Ryder at School

Learning Spanish through art.

It's pretty too!

The Evolution of a Birder

I used to make fun of bird people, when I was a much more avid outdoors woman. I made fun of them because they carried those giant binoculars and practiced making bird calls. I thought it looked ridiculous and sometimes, I still do.
One summer I got a job in Denali National Park in Alaska. It was kind of my dream job at the time. I was a naturalist guide and I took people out into the wilds of Alaska to look at animals, plants and geologic formations. Most of my clients ended up being birders though. I quite quickly had to learn what a golden plover was and where to find ptarmignans. People were looking for them to add to their lifer lists, or a bucket list of must see birds. I was looking for tips to save for a trip to South America.
The thing about birders though is that they know much more about the natural environment than many naturalists do. They know what kind of trees or bushes their birds live in, what they eat, how they mate, where they make their nests and where they travel to in different seasons. All of this, I found fascinating that summer. I had always spent the majority of my time staring at plants and mammals y la tierra so I ignored most of the general bird population.
Since then I have searched for Quetzals in Guatemala and Toucans in India, to no avail. I have watched bright green parrots fly over a tropical river in the Amazon and listened to the wind blow on the wings of a soaring Andean Condor. I look closer now at the ground when I hike, looking for evidence of both animals and birds.
I’m obviously older now than that girl in Alaska (by about fifteen years). I haven’t slowed down but my kids make life a bit slower. They cannot backpack more than three miles and spending weeks on end with very little resources isn’t so attractive to them therefore, not attractive to me either. Now I spend far more time car camping than trekking through countries. Now we car camp but in Mexico.
The campgrounds we have spent a majority of our time in are basically grassy flat areas with trees, a water spicket and an electrical hook-up. Some of them have bathrooms with hot showers. We are usually surrounded by giant RV’s or 5th wheelers, all of which cost about what we bought our house for ten years ago.
We set up our camp when we arrive which consists of a table and chairs, bicycles, a couple of big plastic tractors, some firewood, our birds and a hummingbird feeder. Thus far, they have arrived within the day. The hummingbirds that is.
From what I can see, currently our feeder is feeding two pairs of hummingbirds. They hover near the feeder making a clicking noise before they circle it a few more times, then take a drink. The males are green feathered and both male and female have bright red beaks. They also hover near the neighbors giant red brake lights, which always makes me laugh. They are single minded these hummingbirds, red being their entire world.
Next I hang up a half an orange. We did this last year in baja and two different kinds of orioles came by for visits. One was a bright red orange fat oriole, like we see in the States and the other was a more slender and yellow one. They can devour a ½ of an orange a day. In this campground, I have seen no orioles but the woodpeckers are interested in the orange. They fly to the top of the tree and very suspiciously and slowly shimmy backwards down the tree towards the orange. They eventually get close enough to reach over and peck away.
Our campground is also filled with doves and palm birds. They aren’t called palm birds but I do not know what they are called. I call them that because last year in Baja they were always picking the palm fruits out of the trees and dropping them to the ground. Here, they are ground feeders. They are large, the size of a small crow but very slender with long tails. The males fluff up their feathers and point their beaks to the sky to impress the ladies at night. They are so black they are almost blue. They pick at things in the grass, working in groups like cattle grazing.
Lastly there is a bright red vermillion fly catcher. They are the size and color of a cardinal but with brown feathers on their chests. They sit in the trees and then occasionally dart into the sky and very quickly return to their branch. They might be the reason we have no flies in our campground. They are a beautiful burst of color in my perephial vision.
I sit with binoculars and watch now. I know the different calls of these birds. The shrill and whistle of the palm bird, the constant cooing of the doves and the click click of the hummingbirds. I watch the woodpecker shimmy and I watch the palm bird puff and I feel myself, aging. I prefer to call it evolving though. I’m not sure I’ll ever have a desire to fly to Alaska to see a bird for my list but if I saw a Toucan in the Yucatan you can bet your ass I will be talking about it on this blog and for years to come. I might need binoculars though.

Get LOST

Shannon "Chica" Schmidt, aka Fish Head

She came for five weeks and took over our couch. She washed dishes, made margaritas, laughed with "relish", read five books, helped with maps, stole my new blanket, learned some Spanish, barfed in our sink, didn't change diapers, ate a lot of bread, knit a wash cloth and played with the boys, a lot! We miss you Chica! How will I know when Sally needs feeding? Una besa para tu.

An Invitation

We are losing the last of our houseguests tomorrow in the magic school bus. If anyone wants to escape the cold and dreary winter of el norte, we've got room and can even do p/u's at airports. Grab your passaporte and hop on a plane. Mexico City until March or fly to Cancun around April. Please come! ...plan on doing dishes.

