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2/18/01 11:20 AM Hotel de la Soledad, Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico

We've been pretty busy the last two days so I'll continue this account looking back, using notes I've taken.

The package Lorraine sent containing the cable and software necessary to put the digital camera pictures onto my laptop arrived Friday. I was not at the hotel at the time. The hotel staff told the UPS driver that they had no such person as myself staying here and refused to accept the package. They said the UPS man said he would return “later”. I had told several of the staff that I was expecting a package for two days prior to this. The problem was that my roommate Flavio checked into the hotel after I checked in earlier and put the room in his name after I had already done so in mine. I did not know this so I never bothered to check to see if they had me listed as being here. Another problem is that the staff does not seem to pass notes to one another as they change shifts. The concept of a guest receiving a package seems foreign to them as well. As of Sunday morning the UPS has not returned. Lorraine said that the UPS international liaison would call her Monday. I might receive the package by the time I'm back in Healdsburg. You still may be able to see some pictures from the rolls I sent to Lorraine to have developed. She is working on getting them posted to a site.

Friday night the chaperones met out kids at a small theater for a show. This was the first time most of the kids had seen us since Monday morning. Some of them were now making a show of bravado, saying “Hi” to their parents and walking away. Others gave big hugs. All were doing remarkably better emotionally. Lily helped translate between her host father and me and the change in her ability since the last time she did that last week was very impressive. She no longer hesitated or seemed embarrassed but just went right to it. She seems much more fluent now.

Lily still has her cold. It's mostly in her chest now so she's coughing quite a bit but she no longer has the headaches and stuffy nose. She's OK.

The show consisted mostly of a dance troupe of 4 men and women who performed dances that involved lots of foot stamping in time to the music. Later the men would wear “old man” masks and use canes to dance with. One young woman sang a lovely song. Some children from the school performed a dance wearing traditional clothing. It was an enjoyable performance. After the show all the kids, ours and the hosts', got up on stage for pictures.

When their kids come here we will have to put on a show for them. Our kids can dress in their traditional Healdsburg costumes. Or maybe we can just take them to a movie or something.

We said good-bye to the kids and went to have dinner. We ended up at a restaurant that had live entertainment featuring artists from the area playing local music that was very entertaining. We were all too tired to stay long however and we had to get up the next day to go see the butterflies with the kids.

The arrangement was made a long time ago that we would take the kids to see the Monarch butterfly migration but these arrangements did not include the kids from the host families. It was too late to change this but we recommend that next year's plans include the host kids.

The kids arrived at our hotel at 8:30 and we got on the bus and left around 9 am. We left the city and I was enjoying the countryside again, trying to get a shrine picture. Our guide Alfredo told us that the butterflies had moved to a spot that would involve more hiking from the place we would originally have been dropped off at. The plan now was to go to an alternate town. This place was further from the sanctuary but offered rides there in the beds of stake trucks. OK, we're going to have a truck ride. That should be fun. We settled back into the ride. The bus had 3 televisions and the guide brought 3 or 4 Disney videos to watch. The kids chose 101 Dalmatians first. It was the movie version with Glenn Close. Close's Spanish is excellent although she seems to have a problem timing her speech to match her mouth movements.

We were moving along just fine when the video suddenly stopped. The driver pulled over to the road shoulder but this did not seem unusual since we had made stops like this before for no discernable reason. After we saw the driver walk behind the bus and begin kicking the sides we realized that the bus had broken down. We were now an hour out of town. Across the road was a Duxy (pronounced “doosee”) station which seemed to be roughly equivalent to our mini-mart gas stations. Since it would be at least and hour until another bus could come we elected to take the kids across the road to hang out at the Duxy. This turned out to be a wise decision. The bus broke down at 10, the replacement arrived at 12:30. This Duxy station featured a demonstration small-scale wastewater treatment facility at the rear of the station. There was a small grassy area between the treatment demo and the station where we put the kids. An adjacent building sold cheeseburgers and French fries. The fries were hand cut from a potato to order. Very good. Lily had a cheeseburger as well.

Alfredo handled the layover with aplomb. He showed the kids and adults some games involving putting everyone in a close circle and moving in synchronization. They were fun. Nobody seemed to mind the break. In fact it was enjoyable. It was a very convenient place to break down. Perhaps it was all a very carefully controlled adventure staged for our and Duxy's benefit.

