As the winter season approaches where scenes of stranded cars and trucks and poor souls wrapped in more layers of clothing than an Inuit´s baby are played out day after day, does the question arise at some freezing “Aha!” point of why spend my life fighting mother Nature and her Winter Wrath? After spending many seasons in what I knew as “Sunny California”, I had no idea that there was a place called the City of Eternal Spring, Well, I did know something about this town from the stories often told by my grandmother who did something unthinkable after her bitter, public divorce way back in the 4o´s. She drove down to Mexico with her 19 year old daughter to escape the gossip columns and settled in Cuernavaca, Morelos, the state made famous by the Mexican Revolution and Emiliano Zapata. She ended up staying for 10 years and a cookbook later. The reason was simple. Cuernavaca has the best climate in the world.
Cuernavaca is so unique because it is formed on volcanic flows that form eighteen ravines which have varying depths as they spread from the mountains and volcanic stone foothills that separate this state from the Federal District of Mexico City. The ravines´ depths generate the many ecosystems that constantly change depending on their altitude, humidity and the seasons which, with wind currents, then act as lungs and air conditioners for the higher populated slopes. When the wet season of summer arrives, the streams and rivers flow through these ravines adding more moisture and wild orchids and other flowering bromeliads thrive. This eco-system diversity and the fact that Cuernavaca is situated in the highlands of Mexico with altitudes ranging from 4,000 ft. above sea level to 7,000 ft. in the foothills and mountains are the reasons why Cuernavaca has incomparable weather since these unique factors regulate temperatures to around 70-75° year-round. It never freezes here. It never snows. There is no hurricane season like the Pacific or Atlantic coasts.
So coming to live here in the City of Eternal Spring 25 years ago was somewhat of a déjà-vu but I never looked back missing the L.A.beaches, smog hanging over the Pacific in the winter and traffic jams. Since this is a sub-tropical zone, everything blooms here profusely and continuously. Flowering trees and fruit trees attract sixty-four species of birds, including flocks of parrots, numerous hummingbirds and colorful finches. We awake to birds, not alarms.
The robin shell colored skies are usually boringly cloudless with the oft-heard sigh of new arrivals coming from the freezing north, always ending with a chuckle, “Well, another boring day in paradise!”
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