altiplano

Altitude vs. Perception

When I look around where we live, I see lots of gently rolling hills…

Rolling hills of Michoacan

The next photo is of a nearby “mountain”, but it really isn’t much. Our house is near where the photo was taken, and we walked from the house to a point more than halfway to the peak of the mountain. It only took us two hours at a leisurely pace. However (keep reading below)…

Recently, however, I looked up our town online to learn more about it. Geographically we’re located on the altiplano and one thing that surprised me is that we’re at an altitude of over 6,000 feet! That’s higher than Denver, Colorado.

When we’ve visited Denver, the altitude has a big effect on me – headaches, shortness of breath, etc. When in Denver, you look around and you can see mountain peaks everywhere, and you are always aware that it’s very different from California. But here I’ve never noticed such signs, and it doesn’t “feel” that different from California.

Why don’t I feel the high altitude here? Does it all come down to perception vs. reality? Does the apparent visual similarity to California signal my brain to override the fact that we are actually in a very different place here? I find these questions interesting.

Weather

We crossed the border into Mexico on August 17 and took four days to drive to our final destination. The weather in the northern parts of Mexico was hot. During our first three days of driving the temperatures averaged around 96-97 degrees Fahrenheit with high humidity. However, the clear skies did make for nice landscapes.

We got on Interstate 15 after crossing the border from Arizona, a couple hundred miles inland. The interstate heads southwest, toward the Gulf of California coast, continues near the coast for about 700 miles, then turns inland again. Both the inland areas and the coastal areas were very green, due to the summer rains. On our last day of driving, as we began to head more inland, we climbed in altitude for most of the day. We even drove through pine-forested mountains. As we got to the central part of the country, the temperatures moderated. This region is part of the “altiplano”, or high plains. The high altitude prevents it from being constantly hot throughout the summer.

A rainbow over our backyard.

During our first week here in our town, Zinaparo, the high temperatures were between 78-86 degrees Fahrenheit. We had a thunderstorm one day, threats of rain a couple other days, and some rain one night. The next couple of days there was more frequent rain and temperatures around 70 degrees. So there’s definitely more humidity than what we were used to in the Bay Area of California, but due to the moderate temperatures, it’s barely noticeable. Plus it cools off at night, which provides relief.