Real de Catorce

This morning we woke up to a beautiful mountain sunrise and a nice café con leche. Around noon we took a taxi into the centre of town to catch the local bus into an old mining town called Real de Catorce. The bus ride up the mountains on narrow, cobbled roads was truly awe-inspiring, if not harrowing (the ride down was even scarier – thank goodness for hydraulic brakes!) at a height of around 2,700 metres. In order to get into the town proper, you have to drive through a 2 km long tunnel right through the mountain, which is dark, bumpy and twisty (and really fun). There is a guard positioned at either end in order to direct traffic, because the tunnel is only wide enough for one lane at a time. The European history of the town dates back to the 1630s, but in 1773 the Spanish discovered silver there, and it quickly became one of the largest silver mining towns in Mexico with a very large population. Now the main source of income is tourism, and I can see why: it is a spectacular place and has been beautifully maintained. The people that live there (the population is 2,500 and apparently growing all the time) are really friendly and take great care to keep all the buildings in the same style, so that (aside from the vehicles driving around) it looks and feels like you have stepped back in time. Luckily we were there during the down season, because apparently thousands of people flock to the town during the holidays, as it is a site of pilgrimage both for Catholics (the patron saint of the parish of the Immaculate Conception – built in 1817 - is St. Francis of Asis) and for the Huichol people, who come all the way from the states of Jalisco, Durango, Zacatecas and Nayarit to visit their ancestral lands and participate in a peyote ceremony in the sacred valley. I guess it is the same old story - Indigenous people forced to "relocate" so the invaders/colonizers can exploit the resources...We had wanted to come here ever since we heard about it when we were in Nayarit, the first time we were in Mexico many years ago, before the kids were even born. We explored the parish a bit and even bought ourselves a little relic of the Virgen de Guadalupe to help protect us on our travels :-)
We took about a gazillion photos, of which we can only post a few, but they speak for themselves. After trekking up and down (literally!) the streets, we stopped for a bite at a small place and had gorditas filled with cheese and nopal (cactus), chiles poblanos stuffed with cheese, rice, beans and tortillas. The kids tried a drink called aguamiel de maguey, which comes from a local plant and it actually ended up tasting pretty good. Mateo had a bit of an incident while we were at the top of the town taking pictures: he had been fascinated by the little prickly pears on the cacti for a while, and saw one lying on the ground and couldn’t resist picking it up. Alas, he got many little spines all over one of his hands and couldn’t get them out. A local woman told us that the best way is to rub chewing gum (already chewed!) all over his hands. So, Mateo got a wad of gum and an excuse to play with it in his hands….
Tomorrow we are headed southeast, to some waterfalls between San Luis Potosi and Tampico on the gulf coast that Quique and Suzanne went to last time they were here. We have decided to skip San Luis Potosi itself, as we don’t really feel like dealing with any more big cities for a while; besides, we don’t want to go any further west for now. It is really hard to resist following the advice of other people that we meet, to go here or there, but those adventures will have to wait until the next trip. We will keep you posted as best we can, but it might be a couple of days again (hopefully no one will go into withdrawal – ha ha!)

Ayer fuimos a Real de Catorce. Un pueblito que queda a una hora y media de aca. Decidimos ir en bus, y darle un respiro a la combi, y hacer algo un poco diferente. Despues de tomarnos un rico cafecito, y preparar todo, salimos rumbo a las montanias. El viaje fue impresionante, Ariel paso todo el tiempo sacando fotos y yo (Gustavo) cerrando los ojos para no mirar la poca distancia que teniamos con la banquina…..
Antes de llegar a Real, tuvimos que cambiar de bus y subirnos a uno mas chico y en este entramos en un tunel en la montania de unos 2 kilometros de largo, en el cual solo pasa un vehiculo. Cuando llegamos el GPS marcaba 2700 metros de altura! Quedamos alucinados con el lugar, las vistas, su arquitectura colonial y su gente, y salimos a recorrer sus calles. Quien sabe desde cuando hubo habitantes en este lugar, pero si se sabe que desde principios de 1600 llegaron los espanioles y un siglo despues ya estaban explotando minas de plata.
Pasamos mucho tiempo simplemente mirando y mirando las montanias. Tambien a la distancia se podian ver un par de pueblitos fantasmas. Fue ahí cuando a Mateo se le ocurrio agarrar una fruta roja ( no se cual el nombre) de un cactus. Al pobre se le llenaron las manos de unas espinas chiquititas, y y todavia las tiene. Una seniora nos dijo que la mejor forma de sacarlo con chicle, despues de masticarlo un rato. Asi que despues de comer chicle por un rato fuimos a comer unas gorditas y tacos de queso, nopales, chiles y frijoles, y papas. Tambien comimos poblanos rellenos, y por supuesto unas cervecitas bien frias. Regresamos al camping a las 7 de la tarde y despues de refrescarnos con una buena ducha caliente, comimos algo livianito y nos fuimos a dormir. Hoy salimos nuevamente hacia el sur, esta vez buscando unas cascadas en Tomasopo, un lugar entre San Luis Potosi, y Tampico.

sin querer, se nos cayo la camara arriba de un peyote, y este es el resultado! The camera accidentally fell into some peyote, and this is the result!

vista panoramica de Real de Catorce