Day 7
The Sierra Gorda and the first mission
Morning
Mirador Cuatro Palos
A platform perched at nearly 3,000 meters (9,840 ft), on the edge of the drop, in the Sierra Gorda biosphere reserve. When the sea of cloud lifts, you see the ridges falling away toward the Huasteca. The last stretch of the access road is dirt.
Cascada El Chuveje
A drop of about thirty meters (98 ft) at the end of an easy twenty-minute path along the stream, in mountain rainforest. The site is run by the local community.
Afternoon
Franciscan mission of Jalpan
The first and the largest of the five, built between 1751 and 1758 under the direction of Junípero Serra, before he left for California. Its polychrome stucco front mixes Christian iconography and indigenous symbols without apology: the double-headed Habsburg eagle, the Mexican eagle on the nopal, shells, the rabbit in the moon.
Museo Histórico de la Sierra Gorda
Set in an eighteenth-century fort on the square at Jalpan, it tells the story of the Chichimeca resistance and the long pacification of the sierra.
Good to know
The descent from Pinal de Amoles to Jalpan loses 1,340 meters (4,400 ft) in tight hairpins, from 2,100 down to 760 meters. Not to be driven at night, nor in the rain. Make sure the brakes are in good order and allow spare time: it takes longer than the GPS says.
