A Backcountry Coffee Plantation
with Lodging, & Miles of Explorable
Tropical Forest Trails in Southern Mexico
with Lodging, & Miles of Explorable
Tropical Forest Trails in Southern Mexico
| Host: Alvaro Ricárdez ScherenbergWhen: Any time. Length: The longer you can stay, the better we will like it Languages: Spanish, English, French  Fee charged: $60 US each person per night with three full meals included. Kids under 12 get 50% off. Longer stays and groups can have discounts. We charge a minimum ($10 US) to get to the place and comment about it and the plants and animals met during the walk. If the trip takes longer it is up to the visitor to add a little very welcomed tip. Children younger than 13 do not pay because we want children to discover, enjoy and start loving nature because they are the future. In Alvaro's own English:Statement: We are a coffee plantation called Monte Carlo, located near the town of Santa María Xadani, Pochutla, Oaxaca. Just 20 miles north of the Mexican Pacific Coast, at an altitude of 3000 ft., a cool paradise where orchids such as those at the right live in the wild! In the middle of nice rain forests at the foot of the highest mountains in Oaxaca, we offer you a place to dream and explore...Miles of well kept trails will take you to your very own spot where you can be alone with nature, inmerse on it, feel its embrace...We have all the ammenities of urban life except noise and polution and we can offer you good and simple food at very good prices. If you stay more than a week, we offer free spanish lessons! Our hope: As we are a very remote rural area, left behind by the process of developement, we are suffering like such areas everywhere, depopulation and drastically declining economies. Rather than applying the usual remedies, such as encouraging the entry of new industries and building new access roads, we think that we can make a virtue of adversity. The very things that made our place an economic disaster area-isolation,rugged landscape, small scale agriculture, and traditionalism- identifies ourselves as ideal destinations for urban visitors seeking a change of pace and place. We want to try an innovative approach to tourism revitalizing exixting communities and, at the same time, protecting our natural and cultural resources against deterioration. The strategy is to encourage a constituency of visitors who seek neither a selfcontained backpacking sort of experience nor the high-speed, high-energy style of vacation associated with elegant hotels or elaborate resorts. |
| Things to do: One of the most beautiful places to go is called Las Lobas. It is at about 4 Km. away at the top of a small mountain and it is named Las Lobas (The She Wolfs) because it is near the Lobo mountain and two womans live there all alone taking care of a small coffee farm and the ruins of a precolumbian observatory that their father discovered when trying to make a shelter for his mules. From this place you have a 360° view of the whole area, the coast and the sierra, with all the rivers, beaches, lagoons, towns,cascades and being the place very steep, you can have an eagle´s view of the nearest farms.There is a large stone slab full of hierogliphics, dates and spirals signaling at different directions all around. I have gone at the Spring Equinox and you can see the Sun rising from the Pacific and the center of its disk perfectly aligned with the vertix of a small mountain on the coast very much like a perfect pyramid and the lines and spirals in the hierogliphic stone, It is a remarkable experience that makes you feel the great knowledge that had our american ancestors, and with the solitude and the early lights and the chants of birds and insects around you, saluting the new day, you have a deep mystic awe that shows you your humble place at Universe! You can visit also the small schools that the Mexican government has improvised to give education to little hamlets with less than ten students. They are attended by young urban mexicans that instead of making the army training, help teach children and get a scholarship to continue their studies. With a little knowledge of Spanish you can join the little school in a Geography lesson. On the hikes, beside the exotic plants, insects and birds, you will see the endangered Pico real or Tucanet (a small green tucan with a yellow big beak) or the also endangered Pabellón (Flag Bird), from the Trogon family (same family than the quetzal), with its beautiful emmerald green robe, with red and white breast, symbol of our mexican flag! Or you can follow a river downstream, see how vegetation changes with altitude, enjoy the cool waters and great views, mount ancient pyramids and explore urban centers covered by the forest, and finish in a small modern town to see people carving wood to try to sell its handcrafts at the nearby Huatulco resort. I also have good news for the future, that I am proud to cry aloud!. My nearest town, Santa María Xadani (Xa-at the foot, and Dani- mountain in Zapotec)is on the way to start a small museum and is the first town to have put aside a grat chunk of tropical dry forest as a communal protected reserve. And there is an endemic forest inside the reserve! And to find trees related to the endemic trees, you must travel as far as Michoacán State! And it is just the beginning of the flora studies in this area!   We are really off the main roads so I have given the description on how to get to us in great detail. To see this description on one page, so you can easily print it out, and to view a good map of our area, click here. Geographic Situation Monte Carlo, the name of our hacienda, is in the northwestern corner of the District of Pochutla, in the State of Oaxaca.The Pochutla district is the southernmost one in the State and borders to the south with the Pacific Ocean, to the north with the Miahuatlán district, to the east with the Tehuantepec district and to the west with the Juquila district. The northern portion of the district is part of the Sierra Madre del Sur, an extense chain of mountains with the highest peaks in the State.  