Things to do in Valle de Bravo, Mexico

Nestled high in the mountains on the shores of beautiful Lake Avandaro, Valle de Bravo, Mexico is a wonderful place for a family vacation. Valle de Bravo is where Mexico City’s upper-class comes to enjoy their weekends, so after spending 5 days in Mexico City with kids we thought we’d join them!

We found some great things to do in Valle de Bravo including some great hiking and stand-up paddleboarding. We even knocked off one of our bucket-list items – hiking to a Valle de Bravo butterfly sanctuary to see the millions of Monarch Butterflies which have migrated from Canada for the winter. It was truly amazing!

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How to Get to Valle de Bravo From Mexico City

Valle de Bravo is approximately 87 miles (140km) west of Mexico City. If you don’t have your own car, the easiest way to get from Mexico City to Valle de Bravo is by bus. Take an Uber to the Poniente bus terminal and go the Zina Bus counter.

Zina Bus offers several non-stop bus trips between Mexico City and Valle de Bravo every day. The buses are quite nice, with air conditioning and tv’s playing movies.

We each got a free drink and bag of chips for the bus journey. The 2 hour bus from Mexico City to Valle de Bravo was really nice, taking you through some very affluent parts of CDMX followed by some very pretty tree covered hills.

You can supposedly buy bus tickets to Valle de Bravo from Zina Bus in advance online, but I’ve never been able to get that part of their webpage to work for me. Zina Bus was very helpful by allowing me to make advance reservations for my family via email.

If you prefer to rent a car to Valle de Bravo, but want to avoid driving in Mexico City, consider taking an Uber to the affluent Zedec Santa Fe neighborhood in the far western outskirts of Mexico City, where you will find several international car rental chains.

Be sure to read our post on car rental scams in Mexico before you get too excited about the low prices.

Things to do in Valle de Bravo, Mexico

Day 1 – Exploring Valle de Bravo

There are two main tourist areas within Valle de Bravo: the lakefront and the historic town center.

Valle de Bravo Lakefront

The lakefront plaza at the bottom of Calle de la Cruz offers nice views of Lake Avandaro and the surrounding hills.

This is the central activity point for all water-based things to do in Valle de Bravo; floating restaurants, boat trips, stand-up paddleboarding, kayaks, etc. There are a few market stands with the usual trinkets for sale.

You can walk southeast along the Valle de Bravo waterfront for a while enjoying different views of the lake.

Within a few minutes you will arrive at a really nice pirate ship playground. Our kids didn’t see any playgrounds during our week in Mexico City, so they were very excited.

We stopped and let them play for a while and then we had a snack while enjoying excellent lake vistas from the adjacent plaza.

Central Valle de Bravo

Valle de Bravo has an extremely charming historic center. The blocks surrounding the church (Parroquia de San Francisco de Asís) are pedestrian only, making it very kid-friendly thing to do in Valle de Bravo.

The nicely treed plaza, which rests in the shadow of the large church, is always buzzing with activity. There are restaurants, shops, street vendors, ice cream stands and much more.

Northwest of the town center is the Valle de Bravo Artisan Market (Mercado de Artesanías).

There are two buildings near each other advertising themselves as the Artisan Market, but the real one is in the SE corner; the one on the NW corner was pretty small and uninteresting.

The real Valle de Bravo Artisan Market is in a two-story square building with shops on both floors. The usual touristy trinkets are found here, but there are also some very nice souvenirs to be found here; quality stuff you’d never find on the street.

Day 2 – Valle de Bravo Butterfly Sanctuary

Today was an awesome day – a bucket list day! Many years ago we were watching the amazing BBC nature documentary series Life and saw a segment on the annual monarch butterfly migration from Canada to Mexico.

Every year, millions of migrating monarch butterflies congregate within a small area in Mexico, one of which happens to be the Santuario de Piedra Herrada (Piedra Herrada Butterfly Sanctuary), which is very close to Valle de Bravo.

How to Get to Piedra Herrada Butterfly Sanctuary

To get to the Piedra Herrada Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary, our Valle de Bravo vacation rental host arranged an English speaking taxi to take us there and (more importantly) to pick us up again.

The Valle de Bravo monarch butterfly sanctuary is in the middle of nowhere so having a taxi driver we could trust to return and pick us up was very important to us.

The Piedra Herrada Monarch Butterfly Migration for Kids

Admission into the Piedra Herrada Sanctuary includes a mandatory guide. We started out in a big group, but two people fell way behind and the other group changed their mind and took horses to the top.

