Tour Information
Note: The information presented below has been extracted from our formal General Information for this tour. It covers topics we feel potential registrants may wish to consider before booking space. The complete General Information for this tour will be sent to all tour registrants and of course supplemental information, if needed, is available from the WINGS office.
ENTERING MEXICO: Mexico now requires a valid passport for entry by U.S. citizens. Tourist cards are required and are distributed by your entering airlines. Citizens of other countries may need a visa and should check the nearest Mexican embassy or consulate. If required by the embassy or visa-granting entity, WINGS can provide a letter for you to use regarding your participation in the tour.
COUNTRY INFORMATION: You can review the U.S. Department of State Country Specific Travel Information at http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/country/mexico.html , and the CIA World Factbook background notes on Mexico at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mx.html.
PACE OF THE TOUR: We’ll try to be in the field around dawn which means about 7:00 a.m. – remarkably late for a Neotropical tour because of local time zones! Birding sites range from 30 minutes’ to an hour or so’s drive from our hotels. The pace of each day varies somewhat with this tour: Two breakfasts are at our hotel, the rest are in the field at dawn. Four lunches are at restaurants while three are picnics in the field. All dinners are at restaurants. A late dawn means late sunset, and on a couple of evenings we’ll stay out relatively late for nightbirds; the unanimous consensus in such cases has been to go directly to dinner, without the usual hour before dinner. On both of these days there is the chance for an afternoon siesta, so we won’t be out all day before the later nights. Walks are mostly along roads and wide trails that are level to gently sloping, with the option for some short stretches of steeper gradients. None is more than 3-4 hours.
HEALTH: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that all travelers be up to date on routine vaccinations. These include measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine, varicella (chickenpox) vaccine, polio vaccine, and your yearly flu shot.
They further recommend that most travelers have protection against Hepatitis A and Typhoid.
Please contact your doctor well in advance of your tour’s departure as some medications must be initiated weeks before the period of possible exposure.
The most current information about travelers’ health recommendations can be found on the CDC’s Travel Health website at http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/destinations/traveler/none/mexico?s_cid=ncezid-dgmq-travel-single-001.
Elevation: We reach about 10,000 feet on the slopes of the volcanoes. We’ll move slowly at higher elevations.
Miscellaneous: We have found that careful eating habits are important in order to avoid most intestinal problems. In most of Mexico it is unwise to drink untreated water, although bottled water and soft drinks are reliable and widely available.
Insects are sometimes present. We recommend using insect repellents with a high concentration of DEET.
Smoking: Smoking is prohibited in the vehicles or when the group is gathered for meals, checklists, etc. If you are sharing a room with a non-smoker, please do not smoke in the room. If you smoke in the field, we ask that you do so well away and downwind from the group.
If any lodge, accommodation or location where the group is staying or is gathered has a more restrictive smoking policy than WINGS’ policy, the more restrictive policy will prevail.
CLIMATE: Lowland Colima and Jalisco have a hot and variably humid climate (70s to 80s at this season, but 60s some early mornings). This is the dry season, so rain would be exceptional except perhaps for locally generated afternoon showers on the volcanoes (which has happened only twice over the years). The early mornings on the volcanoes can be cool enough (30s to 40s for the first hour or so, at times with frost and frozen puddles!) for a jacket and light gloves but things soon become warm to hot (60s to 70s).
ACCOMMODATIONS: Our hotel where we start in Barra de Navidad is an all-inclusive resort hotel with an adjacent marina, and has all the usual tourist facilities. We stay at a comfortable business hotel in Ciudad Guzman, which is off the tourist track. In Colima City we stay at the a modern Mexican motel with pool and the usual facilities. We end in Manzanillo at a modern-style resort hotel with pool, restaurant, and beach-front. Wi-fi is available at all hotels but is often intermittent and, when it does work, not very fast, so it shouldn’t be relied upon.
FOOD: Food is of good quality with “standard” Mexican fare and some good seafood.
Updated: 01 May 2017