Jalpan, Queretero to Matehuala, SLP

We spent a long lazy day in Jalpan getting Jesse out of the sun and Pike and I decided to visit the mission at Landa de Matamoros.  The road up to Jalpan had been incredibly windy (and expected) but I was really tired of doing eleventymillion curves at 40km/hr.  So it was with a little trepidation that we sent out for Landa.  Luckilly, the road both east to Landa and north to Rio Verde was not even close to the windyness of the road from Bernal/Tequis to Jalpan.  Pike, Kilo and I had a lovely visit in an absolutely empty town, watched the beginning of a baptism and headed back to Jalpan and Jesse.  We all then headed out for lunch at Pike’s favorite restaurant for comida corrida.  Jalpan was a strange town.  It seemed rather Stepfordish with a large number of homes in the center of town sporting beautiful paint jobs and spiffed up outsides.  Even with a tree growing through the roof of the home, the facade was gorgeous.  The people I spoke with in town say that the ayutamiento is not helping the effort and that people just want to make their homes nice.  Weird.  I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else.  Even in Merida, the ayutamiento will provide labor for painting.  I wondered if it was a weekend town for people from Queretaro or DF, but was told that most of the towns inhabitants were simply folks from the large variety of ranchos in the area.  Still, weird.

Next morning brought rain so I decided to delay departure until 7am so I could take advantage of the rising sun in the fog and drizzle.  There was one more mission on our route and the boys indulged me yet again so I could check out Conca.  Unfortunately, we got to town so early that nothing was open and my hopes for breakfast on the plaza were dashed.  I’ve been hoping for this event since Tequis.  The drive was amazingly easy with good roads, decent signage and well-placed perifericos (ring roads that allow you to bypass the cities).  We headed up the mountains to Real de Catorce, up a cobblestone road of pure cobbles (and ocassional missing cobbles) for 25-30km.  We were quickly at the tunnel – the last 2.5km into Real are through a one-way tunnel – and waited for the oncoming traffic to make it through the tunnel and depart.

I have to say that I was less than impressed with Real.   I had anticipated spending the night there, but the cold was deep and the hotel rooms shockingly exhorbitant.  Pike really had absolutely NO interest in spending the night, so we walked the town, checked out the huge variety and number of vendors selling stuff, bought some Huichol art and headed back down the mountain.  I tried to get a room in Cedral, a town between Matehuala and Real, but could not get the car in the same block as the hotel due to a celebration for the Virgin the next day.  So, after almost an hour of trying to get to the plaza/center, we headed to Matehuala.

We asked at a number of hotels before finding a very cute hotel which had no problems with Kilo and was cute to boot.  It was also walking distance from the Parque del Pueblo and the next morning when we left, I was gladdned to see all the exercisers rounding the plaza just before dawn.  We headed to the parque, had dinner and headed back to bed.  It was a lovely litte area of town – very tranquil and close to everything.  I was surprised at how much I liked that little town.