Rock on to Bernal
By Christine Foster, April 27, 2007

La Peña de Bernal is a naked mountain. With all the surrounding hills modestly clad in soil and bush, this peak stands out as a colossal oddity. According to Wikipedia, the free on-line encyclopedia, it is the third highest rock in the world and the second largest monolith. However, statistics can’t capture its appeal, and the good news is that this unique site is less than a two-hour drive from SMA.

We left San Miguel at 9am one weekend with the idea of having an early lunch in Tequisquiapan and an afternoon beer in Bernal, combining the two into a relaxing day trip. It began well with a speedy trip down 57 (the toll road that bypasses Querétaro). According to the map we could get off at San Juan del Rio and take the 120 into Tequis, but there seemed to be a significant shortcut if we got off at the town of Escobedo instead. 

So we did, and promptly got lost. After a half hour of driving on one-lane cow tracks, we found we had gone in a complete circle and were back at Highway 57, so we (ungraciously) accepted defeat and went in on 120 as originally planned. The total distance to Tequis (taking a pass on our scenic route) should be roughly 140 kilometers or about an hour and a half.

Tequisquiapan is a delight. Traffic is closed around the Plaza Civica, allowing for peaceful strolls through gracious portales which house upscale kitchen stores, galleries, wood and wicker furniture showrooms and outdoor cafes. Nearby is a food and flower market, and behind that another with crafts and the locally mined semiprecious stones, crystals, fossils and geodes. Narrow, colonial streets open onto residential squares and small hotels, some with their own thermal springs. Only 188 kilometers from Mexico City, this is a popular weekend destination for residents of DF as well as Querétaro, especially since the area is also known for cheese and wine production. Lunch and shopping prices are comparable to San Miguel, but the town—at half the population and without the buzzing traffic—has a more relaxing vibe.

From there it is only about a 15-kilometer jaunt on to San Sebastian Bernal, a warm, yellow mountain town nestled at the base of the 350-meter-high rock. The twisting roads of Centro permit no parking, so you have to leave your car in one of the many small lots a few blocks out. No worries, the wandering is great. A wool production center, the stores overflow with warm ponchos and Alpine-style sweaters as well as locally made rugs, slippers and stuffed animals. The 18th century presidio (fortress) now serves as a museum with a great ceremonial mask collection.

Everywhere the Rock dominates. According to México Desconocido, the porphyritic monolith was formed some 100 million years ago during the Jurassic period, when it was at least three times higher than today. If you have binoculars or a zoom lens you can pick out daring souls the size of ants making their determined way up the bald, precipitous face. Many are visiting a chapel about halfway up. There are lower trails to hike and horses for hire. Tourists arrive by the busload on weekends, and, apparently, on the spring equinox, people, dressed in white, gather to form a human belt around the prominence.

Refreshments in this pretty and compact town range from sweets and ice cream shops to sidewalk and terrace restaurants. And whether it is the food, or the air, or that spring ceremony, or emanations from the rock itself, inhabitants here are reputed to have an average lifespan of 94.7 years.

Bernal is also considered the gateway for tours up to the Sierra Gorda Mountains, but that is more than a day trip, so we headed home. While driving back, we debated the relative sizes of other massive rocks in the world. If indeed it is the second largest, then it is behind St. Augustus and ahead of Uluru (Ayres Rock), both in Australia. If it is a question of height, then Gibraltar at 426 meters and Rio de Janeiro’s Sugarloaf Mountain at 396 meters both beat out Bernal. In any event, the Mexican monolith is big, bold and beautiful. And it is worth the drive, or—in Spanish—vale la pena!


Christine Foster is passionate about her work with the SPA and is involved in San Miguel theater. As a professional writer, she enjoys traveling around Mexico writing articles for Atención. Christine is a permanent San Miguel resident.

Real de Catorce: a real adventure
By Bill Gallacher

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About 50 kilometers west of Matehuala, on the highway leading to Zacatecas, a cobbled road veers off to the south, directly towards the Catorce mountains. If you follow this pot-holed road for about 15 kilometers, you will ascend several thousand feet, and eventually run up against a sheer mountain face, into which a tunnel was excavated more than 100 years ago.

The tunnel is over two kilometers in length, and emerges into a barren valley, hemmed in on almost every side by mountains, and containing what must once have been a rather large town called Real de Catorce. Entering the town through the single-lane tunnel is a bit of an adventure in itself.

After a wait of 20 minutes or so for the telephone operators to verify that it was clear, I received the signal to proceed. This is no place for an engine failure, yet I came close, for in mid-tunnel, the motor, starved of its normal greedy intake of fresh air, began to cough and splutter.

