Adventures in Mexico -

A surprisingly different itinerary and a fresh perspective

When I’m planning a trip to Mexico, I’m not dreaming about palm-lined beaches and stiff margaritas – though I may enjoy both from time to time 😉 No, I’m planning our days around watching the antics of the colorful endemic birds, hiking the pine-oak clad forests of the Sierra Madre and enjoying delicious street food like deep friend churros dusted in cinnamon sugar. One trip took me to the states of Nayarit and Jalisco, where I visited the 16th century village of El Tuito, took an evening boat ride through a jungle wetland, ventured into the interior mountains to stay with a local indigenous Huichol family, and visited the Vallarta Botanical Gardens, where I was honored to be invited to teach bird sketching classes as part of their bird-watching festival.

Slideshow from my Birds & Blossoms Sketching Retreat

Haikus written by one of my guests on a sketching tour

Head-first a newborn

butterfly slithers from

a shivering chrysalis

Debris! Debris!

Morning at El Rancho

a blue mocking bird?

Crossing the swinging bridge

caretakers in red tee-shirts

Bromeliad Path

-By Marion

March 2017 Trip Slideshow

A warm welcome to the Huichol homelands

The video below highlights some of the places we visited recently with our birding guide Francisco Garcia of Safaris San Blas, who is the local guide featured in this video. James Currie of Birding Adventures TV focuses this episode on his pursuit of the beautiful and rare Tufted Jay (which we were also lucky enough to see). It resides in the pine-oak woodlands of the Cerro Colorado area of the southern Sierra Madre Occidentale mountains, which is also home to the indigenous Huichol Indian community of Guadeloupe de Ocotan.