Troymedia.com Columnist, Mike Robinson published an article about the hidden village of “Cerro Pelón”, where you can find excellent hospitallity, extraordinary food, and you can live a sublime experience among the Monarch butterflies, calling it “a place of exceptional grace”.
When you drive up the paved road into Macheros village in Donato Guerra, Estado de Mexico, you enter a high altitude (2,600 metres) ejido (essentially a Mexican communal farm) that has a unique relationship with about 400 million monarch butterflies.
There’s a lot to unpack in that one sentence. To start with, the mariposa monarca are the signature draw to this part of Mexico’s High Sierra range.
They nest in oyamel fir trees, at about 3,000 metres, and depart starting early each March for Canada, taking three generations of rebirths to complete the annual trip.
Their population ranges from a high of about one billion to a low of 35 million, depending on who’s reporting, and the extent and availability of milkweed, their prime foodstuff. It’s broadly acknowledged that the butterflies are endangered, largely because farmers spray milkweed with Roundup pesticide.
On the plus side, Macheros has become home to an interlocking series of small businesses, all based on mariposa monarca conservation and visitation. At the core of these businesses is JM’s Butterfly B&B. Here the partnership of Joel Moreno Rojas and Ellen Sharp choreographs an organic array of opportunities for ecotourists from all over the world.
Source: http://www.troymedia.com/
