Cowritten by Troy Kellenberger (T) and Mitchell Quiring (M)
Popocatépetl, an active stratovolcano, spews ash and smoke just after sunrise.
Mexico City Part 1:
(T) Imagine running on high alpine (17,000+ feet) ash-covered mountain tops with the smell of sulfur and then lounging on pristine sand beaches with epic ocean sunsets. This is what our group experienced on our, “From Ash to Sand,” Mexico adventure. The first part of the trip focused on running some of Mexico’s high elevation volcanoes (La Malinche, Iztaccihuatl, and Nevado de Toluca). La Malinche is a 14640 ft volcano that resides 30 minutes west of the town Puebla. Iztaccihuatl is the 3rd highest point in Mexico with an elevation of 17,159 ft and is roughly 2 hours east Puebla. Lastly Nevado de Toluca is 15391 ft and is about an hour south from the town Tuloca. So, the first part of our trip consisted of flying into Mexico City so we could rent a car and get down to Puebla— base camp for the first 4 nights.
There were eleven individuals that joined this adventure. Nine of the eleven were traveling from Colorado and two of the eleven were traveling from California. Miraculously, we all met up at the Mexico City International Airport on time and in great spirits. Once at the Mexico City airport, the first step was to find Avis, where we pre-booked a van for the first half of the trip. After asking some employees at the airport, we were able to locate the small kiosk and eventually take some shuttles to the main Avis hub just outside the airport. We got the luxury of renting a Toyota Hiace, which is a 12 passenger van. The van was soon named “Troyota”.
Troyota at La Joya.
Puebla:
(M) Navigating from Mexico City to Puebla proved to be the first of many many adventures. The traffic, the size of our van and the seemingly complete anarchy that is driving in Mexico was super wild. I (Mitch) am no stranger to this, but was still caught off guard. This was my eighth time to this beautiful country, but my first to the mainland. After navigating bumper-to-bumper traffic from the airport and careening big rigs, daring motorcyclists and locals playing real life Frogger on the highways, we got far enough out of town to relax a little bit. A few hours passed and we found ourselves searching for street parking for our Airbnb in Puebla for the night. It was tight, so we parked a few blocks ahead and stripped the van of interior valuables and settled into our new place for a few days. We had a pretty quiet first evening landing on a “vegan” restaurant for dinner called La Zanahoria. It wasn’t vegan, which we only realized after getting our food, which is admittedly a defeating feeling when you’ve travelled all day and you’re pretty hungry. We followed up La Zanahoria by going to an artisanal pizza and drinks place called La Berenjena— a place that would turn out to be so good (and had the most amazing Mezcal Mojitos) that it was frequented nearly nightly by the group. On our way ‘home’ we came across the most amazing churro corner store/stand. This tiny shop must have had 15 workers nearly on top of each other— it looked stressful for them to say the least… but they made some damn good churros! With dinner (and now) a few small bags of churros in, we retired back ‘home’ to our Airbnb to prep our gear and bodies for the summit of our first volcano, La Malinche, the next day.
Cathedral in downtown Puebla.
(T) Since Malinche was a short drive from the town of Puebla, we decided to have a casual morning to allow the group to catch up on sleep from traveling the day before. Typical morning routines consisted of finding a nearby coffee shop, buying bottled water, eating local fruits, buying bread and/or eating breakfast at a restaurant. We left our Airbnb around 9:00am to drive the “16 miles” to La Malinche trailhead. Once at the van, we soon realized that both of the side-view mirrors were stolen overnight. We hadn’t even been in Mexico for an entire 24 hours and Troyota was violated and stripped of her rear vision. We all kind of laughed at the irony of the situation, hopped into the van and were on our way to La Malinche. A little known fact about Mexico is that they have speed bumps (Topes) everywhere. So, the 16 mile drive to La Malinche from Puebla ended up taking about an hour, when we initially thought it was going to be about 30 minutes. We would soon learn and come to accept that these endless topes can be and would be absolutely soul crushing.
