A Painted Sky

Lost
On a painted sky
Where the clouds are hung
For the poet's eye

There
On a distant shore
By the wings of dreams
Through an open door

- Be, Jonathan Livingston Seagull soundtrack, Neil Diamond

I know I already wrapped up our Mexico trip but technically these photos weren't taken in Mexico but on our flight home. As usual I had a window seat and my camera handy. Often there's not a lot to see but this time I was lucky and there were interesting clouds and views and a colorful sunset. I took almost 500 photographs over about an hour and a half.

At first it was "just" cloudscapes.

There were a few views of the ground. I bet there are some crocodiles in this lake/swamp/lagoon.

Comparing to Google maps satellite view, this it the North-east corner of the Yucatan. With the sunset starting.

Once the color started, there was lots to photograph.

These ones look a bit like the ocean to me.

Finally, the light started to go.

AI thinks this is part of New Orleans.

I hope that wasn't too much of an overdose of sunset clouds.

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Mexico Wrapup

I didn't take a lot of photos in the remainder of our trip. We were mostly sightseeing with not a lot of nature viewing. But here are a few things I spotted along the way.

A black vulture showing off on top of a Mayan pyramid:

A few butterflies:

I think this is an Orchard Spider. Not a great photo, but colorful spiders.

Everyone told us Merida was good, but it was a big city, overrun with cars, with dangerously narrow sidewalks. We did find a good coffee shop - Sempere libros y café (Always books and coffee). It was on the second floor, away from the traffic and even had some English books (and good coffee and friendly staff). We visited the Science Museum. I had seen they had an insect exhibit, but sadly that was over and it was optical illusions, which was still fun. And it was on the edge of a big park, with an artificial but somewhat naturalized lake where I spotted a few things.

We left Merida a day earlier than planned. Our next stop was Izamal which was a lot smaller and we thought would be quieter. Little did we know it was a festival weekend and busy with people (but at least less traffic). Luckily our hotel was far enough from the festivities. Like many Yucatan towns and cities, it was built on top of Mayan ruins. But in Izamal several of the pyramids were still intact within the city. Izamal is known as the "Yellow City" since most of the buildings are painted yellow. It is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. There is, of course, a large church/monastery who's atrium is the second largest in the world (after the Vatican). There were countless Cave Swallows inhabiting the monastery.

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Campeche

After Valladolid we decided to go to the endpoint of our train route and then work our way back. San Fancisco de Campeche was founded in 1540 by Spanish conquistadors. It was attacked multiple times by pirates and others so they built forts and a wall around the inner city. Along with Quebec City, it's one of the only cities in North America with most of its historic old city walls intact.

Campeche turned out to be one of my favorite stops and that started right from the train station. Most of the new Tren Maya stations are outside town but they usually had fancy Tren Maya shuttle buses. Here it was an autonomous bus rapid transit that had multiple stops, including the airport. I've never ridden in an autonomous bus before so that was cool.

Our hotel was on the pedestrian street that crosses the inside of the walled city. There were lots of restaurants with tables in the street. Even though Mexico grows lots of coffee, most of the coffee I had wasn't that great. The best of the trip was at Origen in Campeche.

The main square and church were only a block away from our hotel. When we walked over there we discovered there was an open air exhibit of insect photographs by Levon Biss. I'm a fan of his work and have three of his books (Microsculpture, Seeds & Fruits, and Extinct & Endangered). It was amazing to see his photographs 6 ft across. Roughly 8000 photographs are combined to create each image and they have incredible detail. There were about 50 of these photographs displayed around the square.

Our hotel was only a few blocks from the water. The first morning, as we were walking along the waterfront, I noticed something moving in the water. It turned out to be an octopus. We've seen octopus while diving but I never expected to see one from shore. According to iNaturalist, it's a Four-eyed Mexican Octopus (Octopus maya) - an endangered species that was first discovered near Campeche. It was hard to get good photos from the walkway with reflections, but at least they're identifiable.

I was also happy to see some shore birds along the walkway, including a Green Heron that was there both days we were there. It seemed to be having good success catching fish.

Even the statue had wings and pelicans at its feet.

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See Shelley's post on Campeche 

Rio Lagartos not birds

I had so many bird photos that I left the other stuff for a second post. I promise there aren't as many photos this time.

At first I thought this was a Coati but it turned out to be a Raccoon. Another widespread species - from Canada to Panama. Apparently Vancouver island used to be the northern limit of their range, but they have spread north in Canada. Animals that can live alongside humans do better these days.

We saw quite a few iguanas, in the mangroves and near the beaches. I think they were all Black Spiny Iguanas.

We stopped at Petén Mac to stretch our legs and see some different things. "petén" means hummock - a raised area around a freshwater spring. There was a boardwalk through the forest but it has seen better days and required some balancing between missing sections. (Made more interesting by the crocodiles in the water!)

I didn't see a lot of butterflies this trip (not like Costa Rica) and the ones I did see weren't very cooperative. This was a Guatemalan Cracker. "cracker" comes from the noise the males make to stake out their territory.

The stars of Petén Mac were the crocodiles. The Yucatan peninsula is one of the only places where two species of crocodile coexist - American and Morelet's. Morelet's prefer freshwater, and American's perfer saltwater. But here, where it's a mix, it could be either. And to further complicate things, sometimes they interbreed and produce hybrids. After reviewing the photos I think the ones we saw were Morelet's. The first one we saw was in a pool quite close to the ocean with just its eyes showing.

We saw more in a pool along the boardwalk, including a fat little baby crocodile, mirrored in the still water.

They were quite near the boardwalk so I could get some closeups. (several mosquitos around the eye)

As we were leaving, I looked for the first crocodile we'd seen. At first, I was looking in the water where it had been before but then I realized it was out on the beach. It was nice to see it out of the water. The gaping mouth is for thermoregulation, not aggression - it must have been hot lying in the full sun when it was over 30c. It gave us a good view of its mouthful of teeth.

Most people use panoramas (multiple images combined) for landscapes. I used it for the crocodile.

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