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Camping out in enticing La Selvita

Last weekend, members of Ecoturismo Xalisco, a successful hiking and camping club, invited me to help them celebrate their tenth anniversary at La Selvita Park, located near the town of Tototlán, 50 kilometers east of Guadalajara and easy to reach from the Lake Chapala area.

I had never heard of La Selvita and found precious little about it on the internet, except for a couple of photos. Those photos, however, were so enticing, I easily convinced my neighbor,muralist Jorge Monroy, to join me.

Google Maps made it look like a snap to reach this place and in less than an hour from the eastern Periférico (Guadalajara beltway), we came to the quaintly named town of Tototlán, which, I discovered, means “Place of the Birds” in Nahuatl.

Google Maps must have somehow figured out we were in a jeep, because, only one kilometer east of Tototlán, it told us to turn north onto a very narrow road composed mainly of mud. “Funny,” I said to Jorge, “I understood this place was easy to reach in any sort of car.” As the mud got thicker, I pulled out my phone and asked a friend if seven kilometers of mud was the norm for reaching La Selvita.

“What?” she said. “Who gave you those instructions?”

So, we went back to the highway and, of course, Google immediately gave us a new route to La Selvita, less adventurous, but much drier.

 

This park has lots of space for camping and/or picnicking and has rustic but clean toilets. The big attraction is a grove of majestic Montezuma Bald Cypresses growing all around a swimming hole 1.8 meters deep where warm water bubbles up, giving birth to a river which “flows all the way to Lake Chapala.” 

These huge trees are Taxodium mucronatum, called ahuehuetes, “Old Men of the Water” in Náhuatl and sabinos in Spanish. They are hundreds of years old and beautiful beyond words.

After an evening of exchanging stories around the campfire, I crawled into my tent and was entertained all night long by barking dogs, hooting owls, firecrackers at 1 a.m. and a wake-up call from 10,000 roosters. “Place of the Birds” it is, indeed!

Lots of excursionists from Ecoturismo Xalisco showed up for their anniversary. Founders Alfonso Galván and Guillermo Quintana told me their club offers outings almost every week, which, means they’ve gone on nearly 500 trips since their founding in 2006. “Our club is non-profit,” they told me, “so our outings are inexpensive and concentrated on friendship and fun.” Upcoming salidas include trips to Patamban, Michoacán for the Day of the Dead, a trip to the beaches and ruins around Cancún and a hike through the Maple Forest near Talpa. They’re on Facebook under Ecoturismo Xalisco.

La Selvita is open 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and costs 25 pesos for admission, 40 pesos for camping. Sorry, pets are not allowed. Enjoy the rare opportunity to swim among Mexican ahuehuetes, but don’t forget your bug repellent.

How to get there

Drive to Zapotlanejo on “libre” Highway 90D. Continue east on Highway 90 to Tototlán. Ignoring any goofy suggestions from Google Maps, continue east on Highway 90 for five kilometers past Tototlán. Here (N20.56182 W102.74425) turn north onto to Highway 161 heading toward Tepatitlán. Google Maps will now guide you accurately to La Selvita (N20.59618 W102.74640) or follow my route on Wikiloc.com entitled “La Selvita Park.” 

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