“My niece and her girlfriend plan to do the Camino a Santiago Compostela (800 kilometers) next month,” my neighbor Miguel Mayorga told me. “So my wife and I plan to take them up to La Chupinaya this Sunday to warm them up … do you want to come along?”
Well, thanks to people like Gerry Green and Jim Boles, I’ve been hearing (and reading in the Reporter!) about La Chupinaya mountain for years and two basic ideas had stuck in my mind. The first was “one kilometer straight up” and the second was “hard, hard hard.” But, I thought, if the Mayorga family can do it, maybe I can, too.
To our surprise upon arriving in Ajijic, we discovered that 800 other people also figured they could do it. Yes, we had chosen the very day of the annual Chupinaya footrace and athletes had come from all over Mexico to compete. Upon our arrival at Donas Donuts we bumped into Efren Navarro, an old friend of Miguel’s, who had placed third in this very race two years ago.
“Will they allow us on the trail with all these runners?” we asked Navarro.
“Don’t worry,” he replied, “while you are eating breakfast, all 800 will whiz past here and you won’t see them again, because they’ll come down by a different route.”
At 10 a.m., we heard a boom and about a minute later the first set of runners sped past Donas. These were the real die hards who had chosen La Ruta Salvaje (13.8 kilometers) up to La Chupinaya. Fifteen minutes later came the Circuito Recreativo (6.5 kilometers) crowd.
No sooner had the dust settled than they had all disappeared and the four of us started up the hill.
Our first stage was the very pleasant walk from the streets of Ajijic to El Tepalo Waterfall where, for the first time, I saw water flowing – and what a beautiful sight it was!
Just as we reached the foot of the fall, we heard a bang from down in the town. Would you believe it? The first runner from the Ruta Salvaje bunch, Fernando Azael Dory Mejia Gonzalez, had already completed the grueling circuit and crossed the finish line – and he had done it all in one hour 18 minutes and 24 seconds!
We, however, had only reached the beginning of the steep part of the trail and we moved cautiously up the rocky and slippery route past El Tepalo, to
be rewarded by a great view of the “sea of green” all around us with the lake shore just visible in the distance.
Next we reached The Saddle, after which the trail grew even steeper. Every once in a while a stray Recreational Circuit runner would come loping down the trail and when we’d ask how close we were to the top, the answer was always, “falta mucho ... MUCHO!” But inevitably, they would add: “Pero, vale la pena” (It’s worth it).
One consolation was the ever-changing flora as we gained in altitude...and occasional glimpses of the lake whenever the clouds of fog below us parted. Despite the cloudy skies, Miguel and I managed to sweat buckets ... not quite buckets, but enough to leave the two of us dripping and our knapsacks well-soaked, whilethe ladies somehow looked fresh and dry. All I can say is I was very glad I had brought along two bottles of Electrolit. If I had been drinking water, I doubt I would have reached Las Tres Cruces after
plodding along for two hours and 50 minutes.
Here we found a group of racers having their picture taken.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“Mexicali!” they proudly shouted.
After catching our breath, we walked another 333 meters to a higher point where we
found a broken white cross. There, my GPS said we were 2,389 meters above sea level (7,838 feet) and
here the sun came out, evaporating the fog and giving us a magnificent view of Lake Chapala. All of this, we all decided, made the hard trek to Chupinaya well worth it.
By the time we got to our car, a grand total of five hours had passed. We had gone up and come down one kilometer and I told the girls planning to do their pilgrimage in Spain that they had nothing to worry about.
“Compared to La Chupinaya, the Santiago Camino is flat. Since you didn’t even break a sweat on this hike, I think you are ready for Everest.”
That said, off we went to experience those famous ribs at Tony’s.
How to get there
The easiest thing you can do is contact Jim Boles (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and participate in one of the many hikes he organizes. As for my “Easy route” you’ll find it on Wikiloc.com under “Chupinaya Less Hard.”