More on Florida Sensible traveler Destinations Where they went Travel gear Student travelA disastrous migration
By Diane Daniel, Globe Correspondent, 4/21/2002
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More on Florida Sensible traveler Destinations Where they went Travel gear Student travel |
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Rachel Kelso is Totovig's longtime friend and Jamaica Plains roommate. For years, they'd discussed traveling to Mexico to see the butterflies.
Researching on the Internet, they found Rocamar Tours (www.rocamar.com.mx), an outfitter in Morelia, in the Mexican state of Michoacan, that specializes in taking people to see the yearly visitation by millions of monarch butterflies. They migrate from Canada and the United States to the Oyamel fir forests near Angangeo. They arrive in mid-November and hibernate in enormous fir trees until February, when mating season begins. They return north in March. Totovig, 34, a human resources specialist, and Kelso, 30, a program manager at a design firm, went in mid-February.
After flying to Mexico City, they took a four-hour bus ride west to Morelia, where they would start the tour. The highlight would be an afternoon with the butterflies.
Early in the morning they rode for two hours with seven other tourists in a van to the base of a mountain, where they would hike up to reach El Capulin monarch sanctuary. The weather was turning unseasonably cold and wet.
"It kept getting colder and colder and rainier and darker, and it was sleeting by the time we'd gotten there," Kelso said. "We'd built it up in our minds to be this sunny, beautiful day and you get your soul kissed by 2 million butterflies."
"The tour guide that I was with said the weather we were experiencing was like nothing he'd ever seen," Totovig said. "We were not dressed for it, to say the least. We were cold and wet and it was very, very muddy." From the van, the travelers either hiked or rode on horseback up a sometimes steep trail to the sanctuary. Kelso went by horse, Totovig on foot.
"It was a challenge, but it was really exciting at the same time," Totovig said. "The amazing part of it is that scientists are still trying to figure out how on earth the butterflies do it. It's mysterious and beautiful."
"We had been forewarned by our tour guide that a lot of the butterflies had died from the cold," Kelso said. "But he was optimistic."
As they approached the sanctuary, everyone was on foot. "At first I couldn't understand why we couldn't see any butterflies," said Kelso, whose group was a bit ahead of Totovig's. Then, looking up, she saw that "refrigerator-sized pods of just hundreds of thousands of them were clinging to trees trying to stay warm. Then I looked down and there were dead butterflies everywhere. Our guide was as stunned as we were. I thought, `Oh my God, I can't let Elizabeth see this."'
When Totovig and her group came upon the mass butterfly grave, "the guide tried to save them," she said. "He kept picking them up individually and blowing warm air on them and they'd move. He kept saying, `Please don't step on them,"' Kelso added.
Instead of four hours, they were there for about 40 minutes, and were happy to leave. "We were all just silent," Kelso said. "All you could hear was rain and butterflies dropping from their pods. A couple of the butterflies came back with us. One heated up in the van and was flying around."
That night they stayed in Zitacuaro, 40 minutes away. Had the weather improved, they would have returned to the sanctuary. But it didn't.
Before they had left on their trip, " No one understood what the heck we were doing." Then the butterfly tragedy made the headlines. "When we got back, a lot of people said they'd seen the stories and wondered, `Isn't that where Rachel and Elizabeth are right now?"'
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