Explore The Bajío
Matehuala is the only major town along the highway that links Saltillo, around 260km to the north, and San Luis Potosí, around 200km south. Between the two runs the relatively fast Hwy-57, so there’s little need to stop here except to use it as a staging post for the alluring former mining town of Real de Catorce.
Read More-
Real de Catorce and around
Real de Catorce and around
Real de Catorce (or “Villa Real de Nuestra Señora de la Concepción de Guadalupe de los Alamos de los Catorce”, to give it its full title), west of Matehuala, is an extraordinary place. Mines were founded in the surrounding hills in 1772, and at the height of its silver production in 1898 the town had 40,000 inhabitants. But by the turn of the twentieth century mining operations had slowed, and in 1905 they ceased entirely, leaving the population to drop to virtually zero over the next fifty-odd years. For a period, a few hundred inhabitants hung on in an enclave at the centre, surrounded by derelict, roofless mansions and, further out, crumbling foundations and the odd segment of wall. Legend has it that Real was “discovered” in the 1970s by an Italian hippie searching for peyote (which perhaps explains the town’s curious Italian connection), and particularly since the mid-1990s, an influx of artists, artesanía vendors, wealthy Mexicans and a few foreigners has given the town impetus to begin rebuilding. The centre has been restored and reoccupied to the extent that the “ghost-town” tag is not entirely appropriate, though Real de Catorce certainly retains an air of desolation, especially in the outskirts; the occasional pick-up shoulders its way through the narrow cobbled streets, but most of the traffic is horses and donkeys. There’s not much in the way of sights to visit: simply wandering around, kicking up the dust and climbing into the hills are big and worthwhile pastimes here.
-
Peyote: food for the Huichol soul
Peyote: food for the Huichol soul
The Wirikuta, the flat semi-desert at the foot of the Sierra Madre Occidental near Real de Catorce (and Wadley), was a rich source of peyote long before the Spanish Conquest. The Huichol people traditionally make a month-long, four-hundred-kilometre annual pilgrimage here (now often shortened by truck or car) from their homelands in northeastern Nayarit to gather the precious hallucinogenic cactus, which they regard as essential food for the soul. After the peyote “buttons” are collected, many are dried and taken away for later use, but some are carried fresh to their sacred site, Cerro Quemada (Burnt Hill), near Real de Catorce, for ceremonies.
Tales of achieving higher consciousness under the influence of peyote have long drawn foreigners, many of them converts of the books of Carlos Casteneda. Indeed, Real de Catorce only made it onto the tourist itinerary after it became a waystation on the hippy-druggy trail in the 1970s. New Agers continue to visit, but the hills round about have been picked clean and there are fears that over-harvesting may threaten the continued Huichol tradition.
