San Blas and the Durango Highway Trip Report -  the following is a composite of our fantastic 2002 - 2008 trips.

Perhaps the most memorable feature of our west Mexico trip is that it somehow seems to highlight my good fortune at being able to share the natural wonders of the world with consistently great groups.

This wonderful west Mexico trip begins on the Durango Highway, where we're treated to three nights of wonderful hospitality in the charming town of Copala, a quiet rural town where we usually have the hotel and restaurant to ourselves.  Walks around this bird-rich town have always included close-up scope views of military macaws feeding on the fruits of cannonball trees, and occasionally we're fortunate to have the large fig in front of the hotel in full fruit with a parade of birds passing through.  Birds around town include rufous-backed robin, scrub and elegant euphonias (called euphorias by some onlookers), yellow grosbeak, streak-backed and black-vented orioles, grayish saltator, orange-fronted parakeet, Mexican parrotlet, thick-billed kingbird, painted bunting, Sinaloa and happy wrens, rusty-crowned ground-sparrow, black-capped vireo, and orange-billed nightingale thrush to name a few.  In addition to the fig is a wonderful guamuchil tree, a daily magnet for birds (and birders) situated right at the hotel's front door.  It's not unusual in morning outing in the village to find over 80 species of birds.  

From Copala, we cross the highway to the always exciting tropical deciduous forest on Panuco Road.  Yellow-winged caciques and black-throated magpie jays are plentiful and noisy, with their bright colors accentuated by the equally bright Combretum flowers on which they often feed.  Elegant and citreoline trogons, blue mockingbird, black-capped and golden vireos, rusty-crowned ground sparrow, colima pygmy owl, fan-tailed and rufous-capped warblers, grey silky flycatcher, golden-crowned emerald, and blue bunting are some of the most attractive birds seen regularly in the forest here.  Less regularly seen is the spectacular red-breasted chat.  As mornings warm, butterflies - including malachite, white and yellow angled sulphurs, dirce beauty, fritillaries,  banded and white peacocks, zebra longwing, crimson-patched longwing, julia, longtail skippers, and crackers  - come alive as do swifts, including white-naped (the largest swift on Earth) and chestnut-collared.  At night and early in the morning, mottled, ferruginous pygmy, Colima pygmy, and vermiculated screech owls can be heard and sometimes seen.

Further up the Durango Highway, our walks through the pines, oaks, alders, madrones, and firs of the Sierra Madre are memorable for the highly endemic and gorgeous tufted jays, mountain trogon, red warbler, red-headed tanager (you have to see them to believe them), rufous-capped and green-striped brushfinches, golden-browed warblers, white-striped woodcreeper, various hummingbirds, crescent-chested and golden-browed warblers, russet nightingale thrush, Aztec thrush, gray-collared becard,  and many others.  We've also enjoyed and learned about madrone caterpillars (one of the most unique lepidopterans in the world), swaths of flowering salvias, blooming bromeliads, Psitticanthus (a mistletoe attractive to hummers and Scott’s orioles), and an Ambystoma salamander.  Though our days on the Durango Highway have all been unforgettable, nature, just for good measure, occasionally throws in something like a stunning five-foot boa constrictor right in the middle of the highway.  They say timing is everything, and, when we found this snake, it certainly was, as we were able to handle, photograph, release, and rescue the boa from becoming snake pizza.

We spend six days in the San Blas area and enjoy a variety of habitats including thick jungle, shade-grown coffee plantation, riverine forest, pine forest, and mangrove swamp.  In addition to outstanding birds on Singayta Rd., the sewage ponds road, La Tovara, La Bajada, and in the Cerro de San Juan, we're often treated to other wildlife as well.  Green and spiny-tailed iguanas, heliconid butterflies ovipositing on passionvine, myrmecophytic acacias with stinging Pseudomyrmex ants, fruiting figs and cecropias, indigo and whip snakes, fish eating bats (Noctilio leporinus), leafcutter ants, arboreal termites, and more provide many a nature lesson.  In the San Blas area, we usually have excellent views of russet-crowned motmot, boat-billed flycatcher, San Blas and purplish-backed jays, masked tityra, rose-throated becard, ivory-billed woodcreeper, greenish elaenia, rosy-thrush tanager, and pale-billed, lineated, and golden-cheeked woodpeckers to name just a few of the wonderful birds.  Others that aren't seen as frequently include sparkling-tailed woodstar, red-crowned ant tanager, gray-crowned woodpecker, bat falcon, black hawk-eagle, and collared forest falcon.  

In addition to peaceful tropical scenery and lushness, our boat trip up the Rio San Cristobal has been memorable for mangrove warbler, mangrove vireo, mangrove cuckoo, limpkin, snail kite, black-bellied and fulvous whistling ducks, up to 13 species of raptors, and the beautiful but elusive rufous-necked wood-rail.  On the magical La Tovara boat trip, one of my all-time favorite nature outings, we've enjoyed ringed kingfisher, least grebe, crane hawk, boat-billed heron,  bare-throated tiger heron, pauraque, rufous-bellied chachalacas, short-eared owl, buff-collared nightjar, dozens of northern potoos, greater fishing bat, coatis, racoons, and a few very large American crocodiles.  Once on this trip, as we were passing through a “tunnel” of red mangrove, an ocelot crossed over and in front of the boat along an arch of mangrove branches.  There was stunned silence for a moment as we tried to digest the rare sighting of this tropical cat. 

Up in  the Cerro de San Juan, a rather isolated massif where pines and oaks cover the summits and shade-grown coffee dominates the lower slopes, there are possibilities to find birds not found in the other areas we visit.  Within this refreshingly cool climate, we've seen green jay, elegant euphonia, Mexican woodnypmh (endemic to the area), bumblebee hummingbird, olivaceous woodcreeper, black-capped and golden vireos, spotted wren, sparkling-tailed woodstar, flame-colored tanager, Colima warbler, lesser roadrunner, golden-crowned warbler, Audubon's (Dickey's) oriole, and many other species.  Recent trip highlights were a Stygian owl on its day roost and a perched double-toothed kite.

While in San Blas, we stay at the Hotel Garza Canela where the hospitality of the Vasquez family must be experienced to be believed.  Arriving at their excellent hotel always feels like coming home, not only for me, but also for trip participants who have never even been there.

A superb highlight is always a visit to the village of Tecuitata, where Daniel Fourwinds and the staff of Capulin Coffee give us insight into the coffee industry and its potential for sustainable communities and forests.  We see first hand how their coffee is uniquely harvested, hand sorted, and traditionally dried on a beautiful drying patio. The intensive hand labor involved provides much needed employment and income to local villagers and results in a higher quality product than that produced by the corporate method of processing with water and fermentation (which provides much less employment and income for locals).   If you drink coffee and care about healthy tropical habitats and the people that live in them, then check out capulin.com to learn more and to support the finest coffee project I know of !!

The Durango Highway and San Blas have it all - great weather and scenery, unique lodging with warm hospitality, wonderful food, easy travel, and an abundance and diversity of birds that's hard to beat.

Last updated: April 12, 2008.