2012 Mexican Roadtrip: Hiking, Mountain Biking and Gym-ing in San Miguel de Allende, Gto., Mexico

Long before we arrived in San Miguel de Allende, Gto., Mexico, Dimitri found a hiking group there that he thought we would enjoy. He found it through Rick Wendling's website and it's link to a page describing the Sunday Hiking Group [or cut and paste this link to your browser: http://mapaverdesanmiguel.org/calendar/events/index.php?l=english&eID=2718]

The "ticket" was getting on Jock Ferguson's e-mail distribution list by writing to him: Jock Ferguson, Email: jockferguson1@mac.com. Every Friday (that he was in town), Jock would send out an e-mail with his thoughts on the hike he was planning for the following Sunday. Jock's hiking group was/is an ad hoc group of hiking enthusiasts. They show up at 7:45 a.m. on Sundays at the Pemex gas station on Ancho San Antonio/Salida de Celaya. There they re-group and car pool to the trail heads (loosely speaking). Jock has a photographic memory of the locations of about 75 hikes and how to do them in loops. He is truly remarkable--often we were going cross country on a path he hadn't "followed" (again loosely speaking) for a couple of years. And he was fast. He would start and rarely stop (and definitely not wait for stragglers). 

Audre with our hiking buddies. That's Rick (4th from the left, and that's Jock on the far right)

One of the prettiest hikes was to Boca de la Canada and our friend and neighbor from Los Labradores, Mirna, came with us.

One of the rare hiking pictures that Dimitri is in, Mike took this one! And our friend and neighbor Mirna is on the far right

We started using the Maptaq smart watch to make a GPS record of our hikes. Then Rick told Dimitri how to load the information about the hikes on Wikiloc (Trails of the World: Wikiloc is a place to discover and share the best outdoor trails for hiking, cycling and many other activities-- www.wikiloc.com). From then on, we were hooked. We loved to make records of our hikes and upload them to wikiloc.

With our Sunday hiking group at Corral de Piedras

Click here to see the nifty Wikiloc posting of the Corral de Piedras hike. On the far right of the picture above is Paul Hunt. Paul walks hundreds of miles around the world and spends many months a year in India. Paul was stuff-less at the time we met him, and so were we then. We would have probing conversations about his philosophy of nonduality (advaita). It was the first time we had ever heard of advaita. Paul sent us a link to this website: http://advaitatoons.blogspot.in/  which is pretty cute. In an e-mail he described nonduality as follows: "Men, and all manifest, are like stardust or golddust creating their own roles, scripts, plays and acting them out, or attempting to. The acting out in itself amounts to absurd existential theatre unless there is deep understanding of pure, nondual presence. All opposing things, roles, scripts and acts only have meaning through mutual dissolution in love and understanding into the pure nondual presence of nothingness.”  Got it? 

During the week we would go out of the back gate from Los Labradores and mountain bike on the dirt paths in the countryside (campo).

It was supposed to have been a quick 1-hour bike ride just next to our residential complex. We ended up inside a private ranch where the ranchero helped us jump a fence then we fell in a very muddy part of the trail then we had a flat tire...

Sometimes during the week we would hike in the campo near our gated community of Los Labradores. One day we went out to find a waterfall that Dimitri had found on Google Earth nearby. We drove to a tiny pueblo (pueblo-cito?) that we usually biked to (it has 300 people—all related) and started hiking but found some boys “hanging” and asked them where the waterfall was. They offered to show us where the presa (or dam) was. It turns out they were teenagers—the oldest being 17 and the youngest 12. As we were walking, we met another boy walking back from the path (with binoculars). He was the only one who could speak English and he turned around and joined our group. We felt like the pied pipers and had about 10 boys with us on our walk. I was walking with 5 and Dimitri with the others. Whenever I asked a question or spoke they understood (eureka!) and responded in a way I could understand. We had fun and it was a unique experience being with teenagers for 2 hours. 

The village boys who showed us the way to the Las Canas presa pretty close to our home in Los Labradores

Our third type of physical activity in San Miguel de Allende was going to Sense at the Rosewood Hotel. We paid M$2100 for 12 ticket gym membership or US$13.50 per person each time we went (but there were many different options for membership available. Click here to see them.) The gym was equipped with new Technogym equipment. The sauna and steam in the locker rooms were lovely. There was a young woman in the ladies locker room named Rosabla who wanted Audre to feel like a million dollars each time she was there. She did a great job! The outdoor Jacuzzi and swimming pool area at the Rosewood was wonderful (and the use was included in our membership).

Dimitri in the Jacuzzi at the Rosewood

Audre hired a Ben Morvan, the personal trainer (telephone: 415-115-6393, e-mail: bamorvan@yahoo.com) for M$250 (approximately US$20) an hour and was very happy to see her strength improve using the workout he created for her. Audre was impressed with Ben. She told him that she wanted a strength training workout that she could do in any ill-equipped gym where she happened to be. He listened and he did just what she wanted.

Audre strength-training at the Rosewood with Ben Morvan, her personal trainer

And after all that exercise, relaxing out by the Rosewood pool was a pleasure.

Dimitri relaxing by the pool at the Rosewood after gym-ing

So we tried to keep up our physical activity in San Miguel de Allende--doing at least one hour a day of aerobic activity for 6 days a week and 2 days of strength training--in order to be Younger Next Year, and to be ready for skiing in Vail during the winter of 2012-13.