On our way to the trailhead we wound through several poverty stricken small towns on the outskirts of wealthier Puebla and eventually made it to the forests below La Malinche. The roads were well maintained and the scenery was a lush green, kind of unexpected for being on a volcano. We stopped to peer through the canopy of the trees to see Popocatépetl spewing ash from its crater way off in the distance. Popocatépetl is the second highest mountain and active volcano in Mexico that has no climbing access due to its frequent activity.
The group running the final ridge line to the summit.
Once we got to the Trailhead (Centro Vacacional), we parked Troyota and suited up for our journey up La Malinche. All eleven of us started the hike, but only 8 out of the eleven made it to the summit. The hike is non-technical and roughly 7-8 miles round trip with about 4500+ feet of elevation gain. Even though it is a short and non-technical hike, it’s very steep all the way up to the summit. The trail starts at a locked gate where you used to be able to drive farther up, but due to lots of use, the last section of the road is now closed. From the gate, you kind of follow the road for a short distance until you see a well marked trail with orange arrows that shortcuts the switchbacks of pavement roads. The orange arrow trail that crisscrossed from dirt to pavement soon turned solely into dirt and weaved its way through the forest to treeline. It is very easy to follow— but if you get lost, just follow one of the many local dogs. There is no access to water on the hike, so make sure to bring what you think you will need should you attempt it. Once above treeline, the trail splits into several trails to access the ridge. The easiest route is to stay right and avoid the sandy incline, but for some reason half of our group decided to take the sandy incline, including myself (Troy). The sandy incline was such a slog and super tedious– often considered type 2 fun. Once we reached the ridge, it was a short jaunt to the summit with an endless view….until the clouds came in and we didn’t have any views (which was maybe 10 minutes). This sort of cloud cover makes for some solid pictures to remember our time, however.
A couple of us scrambled across the entire ridgeline to some other high points, which was super fun. All that made it to the summit celebrated and soon headed down, because it was getting quite chilly. Going down was much faster than going up, especially surfing down the sandy incline. We all ran down with big grins on our faces and with great hype that the first volcano was a success.
Tate Knight on an alternate peak beyond La Malinche summit.
Once everyone grouped up back at the trailhead, we enjoyed a beer, hung out with some dogs, stretched and then headed back to Puebla. As we passed through a small town on the way back to Puebla, we stopped to get some fresh handmade tortillas. These were some of the best tortillas from the trip. It might have been because we were all famished or because they were just damn good. We munched on fresh tortillas for the remainder of the drive back to Puebla and parked the van a couple blocks away from our Airbnb when we arrived. We all cleaned up from the volcano adventure and went out for dinner and drinks.
(M) Sufficiently sore and tired from the sand slog that was La Malinche, day 3 began with another easy start. This was considered a gap day between Malinche and Izta used to rest up and see the city of Puebla. There was a strong push by team member Tate to go ride the giant ferris wheel that was a few miles from where we were staying. We decided to walk as driving the van around is more difficult than it sounds, especially now that we didn’t have mirrors. Just before we left by foot, we decided to go and peek at the van to make sure it was still there— only to find that now two of our hubcaps were gone as well(!).
Feeling silly for leaving the van out again overnight, we decided to park it later in the day in a garage. Finally, around 10am, we made the trek out to the big wheel stopping along the way to eat, drink, and do mini workouts in little parks with built-in equipment. Riding the giant ferris wheel was actually pretty cool— we had a great view of the volcanoes, Puebla, outside towns, and our general area. Plus, it was only $40MX pesos, which is just over $2USD— pretty rad for a 20 minute ride! We ate lunch after at a restaurant close by, then went to the nicest grocery store most of us have ever been to. First off, it was MASSIVE— think of the niceties and cleanliness of Whole Foods... but the size of a Costco. Secondly, security in suits greeted out at the door, the cashiers waited in front of the register waiting to greet you and take your cart, all of the breads they sold had a sampler in front, you could order lunch (or a beer!) to have while you shop, and the overall selection of what they had was just amazing. Admittedly, it felt pretty out of place for the area we were in.