I knew that someone had already suffocated in that tunnel in just such circumstances a few years earlier. And that was not my only concern: the road surface had been worn down over the years to a glassy sheen offering little traction even for a 4x4. There was also a jarring and unexpected jog in the middle—where the tunnelers’ tunnels hadn’t quite met as planned. However, we got through. Yet, scarcely had we returned to daylight, when a desviacion forced me to make a sharp turn to the right, up a vertiginous slope that sent wheels skidding and spinning, and loose rocks flying in every direction. I brought the vehicle to a halt in what must be the only level spot in the entire town—the main plaza, nearby are the municipal buildings that function as police headquarters, civil administration, banking centre (one malfunctioning cajero automatico), and which also house the tourist office. I had heard of people arriving in Real de Catorce, surveying the crumbling, dun-coloured, and monochromatic townscape, and high-tailing it straight out. On an overcast day, it surely would present a most depressing and forlorn prospect. Were it not for the mish-mash of gaudy tarpaulins and rickety vendor stalls that blight the entrance to the town, you could easily imagine yourself in a completely sepia world. “Let’s go back,” said a voice from the rear seat. “If you think I’m driving back through that tunnel today........?” And we didn’t.

I had not taken the road to Real de Catorce by accident. It is, perhaps, Mexico’s most celebrated, if little visited, “ghost town,” and a great deal has already been written about it in guide-books. Here are the bare statistics: The town is supposedly located at an altitude of 9,000 feet (It is in fact at 8,500 feet, but let’s grant the local ayuntamiento 500 feet worth of exaggeration in exchange for its persistence at remaining here at all), and owes its existence entirely to the discovery, in the 19th century, of a series of fabulously productive silver mines, all of which are now defunct. The tag “Catorce,” is alleged to stem from the murder of fourteen Spanish soldiers, for reasons unknown and by persons unknown, in the dim, distant, and unverifiable past. At one time, the population exceeded 15,000 inhabitants, a number that has now shrunk to little more than 1,000. The tunnel that caused me such angst, the Ogarrio, was constructed in 1901 to house a tramway for transporting silver ore from Real to smelters lower down the mountain. Seemingly unconnected with Real’s mining history, the surrounding area contains a number of ceremonial sites sacred to the Huichol Indians who once lived here and still visit.

One thing struck me immediately about the town: Nothing seemed to have been demolished in a hundred years. The foundations and crumbling walls of the houses that had once sheltered 15,000 souls remained visible and virtually unreconstructed. Only the ravages of weather and time had caused the roofs to cave-in and the walls to disintegrate. No bulldozers had been at work, no condos had been built, and no Mega or Gigante had intruded. It could have been rural Afghanistan. Had Osama bin Laden poked his head around a corner, I should have been only mildly surprised. And yet, amidst the ruins, the crumbling stumps, and the stone-littered streets, there was a substantial amount of re-construction going on. And, much to our delight, there were a number of good hotels, and one truly exceptional Italian restaurant, incorporated within the Meson de la Abundancia.....as good as anything in San Miguel and at less than two-thirds the price.

They say people come to Catorce, attracted by its inaccessibility and its isolation, and perhaps seduced by the romantic idea of dropping out in a “ghost town,” particularly one with a hallucinogenic drug lore and an indigenous Indian connection. Perhaps a few film wannabes have also been drawn to Real, since some big-name, big-budget movie productions have been shot here, including most recently, The Mexican, with Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt. To be sure, there is a filmic ambience that would be almost impossible to recreate anywhere else. There are, too, a number of legitimate historical attractions, including the Casa de la Moneda (a former mint), and the Virgen de Guadalupe Church with a celebrated high-walled cemetery. Neither of these attractions was accessible during our stay. When I enquired at the tourist office, staffed sporadically by an extraordinarily taciturn female employee who would only dozily raise her eyes from her telenovela if you leaned heavily on her desk, I was informed that the Casa de la Moneda was closed for “refurbishing,” with no re-opening date scheduled. The Guadalupe Church, some distance out of town, could be visited by appointment only. The cemetery, too, was closed. I can’t say I was hugely disappointed (though others might have been), because for me the real attraction of Real de Catorce was the prospect of tramping the surrounding hills and checking out old mine shafts.

The tourist office notwithstanding, it was obvious from the number of chic hostelries dotted around the town that a number of enterprising people were clearly betting on tourism in a rather big way. When I asked Tom, a young Swiss who operated El Meson de la Abundancia and who was married to a local Mexican woman, why the tourist office seemed so ill-informed and off-hand, he shrugged resignedly. He also singled out, as another example of the impediments to enterprise, the hordes of junk merchants selling the worst kind of iconic and religious trash, who had set up stalls just in front of the tunnel and blocked access to the town’s main street.

