Una caminata a la caldera

Domingo 13 - Sábado 19 Octubre   Sunday morning we had a leisurely breakfast of rocky mountain hash. This is but a scramble of chopped potato, onion, sausage and egg. Ours also had nopal, which we have come to enjoy in many foods. Served on top of warmed corn tortillas and topped off to our individual liking with salsa picante.  No sooner did we have dishes finished when the telephone rang. It was Frank asking us if we would go on a caminata (hike) with them. It would only take two hours, and they felt that Dan needed a break from the computer where he had been helping a friend over a LogMeIn remote connection. After hemming and hawing for a few moments – this was of course after previously advising them that Dan could not afford the time until after 15 October – we scurried about changing clothes, rounding up cats to bring inside, locking doors, prepping our backpack, etc. Carmen had understood that Shattucks were picking us up, so she was straightening the house a bit – only to find Dan heading out the back door with the car keys. Oh, WE are driving! Off we happily go on this gorgeous day, and find them walking along their road near the autopista, with a backpack.

After driving on the highway about 15 minutes to the east of Córdoba, we arrived at the exit where the free route to Veracruz takes off. We followed a convoluted route onto increasingly narrow roads thru the dusty village of San Rafael, still roughly paved for the most part. Ania kept us informed of all the sights along the way. Ex-haciendas, fruit trees, birds we might see – soooooooo many interesting things to tell!  Next we turned onto a dirt road, and finally onto a narrow grass lane. This was our car's first experience with an overgrown grass lane. We expected but a short distance on the grass path, but it seemed a fair distance to us paved road travelers. Eventually, the other two got out and walked ahead to be certain that no large rocks had gotten into the track since they had last been there. It was difficult to travel in spots where the wheels had worn down into the surface, and we had to cant off to the side to avoid high-centering the car. Finally we got to a point but a few paces from what would have been the end of the road, providing an ample parking spot with ample turn around space, to find there were two trees down across the road. Dan's heart fell, as he imagined having to back out over the rough and twisting route when we headed back home. Luckily we found a nearby slight widening of the path with a bit less undergrowth, and were able to turn the car around, backing over the bushes between a rock and a tree to face more or less back the way we came. Hopefully no one else would come down the track to block it later...!

Now, with feet on the ground, at one of Shattuck's favorite hikes – off we go to explore the Caldera del Diablo (Devil's Caldron)!  Dan had insisted on bringing his Komperdell “trekking pole,” just knowing that at least one of us would find it useful. Okay, Carmen grudgingly took it out of the car, and Dan hefted our pack with water & snacks onto his back. Carmen soon discovered soon that she is no longer quite so stable on her feet. She had been expecting a well-worn sendero (trail), but after but a couple steps, she was very thankful to have the help of the staff. The ground was in fact a bit slippery from rains a few days before, plus many large rocks of many shapes and sizes littered the way up the slope. Seems that this site was over 1000 years old, where a small volcano had erupted,. It left an oval (when viewed from the air, as in Google Earth) open cone and an interior caldera (crater) about 960 feet across its longest width.

From the base, it looks like just another hill covered in forest greenery, and the inner caldera itself is accessible by a rocky trail up thru jungle liberally sprinkled with coffee bushes. Looking down from near the top it is revealed as a really deep hole with very steep interior walls, and a basin-like floor way below, now heavily forested. After getting near the top of the outside of the cone, there are two breaks in the rim of the vent, allowing access to a well worn rough path around a ledge maybe 100 feet or so down from the upper rim. Step off the ledge, and there is a steep tree and brush covered slop to the bottom of the big round hole in ground. In some places the ledge is large enough to set up a camp, especially in areas undercut back into the cliff-like vertical sides above, The only real problem here was that the path in places was only about a foot wide, or slick with a thin covering of slippery algae-capped mud. Not a “walk in the park,” by any means.

The views of rock formations were fantastic, rising high up the inner cone walls high above us! Carmen, true to recent form, kept losing her balance, so we kept one person near to stabilize her when she wavered. Unfortunately she mostly tips to her right – the down side of the trail. Dan slipped twice on the slick underfoot, and by the next morning he could hardly put weight on his left leg where a ligament in his left knee was complaining. We were too late in the day to see the parrots and parakeets, but heard a few. Saw lots of butterflies. The crazy thing about this cone, is that all the rocks are gray, the color of aged limestone, and the seepage from above has formed stalagmites on the walls and flowstone-like formations in the undercuts (almost caves) inboard of the trail we followed.  The rocks that littered the trail also were of this same material, and showed the clear effects of water erosion.  So just how can a volcano be made of sedimentary rock?  Is this an example of carbonatite, which we understand is pretty rare?

Ania found many plants for both herself and Carmen. At one point, we three enjoyed some banana muffins Carmen had packed, while Ania was scrabbling up a rock to cut and pull off some favored plants. She always has in her backpack a plastic bag and a knife for such gatherings, plus Frank's hands for carrying more. She is careful to only take epiphytes which have been blown off their perches by storms, or off of trees which have fallen to the forest floor. Ania also packed up a large plastic bag with loose soil, of the type some of her plants like.The walk around usually takes them a half hour. Took us about three times that long. What can we say? We walked slower, with so much to see. Our amigos had never seen a snake here, but we did! A large thick black one, moving quickly away from us out of the arroyo trail on the way back down to the car! We believe this 4+ foot specimen to have been a culebra indigo (Drymarchon corais, probably the orizabensis variety that is native here).

As we drove back home, roads here and there were closed or very busy, so they guided us through areas in the city where we had not been before, and interesting tour of Cordoba! At one point we drove by the huge cementerio with it's big panteon (mausoleum), with a fantastic multiple block-long cut flower market outside the walls, close by to where families come to adorn the graves of the departed loved ones. When we dropped Frank & Ania off, we were invited for lunch, but we really did not have time, thinking Dan's friend would be waiting for him to come back online.

