Viva México!

My interest in México started as a child reading comic books. The Conquest of México by Bernal Diaz del Castillo was available for 10 cents as a Classics Illustrated from the nearby Kresge. I was intrigued by the Aztecs and their unusual society, as well as the Conquistadors who defeated them. Then I saw the movie Captain from Castile starring Tyrone Power and I was hooked.

My first trip to México was in 1979 during the Medical School break at the University of Michigan. I had purchased some discounted plane fare and motel package on Cozumel as a present for my then wife, Kathy Kielb who needed a break after her first two years in Med School. We stayed at the northern-most motel on the island, a long walk into town, or a short cab ride. We did have our own little coral reef for snorkeling. One day we rented a glass-bottomed rowboat with another couple and went a little further out to a more distant reef. I was surprised how quickly my college Spanish can back, and my love of México started.

I went back to México in 1983, a year after my wife died. I was on a National Audubon field trip to the state of Colima on the west coast of México. This was the first of two tours that would take, the other was to Panama in 2019. But in 1983 I had become interested in all of the animals and plants that were there, especially butterflies.

My next trip to México was the year that Susan and I were married. We stayed the first few days on the Island of Cozumel at a small motel off of the main square. From there we went to Tulum and stayed at the small motel on the main highway, about a ten minute walk from the ruins. We also visited Coba, staying at the Villa Archeologica, which was our most comfortable accommodations. From there we went to Chichen Itza, staying at El Pyramide in Piste. Then we headed back to Playa del Carmen, where we would catch the ferry to Cozumel.

Over the next few years I was a tour guide leading many natural history tours to México. I spent a lot of time in the Yucatan, Palenque, Uxmal and then Tecolutla, on the Veracruz coast, just north of Villa Rica, where Cortez made landfall on his way to the Aztec capitol. But I was quickly accumulating a lot of plants and animals that tour participants wanted identified. This was before the Internet or online resources like iNaturalist, so I needed reference books.

But with my background in anthropology and a linguistics professor who studied Nahuatl, which was spoken by the Aztec, and an archeology course I was interested in the languages spoken and the archeological sites. Ultimately I visited many sites – Tulum, Coba, Chichen Itza, Uxmal, Xpujil and Palenque. At these ruins I could find diverse birds, plants, and butterflies – for tour participants and myself. Over time my Spanish was improving helped by the slower Spanish spoken in the Yucatan. As it turned out most of the people in the Yucatan spoke Yucatecan Mayan, and learned Spanish as their second language, similar to me. And I started accumulating books on the ruins, the Maya and their language.

Some of these books were in English, and many times in Spanish. Los Mayas in las rocas is a cartoon book, but surprisingly well done. The book on the Mayan calendar is an attempt at understanding the complexities of their concepts of time. Finally, the Spanish-Mayan dictionary is rudimentary, but interesting. Listening to native Mayan speakers was interesting, since many of the sounds were quite unusual to me, and very hard to replicate. Several time at Coba, a native-speaker tried to teach me Mayan, which was an interesting idea, especially considering our only way to communicate was Spanish.

Five of my last six trips to México was to Tecolutla, was was not close to any archeological sites, other than a day trip to El Tajin. But the bird migration was spectacular.

More on Tecolutla in the future…