The Magical Mexican Road Trip, Part One
A personal story and itinerary from our road trip through Mexico, April 29-May 13, 2022. Part One: Querétaro and San Luis Potosí.
This article is a little different from what I normally write on Medium. If you can say I ‘normally’ write something on Medium seeing as I’ve been pretty silent for months! But so many people have asked for the itinerary we put together for the trip — and have now trial-tested — that I thought I would make it public.
I am no travel blogger, but I love planning trips. It’s what I do when I’m bored on a Zoom call, or taking a five-minute break between tasks. I plan trips that I have no intention of taking any time soon, scrolling between Airbnbs and scanning cheap flights from the city I’m calling home at that moment to see if any spontaneous deals will pop up. But once a trip is confirmed, this excitement accelerates to a fever pitch. For this road trip, I started saving sites on Google Maps months ahead of time, watching a tour route materialize along the highways north of Mexico City.
I had every intention of updating my planned (read: written in a Google doc) itinerary along the way with my suggestions, learnings, and notes. Instead, I was in such a happy, exhausted buzz most of the time from driving, hiking to waterfalls, and swimming in green lagoons that I had no interest in opening my laptop. All the better. This blog will therefore be my nostalgic reminiscence of the most elaborate trip I’ve planned in the past 8 years (only my post-high school Europe trip probably surpasses this one in complexity).
In summary, this trip took us through over 1,435 km (nearly 900 miles), 5 States (Estado de Mexico, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, Veracruz, and Puebla + Tamaulipas for about 20 minutes), and innumerable unofficial speed bumps (topes).
The full trip summary (to be found across the sections of this article) included:
Part One (this article):
Day One: Tequisquiapán and Bernal
Day Two: Sierra Gorda Mountains and Jalpan de Serra
Day Three: Sótano del Barro
Day Four: Xilitla
Day Five: Cascada El Tamul and Ciudad Valles
Part Two:
Day Six: Waterfall Tour in La Huasteca
Day Seven: Whitewater Kayak Lessons from Ciudad Valles
Day Eight: Poza Rica
Day Nine: El Tajín and Cuetzálan
Part Three:
Day Ten: Cuetzalán Market and Coffee
Day Eleven: Puebla
Day Twelve: Horseback Riding near Cholula
Day Thirteen: Puebla
Day Fourteen: Back to Mexico City
Day One: Bernal and Tequisquiapán
We had reserved our rental car at Casanova Rent A Car to pick up at 8 AM on the Friday that started our two-week road trip. We picked this car rental because it has really reasonable weekly rates for mid-sized vehicles and are pretty flexible about the cars (we even got upgraded for free). I will say, the trade-off for this deal is spending 1.5 hours dealing with bureaucratic paperwork because this place was founded in the 1980s and seems to have updated exactly none of its technology since. Nonetheless, we were out the door by 9:30 AM, straight into the tail-end of rush-hour traffic.
When road-tripping in Mexico, one of the first things you’ll notice is that it takes almost as long to get out of a big city like CDMX as it takes to travel to your next destination. For well over 1.5 hours, we were still going by the housing complexes that make up the outskirts of this sprawling city as we headed north toward Tequisquiapán. And once you break out of the urban sprawl, it’s trucks as far as the eye can see. I can’t remember seeing this many trucks ever in my life, all heading north.
Our first destination would be Bernal, a Pueblo Mágico (a Mexican federal program that promotes small towns for tourism) located in Querétaro State, known for its huge monolith — potentially even the largest one in the world, if there existed a true definition of how monoliths are measured. This would be the jumping-off point for the Sierra Gorda Mountain range, located only about an hour from the start of the protected area.
On our way to Bernal, we stopped for lunch in another Pueblo Mágico, Tequisquiapán, which was only 30 minutes up the road. This trip overall took us through six Pueblos Mágicos and I’ve been to 3–4 more and I can say one thing: the standard for these towns varies enormously. However, both Tequisquiapán and Bernal lived up to expectations and were well-worth the stops as they were beautiful, colorful, and unique.