Carmen got all the new plant stems into pots. Thankfully we had purchased another huge bag of soil and some new pots last week. We now need more pots! There is simply no more space outside in the ground, without digging up other plants or getting rid of a least some of our tiny plot of grass in the front yard. Dan tied the orchids that came off of fallen trees during out hike, onto branches in our bougainvilleas.  As it turned out, the friend Dan has been helping never came back on line after we returned home, though Dan tried to raise him. Bummer – we might as well have stayed at Ania and Frank's for dinner. While watching tv this evening, our cable went out, so we went to bed and watched some of the maratón of the last season of Breaking Bad, which Dan had recorded on the DVR last weekend. Good day.

One evening our Gardi cat told us excitedly, that there was something in the bag on the floor which was holding the miter box that goes back for exchange. He was right! We took a medium sized brown saltamontes (grasshopper) outside for him to play with. We believe it is the same one he was with in the hallway the next day, so he must have been the one to bring it in in the first place. He is so good about telling us, with a meow, when he has found something that does not belong in our house.  It was a pretty quiet week here. Four days with no rain. We saw two green birds flying at a distance. Probably parrots? Had to put another butterfly outside.

Work has begun in the lot across the street. With the ditches dug around three sides for footings, next huge piles of sand and rocks were delivered this week.  Then on each of the next days, eight bags of cement plus eight five gallon buckets of water were delivered first thing in the mornings. A single man has been mixing cement by hand, bucketing it to the trenches, and then rolling/placing huge rocks into the mix, creating a mampostería (rubble-concrete) foundation for the lot's perimeter walls. Hot heavy work for 8-10 hour days. Don't know how his body held up to it!  Dan walked across the street and offered that the fellow come to our house if he needed anything.

Dan stopped in at the MasKotas store, and was surprised to find two little bags of Temptation treats, to which our two cats have a long-standing addiction. We have been trying to obtain this product for over a year, and all the pet stores professed never to have heard of it, despite the company's email message to us that it was available in our area.  Unfortunately, our cats' favorite flavor is chicken, and Mexico no longer makes that flavor.  But, second best is salmon, and that is manufactured here by Whiskas. The government has just put thru new tax laws, so the prices we pay for some things will go up. This includes a 16%  IVA (value-added tax) on pet foods and sweets. Cat food was already more expensive here than in the US.   In the store, Dan saw a puppy that he would love to have brought home. No more dogs for us though. They are a problem when we travel. Be nice if they could be trained to litter boxes like cats. The cats thought they had died and gone to heaven when they received their treats that evening.

The little man that comes to the back gate with potted plants that cost 20 pesos each (US$1.50) has been here three times this week. His plants are always small, but well rooted, and we don't mind buying from his little enterprise--better than those that come by just looking for a handout. One day we bought a pinkish peach color thanksgiving cactus. It looks nice on our fireplace mantel. We also bought a dark pepper plant, so he told us. Its leaves are dark green with dark purple on the back. Can't seem to ID it one the internet, so we wonder what it will turn into. At present its leaves are a bit rolled up and look long and pointed.. We potted it with our pepper plant that a neighbor gave us – the one loaded with the hot piquin peppers. Carmen again has everything planted. She dug out all the local soil that we had planted our corn in, which was in the large Earthbox planter we had used for tomatoes in the US. Then she put regular potting soil into the planter for four new plants which came from the Home depot discount table.

Thursday morning we woke up at six am, so we got up half an hour later, showered, breakfasted, and drove into downtown Córdoba. We had once upon a time found an agro-chemicals store there, and we since have not found it again ( the yellow pages have been useless in this regard). The traffic is horrid in this area, with only overfull on-street parking. Our thought was that if we got there early enough, the streets would not yet be full. At 7:45am the streets were only three quarters full! We drove up and down the streets 'til we did indeed find the missing shop. Plus, there was parking across from it! We purchased the weed killer we needed, plus some sulfur for getting rid of those nasty little chiggers.

Lots more stops during the day.  Being that we were close to the east side of town at this time, we went to the Soriana hiper-mart. This store has the best oatmeal. This may seem a small item to visit a store for, however, we do like good oatmeal for breakfast! We started down the aisle for our oatmeal and soon Carmen admitted to Dan that they had best take a cart. The veggies looked especially good this day, also this is the only store that seems to carry good canned sweet corn. The fresh baked goods were very attractive, And there were some pies with real pie crust!  Crusted pies seem to be rare down here. We selected a pineapple one. It was good, but the surprise for us was that the filling must have been pineapple juice thickened with cornstarch. It's saving factor was that it was not over-sweet. Since we do not drive the distance to this store often, we strolled all the aisles. Yes, our cart slowly filled. We found some more ant-proof plastic containers at a good price, along with small milks and juices that we give to folks who ring our door bell or call at the gate for anything we can give them. Several come by each week.

At Home Depot we exchanged the miter box which was missing a part. Of course we always check out the plants, and often buy one. This time we bought four. Two from the discount shelf, plus another large bag of soil.  Onwards to IMSS where we stood in line for ten minutes and never saw the line of over a dozen folks ahead of us move. We will go back another day. Walmart for various items and we spied a whole roasted adobo chicken, plus for ten pesos more we got 500g ranch fried potatoes. They were delicious and the potatoes made three meals. Next the RG store looking for a vacuum cleaner. Finally got back to downtown Fortín, for a fill-up at the Pemex station and a stop at the supermarket for their local apples. Home again before 1:30pm. Kitties met us at the door, they like us to be at home with them!.