My "ah-ha" moment re: this region's seasonally-dry tropical forest

Toward the end of our family's wild trip up and over the mountains from the Oaxaca Valley to Puerto Escondido several weeks ago, we descended into the foothills of the coastal mountains.


I was expecting tropical forest - lush, verdant, viney, with palms and coconuts, and impenetrable without a machete. But the forests in these foothills look almost dead - whole hillsides brown and leafless. The trees are spaced relatively densely, but with very little understory.

It is open and park-like, but dry, seemingly devoid of life. Not what this traveler from the "Evergreen State" expected. When I asked a local woman riding in the van with us if the forests always looked this way in the spring, she said "si, es normal". 


There are occasional pockets of green - along the arroyos and in the folds between mountains. Or individual trees, standing alone, deep green and healthy. And there are scattered palms - coconuts, for example, that stand alone or in bunches, or on plantations.


So this week (April 22), with the kids in school and Amy studying spanish, I jumped in one of the countless vans that run constantly back and forth along the coastal highway, connecting the scores of pueblos and families and businesses.

Amid stops for people to jump in and out, we passed close-cropped fields, dusty roads and yards, dry wetlands, quiet communities built with mortar and adobe. Scattered bony cattle wandered across dry fields. Pecking chickens and sleeping dogs just beyond reach of the tires. The orange sun peered through the smoky haze.

As we crossed one of many wide, dry arroyos and trickling streams, I suddenly realized we would only see one face of this area during our time here, at the end of the dry season.

The end of May and early June will bring the dependable afternoon rains that have transformed this arid, almost barren forest landscape for so many centuries into the lush, rich tropical forest of my imagination. These deciduous trees will awaken and erupt with new life.

The dry dusty streets and alleys will run muddy. The dry arroyos will be overwhelmed by run-off. It will all start over again, and this will be in many ways a totally different place.