What's on the agenda for January?

Once again, Sunday is market day here in Valle de Bravo so we were headed into town again to do our weekly fruits and veggies shopping. But we left a little early in order to hike up to La Peña again, this time with my sister Alison.

It was a beautiful blue sky day!

Millions of monarch butterflies

Ruth and I have been to see the monarch butterflies many times, but it never gets old. In fact, it's a magical experience. 

Ruth just added it up... including yesterday, we have been to the Mexican wintering grounds of the monarch butterflies eight different times, at four different locations. Yesterday, we went to the Piedra Herrada sanctuary located on the old highway between Valle de Bravo and Toluca.

The closest thing that you can do that feels like flying like a bird

Valle de Bravo is well known as a world class paragliding destination. It has near perfect wind conditions and the international paragliding community holds annual competitions here.

So we finally talked ourselves into doing tandem paragliding when we were with one of RV Caravan groups back in January of 2019. 

The wind didn't co-operate.... again!

So we tried to go paragliding on Wednesday and the wind didn't co-operate. Then yesterday, we tried to go so sailing. And we actually did go sailing... but eventually the wind didn't co-operate again!

We ended up on the water for about four hours!

The wind didn't co-operate

We left here about 9:30am and took a collectivo taxi into town. We were lucky to get one with three empty seats at that hour. 

Then we had a 2.5 km hike up through town to the trailhead at Monte Alto State Park, and then another 2.5 km hike to the paragliding take off point.

Our pictures arrived!

A day early. They were supposed to arrive today, but when we got back from Mexico City there they were sitting outside our front door.

Really pleased overall, but the two smaller ones are actually a bit too small.

The rooftops of Mexico City

Monday morning we took the entire Line 8 underground Metro route from downtown Mexico City to the suburb of Iztapalapa. We were 18 stops on the subway and it cost 5 pesos ($0.38 CAD, $0.28 USD) per person.

There, we got on the relatively new (2021) "cablebus" system... the public cable car system. That line runs for 10 kms, with one free transfer point. Cost for the entire ride, including the round trip if you don't exit the system is 7 pesos ($0.54 CAD, $0.39 USD) per person.

Always lots going on in Mexico City

Ruth and I took the bus from Valle de Bravo to Mexico City yesterday morning. It's a two hour direct bus ride and costs 310 pesos ($23.75 CAD, $$17.25 USD) per person each way.

We arrived at Ponitente Bus Terminal and walked to the new Observatorio Metro subway station. There, we bought a transit card for 15 pesos and filled it with another 10 pesos for the two of us to be able to do the 8 stop trip to the center. The Mexico City subway is super cheap.

We are off to the big tamale!

Most people know that New York City is often called "the big apple". So it's only fitting that Mexico City's unofficial nickname is "the big tamale"! Here's our plan for the next two days...

We're taking the 9:00am bus this morning from Valle de Bravo to the Poniente bus terminal in the western part of the city. It's about a two hour ride.  They now have the Observatorio metro station open again after a couple of years of renovations. Apparently it re-opened on November 15th.

Mexican Fireworks! And our furniture arrived!

But before we get to the fireworks, we have some good news...

Almost all of our furniture arrived yesterday! They said they would deliver it around 10:00am. It was almost 10:45am when they showed up... but they only had one piece with them!

We took your advice!

I can't remember now who suggested it, but we took your advice to decorate our walls with photos of Mexico that we took ourselves.

I found a Mexican online company called Canvas Lab that prints your own digital photos onto canvas so that you can hang them on the wall.

The view up there is spectacular!

Our friends Fernando and Yessi (she is also our Spanish teacher) invited us to go for a hike in the state park that overlooks Valle de Bravo. Yessi's sister Blanka and her 10 year old son joined us.

And so we combined our hiking trip with our Spanish lesson!

Too bad about Trusted Housesitters

Long time readers will know that we have done a fair bit of house sitting over the years. 

One of the more popular platforms that we have used is called Trusted Housesitters. We were actually among the original members of Trusted Housesitters when they began operations back in 2010.

A house is just a place to keep your stuff.

We have a few Canadian visitors who are camping here. 

When we rented this place, we hadn't thought of the benefit of meeting the other travelers who come through here, and we enjoy doing that. We like telling people about the things to see and do in the area, as well as helping them plan their journey through other parts of Mexico.

A good time was had by all

We were invited to a Mexican birthday fiesta that took place yesterday. Our long time readers know that we have spent quite a lot of time here in Valle de Bravo, and this is where we originally met our friends Paco and Oti.

Yesterday was Paco's 70th birthday and they had a big celebration that took place in the nearby city of Toluca where they live.