This morning my classroom was invaded by huge flying bugs. I spent some time before class using the broom to swat out these loud buggers which appeared to be dying. I wasn’t completely successful as there were still one or two flying about when the first graders arrived. However, to my surprise, not only did the kids not freak out like they do when there is a wasp, bee or mosquito in the room, but they could identify them as an ant and reassured me that “no pasa nada”.
Typically, the chicatanas appear for one to three nights between June 12 and June 20, although sometimes the rainy season comes a bit earlier. Whatever the exact day, the conditions must be just right. Generally, the chicatanas appear after a hot day followed by a very wet, humid night. This year, those conditions were met on June 15/16, at least in Moroleon.
This was my first experience with the chicatanas, even though I’ve lived more than 10 years in Mexico. The chicatana, also called cuatalatas, chancharras, cochonas, arrieras, zompopo, mochomas, sontetas, nokú, tzim-tzim, tepeoani or tzicatl, is a species of the Atta genus (leaf-cutter ants). The Florentine codex referred to these insects as tzicatana (homiga arriera) and mentioned that they were used as food.
Used as food? Yep. Mexico has more than 250 edible insects, including this one. The chicatanas are prepared in a variety of ways, depending on the region, after their wings, heads and legs are removed. Sometimes fried and served in tacos, sometimes ground into salsa with garlic, salt, and chili, they are considered quite the delicacy.
Really, it’s just the queens that are eaten, as they are the huge buggers flying about looking to establish new colonies during this period. The food or salsa prepared from the queens is traditionally thought of as an aphrodisiac and may have something to do with the tradition in Huatusco when girls looking to be married visit the shrine of San Antonio de Padua with 13 coins to ask for his intervention on the matter. But then again, they could be unrelated.
I wasn’t able to find anyone who knew how to prepare the chicatanas, so missed out on trying yet another exotic Mexican food for this year. I’ll have to keep it in mind next year, where the queens swarm again.
The school I work for went on an “educational” trip in May to the BioParque Estrella theme park in Mexico State and my son and I went along with them. The promotional material and pictures online made the trip look incredible. The reality was a bit of a letdown.
Fountain at the entrance to the park
After a LONG bus ride, we arrived and were shuttled along around the fountain at the entry until it was our turn to be yelled at by a person with a megaphone. We were supposed to have a tour guide, but after leaving the fountain area, he wasn’t seen again. Looked like we were on our own!
Our first stop on the grand BioParque tour was the Subterranium (Underground). It consisted of a mini-museum with pictures of actual miners and a sampling of mining equipment. Then more than 200 of us were herded into a room with only 1 exit for the What is mining? animated video. Fortunately, it was brief. We then descended several flights of unnaturally short steps to the main attraction. We boarded gas powered vehicles and went through a “spooky” mine at incredible speeds completely in the dark. The first few stops were mining scenes, then things got a little fanciful. We passed a huge tarantula, a basilisk, a giant scorpion, Medusa (with glowing red eyes) and the lost city of Atlantis, before returning to our starting position and ascending the unnaturally short steps again.
We lost 8 to 10 members of our group during this process, so we had to set out search parties and stand around for awhile.
Once we regrouped, we headed to la Tierra de Dinosaurios (the land of dinosaurs) and went on the Rio Jurasico (Jurassic River) boat ride. We all loaded into a seriously tilting motor boat and went around a circular canal, stopping at various dinosaurs that moved or squirted water at us. I was hit by the poison shooting Dilophosaurus, splat right in the face. I was not a happy camper. Despite my fear we were going to capsize, we made it back to the dock and filed out.
I took advantage of the milling about and searching for stragglers time after this attraction to hit the bathrooms. The lines were really long, but there were both toilet paper and seats in the stalls. Five-star bathroom experience! This is an important aspect of any attraction in Mexico.
We then went to the Sendero (path). The brochure described it as a beautiful 1-kilometer hike to admire the natural world with a few surprises along the way. The tour guide at the entrance to the attraction made a disclaimer that the park would not be held responsible if anyone pregnant, or with heart disease or other physical condition took the hike. We had to give our verbal consent before starting on the path. Red flags should have gone up for me then, but I had been lulled into complacency by the ease of the first two attractions.
suspension bridge
drugged tigers
It turned out to be a 1.4-kilometer hike over a root filled path, with broken guide ropes along the way. There were at least 100 steps of a variety of heights, shapes, lengths and angles. My knees were in agony! I’m not as young as I used to be you know. There were also 2 suspension bridges. They did seem to be in good shape, and there weren’t any problems crossing them. As for the surprises–the first was a mapache (raccoon) enclosure. It was sleeping. Then there was the tiger enclosure–they were sleeping, I expect they were drugged.