Anyway, the replacement bus came and we got back on our way. The ride went on another 2 hours, passing through many small towns. In one town there was a group of women washing clothes in a large pond while other people swam at the other end. I got a picture. The countryside changed as we climbed in elevation. There were more areas forested with large pine trees. We started seeing more of the magay plants used to make tequila. I know, earlier I had used the word majave when describing them. That was the word that jumped into my head at the time. I asked Miguel again and he said magay. I'm just phonetically spelling that, I haven't been able to look the word up.

Still unable to get shrine pictures. They just go by too fast. The word they use for these is capilla, chapel in English. About death in Mexico: The people here have such a strong faith in God that death is not seen as a finality but as a transition. Death is indeed celebrated. Hence the festive cemeteries and decorative skeletons everywhere. It may be a healthier attitude. If you can't beat it, join it.

We arrived at the small town where we would get our rides to the butterflies. There was a hotel with restaurant where some of us ate the sack lunches prepared by our host families and others ate at the restaurant. Lily and I ate the lunches made by Lily's host mother, Jilda. Lily says she is a good cook. She also makes good sandwiches. Everything edible is better here in Mexico. The apples Jilda packed were better than the ones at home. When we return to Healdsburg I won't want to eat, especially what I previously thought was Mexican food. This may be a real problem.

Our trucks were ready to go. We had the option of getting one truck for 400 pesos or two for 700. The trucks had a bench going around the sides of the bed with another bench in the center. Stake panels went around the bed, keeping us from falling out. If we opted for just one truck many of us would be standing or sitting on laps for the hour-long trip. We got two trucks.

The road up to the butterflies is a steep narrow passage. It is concrete for the first couple miles then asphalt, then dirt. Alfredo had purchased surgical masks for us all to wear. The dirt part of the road was pretty dusty. We have some good photos of us all in masks in back of a stake truck like so many cattle. I did say the road is narrow. Too narrow for two trucks to pass each other in opposite directions. So they have a carefully maintained traffic plan. Drivers going up are held until the trucks coming down have passed choke points and everyone is in radio communication to advise each other on their progress. It is all very orderly and well-planned. HA!HA!HA!HA!HA!HA!. Just kidding. What actually happens is that everyone goes up or down as fast as they can. When they meet each other head-on they each charge forward to try to get the other person to back up/down. Eventually someone gives in and moves over or into a driveway to let the other pass. There was much scraping against trees, curbs and the passing trucks. If you take this trip, keep your hands inside the truck. The Mexican drivers love to pass each other and going up this goat path was no exception. We were passed a few times going up whether there was room or not.

After leaving the town and getting into the dirt the road widens a bit and there is less problem with passing vehicles. We gained quite a bit of elevation and had a lovely view of the former mining town we came out of. We passed a lot of small rural houses and farms. Their major crop seemed to be dirt. There were many plots of plowed dirt surrounded by rock walls. I did not see any irrigation and the dirt was mostly dry. The price for dirt is pretty low and so the people are poor and the housing is minimal. I've seen worse in parts of Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky but not much worse. The recreation for the children in this place is to run up behind the stake trucks we were riding in and grab on for a ride. I watched two boys that looked like they were about 5 to 7 years old run up and do this. I was sitting in the very rear of the truck. They both got on back, hanging on to avoid certain serious injury or death with big smiles on their faces. One climbed up to the level of Nancy Dorr's face as she was looking the other way. When she turned back to look behind us she was eye-to-eye with one of these kids. The look on her face was worth the whole trip. Of course it's pretty harrowing to watch. One slip and these kids are squashed. I can't help but think that they must flatten a kid on occasion. What can you do? I took pictures.

We got to the butterfly sanctuary and were let out of our trucks. We passed about a gazillion souvenir stands on the walk in to the park itself. The people in the area had previously supplemented their dirt crop income with lumbering. This was bad news for the butterflies that nest and cluster in those trees. Since the passage of NAFTA, the Monarch butterflies east of the Rockies migrate from Canada to Mexico with the season. They end up in this small area of Michoacan. Here they mate, lay eggs and move on. No one butterfly makes the whole round trip, some never migrate at all. As a species, however, the migration and this area of Michoacan are critical.. Various agencies in North America paid to make this a sanctuary and to fund research. The hope is that the native people can make a living off the tourists. Many are also employed to maintain the hiking trails, police the tourists to be sure they don't harm the butterflies and to reforest the area. It all seems to be working quite well. Everyone wins. All of North America benefits from keeping their Monarchs alive and the local population makes a buck as well. The Monarchs in California do not come here. They follow a different route.

