Sunday 11th November
Breakfast
at 8am then off in our jeep at 8:30 for a bumpy 25km ride up the mountain. Below left was our
driver, Pedro, and our guide, Ricardo who spoke very good English and had an encyclopaedic
knowledge of pretty well any aspect of the trip we quizzed him on. The cost, incidentally, was 1300 Pesos for
the Jeep, Pedro and Ricardo to be at our disposal all day. About £65 all-in, so just a
shade over £16 each.
Epiphytes
abound in this cloud forest – orchids, ferns and bromeliads covering the tree
branches everywhere: aroids climbing from beneath.
Below
left – Chamaedorea radicalis
is a common plant throughout this region – in fact collection of the leaves for
religious ceremonies such as Palm Sunday is an important part of the income for
the families living in the more remote settlements. I have seen it before in Mexico but not this
trunking form, which was present alongside the non-trunking form. Ricardo says there are some specimens deep in
the forest with trunks of 5m!
Below
right encapsulates one of the major reasons for Mark travelling to Mexico and
also rewarded his detective work as he anticipated this very thing – he found a
new dahlia!
After
a couple of hours we stopped at the highest small village, San José, from where
we embarked on a circular hike of about 3hrs, including a diversion off to some
caves. The following pics
aren’t necessarily in order but give a taste of what there is to see
there. The air had a most remarkable
quality – that unmistakable clean mountain air smell with the slightest tang of
wood smoke. Marvellous.
In
this glen there were a series of citrus trees, set many decades ago by early
settlers as experimental fruit orchards.
Pedro picked some fruits from one – a pale grapefruit coloured but small
fruit that, when opened, was virtually transparent. It was delicious – a light flavour somewhere
between a lime and a grapefruit and refreshingly juicy. And, yes, that is a line of rusty truck cabs.
The
wooded areas were a true ‘enchanted forest’ wonderland - magically atmospheric
with weird rock formations densely covered with moss, lichen and epiphytes
around every corner. Water everywhere -
mirror pools reflecting the canopy, gushing streams with stepping stone
crossings. All, of course, next to
impossible to photograph successfully!
It was
then back to the village for some late lunch, which comprised of simply
scrambled egg with potato, refried beans and tortillas but easily one of the
tastiest meals of the fortnight. The
tortillas were a revelation – how can something so simple taste so good? The corn is grown, processed and milled
locally; the dough prepared and patted by hand, flattened out manually in a
cast iron tortilla press then cooked on a griddle over an enclosed wood fire. They had a gritty texture that is absent from
commercially milled flour and the very slight wood-smoked flavour was simply
divine. I forget how many I ate.
We
eventually got back in the Jeep and bumped our way back down again, stopping
briefly to eat some wild guava fruit, one of which became our car air freshener
for the remainder of the trip as it released a fresh waft of citrus aroma every
time we went over a bump.
I
wasn’t sure what to expect of our stop at Gómez Farías. I feared an uncomfortably cold stay in a log
cabin, surviving on whatever we had brought with us to eat in the car. Instead we were treated to a totally unique
and fantastic experience – one of the highlights of all my trips to
Mexico. I cannot recommend a visit here
highly enough.
Dinner
in town at the only restaurant open (and hence exceptionally busy) comprised of
6 beef tacos each and a beer, which set us back the royal sum of 210 Pesos, or
just over £10 for the lot. Early to bed.
2nd/3rd,
4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th,
9th,
10th,
11th,
12th,
13th,
14th,
15th/16th,