Read the previous part of this blog entry in Adult tarantula spiders at last.
When the road went more down, I said to Esme that we walked a little bit more, and then would return. She noticed that what I called "down", was a river, and indeed she was right. We both rested on a huge boulder near the almost dry river. After a short rest I crossed the river (and nearly fell into it) and looked under a few stones. Then we went back.
I decided to take a juvenile Costa Rican tiger rump "look a like" with me, to replace the tarantula (same species) that escaped some time ago. On the way back I also managed to capture a few field crickets for my breeding program.
On the way back I also spotted my first Mexican praying mantis. Much earlier today I had found a cast away skin of a praying mantis on a stone, and told Esme that we should be able to spot a few. We also saw a few stick insects.
We saw several more juvenile tarantulas - but no more adult ones - and several brown bark scorpions now and then. We thought that we had seen many scorpions near the town of Campanario, but I guess we saw more today. However, less adults.
When I lifed a stone on a slope to the edge of the road I found a very nice looking adult Centruroides gracilis. In Cuba this scorpion is sometimes called Alacran azul (blue scorpion), but this one had almost a metallic green sheen.
Another nice find of that day was a perfectly preserved cast off exoskeleton (exuviae) of a scorpion.
When we got close to the town of Otates we saw something very sad: an adult Brachypelma vagans cut in two with a machete. "Bastard" was the first word that came up with me to describe the person who did this. Sadly many people have no idea of how harmless those big spiders are, and just kill them out of ignorance.
The victim was probably an adult male, looking for a female.
Back in Otates we tried to find out how to get back to Xalapa. Esme asked, and we heard that a taxi would cost about 25 pesos each, which is quite cheap. I hoped, that because of the wedding, it would be easy to find a taxi. No such luck. So we followed the main road all the way back to where we got off the bus. No short cut this time since it was getting quite dark. When we arrived at the bus stop we had to wait just about 10 minutes and the bus to Xalapa arrived. Public transport in Mexico keeps amazing me: we rarely have to wait long, if at all.