My name is John (Cach) Cacheiro, class of 1962.  Thank you for sharing Bob Ogden’s memories of life in Mexico in the early 60’s.  What a fantastic memory he has of so much details growing up there.  Brought back a lot memories. 

I  arrived in Mexico City in 1959 from Havana, Cuba.  I was a member of the Cavaliers.  I wish my memory was as good as Ogden’s, but unfortunately there are a lot of blank spaces in my time there..... thanks to too many tequilas and cuba libres.  😊

The one thing I do remember is climbing Popocatepetl in 1961 with 4 other friends. They are Clay Hoyt, Jack (Snooky) Richmond, Chuck Hitchins, Joe Petigrew and myself.  Clay Hoyt and Chuck Hitchins are no longer with us.  We knew very little about mountain climbing and none of us can remember why we decided to do the climb.  We spent the night at the base camp and early in the morning started our climb (see attached pictures).

Snooky thinks we took the Ventorillo route and spent many hours climbing.  We think we made it to the top, but no one can remember for sure. What we do remember is that after several hours of climbing we got hungry. We then realized that the person with the food said at the start he wasn’t feeling well and went back to the cabin to await our return, taking the food with him.  We forgot to take the food from him.  All we had was some water to drink.

Luckily while resting, a group of experienced Mexican climbers came by and gave us some oranges and bananas.  They also told us about an easier route to get back down.  We took it and made it down in a very short time.

It was a very fun experience, but no one wanted to do it again.