Ahh, mornings

We were sitting in a plaza overlooking three different churches during morning rush hour. The light on the stucco walls was orange, yellow, pinks and greys. We sat in the sun as it was cold if you weren’t in it and watched as people came and went, buying drinks and tamales from a stand nearby. I could see the steam coming from the hot drinks they bought. My curiosity finally got the best of me and I had to buy one.
I approached the cart and did what I usually do which is observe what other people are buying and try to figure out what it is. The woman in front of me bought a black drink in a clear plastic cup. I asked her in Spanish if it was sweet. She said yes and walked away without anymore information offered. I told the woman behind the cart I wanted the same. I asked her if it was from frijoles wherein she laughed at me. She tells me it is “near chocolate”. Embarrassed, I then have to explain that in Guatemala they drink the juice from black beans mixed with sugar and milk. She laughed and said, no aqui, not here.
I returned to Shannon with my black steaming hot drink. When I say black, I mean black, not dark brown coffee color, but black like tar. Thick black, like tar. I took a sip and immediately didn’t like it. It was corn, thick corn liquid with probably a little chocolate added and sugar. Mayans are freaks for corn. I tried to cough it down but it was overpowering and I could not make any headway on it. I left it on a nearby garbage can hoping that one of the many local people without resources would find it much to their surprise and hopefully, delight.
I returned to the cart, ready for a new discovery that would hopefully be a little more pleasant to my early morning palette. I asked the woman what each drink is wherein she quite kindly showed me hot chocolate (with corn), hot milk with rice and my favorite, a caramel flavored milk. I ordered the caramel drink which we decided tasted like a pastry in a cup. It was fantastic. I’m sure it had some more of the corn tar in it but the caramel flavor was lovely mixed in it.
During this time in the plaza, there were many people setting up easels to catch the early sun on the churches. They stared through their hands, trying to find the best boundaries for their canvas. There were students rushing off to classes, people catching buses to work and old men and women, warming their bodies with hot drinks and early sunlight. The men were wearing cowboy hats, button down shirts and jeans with belts. The women wore long skirts with black socks and shoes, aprons and large shawls around their heads and shoulders. Their skin was dark brown and leathery with braids down their backs and gold filigree earrings.
One particular woman sitting near us had quite an intericate tamale chocolate drink situation going on. She opened her morning tamale and then proceeded to slowly pick it into pieces and feed it to the pigeons. She carefully peeled every bit of corn from the husk for the gathering group of birds. She took her time drinking her hot chocolate looking as if she quite enjoyed every sip. She noticed nobody around her except the birds and she herself concentrated solely on her own tasks.
When she reached the bottom of her cup, she began to pour small amounts of it into the palm of her hand and drink from it as if it was a spoon. We could only guess that she either wanted to prolong the drink experience or sift through something sitting on the bottom of the cup. I tried to picture myself at a coffee shop in Portland pouring bits of tea into the palm of my hand and then slurping it up slowly, while people watched. It would be fun to do, just to mess with people.
Eventually we left the plaza and went onto another plaza to watch teenagers in courtship, newspaper salespeople yell out the latest headlines and men sell ice cream flavors like mango and lime. We spent the morning like this, wandering the cobblestone streets, sitting in plazas and enjoying the day to day activities as simple as a warm cup of corn tar Joe.

Uphill/Downhill

Once again, I’m sitting in the sun, in winter. Shannon is learning to knit, Casey is sitting on Steve’s lap eating tortilla chips and the boys are reading comic books in the bus. We could be anywhere right now and yet we’re in Mexico. I can tell by the noise and smells. The birds are louder and have different songs. Tropical sounding songs. The trucks honking down the road are melodic, talking to eachother about which way they’re turning or stopping. The air smells like chicken and tires burning. The temperature is a lovely seventy degree something as we sit soaking in the morning rays.
We left the beaches and headed up into the mountains to get a little closer to Mexican culture and away from the leatherbacks – retired Canadians with “leather backs” from sitting in the sun. They are up and down the Mexican coast, taking over every RV park with their 5th wheelers and diesel trucks. None of them speak Spanish and they sit together for days on end eating frozen lasagnas they bought in the States and spend their evenings watching golf on satellite TV’s. It was hard to leave the beaches as the boys had so much fun in the sand but we were going a little crazy trying to find “Mexico”.
San Miguel is adorable – the Santa Fe of Mexico they call it.

The buildings are painted beautiful shades of tierra and everyone prides themselves on intricately carved doors and metal door knockers in shapes of corn, gargoyles and fireworks. It’s filled with museums, galleries, libraries and craft shops. The plaza Jardin in the main square and overlooks an incredibly beautiful church surrounded by churro and chocolate shops as well as food carts with BBQ corn on the cob, fruit cups and colorful handmade sodas.