Dia de los Muertos skulls at an outdoor market along our city walk.
Nonetheless, we left pretty stoked and headed back to our spot, some via foot, some via Uber with our groceries. Those who walked back indulged in some excellent $15MX (<$1USD) mango cups and fresh squeezed orange juice. The rest of the day was spent preparing for an early morning departure (5:00am) for Izta and getting dinner. The group was a bit divided on dinner, some went back to La Berenjena (the pizza spot) and 3 of us went to an actual vegan spot called El Rincón de Tacotlán, which was its own amazing experience in itself. The food was SUPERB, the owner and chef could not have been more kind— and, to top it all off, we got to listen to a local musician play us some old Latino/Spanish folks songs on his guitar. The owner said that this man had been coming for years to his place and he had never before played for anyone. Turns out he is in the local orchestra, too. What a night!
Iztaccihuatl Volcano, 5,230M
(T) The next day we woke up and headed out the door at 5:00 am sharp because we had a two hour drive to the National Park Center of Itza, also known as Paso de Cortez, ahead of us. The drive to Paso de Cortez during the wee hours of the morning were quite calm as we passed through rural farm towns. We soon left the comfort of the pavement after about an hour of driving and were headed up a bumpy dirt road through the forest. Luckily Troyota had all-wheel drive to make the driving easier, but all in all the quality of the dirt road was good. Several low riding vehicles passed us going the opposite direction, so we knew we were fine. At about 6:30 am, the sun started to rise and the mountain views came into view. We rounded a corner at some point along the drive to see that Popocatépetl was right next to us spewing ash. The view of Popocatépetl was breathtaking and memorable.
We reached Paso de Cortez at about 6:50am, just in time to get our permits when the station opened at 7:00 am. We all did our morning rituals in the bathroom after paying $5MX pesos for toilet paper (some paying up to $30MX due to hilarious emergencies), checked out the amazing sunrise views of Popocatépetl and Iztaccihuatl and waited for the main gate to the Iztaccihuatl trailhead to open. All of the reports online said that the main gate opened at 8:00 am, so we thought we had to wait for another hour. But, to our surprise, the gate opened at 7:30 am. We all gathered back into the van and headed through the gate showing the guard our wristband proof-of-permit-purchase and headed on our way up a dirt road to the main trailhead, “La Joya.” The drive to La Joya took another 30 minutes as we followed a small caravan of cars to the parking lot. Once we parked, we all suited up for the hike, took some pre-hike photos, had some high fives and took off.
Getting the X-Alpines dialed just before leaving for Izta summit.
We split up into two groups on the hike/run. The leading group consisted of Tate, Brian, Mitchell, and Troy. The four of us were running and hiking at a fast pace. The other group consisted of Claudia, Alyson, Jared, Skye, Phoebe, and Molly. Most of this section will be written from the perspective of myself, Troy, who was with the faster group. The hike up Iztaccihuatl is roughly 8-9 miles round trip with about 5000 feet of elevation gain. The first section of the trail looks like a trail you would encounter in Scotland with lush green landscape and pristine dirt trails but with epic alpine views along the way. The dirt trail soon turned into packed snow that was easy to navigate without traction.
There were tons of other parties on the trail. Many of them guided folks wearing jeans, groups with too much equipment and parties wearing crampons on dirt. I’d say there was a wide variety of mountain seekers that were out— all walks of life. Some looked prepared, some looked under prepared and many looked over prepared. That said, the faster group (Tate, Mitchell, Brian and myself) were crushing along at a fast pace up the mountain. We passed many parties that warned us that we would need crampons at the glacier and/or that we probably wouldn’t make the summit… but they didn’t know our drive and experience.
