November 3, 2015

Dear all,
The massive arrival started at noontime today. Monarchs suddenly and clearly came from the northern side of our town, overflying mainly in a single direction.

Our throats would have swallowed at the intent to shout out to the world:  Here they come! They’re arriving! BRAVO! HOORAY!

People twisted necks all around and wished to be an octopus with more than two arms in order to point to the many monarchs.

The sudden arrival at midday today took us by surprise. This morning, I had driven up to the El Rosario Sanctuary to talk to people there. All was quiet. After agreeing with Ejidatarios that maybe they’d begin to arrive the coming weekend, I left to Sierra Chincua Sanctuary to check. I reached there just before noon time.  Contrary to El Rosario the facilities were all closed, and only a few Ejidatarios were there. The man in charge of monitoring told me: "In case the weather continues improving, they should be appearing any minute now. Let's go, Estela, and hope we are lucky.

And lucky we were! Suddenly, two, three, five, perhaps ten monarchs were just arriving in that moment. We were only a few people, who within our confusion and joy, said good bye to each other, we had to hurry to shout out the great news!

The flight continued until around 3 pm today, with a main concentration found on a small hill above our town called El Cerrito.

It was just a fantastic day!

Before I end, I must congratulate the two monarchs who crossed the finish line and won the race by arriving two days ago, on Sunday, November 1st. While people in town concentrated at the cemetery honoring our dead relatives, Brenda, Bryan and Lupita, joined me when we ran into the two butterflies at the end of a really long walk around the town. They almost hit our noses! This was the first sign.  Due to the rather bad weather for almost one week were all a little impatient with waiting.

At closing, a special thanks to all children and students from different levels from local schools in Angangueo who rejoiced over the arrival and eagerly wanted to announce it through my camera.

We hope many millions more are on their way and that this winter’s butterfly count will be as high as the dreams of people everywhere.

Estela Romero
Angangueo, Michoacán, México