Pedalling Mexico Aztec ruins and volcano descents

Hans, I’ve cancelled my flight!” read the message I received from Rob Warner the morning of the day he was supposed to arrive in Mexico City. I almost lost the plot… I’d been planning this trip for over a year and had arrived in Mexico one day ahead of Rob to get everything ready. Upon arrival, I’d realised that the e-bike battery we’d shipped to Mexico ahead of us was the wrong model. So Rob cancelled his flight thinking he wouldn’t be able to ride. It was so frustrating – I’d worked with Shimano and multiple other people for months to figure out a way to ship the batteries to Mexico. They’re considered hazardous goods and can’t be transported on an aeroplane.

I convinced Rob to rebook his flight and come as soon as possible. He finally made it to Mexico, but unfortunately his bike didn’t. At this point I was ready to kill him – after all the planning and praying that things would fall into place, it looked like I wouldn’t have the partner in crime I was counting on. On Day 2 we were planning to ride a 4 500m-high volcano, and it would be a shame to do it without Rob. We had to make a plan, and fast.

Urban exploits

Let me take you back to the beginning… after travelling to some of the most remote corners on the globe in my early adventure trips in the 1990s and 2000s, I have recently found pleasure in exploring some of the biggest cities on the planet. They’re often built in and around some incredible natural spaces. 

Mexico City ticked all the boxes as a perfect e-bike adventure destination. It’s a high-altitude metropolis filled with people, traffic, culture, and history – as well as volcanos, bike parks, and mysterious pyramids. The contrasts couldn’t be bigger: between nature and urban jungle; and between rich and the poor, with over 4 million people living in slums in this sprawling city.

If you think it’s easy to plan a five-day traverse that includes all the best trails and landmarks, think again. These trips usually take at least one year of detailed planning, even with the help of local guides and riders. 

For this trip, Mau de Avila came on board as our local guide and fixer, helping with planning, logistics, and locations. He and his brothers have a company called DABCO that offers coaching, trail building, and guided rides, and they are heavily involved in the Mexican MTB scene and with its most popular bike park, Desierto de los Leones. My long-time cameraman Cédric Tassan and my wife and photographer, Carmen Freeman-Rey, rounded off the team.

We spent months figuring out where to ride and where not to ride. Parts of Mexico City can be dangerous and we’d be riding around with expensive bikes and cameras. Ultimately we came up with a great mix of the best and coolest areas. 

Aztec foundations

Our urban stage 1 kicked off in a suburb called Santa Fe. We started in a very poor neighbourhood but were soon submerged among glittering skyscrapers and fancy houses. The city’s contrasts are visible everywhere, and often a brand new building or mansion is located next door to a rundown shantytown. We also got a first taste of traffic as we hit the morning rush hour heading towards the centre of Mexico City, heading through Lomas, Chapultepec, Roma, Centro, Zócalo, and Polanco, which is the Beverly Hills of CDMX (Ciudad de Mexico). We covered quite some miles and found some bits of sweet singletrack between the different neighbourhoods. 

After street tacos for lunch, we headed to Templo Mayor, an Aztec temple built sometime after 1325. It was destroyed by the Spanish in 1521 to make way for a new cathedral, and the ruins were buried and largely forgotten until the 1970s. Mexico City’s history traces to the 14th century, when Tenochtitlán became the island capital of the Aztec Empire, situated on Lake Texcoco in the upland Valley of Mexico. This lake was slowly drained, first by the Aztecs and later by the Spaniards, to make way for what is now a thriving metropolis of 22 million people.

My GT eForce, with a Shimano Steps EP8 pedal-assisted drive unit, was the perfect toy to explore the city, and we found some incredible urban riding challenges in parks and squares to test our skills. We’d definitely earned our cervezas (beers) at the end of the ride. 

Volcanic action

Thankfully, by day two, Rob had arrived in the city and, after a few phone calls to his sponsors to make sure they wouldn’t mind him riding a loaner bike from a different brand, he was ready to roll with us. Rob is a MTBing legend, a former DH world cup racer and the voice of mountain biking. He’s a funny personality and also a damn good rider. We both have trials riding backgrounds and are always on the lookout for obstacles and challenges along any given route. 

Our destination was Nevado de Toluca, a giant volcano two hours west of the city, with a huge crater and two crater lakes at over 4 500m elevation. It was a highlight of our trip!

After circumnavigating the lakes we popped over the crater rim and headed down to the valley below. It was a breathtaking descent – not just for the views and technical trails, but also for the lack of air. Rob felt a bit dizzy from the altitude, and his jet lag didn’t help. I was glad we were all riding tubeless tyres through the sharp rock fields, saving us from punctures. 

It was good to have Mau with us (he turned out to be a fantastic rider) to help us navigate the terrain and communicate with the mountain locals, who live very simple lives. He also helped us  experience authentic Mexican food – from chile relleno to carne asada and carnitas, we sampled dishes cooked, served and presented in the traditional way.