Quick Notes on Bernal and Tequisquiapán:
- Both are Pueblos Mágicos in Querétaro State, located about 35 minutes away from each other.
- Tequisquiapán is known for being at the center of the wine-producing region and retains cobblestoned streets and colorful architecture with lots of opportunities for wine and cheese tasting within and outside of the city. We skipped this (I was driving) and went to eat at the rooftop restaurant, El Maravillas, which had great typical Mexican food, albeit the music was a little loud. We wandered a few streets and moved on, but you could easily spend a night here if you love the small-town vibe.
- Bernal is known for the Peña de Bernal, a massive rock monolith that overlooks the city. It’s a bit of an adventure sports destination, as the rock is popular for hiking and rock climbing, and there’s a big mountain biking culture with the Sierra Gordas so close by. It is characterized by steep, tiny (read: really tiny) cobblestoned streets — I got stuck on one that’s now pedestrian-only and had to back out in our manual car…a story for another day — and views of the big rock. We spent the night at Hotel Cuesta la Toscana, which was nothing fancy or special but did the trick for starting the trip. My recommendation would be to check out the boutique hotel, Santo Cuervo, which is around the corner and stunningly decorated by a famous artist — if it’s within your budget.
- Besides hiking to the rock (we opted out as it seemed cooler to look at it from afar), the main thing to do in Bernal is enjoying rooftops where you can look at the rock. Yes, the rock is a big thing (literally and figuratively). We ended up on the roof of a random hotel that was open, but I recommend finding any nice rooftop at sunset where you can have a drink and look at the big rock. We also tested out Folk, a British themed restaurant for dinner, knowing that we’d be eating Mexican street food for most of the next two weeks.
- I recommend making this stop to break up the journey into the Sierra Gordas, because the road into the park is really challenging and I really appreciated being fresh for that aspect of the drive.
Day Two: Into the Sierra Gorda Mountains and Jalpan de Serra
We headed off before breakfast on Saturday morning (sorry Alfonso) to reach our next stop as early as possible. Our destination, the Mirador de Cuatro Palos, is another incredible geological formation in the middle of the Sierra Gorda Mountains, which is taken care of by a small community (called ejidos in Mexico) that guides you to take in the view and manages the site. Although we wanted to reach it at sunrise, we would have had to leave far too early for that and driving the roads out of Bernal and into the park are not recommended in the dark.
In fact, as we advised our Airbnb host in Jalpan de Serra (our next Pueblo Magico) that we were on the way, she wanted us to “come with a lot of caution.” The parking guard who let us out at dawn repeated these words. It’s safe to say we were a little wary of the road ahead based on these warnings, unsure whether they were referring to dangerous people or dangerous conditions. We found out within the hour when the narrow two-way road started snaking around precarious curves with little room for error and plenty of trucks zooming down the mountain from the other direction. It took an hour of white-knuckled driving to reach the turnoff into the Mirador, which is up an extremely steep gravel road that leads about 30 minutes into the forest to reach the parking lot.
From the parking forward, we were accompanied by a sweet young local guide named Sofia who for 80 pesos apiece (US$4 each) took us on the 25-minute loop that overlooks the mirador. The view truly is jaw-dropping, overlooking a deep, undulating valley with a large mountain in the center. The entire Sierra Gorda range was under the sea millions of years ago and is full of marine fossils and strange geological formations, including this one.
If I could plan this trip again, I might have built in one extra day to stay the night in this village to see the Mirador at sunrise. They have a beautiful, clean campground with views of the rock that costs about US$10 and has bathrooms fed by water from a mist-catcher. It would have been a worthwhile detour so I’m mentioning it for anyone who follows our footsteps. There is also another community on the way into Cuatro Palos that offers a 2–3 hour hike to another Mirador that we considered joining but decided against; if we had camped, we definitely would have done this so it’s worth exploring.
