Birds of Huatulco

I expect that bird-watching doesn't rate very high on many of your to-do lists....  Actually it didn't on mine either, but the amount and variety of birds down here has captured my attention for the past two months or so.  So.  If you don't particularly like photos of little birdies, now is probably a good time to tune out!

All of these photos were taken within one block of our apartment in downtown Santa Cruz.  To date I have identified 36 species of birds, and I think I have photos of about 30.  Some of the little boogers are fiendishly difficult to get pics of, and we're working with a hand-held point-and-shoot camera which is not the best platform for this kind of thing.  But you go with what you got, right?

Turns out bird-watching is a lot like hunting, but not as much to carry home at the end of the day.  First you find them, then you shoot them.  The shooting part can be very frustrating, as many of these species are like small children with ADHD, they never sit still.  Further, they get very nervous when you stare at them with binoculars or a camera.  But that's all in a day's work for us big-time bird photographers!

Golden-cheeked woodpecker.
A little guy, about the size of a robin.

I guess nobody specifically TOLD him
that woodpeckers don't eat fruit...

Lineated woodpecker.  Yes, that's Woody!

Bad hair day.

Yellow-winged Cacique,
About the size of a pigeon.
Note the pony-tail.

Must have been a very sour berry!

Orange-fronted Parakeet.
Noisy little squabblers.

Must be tasty!

White-throated Magpie Jay.
Crow-sized, they fly like
Elliot, from Pete's Dragon.

Groove-billed Ani.
They look like little dinosaurs.

Inca Dove.  Good camouflage!

Orange breasted Bunting.
Looks like he fell into a paint can.

Bush Euphonia.  This guy is tiny.
Not in the bird books, had to send
his photo away to get him identified!

Vermilion Flycatcher.  This photo
doesn't do him justice.  He has a
brilliant red breast.  Stunning.

Tropical Kingbird.

Great Kiskadee.

Streak-backed Oriole.

Lots of color variation in these guys.

Orchard Oriole.  Hard ones to
get a photo of...

The females are green!  Thought
I was seeing things.  Very pretty.

Citreoline Trogon from the front.

And from the back.

West Mexican Chachalaca.
Turkey-size, very loud!

Busted!
Eating flowers from an ornamental.

Pluma Hidalgo

Debbi's penpal (of 51 years) Linda, her husband Barry and her sister, Marlene from Edmonton are here in an all exclusive resort in Tangolunda for two weeks, and we thought it would be fun to go on a tour together.  

Deb contacted our friend Enrique (our Mexican Landlord and registered tour guide), and he gave us an all-day tour for $50 each. The tour included a tour of an authentic local town (Santa Maria Huatulco), a mountain-top town that is famous for its coffee (Pluma Hidalgo), and a mountain hotel/cafe/spa where you can go zip-lining through the forest.   Saturday morning rolled around, Enrique picked us up promptly at 09:00 in a nice shiny air-conditioned van, and off we went!

The view point over looking Santa Cruz. The orange building on the right is our apartment building. Left to right..Marlene, Barry, Linda, Steve & Deb tucked away in the back.

We started off by driving up to the viewpoint overlooking Santa Cruz Huatulco (where we live), and Enrique told us the story of how Santa Cruz (saint cross) and La Crucecita (little cross) got their names. Legend has it that long before Europeans came to Mexico some guy came out of the sea carrying a cross-shaped piece of wood, put into the ground right where the church is today.  No religious significance, it was just an interesting piece of wood, but they were told that this piece of wood would bring them prosperity.  When the conquistadores showed up and there wasn't anything worth pillaging, they burned the town down, and the only thing that survived the fire was the cross.  As per normal, someone decided that the gods had spoken so both towns ended up being named after the cross-shaped piece of wood, and the churches in both towns have pieces of the wood as holy relics and there is a piece at the Vatican in Rome.  

Then it was off on a 30 minute drive to Santa Maria Huatulco.  Deb and I have been there before, but it's a completely different experience when you have a knowledgeable guide.  Highlights of the tour included tortilla-making, the church and the graveyard.
 

These are really cool.. taxi's or produce transport, whatever gets the job done

Enrique knows a lady that runs her one-person tortilla factory out of a little lean-to on the main street. Tortillas start their brief and generally tragic lives as fresh corn kernels which are boiled with limestone, dried for a week, and ground by hand on a mortar-and-pestle-thingy.  Then water is added to make a dough, and a dough-ball is put between two pieces of waxed paper in a hinged squeezer-thingy and squeezed just the right amount to form a raw tortilla.  Then it is flung onto the outside of a beehive oven until it is just toasty and voila! you have a single tortilla.  Looks pretty easy until you try it, which of course we did.  Mine looked like a bat-signal while Deb's was more avant-garde.  Tasted good though.  Maria does this at least 600 times every day, 365 days a year. She is not the only tortilleria in town but she is one of the busiest and best.

