In today’s installment, Emma rides a magical unicorn through a field of butterflies and some north going Kiwis meet some south going Kiwis for some classic Seussian confusion.
More or less, anyway.
Back when we first started our trip. (This is sounding like a long post now, isn’t it?)
Our first stop had been Overland Expo, where we met Will and Rochelle (KIWI PANAMERICANA) who had recently completed their Pan American road trip from Ushuaia to Deadhorse. Rochelle told us about some folk who were starting their travels down south and heading north. It was another Kiwi couple, they had started their journey just over a week before us. Their names were Melissa and Derek.
As we were planning our trip to Cerro Pelón to see some Monarch butterflies, Melissa and Derek were camping in Teotihuacan. We had hoped to cross paths soon and this sounded like a good opportunity. However, with 56,000 hectares of butterfly reserve and several towns to access it from, we weren’t sure whether the plan “We’ll meet you at the butterflies” was going to pan out.
Luckily when Melissa sent through the GPS co-ordinates of their planned campsite, it appeared to be in the same area we had arranged to drive to with Paula and John. Excellent.
Paula and John (OUR BIGGER PICTURE) had plans to head to the Monarch Butterfly reserve at a similar time to us. When we suggested we travel in convoy they were surprisingly keen. They had obviously not acquainted themselves with Javier (our wayward GPS).
Fortunately, we had recently invested in an amazing thing. A map. An actual paper map.
Between the information contained in said paper map and the superior navigational equipment owned by Paula and John we found our way to the town of Macheros. Right on the edge of the home of the Cerro Pelón Butterfly colony.
We had been told of a few options for camping within the very small town: The grass outside a restaurant. A nice B&B that would let you camp if they had an available room and the parking lot at the entrance to the butterfly reserve.
We were a bit vague on whether the parking lot had a bathroom at all, so we thought we’d try our luck with the B&B first. As we rolled to a stop outside the B&B, a woman came out to greet us. The New Zealand T-shirt was a giveaway, the accent was certainly a familiar one and the fact that she knew my name was Emma pointed to the fact that yes, this was indeed Melissa.
From a very brief conversation we gleaned that the B&B was full, the parking lot by the entrance did indeed have bathrooms and even a hot shower (A notch up from ‘parking lot’ in our books). That was where the other Kiwis would be camping for the night.
Sold.
The ‘parking lot’ was in fact a pretty perfect spot to camp, we will actually upgrade it’s name to the ‘campground’. It even came with an inquisitive, although timid dog.
It became pretty clear, early in the first evening, that either Emma or Paula would be stealing this dog if we stayed much longer than two or three days.
When Melissa and Derek returned to the campground, we began the important task of checking out each other’s travelling rigs.
It transpired that they were also driving a silver Toyota 4Runner, with a rooftop tent. As well as having been on the road since almost the same time the previous year, they even had the same type of fridge (A VERY IMPORTANT PIECE OF KIT). Clearly twins from a parallel universe.
I’m not sure that Paula and John had known what they were getting themselves into. Their time camping with the Kiwis left them with an expanded vocabulary—handy dandy words like ‘jandals’, ‘chilly bin’ and ‘wop-wops’. We think Paula and John also now fully appreciate that it isn’t just us who completely misuse all vowels and finish every sentence with an upward inflection as if it were a question.
Ultimately, outnumbered two-to-one by folk from our tiny island nation, the Californians got into the spirit of being honorary Kiwis. They embraced some more general concepts, like tramping not being something dodgy and everything being ‘sweet as’. (Tramping = Hiking for anyone not fluent in Kiwi.)
For us, it was great to hear a familiar accent, although it did remind us how weird we sound to the rest of the world. (“Oh yeah—that’s why no one can understand us!”) It was even better to meet a couple heading north with a long list of advice and suggestions for places to stop at on our way south.
As is always the case meeting other travellers, it was immediately easy to find common ground. We were all having a yarn about experiences we’d had on our separate journeys, what got us started on our trip, what we miss from home, what we don’t miss. The commonalities and similar experiences always leave you feeling like you aren’t travelling alone at all. Sometimes it seems as if everyone is just experiencing a small part of some grander, shared adventure.
It even turned out that in the small world in which we live, it was our friends Gunter and Sissi (ALASKA WILDS) who had suggested this particular location to Melissa and Derek.
The adventure for the next day was to see these famous butterflies we had all driven so far to see.