Eight people, eight mules, two horses, and one dog made the trip up the mountain. Israel (a bighorn sheep biologist), Javier (an Argentinian photographer), and I walked. Franco (our guide), his wife Narda, Don Chito (who owned the mules), Don Chito’s assistant, Aurora (my Mexican adviser), and one of Aurora’s students rode the mules and horses. The rest of the mules packed all the gear and food. Pobrecitas!!! It was a hell of a trip- about 8 miles straight up, a 1900 meter or almost 6000 foot gain. The trail ascended at at least a 45-degree angle the entire time. It was insane! I thought I was going to die. I had to ride the mules a few times for sure. We had also left fairly late in the morning so the sun was beating down something ferocious.

Cali had a hard time of it, with the hot soil and sun, and I think that the next time I’ll leave her at home for this trip. Or leave way earlier in the day. She was also scared to death of the mules and wouldn’t go near them, so when I was riding she sort of took off into the brush. Scared the hell out of me! I had to get down off my mule and call for her for awhile but she showed up eventually, a little panicked but unhurt, and then I had to walk with her. Poor girl. Everyone called her fresa, which translates as ‘strawberry’ and basically means ‘city girl’.

The camp was very rustic, as expected. There a handful of men who stay up at the camp to clear fire breaks and keep the trails clean. They live in a wood and stone structure with a palapa roof, and sleep inside like sardines, with their sleeping bags lined up next to each other. Many of these laborers are young guys just working a job, and a few are ranchers who are working for extra income (nobody gets rich off of ranching around here, it seems).

There was also a large open-air kitchen structure with a shingled roof and wood-fed stoves. Meals were cooked here and at a fire pit off to the side. Luis, our camp cook, made some hearty meals! Eggs and ham and beans for breakfast, quesadillas or machaca (dried beef) burritos for lunch, and dinner varied. The first night Aurora cooked up some top sirloin! We were spoiled with that one, but I gotta tell you it hit the spot after that climb.

We slept in tents in an open area near the kitchen. It was cold up there but not as cold as I expected. My zero-degree bag was actually a little warm, especially with Cali sleeping right. on. top. of me.

The higher altitudes of the Reserve are made of pine-oak forests, which are so strange to see in this part of Mexico. Stranger still are the palms and cactus between the pines and oaks! It’s beautiful up there, and reminds me quite a bit of where I grew up.

The first night I helped Israel set up some cameras to catch those nasty feral pigs in the act of scavenging and destruction. We talked about setting up some cameras for puma as well, and got some tips from the ranchers on a place where they think some pumas travel. The rest of the time I spent just showing my face and talking to the workers, and trying to get into the habit of constantly writing field notes. A couple of the ranchers were telling stories about puma attacking pet dogs and mules (some of these stories I’d heard before in other areas), but all agreed that there weren’t very many puma left in the Reserve. It will be an interesting place to collect data, which I’m guessing I’ll be able to do next month.

The walk down was much easier but just as hot. Whereas the trip up took about eight hours, the trip down took about four and a half. My toenails hurt like I can’t even tell you, and I actually got a blister UNDER my big toenail. It wasn’t that fun to drain it, let me tell you, and I still think it’s going to fall off. Gross!

So now we’re back at El Terreno. It always feels like getting back to reality when I come home from the field. The goddamn truck needed a new fuel pump, I need to deal with the financial aid office and a bunch of other beaurocratic stuff at the school, groceries must be bought, and trash must be emptied. The cats finally started hunting and left me a rotting mouse, which was real nice to come home to. Ah, yes, this is the life!! J

I’m going to Carnavale this weekend so I should have some great photos to share with you. The next couple of weeks or so I’ll just be writing and getting ready to do my first interviews and surveys on a trip north. I’m excited to actually start data collection, and a little nervous too. Mostly I’m feeling the pressure of not having enough time or money to do everything I’d like to do! I’m very grateful though to have some good friends here and a great place to live. Tonight we’re going to watch movies with carne asada takeout from the best place in La Paz (says me). Hope you’re all enjoying the rain/snow/sun of your respective homes!!