In the map at the right, the yellow area at the bottom of the green State of Oaxaca is the Pochutla District, and the tiny dot at the right in the Pochutla District is our Monte Carlo.The Pacific coast shows a very peculiar configuration in the District.The western part follows a southeast direction as most of the mexican Pacific Coast does, but the eastern part takes a northeastern direction to form the western coast of the Tehuantepec Gulf. There exists also, all along this coast, a very deep submarine canyon called the Mesoamerican Trench that in parts is almost 8000 feet deep. There are two currents that in this part of the coast collide and give place to strong winds, waves and a rich environment with plenty of marine life, because of the temperature gradient between the cold California current that flows to the southwest sweeping the mexican coast and the Northern Ecuatorial current, warm, flowing in a reverse direction all along the Tehuantepec Gulf coast. This fact makes this part of the coast very diferent than the rest of it, playing a decisive rule in the weather and ecological singularity of the area where Monte Carlo is situated. Two of the tallest mountains in Oaxaca are also in this area: the Quiexobra with 12,000 ft. and the Nube Flan or Chontal Mountain with 11,800 of altitude. These peaks offer an imposing barrier to the winds that in summer and automn blow in north and northeast direction blessing the area with plenty of rain and allowing so the existance of a unique aerea of rain forest in the otherway dry Pacific mexican Coast. It is at the piemont of the Quiexobra , at 3,200 ft of altitude, near the imposing Lobo mountain at 7,200 ft., that Monte Carlo is found. We enjoy a temperate climate with plenty of summer and automn rains, with a diverse flora ranging from tropical rain forest, to temperate forest and tropical dry forest.  Awash in archeological ruins and past vestiges, the area where Monte Carlo is located has a long and passionate history very little studied. As a young country , Mexico, still feeling the deep trauma and wounds of conquest and the loss of the highest manifestations of culture, starts a feeble recovery of past grandeur and the conscience of it. Still unexplored, this region offers undeniable physic evidence of a vigorous and rich cultural past. We have found irrigation chanels providing the life giving water to amate plantations and the ancient sites where, using the fibrous bark of the amate tree, paper was elaborated. We still do not know which name will we assign to this ancient culture, but we can judge that it shared knowledge and myths with the great mesoamerican cultures: astronomy was not a science as we who are schooled in the Western tradition tend to think of it. Rather, the movements of sun and moon were the journeys of gods personified. In Mesoamerica the stars and the bright planets in their intrincate wanderings were often conceived of as gods moving through the night sky en route to rebirth each sun up. They wove un enormous celestial tapestry mirrored in the warp and weft of the lives of the people themselves. To observe and predict the recurrent paths of divine lights was to know the fates of kings and empires, to discern the proper day for rituals, to forecast animal migrations, the season of the life-given rain and the time for planting. The power to foretell required that observers, probably specially trained shamans or priests, make accurate records and preserve them. The information must have been accumulated over generations and generations, the observers using naked-eye sighting techniques to discover the patterns of movements in the universe. Their knowledge reached a level comparable to that of ancient cultures in the Old World. Proudly and lovingly we keep in our mountains the touching evidence of this knowledge: in a beautiful breathtaking place we found a big monolith and an observation complex that testify and pays homage to the virtuosity of our wise grandparents. To most modern-day americans, though, the night sky is routinely banished by our house lamps and all but erased by the lights of our cities and suburbs. There is not much magic-or even astronomy-in it now. We are, you might say, too enlightened. Witnessing the magic of such a place, send us back to the times when we vibrated together with our environment, with the spirits of the Navajo "Nightway Chant": With Harmony behind me, may I walk, With Harmony above me, may I walk, With Harmony below me, may I walk, With Harmony all around me, may I walk. . . . It is finished in Harmony, It is finished in Harmony. Appendix 1: How to get to Monte Carlo Coffee Plantation |
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Getting to Monte Carlo
Getting to Our Place
First, you must arrive to Oaxaca City, capital of the State of Oaxaca and one of the most beautiful cities in Mexico. From there, take a bus going to the Pacific Coast. There are many lines at different prices, qualities and destinations. The costliest buses travel usually by night and offer TV and goodies like coffee, tea and cookies. The cheapest ones stop very often, travel by day and night and make long hours. There are two bus classes: first and second, and two different bus stations at the city according to its class. You can take the cheapest first class (about $15 U.S.Dlls) going to the Coast, or the most expensive second class (about $7 U.S. Dlls) and get about the same results.
