Canoes, caves and culture
Adventure awaits in Mexico’s San Luis Potosi, writes Mark Johanson.
IMAGINE if you took a giant bottle of Champagne, shook it up, popped the cork and let the bubbles rush all over your body. Now imagine you’re 20m beneath the surface and wearing scuba gear when it happens. That, in essence, is the riotous joy one experiences when floating above a geothermal spring.
I’ve discovered this while swimming past one of the six springs that feed a littleknown prehistoric lagoon in Mexico called Media Luna. Lost in its whirlpool of bubbles, I watch in awe as they tickle their way around my skin, rising to the surface and popping in the midday heat.
Swimming through Media Luna’s crystalclear waters, I pass a petrified forest and cavernous subterranean corridors on the way to a spot where, in the 1970s, underwater archaeologists discovered the fossilised remains of a mammoth. Its head lay on the bottom alongside hundreds of preHispanic offerings deposited in this crescentshaped oasis by the region’s ancient settlers, who used it as a centre of worship.
Not only is Media Luna one of the most intriguing underwater archaeology sites in Mexico, it’s also a haven for beginner divers. Ossiel Martinez, of Dive School Media Luna, tells me after our dive that famed explorer Jacques Cousteau once named this lagoon among the best spots on the planet to learn the basic techniques of cave diving. I can see why.
What I can’t understand is why I’m one of the few foreigners here. Perhaps it’s because this spectacular undersea labyrinth is nowhere near Mexico’s famed coastline.
Most tourists visit Mexico for its lavish beach resorts and towering Mayan ruins. I’ve come for adventure. I’ve based myself in the longoverlooked central state of San Luis Potosi, halfway between Mexico City and Monterrey. It has neither beaches nor Mayan ruins. Instead, it boasts untouched turquoise rivers, stillthriving Wixaritari and Teenek cultures, and a terrain riddled with deep sinkholes.
San Luis Potosi has been a fastgrowing destination among domestic tourists for several years. The US State Department advises Americans to ‘‘reconsider travel’’ to this part of Mexico, citing crime and gang activity ‘‘in parts of San Luis Potosi state’’. However, the global thinktank Institute for Economics and Peace rates the state well above more touristed areas such as Mexico City, Oaxaca and Baja California Sur on its latest Mexico Peace
Index. Having travelled extensively in Mexico, there was nothing in San Luis Potosi that put me on edge.
The region has atmospheric places to stay, such as the colonialstyle Hilton (rooms from $NZ165). Three dozen more hotels are in development. Tourism officials predict an additional terminal at the international airport in the state’s namesake capital will more than double annual arrivals from 500,000 to
1.2 million once it’s finished later this year.
My journey through this burgeoning adventure travel hub began, in earnest, two days ago in a totally different landscape: the vast wilds of the Wirikuta desert. I hiked five hours from the small colonial town of San Antonio de Coronados, past a peyoteriddled scrubland and up to a hilltop sanctuary known as Ameyaltonal, held sacred by the local Wixaritari community.
When I arrived, a shaman cleansed my body with smoke and aromatic herbs in a ceremony where we honoured the four cardinal directions, the earth below and the sky above.
I also took a harrowing ride on the roof of a 1961 Jeep Willys high into the Sierra de Catorce mountain range to visit the onceglorious 18th century silvermining outpost of Real de Catorce. This former ghost town has been repopulated in recent decades and revitalised for the tourist industry, drawn to its crumbling colonial churches and charming cobbled streets.
Now I’ve traded the arid high plains of the state’s western corridors for the subtropical forests and sinkholes of the Zona Media, home to the Media Luna lagoon.
I’m travelling with Miguel Galarraga, one of the founders of Corazon de Xoconostle Tours, a new agency that’s made a big name for itself pioneering novel adventures across San Luis Potosi. The offerings include everything from halfday visits to abandoned mining towns to multiday hiking and rock climbing expeditions.
A former economist, Galarraga got into tourism as a way to share his love of climbing. He even met his two cofounders (an exbanker and an exchef) in San Luis Potosi’s closeknit climbing community. So perhaps it was only a matter of time before we’d find ourselves peering over the edge of a 450m sinkhole known as Sotano de las Huahuas (cellar of the macaws).
Hundreds of parrots, parakeets and swifts swirl around its perimeter in a tornado of squawking wings. We wait for them to finish their mesmerising morning show and then take a leap of faith over the edge.
I have no prior rappelling experience, but Galarraga insists it isn’t necessary. Overcoming anxiety proves the biggest challenge as he and his team lower me like a swinging tea bag into a giant earthen cup.
Some 180m below, we reach the cave’s first chamber: a primordial world of mosscovered rocks, fanning ferns and thickening air. We walk along its slippery, spongy terrain to peek into the depths of the second chamber. It’s a good two hours before we’re pulled to the top, just in time to catch the birds returning to their subterranean homes.
My final day in San Luis
Potosi is spent in the tropical rainforests and turquoise river canyons of the Huasteca Potosina region. This easternmost section of the state is home to the Teenek dancers Voladores de Tamaletom, who ‘‘fly’’ around a pole while suspended upside down. It’s also where you’ll find a surreal sculpture garden by the late eccentric British poet and artist Edward James. But my main objective is to take a wooden canoe into the even more surreal Tampaon River, whose milky green waters radiate in the Mexican sun. My destination: the 100m Tamul Waterfall.
It takes nearly two hours of paddling to reach the base of this towering cascade. I break up the journey with stops at water holes along the edge, including one where you can swim into the pitchblack darkness of a limestone cave. I also ditch the canoe on my return journey and instead float back (thanks to my safety vest) through its small — though bodyjostling — whitewater rapids.
It’s hard to believe that just a few days ago — and just a few hours away — I was in the middle of a sunbaked desert and amid the bubbles of a sacred spring. It’s a testament to the diversity San Luis Potosi packs into its compact borders.
Mexican tourists already know this. It’s about time the rest of us caught on. — TCA