fox poop haha

Well, I’m here! After a number of delays (as usual), some car problems (as expected), and some technical difficulties, I finally made it down to La Paz. The drive down wasn’t very eventful. The cats and the dog were all pretty well-behaved and surprisingly quiet. Of course, I may only think that because their kennels were buried in my clothes and books and other stuff and I couldn’t hear them! The guys at the military check points didn’t quite know what to make of my little traveling zoo and I got waved through at every post. I would love to have three or four days to do this trip without rushing and enjoy all the stops along the way. One day…J

I hit Guerrero Negro (about halfway down the peninsula) just as the sun was setting. We found a hotel and hit the hay pretty early. I still overslept the next morning and we got out of town a little later than I would have hoped. That meant two hours of driving in the dark before getting in to La Paz. Not ideal!! But I didn’t hit any cows so that worked out. I was greeted with hugs and kisses by Alba and her mom and dad, and taken out to my new home, El Terreno.

I love El Terreno!! It’s about a ten minute drive from the nearest Pemex gas station (and civilization in general). It’s in a neighborhood that’s slated for development, although that hasn’t really happened yet. Way more empty lots than houses out here. Lots of dust and dirt roads and goat herds. Alba’s dad, Eleazar, is cultivating a shady fruit orchard on the lot, with oranges, pomegranates, and other big leafy trees just hitting maturity. That makes for lots of shade and a pretty view. Eleazar and the nearest neighbor both come out two or three times a week to water the plants, so for as isolated as it is out here, it seems like there’s always someone around.

It’s a lovely little house, you can see from the photos. There’s no hot water, which is mostly fine, but I forgot that it’s actually quite a bit cooler this time of year! I have to time my showers so that the water in the holding tank on top of the house is somewhat warm. In the summer it really doesn’t matter- it’s so damn hot here all you want is a cold shower, but right now it’s a little different. I’m living in the downstairs area right now. The upstairs has a bedroom and a bathroom but it’s not finished yet. I’m going to help Alba and her family tile the floors and bathroom and get it ready for living in.

The cats are in heaven! Aside from all the mice and gophers they can hunt, there are trees to climb and a roof for sunbathing. Cali has plenty of space to run around and of course has charmed Eleazar and the neighbors into throwing the ball for her. I’m so grateful I’m able to live in a place where I can have all the animals!

Cali and I took an afternoon to go swim in the bay....

Since I arrived I’ve been settling in and trying to get this project up and running.I finally met up with my official Mexican faculty sponsor, and she’s been a great help. She already has some projects going near my field sites, so I’ll be able to tag along on some of those trips. In fact, this last week I accompanied her team up to the Sierra La Laguna Biosphere Reserve. They were doing some plant surveys as well as placing some camera traps for a project on the feral pigs there. More on that in the next post….

on the way down

The highway that runs the length of the Baja Peninsula is long and winding and dusty and desolate and surrounded by desert. This is not to say it isn’t beautiful, because it is, and I owe it to my time in Nevada that I’m able to see how beautiful the desert is. The boojum “forests” look like scraggly whiskers across the hilly landscape. Vultures ride the wind currents in the middle of a hot day. The occasional cactus wren flits to or from a nest cavity in one of the bigger cacti.

Water is obvious along the highway. When there’s water, there’s a splash of greenery, either as an isolated oasis or as a row of vegetation along an irrigation canal. You momentarily forget the sand and rock around you and can’t take your eyes off the green. It’s almost seductive, promising cool water, shade, rest, relaxation. But we drove on.

We stopped at a shrine along the way to take some photos, rest, and check out the desert.

Did I mention the highway is long? We drove about a thousand miles in three days. I white-knuckled it almost the whole way, and my hands were constantly cramping. The landscapes were fantastic though, and I saw some things I’d never seen before, like these strange hills that looked like they were made entirely of house-sized boulders, just set in the middle of the desert. My herpetologist roommate would have gone crazy going snake hunting in them. I was pretty happy ooh-ing and ahh-ing and driving right by. We didn’t make as much progress as we’d hoped that first day due to some construction and really slow traffic outside of Ensenada. Not wanting to drive in the dark (my strong sense of self-preservation thought it best not to attempt the hair-pin turns at night after almost killing us while trying to pass a truck on a turn earlier in the day), we stopped at a little roadside hotel in the Santo Tomás area and called it a night. The paint was peeling off the walls in big chunks and there were mounds of that nasty black mold on the bathroom ceiling, but whatever… there was a bed…. Which I slept on with my own sheetJ

The next day we made it as far as Guerrero Negro, about half way down the peninsula. This is the town adjacent to the Ojo de Liebre lagoons, the last pristine grey whale birthing lagoon in the world. If it had been winter, I certainly would have stayed to see them, but not this time. My new new 4runner decided to have some issues at this point, which just ended up being a matter of needing the timing adjusted, which was an $8 fix, thank goodness. And then we were back on the road.

