Friday, August 18, 2000 - San Luis Potosi to the Texas border - the last leg in our north-bound trip.
Posted by SurfMexico Editor

Today, being so close to the border, we felt the unmistakeable pull of our regular travel mode closing onto us: all we wanted to do was GET THERE. Besides, what else is there in the northern reaches of the State of Tamaulipas, or practically any other of the northern Mexican border states, but stretches of mesquite scrub, cacti and dry, sandy, unproductive land?

Well, at this time of year, the low, coarse vegetation along the sides of Highway 57 out of San Luis Potosi covered the low hills with a carpet of green, punctuated by tall, tufty Joshua trees. Over a stretch of several miles through this deserty area, a series of stands constructed just off the shoulder of the highway offered the passersby rattlesnake skins for sale.

We stopped at one tended by a smiling young woman and her two small boys. The rack on which the snake skins hung, of a length ranging from about one to 3 or 4 feet, also displayed powdered rattlesnake skin, taken for cancer and heart problems, and rattlesnake oil for hair loss. Next to the rack was a cage with several small birds and below that, a wooden box in which a number of peyote buttons were nestled. Really, to call these buttons seems a gross understatement. The largest was the size of one of those large, heavy rounded loaves of rye bread - about 8" in diameter.

When asked about the greenness of the countryside, the woman explained that it had not rained - she said it never rained here - but the extra humidity in the air was sufficient to bring out the tender leaf buds on the bushes and make the cacti flower. Though we didn't purchase any of the woman's "wares", we paid her in thanks for her time and for allowing us to take photographs, then headed north toward Huizache junction.

At Huizache we turned onto Hwy 80, which combined with Hwy 101 just past Presa de Guadalupe, forms a cutoff through the hills to Cd. Victoria. The surrounding countryside retained basically the same look - cacti, yucca, low scrub and rocky, sandy soil, though slightly more hilly in this area - until we neared the town of Tula on Highway 101. Tula valley was cultivated, with large, well-irrigated fields of what look like tomatoes. There were also plenty of cattle, goats and cornfields in the region.

Just north of the town of Jaumave, we crossed the Tropic of Cancer. To the right of us the Sierra Madre was a velvety, green barrier separating us from the coastlands. To reach Cd. Victoria on the other side, we had to climb up and then back down a fairly steep mountain pass - a stretch of about 50 kms. There's a new highway being put in to skirt that pass, but to our surprise it still wasn't finished - when we came through last year on this same route, it looked to be in about the same state of near-readiness as it is this year.

In any case, the pass takes one past two names "balcones" or lookout points. One is the Balcón de Chihue on the western side of the mountain overlooking the valley of the Chihue river through which we'd just passed, and the other is the Balcón de Moctezuma, from whence one commences the downhill approach to Cd. Victoria on the other side of the pass.

Balcón de Moctezuma is also an archeological zone. A rutted dirt roads leads down from the highway through the small settlement and carries down toward an outcropping overlooking the south-eastern gorge through which the new highway will run. We travelled down this road about 3 1/2 miles before reaching the ruins. The road was rocky and sometimes muddy (rains did recently fall at these heights), and we were advised by a machete-carrying elderly man on donkeyback on the road, that just before the last dip to the ruins there is a small grove of trees with space to park the vehicle and turn around, and that we should not attempt to drive down the last hill to the archeological zone since it was extremely steep and in poor repair.

We took the fellow's advice and stopped among the trees and walked the remainder of the way to the ruins. The ruins are cared for and marked by INAH (National Institute of Anthropology and History). Approaching them from the dirt track nothing was visible except a hillside covered with large, flattened pieces of limestone that looked like a gigantic, rubbled staircase that looked as if they could just as well be natural as man made. Coming to the top of the rise, we came to a series of round, stone foundations that kind of terraced down the opposite side of the hill and that were totally invisible from the main approach.

The ruins date from between 200 B.C. to the 16th C., and it is surmised they were constructed by native groups engaged in hunting and gathering of wild foods of the area and the cultivation of terraced plateaus of the eastern Sierra Madre. It is thought that the circular stone foundations were walled with wood or straw and roofed with thatch.

After a wander around the site, we returned to the truck and headed back up the stony, bumpy road to the highway. The 3 1/2 mile sidetrip took us about 20 minutes of driving each way, and we did use 4-wheel drive in a couple of spots. Don't try taking a low-slung car down this road!

Back on Hwy. 110, we carried down the other side of the pass - a road that snakes down along the hillside all the way to Cd. Victoria. Located on a switchback turn about 15 kms. from Victoria is the Santuario del Camionero (Truckers Sanctuary) - a very large shrine at which the many truckers that take this short but steep and winding route stop to make offerings of flowers and light a candle for their safe journey over the mountain.

From Cd. Victoria on north the highway runs past the Vicente Guerrero dam - reputed to be a fisher's and bird hunter's paradise, through flat country all the way to our Matamoros border crossing. Hitting the line at about 6 p.m., we had now completed our five-day-long trip to the border.

In a couple of weeks we'll be adding more pages to this travelogue, though, as we wend our way back south, this time along the Gulf Coast to the Veracruz area, then inland through Oaxaca - at least those are our plans - they'll probably vary.