On the way down from the Mirador, we noticed a couple of women with a small business selling coffee and fresh quesadillas. Remember that we left before breakfast and it was now around 9 AM, so we gladly tucked into sweet cafe de olla (coffee with piloncillo (like brown sugar) and cinnamon, common at every Mexican street stand) and quesadillas filled with poblano peppers and stewed zucchini. The breakfast was absolutely worth the wait and the early wake-up call.
We continued on our way along the main road through the Sierra Gorda Mountains, which are a nationally-protected area and Biosphere Reserve, to reach the El Chuveje Waterfall, which is privately owned ($80 peso entry fee again) and slightly less organized than Cuatro Palos, but beautiful and worth a visit. There is another stop available along the way to Jalpan called Puente de Dios that is indigenous/ejido-owned and that we would have visited instead if we had known, but El Chuveje was gorgeous. The waterfall is crystal clear and extremely clean, so the owners technically no longer allow people to swim in the falls or the pools as they are home to critically-endangered wild axolotls (we saw one!!) that are very sensitive to water pollution. However, after you look at the waterfall, you can head further downriver to a site called Poza Azul where you are allowed to swim and I highly recommend it after a couple of sweaty hikes. The water is crystal blue and we had a pool with a small waterfall all to ourselves.
Adventures complete, we made the rest of the journey along the serpentine (albeit a little less death-defying in this section) road to Jalpan de Serra, a Pueblo Mágico in Querétaro known for being an old Franciscan Mission that was designed to ‘civilize’ the very rebellious indigenous peoples of this region during the Spanish colonial period. The foliage changes enormously along this road, from desertic at the start, to pine forests in the high portion of Pinal de Amoles, to the humid, deciduous jungle at Chuveje, back to semi-arid by Jalpan.
Quick Notes on Jalpan de Serra:
- Remember what I said about variable quality of Pueblos Mágicos? Well, Jalpan was cute, but far from magical in my opinion. It has an incredible, UNESCO-recognized church (there are 5 of these across towns in the Sierra Gordas) and a great museum of the Sierra Gorda Mountains (free!) but not much to speak for beyond the main plaza. I’d still recommend it for a night so you could do what we ended up doing the next day, but don’t expect much of the town itself.
2. We stayed in an Airbnb on the outskirts of town. I’d recommend staying in the Mission Hotel or similar right on the main plaza so you don’t have to drive into town to explore. I also recommend visiting Trega Supermarket just for fun as it was probably the wildest selection of items I’ve ever seen available in a single place.
3. We ate at Restaurant Mirador (not much to look at but the seafood was good) and Kawa Cafe, as well as at a street stall in the plaza to try the local specialty of cecina (thin beef) and enchiladas huastecas (in tomato sauce).
Day Three: Sótano del Barro from Jalpan de Serra
Though Jalpan de Serra turned out not to be one of the most magical ‘pueblos mágicos’ we visited, I was glad I planned for us to stay two nights. To be fair, we actually almost left after a single night, as we didn’t love our Airbnb and thought that we might as well continue on to Xilitla if we were going to keep exploring along the main road of the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve. But I kept coming back to the original reason I’d wanted to stay two nights: to visit the Sótano del Barro, the third-largest sinkhole in the world, home to Mexico’s last remaining colony of military macaws and potentially even an undescribed subspecies. I found out about the hike to this sinkhole through AllTrails and wanted to find a way to reach the community and visit. However, to see the macaws you have to arrive at sunrise and it’s quite a distance from Jalpan.
In retrospect, we found out that the community that protects this giant sinkhole has small cabins at the bottom of the mountain (2.5 hrs from Jalpan) that you can stay in to make the journey I’m about to describe a little more humane. This probably would have been the best option had we known and also had a higher clearance rental car, as it was mostly winding gravel roads up to the community and I’m not sure the Nissan Versa would have made it, even in the daytime, let alone in the pitch darkness.
