Ecotourism and adventure travel are being heavily promoted these days in the Huasteca Potosina. Ecotourism appeals to those who enjoy simply relaxing while gazing at beautiful scenery. Adventure travelers want to become part of the landscape, rafting down raging rivers or rappelling over towering cliffs and hoping to return home with no bones broken. They enjoy going to extremes.
The Huasteca region overflows with extremes. People are inclined to think of San Luis Potosi as a flat desert state, but eight rivers cut through lush green Huasteca jungles, churning up white water and plunging over magnificent cascades. Forgotten now, this once was the most heavily-traveled part of Mexico and Ciudad Valles an overnight stopping point along the sole road leading to the border. The main street is still called the Mexico-Laredo Boulevard, although a much faster route to Laredo opened decades ago.
The old Pan American Highway, Route 85, remains beautiful, but is no speedway. You twist and turn through the mountains, racing along no faster than the slowest truck. This gives those not in a hurry time to enjoy the verdant soaring crags of the Eastern Sierra Madre. Route 85 is a two lane highway except for the one-lane bridges. The drive from Mexico City to Ciudad Valles takes about seven hours unless you stop along the way.
Youth in search of adventure will go by bus, leaving at 10 p.m. and arriving just after dawn, ready to paddle a kayak, pedal a mountain bike, mount a horse or try something more extreme. Ecotourists prefer savoring the scenery along the route, arriving at dusk, in time for a pleasant dinner and a good nights sleep. Food, to be sure, is prepared by cooks, not chefs and the ancient hotels date back to when the Pan American Highway was a busy thoroughfare.
With only 600 rooms in the region, booking a reservation in advance is a wise precaution. Anyone seeking the thrills of adventure travel certainly should make arrangements before leaving. Finding out who organizes rappel or river rafting expeditions can be an adventure in itself. I was told to check the Internet, but found little help there. Finally I made a special trip to the Sectur information office on Presidente Mazaryk where all I was given were some numbers to call.
Everything between Pachuca and Valles apparently is La Huasteca. La Huasteca, I am told, is the Aztec term for The Boondocks. The original Huastec inhabitants linger on, calumniated by the descendents of the Aztecs who conquered them centuries ago.
Descendants of the Conquistadors calumniate them both.
Archaeologists say this was the ancient border country where Meso-America began. Or ended. The ceremonial center at El Consuelo, east of Valles on the Moctezuma River, apparently was built by Mayas or people who learned from the Mayas. An hour beyond lies Tampuxeque, southern frontier of the Hohokams, ancients known in the United States as the Mound-Builders. Tampuxeque may date back some 2,000 years.
La Huasteca is fabled as a land of necromancy, a country of secluded hamlets where the hexed hie for cleansing, where love potions are sold and where warlocks may be hired for the casting of vengeful spells.
In this setting, a most eccentric Englishman, Edward James -- who died only two decades ago -- built Las Pozas, a surrealistic monument beyond the coffee plantations and banana trees, deep amid ferns and vines swirling up towering hardwoods in a mist-shrouded tropical forest near Xilitla. The venue is worthy of Dracula. Amid 80 acres of greenery, concrete stalks of bamboo sway in the breeze. Larger-than-life cement vipers, slimy with green mildew, rear up by an overgrown trail. A pair of giant hands reaches out of the earth. A grand staircase stands alone, leading upward, into the void.
Visit El Consuelo, stop by at Las Pozas and hurry to El Sotano de la Golondrinas at dusk. What appear to be scores of thousands of tiny birds gather in the sky to hurl themselves into a minute hole leading into one of the deepest caves on earth. This is where they spend the night. The sight defies description. Some things simply must be experienced in person.
Caves and caverns apparently burrow everywhere beneath the Huasteca Potosina, but cave exploration is one form of adventure travel not being promoted at the moment. It can be harmful to the environment.
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