Xilitla

Xilitla

On this Semana Santa (holy/major week), Regina and I took a little vacation: We went ~400Km North, to the magical Xilitla, in the Eastern part of San Luis Potosí state. To get there, we went by the Sierra Gorda de Querétaro route: A beautiful but quite hard to drive road, crossing desert, forest and jungle through a very steep mountain ridge. What does hard to drive mean? It means that for ~200Km we had a speed average of 40-50Km/h. The road is in very good conditions, and traffic was quite light. And although our plans were to come back via the other ridge road (crossing Hidalgo state instead of Querétaro), we were persuaded to go the long way instead: We came back via San Luis Potosí city, making ~700Km instead of ~400, but –I'll concede– it was a much easier drive.

But although I take the road as an important part of the vacation, and although it was a very quick vacation, what is it we went to see there? Xilitla is a town at the beginning of the huasteca potosina region, with really exuberant vegetation, that captured Sir Edward James' heart back in the 1940s. Sir Edward, a noble Englishman, was good friends with several surrealist artists, and became one himself. After moving to Xilitla and buying an impressive chunk of jungle, in the 1960s he started building a surrealist garden in the middle of the jungle, which he continued to work on until his death, in 1984. We took some pictures, but of course, they pay very little tribute to the magic and beauty of the place.

And going to the huasteca means going to places of nature, of many crystaline rivers. Yes, only three days (two of them spent getting there and back) are far too little to enjoy it. But even so, we went to the birth of river Huichihuayán (~45 minutes North of Xilitla) and to the Los Micos waterfalls (~20 minutes West of Ciudad Valles). Very nice places to visit, among so many others. We should go back to the huasteca soon!

I uploaded many of the pictures here. They will not be syndicated on the planets that follow my blog on RSS (or for individuals following RSS, FWIW), but you will find them following the relevant links.

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