Travel

Got my ass royally whooped last weekend on Izta. The plan was to camp at La Joya until 0000 on Sunday and push for the summit by 0800. With around 4500’ to climb, I knew this would be challenging. What I was not ready for, was the elevation sickness that hit me at about 14000'. La Joya is at around 13000’. We got here around 1200 on Saturday, setup camp and did a short 1.5 hours acclimatization hike to Portillo 1 and got back to La Joya for dinner and rest around 1600. I’m usually able to sleep well despite the surroundings. Today however, I sense a mild headache and am not quite able get much sleep for some reason. ...

The only regret I have from our recent trip to Maui is my zero involvement in any of the trip planning. We could have gone kayaking to see the whales up close. Such a missed opportunity…Next time I guess!

Some good time up in the air above the Teotihuacán pyramids. Flight was super smooth and with us landing right over a cactus field, the ending was even better!

Working with S on her first ever Junior ranger activity sitting right above the clouds. The park ranger sneaked in an ’eating vegetables’ pact in her oath and handed over a pretty cool wooden badge.

Super short hike up to the overlook. Absolutely mesmerized to see the Tradewinds holding down the sea of clouds!

I’ve been wanting to scout out the Izta-Popo national park ever since I got a sneak peek at the volcanoes while in Ikea a few months ago. Several blogs pointed at exploring this region by doing the La Joya traverse which essentially gets one to the base of the Iztaccihuatl volcano. I head out this morning to Amecameca - a small quaint town to the east of Mexico City. The bus that left TAPO [Terminal de Autobuses de Pasajeros de Oriente] around 0700 only got to Amecameca by 0900. Should have left earlier! From there at the Centro, I was able to hop into a cab that got me to Paso de Cortes around 0930. ...

At 12,220 ft and after a 3-hour climb, it felt like home and more importantly I felt real strong. This was my first decent hike in quite some time now and I was pleasantly surprised my body wasn’t really complaining. Early this month, M and I spoke about getting back into the hiking circuit. It’s been about 9 months that we’ve moved to CDMX and we’ve covered a decent bunch of the touristy stuff. CDMX has so many good hikes to offer and quite a few are reasonably accessible from the city limits. With work-travel, visitors and other schedule conflicts; we felt it was reasonable for us to fit in one camping trip and one exploratory hike very month. ...

The initial plan was to hike up to Greenleaf hut by the Old bridle trail and summit Mt. Lafayette at the crack of dawn. Sunrise on the ridge would have been terrific and the switchbacks on the way down would have been just perfect! However, Mountain weather forecast on Thursday indicated a cold front approaching on Friday night - temps dropping down to 3 F! We decided to shift this to a day hike instead. ...

Appa’s been mentioning Luray Caverns for a while now, so we decided to head there this weekend. He did pretty well despite his knees giving him a tough time. ‘Oh so worth it. Simbly beautiful’ - his words! While at it, we got our annual national parks pass and decided to do the scenic drive in Shenandoah. S had a terrific time hopping on top of the car and addressing the wilderness at almost every pull-over area. ...

This labor day weekend, the fam VRBOd a pretty nice woodsy property in the Poconos. It’s been years since some of us have met! The adults had some great time together just winding down while the kids literally brought the place down. The property had direct access to the Beltzville lake and almost everyone took to the water. A first of kinds…The kayaks weren’t the best maintained and a couple of us did take some falls in the water. Life jackets came in super handy! So thankful I learnt swimming early on. This weekend did bring out the outdoorsy flair from everyone. ...