This time we made it to Loreto. Well, barely. The last hour the dark came before I’d anticipated and we got stuck on the road in the dark for an hour. This was far south of areas where the bandidos hang out, mi familia, but I was definitely not happy about the hair-pin turns and random cows on the road. I’ll do everything in my power never to drive in the dark again. But we made it, and stayed at a great little guesthouse with well-decorated rooms, great aircon, and a nice family feel to it. The lady who checked us in was very sweet, and had a nice breakfast for us in the morning. Granted we were there at night and didn’t see any of the town really, but I wasn’t convinced that Loreto had anything to offer us in any case, and I wasn’t tempted to hang out for a while.

And so, finally, we made that last leg of the journey to La Paz. Now, La Paz I love. It’s got it all- the ocean, for when I can stand the sand, and the mountains. Nightlife, if you like that kind of thing, a thriving academic community, and I swear some of the genuinely nicest people on Earth. Great taco stands and restaurants, big shopping centers for when you want the convenient one-stop shopping experience, and a 15-screen movie theater, which is very important when you want to relax in the a/c in the middle of the day. And then the neighborhoods are so quaint and the houses are soooo cute, many of them in the quintessential style- pretty pastel colors, a nice shady garden in back, decorative ironwork around the front yard.

The apartment we’re staying in suits my needs just fine. No nice little garden, but very conveniently located to the university and shops. It’s a bit of haul to downtown and the malecon (boardwalk on the bay), but that really means it’s like a 15 minute drive, because nowhere in La Paz is that far.

From our front porch the first day I saw these cows walking in traffic, heading to the Pemex station for a fill up. Love it.

¡Por fin estamos aquí!

After two weeks of delay and three days of driving, we finally touched down in La Paz today. I'm so tired that I'm not going to write anymore right now, but promise to do so later. Like tomorrow probably. Just wanted to let interested parties know we've made the trip!

Jakarta blah

Hi all,
I'm off to the island of Sulalwesi tomorrow and will not have internet for a couple of weeks. I'm in Jakarta now, which is big and smelly and like any other big city I've ever been to. Looking forward to getting out!!

I'll be in touch in two or three weeks:)

Pani

Klahng na! Very strong!

About the time that Jeack was wrestling our motos across the big river, these farmers that we ran into had to get their tractor up a steep muddy hill. They pulled some rope around a tree at the top o the hill, attached it to the tractor, and pulled. Then some guys on the downhill side started to push. It was quite a sight!

Moto madness

>

We were crazy. I don’t know what we were thinking. We took motos (think Vespa but the Honda version) on 4WD roads meant for dirt bikes. In the most heavily land-mined province in Cambodia. Seriously, on the sides of the road there were red signs with skull and crossbones that said “Danger Landmines.” It was quite an adventure.

Anne, Jeack, and I took a taxi to Kampong Thom, about halfway between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, pretty much in the middle of Cambodia. We were embarking on a visit to Preah Khan, an ancient Cambodian temple that used to be the palace of a king or two. It is still largely overtaken by the forest, and we’d heard it was a cool spot, so away we went. Early in the morning we set off on rented motos up a pot-holed gravelly red-dirt road. About an hour in Anne and I had to pee. Jeack picked a likely looking place, and we pulled off the road. But there was a red and white flag hanging from a bush, which means, “You can come here but be careful because there may be landmines.” Jeack assured us it was fine to walk into the vegetation a little ways but we decided to pee right off the side of road. Like they say in the guidebooks, just swallow your pride and do it- it’s not worth losing a leg!

