I’ve always thought one of the best ways to avoid trouble in Mexico is to not drive there. This is solely based on the many horror stories I’ve heard of this country, like being stopped by bandidos on the highway or being pulled over by police to pay a bribe. Whether or not these stories are true, I can’t say. It’s never actually happened to anyone I know; I always hear a second hand tale about how they heard it happened to someone they know.

Even in the US, I don’t own a car as I am happy to let someone else do the driving. Mexico’s bus system is so efficient and cheap that it doesn’t make sense to use a car for a variety of reasons. With my numerous visits to Mexico, I’ve also learned that there is always a bus to get you anywhere you want to go. What I hadn’t anticipated is that the frequency and route might not be exactly as I’d hoped.

I was in Saltillo when I finally decided to rent a car. I’d visited the town on the other side of the mountains from where I was staying, and I’d hoped to catch a bus to the mountain village in between before continuing on to the other side. My hopes were dashed when I arrived at the bus station and inquired about such a bus.

There’s a lot of research you can do online. In particular, the web site Rome2Rio.com seems to show about 85% of the possible options, but sometimes you just have to get to the actual station to find out whether there is service to where you want to go. In my case, I learned that there were no buses across the mountain and only one a day to the mountain resort I wanted to visit. It was also the only bus a day that returned from the resort so I’d have to stay a minimum of 24 hours if I went by bus.

The resort got on my list because it had year round skiing. You rarely find snow in Mexico, let alone a ski resort and, based on the pictures, I was curious to see this place; if for no other reason, just to say that I had skied in Mexico. I knew that the pictures of the winter wonderland, with trees covered in snow, was probably just an annual occurrence and for the rest of the year, they simply took advantage of cold nighttime temperatures to blow snow. My decision to rent a car was justified when I arrived at the resort and it was neither open nor covered in snow.

I was impressed, however, to see traces of snow along the roadside and melting from some of the rooftops. There was even a point at which I was concerned I’d have to turn back because the roads were too slick, and no car in Mexico comes equipped with chains. Not only was I disappointed that I wouldn’t enjoy breakfast from what I had hoped would be an alpine ski lodge (it was named Forests of Montreal after all), I was dismayed by the lack of any commercial activity.

The resort was simply made up of vacation homes for people trying to escape the summer heat of Monterrey or Saltillo. After a brief stop, I continued on. While I knew the bus route didn’t go beyond the resort, I’d hoped to go all the way over the mountain using the rental car. My hopes were dashed when the paved road turned to dirt just after the resort. It also explained why the direct route I’d chosen on Google maps purported to take 2 more hours than backtracking half the way to Saltillo.

Since it was early in the morning, I considered taking the unimproved route, but there was no way to know the condition of the road ahead, and since my car was a compact, there was the chance I could have made it 99% of the way before encountering an obstacle substantial enough to force me to turn back. 

I backtracked almost all the way to Saltillo before getting on the better developed road through the mountains. Immediately, the peaks began to rise before me, steep jagged edges of years of sedimentary rock forced perpendicularly into the air by the tectonic movement of plates miles beneath the surface. They reminded me of the razor sharp vertical peaks I’d seen in Patagonia.

I passed through a couple of surprisingly unremarkable mountain villages before beginning my descent. The road began to dodge in and out of the vertical cliff walls, and it was barely wide enough for one car as it wove its way into the canyon, the way a wild river would as it carves its way to lower ground. If I experienced nothing more sensational that week, that drive alone would have justified the cost of the rental car.

There were times the pavement turned to dirt, and I had to slowly navigate my compact through several drainage ditches and washouts. Even that road could have forced me to return if I ran into an obstacle too great. Mexico is not a country to warn you that the road ahead is closed, but I took comfort in that cars were coming the other way. Of course, I entertained the fear that they could simply be on their way back after discovering the road to be impassable.

Eventually, I arrived at the waterfall I’d visited on my first day in Monterrey and knew I’d be able to complete my intended journey through the mountains. I was pleased I’d left early that morning since it was two by the time I arrived at the other side of the pass, and I still had a few hours ahead of me to Bustamante.

