Mariposas

Monarch butterflies make the journey from eastern Canada and northeastern USA to this area in the middle of Mexico.

These trees look like they are brownish and dead but if you look closer...

you can see that the branches are loaded, literally coated with butterflies.

After having a picnic lunch, I sit and watch the butterflies for a while.



The Monarchs congregate in any source of water they can find.

We took a walk up the paths in Angangueo, the pueblo we stayed in while visiting the Monarch Sanctuary, and enjoyed the views of the red the roofs and the local church.

Angangueo is old and was the home of a booming gold mine until 1995.

I love all the little homes with the many pots of flowers.

What a ride! For the last 3 days we have been riding between 1900 and 2400 mts and that makes for nice cool riding temperatures, in fact we have been wearing just about every piece of warm clothing we have, but has it been worth it. The El Rosario Monarch Sanctuary was unbelievable! We stayed in Angangueo, a pueblo about 15 min. from Ocampo( the entrance to the sanctuary)where we turned up the mountain and rode on a cobblestone road up to 2800 mts where we paid our 40 peso entrance fee and started our hike up to about 3400 mts where the butterflies migrate to. We got to the top relatively early so the butterflies where slow in moving but the longer we waited and the warmer it got the more active they got. It wasn't until then that we realized how many butterflies there were. There are over 3000 trees that are literally coated with butterflies. Today, people are only allowed to walk to the place where the butterflies start to congregate, in recent years they could walk through the trees. We were happy to get to the point we did and see this amazing act by Mother Nature.