I. The Tour
I was up at 6:00 am to ride on the near-deserted Metro to
the meeting spot at the Plaza de La Transpatencia, and as the street vendors
were setting up their carts in the pre-dawn gloom in front of the Tok’s
restaurant we introduced each other and climbed into the van.
I took a tour yesterday to hike Nevado de Toluca, a towering
inactive volcano about 50 miles west of Mexico City. Since my Miata wheels are still frozen while
I await my new driver’s license, a tour was just the thing, and indeed made for
a far more enjoyable day than it would have been on my own: more social, better
directed, and I wasn’t the one who had to thread Mexico City traffic to get us
there!
I highly recommend the tour group, Aztec Explorers: it’s
run by a friendly husband and wife team, Peter Winckers and Lidia Herrera, who guide
frequent day trips in and around Mexico City.
There were 13 of us in the comfy Toyota van as we headed
out, including a couple of Americans my age who were long-term residents living
in Mexico City, and who loaded me up with so many “must-see” places in the city
that I could almost wish my license delayed further. The route to the volcano did its best to
gainsay them, however, running through nothing but the decrepit urban sprawl of
the city’s outskirts, briefly broken by a region of faceless tinted-glass corporate towers
still under construction, then back to more littered and crumbling cement landscapes
in the city of Toluca. The megalopolis
seemed inescapable (not to mention educational, alas), but finally we were into the
green of the countryside, and there was the volcano pure above us.
Traffic delays had meant breakfast at a tamale stand alongside
the gas station, and then we were delayed further by attempting a back road up the
mountain; the dirt road was all but ruined with ruts and washouts, and our van jounced
and crawled along until, forced to squeeze past a returning truck with
miraculous tilted inches between, the other driver informed ours that the road
was impassable further up. We had to
turn around, retrace our bouncing crawl, drive around to the main road and
ascend on that. The result was a
five-hour journey, but a faster ascent, and as we climbed under the mountain’s midday
cloud-lid the scenery out the windows became lovely.
The base camp, where our hike began, is over 14,000 ft., and
under the grey of the clouds the clean air was cold enough for sweaters and
jackets. From the camp the trail to the
crater rim was steep but short, probably only a quarter mile; in the thin air,
however, we moved slowly, and talk faded as the beauty of the mountains unfolded
around us.
II. Photo Essay
Base camp
The view from the rim. The caldera is a mile wide.
The crater holds two lakes. Down we went!
Though we didn't have sun, I liked the threatening clouds, dragging their gossamer skirts
through the high peaks and spreading varying luminescences and shadows across
the landscape. And it was only when our
scattered group reconvened at the base camp and slid open the door to the van
that the heavy rain started pelting down.
Perfect timing!
I could have called it a day at that point, but the tour continued. From there we proceeded to the nearby town of Metepec
for lunch and colonial architecture— see Part II for that part of the day.
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