Mariposas

The road out of Zitácuaro was small with few traffic, so a lot nicer than the one into town. There was only some old VW vans that are used for public transport here.
We headed to the Monarch butterfly sanctuary Cerro Pelon in Macheros to see this species. It's actually quite impressive: every year, the Monarch butterflies travel about 4500km from the US and Canadian forests to Mexico where they stay between November and March. As butterflies don't live very long, it takes 3 generations to travel back and forth.
It's obligatory to take a guide to enter the sanctuary. Our guide was Mauricio, a local from the village. We could choose between riding a horse or hiking. Of course, we decided to hike to the butterflies, as we were happy to not having to sit for a while. The first place was a meadow where we saw the butterflies flying around. There were millions of them, so we were surrounded by the little orange animals and had to be careful not to step on them while they were resting or drinking. We then hiked further up in the mountains to see the butterflies sleeping in the trees. It first looked like brown autumn leaves, but it's actually millions of butterflies hanging on the branches. Quite spectacular!
In the end, the hike was longer than expected. When we were back at the entrance after 3.5 hours, we realized we had climbed more than 800m and were above 3200m at the second spot. Our legs were tired, but we still had to cover another 30km including a 500m climb in order to get to our stop for the night. It was quite exhausting, but in the end we made it and found a nice place to sleep for the night.En savoir plus