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.

Creel is a tiny little town – although in terms of size, I would actually describe Creel as more of a village – and is not particularly notable for its local sights, but rather for the surrounding nature. One of Creel’s tourist highlights is the Valle de las Ranas, translated Valley of the Frogs.
These are medium-sized rock formations of which one or two actually resemble frogs when viewed from a certain angle. As the Valle de las Ranas covers a large area, there are also numerous other rock formations, such as mushrooms.
The valley itself is really large and wide and is surrounded on all sides by mountains and/or coniferous forest. In one corner, there is something like a cemetery – at least that’s how I interpreted what I saw – in another, there is a small church, and near the rock formations, there is also a small hut next to which clothes were hanging on a clothesline to dry when I was there. At the far back, I also saw a man ploughing the fields by hand. What I mean by that is… it’s not just an attraction, but without it being immediately obvious, you also enter people’s living space and witness that this super simple life, where everything was still done by hand and most of the times extremely hard physical labour, still exists. And I personally found that quite fascinating.
Go or not? Creel is pretty much ideal for nature lovers and people who like peace and quiet and shy away from too many tourists. Because, as I said, there isn’t really anything to see in Creel itself. But you can go hiking here and simply discover things that you don’t find everywhere anymore. However, as Creel is quite far away from everything, I would leave it up to everyone to decide for themselves whether it’s worth the trip. But you should definitely visit the Valle de las Ranas while you’re there 😊