Well, it was supposed to be a relaxing day!

But it wasn't. We ended up going for an uphill walk that turned into a lunchtime destination, and a bit of a mystery tour on the way back down.

We often just take off on a backroad walking just to see what there is to see. And of course to get some exercise.

This particular time, I spotted a restaurant on the map that also had a mirador (viewpoint), so I suggested to Ruth that maybe we should hike up there and have lunch. 

It was 5 kms one way with a 300 meter (1,000') elevation gain. Pretty much a steady uphill the whole way.

We left Igor alone in his parking spot.

It was mostly overcast all day. 

We made it up to the mirador.

Mooo!

The restaurant was open. Our waiter spoke quite good English, and explained that he was originally from Veracruz City and had worked as a translator in the oil industry there. His mother owns the restaurant and he was helping her out.

They have a lot of animals at the restaurant! We made our order, and the waiter suggested we should go look at the animals while we're waiting for our food to be prepared.

Several different rabbits.

This turkey was showing off for us.

A face only a mother could love.

I ordered the garlic shrimp.

Ruth had the trout.

Mine was good, but there could have been more shrimp. Ruth had a full meal and she was stuffed. With a glass of watermelon juice each, the total bill including tip was 470 pesos ($37.30 CAD, $27.10 USD) for the two of us.

This interesting flower called a hooked hibiscus that was growing on vines at the side of the road.

We decided to take a shortcut... it showed up as a path on our map, but you never know what you're getting into. It turned out to be quite overgrown...

This horse was waiting for us.

Ruth is not sure that this was a good idea!

It was a little bit of a jungle through there!

But, we did end up getting through to where we wanted to be, and back to where Igor was waiting for us. We ended up doing just over 10 kms (6.5 miles), with a fair bit of uphill in the first half.

Relaxed for the rest of the day, and I had an afternoon nap!

We're up in the air about moving on today. I think we're probably going to stay. The property here is very quiet... there are no other customers and we haven't seen anybody here using the other parts of the property except for employees. Not sure how the place makes any money, but maybe it's a seasonal thing. Anyhow, it's dead quiet at night, so we sleep well. Our option is to go into Xalapa and sleep at the Walmart. We're going to end up doing that tomorrow anyhow. 

After that, we're going to Veracruz City and then I think we've pretty much decided that we're going to head down to Oaxaca City for the end of the month where we'll store Igor for the next five months. We've got friends who own an RV storage facility there. Then we'll take the bus back to Valle de Bravo and spend a couple of weeks there before we fly to Kyrgyzstan.

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