Luckily, while wandering around the central plaza of Jalpan, we found a tour that goes to Sótano del Barro with a guide who will drive you up to the community for sunrise. You just have to leave at … 2 am … then hike 5 km with 1000m elevation gain. Bet you don’t want to go on vacation with me now. If you stay in the community, you get up around 4:45 to reach the summit at 6:30, just in time for sunrise. As I said, a lot more humane.
Although the tour was a little pricy ($75 per person), it seemed worth it for about 5 hours of driving (and not easy driving!) at 2 AM and a tough guided hike, with an additional local guide, and breakfast included. We definitely would not have made it on our own and it was one of the absolute highlights of the trip. So on Sunday morning, we rolled out of bed at 1:30 AM and hopped in a car to drive up to the community of Santa María de Los Cocos. There, we were greeted by a local guide who took off at a breathtaking clip, straight up the mountain. We were told to bring an extra set of clothing to change into at the top, which I could not understand until we started walking; even in the middle of the night, and at a reasonable altitude, the community was sweltering and we were immediately pouring sweat. After two hours of straight climbing at the guide’s breakneck pace (with only one stop for water!), we reached the top in the dark, absolutely drenched.
It was very cold and misty up there, so I quickly peeled off my soaked bra and t-shirt in the dark to put on my sweatshirt for the first and only time on the trip. Since sunrise was still an hour away (we hiked too fast apparently) we all fell fast asleep on the ground while waiting for the macaws to start their morning. We were woken by their haunting calls echoing out of the massive sinkhole but couldn’t see where they were as we were enveloped in a huge cloud. Over the next hour, as the sun rose, the clouds dipped and swirled around the sinkhole, like water over a rock in a river, but as they cleared, the pairs of macaws came into view. Even from 400m away (the diameter of the sinkhole), the bright green and blue of their wings was visible and there seemed to be thousands calling given the echoes. It was truly otherworldly as they swirled around the massive cavern in pairs before heading out for morning foraging. With the guide, we were even able to approach the edge of the hole (safely) to see the parrots from a closer vantage point. Knowing the Spanish used to throw indigenous rebels down this hole, it felt like a powerfully spiritual and simultaneously slightly terrifying place. It would have been a long fall.
After a couple of hours with the macaws, we made our way back down the mountain toward breakfast. Since we hiked up in the dark, we hadn’t realized quite how steep and rocky the trail was; definitely not a hike for beginners! But since it was still only about 7:30 AM by this time, the rest of the forest birds were just awakening and we got to see multiple Elegant Trogons (a gorgeous bird) and hear many others calling. These are pretty solitary birds so it’s very rare to see more than one, though you can sometimes hear several when they are mating.
By the time we reached the bottom, we were extremely grateful for a home-cooked meal from the local women of fresh tortillas, eggs, cheese, and chilaquiles (tortilla chips bathed in fresh salsa) as well as multiple mugs of coffee. And to be honest, I don’t remember much else after this as we hopped into the car and fell asleep almost until reaching Jalpan at noon where we also napped for a significant portion of the day. It turned out to be completely worth it to stay in Jalpan for an extra day to visit Sótano del Barro, though I might stay in Santa Maria de Los Cocos for that first night instead (then second night in Jalpan) to avoid the really early wake-up call. We finished our time in Jalpan with some local enchiladas huastecas and cecina (a local cut of beef prepared with lots of lime) with a street vendor right in the central plaza.
Day Four: Xilitla and the Surrealist Garden
The town of Xilitla is located around two hours East of Jalpan de Serra along the main road and turned out to be another ‘pueblo mágico’ that we considered not to be quite so magical. It is still worth a visit, but not impossible to go for the day then continue on to Ciudad Valles (another 2 hour drive) as there’s not much to do in Xilitla besides visit the famous Surrealist garden on the outskirts of the city.
