Parres to Tepoztlan

This past Sunday Lenny and I decided that having a lot of friends that mtn bike is never a bad thing. So, we headed out for our first group ride. It is a point to point ride starting in Parres, a small mountain time just on the outskirts of Mexico City, to Tepoztlan, a lush beautiful town in a valley south of Mexico City. Miguel, the head of the Mexico City mountain bike league, invited Lenny and I. His email said that we would meet at 8:30am and he would not wait for more than 30 minutes before leaving. Being the on time gringos we are, Lenny and I arrived just before 8:30 at Parres, changed into our biking gear, and headed to the meeting point . . . but no one from our group was there. And they weren't there at 9am either. Finally, at 9:30am they show up. We should have know this would happen because in Mexico being on time means being an hour late. Once all 20 of us got organized and I could no longer feel my feet nor fingers and was shivering like crazy from waiting for over an hour in 40 degree fog, we started riding. The first part of the ride was through an ecological reserve. We couldn't exactly see where we were going because of the fog, but it was still beautiful. We rode through some serious black mud.Lenny.
Me.
The second part of the ride was through some beautiful fields and
forests.

The last part was a 20 km descent on an EXTREMELY rocky road. My forearms are hurting from breaking. I don't have any pictures of the end of the ride unfortunately. The Tepoztlan valley is just beautiful. The total distance of the ride was 47 km but it took us probably 5 hours to ride it. Just think of doing a large group ride in the US and then adding in the Mexican cultural factor.

During the ride Lenny and I learned that there was no way to get back to Parres using public transportation. We had already been gone for over 8 hours and poor Endo was home alone, stuck in my apartment. We hired a taxi and paid him 400 pesos (about $32) to drive us an hour back to Parres (I guess we paid him way too much money, but I thought it was well worth it). We grabbed a quick sandwich to hold us over and headed home. Things we learned: never believe that people will actually show up on time, group rides take a lot of time, there is some great mtn biking that we have yet to explore, I need to visit Tepoztlan not in my chamois, and Endo doesn't like it when he is left home alone for 10 hours. Overall, a fun adventure and it was so nice to spend a day not in the city.