Week #21: Huasteca Potosina

Jiminy Cricket, it has been hot the last week or so here in Mexico! Daily highs have been in the triple digits the last couple days so we've been doing a lot of swimming and also booked an AirBnB with a/c for a couple nights to escape the heat. 

Since leaving Veracruz, we've left the coffee region behind and are now in the heart of the sugar cane region. At first we thought it was bamboo on all of the trucks rumbling by us but then we realized that they were all carrying sugar cane. There's sugar cane growing in most of the fields that we pass and we've also seen a couple sugar cane processing plants (see photo below). They really pack the sugar cane quite high on the trucks and they do some serious damage to the local road network so we've had so drive pretty slowly and cautiously around here. Road maintenance appears to be a local volunteer activity as we often see guys patching pot holes on the road and they collect donations in old yogurt containers from passing traffic for their efforts.    

We started the week in Xilitla which is a pueblo magico and is where Sir Edward James built his Jardin de Las Pozas. The gardens were built over more than three decades from 1949 to 1984 when he died. The gardens are in a subtropical rain forest of the Sierra Gorda moutains and were built in the surrealist style by hundreds of Mexican workers to create Edward James's vision. He apparently paid them seven times the going wage but they still thought he was crazy and called him the Gringo Loco (see photos below and you'll probable agree!). In the nearly 40 years since his death, the gardens have fallen into disrepair but are still a sight to see. The current custodians of the gardens provide tours of the gardens and maintain them to be safe but are more of less allowing the rain forest to reclaim all of the structures as time passes.    

Amazon is not nearly what it is in the US in Mexico because most things are already available at your doorstep. I've written in previous posts about gas trucks, water trucks and recycling trucks passing through the neighborhoods looking to service the residents. Without even going anywhere, it's incredible what you can get from vendors passing through the neighborhood. We've bought tortillas, fruit (see the photo of the three pineapples we bought for $2.50), vegetables, ice cream, tostadas and bread without even setting foot in a store. It may be one of the coolest things about Mexican life! 

If you're a fan of swimming in turquoise rivers and ogling at one spectacular waterfall after another, then you should definitely visit the Huasteca Potosina as it is chock full of these water wonderlands. The Huasteca is in the state of San Luis Potosi and while Mexican tourists love to come here on vacation, foreign tourists are few and far between. Our favorite spot was the Puente de Dios which is a semi-cenote in which you can swim through a cave with bats overhead, marvel at the stalactites and stalagmites and jump off cliffs into the sparkling turquoise waters below. It's truly a magical spot aptly named as the Bridge of God. We've been very grateful to visit the Huasteca during this heat wave as there's always a swimming hole just around the corner wherever you are. See photos below for some highlights from the Huasteca.