The second magical stop of our whirlwind tour of Estado de Mexico was at the Butterfly Sanctuary in Pieda Herrada. We arrived around noon and were given a brief lecture on the monarch butterflies before hiking up the mountain. It turns out that most butterflies live for only about one month, but the generation of monarch butterflies born in the fall each year in the US and Canada live for about six months! This enables them to make the 4,000+ mile flight to Mexico to hibernate each winter. They are attracted by the alkaline nature of the Oyamel forests here (some kind of fir / pine tree native to Mexico) that makes the butterflies poisonous to predators during hibernation.
Anyway, we opted not to ride the weird "caballitos" aka little horses that looked like they were half donkey, and take a slow hike up to the top. It was a really nice day, and the terrain and vegetation reminded us a lot of eastern Washington. The only drawback was the thick DUST when the "horses" went by. The long walk was worth it once we got to the top and saw the, literally, millions of butterflies. It was pretty amazing.
Entrance to the sanctuary...I resisted the urge to yell "SANCTUARY" in a Quasimodo impression...but it was hard!
Lupine wildflowers...just like in Washington!
Our first butter-friend!
For being bright orange, the butterflies were surprisingly camouflaged in this forest.
Wait a minute...those aren't leaves...
Every inch of the trees at the top of our climb were just coated in a thick layer of monarchs
Hola butterfly king!
This almost reminded me of a scene from Hitchcock's "The Birds"!
More clusters of monarchs on the Oyamel trees
Butter-iffic!
To quote Johnathan, "Re-donk-u-lous!"
Someone was excited!
The "caballitos"
There were so many flying down to the nearby river for a drink, that the police were out to direct traffic. We had to drive about 10 MPH to avoid mass murder!
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