Robert MacNeil Christie, Author

I was talking with someone the other day about my trip to the West Coast of Mexico, just to the east of the tip of the Baja peninsula. I praised the wonders of consistent sunny 80 degree beach weather in January and February. And swimming with my dog most afternoons in the little pool at the house we rented was great fun.

Commenting on my happy discourse he referred to me as a “snowbird.” I was taken aback. I had never thought of my little adventure as the mere seasonal migration of a snowbird. I had always thought of snowbirds as those people who live in “recreational vehicles” (RVs) and stay in various RV parks around the country, moving south in the winter, north in the summer. But it got me thinking.

While researching central Mexico for our first road trip “south of the border,” I had perused a Web site called “On the Road in Mexico.” We were having a hard time finding

hotels in Chihuahua, Torreon, and Durango that would accept pets. When we had driven down the Baja peninsula a previous winter, we had easily found “pet friendly” motels along the highway to La Paz. Of course, Baja is heavily traveled by tourists from the western states of the U.S. Many travel in RVs with their dogs, some even with cats. As it turns out, pet friendly hotels are much more common in the western United States than in the eastern states. I don’t know why.

The “On the road in Mexico” Face Book page is a site where people exchange information and advice on traveling in Mexico. Much of the talk is about Baja, since probably the majority of road trips by U.S. nationals is to the various tourist destinations in Baja. Little is said about central Mexico. Very few “snowbirds” travel down the well maintained toll roads between Juarez and Durango or beyond. Chihuahua, Torreon, and Durango are all major Mexican industrial/commercial cities, not “tourist destinations.” It is striking to see, on driving through these cities, how they seem so similar in texture and tone to mid-size and large U.S. cities.

San Blas is a coastal city by a river about 3 hours’ drive north of Puerto Vallarta. The large estuary at the mouth of the river just south of town is teeming with all manner of wildlife. It is said that this area of the Mexican coast has more bird species than all the rest of the North American continent combined. We drove to San Blas one day and hired

a guide and his “panga,” a large outboard-motor boat that can seat up to 8 or ten people. Slowly cruising along the narrow waterways, we found more birds than we could capture on camera. Crocodiles also laze long the shore. We even saw a baby crocodile sunning on a tree branch just above the water. Had we gone out in the early morning, we would have seen much more.

San Blas was a major outpost of the Spanish empire on the west coast of what is now Mexico; today it remains a major fishing town. Its beautiful estuary seems so remote from the life of the industrial economies of the U.S., central Mexico, and the rest that threaten most species of the world in the Sixth Great Mass Extinction now underway. It is hard to imagine these crocodiles and birds being in danger. But they are. Those of us who are so lucky can go about our middle-class consumer lives for a little longer, but big changes are on the horizon… Snowbirds are, after all, totally dependent on fossil fuel, unlike the wily crocodile