As you can read here, I had a 9 hour day yesterday walking through Mexico City and started my journey at the Museo de los Ferrocarriles.
After that moment, I took the metro to a green area of the city called Bosque de San Juan de Aragón.
So I got onto Metro La Villa and headed over to Martin Carrerra Metro as you can see here.
Then I switched lines at Metro Consulado as you can see here.
Before arriving to Metro Oceania as you can see here and what it looks outside from Oceania in this photo here.
From there, I rode up to Metro Bosque de Aragón where I got off.
Once I got to metro Bosque de Aragón, I asked a random metro cop about which direction to go to.
He pointed me in the right direction and I soon found myself in front of Bosque de San Juan de Aragón as you can see here.
How was it?
Inside Bosque de San Juan de Aragón
Right away, you’ll notice plenty of street vendors selling candy, food, etc.
Some offering to paint your face.
I saw a few folks around this park look like the Mexican version of a “walking taco.”
Where you take a bag of doritos and put shit inside it like meat and whatever else.
However, from what I could tell in the photos, it looked like they put some green shit inside it also?
Whatever it is.
Doesn’t look as tasty as the American walking taco.
Well, here’s some photos to begin the time in this area.
Also saw some horse ride offer as you can see here.
I thought about using their service but I imagined it would be difficult to take photos on a horse maybe given I’ve never ridden one anyway.
Here's some more pictures.
As I walked along, I also saw this weird spot for kids to get on rides.
The rides were moving but I literally didn’t see anyone on them.
Not sure why they were having them move around then.
They also had a funny choice of a song to be playing at the time – “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd as you can see here.
Not sure if that’s the song kids want to listen to on a ride but fair enough.
So I kept walking from there and here’s plenty of photos.
During this part of the walk, various thoughts did cross my mind.
For one, this place needs a few more park benches.
Second, the park overall seemed like it could use a better management service to make it look nicer.
It seemed a little bit unkempt around a few parts.
Despite that, it did seem like a pretty cool place overall.
A New Place for Gringos?
For obvious reasons, I didn’t see a single other gringo in the area.
Why obvious?
Because of the location of this park.
It’s located on the green line by Bosque de Aragon Metro.
Which is simply too far away for most gringos too chicken shit to leave Roma Norte or Condesa to ever visit.
Maybe a good thing though?
The hustlers in the area weren’t too aggressive whatsoever in trying to get money.
You go to a more touristy area for foreigners and you get more of that.
However, with a tiny bit of gentrification, this park could be a top spot for gringos without any question.
We just need to add maybe a few more bars around the area.
Come up with a few new museums focused on cultural figures of Mexican history to put around here and make them top notch.
And clean up the park a tiny bit.
After that? Pay a few gringo bloggers to talk about this online.
Boom. New foreigners coming in.
I really did see a lot of value in this area for foreigners to live in.
To the point that it made me even consider living here.
While I’m not overly familiar with this area, I did take a walk outside of the park afterwards to get “a feel” for the area and it felt pretty safe.
I guarantee you – if this place was a little more centrically located, it’d be popular with foreigners.
You could pull it off.
And, as more foreigners flood into Mexico City, we’ll see if it ever gets picked up by the foreigner crowd.
Anyway, how was the rest of the park?
At the Lake
As I walked past those mini murals you saw in the last bit of photos, I found myself somehow returning to the entrance of where I started.
From there, I decided to walk straight forward instead, finding myself by some lake area as you can see in these photos here.
This was easily my favorite part of this park.
As I got closer, I noticed also a lot of people jogging around.
While this place seems like a good area for a family to take their kids, it also seems like a nice spot to do some normal exercising.
I saw people doing pushups, jogging and using some of the machines they have at their “open air gym” as you can see here.
Which, as a side point, I never understood why anyone uses these things.
I can’t imagine you’re building any muscle using them.
Anyway, as I said, I found myself at this lake area as you can see in more photos here.
I sat down for a moment to appreciate the area.
Despite a sign saying “don’t feed the ducks,” there was a whole group of people feeding the ducks next to me funny enough.
Well, whose to judge, I’m sure the ducks enjoyed a free meal.
Meanwhile, some homeless looking dude came along begging the duck feeding group for money.
He seemed to be getting quite aggressive too.
Doing a whole monologue even about “what would Jesus do” and so forth.
It was at that point that I decided to carry onwards before I also get a 5 minute monologue about Jesus with probably a few broken English sentences thrown in asking “hOw ArE uUuUuUuUuU?!!?!?!?
So I got up and kept walking since I had a lot more on my itinerary to see today anyhow.
Finishing My Time at the Bosque de San Juan de Aragón
Here are the remaining photos of my time at Bosque de San Juan de Aragón.
Near the end of the trip, I began wondering where the hell is the zoo?
For those who don’t know, there’s a zoo nearby but I thought it was part of the Bosque de San Juan de Aragón.
I was wrong.
It’s actually next to it.
Still, I was looking at the park maps that describe the various points in this park and couldn’t see anything initially about a zoo.
Which, as a side point, another way this park could be improved would be to add a “usted esta aqui” bit to each of them so we have a better idea of where we are given the size of the place.
Anyway, as you can see here, I noticed on one of them that it did mention the zoo!
However, the letters showing the location of the zoo are in very faint blue.
Very easy to miss.
Not sure why they chose that color but we’ll roll with it.
Anyway, by looking at the map, I was able to guestimate where I needed to go and found myself at the zoo quickly enough.
But let’s wrap this up before getting to that bit.
Final Verdict: Worth it?
The entrance was free for me.
So, right off the bat, you don’t even need to pay anything to enter.
If you like green spaces, I’d absolutely recommend it this place for a visit.
I love parks.
So, for me, it was definitely worth a trip.
Depending on how much time I give myself to Mexico before returning home, I might even move to this area someday so I can enjoy this park even more!
It was nice enough that I would even consider spending a month or two in the area to give this place more visits.
Now, to be fair, it’s not the nicest park in Mexico City.
But I would argue it’s extremely underrated.
You got other parks like Viveros in Coyoacan that, while that place is nice, largely gets the extra attention it gets because it’s located in a spot that foreigners frequent anyway.
Therefore, it gets more attention than it would have normally.
For Bosque de San Juan de Aragón, it’s simply located in a part of the city that few foreigners ever visit.
And I definitely liked Bosque de San Juan de Aragón more than Viveros.
Though both are cool!
So, if you happen to like parks and green spaces, I would definitely throw this area onto your list of places to check out.
It wasn’t amazing (no need to oversell the area) but it was cool to visit for me personally.
Anyway, that’s all I got to say.
If you got any comments, drop them below in the comment section.
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And, for those curious, here’s the article I wrote reviewing the zoo that is located right next to this park.
Thanks for reading.
Best regards,
Matt