Weblog: Mexico Day 2: Climbing La Malinche
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They say that the best time to climb a volcano is when you haven't yet acclimatized to the altitude at the base of the volcano. Actually, they say the opposite. So Edward, his house-mate Alfredo, and I climed La Malinche. Zero to 4500 metres in 36 hours. It was about a 1.5 hour, really beautiful drive that started on freeways and got to smaller and smaller roads. I did a lousy job as navigator. The roads go right into the centre of town and then give little indication of how you're supposed to navigate through the maze of one-way streets (something we experienced several more times during the next week's road trip).
The bottom part of the mountain was pine forest, and then it cleared up and became a steep scramble up rocks. I was starting to get major altitude sickness in this last part, and my progress got slower and slower as Ed and Alfredo got further ahead of me. It got to where I couln't take more than a few steps without resting. Pounding headache and I felt sick to my stomach. But I had to get to where Ed was waiting. The summit. Finally I got there. It's not the summit, that's a few minutes further. My will-power was depleted, but from this point I could see into the volcano. I waited while Ed went on to the summit where Alfredo was already waiting.
It was hard to get moving again as we decended, but I quickly started to feel better as the altitude decreased. I was energetic as were were getting to the base of the mountain, but still sick to my stomach. It was already getting dark at this point, and it was quite late as we came into Cholula so we stopped into Macdonalds. By this point I was really hungry (nachos and Bimbo Bread only get you so far), and even Macdonalds didn't make me feel sick :). Yes, my second meal in Mexico was at Macdonalds. So pathetic.
Bimbo Bread? Your usual cheap pre-packaged bread. They also sell little packages with sweetbreads and cinammon buns (they're not bad). Why Bimbo? Who knows?
Got to bed early because the next morning we would need to get up early for the long drive to Chiapas. To be continued.
Posted on Sun, 6 Oct 2020
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