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EL PEDREGAL
Nature Lodge and
Retreat Center
Check out El Pedregal on YouTube! Our friends doing the Big Day documentary did a nice promotional piece for us. Take a look at the following link:
Offering luxurious lodging
in a natural and beautiful setting.
The comfortable main lodge is surrounded by five hand crafted casitas, connected by trails that wander through native gardens
and intact forest.
El Pedregal is only a mile from
the main plaza in Alamos, and
yet it feels miles away from
everything.
El Pedregal is the perfect place
for individual travelers looking
for a relaxing getaway. It also
lends itself perfectly to small groups. Birding groups, writers
and artist workshops, family
reunions, business retreats and
other such groups can have personalized experiences at El Pedregal.
As we strive to create a comfortable and private environment for our guests, we are also working to open up El Pedregal to the community for experiential educational events and presentation that emphasize conservation and natural history
For more information or to make
a reservation, go to
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YOGA CLASSES
AND
WORKSHOPS
Our fully equipped yoga studio
at El Pedregal is a magical space
for yoga classes and workshops.
Classes are offered Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from
8:30-10:00 a.m.
from mid-October to May.
Jennifer teaches these classes
and they are open to all levels.
In addition to regular classes,
we are pleased to announce
a very special workshop:
Iyengar Weekend Workshop
with
Deborah Bristow
A workshop for all levels Join us for a 10 hour workshop that gives you an opportunity to deepen your practice and your understanding of yoga. Deborah has years of experience as a teacher and helps everyone work and evolve at their own level. Small class size, great people, lots of fun and lots of yoga!
November 5-7, 2009
$500
(includes classes, meals, lodging at El Pedregal and a special tour)
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Alamos, Sonora
The Strawbale Yoga Studio
A Mexican Beaded Lizard at
El Pedregal
A Baby Yellow Grosbeak at
El Pedregal
Solipaso and El Pedregal are proud members of Tucson Audubon's Birds and Business Alliance
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Cowboy Hats, Pointy Boots, Bird Books and Binoculars!
Sharing natural history and conservation knowledge: The Sonoran Joint Venture Bird Guide Training Program
We never take for granted the nice life we have carved out in Alamos, and we owe a lot of this to the beauty and nature of our area and to a lot of great people that have helped make it all happen. With this in mind, we are very excited to help spread the benefits of nature-based tourism to the Alamos community at large. We have been working closely with the Sonoran Joint Venture (a US based non-profit http://www.sonoranjv.org/) to help train local residents to be competent and knowledgeable bird guides. The idea is to help the candidates learn their birds well, improve there English communication skills, feel comfortable working with different types of people, and how to work safely and generally just deal with a group of individuals that will most often times be foreigners. There are a lot of interesting challenges in the task at hand. Some of the participants come from backgrounds that offered rather limited educational opportunities. Basic knowledge that we take for granted can be something that some of the trainees have never been exposed to. For example, we have found that short Geography courses can go a long way to teaching just where birds migrate to and from! Working with the participants has been extremely rewarding for us and we are happy to have a number of very talented local guides that will be working with us in the future!
One of the elements required of the Guide Trainees is to perform a certain amount of community service work to gain their "Diploma". Recently we did a basic bird watching workshop with 10 kids from the rural community of "El Sabinito", about 10 miles east of Alamos. we concentrated on how to use binoculars properly, basic identification principles and bird topography. It was a very rewarding experience for all of us. The new guides got to practice all they have learned so far and the kids really got into it! I think all of us were a bit surprised at how excited these kids got about bird watching...it was wonderful. Down the road, we want to have these same guides give programs to school kids that get them out in the field and experiencing all the neat natural stuff that gets us so excited about the Tropical Deciduous Forest! We think that by exposing more young people to birding and nature, we can start to create a deeper appreciation of the incredible resource that surrounds these kids while creating a local market for nature-based tourism, which is only beginning to get started in Mexico.
To help fund the endeavor, as well as to give real time guiding experience, the new guides will be offering weekly, three hour guided bird walks to the various hot spots around Alamos. These walks will be for birders of all abilities and give people a chance to get out to some of Alamos' interesting habitats. Our hope is that the low cost and casual atmosphere will tempt people that have never thought of going birding to get out and try it. The bird walks will meet in the Plaza at 6 a.m. every Saturday starting October 17th and continue through April, the price is 100 pesos (about 8 dollars) per person. The funds will be used to pay the two guides a reasonable salary for the morning and the remainder will go to continued financing of the guide program (gasoline, vehicle, travel expenses, birding equipment and outreach programs).
If you have birding equipment or books (particularly Mexico and North America) that are under utilized, we are happy to get it to people who need it and will really use it. Email us for information on where to send you old stuff, and we will put it in the hands of an excited new bird watcher!
