Before moving on to the next Wikileaks cable in which Embassy staff presents Obama with an introduction to Mexico and Calderón, I just want to mention that yesterday we set out on a short drive to a town called Tlaltetela on the other side of a barranca near where we live...going towards Huatusco (which is probably no help to most of you.) ANYWAY, we traveled slowly down from Las Trancas road into a long valley where heat and humidity shimmered across the landscape. At the lowest part, we stopped at a bridge that crosses a wide rocky river. Jim wanted to see if there was a trail we could walk along some day. But not this day.
The roads down one side of the barranca and up the other are not steep, but cling and skirt cliffs. You can see the ones on the opposite side looking like water pouring down through the trees.
The top is long and fairly level, perhaps a lava flow. You can't tell till you get close to the edge that this flat place does not go on forever. It is much cooler than the bottom of the barranca. Here as many people say, the climate is at least in part a function of altitude and cloud cover. We pulled off the road to Tlaltetela just to give the dogs a bit of a walk and to explore. It's an area that looks a bit like Africa, a bit like south Texas: scrubby vegetation around ploughed fields, acacia trees, some tossing their brilliant orange blossoms in the breeze. The rains have already washed away the dry season's omnipresent dust.
We walked toward a shallow pond. Jim called to me to see a large bird. "Where?", "There!" I missed it again. "On that branch half way up the tree." Finally I saw it. A plump white egg-shaped body drooped over the sides of a branch, a long neck and head looking like some kind of handle Suddenly it stretched into flight, long and graceful. Gusts of wind caught its wings. It turned and banked and sailed away. Maybe a heron? I don't know if there are herons here or not.
We also came upon the largest toad I at least have ever seen, perhaps 15 centimeters from the top of its head to the bottom of its back. Jim says he's seen bigger ones. It was sitting with its head resting against a clump of flowers, one back leg stretched out. It looked comfortable and peaceful. And as Jim noticed before I did, it was quite dead.
At the entrance to the town of Tlaltetela, there is a billboard that advertises something called a ladies' bar. It said it in English A lovely woman barely dressed reclines over the letters. In the US such a sign would say Girls! Girls! Girls! and wouldn't be called a ladies' bar.
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