BEST HIKING AROUND MEXICO CITY! | Parque Nacional Izta Popo and Desierto De Los Leones | CDMX

[Music] we found a viewpoint [Music] [Music] good morning good morning everybody and welcome to this absolutely stunning easter popular national park we've come about 80 kilometers to the south east of mexico city this morning to this national park whose name comes from the two massive twin volcanoes that dominate the landscape we'll pop the names of the two volcanoes on the screen because there's absolutely zero chance that we're going to pronounce them correctly as you'll see but it's a really popular national park here around mexico city and very doable in a day trip from from the city itself which is what we're doing today yeah i think we definitely saved the best for last definitely so we're starting our walk from a spot called la jolla which is about 4 000 meters is a really popular spot to start your hike up is to volcano from we're not going to be going up the whole of the volcano today though because we don't really have the right gear for that but we will walk up a little bit just to get some good views and then we're going to be walking back down towards paso de cortez which is another place you can get dropped off if you want to do a longer walk so let's go explore some volcanoes [Music] [Music] there she is that's a good view is huge covering an area of almost 100 000 acres however the main draw is by far the twin volcanoes and from our vintage point we could clearly see these two pigs dominating the skyline easter is actually the third highest mountain in mexico with a height of 5230 meter and popo is the second highest in the country at 5426 meter the views here were absolutely amazing so we settled in had our lunch and soaked up as much of the natural beauty surrounding us as we could [Music] so as you can see we're currently standing on the slopes of easter volcano and that's actually the only volcano out of the two that you can climb popo volcano which you can see behind us is actually one of the most active volcanoes in mexico and one of the most monitored volcanoes in the world also one of the most dangerous because it does have a bad eruption it could affect about 26 million people down in the valley of mexico which is crazy because we can just see it smoking all day long all the time the only people that are allowed on it are professionals i think we're going to admire popo from a distance and let the professionals do their job [Music] i think it's way more obvious from watching us in this video that we enjoy this kind of excursion a lot more than we did when we went to teotihuacan in the last video it's just so much more us amazing we're just making our way back down from the viewpoint where we got those amazing views and had lunch highly recommend if you're coming up like us you're not wanting to do the actual volcano if you come up to la jolla car park and hike up about 750 meters a kilometer you'll get to a fork in the path if you take the right fork up about 100 meters you'll get to this amazing viewpoint where you can see poppo and ista on either side of you incredible like absolutely perfect spot for lunch so now we're just making our way back down the way we came back down to the car park and then we've got the long walk all the way back down to pasado cortez again like with all the national parks visited so far there are many ways to arrive here then you can come by private vehicles or you can take a guided tour which is probably the most expensive one if you're on a daily budget like us then you can also do it by public transport and taxis which is what we did you've got to get yourself to the east bus station in mexico city which is known as tapo and look for the volcanes sign once you see that sign go through and you'll be able to buy a ticket there to a place called a mecca mecca took about an hour and a half to get here this morning on the local bus from a mecca mecca we walked out the bus station and there's like loads of taxis you can sort of negotiate a price to take you up to either paso de cortes or la jolla one thing that stays the same though no matter which choice of transportation you choose is to get here early if you come later in the day the smog and the haze that surrounds mexico city and the valley of mexico will definitely descend on the volcanoes and your view of them will be disrupted so if you come in the morning or even if you come in the evening you'll have a much better view of the volcanoes which let's be honest is the the reason we're coming here in the first place [Music] this bridge doesn't look the safest no i think we're gonna go around it since we've arrived in mexico and we've been doing our hikes we've been slowly trying to build up the altitude so we started in guadalajara with the barranca hike which was about 1 500 meters and then we went to the desereto de los leones in mexico city which was about 3 300 meters and now here in the ista poppo national park we are roughly between like 3 700 and 4 200 meters high so this is by far the highest we've been so far in mexico city so it's gonna be a good test of how we cope with the altitude as we get higher and higher in countries that we visit in the future obviously the bonus of starting this walk up at la jolla at 4 000 metres is that the majority of our walk barring that little bit of the star is all downhill [Music] so we're making our way down into paso de cortez now we're coming down in towards the forested area so we're getting pretty close and pasade cortez is the main entrance to the park where you will have to pay an entry fee to get in the entry fee was 50 pesos each so we paid 100 together [Music] we continued our descent down to paso de cortes before jumping in a taxi and returning back to mexico city mexico city is surrounded by many beautiful national parks though so we weren't quite done with our hiking adventures in the area just yet we've come to the to delos leones national park which is on the south western edge of the city and it's actually one of the most popular national parks here in mexico city we can't wait to get out and explore it but first we actually had to get here and we don't have a car so it's definitely a lot more difficult if you're trying to come on public transport