Two weeks ago the Reporter featured an article on Wikiloc, a Google-Earth Program which shows you hiking and cycling trails close to home and all around the globe. I decided to test out Wikiloc by searching for a good hike convenient to people living both in Guadalajara and Ajijic.
I went to Google Earth and zoomed in on the wide Circuito Sur highway which is easy to access from both areas. The first thing I saw was a track going up a big volcano located just south of San Isidro Mázatepec. By pure chance, this volcano had been pointed out to me by geologist Chris Lloyd as a good example of a cinder or scoria cone. “There are three main types of volcanoes,” Lloyd told me, “and you can find all three of them close to Guadalajara.” One, he explained, is the stratovolcano, like El Volcán de Tequila, which has a graceful Mt.-Fuji shape and oozes lava. Then there is a maar volcano, featuring a violent explosion, caused by magma coming into contact with underground water, shooting huge quantities of ash and rocks straight up into the air, and leaving a bowl-shaped hole (a caldera) behind. The Primavera Forest is located inside what was once just such a caldera. And finally, we have the cinder or scoria cone, which has a rather squat shape and produces a great heap of tough, light-weight, often red cinders.
In theory, therefore, a Tapatio could visit all three types of volcano in just one day. But the only person I knew of who had ever tried to climb this scoria cone was my friend Mario Guerrero, who told me he and his colleagues had managed to do it only by “swinging a machete and chopping our way to the top,” which, by the way is nearly 2,000 meters (6,500 feet) above sea level.
If Wikiloc could provide us with an actual trail to follow, Guadalajara might someday be hosting a “Trivulcanon” with athletes competing to conquer the three classifications of volcanoes in the shortest possible time.
One Sunday morning, I headed for Mázatepec with a small team of determined hikers. The downloaded Wikiloc trail took us east and then south toward the huge volume of the great cinder cone filling the horizon. We ended up on the far side of the volcano where we came to a big surprise. Instead of finding the trailhead at the base of the big cerro, we found … a new four-lane highway with not a car upon it. We climbed up onto the tarmac. It turned out we were standing on a section of the new Macrolibramiento, a controversial highway that supposedly will take all the heavy traffic heading for Mexico City, which presently goes straight through Guadalajara. Fortunately there was no one around to collect any tolls from us and no cars to run us over, so we strolled down the middle of this expressway for ten minutes and when we got close to the Wikiloc trail, we slipped under two fences alongside the highway and found ourselves back on track. To our surprise, we found the “trail” we had been seeking was actually a very old cobblestone road several meters wide which climbed the volcano at such a gentle angle that any bunch of kindergarteners could have followed us up to the very top.
Having a botanist with us, we found all sorts of plants, berries, flowers and bugs along the way, but for me the most dramatic moment was when I heard the movement of a rather noisy animal in a tree a few meters in front of me. I stopped and stared and just in that moment a second animal, about a foot long, ran along the top of a horizontal branch, silhouetted perfectly, its long tail sticking straight back behind it. No sooner had it trotted across the branch than a third animal, almost identical, followed it. “Those are coatis,” said Rodrigo Orozco. “They always travel in packs.”
I never expected to see coatis or coatimundis (Nasua narica) in broad daylight, but now I know they are diurnal, so if you try this hike, you may spot them too.
Stopping for lots of photos, we reached the top of the volcano in two hours, having walked three kilometers from the base, a rise of 446 meters. From an elevation of 1932 meters we had a fairly good view. If it weren’t for a few rare outcrops of rock, I’d never have known we were on a volcano. Most of this one is composed of cinder or scoria (tezontle in Spanish), much used for landscaping or land fill and in a few cases even for building homes. Two areas of the volcano are being quarried and it’s possible that this cinder cone will eventually disappear as is already the case with another one that used to be nearby.
On the way back we realized we didn’t know the name of this volcano, which was simply called “el cerro” on Wikiloc. So, we asked the first person we saw. “Its name is Cerro de San Isidro,” he told us. A few meters down the road we found another man who said the name is actually Cerro de Mazatepec. This convinced us we needed a third opinion, which, to our surprise, was Cerro de Carboneras. Hmm. By the time we reached nearby Lake Valencia where we had planned to have a fried fish dinner, we had been told the correct name was Cerro de San Isidro Mazatepec and Cerro de San Antonio. Our final informant, however, pooh-poohed all the other names and with great solemnity assured us that the correct name was Cerro Mazatl, explaining that mazatl means deer in Nahuatl. Is it all nice and clear now? Well, the last version is the one I put on my 2013 version of this trail on Wikiloc and, no matter its name, I’m sure you’ll find it easy to follow if you don’t mind sliding under a few fences.
How to get there
Head for the town of San Isidro Mazatepec, located on the Circuit Sur, 25 kilometers southwest of Guadalajara. At N20 30.481 W103 35.788, take a relatively friendly dirt road south 3.8 kilometers until you come upon the Macrolibramiento. Park, walk northwest 350 meters, slide under the fences at N20 29.337 W103 36.516 and start up the ancient cobblestone road… or, save yourself all the hassle by going to Wikiloc.com and searching for “Cerro Mazatl”. Just download the trail to your GPS or smartphone. Driving time to Mazatepec is about 40 minutes, either from Guadalajara or Ajijic.