Soon enough we had our butterfly sanctuary guide all to ourselves. She didn’t speak any English, but she was very helpful with the kids and watched them while we stopped to take pictures of the Monarch butterflies.

There are a decent number of monarchs at the bottom of the butterfly sanctuary, but this was nothing compared to what was to come.

The short uphill walk from the bottom of the Valle de Bravo butterfly sanctuary to where the monarch butterflies congregate is about 1.2 miles (2km) long.

The Piedra Herrada Butterfly Sanctuary is 3,000m (9,800 feet) above sea level, which is above the 8,000 foot level where altitude sickness can start to occur.

If you are coming from sea level and haven’t had time to acclimatize to the altitude, we’d recommend you rent a horse to see the monarch butterflies.

If you have acclimatized, or you are feeling good, it’s an easy kid-friendly hike. Both our kids (age 3 & 5) hiked to see the monarch butterflies without any help.

What to Bring to the Valle de Bravo Butterfly Sanctuary

The hiking trail to the top of Piedra Herrada butterfly sanctuary is extremely dusty and the horses kick up a TON of dust. Regardless of whether you are walking or taking a horse, a dust mask is a good idea.

They sell face masks at Piedra Herrada, but if you’d rather be certain of the quality, you can order Anti-Dust Face Masks before your family vacation to Mexico.

Also, be sure to wear real hiking shoes. We wore Keen sports sandals and our feet were incredibly dirty by the time we were done hiking up the butterfly sanctuary.

Viewing Piedra Herrada Monarch Butterflies

At the end of the main butterfly sanctuary hiking trail we entered a series of smaller, tighter pathways into the trees.

It wasn’t long before we started to see a lot of Monarch butterflies, then more, then more and more until suddenly they were just everywhere. It’s hard to guess, but there had to be hundreds of thousands of Monarch butterflies in the area.

Everywhere you look at the Piedra Herrada butterfly sanctuary, you see Monarch butterflies. It’s an absolutely incredible sight!

We could have stayed there watching butterflies for a very, very long time, but they have a 15 minute limit for groups to be in the butterfly area. Our Piedra Herrada guide let us stay around 45 minutes though, which we are grateful for.

Interested in learning more about this incredible butterfly migration? You can read about the spring migration of the monarchs here and more about how monarchs migrate here.

Best Time to see Monarch Butterflies in Mexico

The annual butterfly migration to Mexico is seasonal and the best time to see monarch butterflies in Mexico is November to March.

When in Mexico, the butterflies cling together on the sides of the trees when it’s cloudy or cool, which makes it much less interesting.

It’s best to visit a Valle de Bravo butterfly sanctuary is when it’s hot and sunny out, like it was for our visit (81F / 27C), as that’s when the magic happens. The Monarch butterflies leave the trees and fly through the forest in such massive numbers, you won’t believe your eyes.

Tip: If the Monarch butterflies are flying, be sure to take some slow-motion video of them. The resulting footage is amazing!

Piedra Herrada Butterfly Sanctuary Facilities

There are simple, but good facilities at the bottom. There is bottled water and snacks for sale, as well as a toilet to use.

Piedra Herrada Butterfly Sanctuary Tours

We were fortunate enough to easily visit the Piedra Herrada butterfly sanctuary from nearby Valle de Bravo. If you can’t make it to Valle de Bravo, you can still easily enjoy one of the Monarch Butterfly Day Tours from Mexico City

If you are really interested in the Monarch butterfly migration, you can join a 7 Day-Monarch Butterfly Ecofriendly Tour from Mexico City.

Day 3 – Hiking La Torre in Valle de Bravo

Due to the surrounding hills and abundant natural beauty, Valle de Bravo is a very popular spot for paragliding.

At any given moment, you can look up and see several paragliders floating gracefully in the sky above Valle de Bravo. The paragliders take off from a launching pad high up on La Torre mountain south-east of town, and we thought it’d be a fun idea to hike up there for the view!

La Torre Mountain Hike Trailhead

We really enjoyed our 45 minute walk through Valle de Bravo to the La Torre trailhead. The first part was through a charming non-touristy commercial area, then we transitioned to residential streets along Lake Avandaro where we got to see first-hand some of the beautiful multi-million dollar homes of the Mexican upper class.

Finding the La Torre trailhead wasn’t easy, but thankfully a nearby shopkeeper gave us proper directions. If you are walking or taking a cab, navigate towards this spot.

Continue walking uphill past the orange resort until the cobblestone ends. You will then have a choice of three La Torre hiking trails – it took us three tries to pick the right trail, but ultimately we got it right…  take the middle one.  

