Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Real de Catorce



Yesterday we left the house at 6am to drive a few hundred kilometers north of here to the town of Real de Catorce. After all sorts of adventures finding breakfast and avoiding a collision with a burro (I wisely slept through most of this), we turned off the highway onto a cobblestone road that wound up into the Sierra Madres 20 kilometers. 20 kilometers on a cobblestone road!! You can just imagine. At the end of the 20 kilometers was a tunnel that was 2 kilometers long, which is a really long ways for an old tunnel blasted out of the mountain over a hundred years ago. We paid our veinte pesos ($2), braved the tunnel, and soon found ourselves on the other side in the town of Real de Catorce. (My dad and I had a fun time explaining the expressions "rocky road" and "the light at the end of the tunnel" to Jacinta - "It's been a rocky road, but thankfully we can see the light at the end of the tunnel!")



We had a great time walking around the town. We bought a few souvenirs, looked at the church of San Francisco (the town's patron saint) and ate lunch at a little café that served coffee, crepes and sandwiches. I hadn't seen a sandwich in days and was amused at how excited I was to eat a sandwich again.



(On a side note, Real de Catorce was the town they shot the movie The Mexican in.)



Today my dad and I stayed home and did pretty much nothing. It's the first day we've really had to just lay around and be on vacation. Since we arrived, our time has been full of sightseeing and parties and everything else. It's been nice just laying around.



Oh, and our bags finally arrived Sunday night.
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1 comment:

femmusic said...

It looks beautiful from the pictures! Ah, the travelling life... parties?! Don't think I did much of those, but sounds like you're having lots of fun!