Hiking Toluca de Nevado

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Our three day trek in the Sierra Juarez mountains was great, but we needed something a little higher, a little more challenging to help us prepare for trekking the great Himalayas.  Toluca de Nevado offered us just that challenge. Towering at 4600 metres, this long dead volcano is now home to two beautiful caldera lakes and absolutely stunning views.

We paired up with Julius and Sandro again and decided to rent a car. We grabbed snacks and fluids and hit the road around 1030am. Major props to Juluis for being the hero and doing the driving to get us out of Mexico city! It took a while, as traffic in this beast of a city is horrific! But finally we made it out, paid a couple of tolls and eventually took the turn off Mexico highway 10, drove past the little town of Raices, past the National Park area (where all the vendors are set up) and began to gruellingly slow switchback ride up the mountain. The reason so many people trek this mountain’s peak is because you can drive almost all the way up! In fact, you used to be able to drive right to the caldera, however the road now stops 2km before and you must hike in. Continue reading →

Puebla and Mexico City

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After over three weeks in Oaxaca where we spent the holidays, it was at last time to move on. We were moving north, to el Monstruo (as Mexico City is affectionally called), but decided to stop off in Puebla on the way there as we heard good things about this old city. It was a big city in and of itself; at over 1.5 million people it is the 5th largest city in the country. I’m not much of a big city fan, but it was just a couple day stop over, mostly to see if we could find some good food!

We checked out the massive cathedral in the centre of the town, took one of those cheesy open concept bus top tours, and stopped in at the Biblioteca Palafoxiana, a gorgeous library founded in 1646 , making it the first public library in colonial Mexico. Some even consider it to be the first public library in all the America’s! The Bishop of Puebla at the time was a total book nerd and donated over 5000 books to San Juan college under the stipulation that they be made available to all the public. Over 100 years later the library was created and given the name of the Bishop, Palafoxiana in honour of his donation and love of books. Continue reading →

Hiking in the Sierra Juarez Mountains, Oaxaca

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With our upcoming plans of trekking the Himalaya’s in Nepal, we needed to get a trek or two under our belts. There were plenty of hikes online with pricey tour companies, but we didn’t want to have to pay someone hundreds of dollars to walk with us, we were quite capable of that, thanks! After digging around some more we found there was a company in town that helped coordinate treks through the Sierra Juarez mountains and the Pueblos Mancomunados (united villages) for a fair price. The best part was the money went directly to the guides who lived in each of the villages so your money was actually making it to the villages. What made these villages united was that they pooled resources to help each other out, and 6 of the 8 communities came together and created the ecotourism programs that helps sustain the villages today. 

And so, on the first day of the new year, I awoke at 6am after not really sleeping at all (thanks anxiety!), caught a cab to the second class bus station and hopped in a collectivo van headed for the village of Cuajimaloyas, resting at a mighty 3100 meters above sea level. Continue reading →

Where to Eat in Oaxaca: The Oaxacan Food Diaries

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Let’s be real here for a moment. The main reason I came to Mexico was the food. And the one state/city that I dreamt of most in my foodie dreams was of course, Oaxaca. The name alone strikes hunger, and fantasies of mole and chocolate swirl through your mind tantalizingly. Lucky for us, Mexico seems to book up like crazy over Christmas, and so we found ourselves ‘stuck’ in Oaxaca for three weeks over the Christmas and New Year holidays.  This gave us ample time to taste this sweet and spicy city! Continue reading →

On Horseback To Iglesia de San Juan, Chamula

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While in San Cristóbal de las Casas we decided to go horse back riding through the country side to a small village. Technically this would be my first time on a horse (the ride I took in Peru hiking through the Salkantay Pass to Machu Picchu was a mule) and I was so excited! This would also be Travis’s first ever horse ride. We were picked up, myself, Travis, Matt and Monica, another hostel dweller, by Juan in his old pick up truck. His son hopped into the truck bed, which was full of huge sacks of maiz, and laid down to have a snooze, so that we could all squeeze into the back seat. We cruised to the edge of town where his pasture was located and then all got ourselves acquainted as best we could with the four horses. They didn’t speak much English (our guides, not the horses :P) so we just sort of went with the flow – which was a little unsettling since, you know, we were about to get on these huge beasts and had absolutely no idea what we were doing – Monica was the only one of us who had any experience with horses. I picked the smallest horse- thinking this would be a good idea, however that didn’t quite work out in my favour. I had the only horse who was clearly either overweight or pregnant, her side stuck out implausibly far, and she was the only horse without a sort of bit (which I am thankful for in the sense that it meant my horse was far more comfortable) but it also meant I had no control whatsoever. Continue reading →

