Well this is my first post in Passion and also my first offroad ride since moving to Mexico City this fall. Been riding round the city a bit which certainly offers it's own technical challenges (and the "bike path" between my apartment and the Zocalo was designed by a sadist not a cyclist), but this was the first chance to get the bikes dirty.

Our friend C has been here for a couple of years and seemed glad to have others to ride with. He took us to Desierto de los Leones just west of the city for a 3 1/2 hour ride that proved to be a perfect warm up for hopefully bigger and dirtier rides to follow. I was very pleased to discover my lungs handling the altitude much better than on the 15,000ft volcano we'd climbed the previous month. Most of the ride was easy fire road stuff interspersed with some nice technical sections with some seriously slippery mud. We finished with what was initially some great singletrack through the trees, but unfortunately became a nasty quagmire. We've had a lot of rain here in the last couple of months and the horses really tore the hell out of the trail. Sorry there's no pics of the singletrack but I was either having too much fun or hanging on for dear life!

It was great to see so many bikers out there and know that there's a thriving MTB community here, I was worried before moving here that it would be hard to get out of the megalopolis and ride but there seem to be great locations all around the city.

After the ride we sampled the local speciality - Caldo de Hongos (Mushroom Soup) and great quesadillas followed by Fresas con Crema. Mmmm.

Big shout to Warp2003 for all the info and help - let me know if you can join us soon. Next ride is hopefully Xinte - north of the city.

Matt.

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El Diablo

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Caldo

Excellent stuff,

Thanks.

in August that I will try to post. I was visiting my friend Rodrigo & he took me to a place not far out of town, Cruz Blanca. Dirt road up, single track down, a lot of runners, everybody was friendly.