This past weekend I finally made it to Real de Catorce, a small, old mining town in the middle of the desert in the state of San Luis Potosi (about 11.5 hours from Puebla). The town was abandoned in the past, but is making a come back as a tourist destination and has been re-settled by Italians. We went there via Matehuala which means you have to enter through the Ogarrio Tunnel. The bus doesn’t actually fit in the tunnel, so you take some bus to the entrance of the tunnel and then switch over to a smaller bus to get through.
The main church in town is the church of San Francisco and inside is one of the best collections of retables, which are pictoral representations giving thanks for various things like the birth of a child or overcoming an illness.
That day we wandered up to the “Pueblo Fantasmo” which is an old abandoned mining site about 4km outside of town up in the hills. In addition to being able to climb all over old mining buildings and look down mine shafts, there were great views of Real.
The view from the terrace of our hotel the next morning….
We decided to just follow a road that headed out of town on Sunday and see what could be found. We first found a dog, a blonde German Shepard, that decided to accompany us for the rest of the morning and all the way back into Real later. We found 2 more abandoned mines with open access to parts of their tunnels. The access points to the mine shafts were also easily accessible, but in a kinda scary way. It took about 10 seconds for a thrown rock to hit the bottom of the dark shaft.
Who knows.....
Huichol crafts...
Then we tried a second visit to the church of the virgin Guadalupe and attached cemetery and luckily it was open this time.
On the way back to Puebla, we stayed at another vol’s house in San Luis Potosi. Her newly adopted dog had recently had 7 puppies…..
