I've been in Temoris, Mexico for almost 3 weeks (Bryan for 4 ½ weeks) and it's been very interesting to be here as the season has changed from the dry to rainy season. When we arrived here, most of the landscape was dry and brown, the cows and burros were skeletal, and the creeks and waterfalls were dry; now there are creeks and waterfalls cascading down the rocks, the landscape is brilliant green, farmers have started plowing and planting, and the livestock is visibly fatter. Quite a change! It's still hot, so with the rain, the canyons and valleys are feeling like a humid tropical forest.
The canyon environments around here are intriguing – the vegetation is a cross between temperate forests (pine trees, oaks, etc.) and tropical, as is the wildlife. I've seen a gray fox and a large jackrabbit, but apparently there are also ocelots and jaguars here. The birds are also a mix of temperate and tropical, with colorful trogons to red-tailed hawks. The reptiles and amphibians plentiful – we've seen a few snakes, and as the rain has come we've also seen several species of frogs. Having to climb and study rocks everyday in remote canyons has given me the opportunity to do a lot of insect observations – from leaf-cutter ants to dragonflies (dragonflies are everywhere!) The beetles are especially interesting as many are iridescently colored and big – some are 2-3 inches long! There are big, orange, creepy centipedes all over the place, as well as millipedes, spiders, and scorpions, so we have to be careful where we put our hands and check under rocks when we pick them up. I don't have any field guides for the area, so I'm taking pictures of interesting species and am planning to do a little research when I get back to Santa Barbara (I'm not even sure if there is a field guide to this area…)
Bryan's research is going well, but has been challenging, as it's very different than his master's fieldwork in Bolivia and there haven't been any geologic studies here outside the gold and silver mines. In Bolivia we focused on sedimentary rocks with a specific task (constraining the timing of the uplift Eastern Cordillera of the Andes), whereas here he's doing reconnaissance work, making maps, and studying mostly igneous (volcanic) rocks trying to figure out how these mountains and canyons formed and when. Yesterday we climbed a huge ridge in order to take samples of the rocks (ignimbrites) at the very top, all in this humid heat. Quite a workout – whew! We really have been gobbling up all those bean and cheese burritos for energy for lunch everyday (once we leave, I'm not touching a burrito for a year!). Bryan's professor, Cathy Busby, joined us a week ago and it's been neat to see her and Bryan have these big discussions and epiphanies up on the tops of mountains figuring out where faults are, what the mountains are made of, where lava flows are, and when volcanoes erupted. I'll usually listen for the first few minutes, but it is all so far over my head and technical how they figure all this out, so I have plenty of time to study the insects or read during those intervals.
We've met some interesting people back in the canyons, as we're usually crawling under farmers' barbed-wire fences and asking ranchers' permission to get to areas to map. Once we were following a hardly-used dirt road that according to our topographic map would lead us to a specific mountain, but somehow we ended up right in the middle of some farmer's yard thinking we were lost. Of course, the whole family came up to us to see why we were there, and after explaining, the grandfather offered to show us around the area and hopped in the truck next to me. Ricardo Lopez Torres then spent the afternoon showing us old mines from the 1600's and lamenting that if we'd brought flashlights with us, he'd show us around inside the mines … hmmm, as tempting as an offer as that was (sure sounds safe!), we declined. We took him back to his farm at the end of the day, where his sons were busy plowing the fields with oxen for the corn-planting season.
One day we decided to explore some of the other barrancas (canyons) and drove for 6 hours along bumpy, eroding dirt roads to the towns of Creel and Divisadero where we witnessed spectacular canyon views, traditional Tarahumara people, and cool rock formations. We spent the night in Creel and went hiking to a large waterfall, passing Tarahumara people in the canyon as we hiked. Tarahumara are the indigenous people of the Copper Canyon area, and are very reserved, yet interesting and tranquilo. The women dress in colorful layered skirts, an equally colorful blouse, and a headscarf with their hair braided in ribbons down their back. Their sandals are made of local fibers and old rubber tires (before cars they used to be made of leather or rawhide), kind-of like the tire sandals many East Africans wear. The men dress like the rest of the Spanish men in town, in big cowboy hats, jeans, button-shirts, and cowboy boots. Spanish is also their second language, so it's a bit hard to communicate with them, but one Tarahumara woman told me how they make their baskets from pine needles, and showed me how she makes them. They dye some needles red and black from pigments they can find in the forests, so their baskets are weaved of several colors – green, brown, yellow, red, and black. The baskets are beautiful and look like they take forever to make! Historically, the Tarahumara people lived in the caves of the canyons, but now also live in adobe homes. The only field guide/research I could find for the area was a book on the Tarahumara people, and I was fascinated to find out that they're known as phenomenal runners, out-running their prey until the deer they're hunting rests or collapses in exhaustion!
The women in "Restaurante Gaby" know us pretty well by now, and have been making me "surprise dishes" now and then for variety – it's a good thing, as I'm beginning to get a little sick of corn tortillas (I have them with breakfast, lunch, and dinner!) We definitely won't be having any Mexican food cravings for a while once we get back the US… Grateful for a change in diet, one night we were invited to a BBQ of carne asada for "Dia de los Mineros" (Miners' Day), which I'm not sure is a real holiday, but rather just an excuse to party with Tecate, tequila, carne asada, and guacamole! It was a great evening, cut short by a huge lightning and rainstorm that cut out the power and drenched us all outside. Man, these lightning storms are intense! Yesterday it even hailed! Tomorrow we're heading to a new area, Cerocahui, for some reconnaissance work – I hope the rivers are passable…
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