Solipaso is proud to support this local effort by utilizing these local guides as co-leaders on all of our Sonora tours, Rio Mayo float trips and some of our tours to San Blas and the Durango Highway. Join us for a tour to Alamos or Yecora /Alamos this fall and help us promote a great program! For more information on specific tours click on the trips below:
SEE OUR WEBSITE FOR A COMPLETE LISTING OF ALL UPCOMING TOURS:
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After years of thinking and scheming about doing a Sonora "Big Day", on March 21st, 2009, it finally happened! Along with four friends and a documentary film crew, we set out to find as many bird species in Sonora as possible in 24 hours. The previous unofficial Sonora Big Day record of 180, which was done by Steve Ganley and Roy Jones in 2000, is the only other Sonora Big Day that I know of.
Our original intention was to do the Big Day on the 21st, but due to some logistical issues this ended up being a scouting trip. So, the true Big Day was on the 22nd and covered a route from Yecora to Yavaros Bay on the Sea of Cortez before going on to Alamos. A very ambitious route to say the least! This covers about 450 miles on roads that are less than perfect from the pine and oak covered slopes of the Sierra Madre, through thick tropical deciduous forest and on the the mangroves at the Sea of Cortez. It was a crazy two days that I can't wait to try all over again in 2010!
To read the complete story of the 2009 Sonora Big Day click on the following link: Sonora Big Day |
| Conservation Efforts in Southern Sonora
CONANP, NCI, PRONATURA...These three acronyms may not mean too much to anyone who does not live in Mexico, but the impact they are having on the conservation movement in Alamos is paving the way for an "industry" (for lack of a better term) of nature-based tourism. For those of us that have been involved in this business for years it is very exciting to see such important organizations coming together to guarantee long term conservation of some incredibly diverse and beautiful habitat. Certainly there are growing pains and periods of adjustment, but the local community has mostly embraced the idea of conservation as economic activities like cattle ranching have become less and less profitable. The following are brief introductions to the above mentioned groups.
CONANP - Comision Nacional de Areas Naturales Protegidas, is a Mexican Federal Government organization that is responsible for enforcing rules, promoting biological research and creating rural development programs within the boundaries of the Sierra De Alamos-Rio Cuchujaqui reserve. Currently they are monitoring about 247,000 acres including the Rio Cuchujaqui and the Sierra de Alamos. Their website is http://www.conanp.gob.mx/ , here you can find out information about all of the protected areas in Mexico.
NCI - Nature and Culture International: From their website http://www.natureandculture.org/htm/mexico/mexico.htm"NCI's goal is to protect tropical dry and montane forests within the Sierra de Alamos and place them in permanent conservation status. Although this land is within a zone designated for protection by the Mexican government, almost all of the reserve is currently privately owned, except for the upper slopes of the Sierra de Alamos itself. Under Mexican law, the private land within the Sierra de Alamos is subject to only minimal ecosystems management, which means overgrazing and even land clearing continue despite its conservation designation. The purpose of this project is to purchase private lands and to place them in permanent conservation ownership."
ProNatura - Pronatura Mexico's mission is the conservation of flora, fauna and priority ecosystems, while promoting society's development in harmony with nature. Pronatura México, A.C. was first created in 1981 and in the following years, regional and state representative offices were constituted. Together, they integrate Pronatura's National System, with strategies and actions oriented towards achieving the conservation and sustainable development of priority regions and sites for biodiversity preservation in the country.
http://www.pronatura.org.mx/index_ing.php
We are proud to be one of the few permitted commercial operators currently working within the Sierra de Alamos-Rio Cuchujaqui Reserve and to have good working relationships with all three organizations. The potential for long term, sustainable opportunities in conservation and nature-based tourism for southern Sonora are huge. With the ongoing work and coordination of these organizations, along with a new local government and businesses such as ours, it is exciting to see the conservation movement taking shape and laying the groundwork for having a long term positive effect on the well being of the community and the environment. | | |
Athough we recently sent out a newsletter, we wanted to send out another one with news of things we've been involved and are of interest to us. There was actually more to include, but didn't want to make it too long. So stay tuned for the next one! We hope that you enjoy our 'noticias de Alamos!'
In September, we are headed back to Gambell, Alaska to work a fall trip for High Lonesome Bird Tours. Looking forward to that and our upcoming trips to Sonora in October and November. Please keep in touch and we'll do the same. And, we hope that we will see you on a trip or at El Pedregal in the near future.
Sincerely,
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10% OFF
SIGN UP FOR A 2009-2010 TRIP BEFORE SEPTEMBER 15th AND GET 10% OFF YOUR TRIP!
(mention the Late Summer Newsletter offer)
ONE NIGHT FREE
BOOK TWO NIGHTS AT EL PEDREGAL, GET ONE NIGHT FREE! (Offer good September, October, November and December...not valid during certain holiday dates)
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