Saltillo y Matehuala

Greetings from the central Mexican Altiplano!
Hoy llegamos a los 2,500 metros de altura. Despues de salir de Saltillo y viajar por 6 horas llegamos a un pueblo llamado Matehuala. Estamos acampando en el parking de un hotel que se llama “Las Palmas,” que tiene piscina para los muchachos. En el camino hoy habia un monton de remolinos y con las montanias atras era un imagen muy escalofriante. Teniendo en cuenta todo lo que manejamos, este viaje fue tranquilo. Igual, nos quedamos asombrados con las montanias. A veces teniamos que llevar la camioneta en segunda y subiamos despacito a 30 km por hora en medio de la Sierra Madre. Ahora de noche, despues de comer una buena ensalada de frute con jicama, ananas, melon, con chili y jugo de lima, fuimos a jugar un partidito de min-golf. Maniana vamos a ir de excursion a un pueblito a 3,000 metros de altura llamado Real de Catorce. Despues les contamos….
After driving through some serious mountains today (we at one point reached some 2,500 metres!) we have reached the town of Matehuala. We left our trailer park in Saltillo just before noon, and drove a bit through the centre of town to see the historic cathedral and the narrow, colourful streets with crazy traffic. It took us a lot longer than we thought to get here, as of course the distances look shorter on a map, especially when you aren’t accounting for the mountains! Our little beastie just chug-chug-chugged along, and we made it with no trouble (except that we had to drop down to second gear sometimes on the highway!). We got a bit suspicious when we noticed that there were piles and piles of broken glass on the side of the road at regular intervals, which seemed to coincide with an inordinate number of tire replacing businesses…hmmmm. It was truly a breathtaking ride, and we couldn’t believe how high up we were. Luckily there were a bunch of strange mini-tornado dust swirl things to keep Mateo occupied (see photo). We are a little bit lower here, at just 1,500 metres, but in this town we can see the mountains all around us. After trying our luck at the “Oasis” hotel (which has a small paved area for trailers, right beside the guy with the really big machine gun) we found one called “Las Palmas,” which is a hotel/trailer/restaurant complex which makes us think of Las Vegas or something and is perfect for us. It is another trailer park(ing) lot, but at least we have it basically to ourselves and the bathrooms are nice. They also have a pool (freezing, according to the boys, who already went for a swim) and mini golf, which was a complete riot (now Mateo is hooked). Tonight we had a beautiful fruit salad, with pineapple, papaya, jicama, and watermelon, sprinkled with chili powder and lime - yum!
Tomorrow we will take a bus in to Real de Catorce, and we will keep y'all posted.