Hiking to the La Torre Paragliding Launch Pad

You will encounter a spot along the road with two Private Property signs on either side of the road. They are positioned such that it looks like you cannot pass.

At this point, we felt defeated and turned back, but thankfully we met up with a Valle de Bravo local who was also hiking La Torre. He said the signs did not apply to the hiking trail and invited us to join him on his walk to the summit.

He was a very kind man who spoke good English, so we were able to have a nice conversation along the way.

The La Torre hike was amazing. The hiking trail is 2 miles (3km) long and gets a bit steep in spots, but it’s not too bad.

We picked up our kids a few times as they were being a bit slow and we didn’t want to hold up our new friend. We felt that they’d have been able to hike to the top of La Torre on their own if we hadn’t had this extra time pressure.

The La Torre hiking trail leads hikers through a beautiful pine forest, which wasn’t very thick, so we were treated to amazing vistas of Lake Avandaro below.

We reached the top of La Torre safe and sound and thanked our new Valle de Bravo friend profusely. We are so lucky to have bumped into him at that precise moment; we didn’t see another soul on the La Torre hiking trail all day. He really saved our whole day!

The Views from the La Torre Hike

The views from the La Torre paragliding launching platform are breathtaking. The views of Valle de Bravo, Lake Avandaro and towering mountains all around are incredible.

We were very nervous having our kids on the La Torre parasailing launching pad as it had a steep drop-off, but there was a safer viewing area off to the side where we went to eat our lunch.

We were lucky to have a group of people up there taking off for their Valle de Bravo paraglider flights, so we got to watch them take-off.

The hike up La Torre was one of our favorite things to do in Valle de Bravo with kids. It was a great way to spend a day in nature in such a beautiful location. If you enjoy hiking to viewpoints, we’d highly recommend the La Torre hike in Valle de Bravo!

Try paragliding in Valle de Bravo

Day 4 – Stand-up Paddleboarding in Valle de Bravo

Today we went stand-up paddleboarding with our kids on Lake Avandaro. You can rent SUPs in Valle de Bravo from vendors down by the waterfront plaza, but we found a guy offering SUP lake tours, so we thought we’d give him a try.

We met our stand-up paddleboarding guide at 10am down at a waterfront park which ironically is where the Valle de Bravo paragliders land. It’s a small patch of grass near the water, but it’s only one of five public access points to the lake. The rest of the land around Lake Avandaro is owned by wealthy Valle de Bravo lakefront homeowners.

Our guide Arturo was great with the kids; he didn’t charge anything for them and he even had two small lifejackets for them. He had no issues with the kids just hanging out on the front of our stand-up paddleboards.

For 90 minutes our Valle de Bravo SUP guide took us around the southern part of Lake Avandaro. We stopped several times near some scenic waterfalls feeding into the lake.

Even the multi-million dollar homes around Lake Avandaro were fun to look as they are beautifully maintained with many trees and gardens.

The water was so calm and glasslike during our Valle de Bravo stand-up paddleboarding tour. Our guide said that the mornings are always best for SUP as the wind starts to pick up in the afternoons.

There was supposed to be a swimming element to the SUP tour, but to be honest, Lake Avandaro had a thin layer of green algae on the top, so we elected to skip that part.

Our guide said the algae was result of water being diverted from another lake into this one to prop up the levels, as Lake Avandaro supplies 20% of Mexico City’s drinking water.

Day 5 – Hiking Mirador La Peña in Valle de Bravo

We enjoyed our first Valle de Bravo hike so much that we wanted to hike to another viewpoint to soak in more of the amazing scenery. The most popular hike in Valle de Bravo is to Mirador La Peña.

We have an entire post full of all our best tips for hiking with kids and this one with all the best hiking gear for kids.

Mirador La Pena Hike Trailhead

As with our previous Valle de Bravo hike, we decided to walk from our apartment rental to the Mirador La Pena trailhead. This time we walked through a typical middle-class Valle de Bravo neighborhood, which was fun to see how the normal people live (vs the ultra-rich along the lakefront).

The walk to the Mirador La Pena trailhead starts to get very steep at this spot, when you start to walk uphill along a quiet residential road. If you are not comfortable with steep inclines, it might make sense to take a cab to the end of this road to where the trailhead begins.

The walk along this road was interesting as it’s a Valle de Bravo neighborhood in transition. There are a few high-end view properties on this road, but they are side-by-side with modest homes.

The Mirador La Peña trailhead begins here.

