Read the previous part of this blog entry in A walk in the desert 1.
We walked more and more back into the direction of El Limón Totalco. It was close to five o'clock when we finally found our first snake. Under a big piece of volcanic rock a Conopsis lineata (Tolucan ground snake) was hiding.
And less then 10 minutes later I found another Conopsis lineata also hiding under a large volcanic rock. Our second snake of that day. I like this species a lot because they are in general quite docile and are easy to pick up for a closer look. Although on this occasion the snake "peed" on my hand. The smell was quite strong and resembled to me the smell of sweet water eel.
It slowly got darker and darker as we got closer and closer to the main road. We decided to walk parallel to the main road, back to El Limón Totalco.
El Pico de Orizaba was now much more visible then earlier on. At that time I was not sure which mountain we were seeing, I guessed it was a different volcano, more to the west. But when we arrived at home and I used Google Earth verify what mountain we had seen and it turned out that Esme had been right from the beginning, it was the Pico de Orizaba.
Another volcano that was clearly visible, and we recognized for sure, was the Cofre de Perote (Naupa-Tecutépetl or Nauhcampatépetl). In the photo below the cofre ("coffer") is clearly visible.
After quite a walk, we arrived at the bus stop on the other site of El Limón Totalco, close to the church. I made several photos of the church, trying to capture the moon in the image as well, even though it was quite small.
Shortly after I had finished taking photos, the bus to Perote arrived. After a short trip we were back in Perote and again we were lucky, the bus back to Xalapa was leaving in 5 minutes.