Raja and I want to see them first hand and we are planning a trip there in late October. We will fly to Mexico City, take the road to the west to Angangueo, stay in a small hotel heated by sunshine and fireplace, and hike up to the mountain valleys where butterflies fly about in the warm mid-day sun.
I admit, we were worried about this trip at first with all the bad news from Mexico- crime, a flu pandemic and reports of dodgy police. But, after the panic, one observes that the sky indeed is not falling- certainly not at Cancún or Acapulco where the piñacolada tourists are flopped all over the beaches, nor is it falling on the butterflies. And- lucky us- Mexican friends have shed some sanity on the panic of TV reportage.
Raja has been all over the narrow, dark alleys and stuffy souks of Morocco and through downtown Santiago, Chile to the places where the guidebooks say the pick pockets go to work. Nothing whatsoever has happened- which is not to boast that we are unstoppable, or to suggest that crime does not happen and viruses do not exist. But the point is that areas where there are warnings are often less alarming in real life, than they are when we imagine what might hypothetically happen. And, as we have so often observed first hand, TV news reportage takes advantage of its opportunities to sensationalize and multiply negative numbers.
Right now, Michoacán’s Winter monarchs of 2009 are in flower gardens and fields in North America and they are already beginning to feel the stirrings of a need to fly south. And Raja and I do too. Just keeping you in our loop!
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