There was a monkey on an island and a tortuga de orejas rojas (red eared turtle). The monkey wouldn’t leave it’s cage since the rest of the island was bare of trees, and it was hot. The turtle was sunning itself on a rock. And that was it for the surprises. It was dry, dusty and difficult to navigate. If there were other things to be admired, I didn’t see them as I was too busy watching my feet so as not to break an ankle and have to be airlifted out of the park.
The only thing interesting on the hike was this plant life. I expect it’s a mushroom of some sort because it was growing at the base of several trees. Kinda looks like corn, doesn’t it?
One of the concession stands with extraordinary prices
Anyway, we dragged our sorry butts back to the beginning and gratefully sat down to wait for the slower members of the group. There was a snack bar conspicuously situated there, and of course, everybody wanted some refreshment. Chips were 22 pesos for a bag that costs less than half of that at a grocery store. I didn’t even bother to price the fruit or soda. We made due with our one allotted 1.5-liter bottle of water per person.
Then we headed to Lago Ziwa and the Isla del Mono Araña (Spider Monkey Island). Four-person paddle boats were the main attraction, the route being around the Monkey Island. The lines were tremendous yet again. My knees hadn’t recovered, so I passed on this attraction. My son though managed to loop the island without incident.
There was also a smaller paddle boat attraction for the younger kids. Instead of a monkey island, there were two eagles tied to posts as the “bio” part of the ride.
After waiting an extraordinarily long time for everyone to circle the island, we headed to the Kamba tirolesa (zipline). There actually were two zip lines–one for bigs and one for littles. The big Kamba was more than 100 meters long, and I again passed on this experience. I sent my son as my representative, though.
He said that the dude running the zip lines had to verify twice that he was tall enough to go on the ride. As he was taller than the measuring stick, there shouldn’t have been any doubt, but hey, he’s in charge. There were no helmets or any other sort of safety equipment, including brakes. In order to stop, a guy at the end of the zip line was supposed to catch the rider and drag him or her to a stop. My son said that the brake man had a horrified expression on his face as if just knew this one would get away.
By this time, it was early afternoon, and most everybody was getting tired and cranky. The group leaders bypassed the Teatro Muziki in favor of an earlier lunch. There were oodles of school groups milling around the eating area. We had the students sit down at some dirty plastic tables under a roof and went to get some food. We waited in line for 30 minutes only to be told that our order was at the other concession stand. The school had paid for our lunches. We had 3 choices, hamburger, chicken pattie or hot dog and an order of fries and soda. My son and I ordered the chicken patties–which were cold and had nothing on them but cheese. The vegetables were in a buffet area surrounded by dust and dirt kicked up by the milling school groups, so we passed on those and ate them plain. We each received 1/2 container of floppy fries and the smallest soda in the world. It was far from filling, far from healthy and even further from environmentally friendly.
My son and I finished in record time and opted to hit the bathroom line again and go to the Zoovenirs (souvenirs) store to wait for the slower eaters to finish. The Zoovenirs store was disappointing. The only things I could afford were cheap plastic stuff that I could get anyway. Mugs were $115 pesos, stuffed animals were over $100 pesos, crappy plastic dinosaurs were $450 pesos. Well, you get the idea. No Zoovenirs for us then.
The next stop was the Serengeti. It was a motorized tour of an animal preserve with a petting zoo aspect. We boarded this huge DIESEL tour vehicle and sputtered and smoked our way to the first “free range” animal area. It was mostly goats with a water buffalo and emu thrown in. The emu pecked a little kid and probably traumatized him for life. The water buffalo came right up to the side of the vehicle and opened its mouth for the kids to pour the food in. There were some llamas, camels, buffalos, a variety of deer and antelope, ñandu, ducks, gnu, watusi, nutria, zebras, hippos, and baboons. The main attractions were the giraffes who were too regal to consent to be handfed by our group, the lions that had a 20-foot enclosure and looked to be drugged and the elephants. The elephant enclosure was horrible. It was a circular pit with absolutely NOTHING in it. Both elephants were as far away from the road as they could get and turned their back on our gawking. I expect they were former circus animals that had to be rehomed when it became illegal for animals to be used as circus attractions. What a bleak life these animals now had. And the trash and air pollution generated by this attraction–unbelievable!