Tate, Brian and Troy heading up to the first of many false summits.
The trail meanders across a ridgeline up and down crossing multiple false summits before reaching the true summit. We crossed a glacier, saw a couple small crevasses, smelled some strong sulfur, snapped some photos and took in the beauty. All four of us felt great the entire way to the summit. We didn’t have any issues with traction or navigation, because luckily I, Troy, had done the route before. We made it to the summit in about 2.5 hours, which is super fast compared to most people who take multiple days to climb the mountain. Brian and Tate enjoyed a summit beer, we snapped some photos and headed back down to see where the rest of the crew was.
17k ridgeline fun…
On the way back down we ran into the crew as they were making it to one of the first false summits. They still had a ways to go before reaching the final summit. Mitch and I decided to continue on down back to the car to eat and chill while Brian and Tate decided to stick with the group and hike up with them. In the end, the rest of the group decided to turn around and head back down after that first false summit at 16k feet because a storm was rolling in soon. We all enjoyed bottled Mexican Coke and fresh tacos back at La Playa trailhead. We celebrated our successes, packed up our gear, hopped back in the car and headed back to Puebla.
Once back in Puebla, we all cleaned up and headed out to dinner because we were famished. We ended up going to this very nice restaurant and at what seemed to be a 4 course meal. It was some of the best food from the trip. Well, maybe not the best, but the best food presentation experience. After dinner it was tradition to get some churros, so that’s what we did. Most of us were exhausted from the day so we all called it a night because the next day we were to head to Taxco.
Taxco:
(M) Also, again, sufficiently sore but feeling super energized for having hit above 17,000ft the day prior, we were looking forward to a travel day and to see a new town, Taxco. After pulling our van out of storage for another night, we hit the road at about 10am for the 2.5 hour drive to Taxco from Puebla. We left the cut and dry city streets and began maneuvering our way through the windy mountain highways (again, filled with soul-crushing bumps/topes)— a wild and beautiful drive as we climbed in elevation from Puebla. We arrived in Taxco after a few hours on the road and instantly began navigating to our next Airbnb, which took us through the heart of the city center… with our giant van. One lane wide super tight cobblestone streets filled with people, vendors, and other cars made the journey up to our new spot stressful for the driver, navigator, and passengers alike. Streets barely wide enough for our van, some turns almost guaranteeing some brutal damage to our trusty steed, Troyota. On our first pass, we made it up without issue to the driveway of our Airbnb, which happened to be facing 180º opposite of the tight street we were headed up— in other words, it was impossible to turn around to drive up or to back in. We only knew this because it was attempted and gloriously failed at when it was revealed by a local that this “two-way street” was actually only one-way. After tucking tail and finally getting the beast turned back around, we went back down to the city center by an even tighter and more heinous route with the assurances from our new host that, this time, traffic would be stopped to accommodate our parking. Another lap around the congested city center brought us back to our spot where traffic was stopped and we were finally given an opportunity to park. Up the driveway we went doing some solid cosmetic damage to the front and rear bumper due to the length of our vehicle and the angle of incline at which their driveway is. Not really giving two shits, we were happy to have the van parked for a couple days. We unloaded our gear into our sweet villa with a view and planned the rest of our day. The rest of the day consisted of eating good food, finding drinks, making our way 1000ft up to “El Cristo” (more about this in the next paragraph) and getting to witness a really cool last day to a three day festival (that only happens twice a year). If I recall, it’s a festival to honor one of the local saints that means a lot to the people of Taxco. The first part of the festival includes having everyone bring their farm animals to the city central and cathedral for a blessing and ends on a third day pull of parades, music, vendors, and statues/moving altars. We missed the farm animal part, but made it for the parades, all by accident. These are some of the many joys of traveling. We spent the last few hours before bed playing what would come to be known as “Blind Jenga” — hilarious and just the perfect amount of extra difficulty.
