Mt. Rainier from the air

I got back Saturday from a week visiting family in Washington State. I had a wonderful time, of course!  I started off with an inexpensive direct flight from Mazatlán to Vancouver, BC on Westjet Airlines.  This was my first time flying Westjet, and I loved it. During the summer they fly from here to Vancouver and back once a week, on Saturdays.  During the rest of the year they have more flights.  I paid about $250 less than my usual carriers that require a plane change in Phoenix or Los Angeles, so that was nice!  Since my son and his family live in Bellingham, just a few miles South of the border, it made the whole trip easy as pie.

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My son and his family live a very active life and it was fun to jump right into it!  There were volleyball tryouts every day for Erica – and I was glad I was there for the good news that she made the JV team.  She was a willing driver, too, offering to drive whenever we headed out.  Owen had his middle school orientation and of course a bit of baseball practice.  We walked their chocolate lab, Lexie, went boating on Lake Whatcom, had a shopping spree at Best Buy, and ate out a bunch.

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Click to enlarge panorama of Bellingham Bay

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One night Erica and I cooked dinner for everyone – snow pea, asparagus, and parmesan pasta with crunchy bread and a salad!  We walked along Bellingham Bay, visited a fabulous knitting store downtown, and bought quinoa, bulgur wheat, and basmati rice for me to bring home at Trader Joe’s.  We had plenty of time sitting in the sunshine talking, too.

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Visits never seem to be long enough but I feel all cozy and happy to have enjoyed my wonderful family for a bit.  I got back Saturday afternoon, and that night we experienced one of the biggest rainstorms ever (at least for us!)  We think more than 4 inches of rain fell at our house! You might want to read MazReal’s great blog post with lots of pictures showing what it was like at his end of Centro – and during the same rainstorm just a few blocks North the oldest church in Mazatlán lost its front wall… picture below. This has been a very rainy summer here in Mazatlán, and many colonias have had huge problems due to flooding.

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Templo San José, Mazatlán

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This morning we took a walk along the malecón with the dogs and realized that they are nearly done renovating the exterior of the Belmar Hotel.  It’s been a long haul but it is looking great. Do you remember in January 2010 the cement canopy fell down?  It was a real mess back then, but now – the only remaining project seems to be painting a new front sign.

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Belmar Hotel, Mazatlán

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There’s lots more going on in the Countdown to Mexico world that I’ll tell you about soon, but now – I think it’s time to get back to my knitting!

You may remember that Paul and I visited Mazatlán’s Estero Del Yugo (Estuary) last December.  It was very dry and nothing was blooming. Many of the trees did have pods hanging from them, though, which of course are an essential food for many birds.  I thought the place was amazing (please click above to read about our previous visit)  and I knew I wanted to come back during the rainy season.

The other morning Paul and I headed out to see what it was like during the summer.  We put on long pants, insect repellent, and hats. It had rained overnight and the morning was about as cool as it gets here during the summer.

We parked, paid the 50 peso entrance fee ($4.07 USD) and headed out on the path.  It wasn’t long before we were waving mosquitos away – although so far the repellent was working – and we got to watch a long line of leaf cutter ants carrying their flag-leaves. We continued on, ducking under branches and stepping on or over hanging limbs as we worked our way along the path.  Our goal was to make it to my favorite place – the three story viewing platform.

Unfortunately, we got stopped by a big mucky marsh that engulfed the path.  We almost thought it was raining, there were so many bugs on the water!  We reapplied repellent and explored a little this way and that before heading back.  The path at the Estero del Yugo is one way out, the same way back, unfortunately, so there was no alternative way to get to the viewing platform.

As luck would have it, though, I happened to notice a flower blooming on a tree trunk!  After consulting the plant identification guide we’d been given we discovered it was a Crescentia alata or Tecomate tree.  The flowers are gorgeous, and were a real consolation prize for not being able to walk the whole path. I did a little research when I came home, and discovered a new word – cauliflory – flowers that bloom on tree trunks.  The tecomate fruit is a round gourd like thing that is used for water containers and maracas and is also a cure for bronchial problems.

The Estero del Yugo is home to a wide variety of plants and animals.  Its low tropical deciduous forest and coastal wetlands used to be the landscape of coastal Sinaloa.  Both the forest and the wetlands are in danger now as these unique and important areas are transformed either in to farmland or more urban uses.  Just outside the left edge of the panorama picture  of the estuary is the Hotel Riu Mazatlán, a huge all-inclusive resort.  To the right just showing is a water slide park. Click the thumbnail picture below to bring up the larger panoramic photo.

The importance of maintaining this ecosystem is vital to many species of plants and animals. The picture at the top of this post shows a number of spoonbill and herons resting in the trees, but the woods were crazy with bird sounds and I wished I could have endured the mosquitoes for longer so I could have perhaps identified them.

Our next visit will be at the end of the rainy season, maybe late October or early November.  We’ll spray ourselves down even more and this time ask the young man we encountered as we were leaving to walk ahead of us with his machete.  It really is a special place, and I encourage you to visit and support this excellent endeavour.

Estero Del Yugo has a website, and they are open to visitors from 9 am to 5 pm Monday through Friday.  If you’d like to visit during the summer rainy season I’d recommend going when it hasn’t rained for a day or two, as you should be able to traverse the whole trail.  A long sleeved shirt would be a plus, too.  Don’t let fear of mosquitoes keep you away – we only had one or two bites, in places where we’d missed with repellent.  There are pictures from our last visit as well as this one on our Photos page, above.

Disclosure:  The above blog post will also be shared with Mexico Today. I am being compensated for my work in creating content as a Contributor for the México Today Program.  I was also invited to an all-expenses paid trip to Oaxaca as part of my role and for the launch of the program.  All stories, opinions and passion for all things México shared in my blog are completely my own.

Last night I passed by the back yard hummingbird feeder in the dark.  It looked like something was on it.

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I crept over for a look thinking it might be a bat.  You can see what I saw, above!

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Geckos!  A trio of geckos hanging about on the empty feeder.

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Are they drinking the last of the nectar?  Or were there bugs by it that they were eating? I’ve written before about having geckos hanging about in our outdoor lights waiting for bugs to come within range, but this is the first time I’ve ever noticed them on the hummingbird feeders. We often sit outside at night not six feet from this one. I’m sure I would have noticed them before.  Funny, no?