Weeks 86: Monday, April 14, 2025 – Sunday, April 20, 2025

Good evening, friends and family,

Happy Easter, happy end of Passover. I hope you all enjoyed a beautiful spring day wherever you are in the world.

Today, I returned to the Sierra Gorda after spending the week with a group of Peace Corps volunteers in a cabin close to the town of Carrizal, Querétaro. 

Thanks to my friends Jordan and Ben, who organized the trip for us, a group of 12 volunteers, mostly serving in Querétaro but also serving in Tlaxcala and Hidalgo, got together to hike, relax, and disconnect for a few days in the beautiful hills of the Querétaro semidesert. 

I cannot express enough how exciting and wonderful it was to spend time with my fellow volunteers in nature and have a few days to disconnect from the rest of the world and be present in the moments we shared.

So here's how the week went: 

On Tuesday morning, I left Neblinas and got a ride to Jalpan, where I met up with my friends Miryam and George, who live in a town right outside of Jalpan, as well as Adrienne and her friend Anna who was visiting for the week and joined in on the activities. We had lunch at Chipotle (no, not the Chipotle you're thinking of, but an authentic Mexican restaurant with the same name) and spent the afternoon chatting away, first at the restaurant and then in the beautiful plaza in the center of Jalpan. 

We were joined by Rodrigo, another volunteer serving in Jalpan, and continued our conversation until it was time to go back to George and Miryam's places to get ready for our upcoming journey the following day. 

George and Miryam each have their own casitas on George's host family's property. I stayed with Miryam, while Adri and Anna stayed with George, but we all got together on George's rooftop balcony to enjoy some wine and keep the conversation from lunch going. At some point, we called it a night, and returned to our respective lodging. 

The next morning, we woke up relatively early to give ourselves sufficient time to eat breakfast, change, prepare our things, and take a taxi to the bus station for our 9am bus. Luckily, two taxis in a row drove by, and we got to the bus station in perfect time to make our bus. 

Unfortunately, the site of our camp ground was not in the Sierra Gorda, so the five of us had to take the journey through the curves and turns of the road that takes you in and out of the Sierra to get close to our destination.

We got off the bus at the Crucero de Colón, and we immediately hopped into a taxi to take us to Colón, the municipal seat of the municipality of Colón, where El Carrizal is located. 

In Colón, we grabbed a bite to eat at one of the food stands in the town center, took the opportunity to use the bathroom, and then walked to the bus stop to catch our next bus to El Carrizal, which arrived after about a 20-minute wait.

Upon arrival in El Carrizal, we walked the 20 minutes to Ben's host-family's house and put our things down while we waited for the rest of the group to arrive. We played cards, and stocked up on supplies for the cabin, and ultimately started our trip to the cabin around 6:30pm. 

We loaded up the truck with our gear, and then it was brought to our attention that in order to successfully bring the gear up and get the truck back down again, a number of us would need to ride in the back up and down, as the car's 4-wheel drive was not functioning, and that was the only way the truck would make it there and back without getting stuck. 

Five of us volunteered to go up with the gear, but little did we know that what we thought would be a 15-minute drive to the cabin was really a 50-minute drive along bumpy, unpaved, uneven road through the forest. When we arrived, we could not fathom the idea of going back down and then hiking the likely 3-hour hike from the town to the cabin.

But luckily, our driver, Chava, agreed that it would be silly for us to go all the way back to town just to come back again, and instead, he placed some rocks in the back of the truck that were heavy enough to weigh the truck down, and we were able to stay at the cabin and prep for the arrival of the other volunteers who waited for us back in town. 

About an hour and a half later, the rest of the volunteers arrived in the back of the truck (Chava encountered them on the trail on his drive down) and we were able to get the camping trip started. 

For the first night of the trip, Jordan, our hostess, was not present, so our options for meal prep were limited (we didn't have a knife to cut produce and we had a lot of meat and no refrigeration so we thought it would be best to cook that first). But we made due with what we had and cooked up some chorizo and heated up some tortillas and made tacos. Simple, but effective. 

The next morning, we still didn't have much in the way of utensils for slicing and dicing, so we made egg tacos and reheated some of the meat and called it a day. Sufficient calories to hold us over until the afternoon. 

Around 11am, we set out on a hike to get a sense of the area, and after following trails blazed by a former Peace Corps volunteer, we found ourselves at a number of beautiful lookout spots, which provided a backdrop for excellent photo opportunities. 

Around 1:30pm, half of the group (myself included) decided to make our way back to the cabin to prep lunch and rest, while the other group stayed out and explored a little more. 

Back at the cabin, we encountered Jordan, who had arrived shortly before on horseback with her horse Omega, as well as a machete that her boyfriend lent her and her pocket-knife—one comically-large and one comically-small implement for cutting, but useful, nonetheless. 

With access to these tools, we started prepping our lunch of quesadillas, refried beans, and a fresh salad made from tomatoes, cucumbers, onion, lime juice, and a little bit of salt. (I called it an Israeli-salad-style Pico de Gallo). We enjoyed our lunch and waited for the rest of the crew to rejoin us at the cabin after their continued exploring.

That evening, we feasted on tostadas with tuna salad, made a bonfire, and called it a night.  

Friday morning, 9 of the 12 individuals on the trip took a hike while Emma, Miryam, and I stayed back and had a little party of our own, first belting out show tunes and then dancing it out to upbeat party music. Around 2pm we made lunch for ourselves (egg and caramelized onion tacos and a cucumber salad) and awaited the arrival of the other volunteers who went out exploring for the day. 

Our final dinner consisted of spaghetti, grilled onions and zucchini squash, and a tomato sauce. We ate our spaghetti a la mexicana in tortillas, as we realized we did not have utensils to eat with. But that's the beauty of camping. You make due with what you have. When we ran out of purified drinking water, we turned to boiling the rainwater that was captured in a cistern connected to the cabin. When we ran out of gas for cooking, we used the wood-burning stove, and everything turned out alright. I'm truly so inspired and impressed by the creativity and flexibility of every individual on the cabin trip this week. We were all able to use our skills to contribute to the betterment of the group and we compiled our resources to pull off a successful trip. 

The next morning, we packed up our things and rode down the trail with our gear in the back of the pick up truck together (9 of us in the back, 2 inside, and Jordan riding her horse alongside us).

We made it back into town around 10am and took another ride (this time on paved road) to Jordan's boyfriend's family's restaurant for a quick desayuno at his family's blackberry farm, before catching public transit to take the majority of us to Bernal, where we planned on staying the night so we could dance and enjoy the ambiance of the beautiful pueblo magico that is Bernal.

So that brings us to today, when we said our goodbyes and ended a truly magical trip. 

I'm currently sitting in Tilaco, listening to the sounds of birds and watching the sunset over the mountains. I'll be here for a couple of days before heading back to Neblinas on Wednesday. 

I wish you all a wonderful week ahead. 

Saludos,
Ilana