Popocatépetl

Popocatépetl, "the smoking mountain" in Nahuatl, is the volcano that stands guard over the Valley of Mexico. At about 5,400 m it is the second-highest peak in the country after the Pico de Orizaba, and it lies some 70 km southeast of Mexico City, which on clear days can see its cone on the horizon. It is joined to its twin, the long snowy ridge of Iztaccíhuatl, by the high saddle of Paso de Cortés, and both stand in the Izta-Popo Zoquiapan National Park. Mexicans call it simply El Popo, or Don Goyo, after a local tradition in which the spirit of the volcano appears to villagers as an old man named Gregorio and warns them of eruptions.

The pair has its own legend. In the Tlaxcaltec story, the princess Iztaccíhuatl died of grief on hearing the false news that her beloved, the warrior Popocatépetl, had fallen in battle; he laid her body down and knelt beside her, and the gods covered them both with snow and turned them into mountains. Iztaccíhuatl still looks like a woman lying on her back, and Popocatépetl still burns with rage. The volcano is also a literary landmark, looming over Malcolm Lowry's novel Under the Volcano and John Huston's 1984 film of it.

Geologically it is restless. The present cone grew over the wreckage of older volcanoes that collapsed in giant landslides; about 23,000 years ago one lateral blast sent an avalanche up to 70 km from the summit. Three great Plinian eruptions followed in the last 3,000 years, the most recent around 800 AD, and two of them buried the village of Tetimpa. More than fifteen major eruptions have been recorded since the Spanish arrived in 1519, the year Diego de Ordaz led the first recorded European ascent. After half a century of quiet the volcano woke in the 1990s and has been steaming almost continuously since 1993; its glaciers had disappeared by 2001. On its lower slopes stand the early sixteenth-century monasteries that form a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Getting there

The nearest town is Ozumba de Alzate, about 18 km away; Mexico City is about 70 km to the northwest. Hermanos Serdán International Airport (PBC) near Puebla is about 30 km away. The best close view is from Paso de Cortés, at about 3,700 m between the two volcanoes, reached from Amecameca by a winding paved road.