We Hate Ameca (December 26)

(Map of the day.)

We headed by bus to the town of Amecameca (known as Ameca), which was to be our jump-point to visit two volcanoes: Iztaccihhatl and Popocatepetl (known simply as Izta and Popo). We were dropped by the bus at the town's bus station, and our tour book offered us very little in the way of directions from there. We found the town's Zocalo, and from there the volcano's tourism office. It was closed.

We had been depending on this office for guidance on how to actually get to/up the volcanoes. A helpful guard let us know that to get to the summit, we needed to go arriba, which means, helpfully, 'up'. We threw caution (and money) to the wind and hailed a cab. He said he'd take us up for $300Mxn (which is about $30Cdn). We talked him down to $200. We felt a little bad about this after it turned out to be a 45 minute ride up the mountain's twisting, unmarked roads. The way up the hill was steep; there were no hiking trails that we could see, but there were plenty of food stands. We asked the driver to return for us at 5, it being 11:30.

The park entrance was a dusty parking lot with a pavilion, Spanish signs, and nothing else. We were in a flat-ish large field, bordered by volcanoes/mountains. The elevation change on the way up was such that my ears were clogged:



We started off on one of the wheel-chair friendly paths, hoping to get away fro the swarms of families and loud children. We cut off of that trail, and followed a dirt road that wound its way around the hill. We weren't actually climbing either volcano; they were both too far away.



We ended up reading in the tall grass just off of the road:



Andrew tries his hand at filmmaking:



We explored the rest of the park, but quickly discovered that there wasn't anymore park to explore. Inadvertently, we had seen it all. Keep in mind that parts of Popo are a World Heritage Site. We wandered around, killing time waiting for the cab, which was late. The driver of a colectivo offered to take us down in his empty van for $45Mxn each. We hopped on, and felt bad when about ten minutes later we passed our taxi as he made his way up the mountain...

Back in town, we found out that the restaurant we had planned on going to was far out of town. We asked around for a recommendation (this is harder than it sounds, trust me), as there weren't any restaurants in the visible vicinity. Our new place was 4 kilometres away, so we hopped onto another colectivo, which tried to pull away without Andrew.

The restaurant, the El Castillo de los Venados, was part of a hotel and spa.



It should have been the nicest in town. We were instead stared down when we walked in. They insisted on giving us an English that only had a handful of choices (compared to the full Spanish menu) and all staff really seemed put out that we were there. The food sucked too. It was hands-down our worst meal yet.

We managed to get back to the bus terminal, and enjoyed a bus ride back to Mexico City that was crowded, standing room only (for a 2 hour ride), and humid -- > the smell was not dissimilar to that of a post-game locker room with an extra dash of BO thrown in for good.

Aside from our relaxing time reading atop the mountain, the day was rife with obstacles and strife. In spite the flowery description on Wikipedia, we never saw anything other than 'seedy' and 'rundown.' We hate Amecameca.