Taxco City Center
Beautiful cathedrals, architecture and cobblestone streets.
(M) The next day was our only full day of exploring this old city with a crazy rich history, quite literally. Taxco is known for its silver production and is still one of the main reasons for its prominence today. The tight cobblestone streets, the colors, the cathedrals and the architecture all evokes a strong nod to Spanish colonial style. Team member Pam and I (Mitch) got out early to seek out a new spot for breakfast (which turned out to be a nonexistent location). Having moved through quite the number of streets and having lost quite a bit of elevation, we decided not to backtrack quite yet and just continue to just explore the area. We eventually came across a long and skinny down-sloping street that was filled with vendors and small mini markets full of fresh fruit, vegetables, traditional Mexican food and other goods. This small street market would turn out to be but a speck of available markets Taxco had to offer— but more on that a little later. The choice of the morning for Pam and myself was a large jugo verde (green juice) that was made up of spinach, celery, nopales, and pineapple— all fresh blended and served in a giant cup for only $18MX (<$1USD). This blew my mind and also reaffirmed my love for this little town. We also stocked up on some other goodies, like avocados, limes and handmade tortillas.
A woman shields her face with a bundle of herbs. Taxco, MX.
After our amazing discovery we made contact with the rest of our crew and learned that that part of the team had gone for breakfast at a nearby restaurant in the city center. The other part of the crew (Tate, Brian, and Troy) had gone for a run another 1000ft up to “El Cristo,” El Cristo is this giant Christ statue that looks over Taxco from the top of the mountain the town is built into. We had gone up as a group the evening prior and the view was truly incredible— getting there was all kinds of fun, too. “There are no shortcuts to Jesus,” was quickly adopted by team member Pam, and she could not have been more right about that. After our jugo verde, Pam and I decided to join the part of our team at the restaurant. Not too long after our arrival, we had the whole team there eating breakfast together. Once we wrapped breakfast, some folks decided to head back to the Airbnb to do some laundry, change shoes, and other small errands— the rest of us decided to explore a little more. My main goal was to see the many Cathedrals Taxco has to offer— however there was a stronger initial draw to seek out some more markets (for the crew that hadn’t been to one yet). While trying to maneuver back to the first market Pam and I went to, we found a seemingly random, unmarked down-sloping side street that ended up leading to one of the most wild sights/places I’ve ever been. It turns out that there is an entire “underground” side of the town nestled in between the cracks of Taxco. We found ourselves in the middle of this several-story-high open-air market labyrinth filled with literally any good, service, or consumable you could imagine— I would, without a doubt, label it as awe-inspiring. It took a number of hours and revists throughout the day to even get a small understanding at where all the entrances, exits and all the staircases to other floors really went to. We met some many incredible people through these markets, too, which was a large part of the whole trip— to connect with traditional Mexican culture and observe/take part in local customs and everyday life.
We made our way out of the underground markets sufficiently stocked up on goodies and began our continued quest of seeing quite a few of the Cathedrals. They are pretty wild— so intricate and ornate. It was a special experience to get to share in the art and custom. All of this moving around (miles of walking and thousands of feet in elevation gain) ate up a good portion of the day. We spent the rest of it doing a little silver shopping (or just viewing) and eating/drinking. We learned pretty quickly that the Mezcal de la casa (house Mezcal) in Taxco was pretty sweet and weak, but most places didn’t offer anything else. I also did get the chance to try Pulque, a drink made from the fermented sap of the agave plant. I can say with assurance that I probably won’t ever order it again, but it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever had. A couple of other small highlights were definitely finding a jar of Kirkland Organic Peanut Butter (creature comfort) at a small vegan corner shop. You could fit maybe 2 people in this little place, but they had a surprisingly solid selection of goodies. The other was finding a panadería that served excellent Pan Blanco to pair with the peanut butter. Sometimes it’s just the little things.
