Somewhere in the mountains

We hadn’t heard from our contact here, so we decided to head out. We’re going to the monarch butterfly sanctuaries in the mountains just west of Mexico City. This is where all of the monarch butterflies in North America come to spend the winter.

But first, we needed gas. We decided to take the route into Morelia (pop 600,000) and hook into a section of the ring road to avoid getting anywhere close to the downtown and congestion. But it was a busy road just heading into Morelia. Trying to follow both the GPS and a paper map, we managed to get through it. But it sure is stressful driving in a strange city where other drivers don’t give you any leeway at all. It is definitely a two person job.

Bought another 1,000 pesos ($85.50) worth of gas. Asked if we could pay with Visa…no problem. Now 3 for 3 with being able to buy gas with a credit card at a Pemex station.

Now we were past Morelia and on the old Mex 15 highway. This is one of the oldest highways in Mexico and was the original connection between Guadalajara and Mexico City. Now, it’s just a twisty windy two lane road through the mountains. There’s very little traffic, which is a good thing because it’s slow going. This route can be done by any size RV, but you just have to take it slow.

But it is scenic, and even though it’s slow going, I’d rather drive through the mountains on a narrow road than drive in a busy unfamiliar city!

We stopped beside a little waterfall, and there were quite a few varieties of butterly floating about. Ruth got a few pictures.

We saw a turn off to a logging road, and parked at the entrance to see if we could take Whiskey for a walk. We’re at 9,600 ft elevation now, and you can definitely feel that it’s a little cooler out.

There was a local fellow out for a stroll by the entrance, and I asked if it was private property and if it was okay to park for the night. He said we would have no problem. Turns out that this road was built about 10 years ago to install a cell tower, and the cell tower still uses an old slower signal. This is how we are able to get onto the internet from the top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere Mexico! Amazing! It’s a little slow, but it works.

We took Whiskey for a nice walk, and she loved it…no espinas on the ground to bother her paws. This is a pine forest, and at 9,600 feet it seems like we could be in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, not the middle of Mexico. Tomorrow morning we’ll hike over the the antenna tower.

We found a nice parking spot and the only other people we’ve seen was three guys in an old truck who were out getting some wood. I’m sure they most have said “what the hell is that” when they saw us parked here…but we waved and they waved back.

The stars are amazing. I wish they would show up in a picture for you.

Here’s today’s drive…

80 kms (50 miles) took us about 4 hours! We did stop a few times, but still...