Xilitla was our first stop in the state of San Luis Potosí, a Mexican state that is famous for its mineral-rich region called La Huasteca, which is technically shared with four other states — Querétaro, Veracruz, Hidalgo, and Tamaulipas — as it was considered too valuable to be owned by a single state. However, the Huasteca Potosina region is the most famous part of the Huasteca, known for adventure travel, rafting, and bright blue waterfalls in the middle of the jungle. This was the part of the trip we were most excited for, as the waterfalls seemed out of this world, and Xilitla is considered the doorway to the region.
The town of Xilitla is not particularly beautiful nor charming; it’s relatively industrial and busy as it’s known as a region of coffee and vanilla plantations, as well as some exotic flowers. However, it’s not an area of specialty coffee, so there is not much gastronomic tourism to speak of. The city is famous for being the favorite city of eccentric British poet and millionaire, Edward James, who was a patron of the surrealist movement in the 20th century and created a personal playground in the form of a surreal castle and garden on the edge of the town by a local waterfall. While the house was never completed before his death, it remains standing and his business partners and children have donated it to a private foundation in Mexico to become a national patrimony.
It costs about $7 per person to enter, but you can’t buy tickets at the door; you have to buy them in the main plaza or online for a certain time slot, which are limited each day. You visit in large groups of 25–30 people with a guide, so although the site is very cool and worth a visit, it’s not the most pleasant experience. We were able to get tickets for 3 PM on the day we arrived so had lunch in front of the site until it was time to enter. If you planned ahead, you could purchase tickets for mid-morning, visit, and reach Ciudad Valles by late afternoon. The other option that I’d recommend would be to stay in a posada, or traditional home, on the outskirts of town so you could enjoy a quiet day in nature after visiting the garden. We stayed in a charming Airbnb in town that was a little cramped (tiny rooms and double bed to share!) but had a great local breakfast included and was run by a very sweet woman. It worked for one night, but a rural posada might have been a little more relaxing.
Dinner was at Plutarco’s Restaurante, set in Edward James’ castle in town and named after his long-time business partner. The dishes were enormous, and I do not say this lightly, so although I would go back, I’d only order one main dish for both of us and still would have had food to take home.
Quick Notes on Xilitla:
- While there was no rush to reach Ciudad Valles, this definitely could have been a drive-by location to visit the garden and continue on to stay in a cabin somewhere else or onto Ciudad Valles. Otherwise, I’d recommend staying in a place outside of town as there was nothing to see besides the Surrealist Garden or starting some of the Huasteca tours (which are closer to Ciudad Valles!).
- There are day tours from Ciudad Valles to visit the Surrealist Gardens. I personally would not consider this to be worth it as it’s just a lot of driving to be at the gardens for an hour or so in a big tour and have lunch. I would prefer to visit on my own time and they were safe and easy to find and get to.
- I recommend buying your tickets for the gardens ahead of time if possible to ensure you get a spot. Because of COVID and this being the low season and a Monday, we had no issues getting a ticket the same day but it seems like it would fill up most of the time.
Day Five: Cascada El Tamul
Tied with Sótano del Barro, I’d say the El Tamul waterfall was one of the highlights of the trip. Located along a side route from Xilitla to Ciudad Valles, we decided to make this the activity of the day on our way to the next three nights in our next city. We did end up taking a small road that went through lots of towns (read: lots of speed bumps) and rural areas, but it was a beautiful drive.
As we prepared for this portion of the trip, we realized there were two ways to see the Cascada El Tamul: by boat and on foot. The boat option is the most popular and is relatively full of tourists from Ciudad Valles, which is only about 45 minutes away. For the boats, you go to the official entrance in the community of La Morena and pay an entry fee to get in a large 20 person boat where you row upstream for an hour or so to reach the falls, take a picture, have a quick swim, and head back for lunch. That didn’t sound very fun to us, so we opted for the less popular option of hiking to the falls, which was not particularly well-documented on the Internet. We weren’t even completely sure we’d be able to hike given changes in regulations, but the two entrances were close to each other so we decided to risk it (and our gamble paid off).
