A week in the forest...and other thoughts

I was able to spend the past week helping out another volunteer on one of her projects.  This meant I got to spend a week in Parque Nacional Nevado de Colima (yes...the same park I have mentioned many times on this blog).  Most of the week was spent working on the mural Whitney designed for the revamping of the park's environmental education center. As you can see in the picture below, this is quite the mural.  It was designed to give the effect that you are in the forest and only includes those animals that can be found in the park.  The mural will eventually encompass the entire room when it is completed (all 4 walls and the ceiling).  We were able to finish off the first wall during our week in the park with the help of one of her coworkers.  This mural will look (even more) awesome when all is said and done.

Whitney and her mural

There were also many clear days where we were able to get some great views of the Nevado on breaks from painting.

View of Nevado de Colima

Climbing a tree in the forest...because why not???

Because we had so many nice clear days during the week and we were diligent in our painting and completed the wall on Thursday, we decided to reward ourselves with a day of outdoor exploration in the park on Friday.  It had been so nice every day of the week that we thought we may have a chance to summit if the weather remained clear for Friday. Alas, we awoke to find that the awesome days of weather were behind us and found ourselves facing another unlikely bid for the summit due to the weather (see previous blog post about my other attempt to summit here). After about an hour or two of walking and no real signs of the clouds letting up we thought our chances of summiting were slim to none…so we decided to take pictures of us on the summit of something just to say we had summited that day.

At a "Summit", notice the weather predicament
we were in

We slowed our pace a little bit at this point as we had no real time crunch now that the summit seemed out of our reach, but we still continued going up because at times the clouds would clear just enough to give us hope that maybe it would clear up.

Enjoying the view while there is a break in the clouds

Expedition Ready

As we kept walking up, we kept wondering how much further we should go up without fear of getting lost as the stubborn clouds kept on following us.

Pesky clouds impeding our visibility

However, the clouds still kept breaking just enough for us to feel safe continuing upward and little by little we made our way further up until all we had to do was make our way up this rock face to reach the top.

Somewhere at the top of this rock face is the summit

And low and behold after starting our trek at 7:08 in the morning at 11:40am we made it to the summit of Nevado de Colima, the tallest point in the state of Jalisco at about 4,339 meters or 14,235 ft.

Whitney and me at the summit

Given that the weather had still not completely cleared, there was not too much of a view with the clouds blocking the way, but it was still fun to have made it to the top!  We were able to enjoy a snack of homemade pizzas on the summit, take some pictures, and then head down when it started to rain.

Perfect post summit food, pizza!

…and then the rain turned to hail which just makes it more of an adventure heading back down.

Making our way down in the hail

The hail didn't continue for too long and later in the day when we were meandering our way back to the cabin we were able to get our first view of the peak from afar that day (due to the clouds we actually never saw the peak while walking up, only after we had summited were we able to see it)

A cloud free view of the peak

All in all it made for a fun day of adventure to the summit…never knowing until we were actually on the summit if the weather was going to allow us get there.  I now can check off summiting Nevado de Colima off of my things to do…although I wouldn't mind returning on a clearer day when you can get a better view of the surrounding landscape.

So that's all for my week in the park.  We returned back to Ciudad Guzman on Saturday and then it was back to the routine in the city.

Here are some other thoughts and updates I thought I would share just so you don't feel like you keep reading about my walks through the woods on this blog…

-I have begun my work teaching environmental education in schools in Ciudad Guzman.  The plan for now is for me to work with 2 schools and give classes weekly at each school.  I had my first class this past Monday with a group of first graders. The kids were nice, but a it was a challenge to get them to do what I wanted them to…I then realized later that this is only their second week in school in their lives, so I probably should have expected that.  I still enjoyed it though and look forward to my future classes.

-I felt like I had made it in Mexico when I made my weekly trip to the market and one of the vendors gave me my chiles for free…there are a few vendors I talk with when I go and he is one of them, so I appreciated this gesture. I tried very hard to pay him, but he said I was taking too little an amount of chiles for me to pay him, I beg to differ now as I made refried beans with my 'small' amount of chiles and they are some SPICY beans.

That's all for now…have a great week!