What this section covers. Green space in a city of twenty million — and there is far more of it than the reputation suggests.
Inside the city. The Bosque de Chapultepec, the largest urban park in Latin America, which fills a whole day: castle, lake, free zoo, museums. Parque México and Avenida Ámsterdam, in the Condesa, laid out in the 1920s on the oval of an old racecourse. The Viveros de Coyoacán, a national tree nursery turned park, where the city runs in the morning. And Parque Hundido, the Alameda Central and Parque Lincoln.
On the edge of it. Los Dinamos, along the last river in the city still flowing in the open; the Desierto de los Leones, Mexico's first national park, with a seventeenth-century monastery in pine forest; and the Ajusco, the highest point in the city at close to 4,000 metres.
On the water. Xochimilco, the last fragment of the lake the Mexica built on, World Heritage since 1987 and still farmed from chinampas.
Practical notes. Public parks are free and open from around 06:00 — the best hour, before the heat and the haze. Mountain parks are for the dry season and early starts. June to September it rains most afternoons. The sun burns at this altitude: hat, sunscreen, water.