Hiking Mirador La Pena with Kids

Once you leave the road and begin the Mirador La Pena hike, the trail becomes super-fun for the kids. There are small, climbable rocks all along the sides of the pathways which our kids went nuts over. It seemed like they wanted to climb up and over every one of them.

We weren’t in a hurry and the kids were having so much fun, that we pretty much let them as long as it was safe. The Mirador La Pena trail itself is still pretty steep, but it’s not that long of a walk to the summit.

Along the way, there are many amazing viewpoints of the Lake Avandaro below, each better than the last. Near the top the kids discovered a small passageway into a small “cave”, which they thought was the greatest thing ever.

Once at the top of Mirador La Pena, the views of Lake Avandaro and surrounding Valle de Bravo area are breathtaking. Even the unfortunate layer of algae was a beautiful, glowing bright green in the bright Mexican sun.

Be careful with your kids as there are no safety rails up top and some of the drop-offs are pretty scary. There’s plenty of room at the top of Mirador La Pena for everyone to enjoy the views away from the edges.

Where to Eat in Valle de Bravo with Kids

Given Valle de Bravo is a weekend getaway for Mexico City’s elite, it’s no surprise there are great dining options. Traveling with small kids means that we tend to eat take-away or at simple places with kid-friendly menu options.

Here are the Valle de Bravo restaurants that we loved during our visit:

The Valle de Bravo produce market: In recent years we have noticed a big improvement in the quality of the fruit we get in Canada over the winter, and much of it comes from Mexico.

After a week of hardly seeing any produce in Mexico City, we were overjoyed to see the large quantities of fruits and veggies on display at the Valle de Bravo market.

We bought so many avocados, blackberries, guava fruit, mangoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots etc. at this market. The produce was great quality and very reasonably priced.

Empanaderia: We found this little hole-in-the-wall on the way back from stand-up paddleboarding and it was our favorite restaurant in Valle de Bravo.

Empanaderia is a few blocks outside the tourist zone and is a real treasure. We tried a wide variety of the sweet and savory empanadas on offer and loved each one. Empanadas are an easy, non-threatening Mexican food for kids – our kids devoured theirs!

Mi Lupita: There are many take-away vendors in Valle de Bravo who have large barbeques cooking mouth-watering rotisserie chickens. Mi Lupita looked especially good so we gave them a try.

The rotisserie chicken was so juicy and flavorful (not spicy at all) that we came back a second time. This time we got chicken and BBQ pork ribs, which were also amazing.

Mi Lupita is a great option for kids who are need an alternative to Mexican food.

Taco Alley: There’s an alleyway in the pedestrian-only part of Valle de Bravo which has back-to-back taco stands the whole way. There must be 6-7 different taco stands, each with their stools filled with hungry visitors.

We ordered take-away tacos a few times from different stands. We especially enjoyed the Tacos al Pastor and Arrachera Tacos.

Ice cream: This place isn’t in Google Maps, but the ice cream at this parlor opposite the church in the main town square was amazing! We highly recommend the Fresa con Queso, which had fresh strawberries and what appeared to be chunks of cream cheese. Yum!

If you want a simple lunch, you can’t go wrong with stopping at a small tortas stand in Valle de Bravo. They make one amazing sandwich!

Where to Stay in Valle de Bravo

When looking for a place to stay in Valle de Bravo, you have two main areas to choose from:

• The main tourist area of Valle de Bravo is pretty small. If you’d like to stay in the middle of the action, try to stay within 1-2 blocks of the main town square.  
  
  
• If you have a car or don’t mind a hilly walk to and from town, there are also many great places with amazing views in the hills around town.

There are no major hotels chains in Valle de Bravo, but you can still find a good selection of family-friendly Valle de Bravo hotels in all price ranges.

We stayed at a 3-bedroom apartment rental in central Valle de Bravo. Our hosts were very friendly and helpful. We really liked it, but the taxi noise was a little much at times.

There is also a good selection of kid-friendly vacation rentals on Airbnb and VRBO. Find a great one for your vacation with our best tips on finding a family-friendly Airbnb.

Summary – Valle De Bravo with Kids

We had a great time in Valle de Bravo with our kids and we very happy it was a big part of our family vacation to Mexico. Valle de Bravo’s laid-back atmosphere and pedestrian only streets seemed a million miles away from the craziness of Mexico City.

We love outdoor things to do and Valle de Bravo delivered big time. The atmosphere in Valle de Bravo is just so happy, we really enjoyed every minute of our stay.

I think one of the reasons we liked Valle de Bravo so much is that we were here on holiday with Mexican people, instead of around other Mexicans who are just working at the resort.

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