Where the Air Gets Thin

The altitude was about three times as
high as at Appalachian State.

Highlight of the day: Breakfast was beyond words. I got huevos a la mexicana (Mexican eggs) at a little restaurant at the campgrounds. They were scrambled eggs with tomatoes and onions sautéed and mixed in. Nothing hits the spot quite like scrambled eggs with some vegetables and a nice cup of hot chamomile tea in the morning. 

DJ makes impressive fires.

     This weekend, DJ, Alex, Savannah and I went to the extinct volcano, La Malinche, to camp. I don't know how well you could consider it camping, because we stayed in a fully furnished cabin at IMSS Centro Vacional La Malintzi with electricity, a refrigerator, air conditioning, and more. We had to make our own fires to stay warm, and DJ was really good at that! We bought bundles of wood at a small store in the park. We went through 12 bundles of wood to keep the fire going as long as possible!
   

I got a cup of hot coffee
for about 50 cents to warm up.

     We were really lucky because Dr. Bandala, Alex and DJ's professor here at UDLAP, drove us to the park. If he didn't take us, we would have possibly had to take multiple buses and taxis (probably very confusing and a little overwhelming). Dr. Bandala's daughter, Alexa, came along and spent the weekend with us as well. It was nice having someone who understood everything and could take care of the little details for us! We accidentally took all back roads getting to the park, so it took twice as long as it should have. It was the "scenic" route, so the delay was definitely worth the extra time. The countryside of Mexico was beautiful with the rolling hills, mountains, volcanoes, cities, and towns all in view.

Some locals told us to come
look  at the poisonous
red mushroom.

    Finally, we made it to La Malintzi, and we put all of our things in our cabin. We brought a decent amount of food, but there was a restaurant on site as well, so we made some meals and sat down at the restaurant for others. We were told that the hike to the top took between eight and ten hours to complete. Since that didn't sound too appealing to us, we decided to try the shorter hike (between three to four hours). However, the hike was not as easy as I thought it would be. I'm not really sure why I thought it would be easy to hike up a volcano. The oxygen kept getting thinner, and the hike was basically uphill the entire way. I'm sure the view from the top would have been beautiful, but it was too difficult for me, Savannah, and DJ. We decided to hang back and walk slowly to take in the beauty. I'm glad we decided to not go too far, because it started pouring! Luckily we had decided to head back to the park when we heard thunder, so we made it to a little restaurant just before the pouring started.

  

We found DJ a new car!

     Once we were all down from the volcano, we decided to head back to our cabin to dry off and warm up. We played card games, listened to music, and made dinner in the cabin over the fire. Not having any cell service or internet access for a while was really refreshing. We all just hung out and got to be off the grid for about 24 hours. It was exactly the relaxing getaway I needed. I would definitely do something similar to this weekend again, just at a much lower altitude!

Breaks were very necessary on the hike.