Xilitla, and Las Pozas gardens

For several years, since I read a book about northern Veracruz and eastern San Luis Potosi states, I've had a hankering to see this reportedly fantastic garden. It's in a town that is not on my map, but a google search turns up the remote location.  We've traveled to some pretty remote places in Mexico, but this one has us scratching our heads.  So, with a general idea, we travel to Tuxpan from the Costa Emeralda and Nautla.  That means standing by the road, to wait for a second class bus to a near-by town, then finding the bus station and traveling further north.  We spend a night in the port city of Tuxpan.  The river is wide, and it's too smelly to enjoy.  There are several small river taxis running back and forth across the river from a small village to downtown Tuxpan.  The city is trying, however, to make a good impression.

One night in Tuxpan is enough.  We wanted to avoid Tampico, after our friend Rafael told us about the drug gangs there, but there is no way to get to Xilitla from here without going to Tampico.  The drug gangs aren't looking to harm a couple of gringo tourists, but it doesn't seem like a pleasant place.  We have very comfortable seats on our favorite bus line, ADO, a first-class line. Watching our progress on my GPS is part of our entertainment, and we notice the driver is taking back roads to Tampico, stopping a couple of times to ask for directions!  Suddenly, the road disappears, a river is rushing across the road.  The water flow has washed away part of the pavement, and there is a drop-off on the down-current side.  I put my shoes on quickly, in anticipation of getting off this bus.  The conductor gets off the bus, standing in shin-deep water, and directs the driver through the flow, and on the up-side of the river flowing across the road.  Most folks on the bus don't seem to take any notice, but I'm terrified of washing down the river!

 

Several hours later, we arrive in Tampico, and buy tickets to Ciudad Valles, another 2 hours.  The accent in this part of the country is very different, much "thicker", and while I understand the people I talk to, they have a hard time understanding me!  The bus leaves the busy central of Tampico in less than an hour of our arrival, late in the day.  The road is in bad shape, but the new road is under construction, and it's going to be a nice road.  The driver is considerate, and knows every tope and bump, and drives with confidence after the sun sets.  When we arrive in Ciudad Valles, I find a ratty hotel, and we look for some supper and a beer.  For the past few days, we've spent a lot of time traveling, and it's good to be close to our destination.  From Ciudad Valles, we will travel tomorrow, on a local bus, 2 hours to Xilitla.

Ciudad Valles is a hub in this pretty mountainous area.  There are lots of water falls and beautifual sights close by, according to my research, but I'm heading for Xilitla, and the gardens built by Edward James, a British artist.  He wanted to build a Garden of Eden ,and after a freak cold snap in the mid-1040's killed thousands of orchids, he began designing and building a cement garden of sculptures in the tropical-zone forest that is hard to describe. Fantastical, curious, funky cement  sculptures such as a staircase that leads nowhere, a would-be cinema for the people of Xilitla (never used as that),small houses and workshops, and all sorts of  Audrey-looking (Little Shop of Horrors) giant flowers.  James died in 1984, leaving no provision for maintaining this fantastic place, and it sat neglected for 10 years.  In the early 1990's, the gardens were acquired by a wealthy philanthropist, the State of San Luis Potosi, and the giant cement company, Cemex.  An appropriate group.  They've done a terrific job of renovating and restoring much of the gardens.  Today, Xilitla is a Pueblo Magio, because of the gardens and the incredible natural beauty of the area.  The town is very small, the people are very friendly and warm.  There are several, good-quality hotels here,including the B&B in the house his builder lived in that is as curious as the gardens.  There are several good restaurants in the small town, too.

It was raining and cold, but nothing was going to stop me from seeing those gardens!   It's hard to believe James found this beautiful little valley, with dozens of hidden waterfalls and beautiful vistas.  It's harder to believe this place isn't better publicized, and that the roads from the small village to the gardens aren't paved.  

I write all this detail for those who might want to go.  It is far easier to get to Xilitla from Queretero, where we spent a few days after Xilitla.   But, that's another post!  These photos are for me, but I hope you enjoy them, too!

From Coscomatepec to the beach at Nautla.

In Coscomatepec, we are in the land of sugar cane.  Miles and miles of fields of sugar cane are under cultivation, and all that cane must be cut and hauled to market.  The roads are clogged with huge, slow-moving old trucks, all over-loaded with cane.  Those trucks remind me of my childhood, when daddy would pile the old red dump truck high with baled tobacco and then load the trailer behind also loaded high, and head for the market in Chadborne or Wallace, NC.  Often, he would return with a bit of sugar cane to us to chew, a real treat in those days.  Sugar cane is not grown anymore in southeastern NC.  Around Cosco, there are also fields of bananas and coffee, oranges and intricate networks of chayote vines.  The coffee is  grown underneath the banana trees, making the land more useful.  We're warm and the sun is shining, after several days of cold, rainy weather.