The butterflies gather here and form huge clusters on the branches of the pine trees. Sometimes the weight of the butterflies causes the branches to break. That's a lot of butterflies. We saw the butterflies flying around, dead on the ground, in their clusters, doing their mating dance and even saw one pair mating. They mate for 6-8 hours. No comment. The trail is circular and starts off with a fair uphill hike. The kids handled it very well. The Monarchs were very impressive but the saying was really true on this trip, getting there was more than half the fun.

Going back was more fun yet or not so fun depending on whether you had the standard stake truck or the deluxe model. The group I was in had the deluxe model with a large blue plastic tarp to put over the stake panels in case of rain. As we were walking to the trucks to go back down there was lightening, thunder and lots of rain. Our group just held the tarp over our heads and stayed dry. Not so for the other group. They were pretty soaked when we got back into the town. Still, the kids in that group held up marvelously and everyone was able to warm up in the bus.

The trip home was much faster. No breakdowns. We saw the Spanish version of Beauty and the Beast. It was strange to hear the candlestick guy singing in Spanish with a French accent. It's hard to imagine Spanish sung with a French accent but it works. It's obviously a French accent even though I don't speak Spanish. Pretty cool. We all watched the movie since it was dark and there was nothing else to do. We all clapped at the end of the video when the girl marries the beast and all is wonderful. I wonder if the Mexicans think we're strange for applauding a video tape.

I woke up yesterday morning with a very sore throat and later was blowing my nose on a regular basis. I guess I got whatever cold Lily has. Andi gave me a Chlortrimeton last night and although I awoke in a stupor from the drug this morning, my throat didn't hurt as much since the decongestant stopped the drainage in my throat. I would gargle with salt water but it's a hassle with the bottled water and all. I've gotten pretty good at tooth brushing with bottled water. Still it's a hassle. After using the bathroom here do you wash your hands? Is there any net gain if you do? I wash them and then use the Purell.

Lets look at the whole Montezuma's revenge business. I said no bowel reports but this fear needs to be laid to rest. Many of the group are taking regular doses of GSE or Traveler's Friend. A lot of us, myself included, are taking nothing. We are all not drinking the tap water and brushing our teeth with bottled water. We have eaten at hotel restaurants, other restaurants, a few roadside stands, a sort of fast food place under a church that makes Mexican food to order while you wait and even a few street vendors. We have all had a few more movements than usual at times but nothing that wasn't due just to a change in our diet. I once thought I may be starting a diarrhea bout but that was stopped by just one half of one Imodium. I have been fine for days since. Everyone is making long rides and walks without running to a bathroom, so I imagine everyone is fine. We have nothing to report from the kids either.

There was a sign behind the dancers at last night's show. It said simply. “See Michoacan” I cannot agree with that more. I was apprehensive about coming here. I had visions of roving bands of kidnappers and bribe- demanding officials and spending my whole trip attached to a toilet seat. The problem with food has not been excessive output. The problem has been excessive input. I have never, and I mean never had better food. We have yet to find a bad meal. We have been here for over a week and the food continues to surprise and delight.

This is a safe place, a clean place and a very different place. It is very much like being in Europe without having to go to Europe and paying European prices. I have never had a better vacation. The weather has been fabulous. About 75 degrees in the day, much cooler at night to help you sleep. No rain except for what we had last night up in the mountains. It would be better yet if my wife and Brandyn were with me and I fully intend to return with them. We will visit the host family Lily is staying with. How can I ever express my thanks to these people for taking such good care of my daughter? They have gone through a lot of trouble for someone they have never met. I hope I can do as well for their daughter when she comes to stay with us.

We hear that US President Bush is in Mexico. It turns out he came to see me to discuss our exchange program and to get some sound general advice. The hotel staff of course told him I wasn't staying here. I heard he was furious. I just hope doesn't bomb some country or something. He can get pretty pissy. He tried to catch us in Guanajuto but we left there the day before. I understand his Spanish is passable although it's no better than his English which could be a big problem if he tries to actually speak with Fox. I hope he just sticks to eating chicherones and drinking Coronas. Later.