October 5, 2010

Dear Journey North friends,
After I heard the surprising news that 100 monarchs were sighted only 200 kilometers from here in the state of Guanajuato, I made my first visit to El Cerrito.

El Cerrito is a hill above our town where the monarchs traditionally first appear. There was not a Monarch to be seen last Friday, and so I took my way back home without any news.

On Sunday, my niece Zamara wanted to come to fill in the graph through which we will keep a close counting of Monarchs as time draws nearer for them to arrive, and to show it to you every weekly report. Again, no monarchs…

Today, Tuesday, I was just arriving at El Cerrito and I casually ran into a boy, Luis, who accepted to fill in the graph for you. Not a Monarch to be seen yet.

As you can see this is how the graph looks until today. Perhaps in one more week we could get surprised and see the first monarchs arriving. Be it so!!!!

For one week now, we have been enjoying a deep, blue and sunny sky during the day, and average cold mornings and nights that are typical for this time of the year, just before the arrival of Monarchs. Our temperatures range from a low of only 8 Celcius at night to a high of 20 Celcius during the day.

Our rainy season is finally coming to an end. Since May, such abundant rain we had not had in our region for 10 years or more. (And of course never before caused us such anguish due to the landslides and flooding last February. We now live praying that nothing similar will happen again in the future, which many of us doubt, due to the weather change and the deforestation in our region.)

Until next week,

Maria Estela Romero, friends and family

My niece, Zamara, wanted to come to fill in the graph through which we will keep a close counting of Monarchs as time draws nearer for them to arrive.

Today, Tuesday, Luis, accepted to fill in the graph for you.

This is how the graph looks until today. Perhaps in one more week we could get surprised and see the first monarchs arriving!