Anyway - the trip was good and bad... we hired the car and were so so happy with it cos they upgraded us to a car 2 models up from what we'd ordered for only $300 which is about £15 so that seemed like a bargain!!! We set out at 5:30am but took the slow road bacause we couldn't work out how to get to the beginning of the super-highway and it was all mountain driving and Ed was a bit nervous cos it was dark and he didn';t know the road and the other drivers were flying round in the other direction. Once the sun came up t improved and we had a nice smooth run... until we got to the turn off.
We wantesd to go and see some waterfalls which we'd been promised were the most spectacular in the area but you had to drive down a dirt track and then take a boat to see them. So we saw a sign for the waterfalls and turned off down a dirt track. We drove for 20km and the road was getting worse and worse and there were less and lesssigns of civilsation. We stopped and asked some farm kids and they didn't seem to know where the river was so we turned back to the main road. We soon found there was another turn a few kms later and it was more clearly signposted. Still we'd wasted a lot of time by this point and it was later than we'd intended to get to the waterfalls. We went down the next dirt track though and eventually got to where the boats were going from (or where it seemed was the only boat place) and the guys told us it was a 4 hour river trip rather than the 2 hours we'd anticipated. We decided not to do it simply because we really wanted to get to the next place we were going before dusk so we could see the birds (i'll explain later). So Ed had been driving all day and we decided to stop and go for a walk. The heat was exhausting and there wasn't much to see - just green countryside (which is lovely after living in a desert town but there's only so much you can see...) It was good for Ed to have a break though.
Next we made our worst decision of the day. We looked at the map and saw that the dirt track we were on actually continued all the way to the town were wanted to go to next. It was another 25km and we'd already come 18km and the track hadn't been too bad, so we continued. 5 mins down the track we saw other places where you could take boats to the waterfalls but we didn't have time to stop by this point even if they were shorter trips because we really wanted to get to Aquismon, and thank god we didn't stop!!! The track became progressively worse and we wer travelling at roughly 10km/hour all the way. The pot hole and rocks were equally huge and i became convinced that the car would be wrecked and i would have an enormous credit card debt that i could never pay off once the car hire company saw what we'd done. (They didn't offer any insurance that covered you on dirt roads, so they told us to be very careful!)
Finally after 2 1/2 hours of terrifying dirt road driving in a Dodge Attitude (look it up and you'll see it's no 4x4 and totally unsuitable for this type of off-roading!) we arrived in Aquismon - a tiny little town in the middle of La Huasteca and close to the Sotano de las Golondrinas which is what we'd come to see.
We'd booked into the most expensive hotel in town. I'd give it a 2* and that might be generous. It had a shower, lights, sort of air con and ants. But it was ok. We eaded stright out to get a lift to the Sotano. We'd alreday been warned that the road was impassable for normal cars and had no intention of any more dirt road driving, so found a local pick up driver to take us. He wanted to charge us a huge amount, we haggled him down a bit but we were still overcharged enormously - however it was getting late and we needed to get there before dusk!
So i should explain about the Sotano de las Golondrinas. It's the 6th deepest pit in the world and is a sanctuary for millions of parrots, swallows and other birds which fly out en masse at dawn and return at dusk. We arrived and were led through the jungle at break neck speed by a kid no older than 12 to the pit. There we saw the birds circling above and then plunging down into the hole. It was really strange but totally worth it and we were so glad we'd made the decision to see it. The birds were beautiful and all you could hear was the sound of birds and the rushing of wind as they dived into the hole. We stayed there for over an hour before returning to Aquismon where we got some quesadillas for dinner and headed back to the hotel totally exhuasted!
The next day we got up, had breakfast in Aquismon - an interesting drink called a Raspa (shaved ice with condensed milk, fruit and cinammon) and thenheaded for Xilitla. It wasn't too long a drive but we weren't going to the town but to the Castillo del Ingles or Las Pozas and there were no signposts to it so it took a while to find. When we did find it though we knew the whole trip had been worth it. Words can't describe the complete weirdness and beauty of Las Pozas. Basically several decades ago a younf member of the British aristocracy who was a patron of surrealist art decided to move to Mexico and build surrealist structures in the jungle - he never finished it and now it's all just falling into a kind of ruin and is just strange surreal concrete strructures in the middle of tropical jungle. My photos will describe it better than i can. We spent the whole day there and it was just fantastic. We also did a bit of swimming under a waterfall.
After that we went into the town of Xilitla which is famolus for it's coffee, but there wasn't much to see there, so we bought a bag of cofffee and headed on to a town just outside SLP state called Jalpan, where we planned to have dinner on the way back to SLP.
It was a pretty town and the drive there was really lovely, mountains, forests - very enjoyable. We had a good feed at a restaurant there and a quick wander round to see the facade of their beautiful church before hitting the road. It started to rain heavily soon after leaving Jalpan which wasn't much fun for Ed, but luckily it didn't last long. The night time driving was tiring though and i fell asleep for a good part of it. It rained again just as we were arriving in SLP and we had the heaviest night of rain since I've been living here. We got back late but it was fanatstic trip.
Good news: the next day we took the car back (feeling very sad to see it go) and we covered the one little scratch that wasn't on it before with a bit of mud and they didn't notice a thing - in fact the guy said it was "perfect!" so no unpayable debts to worry about just a really lovely trip with a bit too much off road driving!