 

They bubble up because of the gases released with heat, from the lime and corn

The church is in the town square, and looks a lot like every other church in Mexico.  The difference is this one is over 450 years old! The graveyard is very cool. Everything is more-or-less above ground here, so the grave-things are basically open buildings for each family that house the gravestones, urns, decorations, flowerpots, etc.  According to Enrique, funerals are a VERY big deal here, a bargain basement funeral runs 80,000 pesos ($5,000), with friends and relatives pitching in to help pay, and the sky's the limit.  Since a typical wage here is $4/day, that's a LOT of money! Apparently the cartel bosses up in Sinaloa have 2-story mausoleums with air-con, music, and security.  I guess that means something like "I may be dead, but I'm still winning."

This place is really really big, and it's full of dead people.

Then it was time to head up to Pluma Hidalgo, which is a very pretty 45 minute climb up a windey paved highway to 4,500 feet.  It's a beautiful spot right on the ridge-top of a mountain, so there are scenic vistas everywhere you look as the land falls away in all directions.  Not to mention that the temperature is 25 up in the mountains, which is very cool and refreshing!  

It started to rain just as we were headed down the mountain. It was very refreshing to have a cool day 

Hanging out on the street.

A very busy yard!

We all went to a coffee factory and ordered a couple kilos of coffee each, as the coffee from here is locally famous and quite reasonable in price.  A medium-roast, low-acid, both Deb and I quite like it,..much better than Weasel coffee from Vietnam.

This coffee business has been in the family since the 1800's. The family has 2 restaurants in Santa Cruz that have been serving this coffee since 1938. 

Enrique explains the process, but when he gets to the part where the beans were shucked by hand before machinery, he could not demonstrate..so the owner did the right thing & demonstrated. The strength in that mans hands were..well, strong enough to crush a coffee bean.

Processing and the selling is all done in the little shop

The hot water is poured over the grounds, gently stirred for 30 seconds and poured into cups. 

Then we went for a walking tour of the town while they ground and bagged our coffee!  It's a very pretty town, with viewpoints everywhere, lots of flowers, and very friendly people.

See that flower in her hand..we were all standing around, looking at the steep streets and the kids were just getting out of school. This little one walked straight towards me and handed me the flower. I felt very privileged and touched.

Then we stopped at what could be called an orchid garden, except there aren't many orchids blooming right now.  It's actually a lady's house, and she has managed to shoehorn a zillion plants into her little yard with twisty little footpaths through the whole thing.  It is a very cool experience, with lots of photo opportunities!

This is what the Orchid Ladies house looked like just on the one side. You should have seen the rest of the yard.

This is one of her 'streets' in this itty bitty yard

Don't know any of these names

This is a vanilla vine. It is not blooming, but once the flowers come and are pollinated, they dry up and poof, there is your bean.

She had a zillion different pots,.. this is a tire, but she had plants in old soccer balls, shells, cans, baseballs, bricks, broken dishes..just that in itself was interesting

Here Enrique tells us about this flower that blooms yellow in the morning but as it dies in the evening, it turns red. It only lasts 1 day.

This is called the Pineapple flower..for obvious reasons

The coffee plant

After picking up our coffee we loaded up and it was off to the hotel/cafe/spa for a walk of the grounds, lunch, and a zip-line.  The good folks at the restaurant serve up a Oaxacan platter for two people along with a pitcher of hibiscus water (jamaica). It's a great meal for 100 pesos each including a healthy tip.  Better yet, they made up the meal while we had a tour of the hotel and grounds!

 

The hotel kitchens

The hotel has very pretty rooms with glass front walls looking out and 4,000 feet down, a magnificent view and on a clear day you can see the ocean 40 kilometres away.  About $60 a night, what a cool place.  And the whole place is a mixture of manicured lawns and gardens and unspoiled rain forest.  Very pretty. No phone, no internet   

The view from the hotel room.

The hotel is made of Adobe..mud or fertilizer from farm animals and water. It is suppose to be cool in the summer and warm in the winter. We stayed in an Adobe hotel once and froze our butts off as there was no heat and all our clothes and sheets were damp...not for me, but some people think they're quaint.

And a pool

They have cabins too.

 Lunch was great, and then it was on to the zip-lining! This was for the three ladies only, as Barry and I would have loved to participate but we both had important commitments; for example I had to re-arrange all the bills in my wallet so that the Mexican guys all faced the same way. After that I hustled down to the other end and video-ed the ladies as they cheated death, hurtling over the abyss and through the jungle suspended from a mere spiderweb.  There was much screaming, and it was very cool. 

Remember that flower the little girl gave me? Well, it served me well..it kept me from biting my tongue but not from exercising my vocal cords. yeehaw

Then it was time to head home, and we were all snuggled back into our hotels by 4:15.  A very good day!

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