Mexico City Part 2:
(T) It was time to say goodbye to Taxco as we left early in the morning for a three and a half hour drive to Nevado de Toluca. It was early in the morning so most of the group was sleeping in the back of the van as we passed through small towns, farm lands and over way too many speed bumps. We accidentally missed a turn that would have saved us an hour, but by the time we figured out we missed a turn we were so far past it that it made sense to continue to the trailhead from where we were— in the end, it didn’t really matter. We passed by several military checkpoints and saw lots of police on the way in, but we just thought that was normal.
Once we pulled off the paved road, we headed down a dirt road for a couple miles to the first gate and payment center for Nevado de Toluca. We paid $100MX pesos ($5 USD) to pass through the gate, but shortly after we were stopped by a bunch of cars that were blocking the road. There were a ton of police cars there as well. Many people were standing outside their cars and conversing with the police. It looked like something fishy was going on. We couldn’t drive any further down the dirt road to the main trailhead because the locals had the road blocked. We eventually found out from the police that the locals were charging the public to park at the parking lot by the trailhead and they weren’t supposed to. The locals said that they were blocking the road because there was too much snow at the parking lot and limited parking so they were requiring people to be transported in their trucks, but of course you had to pay. So the police and the locals were trying to come to an agreement, but in the meantime no one was allowed to continue up the road.
We decided to wait for a while to see if it would get resolved. After waiting what seemed like at least an hour or more, we as a group decided to bail on trying to hike and run up Nevado de Tuloca and headed to Mexico City instead. All in all I think it was a great call— we don’t know how much longer it would have taken for the locals and police to come to an agreement. We made the decision based on time— we still had another hour to drive up to the trailhead from the road closure, then run/hike the mountain, then drive the 3 hours back to Mexico City and it was already 11am. With time running short, we made the decision to tuck tail. Just before we all piled into the van, a bunch of the team hopped out and ran down the two mile long section of dirt road to get a little exercise in before the drive.
We got back to Mexico City and headed straight to the famous Pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacan, which has a bunch of ancient pyramids. We got there in the afternoon when it was less crowded. This place was much larger than we expected and unbelievable. Just imagining how they built these structures and the purpose behind them is mind blowing. We all had a great time roaming around, going up and down the pyramids, and listening to the locals try and sell you a bunch of souvenirs. Beware of the famous jaguar call… In other news, Mitch, Brian, Tate and myself (Troy) tried to get the fastest known time (FKT) on Strava for the Pyramid of the Sun, the tallest pyramid, but we were all a little shy of the time. However, I believe we got second, third, fourth and fifth. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter— but it was super fun.
We left the beauty of the pyramids and headed to our Airbnb which was close to the airport in Mexico City. It was a lovely place and probably had one of the best showers on the trip. A couple of us wanted to go to a vegan restaurant so we found a random place called VG Pizza that turned out to be another truly all vegan joint, continuing our record and recovery from La Zanahoria. We took an Uber to the location and got dropped off. We had to hit a buzzer because the front door was blocked by a gate. No one answered the buzzer, even after several presses— so we called and the owner answered the phone and ran down to let us in. The restaurant was inside an art studio and it felt like being inside someone’s home while they cooked dinner for you in the kitchen. There was no one there and the food was amazing. We had some of the best tacos, drank some beers and took photos with the owner. It’s hard to find good vegan food in Mexico, but VG Pizza is doing it right. We all left satisfied and happy as we headed back to the Airbnb. It was time to go to bed and wake up early to fly out to Puerto Escondido the next day.
Puerto Escondido:
(T) We woke up early so we could return our rental van, Troyota, before our flights at 10am. Returning the van with no mirrors and two missing hubcaps was interesting, but in the end no big deal. What I didn’t like was the $250 cleaning fee for the inside being too dirty. That was quite frustrating to say the least. Anyway, we said our goodbyes to the van and went to the airport. The flight to Puerto Escondido was about an hour and smooth sailing. When we landed we exited the plane to a blast of heat, sunshine, and humid skies. It was great. We walked across the tarmac to the terminal to hail some taxis. Luckily we were able to check into our Airbnb’s early so we could drop off all of our luggage and head straight to the beach.
