Tuesday, February 20, 2018 

Dear Friends,

Greetings from Cerro Pelón and the peak of peak butterfly season. “Peak” in terms of the number of visitors we’re seeing, that is. As far as butterfly viewing goes, ever since February hit, the weather has turned uncharacteristically grey and cloudy. On many days, the monarchs have stayed huddled in their clusters and visitors leave muttering about their bad luck.

February 12, 2018

Dear friends:

Today we rejoiced at seeing the sky shining blue and the sun’s rays showering our mountains early in the morning after a couple of weeks of cloudy and chilly days.

At the sanctuary facilities, we bought our tickets, planning to ride horses to make our way up, allowing us to enjoy different scenery along the uphill path.

Celebrating Dia de Los Muertos

Dear friends: 

My words try its best to convey the emotions of our great Day of the Dead. The whole celebration has been like several orchestras playing at the same time, all different, but all harmonious.

All day, Monarchs overflew our bright-blue sky.  People took them for granted as the arriving souls of our dear Dead ones. Even so, they could hardly help crying out in surprise.

By Ellen Sharp

Pato Moreno is a lucky man; he gets to walk around the beautiful boreal forest of Cerro Pelón five days a week, tracking and protecting monarch butterflies for a living. He started working as a forest ranger for CEPANAF, the state park system of the State of Mexico, in the fall of 2014. This is his fourth season watching migrating monarchs select their roosts.

October 27, 2017

Last week my brother-in-law Rogelio called me excitedly to say that he’d seen two monarchs from the window of his van as he was driving down the wildflower-filled road that connects the city of Zitácuaro to our village Macheros.

Then on October 27th my sister-in-law Daleth saw another two dancing around our yard.