yeah the journey we went to a tube station called barranca del muerto from where we thought we could get a bus to santa rosa which is the closest town to the park we waited at the bus station for about 45 minutes the buses that were supposed to come a lot more regularly than that that's just like the system here in mexico the buses you just never know no in the end it was getting later and later so we decided it'd be better to just get an uber get here pretty early because we didn't want to be hiking sort of right through the middle of the day but even that wasn't easy because the uber driver started taking us back to chipotle park because he didn't believe that we were coming here to hike i had to convince him to take us here and then we obviously paid more because he'd gone a really long way around we got to the trailhead now and then hopefully from here will be easy but we'll see how we're gonna get back because i think it's gonna be another challenge [Music] so desierto de leones translates to desert of the lions and looking at our surroundings you may be wondering if we're in the right place we are the name is just very deceptive desert in this case probably just refers to a wild place that's away from like civilization there's a little bit more debate about where the the lion part of the name comes from one theory says that there used to be pumas that used to live in the forests around this area and that they were referred to as lions so that's where the name came from hopefully we won't meet any of them today hopefully they no longer are here so the other theory behind the name is probably relating to two brothers with the surname of leon who once owned this land they were part of the carmelite order whose monastery we're going to see very shortly so we'll let you decide which theory you think is probably the true one i personally like the puma theory the only reason i don't like it because i don't want it to be true meet any humans here ready to hop some rocks [Music] so one of the main features of this national park is the abandoned monastery that sits within the dense forest it was the sanctuary of an order of barefoot catholic carmelite monks for almost 200 years from the early 17th century and you can now explore this ground for a small fee and see how these monks would live here the monastery buildings are actually in very good condition and the grounds are so peaceful and filled with beautiful flowers we really enjoyed just spending an hour wandering around and definitely came out calmer and more relaxed than when we entered [Music] so the park covers over 4500 acres so it is massive and on average the whole park is about another 750 meters higher again than mexico city so we're about three thousand to three thousand three hundred meters up here through the whole of this walk if you've been watching us you know that we mapped out a route around the national park to explore as much of it as possible whilst on all trails it was pretty easy to map the route out once we got here it's slightly more confusing i would say there's no marked paths or anything so navigation's been a little bit difficult a little bit of guesswork going on [Music] no not with my backpack on my camera [Music] so it is very forested here as you've seen we were kind of hoping that we'd get a few more views out over the surrounding area what with it being quite high up but the forest is just so thick that you just can't it's a bit of a shame but it's a beautiful forest and you're covered from the heat so it's nice exactly in terms of altitude we're definitely feeling it when we're walking up here like oh it's only 100 meters up but then we really really slow and really feel our legs and we're just very out of breath so let's start heading back to the town and keep our fingers crossed that we can get back okay from there the size of this pine cone massive head that's not a pine cone that's a pineapple did not want to get hit on the head by one of these we continued to walk back towards the town a little disappointed with our lack of views when suddenly this happened oh wow we found a viewpoint i think we were about to tell you that the route back the trail that we chose to do on the way back to just avoid doing because it's very monotonous you're just following a track the whole way a lot of it's very walkable but there's quite a few sections that are a bit overgrown it just seemed a lot easier to go back the way that we'd come but now we've just come out onto this unbelievable viewpoint which i'm sure not many people know about and it's just made everything worthwhile definitely advise coming back the way we came and i'll try and mark this spot where i think it is on the map for you guys because it's incredible [Music] not one but two viewpoints wow and this one you get to see all the way out over mexico city [Music] for the second viewpoint as you're coming down this trail here just after that first viewpoint you'll see this off to the side these like rocks out here you've got to climb up the rocks and out to this one here and you get an amazing view out over the city so yeah definitely worth it we eventually made our way back into town and managed to catch a local bus back into the city this has been the absolute highlight of our time in mexico city really hope you enjoyed our mexico city series and next video will be somewhere completely different after about two months in mexico we finally decided to head to the beach yes but we also have some unique activities planned so make sure you stay tuned subscribe if you liked our videos and see you in our next one [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Kitti and Jon

Views: 4,011

Keywords: mexico hiking, mexico hikes, mexico city hiking, izta popo, izta popo parque nacional, desierto de los leones, parque nacional, best day trips from mexico city, best hikes from mexico city, mexico city national parks, cdmx day trips, izta popo hiking guide, desierto de los leones hiking guide, how to travel izta popo, how to travel desierto de los leones, mexico city day trips, izta popo without tour, desierto de los leones monastery, how to visit izta popo, volcano hike

Id: 8jZlI_FKw5Q

Length: 14min 55sec (895 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 05 2022