With May 1st off for Labor Day and May 5th off for 5 de Mayo, I had a nice 5 day weekend for a lot of time on buses. I left Wednesday afternoon on a 12 hour bus trip to Ciudad Valles, San Luis Potosi, which turned out to be fairly informative since I passed through one of the watersheds I have been doing a lot of paperwork for and attending a lot of meetings about, however, after getting stuck on the road for 1.5 hours after a truck overturned on a curve on the side of one of the mountain, I was ready to leave the watershed. Thursday morning we went to a town called Tamasopo, about 1.5 hrs west of Ciudad Valles. This town is known for two different sets of waterfalls, one is the Cascadas (waterfalls) de Tamasopo (2km away) and the other is called Puente de Dios (God’s bridge) (3km). Normally distances aren’t that important, however, we walked about 10 km on Thursday to get to the two waterfalls, between them, and back to town. This is usually a perfectly normal distance, however, this area of Mexico is one of the hottest in the country and Thursday temps almost reached about 50ºC ( 120ºF) with about 80% humidity and walking along dirt roads provides little shade. Luckily the waterfalls are all swimable and extremely refreshing. (Side note here, it is said that it gets so hot in Valles that birds have been known to drop from the sky while flying after suffering heat induced cardiac arrest).
We went to Puente de Dios first. There is a huge pool cut into the rocks that has several waterfalls pouring into it and a river flowing through it. Just downstream of that is the puente, or bridge, formed by a huge rock structure. From the top it just looks like a rocky bridge, but if you enter it from below, you can swim up the river and swim into the cave that has formed under the natural rock bridge. The water is an unbelievable bright crystal clear blue, and above your head is a cave with really cool rock structures and birds. From there you can swim through a small opening into the bigger pool with the waterfalls. No pictures of the cave, but you can see the large pool with the waterfall from these pictures.
Next, we went to las Cascadas de Tamasopo. This place has been developed a lot more than Puente de Dios, and because of the holiday weekend, it was pretty packed with people. There are 3 large waterfalls here that flow down into the river as well as a series of small cascades and pools along the river. Again the water is crystal clear.
Friday was a slow day hanging around Valles, everything seems to move a little slower when it’s over 110º. Saturday we headed to the state of Tamaulipas to the natural reserve called El Cielo. El Cielo is actually only about 225 miles south of the border, sometimes I forget how close we really are to the US. This reserve is mainly known for its cloud forest sections located in the higher mountainous areas, however with limited time (even more limited when you don’t have a vehicle) we focused on the lower sections of the reserve and more good swimming spots. After camping Saturday night, Sunday we headed down the road in search of the Rio Florida. 10km later we came to the turn off to the river and were lucky enough to be picked up by ½ of a soccer team headed into the town nearest to the river for their Sunday soccer game. La Florida, is another gorgeous river with brilliant water and shaded by big cypress trees. The one sad thing in seeing all these beautiful rivers, is that even while you’re swimming and enjoying them and they appear to be clean, you can’t help by notice the whiffs of the sewage smell that still emanate from them.
The trip back to Mante and then finally Cuidad Valles turned out to be a little longer than initially anticipated. We made it back to the main road and the bus stop after our swim in the river. After waiting for a long time and talking to a guy who had been waiting an equally long time, it was determined that the buses for whatever reason were not running on a normal schedule, if at all, so we started walking out to the main highway to try and catch a de paso bus coming down from the border or Ciudad Victoria. Fortunately (and I say this because again it was probably over 100º, a family offered us a ride to the main highway and it ended up that they were going all the way to Mante as well, so we got a ride all the way to the bus station which was pretty amazing.
Monday, 5 de Mayo, was spent in Tampico, the southern most city in the state of Tamaulipas, on the Gulf of Mexico. Puebla is actually the place to be for 5 de Mayo (where the battle was fought), but unlike the drinking festivities that take place in the US, 5 de Mayo celebration in Mexico are mainly about the military. In Puebla there is a huge military parade down Blvd 5 de Mayo complete with marching bands, soldiers, and tanks. It appears to be quite big, but I watched it on tv from a seafood stand in Tampico. Tampico is a really cool city that is pretty much architecturally unlike any other place in Mexico. Most of the city was build during the early 1900’s and resembles New Orleans because of the French influence in the architecture and the buildings commissioned by Porfirio Díaz.
Catching a 9pm overnight bus back to Puebla, I arrived the following morning at 6:30am, just in time to catch a 7am bus down to the town of Tehuacan in the southern part of the state of Puebla where I had a meeting about a possible watershed management project in a natural reserve that is shared between the states of Puebla and Oaxaca.
