Cañón de Lobos

A small range, the Sierra de Yautepec, divides the Cuernavaca and Yautepec valleys, and Cañón de Lobos is the ravine that cuts through it between two of its hills. Federal Highway 138 runs through it between kilometres 17 and 20 out of Cuernavaca on the way to Cuautla, in Yautepec municipality and close to the village of Amador Salazar. The slopes rise from about 1,200 to 1,840 m, and in the rainy season an intermittent stream almost 6 km long flows the length of the canyon, beside the road.

The vegetation is tropical dry forest: trees under 15 m that shed nearly all their leaves between December and May, among them pochote, shaving-brush tree, papery-barked Bursera, tree morning glory and frangipani, with plenty of lianas. A UNAM study that sampled the canyon from 1983 to 1986 recorded 148 butterfly species, 21 of them endemic to Mexico, one of the richest counts for any ravine in Morelos; most fly in the rainy season. The Key Biodiversity Areas database lists a site of about 4,500 hectares with 61 bird species, including Mexican endemics such as the West Mexican chachalaca, happy wren and golden-cheeked woodpecker, and flags Cuernavaca's urban growth as the main threat.

The road has a story of its own. In 1983 it was a narrow lane with rock on one side and a drop on the other; Governor Lauro Ortega had a second carriageway laid out along the line of power poles and the old one widened, and work on the dual road began that October. Today the curves are a popular climb for road cyclists riding from Cuernavaca to Yautepec and Oaxtepec, and also a stretch where local papers often report crashes.