 From Cosco, we head for cosmopolitan Xalapa, a much larger mountain city.  More then 20 years ago we were in Xalapa, and I remember the beautiful Museum of Anthropology and the pretty Parque Juarez, and not much more.  The museum is as awesome as I remember, because of the fine displays, the explanations and the beautiful building housing the immense collection.  Even with all the history under that roof, I could have spent the entire time we had looking at the temporary exhibit of clay work by Alicia Mejorada.  I was enchanted with her dress collections, leaf impressions,  and books of various topics, all made from clay. Xalapa is educated and sophisticated, and funky and hip, all at the same time.  People here take coffee very seriously, and there are multiple coffee shops in every block in centro. The street musicians are playing cool jazz, and complicated guitar tunes.  The teenagers are roller-blading through the park, or break-dancing on big pieces of heavy plastic.  Older men, wearing suits and ties, are talking earnestly to each other on the streets around the government building.  Young, smartly dressed women are walking toddlers along streets of high-end retail shops.  There is a demonstration on the church steps across from the government building, in support of the Ayotinzapa 43.  We find a pleasant restaurant by the lakes serving shrimp and mezcal...the bartender sends me a mezcal, gratis, when he hears us speaking english.  Of course he wanted to practice his english with us!

Xalapa is nice, but we move on after a few days.  I'm looking forward to some beach time!  My maps show a road that runs for about 30 miles along the coast, and Lonely Planet says this is a destination for middle-class Veracruzano families. Sounds like our kind of place. Our hotel is on the ocean, and the sand is black and quiet this time of year.  Friday afternoon, we stand by the side of the road to wait for a colectivo back into the town, looking for a seafood comida.  We get out of the colectivo at Restaurant La Pirata, which someone suggested to us.  It's big, the two mariachi bands are competing for attention from the 6 people eating inside, and the prices are high.  We leave, and walk down the dusty road a bit, stopping to buy some coconut candies from a road-side stand.  There, by the river, is a shack and a fish house, with two tables and some chairs scattered around under the trees, a couple of small boats pulled up on the river bank, sleeping dogs and clucking chickens.  We ask if they're serving shrimp, and sit down when the man says,"Yes!".  We eat a delicious plate piled high with shrimp cooked in garlic (heads still on), hand-made tortillas and a salad.  Our host ran across the road to buy some beers for us from the tiendita, charging us what they charged him.  Later, back at our beach, we walk for a bit just before the sunset.

The beach is pretty and quiet, but the weather is not so warm, so we decide to move on.  Next stop:  the surrealistic gardens of James Edwards, in Xilitla.  We don't know exactly where we're going, but begin heading north, knowing that it will take us a couple of days to get there.

(no photos right now.  My computer is having technical difficulties, and I can't access my photos.  Richard will resolve this when I get home!)

Gifts of Veracruz (and travel notes)

Traveling.  We are no longer in Oaxaca, the city of bright, beautiful and colorful embroideries, really tasty food, the smell of chocolate and the sound of bus horns, settled in an apartment.  The brown, winter landscape of Oaxaca becomes normal in December and January.  I didn't realize how much I missed the green until we began to climb the mountains between Ixtlan and Valle Nacional, heading for Veracruz state.  Suddenly, it felt like spring on the south coast of North Carolina:  rain showers, cool, and green everywhere.  On my List of places to see in the state of Oaxaca, the mountains beyond Ixtlan were close to the top of the list.  We bought tickets on Cuenca bus line from Oaxaca to Tuxtepec, because it went on the impossibly curvy road over the mountains. ADO goes to Tuxtepec,via Puebla. The five-hour trip was relieved by several stops, giving us a chance to get our balance again before negotiating the next section of unbelievable road.  We passed more than a dozen tourist cabin sites, all of which called me to stay for a few days of hiking, even in the cold, foggy, rainy day.  Abruptly, we cleared the mountains, and from Valle Nacional, the road was flat and straight, and the sky blue.  We drove past miles of fruit trees and sugar cane as we peeled off layers of clothes.  By the time we got to Tuxtepec, we were down to a t-shirt again!

A business cross-roads, Tuxtepec feels small and quiet, and sits in the big curve of the Rio Papaloapan.  We stayed two days, enjoying the quiet, after three months of city busy and noise.  Not much to take our attention, other than the barbacoa palapa, and it was nice to begin a "re-set".  The two hour bus ride to Tlacotalpan, another place on my List, turned into only a layover on the way to Veracruz.  It was the weekend of Candelaria, and Tlacotalpan hosts a bigass homecoming of sorts.  Families make day trips from Veracruz city.  If they come from further away, they sleep wherever they can:  in tents pitched everywhere; in their cars; on the sofa of a local who rents any space they have.  No way to stay in this picturesque town.  We sat on the curb by the tiny bus office (no station here), taking turns walking through the crowds, waiting for the next bus to Veracruz.  We might have been the only gringos in town, and were curious to the locals.  This man, from Boca del Rio, sat down and sang for us, then got on a bus and disappeared.

