Somewhere in the mountains near Mexico City

Written Feb 15…8:30am

On Tuesday, we didn’t leave the RV park until 11:00am to make sure we were complying with the greater Mexico City driving rules. This was a late start for us, but even if we did the whole way to Valle de Bravo we would still arrive well before dark.

First, we got on the toll road going north towards Mexico City through the city of Cuernavaca. It was fairly busy, but it was a nice highway and easy enough to navigate. We did notice though that it was uphill all the way.

Valentines Day flowers for sale beside the highway.

We exited the toll road at the north end of the city and took the route that goes towards Toluca. This is definitely a secondary road, narrow and twisty windy. But it’s recently paved and in very good condition. It’s also VERY steep. And, it’s the road that the buses use to go to Toluca, so we figured Sherman could do it. And he did, but there were sections where we were down to first gear going 10 mph to get up some of the hills. Good thing it’s not a busy road.

Going uphill through a little town.

And downhill towards the entrance to the park.

I parked Sherman at the entrance and walked in to make sure he would fit okay.

We made it to the entranceway of the Parque National Lagunas de Zempoala.

To give you an idea of how steep some of these roads are, the altitude of the RV park in Cuernavaca was about 3,200 ft. The altitude of the National Park entrance is 9,000 ft. There is an altitude gain of 6,000 feet in about 55 kms (32 miles) of driving. The Toluca Volcano, at 15,800 feet is only 40 kms from here as the crow flies.

This is a beautiful spot. If you can deal with the steep roads, just about any RV could make it in here, although there are no services. GPS co-ordinates are 19.05039 -99.31632. They have a large enough parking area once you’re in here, and it’s fairly level. And, it’s free!

You can see Sherman parked off the the right.

We decided to stay the night. In fact, we’ve decided to stay two nights! There is no internet here in the mountains so this won’t get posted until Thursday morning sometime.

At this altitude, it’s a bit chilly! This morning, the temperature inside Sherman when we woke up was around 10C (50F). Had to put the furnace on to take the chill off!

The park ranger just came by to say hello to us. We invited him in for a coffee and had a chat. Danny told us that there are three trails here, one of them is the one that goes around the lake that we did yesterday. There is another one that has a lookout, so we’ll do that one this morning.