Angangueo to Mexico City

We had breakfast at our hotel's restaurant; something we never usually do, but we knew we would have a long hike to to the butterfly reserve so we wanted to sensibly “carb up”. After breakfast we asked the hotel staff if we could leave our stuff in our room until we got back from the butterfly reserve which would be after check out, and they didn’t mind since we were the only guests there. 

Papaya, yogurt, honey and granola. Simply delicious. 

Eggs Mexicana, coffee and juice. 

We asked the hotel staff if we could leave our stuff in the room until we got back from the reserve. They didnt mind since we were the only guests there anyway. We took the bike to the butterfly reserve and parked outside the park entrance. We were greeted by a few kids who offered to watch our bike for us in return of a tip. We had no interest in having anyone watch our bike as we knew it would be fine since all of our gear was locked up, but we left one of the kids in charge anyway and headed towards the park.

I forgot my hiking shoes back at the hotel and had to walk the 45 minute hike up in my moto boots. This wasn't exactly the most comfortable walk of my life but I made it there nonetheless.

  There is one spot in the reserve designated to view the butterflies. They have the area where the butterflies mostly hang out roped off, and you can stand along the outside and watch for 30 minutes at a time as the area is only large enough to allow a small amount of people to view at any given time. Since it was early though, and it wasn't exactly high season for tourism, we were able to stay until we wanted to leave; about 45 minutes to an hour.

 Those aren’t just branches, those are large groups of butterflies weighing down the branches!

Eric proved to be a popular resting spot for the butterflies..

With jealousy overcoming me, I asked Eric to switch spots with me so I could get some butterfly action too. After a few minutes with no attention, I stood as still as I could with my arms extended hoping they would mistake me for a tree. This didn’t work either. 

This was the only butterfly I was able coax into hanging out with me while we were there, and I couldn’t even see it. "They are here to mate, after all" Eric says as he takes a picture.

The monarch butterflies are beautiful, graceful and so interesting to watch. We were lucky enough to have a mostly sunny morning which the butterflies love, so they were extremely active while we were there. Apparently if it is cloudy out the butterflies stay tucked into their groups on branches for most of the day, but when the sun comes out they start flying around just until the sun goes back behind the clouds. We witnessed this a bit as each time the sun escaped behind the clouds the butterflies went back in hiding, and came back out when then sun did. We could have stayed here all day picnicking and watching the butterflies fly, but we had a schedule to keep and it would take a couple of hours to get to Mexico City from Angangueo.

We approached our bike again with eyes of anticipation. We tipped the one kid who we left in charge of our bike and the rest of the kids were more than disappointed. The kid we tipped asked us for more money for his friends, but we told him to share with them what we had given them. Is that bad? The way I see it is if we tip each and every kid who offers to watch our stuff from now on, we will be broke before we make it back home. 

We arrived back to our hotel in Angangueo, packed, and started towards Mexico City. Once leaving the village, the roads became smooth again and made for an easy drive to the city. I was feeling ambivalent about going to Mexico City before arriving there. I had scenes from Man on Fire and thoughts of crime and death stuck in my head on the way there, leaving Mexico City the one and only city I've been afraid to visit throughout our entire trip through Mexico. Though, once arriving I immediately changed my mind. Mexico City is the 5^th most populated city in the world as of now, and my expectation was that it would be dirty, dodgy, and have more traffic than anyone desires to sit through. To my amazement, Mexico's centro is quite the opposite. It's actually very modern, nice, clean, and has much less traffic than you would think for its population. We drove through town looking for a hostel to stay at and I as we did my fear of Mexico City was replaced by love. We found a cheap hostel, parked our bike, and settled in for the night.

We would be in Mexico City for two nights, and I had two places for dinner already picked out that I wanted to go to. After checking emails, interneting, and meeting a few people at our hostel, we walked towards Cantina la Mascota where I had planned to go for dinner. 

