La Toma

La Toma lives above 3,000 metres, a little over a kilometre from Ayahualulco, the seat of its municipality, on the side of the Cofre de Perote that faces the high plateau. The municipality's name comes from Nahuatl and refers to a lake or lagoon: atl, water; yahualli, something round; and co, place.

With 1,190 residents in 2020 it is one of Ayahualulco's mid-sized localities. Its population has barely moved this century: 1,177 in 2005, 1,064 in 2010 and back above eleven hundred in the latest census.

The cold is what to plan for. The annual mean is around 9 °C, lows near −6 °C have been recorded, and in March 1987 almost 4 cm of snow fell. Above the 3,000-metre contour begins the Cofre de Perote National Park, declared in 1937, with pine and sacred fir forest, although much of the lower slopes has been cleared for maize and potatoes.

Phone coverage is patchy: in 2020 half the homes had a mobile phone and fewer than one in ten had internet. The big feast in the area is that of Santiago Apóstol (Saint James) on 25 July, in the neighbouring municipal seat.