Scorpions and Duct Tape

Continued from previous post . . . .
We headed down the road toward Tamazunchale in a heavy rain. Not too many miles south of Valles the road crew was out with bad news. The road was washed-out ahead, flooded and closed.

We looked at our trusty Guia Roji maps of Mexico and took a sharp turn to the east on a secondary--no, tertiary at best--road. We dropped down through a small town where the bulldozer pushed a path through the mud in the road for us to follow. The water had been 4 or 5 feet deep in the buildings on the sides of the road, but we were fortunate again. The water had receded, leaving only deep mud behind.
We stopped at a small Huasteca ruin at Tamuin and saw the partially excavated altars and temple mounds, then turned south on a road that could only be described as pesimo. Really ugly. There was a mist in the air, the tall grass was wet and butterflies covered the telephone poles along the road--even they knew this wasn't travel weather.

Charlie had been talking for days about getting a cowboy hat. When he got to Mexico he wanted to get a straw cowboy hat. We wanted to look at the butterflies on the poles, and pulled over to the side of the road. The van door slid open and Hopkins descended. Much to Charlie's delight the storm had blown a nice looking cowboy hat his way--there it was sitting it the wet grass. He snatched it up and tossed it into the van.

We spent a while collecting butterflies. They just sat and waited for us. They couldn't fly in the wet air. Coming from Arizona the air felt great. Finally we all got back into the van and ready to go. Suddenly, from the far back a voice yelped, "There's scorpions in the car!"

Mike hit the brakes and everyone bailed out. Sure enough there were scorpions looking for cracks to hide in on the floor of the van. Mean looking scorpions not quite an inch long. Lots of em.

While I stood gaping, Mike grabbed the duct tape and wrapped it backwards around his hand and started sticking scorpions to duct tape. When he had a handful he changed tape. They didn't have a chance.

One of the kids wondered aloud where the scorpions had come from, and the light went on as a chorus of voices sang out, "The hat!"

Mike snatched up the hat, and in the crown was the four inch mama with babies still scrambling down from her back. He did not try to trap her with duct tape. We didn't even put her in a collecting bottle. We crushed her dead.

Finally, hoping we had captured all her little poisonous offspring we loaded our offspring back into the vehicle and headed down the road. We traveled on roads that could have provided great moguls for skiers--if they liked mud. We traveled through tropical villages, under huge trees where we saw our first electric blue morpho butterflies on the wing, and finally, hours after leaving Valles we turned back west and hit the main road less than a hundred miles from where we'd started that morning.

We stopped in Tamazunchale and spent the night in a little hotel behind the bus station.

To be continued. . . . .