Mexico – country
http://www.routard.com/guide/code_dest/mexique.htm
- Continent: America
- Surface: 14th world rank – 1972550 km2
- Coasts: 10143 km
- Borders: with the USA: 3141 kms – with the Belize: 251 kms
- Altitude: maximum: 5675 m (Peak d’ Orizaba) – minimal: – 10 m (Salada Lagoon)
- Longest water course: 965 kms (Rio Lerma)
- Biggest lake: 1100 km2 (Lake Chapala)
- National festival: September 16, 1810 – freed from the Spanish colonial supervision to reach a new identity within the free nations. This date, considered as the birth certificate of the Mexican nation, is now the national Day of the country.
- Fauna and Flora of Mexico
Mexico shelters more than 33.000 species of plants or flowers, including 1000 kinds of cactus and as many orchises, more than 2900 species vertebrate including 520 of mammals, more than 1400 species of birds among which 50 species of hummingbirds.
- Fauna and flora of the plates
Towards the center and the south, the cereals kow how to adapt themselves to the summer rains. They can grow without irrigation. Since prehistoric times the essential resource it the corn. In the years 1970, one found how to start from a wild grass with seeds, and after all the developmental stages of the corn were developped That made it possible for the natives to pass from the condition of nomads living and hunting to the gathering of sedentary farmers. The cereal is the providence of the Mexican peasants, who consume it under many forms and above all, under the twisted corn crepe, bases of their food.
Coming after the corn, whose culture is made by irrigation in the dry zones, brown bean, or frijol, is an important resource. Looking the same of a small but very strong pepper, the chile records usually savour of food.
The sisal plant or maguey provides a sweetened juice which, fermented, gives a very widespread alcoholic drink, the pulque one: this is not a very demanding fatty plant. Similar to the cacti, it covers cultivated big spaces on the plates of the center. The blue sisal plant (called Sisal plant tequilana Weber) is a beautiful green blue color plant with thorny sheets and sharp points and a large heart (called piña from its resemblance to the heart of pineapple). The cut heart, cooked around fifty hours is crushed. The juices are extracted and distilled after fermentation to obtain the tequila.
In the depressed and rich zones of the plate, one cultivates the cane with sugar and rice (Morelos etc). As for the corn, whose consumption grows, it is collected especially far in the North-East, where great work of stoppings and drillings completely modified the semi-arid vegetable medium.
Lastly, the sprinkled mountains carry conifers. Deforestations did not erode them.
Above 4.500 or 5.000 m, one find the eternal snow and the glaciers.
The fauna of the plates was rather poor before the contacts with Europe: deer tribe, small animals like the armadillo, hare, eagle of the sierras (national symbol), hummingbird of the moderated grounds, turkey (domesticated), guajolote, which was one of the two only natives animal. The predatories are the coyote and the wolf. The slopes and coasts of the Pacific seem less favorable. In the State of Guerrero, it is a semi-desert with a xerophytic vegetation of large cacti and viejitos (“little old woman”, because of the white hairs of which they are crowned).
- Fauna and flora of the low grounds
The biznaga is a plant very well adapted to the life of these inhospitable areas. The spherical form can reduce the loss of water by evaporation to the minimumt and can preserve it in its fabrics by the reduction of the transpiratoire surface. In the same manner, as the cacti does, the biznagas have a large aromatic flowers with colors that attract the butterflies, the hummingbirds, the bats, the bees and the bumblebees. That contributes to its pollination. Its fruits, juicy and dry, are the food for reptiles, birds and small mammals which help with the dispersion of seeds. They push very slowly and require plants that feed them and provide them a shade and a moisture, especially during the germination and the first stages of their growth.
If the eagle was the emblem of prehispanic of the high plates, it is the tiger which symbolized the hot grounds – actually a jaguar, at least as large as the puma, or a small Mexican lion with russet-red peeling.
The ocelot is a large wildcat of mouchetée dress. The deer tribe of the highlands is also found in the tropical bushes. One sees great flights of green parrots there, blue herons, the pink flamingos, storks jabiru, cranes with large nozzle, water birds (martins-fishermen, brushes, frigates, etc.). In the same lagoons and rivers, we can find the caimansand the tortoises. There are also reptiles, sometimes dangerous, like the rattlesnake. The hikers will be able to admire large herds of deer tribe in the National park of San Pedro, located in Low California and of the black bears in the National park of Cumbres de Monterrey. The orange monarch butterfly comes for reproduction between November and March in the State de Michoacán coming from Canada; their number is estimated at 250 million mariposas monarcas. Off the coasts of Low California, one will be able to see gray whales (fortunately protected) coming from the artic regions to reproduce in these waters. The gulf of California shelters a third of the species of marine mammals of the World. You will be able to also see dolphins. Quantity of birds nests in the coastal regions, in particular in the lagoons, estuaries and also in the peninsula of Yucatán and on the Peaceful Coast. The area of the ria Lagartos (Northern of Yucatán) is invaded pink flamingos while the Peaceful Coast is the paradise of ducks both for the hunters the observers. The Caraïbe coast is famous for the diving. The turtles elect residence to reproduce on the places of this coast like on the beaches of the Pacific.
Mexico City
- Country: Mexico
- Foundation: 1325
- Surface: 4979 km2
- Population: City: 8720916 inhabitants Metropolis: 19239910 inhabitants
- Density: 3584 /km2
- Moderated climate
Puebla, “the pink city”
- Situation: south Mexico City
- Surface: 546 km2
- Population: City: 1.485.941 -Metropolis: 2.109.000
- 4th city of Mexico
- Altitude: 2167 m
- Foundation: 1531 (52 years after the declaration of independence of Mexico in 1810)
- Culinary specialities of Puebla: the kitchen of Puebla is internationally recognized for its originality and its variety. Its principal culinary specialities are the camotes (long cylinders of paste containing sweet potato, sweetened and aromates), the chiles in nogada (peppers with sauce with nuts) and the famous mole poblano (generally turkey with a sauce containing cocoa, peppers, onions, bananas plantain, almonds and many spices).