Shortly thereafter we turned off onto a much narrower dirt road that wound off into the forest. Now, mind you, what you call forest here is what we think of as jungle back home- huge trees and thick vines and impenetrable undergrowth. Here there be tigers. The road began to get narrower and wetter almost immediately, and the vegetation grew over and around us. There were deep tire ruts from other bikes, which the rains had filled with water; when we couldn’t slog through them we had to slog around them. We were forced to ride at a snail’s pace to avoid the rocks, vegetation, and deep water, and because if we rode too fast we would have mired ourselves in the mud or the deep sand which would occasionally take the mud’s place. At one point we had to get the motos through a river that was about 3 feet deep- enough to leave the engines sputtering and dead. We thought we’d lost them but somehow Jeack got them started again. The whole ride was a constant battle of wills with the handlebars; they wanted to go one way and I had to wrench them the other way to avoid the one foot drop-offs into a buffalo-sized puddle.

Big moto stud going through small stream....srool-easy!

Jeack helping me out of a tough spot...

Again...

It was hot sweaty hard work. Did I mention it was only the second time I’d ever ridden a moto?!

We rode like this for hours. Many hard hours. We didn’t have a map. I asked about one but Jeack insisted that “the mouth is the map” in Cambodia. I imagine a map wouldn’t have helped much, really, with all the small detours and road branches. But then the villagers we happened to run into didn’t help much either!! They seemed to have no real concept of time or distance, which isn’t very surprising considering they probably rarely to never travel more than a few miles from home. The villagers we ran into had small farms or herds of cattle, and their homes were very few and very far between. It was actually quite exciting when we saw a villager, because we were convinced we were lost the whole time and it was a relief to see someone nod and point in the direction we were already going. And thank god for Jeack, I don’t know what we would have done if we hadn’t had a native Khmer speaker with us.

Stopping to talk to a local...again..

House out in the middle of the forest...

Village school...

Somehow, miraculously, we made it to the village just outside the temple ruins grounds. I was beat. The bones in my hands hurt, my butt hurt, my arms hurt, my back hurt, my body was one big pain. It had taken us about four hours longer than we expected to get out there, and while we were already looking at having to spend some time driving through the jungle at night, it would have been ridiculous to go all that way and not drive the final few miles to the temple. So we did. It was beautiful and peaceful. I wish there’d been more time to enjoy it.

So exhausted but relieved to finally be there....

Really old bridge....

Walking an ancient road...

I like to call it "rubbling"

More temple shots ...

Cool faces...

Evidence of looting- digging under the towers looking for valuables...

Victory!!! Now we're ready for the ride back!!

And then we were back on the road. The locals had pointed out another road that was supposed to be much easier, if a little longer of a drive. I personally didn’t really care how long the drive was, I just didn’t want to be in the jungle at night!! About an hour in, as the sun was setting, we somehow turned off the decent dirt road and ended up passing by a house, where the man of the house pointed us to a road back into the jungle. I absolutely refused! There was a good road, where did it go? As long as there was a decent road I wasn’t going back in the jungle. A couple of guys in military greens drove up on their motos and when Jeack asked where they were going, they offered to lead us back to their village on a good road, and then there’d be a good road back to town. As we started to follow the men, the light fading quickly, it occurred to me that this wasn’t the safest situation. But what else can you do when you’re lost in the forest in the middle of Cambodia? In the meantime, Jeack and Anne were having this conversation on their bike—

Anne (flippantly): Gosh, those guys sure do look like Khmer Rouge, don’t they, with their military clothes and patches?

Jeack: They are.

Anne: What?!

Jeack: They are Khmer Rouge.

Anne: What?!

Jeack: They left the Khmer Rouge area several years ago and now they live here.

Anne: What?!

SO there’s that. The KR were kidnapping foreigners not so long ago, so I imagine we were pretty lucky in our timing. Or something. Jeez, I don’t know, but it gave me quite a start when Anne relayed this information after we’d passed the men’s village. I can’t believe we were escorted out of the forest by Khmer Rouge guys. Damn!

Anyway, they put us on the right road back to Kompong Thom. It was still a long drive, and it again occurred to me that driving at night on back roads is exactly what you’re NOT supposed to do in Cambodia. But you know, it really fit with the atmosphere of adventure for the day. We finally made it back to town around 10:30, exhausted, hungry, dehydrated, and sore. But you know what, it was worth it- it was one hell of a day.