Tropical trees and fresh coconuts everywhere.
It was around lunchtime, so we found a place right off the beach that served great burritos. The owner was a cool Australian woman who’s lived down there for years. We enjoyed some beers, ate our food and then headed back out to the beach to enjoy the waves.
The beach right in front of our Airbnb. Magic.
Every day in Puerto Escondido, we all kind of ended up doing the same things. Some of the groups went surfing, some of the group slept in, and some of the group played frisbee on the beach. We ate lots of food— a wide variety of food to be precise. We drank lots of cold beer and enjoyed amazing paletas (fruit popsicles). The highlight was to have no plan and make it up each day. It was a true vacation with no stress and only good times. Because each day ended up being pretty similar to the prior we thought it would be good to combine all the days into just a few paragraphs and cover some of the highlights.
(M) Wintertime in Puerto Escondido is mostly the off season for big surf— which makes it pretty prime for a bunch of recreational surfers. Water conditions were different each day, some ideal and some not so much— but the least of all the good times in the water was the crowding of the waters and the lack of any surf etiquette. We found the waters to be dominated by the surf schools barrel to barrel, sun up to sun down. It was really quite difficult to catch a wave without either being yelled at, splashed, or worst of all running into someone (or being hit). That being said, there still were a few solid waves caught each day that kept the stoke alive.
All of the recreation we did from surfing, walking miles and miles each day, frisbee, etc, and getting baked in the sun built up a mighty appetite for our whole crew. We discovered a discreet little taco venue pretty much right next to our Airbnb called Pepe’s Tacos that blew our hair back. It was difficult (at first) to understand why they were discouraging us from ordering 4 tacos a piece… until we received them. These were the largest and most delicious “beachy” tacos I think any of us have ever had. I label them as beachy because they came topped with fresh pineapple and had other similar goodies throughout, which was such a nice twist on a regular taco. The other highlight of this little spot was for sure the option of a vegan taco— a crispy flour tortilla base with fresh coconut-fried tomatoes on the inside with lettuce, avocado salsa, pico de gallo and topped with fresh pineapple. We are pretty sure it was 100% vegan, but there may have been an egg batter on the coconut-fried tomatoes... sometimes you just do all that you can and just have to trust. Either way, eating these tacos transported me to a plane of food enjoyment I have only visited a handful of other times in my life. It was nearly a religious experience… Thank you, Pepe!
On our second to last day in Puerto, I had taken up an offer I’d see written on a motorcycle in a surf shop the day prior— “$300MX se renta por el día.” Quick translation is that I could rent this moto for 24hrs for only ~$16USD! I was really excited about this and was at the shop about 9am to pick it up. I pretty much just paid, left an ID, and rode off with it— a classic, “no paperwork kinda deal,” to quote Breaking Bad. I spent the day mostly solo riding up and down the Oaxacan coast, into small mountain villages and occasionally popping day into town to meet up/check in with the group. I got to explore quite a lot and I’m definitely fired up to doing something similar on whatever my next trip may be. Since I had it for the night, too, I decided to set up a little shoot with Aly, one of our group members and the bike. We got some great stuff and just had a lot of fun with it. The next morning, before I took it back, I rode quite a ways South past many campos de sandias (watermelon fields) and watched the sunrise from a random campo de cacahuate (peanut field) by the ocean. It was a magical way to spend the morning. On the way back I threw a couple bucks worth of gas and returned it good as new. Best $16 I’ve ever spent.