Park and ride

The third day of our adventure saw us in Desierto de los Leones, a large national park to the west of the city. It covers nearly 2 000 hectares in the Sierra de las Cruces mountain range, spanning altitudes from 2 600 to 3 700m above sea level. It belongs to the native people, who still hold the land deeds that the Spaniards issued them with 500 years ago. 

The park has become the most popular riding area in Mexico City, with more than 120 trails according to Trailforks. In an attempt to protect the land from developers, local mountain bikers, Mau included, are working with the indigenous people to turn it into an official bike park – not just to provide improved services and infrastructure to riders (some weekends see over 5 000 MTBers in the park), but also to create job opportunities and revenue for the locals. You can shuttle or ride to 3 700m elevation, and there are no shortage of options to work your way back down the mountainside. 

We got to ride a black trail called ‘Extincion’ that was pretty technical, with some steep chutes and rocky drops, and with a pretty good-sized road gap jump. We also got to test our climbing skills on the ‘Hipermuro’ trail. I really enjoy the technical rocky uphill trails that wouldn’t be ridable on a regular mountain bike but are doable with the help of pedal assist.

Don’t assume it’s easy just because you’re on an e-bike – it takes a lot of skill to keep the momentum going and to pick a clean line. Between the heat, the lack of oxygen and the long, relentless rocky stretches of trail, I felt like hyperventilating more than once. 

I was also blown away by the number of riders and how many of them owned high-end mountain bikes. It just shows how our sport has exploded over the past 10 years. They always say ‘build trails and they will come’… Well, it couldn’t be more true here. 

We ended our day’s adventure in a tiny restaurant near one of the parking areas. With Mexican folk music blasting from the speakers, we had our first taste of pulque, a traditional Mexican alcoholic beverage made from the fermented sap of agave plants.

City cruisin’

On day four, it was time to give Rob a taste of the city. His bike had arrived the day before and we were all excited to experience the city on a Sunday, which brings a different vibe and less traffic to the streets.

We set off from the famous Blue House in Coyoacán, where Mexico’s most famous artist, Frida Kahlo lived with her husband Diego Rivera, also a prominent Mexican painter. His large frescoes helped establish the mural movement worldwide and can be seen all over the city. I couldn’t resist getting a fresh coconut from a kid selling and preparing them to eat on the side of the street. I also sampled some dried grasshoppers with extra lime and chilli. Rob couldn’t be convinced to try any of it, but to me trying the local specialities when travelling to exotic places is always a highlight. 

The Sunday morning atmosphere in this part of town was very pleasant – people sitting in cafés, browsing local markets, playing football in parks, running and even rock climbing next to the stadium built for the 1968 Olympic Games. We got our wheelies dialled, riding walls and staircases as well as the natural lava rock formations on which this area was built.

Mau had promised a colourful surprise at the end of our city tour – and Xochimilco was exactly that. The borough is best known for its canals, the last remnants of a vast water transport system built by the Aztecs that once connected most of the settlements in the Valley of Mexico. Colourful gondola-like boats, called trajineras, take visitors on cruises around the 170km of canals and their artificial islands, called chinampas. For an extra 100 pesos we hired our own mariachi band to make our cruise even more romantic. 

Ancient and modern

The vast archaeological complex of Teotihuacan, the remains of an ancient Mesoamerican city dating back to the first century, has always been on my bucket list. I’ve seen many cool archeological sites around the world, but these mysterious ancient pyramids have always fascinated me. Nobody knows who built them, why and how – just like with so many other sites around the world, we can only speculate about their origins and marvel at the knowledge and skills of these forgotten civilizations. Underground tunnel systems have been discovered below the pyramids, many of them filled with artefacts. Although we couldn’t take our bikes onto the site, we couldn’t not pay it a visit. It was well worth it, and afterwards we did get to do a cool ride outside the entrance. 

We also wanted to explore some of the less glitzy neighbourhoods of Mexico City, where poverty and crime rule the streets. Ecatepec is one of these areas, with colourful houses and shady characters – and a gondola system running above it that serves as public transport. It was a sobering experience to see this other side. Mexico City is so big that individual neighbourhoods are like separate worlds. It’s an endless sea of houses and highways clogged with traffic. While we enjoyed our urban exploits, we definitely preferred the nature and culture that can be found on the outskirts of this concrete jungle. 

We ended our trip to Mexico by distributing some bikes through the charity my wife and I founded 17 years ago. Wheels 4 Life is a non-profit that gives bicycles to people in need of transportation in developing countries. We’re planning to support multiple projects in Mexico in the future, and we set the groundstone for them while we were there. We donated the first bikes in person, some of them to the indigenous people who will run the Desierto Bike Park.

Arriba Mexico – we’ll be back.