Relaxing in Patzquaro

Relaxing in Patzquaro

August 28, 2019

The horse was knee deep in mud and being riden round and round in circles.  What in the world was going on?

Horse in Mud

 

 

We were visiting with new-found friends who were neighbors in an RV Park in Patzquaro, Mexico and watching this strange behavior.  The activity in this mud pit that was certainly not an accident of nature, it was obviously man-made.   Although none of us had ever seen this operation before, it did not take long to figure it out.

The workers added hay to the right kind of soil or clay, then water and the horse functioned like an animal mix-master to mix all that stuff together.

Adding Hay and Water

Of course, they were making adobe bricks.  After they got the right consistency and mixture, they shoveled the stuff onto a waiting wheel-barrow, and hauled it to the brick-making area.

Hauling the mud mixture

Using rectanglar boards, the mud mixture was packed inside and the bricks were formed.

Then, the bricks were left in the high-dry climate and after a certain time, were dry and hard enough to be used in building construction.

 

It was a very labor-intensive operation but the materials seemed to be relatively cheap.  With these bricks they could build a home like the one in the following photo.

This all happened on a trip that Pat and I made in 1988 down the east coast of Mexico, around the Yucatan Peninsula, to the southern tip of Belize, then over to and along the Pacific coast until we climbed back into the mountains and Patzquaro in the state of Michoacan.

So, there we were in the shade of our motorhome awning, chatting with this interesting British sheep farmer and his wife while enjoying a cool drink or two.  Interestingly, Authur and Jean Topping continue their RV adventures -- mostly in southern Europe while Pat and I sold our last motorhome a few years ago.  We still receive their fascinating travel reports. 

Looking carefully at this photo, you will see binoculars and bird books on the table.  Yes, we were also watching Mexican birds.  A blue, leaking faucet provided water for the local birds and was located very close to us.  Here are some of the birds we saw and photographed.

Audubon's Warbler

Black-headed Grosbeak

Bushtit

Curve-billed Thrasher

Hepatic Tanager

Summer Tanager female

Vermillion Flycatcer

Silky Flycatcher

OK, it's a pretty lazy way to go birdwatching, but it was very relaxing and fun.  We also saw other interesting birds such as a Blue Mockingbird, but failed to obtain a good photo.

Patzquaro proved to be one of the most interesting stops on our trip.

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When Water Falls Up

When Water Falls Up

September 2, 2019

Water Falling Up

Hurricane Floyd caught us in Canada.  As the winds began to subside, we visited this waterfall to observe that the water was not falling; it was being blown skyward by the still strong winds.  Of course, Hurricane Floyd no longer fit the definition of a hurricane by the time it reached Quebec, but was still an intense storm.

Track of Hurricane Floyd

We were visiting the town of Perce on the east coast of Quebec, Canada back in 1999 and were camped in this Accueil (Home) campground, when the storm hit.  We rode it out in our motorhome which was parked in this very exposed campground.  As far as I remember, the winds never exceeded ca 55 mph, but our motorhome shook and we watched the whipping flags began to shred.  It was not a comfortable feeling -- especially because we did not know if higher winds were still coming.

Anyway, the memory of this storm was triggered by Hurricane Dorian, now located off the coast of Florida and predicted to follow about the same track as Hurricane Floyd.  Watch out, Quebec.  Here it comes.

As the storm's intensity began to subside a little, we decided to leave our motorhome and drive out in our Honda CRV toad (a vehicle that is towed) to expose ourselves to a first hand experience of the storm.   That's when I took the photo of the water falling up and also this photo of Pat leaning into the wind.

Pat in the wind

I was a little worried that if the wind stopped suddenly, she might fall off the cliff.

The wind was still strong enough to whip up spray on the ocean surface near the Perce Rock formations offshore.

Seabirds had found a less windy cove to wait out the storm on a beach.

We drove up the mountain behind Perce and found it necessary to remove a fallen tree before we could pass.

Road Block

 

Perce is just a small town, so we could capture most of it in this one photo.

Town of Perce

From this vantage point on the mountain, the sun came out briefly to expose parts of Perce and our campground far below -- high above of the storm-disturbed, Gulf of St Lawrence.

The day before the storm, we had done a little sight-seeing by taking a boat out to Bonaventure Island where we hiked to visit a colony of nesting Gannets.  These are large, almost goose-sized pelagic birds that nest here in very large numbers.  In the summer you can sometimes see them deep diving for fish in the Gulf of Mexico off Padre Island in Texas.  But, they nest on islands where they find few predators in the near-arctic where fish are very abundant.

They are very tame birds when nesting so they can be approached fairly closely.  But don't get too close if you don't wish to be hammered by that big, pointed beak.

Win and Pat at Gannet Rookery

After the storm, we wondered how well the Gannet chicks had survived, but we did not take another trip to find out.

Anyway, we found Perce to be a very scenic and interesting place to visit -- even in a hurricane.

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