POSTCARD from Mexico N°14

(By Fernando Rivadavia, April 3 to 12, 2004) 

A TRIP THROUGH CHIAPAS & OAXACA

PART 1:  

             Between April 3-12, 2004, I drove ~4500km around southern Mexico, mostly through the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca. This was my last trip in Mexico before returning to Brazil, the icing on the cake of the 6 months total I spent there, a great way to wrap it up and say ADIÓS to that fantastic country.

            Over 3 months have passed since I went on this trip and I hope I haven’t forgotten important details. I wish I’d gotten around to writing this earlier, but life back in Brazil has been hectic. However if I do forget anything important, I have a few friends who can help fill in the gaps. After all I wasn’t alone on this trip. Ed Read joined me in my Mexican travels for the 3^rd time. Also, my good friend Joe Mullins from Ireland came along with his friend Helen Butler. Both are botanists/ geneticists and Joe is a CPer as well, having joined me in early 1996 on a 10-day CP trip in Brazil (a most memorable trip where we saw tons of cool CPs, including albino U.longifolia and my first ever U.nelumbifolia in the wild!).

            We squished into my small car and headed out early morning on Saturday April 3, driving ~1000km SE to the city of Villa Hermosa in the state of Tabasco, non-stop except to hitch a ride to and from a gas station when we were stranded without fuel, hehehe! We arrived still on time to check out the Parque-Museo La Venta, an excellent open-air mixture of park, botanic garden, zoo, and museum with lots of interesting Olmec sculptures, including huge stone heads!

            The next day we continued SE toward the famous Maya ruins of Palenque, where we spent all morning admiring the fantastic architecture amidst tropical rainforest. After lunch we headed S, stopping at the famous waterfalls of Agua Azul and Misol-Ha. We were hoping to see our 1st CPs of that trip in an area just N of Palenque, where supposedly several Utrics had been collected. But we didn’t spot any suitable habitats there nor around the waterfalls.

            Just after dawn the next morning we did find our 1^st CP: the ubiquitous P.moranensis. It was growing on N-facing banks by a roadside just outside the town of San Cristobal de las Casas, at ~2175m altitude. It was quite dry and only winter rosettes were present. We only spotted these because there were flowers – and what nice flowers! Of all the numerous blooming P.moranensis I’d seen in Mexico, none had such a rich dark pink color.

            From San Cristobal we drove SE towards another famous tourist spot, the Lagunas de Montebello, a series of beautiful lakes varying in color from emerald green to turquoise blue. Other than the beautiful scenery and rich local epiphytic flora, our passage through the Lagunas de Montebello was completed by yet more P.moranensis with lots of dark-pink flowers, similar to the ones we’d seen near San Cristobal. These were growing at ~1550-1600m, all the way from the roadside down to rocks next to one of the lakes, mostly semi-shaded by pine forests on N-facing slopes. Both winter and summer rosettes were present, some varying from yellow-green to reddish.

            The 3^rd day of our trip was not yet over and we still had a bit of driving to do. We continued driving S along the Guatemalan border, trying to get as close as possible to what would be our main objective the following day: isolated highlands around the small towns of El Porvenir and la Grandeza. Our hope was to find the elusive P.clivorum.

To be continued on POSTCARD N°14 Part 2