soy exploradora!
It's been raining all day and night so I spent the morning in bed listening to the rain and the sounds of the city. It cleared up a bit around noon and as I walked outside to get some fresh air my eyes focused on the mountains in the distance as I realized where the rest of my day was going. I don't think there is a word in spanish for hiking, which makes sense come to think of it. What is the difference between hiking and walking anyway? Well anyway. I laced up my hiking boots, threw my climbing shoes in my backpack just in case, and started walking towards the mountains in hope of finding a decent access point. Guanajuato itself is literally surround 365 degrees by mountains, so if you want an adventure in the mountains, just start walking in a straight line for a really long time!
When I reached the outskirts of town I could see nothing but large private property lined up ahead of me. One of the houses was an abandoned construction site though, so I went behind it and was ecstatic to find a beautiful drainage draped in foliage with a steady trickle running through it. I had found my way up. So i spent the next 2 hours or so moving up the drainage and exploring the area. I finally got a taste of the massive ant nests that I was expecting Mexico to enchant me with. At one point I noticed a small leaf scuttling across the ground and I instantly crashed down on all fours to take a look. It was a leaf-cutter ant!! I quickly found others and found their colony which was in the process of expanding its land to a gigantic horse shit. Okay I dont know who is going to read this, but if you know me fairly well you know about my "ant-thing." Well, this obsession of mine began last summer in Washington DC at the Audubon natural history museum. They had an exhibit on ants, I watched a short video on leaf-cutters, and I was hooked. I can honestly say that I adore this species. Their survival strategy is most unique. The worker ants spend their days cutting down leafs with their long sharp mandibles and dragging down the debris into the nest. What you might have not realized yet, is that these leaves provide the ants with absolutely no nutritional value. The ants sole source of food and water is a unique fungus of the Lepiotaceae family. The leaves then, are brought down into the nest to "feed" the fungus that the leaf-cutters so dearly rely on. This mutualistic symbiotic relationship is entirely exclusive, neither the fungi nor the leaf-cutters can function without one another! And yet, leaf-cutter ants form one of the largest and most complex animal societies on earth!!! So basically..I have really wanted to encounter them for a long time now - and it happened today!
So that was a good half hour of the day..watching ants. I could not be happier I was literally squealing and you do not want to know how much space this all took up on my cameras memory card. In addition to the leaf-cutters, I found several nests of harvesters, and 3 other species I don't know. I also saw a massive stink bug, a moth caterpillar, and a bunch of cool little birds that I wish I could tell you more about. It was really stormy out the whole time, and I ended up turning around before I reached the apex of the mountain in anticipation of another heavy rain. I'll make it there another day, I've got time.
Thats pretty much all I've done today though, I went into town for a bit to buy some groceries (found homemade guacamole thats about 5 pesos [40 cents] per gigantic scoop!!) Just hiding from the rain otherwise, anticipating registration at school tomorrow morning !
By the way I literally just have no responsibilities right now. Updating this thing everyday will truly be an anomaly in due time.
(I'm going up there next time!!)