After about 2 hours of driving from Xilitla, we reached the community of El Naranjito (about 20 minutes drive beyond La Morena), where some guides had a small kiosk set up to take people to the waterfalls. The kind men came out to greet us and explain the process for us to visit the falls through their community. The price for 2–5 people is about $25 per group, so you can get it down to as low as $5 per person if you’re a big group. We didn’t want to wait for anyone else, so we paid our entry fee plus an extra cost to have them drive us down to the start of the hike in a pickup truck, which turned out to be a great idea given the state of the road. Also riding in the bed of the pickup in the sun through the fields of sugarcane (this is the second-largest sugar cane state in the country after Veracruz) was part of the adventure on its own. As a heads up, there were nice cabins here, too. I’m not sure we would have needed to stay in them but could have been an option if we bypassed Xilitla the day before. There was also a campsite near the falls if you wanted a sunrise view, but it seemed like it could get really full and unpleasant on weekends.
Our guide led us on the 15-minute walk to the falls from the campsite, each of us carrying a life jacket for the swim when we reached the bottom. While the hike was mostly flat and easy, it did require climbing down (and then back up) about 300 stairs to reach the base of the falls, some of which were very steep, almost like a ladder. It was borderline dangerous (probably would have to wear a harness in the US) but the ladders were sturdy and made of metal.
We climbed down to an absolutely breathtaking view of the bright blue waterfall and river (the meeting of two rivers), the tallest waterfall in the Huasteca Potosina region. The water was perfectly cool after the stifling heat (about 97 degrees Fahrenheit and humid) and we were allowed to swim for as long as we wanted with our guide floating alongside. Since the water was low (April/May is the tail end of dry season), we were even able to swim under the falls. In different seasons, it can go as low as disappearing all the way to being so powerful that tours have to stop because it would be dangerous to be so close to the bottom. We were lucky to have it at the perfect level and got to jump off the limestone cliffs into the clear blue waters below. I highly recommend this route over the very busy boat route; plus you don’t have to row a boat upstream! We were basically the only people there, with a couple of small groups arriving while we were swimming, and we were able to be right next to the waterfalls and take as many pictures as we wanted.
After an hour or so of splashing around, we made our way back to the car. It was so hot that our clothes and swimsuits dried completely before we reached the pickup truck. On the way back, our guide stopped by his farm to cut us off a sweet piece of sugarcane to suck on as we bounced back to where our car was parked. We were pretty hungry by this point, but there were literally zero restaurants between the falls and Ciudad Valles along the road we took. You could backtrack about 20 minutes to reach a few restaurants by the other entrance but we just pushed through to Ciudad Valles.
We stayed at Hotel Valles, an old-fashioned fancy hotel that definitely looked its age but had air-conditioning, which was very welcome in the 40+ Celsius heat. We ended up eating at the hotel because we were so hungry by the time we arrived; we didn’t even check in before sitting down to lunch. Honestly, Ciudad Valles is pretty blah — and used to be quite dangerous — so this was a spot we mostly just rested and ate wherever seemed fine.
Quick Notes on El Tamul
- There are day trips to El Tamul from Ciudad Valles and Xilitla, which would be a decent option if you don’t have a car, as there’s really no other way of getting there. However, you will almost certainly be taken to the very touristy boat entrance and be shuttled through crowds most of the time, so I recommend renting a car if you can and entering via El Naranjito.
- There are nice little cabins near El Tamul where you could stay the night, as well as a campsite near the falls. This would be a good option if you want an off-grid night or an early morning at the falls.
Given how long I’ve gone for the first five days of this trip, I will wrap up part one here and continue in parts two and potentially three.