Our last stop of the day was Antartica, which was a sliding ride. There were no lines, so most of the kids got two trips in. My son opted to not ride once the braking system became apparent. Some dude at the bottom of the hill would grab hold of the sled and pull it to a stop. If he missed, well, you would get a quick trip to Paraiso de Jirafas (Giraffe Paradise) which bordered the ride. No, thank you. However, you can see that several of our teachers, after crossing themselves, took the risk.
There were a few animal exhibits on the way out, and we saw the rather interesting Capybara–the original R.O.U.S.–rodent of unusual size.
And that was that. We headed back to the fountain and mosied out to the bus for an even LONGER ride home.
Site after site lists online surveys as a viable way to make money online, so with things a little tight in January, I decided to see what all the fuss was about.
I signed up for a few online survey and testing sites, hoping to make a little moolah along the way. I completed the initial questionnaire and the criteria questionnaire and the availability questionnaire and waited.
I started with User Testing. I mean $10 for reviewing a website sounded good to me. Every time I received an email indicating a job (test) was available, I went to check it out. Only thing was, I never qualified for the demographics criteria, so I would fill out the questionnaire, wasting 10 minutes or so of my precious time, only to be REJECTED with no reason given. Finally, I regulated those emails to the spam folder and went in search of another site.
Then I signed up with Toluna Surveys. They offered gift cards instead of cash, but hey, I have a valuable opinion and would like to receive benefits for expressing it, so I joined their Global Community. And again, every time I received an invitation to participate in a survey, I hurried over to the site, only to be told that the survey was now closed. After a few months of this without having filled out a single survey, I sent those emails to spam as well.
I also tried Hiving and after 37 invitations to complete a survey, did not qualify for a single one. With Hiving, each completed survey gives you points which you can redeem for cash after reaching 4,000. Just so you know, 4,000 points is $4 usd but apparently your points NEVER expire. I’m up to 545 points for doing things like what the company calls microtasks, although there isn’t anything micro about it. The few I have done consist of searching and verifying information about companies via search engines or company websites and takes forever. Then you submit what you found and somebody tells you that you’ve found the wrong information so didn’t qualify for full point value.
Not to give up so easily, I signed up for a fourth survey site. ipoll offered gift cards AND a Paypal cash out option. Sounds good to me! And the very first questionnaire said I met the criteria and I was sent along to the survey site. I completed the survey and a little cash accumulated in my fund. I also qualified for surveys in Spanish, so double the fun. I spent several months filling out a survey a week or so and slowly, slowly my funds grew. In April, I was up to $15. I needed $20 to cash out and I was so looking forward to that little bit, either in cash or gift card. Then I received an email that said that iPoll would no longer be servicing Mexico and that I had until the end of the month to cash out.
I went to the site every day to see if I could earn that last $5 but found that there was nothing available for me, every single time. And come April 30, just as I was warned, my account disappeared, without me having reached the minimum cash out amount.
Two months and 10 emails after the April 30 deadline, I finally received my cash out payment through Paypal. My $15 usd converted to $280 pesos and I was content enough.
However, as this way of making money was so time-consuming with such low profitability, I decided to leave the online survey world and move on to online teaching. (See Also Can you really make money with paid online surveys?)
The only thing interesting on the hike was this plant life. I expect it’s a mushroom of some sort because it was growing at the base of several trees. Kinda looks like corn, doesn’t it?
Then we headed to Lago Ziwa and the Isla del Mono Araña (Spider Monkey Island). Four-person paddle boats were the main attraction, the route being around the Monkey Island. The lines were tremendous yet again. My knees hadn’t recovered, so I passed on this attraction. My son though managed to loop the island without incident.
There was also a smaller paddle boat attraction for the younger kids. Instead of a monkey island, there were two eagles tied to posts as the “bio” part of the ride.
