Has it really been a month?

And I thought I'd blog twice a week, no problem. The time has been well spent, as Mark and I are well immersed in our work and the children are happy and healthy. I can't quite decide how to catch up, so for now I will start with the most recent and perhaps try to catch up in the near future.

This weekend, we finally made it to the ecological park here in Papantla. We had tried to get there various times but were foiled by the weather (mostly) and occasionally laziness (once or twice...) Now we are sorry we didn't discover it the first week as it was a lovely place and we'll do what it takes to get out there several times a month.

When we arrived, we were met by a couple of healthy dogs, one of which is an Xholotlescuintle, better known as a hairless Aztec dog. I'd never seen one up close before and this guy was delightful. He loved the kiddos and I especially loved his mohawk, the only hair on his body.



Isn't he lovely? The kids are pretty cute too.

This park was once the city dump but a local man, who owned an orange grove next to it, decided to bring the selva (rainforest) back. He had been tending his grove, fighting back the rainforest when three years ago he wondered why he spent so much energy fighting nature. So at that point, he stopped tending the grove and started re-integrating the area into the forest. He covered the dump with dirt and let things grow wild, at times introducing plants but never cutting anything back. There are trails through the forest and we loved walking through them.



(Steve, doesn't Willa look like Laura in this picture?) Juan, the owner, has also set up several museums (photos from the vanilla industry and Tajin) and a living museum where he has built a Totonac home with all the furnishings, a sweatbath and a vanilla orchard. These items were built to demonstrate how the Totonac live in a more balanced manner with the environment.



This is Juan in front of the honey hives. The bees are endangered, don't produce a lot of honey, but are good to have around a vanilla orchard. In all my months of travel around the country side, I have not seen this, not to say it's not out there. Traditionally, vanilla was grown in the rainforest in an area that had enough moisture and combination of light/shade to support the plant (today, more and more, it is being produced in shadehouses or in more controlled environments). Juan has the examples of both the most traditional method (let the vines grow as high as they can on trees as tutors (using bamboo ladders to harvest) and a more controlled version, where tepees are made with wood to serve as tutors for the vines but larger trees around the orchard provide the shade.



If you come for a visit, we promise you a trip out to the park. We only wish we had taken the visitors we've had thus far out there. Well, come back Mark, Denise and Peter, we'll take you this time, promise. There are other photos on the flickr board, just click on a photo above and you'll be led to our account.