The overall time spent in Puerto was pretty amazing— perfect temps (I, Mitch, didn’t wear much more than different pairs of 4” shorts for 5 day straight), zero agenda each day, excellent local markets, good friends, good beer and just a damn good time. We had one last group sunset together at the beach in front of our place and just sat in thankfulness for this fun life we get to live. One last round of cold beers & Pepe’s was on deck once the sun dropped to cap an amazing time in a sweet, sweet place.
Mexico City Part 3:
(M) It was finally time to say goodbye to not only our beach paradise, but our trip as a whole. We had a small amount of time in the morning to watch the sunrise, pack and head to the beach for one last dip before we needed to head to the airport. We all piled into taxis (for only $50MX each[!]) and got settled in at the airport without issue. I should mention at this point that I, Mitch, was on a slightly different schedule than the rest of the crew. They are all heading back to Colorado and I, due to weird flight times, would be spending another night in Mexico City. I was definitely not bummed about this other than wishing they were all staying, too! But, again, more on that later. I was booked on a seperate flight from them, however both of our flights were delayed a bit flying from Puerto. Once airborne, however, it was a pretty brutally bumpy flight— apparently the other crew was all pretty nauseous and even had some other people on their flight throwing up. Admittedly, mine was bad, but not that bad. We did have an amazingly clear view of the volcanoes we got to summit as well as those that are still on the tick list. When we flew into Mexico City at the beginning of our trip it was so smoggy that visibility was heavily altered— so it was pretty cool to get this view of where we were in week one. I flew into CDMX, Ubered to my Airbnb for the night, offloaded my gear and caught another Uber downtown to explore the rest of the afternoon. Some of the others weren’t as fortunate as me since the earlier flight delay and well as baggage delays caused some to miss their connecting flights stranding them partly in CDMX for the majority of the day and then in other US airports for the night. I decided to have a good night in their name.. :) I was delighted by more crazy markets, the sheer insanity and anarchy that is driving in Mexico (especially CDMX), seeing the old ancient ruins in the center of town (look this one up!), and eating a delicious dinner at a place called Vegamo. I’d walked quite a number of miles in my afternoon, so my Uber ride back to my Airbnb took quite a bit longer than it did when I arrived. I got to bed a little early so as to be well rested and at the airport at 5:30am for a 7:30am departure back home. Pretty much everything went well for me getting home— just a quality long day of Travel from CDMX to Houston, Houston to Phoenix, Phoenix to Reno Int’l, then a three-hour drive home to Mammoth to really ponder what an amazing and full trip we had. If you want to know how to make two weeks feel like two months: go hard, go light, and go fast.
Cathedral interior, downtown CDMX.
Newspaper stand, CDMX.
(T) If you are interested in visiting the wonderful country of Mexico and exploring a wide variety of what the country has to offer, a trip like ours is the way to do it. Our trip was logistically challenging, but manageable, and it ended with multiple days to enjoy the beach. We got to experience high elevation volcanoes, a variety of different towns, a plethora of culture, and sun and surf in Oaxaca. This was a 10/10 trip and highly recommended.
Thanks to Revo Sunglasses for hooking our entire crew up with sunglasses or this trip. They make the best polarized sunglasses lens and goggles for adventure and leisure on the market— Mitch and I have been proud ambassadors for years and are always grateful for their support on our trips. Basically, for every occasion, we have continued to be blown away by the quality and rigidity of their frames. Check them out here.
We’d also like to give a special thanks to Salomon for hooking our crew up with some X-Alpine shoes for the volcano run/hikes. The X-Alpine is a new type of hybrid running and approach shoe that was perfect for the changing and mixed conditions we found— check them out here.
(M) We hope you enjoyed this small glimpse into our latest venture abroad as much as we enjoyed remapping it! If you do enjoy reading about our adventures and seeing the imagery behind it, head to our social handles (listed below) to continue to follow the fun. If you are interested in any prints from this trip or any of my other work, click here or click the prints tab from the navigation bar.
Until the next one,
Mitch and Troy