San Cristóbal, Pueblo Mágico

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We had a challenge coming our way – our real first long bus ride in Mexico. A whopping fifteen hour bus ride, from Campeche, through the winding mountains, to San Cristóbal. So we did what any smart backpacker would do. Stocked up on snacks, popped a couple of Benadryl and put on every warm thing we owned – Mexican buses love to crank their air conditioning, even when it’s cold outside. The bus ride turned out to be not so bad with our preparations in hand, though we would have been left behind at one stop if it weren’t for the kindness of a local woman. We had only taken our drugs three hours prior, when we were all told to get off the bus. They were doing a bathroom cleaning and such. So, off we get. Then the bus starts driving away and we panic, but not as much as a fellow gringo panicked- he chased the bus down, banging on it’s side, yelling. The bus driver advised him he was just backing it up to the cleaning station. So we stood there, our brains all a muddle, trying to stay awake, fighting the pull of the Benadryl. A while passed and I was getting worried – as worried as Benadryl will let you – when a local woman came up to me and advised us in Spanish that our bus would be coming from a completely different side of the station to pick us up. Even if I had been in my right mind, I would not have known this without her advice. I am sure it was said over a speaker somewhere, but my Spanish is not good enough for deciphering loud speaker gibber. We were so thankful someone saved us! Our bags would have taken off with the bus without us, what a mess we avoided thanks to the kindness of a stranger! It’s something I’ve noticed a lot in our travel in Mexico: locals see the gringos, know they likely are a bit clueless to what’s going on a times, and step in to help them out. The kindness of Mexican’s, always coming to our rescue, has been a beautiful part of our journey through this amazing country. Continue reading →

Three Days in Campeche, México

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DSC_0009One of the things I love about travel is going to places you’ve never even heard of before. I admit to being quite ignorant of much of Mexico and it’s 31 states prior to coming here. I knew about the Cancun area, and that was about it. From Mérida we knew we wanted to head southwest towards San Cristóbal, so we looked at a map and saw a place called Campeche was on the way. Why not, right? So we researched it briefly online and booked our bus tickets out of Mérida. After Holbox, we had come back to Mérida for another 10 days or so to just relax, and check out a few places to eat that we never made it to last time, and hit up some of our favourites again! We were excited to be moving on from the east to new land, and Campeche sounded like a great stop along the way. Continue reading →

Isla Holbox, México

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Shortly after arriving in México, my friend Yves messaged me on facebook and told me I absolutely had to get to Holbox Island while in the country. I had never heard of this island before (and I admit to pronouncing it Hall-box, not Hall-bosh, as it is properly pronounced!) but I was now recalling posts of his from a couple of years ago from an idyllic looking beach in México. So we looked it up and said why not? After spending almost ten days in Mérida, we were excited to get back to a beach and to a place we’d never heard of! We found a perfect little apartment online at Casa Frida that was a bit expensive for us, but we agreed to eat as cheaply as possible and take full advantage of the kitchen instead of eating out. 

Continue reading →

Día de los Muertos in Mérida

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When we decided we would travel around Mexico, I was elated to know we would be in the country for one of their greatest holidays, Día de los Meurtos (Day of the Dead), which falls around the same time as our Canadian Halloween, which just so happens to be my favourite holiday of all! So while I was devastated to be missing Halloween, being in Mexico for Día de los Muertos more than made up for that loss!   I wanted to make sure we were in a big city centre for the holiday, so after Tulum, we headed up to Mérida, a city my mom had told us about when she last came down to Mexico. Continue reading →

Mérida, México

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IMG_3892After relaxing in Tulum for a week, it was time to move up to the big city, Mérida.  We had booked eight nights into Nomadas hostel, as I wanted us to get into a hostel atmosphere to meet other people and find out what was going on for the Día de los Muertos festivities in the big city, our whole reason for coming this way. My mom had been to Merida recently and raved about it so we figured why not? Merida is the safest city in Mexico.  And the Yucatan, the state of which it is the capital, is the safest of the 32 states in Mexico, so that also made it an easy choice for a place to spend the big festival!

Our bus from Tulum was uneventful other than me feeling a little nauseous and wondering if I’d suddenly developed motion sickness after all these years. It sat with me like a pit in the bottom of my stomach the entire ride, and got quite terrible near the end. I lost motor control and couldn’t even open my purse to look at my phone to see if we were near our stop. I had no energy, no strength whatsoever, I felt like I was going to pass out or just topple over, unable to move. At one point I fell asleep against Travis’s shoulder, perhaps worn out from the hours of feeling unwell, and perhaps as a coping mechanism to not feel anything at all. Travis helped get my bag off and I shuffled off behind everyone else, happy to have my feet touch the ground and I sat off to the side, deep breathing and fanning myself while Travis waited for the rest of our bags. We hailed a cab and thankfully I was already starting to feel a touch better. It was a short ride to our hostel but our driver was sweet (and patient!) as we chattered away in my broken Spanish, and I translated for Travis. Continue reading →