Zitácuaro

I took a night bus from Mexico City and arrived in Zitácuaro before dawn, the kind of arrival where the town is just streetlights and a dog crossing an empty intersection. By seven I had found coffee and a tamal de rajas at a market stall near the Mercado Hidalgo, and by eight I was on a colectivo climbing into the mountains toward El Rosario. I had read about the monarchs for years. I still was not prepared for what the forest does to a person who walks into it in January, when the trees are orange all the way to the top.

The Monarchs at El Rosario

The sanctuary at El Rosario is about an hour from Zitácuaro by colectivo to Ocampo and then a local taxi up the mountain. The entrance is at roughly 2,400 metres, and the real colonies are another forty-minute walk up a steep path through pine and oyamel. Go early — before ten if possible — because the cold morning air keeps the butterflies clustered and still in the branches, which means the trees look like they are draped in something living and orange. By midday the sun warms them and they lift off in waves, which is its own kind of spectacle, but the stillness of early morning is the thing I keep returning to. A guide is compulsory and worth it; mine pointed out a cluster I would have walked past entirely. The sound I noticed first was not wings but the faint ticking of thousands of legs on bark.

Strawberry Country and Hot Springs

The valley around Zitácuaro grows some of the best strawberries in Michoacán, and in the market you can buy a kilo for almost nothing. I ate them with crema from a plastic cup while watching the morning vendors set up, which is as good a breakfast as I have found anywhere. Outside town, the road toward Tuxpan de Bolaños passes thermal springs at Zitácuaro’s balnearios — concrete and tile affairs, not particularly photogenic, but the water is genuinely hot and on a cold January afternoon after a morning in the mountains, they make a reasonable argument for staying another night. The springs at Agua Caliente on the road toward Jungapeo are quieter and surrounded by more trees.

Eating in Town

Zitácuaro eats well without making a fuss about it. The carnitas at the market are Michoacán-standard, which is to say very good. In the evenings the area around the plaza fills with small fondas serving enchiladas placeras and atole. I had a plate of uchepos — fresh corn tamales, soft and slightly sweet — at a place on Calle Revolución that had no name written anywhere outside, just a woman with a clay pot and four tables. That meal cost me forty pesos and I thought about it for the rest of the trip.

Getting There

From Mexico City’s Terminal Poniente, several lines run overnight or morning buses to Zitácuaro — the ride takes around three hours. From Morelia it is roughly two and a half hours by bus via Maravatío. Colectivos from the Zitácuaro market district run to Ocampo for the El Rosario sanctuary; from Ocampo, taxis go up to the sanctuary entrance. The butterfly season runs November through March.