Sierra Gorda

We just got back from a three day, two night vacation with our friend Grace to the Sierra Gorda. We had been planning on visiting it with the girls for nearly a year, but when the girls got here, they were too busy doing other things, and we just could not work it in.

The Sierra Gorda was better than I thought it would be. It is really a jewel and a place that all tourists to Mexico should visit if they are interested in nature and history.

The Sierra Gorda is a UNESCO recognized biosphere in the northern end of the state of Querétaro and a couple of surrounding states containing some of the last remaining pre-Columbian forests. This is due in large part to its isolation and difficulty of access. It contains tropical rain forests to deserts and most everything in between. The altitude ranges from 300m above sea level to around 4,000m resulting in a wide variety of micro-climates. It attracts people from all over the world for spelunking, bird watching, camping, hiking and adventure tourism, and for its five Franciscan missions built by Brother Junipero Serra in the 18th century. This was the the same fellow who later built all the California missions. The Sierra Gorda missions were a Franciscan experiment to develop building, missionary, and organizational techniques to spread the gospel in Mexico (which then included half the US). The missions have had their ups and downs over the centuries, but they are all now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, like Querétaro, Pompeii, the Parthenon, etc.

We took our time and visited all five missions. My favorite was the one at Tilaco which is located in a valley way back off the main road (which is itself in a valley way back of the beaten track, which is over 4 hours through a curvy, two-lane, mountain road from Querétaro). The village is spotless with lots of cedar trees and bougainvillea. In 1958, the town got a priest for the first time in 28 or so years who became a real preservationist and did a great job getting the church back into something resembling its original condition. It is really a little gem.

We also visited Las Pozas de James in Xilitla at the other end of the sierra. Edward James was a rich, eccentric Brit who hung out with Dali and Picasso. Dali thought he was really crazy, which is saying something coming from Dali. James bought a large mountainside tract of tropical jungle and mountain streams, and "enhanced" it with surreal sculptures and buildings. He started it in 1949 and died in the 1980s. Over those nearly 40 years he brought in workers (as many as 150 at a time) and building materials to produce his idea of some kind of surrealistic, futuristic landscape. The place is mostly in ruins now, and it is dangerous as there are stairs leading up to towers with no hand rails, balconies and terraces jutting out over the jungle that have big round holes in them for stairs that no longer exist, waterfalls that have been subtly changed with slippery concrete that looks like stone, and with flowers and exotic plants running wild. It was literally a delight to behold. We laughed constantly, as we turned corners to view something totally unexpected.

Here are some pix of the Sierra Gorda and the missions of the Sierra Gorda

If you ever get a chance to come to Mexico, this is a must do.