Another picture of the mystery butterfly, for Steve.

So, the only info I had from Mimi of the beach bar in Playa was that the man's name was Sr. Conrado and he lived in Residencia Campestre. That's a private residential community off the road south of Cancun.

After dropping our friends off at the airport and spending a couple hours in the mall looking at washers and dryers, we started south and turned into Residencia Campestre. I told the guard at the gate who I wanted to see and he asked me for some ID to keep and gave me a pass to enter and directions to his house. It's a very upscale residential community, if I ever want to impress someone enough to lie I'll tell them I live there.

All the houses are huge and most seem fairly new but when we got to #1 Avenida Sur it was an old house with a huge, ornate iron fence and a rope to pull a bell. After awhile a very tiny older woman came out and said she would see if Sr. Conrado would see us. I saw a young girl head towards the back shortly afterwards and the woman returned and said it would take a few minutes to get him, he was in the park.

We waited and waited, I think Mimi was starting to think I was nuts and to tell the truth it was kind of a spooky house and I was having second thoughts myself although what I said to her was "it will be an adventure". I'm so brave when I'm scared.

After a very long 5 to 10 minutes, he came walking towards us. A tall thin man, smoking a cigarette and dressed in khakis. He listened to my Spanish explanation of why we were there and opened the gate and said to follow him. We walked back behind the house and, I kid you not, it was a park. It was a huge animal park. There were minature horses, flamingos, emus, llamas, and hundreds of pairs of macaws. It took us about an hour to walk around, he was very nice, let us go into all the macaw areas and explained whatever I could figure out how to ask him in Spanish. He apologized for some damaged cages saying they were a result of Wilma and hadn't been repaired yet. He had huge flight enclosures, a concrete flight building, a building to house all the birds during hurricanes. The birds looked for the most part to be in really good shape, there were a couple that looked to be rescues perhaps, one with a deformed foot, others that had plucked some feathers. By and large though all of the birds looked healthy and well cared for. There were nest boxes in most of the pairs cages and the cages were quite large. He had mainly Blue & Gold and Scarlet macaws but he also had several pairs of Military, Severe, a couple of Cockatoo's, Amazons, I'm forgetting the rest.

I had told him that I was hoping to import my 2 macaws and at the end of our tour he invited us into the house and told us to have a seat in the sala. When he returned he gave me the name and phone number of a man from the govt agency that controls bird imports in Quintana Roo and said to use his name as a recommendation. I really wanted to ask him if I could hire him to handle the import for me but unfortunately, the verb 'to hire' was not part of my Spanish vocabulary and I didn't want to sound crass and just say I wanted to pay him. I did tell him that I would have our vet call this man and he laughed and said yes, they will talk vet to vet and that will be good. I'm still many months away from being ready to do this so I will have time to investigate it more and perhaps learn the polite way to see if he will represent us.

I'm encouraged because he said that it was definitely possible to import them, and he had already asked me which type of macaw they are. One of our birds is half Military which is an endangered species from Mexico, this complicated our previous attempt to import him. He said it will be a hassle and a lot of paperwork but we can do it. He also agreed that the safest way was to fly them into Cancun even though they are going to live in the neighboring state of Yucatan. He said the papers to take them to Yucatan would be available along with the papers to import them into Mexico.

He also gave us his card and the address of his web sites. He said that he will be opening his park behind the house in a few months to the public. There was a lot of work going on with the pond and pools and enclosures while we were there. From reading his web sites it appears he is very dedicated to preserving and breeding birds and supports his park by taking some of his birds to the hotels and resorts in Cancun for shows and pictures with the tourists as well as the sale of young birds. I wish now I had asked him if I could leave a donation.

His old web site, La Casa de las Guacamayas and his new web site Parque Moo' Cancún.

I was right, it was an adventure.