Festival Cultural Zacatecas 2012

     Magna inauguración del Festial Cultural Zacatecas 2012

Zacatecas at dusk

     This very nice historic center of Zacatecas is magical, the cathedral is lighted in a very pleasant way and the street (Hidalgo) converts to pedestrian only on the nights where the Festival Cultural de Zacatecas is playing at the Plaza de Armas.

Sian Ka'an (the place where the sky is born)

Not many words needed to describe the beauty of an amazing sunset at the biosphere reserve
     

 

Prismas Basálticos de Santa María Regla, Hidalgo

This are very interesting basalt rock formations.

The columns were formed by sudden cooling of magma on the surface of the Earth. The very interesting part is that they can be pentagonal, hexagonal or heptagonal prisms.



In this particular place - Santa Maria Regla, near the town of Huasca de Ocampo, state of Hidalgo, México. the columns reach around 30 meters high and their diameter is around 1-1.5 meters, they form a little basin/canyon with waterfalls artificially feed by a man-made water reservoir.

If you are in the area of Pachuca, Hidalgo, it's just about 30 minutes to get to Huasca, a "Pueblo Mágico" and you can visit the old Haciendas of San Miguel Regla and Santa Maria Regla that serves a hotels this days.

Balam-Kú - the Bat volcano

If you see this sign in the higway

You are certainly on the Escarcega-Chetumal route near Calakmul.

The sign is serious, be aware (not afraid) of bats crossing the road after sunset.

There is a huge cave called Balam-Kú, residence of millions of bats.

Please SLOW-DOWN to 40 Km/h, yeah from those 120km/h you are doing in this brand-new super duper highway.

The speed reduction is needed for two things: avoiding an accident due to lossing control after hitting a bat and to avoid killing this amazing and very usefull animals.

Every night this millions of bats emerge from their cave to feed on the Calakmul biosphere forest. They are not looking to bite humans, but hunting for insects. Imagine what would happen if the bats didn't eat so many pests!!!!

The bats also pollinate flowers and when they eat the fruit, they help disseminate the seeds, so the forest gets three services from this usefull animal. Please don't kill them, they are harmless to humans and we need them a lot.

Interesting trees