Hostel Suites DF for 39 the first night (with tv) and 30 the second (without tv). They didn’t have a non tv room available the first night or we would have taken that one. Actually, we've spent 36 days in Mexico so far and never once turned on the tv in any hotel we've stayed in.

Met a few people here including Gus, a guy originally from Mexico but had just returned from Australia after finishing up a grad degree.  We hung out with Gus both nights on this stay; interesting guy.

 Parking outside of our hostel. Not ideal since no private parking and we were worried something would happen to our bike overnight, but the staff assured us we had noting to worry about. Thankfully we were able to park it right in front of the door so we could easily keep an eye on it from the living area.

 Cantina La Mascota. I saw this place on No Reservations and learned that when you order a deer or drink you are served free tapas all night. I had never been to a place like this before so I had to try it out. We learned from Gus that there are many places like this all throughout Mexico but we wanted to go to the one reviewed by Bourdain.

Eric is happy eating his plate of intestines..

The beer was more expensive than what it would be at any normal bar at 2.50 US a drink compared to its usual 1, but the food was great so it was worth it. Not only did they serve tasty dishes, they served large portions as well. The experience was great and I would definitely go to another cantina such as this since the price break down is pretty good, but maybe not one so well known next time. Our good experience was semi-shattered when we were leaving and had tipped the guy who cashed us out (who was also our waiter) when we were then asked by another waiter if we could tip him as well. They had both been serving us food all night, but we figured with the cash out they would have split the tip. We told him, like with the kid earlier that day, to split the tip we had given the guy who cashed us out.

Ocean Springs to Angangueo

It felt painstakingly early waking up to a 4am alarm to catch a 6:45 flight out of Gulfport back to Queretaro. It didn't help matters that Eric got off of work at 11 the night before and we didn't get to bed until around 1:30am. A helpful motivation was looking forward to a good rest on the airplane and an early arrival back to Mexico to start our 5 day trip. 

Ride to the airport in the dark :/

 

I felt a rush of relief that our bike was parked just where we left it walking out of Queretaro's airport. Eric on the other hand felt no panic for the safety of our bike and knew it would be fine all along. We changed, once again, in the parking lot back into our moto gear and headed off towards Angangueo where we would stay for the night.

The ride to Angangueo would take about 2 hrs and 45 mins, which meant that it would take us 3-4 with stops. And it did. Leaving Queretaro felt long, hot, and dusty. The roads were paved but the surrounding area was nothing but sand and dust storms driving along the freeway. Every once in a while, we would get a foul gust of wind coming off trucks with livestock, which made it impossible to not want to stop and shower in our tracks. 

Truck full of pigs ahead of us= bad bad smell

 

Since Angangueo is in the mountains, we found ourselves stopping a couple of times to layer up underestimating how cold it would actually get. The roads became harder to drive on as we pulled off the highway and up to the mountains. There were far more pot holes and washed out roads than I've seen consecutively on this trip which made it harder for us to drive faster than 30-40 miles per hour, especially on winding, narrow roads uphill. As the sun was setting, we finally made it to Angangueo and started our search for a hotel room. The town was more of a small village upon entering, with tiny houses on hillsides and stair cases made of grass leading from homes to the road and outhouses made out of plywood along each and every house. When entering the town square, the buildings became much more modern, but we quickly realized there would be no tourists in this town aside from us. We found our hotel we had previous decided we would stay at and checked in thankfully before dark. The hotel was nice and clean, had private parking and wifi, but had no heating. In this town, we knew heating was out of the question anyway. After unpacking we headed out for an early dinner so that we could eat something before the town closed. We had learned earlier in our trip to make sure to eat before 7-8 especially in smaller towns. We walked a few blocks up hill heading towards the main square and found each restaurant we saw to already be closed. This was, after all, a very small town with no tourists, and we said to each other we would probably be eating snacks from a convenient store for dinner. Though, many blocks further, we arrived at taco stand and quickly ordered before they, too, closed for the night.

Nice to be able to park the bike right outside of our window