First, you must arrive to Oaxaca City, capital of the State of Oaxaca and one of the most beautiful cities in Mexico. From there, take a bus going to the Pacific Coast. There are many lines at different prices, qualities and destinations. The costliest buses travel usually by night and offer TV and goodies like coffee, tea and cookies. The cheapest ones stop very often, travel by day and night and make long hours. There are two bus classes: first and second, and two different bus stations at the city according to its class. You can take the cheapest first class (about $15 U.S.Dlls) going to the Coast, or the most expensive second class (about $7 U.S. Dlls) and get about the same results.
The main destinations on the Coast are, to the West, Puerto Escondido; at a center position, Pochutla-Puerto Angel; and to the East Bahías de Huatulco-La Crucecita. Puerto Escondido is a charming city with plenty of hotels and places to stay and offers great beaches for surfing. There are nearby lagoons, one of them a National Park with plenty of acquatic birds. Pochutla is a commercial city, with an interesting market on mondays, quite alive and noisy. From there, Puerto Angel, a little fishing village is just 20 Km. away, offering some good beaches and nice places like the Cañón de Vata hotel, with a very uncommon but pleasant way of hosting the visitor.
Around Puerto Angel, to the West, there is a long chain of little posadas and small hotels finishing at the Turtle Museum, that make the so called alternative tourism, involving the guests on the communities life. And 70 Kms. to the East of Pochutla you will find La Crucecita (also called Bahías de Huatulco) that is the newest city in Oaxaca, and the closest to Monte Carlo. La Crucecita is the brainchild of the Tourism Ministery and is a little plastic. But it is located in the middle of the newest mexican National Park and offers a lot of beautiful beaches and coves to enjoy the ocean. It is a little expansive because the government wants to get money there. But you start to find cheap places there. One of the most beautiful beaches, where you can arrive only by walking is the Conejos Beach. There is a small restaurant, the only one, that offers you hammocks to stay, and a simple lifestyle that is quickly dissapearing, sad to say.
From La Crucecita, take at the corner of Carrizal and Palo Verde Streets, a bus from the line TRANSISMICOS. They leave town every half hour during the daytime, but try to start early (seven in the morning an excellent hour) because the trip to Monte Carlo by this way take about 5 hours. So, take a bus on the direction to Salina Cruz, which will travel to the East on Mexican Federal Road 200 (Costera del Pacífico). Ask the driver to put you down at the Zimatán Bridge stop (about 60 Km. far from La Crucecita). There starts a dirt road going first to Santa María Xadani (at the foot of the mountain in Zapotec) and then to La Merced del Potrero (The pastureland Gift in Spanish).
You will find pick up trucks from boths towns waiting for customers. If you take a Xadani truck, go all the way. If you take a La Merced truck, you will pass Xadani and after 4 Km. on the way to La Merced (Also known as La Meche) you will find The San Lorenzo River Bridge, where you will leave the truck (ask the driver to show you). If you arrived at Xadani, walk 4 Km on the way to La Merced, walking the only paved street that traverses the town and at its end taking the right fork of the roads junction at the town end.
You will arrive at the San Lorenzo Bridge. There, before traversing the bridge, at your left, there is a rural road that goes upstream beside the river and after 5 Km. you will arrive at Monte Carlo after crossing two small creeks and two little hamlets called El Mamey and El Istmo. Starting from Federal Road 200, look for two paint patches: yellow and red on the arm of the road junction that you must take. Follow this signal all the way and you will arrive without problems, I am sure. Monte Carlo is a big yellow house with a big red patio around.
If you feel a little affraid about this adventourous trip, plan yor trip very well, tell me by e mail where and when you will be at the Coast, and it will be a pleasure to be your guide for a small fee. From Xadani I have a small Jeep and we can go faster. My wife lives at Oaxaca City, phone 5143059, do not hesitate to contact her, she speaks English and French besides Spanish.
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