for their own families and some offering their food for sale.  I bought the usual:  some kind of filling (chicken, beef, or pork) wrapped in a small tortilla.  It wasn’t very good, and I’d really come to dislike tortillas.  It was a good thing I hadn’t come to Mexico for the food.

When I got back to my hotel I got ready to go to the Holy Week celebration I had been invited to.  I didn’t know if it was protestant or catholic, but it didn’t matter to me.  My relationship with God could be celebrated despite circumstances.  A family picked me up in their rickety car and off we went, to what turned out to be a rather large group of Mexican protestants.  They were all dressed in their Sunday best, and I apologized for my pants and shirt.  I wished I had brought a skirt with me on my trip.  The father left me in the care of his eight-year-old daughter and returned with his small son to pick up his wife and new baby.  He had led us to seats in the front of the church before he left.  As the church filled up, those entering came to each row and shook hands with everyone else, including me.  That was nice.  When the father returned with the rest of his family, all of the seats around his daughter and me were taken, so we sat alone for the service.

I had brought a parallel KJV/Spanish New Testament to Mexico along with my usual Bible.  The Spanish edition matched the King James Version pretty much word for word and made it easier to understand the sermon, since I could glance across at the English to remember the details of that particular passage.  Unfortunately, unlike Guatemala where that process had worked well, the pastor was using a different Spanish translation than the one in my parallel New Testament.  I was frustrated in the same way I was frustrated with many of the churches I’ve attended in the U.S., including my own.  Many different translations (versions) of Bibles are used in a church, which results in confusion.  It is difficult for me to concentrate on the meaning of a passage when I’m following along in my KJV and the leader is reading different words than appear in my Bible—arranged differently as well.  As difficult as it is for me, it must be almost impossible for a new believer, unfamiliar with the Scriptures, to do so.  The pastor of our church has compromised.  He continues to read the KJV, but he changes every Old English word to modern English as he reads (“thee” to “you” and “goeth” to “go,” for example).  I find that only slightly less confusing.

Since I couldn’t understand much of the sermon, I just read a portion of Scripture.  It was nice to be among fellow believers.  After the two-hour service several of the ladies invited me to their homes for a meal.  When I explained how tired I was, they extended the invitation to the next day, or the next.   I was unsure where I would be going the next day, so I had to decline.  When the family took me back to my hotel, I asked them to wait a few minutes.  I got the box of gifts and Spanish tracts from my van and gave it to them.  I felt they could distribute them better than I.  I also gave them my parallel NT to give to their pastor.  The pastor and I had discussed the difference between the translations.  At first he’d thought I was trying to say that his Spanish Bible meant something different than did my English one.  Then he understood that I wasn’t disputing the meaning—only the difference in the words and word arrangements of his Spanish Bible and my Spanish Bible, which were different translations.  I thought he would enjoy having my parallel translation to study.

When I went to bed that night, I wondered if I should head south to my original destinations, stay in this area, or return home.  I’d already been gone from home two weeks.  I’d seen few new birds (lifers), and it was disappointing that the birding was only good for a few hours each morning.  I regretted making the trip so late in the year, when it was so hot and dry.  I asked God to guide me to the right decision and fell asleep.