The plan is to stay here for over a month while I take Spanish courses and Steve volunteers somewhere with the kids. We’ve come up with a list of projects the kids can do such as map out the central market, take photos of all the doors and hang out at the coolest public library I’ve ever seen. The surrounding area has villages known for things like silver smithing and wall murals that we all can take day trips to. There will be a lot to do in the next month, for sure.
The adventure to get to this village is almost undescribable. We left Teacoupan, a beach just south of Mazatlan around one o’clock in the afternoon and drove until it was dark. We spent the evening in a semi campground behind a gas station. It’s common here for trucks to sleep behind the state run gas stations. It was clean and secure and if we paid the gas station attendant 100 pesos, he would let us stay there. Ugh, I think they’re free I told him. He laughed and said no, I said 100 pesos, not 100 dollars. I told him I would be happy to discuss it with the attendant in the morning and if it was still 100 pesos, I would pay it then. He then asked us to simply fill up with gas and we’d be fine. It’s common that there are hidden charges in our daily life. Knowing ahead of time what you’re willing to pay, stand your ground and you’ll usually get to the bottom of the true price fairly quickly.
Our next day of travel was a day to never ever forget in our life of travel. We entered into a city looking for signs for a small village to the north. We turned when we found it and headed directly into the heart of a tiny cobblestone central area. We realized immediately we were in trouble but we thought there would quickly be a turnoff onto a highway towards this other village we were looking for.
We discovered instead that the road jogged to another side street which required Steve to turn to the left and immediately make another right within about ten feet. There was another bus sitting on the corner in our way. It wouldn’t move. Steve took the turn and the back of the bus swung into the sitting parked bus. The thud was noticeable. Everyone on the street started screaming for Steve to stop.
I jumped out of the bus to help Steve around the corner. The other bus driver came out and told us we would need to pay for hitting his mirror. I ignored him and helped Steve go around the jog. The bus driver stood in the way of our bus and started yelling for the police. A man walking down the street came over and asked us if we needed help. Obviously we did. He worked for the bus company and told the other bus driver to see if he could fix the mirror himself. The police showed up and asked us if we wanted an escort out of town. At this point we didn’t know how many more streets we would need to turn and figured they wanted us out of there, they would help us get out. The helpful man jumped on our bus to help guide us out of town as well. All was well with the bus we hit and off we went. By this time, I was a little shaky about our chances of getting out of this maze. The roads was getting thinner and the balconies were at about the top of our bus level.
Finally, we could see the end of the street. We would just need to pass a full size pick-up truck. Steve slowly squeeked by while I hid my head in my hands. Then another clunk and scrape sound. Oh god, we just hit the truck. I panicked and tried to figure out where we had put our Mexican insurance and my hands began to shake. Then Steve said he didn’t hit the car, only the truck’s tire and it broke off the lid to our black tank, holding our shit from the bathroom. He said there is piss and crap flowing out of the tube, onto the little cobblestone street we were traveling on. With people watching. The smell was um, kind of bad.
Steve wanted me to go outside and pick-up the pieces of tubing that had broken off. Now picture this. There’s a tiny street maybe 10 feet wide with a four foot wide patch of pee and poop flowing down it. In the middle of it, is a lid cap that needs to be retrieved by me, while people walking down the street are watching. Yes, I grabbed it and asked for a plastic bag from inside the bus. Shannon hands me a tiny ziploc bag and I yell for a bigger one. My hands are shaking so bad at this point that I couldn’t open the bag she hands me to get the parts in it. The entire moment was so ridiculous. I hop back on the bus crying from stress and fear of hitting another car or building. We had one more major turn to do that somehow Steve made look easy and we were now out of the maze.
Once out of town, we pulled over and assessed our mental and physical damage. Only the pooper cap broke off and Steve was able to instantly fix it.
What we didn’t expect to find though is the massive dent and scrape on the side of the bus. The bus we initially hit probably had a lot more damage than either we or that bus driver had seen. Steve thought he had hit it harder than just pushing a mirror but we weren’t going to argue with the bus driver anymore than we had to. We eventually took off after Shannon made me a margarita and managed to get to our destination about five hours later, a little bruised but now with a good story.
Now we rest. It’s pleasant here sitting in the sun with my family. We are more than happy to not drive anymore for awhile. We’ll take some day trips around the area on chicken buses and head back to the beach next month for more boogie boarding and sunsets with leatherbacks. For now though, it’s good to be in Mexico in January listening to birds and eating chips and salsa in the sun.