In Veracruz, we found a hotel close to the Malecon and zocalo.  We arrived at 9pm with no reservation, and were led to a tiny room on the third floor.  Because the air conditioner didn't work, and it was surely needed, we were led to a much nicer room for the same price.   Veracruz is grittier, more casual than Oaxaca, with delicious seafood and a big reverence for good coffee. Javier Marin, sculptor from Veracruz, had recently installed giant, bronze heads along the Malecon. It took distance to recognize the shapes, turned sideways and upside down in the constant wind off the Gulf. I loved them.  One afternoon, we caught a local bus to Boca del Rio, the Myrtle Beach of Veracruz, where we had a fabulous meal of grilled octopus, seated at the best table in the palapa, by the water. 


Veracruz is an important city for business and tourism, a good city, but we were looking for quiet, so after a few days, we headed west 2 hours to Cordoba. Some people in Veracruz say the people of Cordoba are snobby, theater-going, high-class people.  We found then very warm and friendly, and saw no signs of high heels!  A really pretty small city.  A cold front was chillin' most of our friends in the north, and had dipped very far south, chilling and bringing rain as far south as Veracruz.  No views of mountains or hiking for these fair-weather gringos! Much coffee, and a little tobacco is grown here.  The tourism office is very eager to show spanish-speaking tourists around, and we learned more about the histoy of the state.  The church across the street from our hotel was almost invisible in the fog before the lights came on.

On the road again, we headed further west, to not-so-sophisticated Orizaba on the river, passing miles of sugar cane and coffee growing underneath the taller banana trees.  The bus negotiated the 5-wagon-trains of sugar cane, hauled by slow moving tractors on the way to the processing plants.  (Not such a good photo, grabbed when the bus slowed for traffic.)

Still cold and rainy in Orizaba, we put on another layer of clothes, thankful for our raincoats and gloves, and hit the streets looking for a glimpse of the highest mountain in Mexico, and the third highest in NA.  On a rainy, cold afternoon, we went into the beer museum (yep, a huge beer manufacturer for more than 100 years) and then the museum of Mexican presidents, and were adopted on the spot by Alan Joseph, a college student working an internship at the museum.  His english is far better than my spanish (even though I'm doing so much better!),  and he spent the rest of the afternoon with us.

Lonely Planet guide book reports that the Iron Building in Orizaba was designed by Gustav Eiffel, which Alan Joseph informed us is not correct.  The beautiful building, bought more than 100 years ago by the city for use as a hotel, was designed by an annonymous designer for the Belguim Iron Works.  When it arrived in Orizaba, in hundreds of cases, the city decided to use it as a city hall, and it functioned as that for about 100 years.  Today, it houses museums and the tourism office, lovingly maintained and used.  The second-largest collection of Diego Rivera paintings, housed in the gorgeous 450 year-old ex-convent across town, were traveling in China.  The teleferico, the cable-car to the top of the mountain which looks over the valley with views of Mount Orizaba on clear days, was closed for repair.  Thankfully, the day we left town, the sun appeared, the teleferico opened, and we enjoyed beautiful views of the volcano from the top of the Cerro del Borrego.

Cold.  It's just cold!  And, the chipichipi, (constant slight drizzle) keeps us out of the parks and other outdoor living areas.  So, we bought beers and returned to the hotel to get warm.

Seems that everyone we met asked if we were going to Cosco.  Being eager to know the area, we bought bus tickets to Cosco.  It's about an hour north Orizaba, a Pueblo Magico, and turned out that getting there was more complicated than we planned, but eventually we found ourselves at the small bus station.  Coscomatepec.  By the time I'd figured out how to pronounce the name, we'd fallen in love with the pretty village.  Coffee, really delicious bread and fruits are grown in this Nautl village that is more about 800 years old. Sunday, looking for a laundry, with an armful of dirty clothes, we met Rafael on the street, with his 2 year old daughter.  He took us into the house of his in-laws, where we were hugged, kissed, fed coffee and roasted meat in hand-made tortillas, and entertained by a stream of cousins and spouses and children coming and going, all being fed.  They were horrified to know that we were paying for a hotel, and insisted we stay with them.

Next visit, and I'd love to return, we will stay with our adopted family.  Rafael, baby daughter, son Renato, wife Maria Antonia, Stuart in the photo.  We spent the day with the family, meeting friends and touring the small town church and tiny museum.  The town is terrifically proud of it's beautiful location, view of Mt. Orizaba, cleanliness, good coffee and friendly people.  We ended the day with antojitos, and a brief cooking lesson from Maria Antonia.  I was sad to leave, and was overwhelmed when Maria Antonia gave me a tortilla cover she embroidered. 

No surprise, we have met many kind, generous, caring people traveling in Veracruz.  I can't help but compare the places we are learning about on this trip to our second home in Oaxaca, where we always meet kind, generous, caring people.  There is a love of good food everywhere!  The artwork in Oaxaca is the finest in the country, by far, but the hearts and souls of the Mexican people are the same, no matter where we go.

Next stop:  Xalapa.