Some of Real’s accommodations are aimed at specialized tastes. If you walk towards the cemetery at the far end of town, you will happen upon the luridly-painted, orange concrete box known as the Hotel Quinta Puesta del Sol. Anyone making a reservation here, sight unseen, could be in for a shock. From the exterior, La Quinta is about as hospitable-looking as a bordello in Nuevo Laredo. Furthermore, it promises even less, by announcing on a large sign by the main door: Lo que Ud. ve, es todo lo que ofrecemos. What you see is all we offer. I remember, many years ago in Scotland, staying in a guest house that displayed a message in the same vein: All our guests make us happy. Some when they come, and some when they leave. Could it be one and the same proprietor? As I pondered the unusual marketing strategy of La Quinta, a column of small children accompanied by their teacher filed past, a goodly number of them light-skinned and tow-headed, indicative of the level of penetration of non-Mexican pioneers into this rather unlikely environment.

The second day in Real had been reserved for a walk to the Quemado, a mountain near whose summit the Huichol practice ancient religious rites and maintain a surprisingly modern community centre, kept, perhaps understandably, under strict lock and key. The Quemado, in outline, is said to resemble an elephant. I usually have trouble seeing these animal resemblances, but in this case I had no problem; it truly looked elephantine. The path to the summit provided an excellent opportunity for observing many fine and unusual cactus formations, as well as for enjoying magnificent panoramas. On the summit itself (at 9,200 feet), there was little of note, save for some concentric rings of rocks, and a small stone building with a grilled door, through which could be seen many colourful ribbons and intricate woven cloth pieces, of significance only to the Huichol. I am not in any way anti-Huichol, but I do take issue with the zealot(s) who have seen fit to post warnings of the NO SE PUEDE PASAR INAUTORIZADO variety, at f
requent intervals on the path to the summit. In such remote, barren, and unused land, one has to wonder why anyone should be prohibited from free passage. And it seems absurd to repeat the message so many times, since anyone who ignores the first warning is hardly likely to observe subsequent ones. We ignored them all, of course. 

On the way down, we were approached by a rider on horseback, who demanded 20 pesos a head.

“For what?” I enquired. 

“For being here,” he replied, as if it were obvious.

“Show me your authority,” I said.

“I have comprobantes,” he replied.

“Okay. So give me one.”

“They’re up there,” he said, pointing towards the elephant.

“Tell you what,” I said, searching for a compromise. “You come to the Meson de la Abundancia tomorrow with your comprobantes, and you’ll have your 80 pesos.”

He never did show up.

Real de Catorce’s entire raison d’etre was its great silver mines, and the surrounding hills are dotted with ruined mining buildings and some very alluring and dangerously unfenced shafts. For those who are allured by such things, like me, it is a peculiarly exhilarating exercise to hang over the edge of one of these shafts and toss large rocks into the abyss. Invariably, the shafts are flooded, and when a large rock hits the water surface at high velocity, a tremendous sonic boom is unleashed, amplified by harmonic waves in the constricted vertical space. It is a sound that has to be heard to be appreciated. In one shaft, it took a full 8 seconds from the release of a rock till impact, indicating a depth of more than 1000 feet, about three quarters the height of the Empire State Building. (I seem to recall from high school physics that the distance in feet traveled by an object falling under the force of gravity is 16 times the square of the elapsed time.)

I had been trying not to think about the return journey back through the Ogarrio tunnel, and someone had told me about another way out of Real, only for the truly adventurous. After walking about a kilometer along this alternative route, I quickly rejected the idea. Yet, it clearly was possible, for, as I was heading back, an ancient jeep-like vehicle suddenly emerged, ascending, from behind a curve, and chugged passed, with about ten nonchalantly smiling Mexicans hanging off its back and sides. Pressured by a prospective son-in-law to give it a go, I caved in, and a short time later we were headed down. He wanted to film from inside the SUV, so I gave him my video recorder.

“This will probably be on CNN,” I said. “Unfortunately, we will not be watching it.”

“Piece of cake,” he replied, mixing ridicule and bravado, with perhaps a little fear of his own, now that we were under way. This was a one-way ticket to who-knew-what, because turning back was out of the question. I took note of the three ashen faces beside me, and then at a fourth one in the mirror, and grasped the wheel tightly. Not only was the road extremely narrow, with lethal drops only a few feet away, but it was severely broken up, causing the vehicle to yaw sickeningly from side to side, even as we edged forward at no more than walking speed. Was it Roosevelt who said that we have nothing to fear but fear itself? It’s true, fear alone can unhinge you. I had one of the best possible vehicles for handling this situation, but I was afraid the high state of tension might elicit some utterly bizarre physical reaction on my part, such as hitting the accelerator instead of the brake. I was also mightily concerned that another vehicle could be clawing its way up at the same time, even though I had the right of way, farthest from the precipice......if right of way were to mean anything here. To everyone’s relief, the ordeal ended without incident, and an hour after leaving Real de Catorce, by the back door so-to-speak, we reached the plain below, and linked up with the highway to Matehuala.

Real de Catorce is a five-hour drive from San Miguel de Allende. As a locale for self-choreographed adventure and self-inflicted anxiety, it would be hard to surpass. The possibilities are boundless. However, I don’t recommend taking the kids.

Bill Gallacher, long-time San Miguel resident, is a regular contributor of ironic works to Atención.