Peaceful, truly beautiful, a great hike and super close to Creel. Creel itself is a really small town, or rather village, in the north of Mexico pretty far away from everything. Apart from that, Creel doesn’t really have many touristy things to offer. However, the surrounding nature is really beautiful and one of the areas you can explore is right around Lake Arareko.
At the time, me and my travel buddy paid a small extra charge to be driven to the lake, from where we then walked back to the Valle de las Ranas via a hiking trail. It was a very beautiful hike through coniferous forest, which personally reminded me a little of northern Spain, where there is a similar natural landscape near a place from my childhood. At least, it somehow felt familiar to me. The hike itself was not difficult at all and mostly fairly flat. Every now and then you had to search for the path a little, but everything was quite good and easy to find. And in terms of nature, it was very different from the rest of Mexico, but very cool precisely because of that. I had never seen such flat expanses and quite ‘dry’ and stony terrain before.   

One thing you should know though: as easy as the hike may be in terms of the path, the distance we covered was quite a “big” one as we walked back to Creel from the Valle de las Ranas as the trail had brought us back there. And I, for sure, was pretty happy when we finally were back in Cree and really did not feel like walking any more. Meaning this is not for people who are lazy when it comes to walking. It’s distance wise a real hike – even if the trail itself is easy.

Do it or not? I think you should. The hike is really beautiful and completely different from the landscapes I had seen in Mexico up to that point.