Bustamante was one of the magic towns I’d read about, and based on pictures I’d seen, I booked two nights to enjoy it since I knew I’d be arriving late the first day. The drive through Monterrey was a bit challenging, as I imagine any drive is through a city you don’t know well. More than once, Google maps suggested a right or left turn where one didn’t exist or I had to in fact do the opposite. In addition to navigating the map, I had to translate the street names from the butchered pronunciations that the app would announce. 

I was pretty impressed with myself that I didn’t miss a single turn as I traversed the city. It was only once I reached the northern outskirts that I made my first mistake. I knew I had a left turn coming up so I was in the far left lane. The intersection just before my turn, however, allowed the left two lanes to turn left, which meant I had to try to go straight while semi trucks, needing a wider turning radius, were turning in front of me. I thought if I forced my way, I could break through, but the semi to my right refused to yield, and I was left with no choice but to turn with him.

My navigation re-calculated, and I had to drive 2 miles down the highway before I was able to make a U turn. This time, as I approached the intersection from the far right side, it occured to me why Google might occasionally be instructing me to use the lane opposite the one that seemed most logical. I made my turn and continued north for the next couple hours.

My first impression of Bustamante was, “what the fuck?” I felt duped. I’d been in magical towns (Pueblos Magicos) more magical than this one in the middle of nowhere. One of the criteria for Pueblos Magicos, as they are designated by the country of Mexico, is that they are supposed to have many restaurants with a variety of cuisines. Bustamante had a couple convenience stores and one open restaurant. On top of that, the place was devoid of any people, making it more of a ghost town than a magic town. I felt like I’d arrived a week after the Zombie apocalypse. Honestly, I could count on one hand the number of people I saw as I went looking for a place to eat dinner.

In the end, I headed back to my hotel to eat since they had a restaurant there. I returned to find the whole place dark, and I had to ring the bell to inquire with my host about getting some food. It was only 7pm, and when I headed out at 5pm, the housekeeper asked if I wanted dinner. Apparently it had been a mistake to tell her I was not hungry now, and she’d left for the night. The owner of the hotel took pity on me and offered to make me some tortillas and beans, of course the last thing I wanted to eat, having met my lifetime threshold for that particular Mexican cuisine years ago. 

The next day, I further validated my perception of the town by driving up the nearby canyon that had looked so beautiful in the pictures and was touted as one of the main reasons to visit Bustamante. Had I not just driven through the stunning canyons around Monterrey the days before, I might have been more impressed. The only good fortune I had was that no one was at the ticket booth to collect a fee for entering the canyon. Apparently they’d decided it was equally unimpressive.

What I’d expected to take a day exploring took just over an hour, and that included a little off road driving that I hoped would eventually lead to something that justified my expedition. As I progressed, the road just kept getting more narrow so I called it quits and backed 20 minutes up the road I’d driven down, since there was nowhere to turn the car around.

I decided to salvage the day with a late lunch by the pool and some work on my computer. At least this time I was able to catch the staff before they headed home for the day, and I took comfort in knowing that I would be leaving this place first thing in the morning. Just to be sure I could get away as early as possible, I even filled the gas tank that afternoon.

In the morning I was on the road before the sun even cleared the horizon. Unfortunately, that also meant the fog still carpeted the valley floor, and I wasn’t able to get away from the town nearly at nearly the velocity I’d hoped. It also meant I missed seeing any of the landscape I was driving through, and I hoped it was nothing more spectacular than what I’d seen the day before.

The road I’d chosen between these two destinations was the primary catalyst in convincing me to rent the car. It was fairly clear that a bus would not have taken this route, and I would have had to catch a bus back to Monterrey before heading back up to my ultimate destination. I did begin to worry what would happen if I had car troubles along this isolated stretch of highway. I lost cell service not long after I left Bustamante and could not envision any easy way to get help if I had a breakdown.

I knew I was in the clear when I began to see signs of suburbia in the town I knew to be half way between my destinations. There was even a Starbucks so I took one of those rare opportunities to go in and get a coffee, knowing the comforts of the familiar would help relax the anxiety I’d been feeling as I drove along that deserted highway.

My destination for the day was Cuatro Ciénegas, which means “four swamps”. Fortunately, I’d looked at the pictures of the landscape before translating the meaning or I might never have made the trip so far north. When I took out Google maps to get me to the main highway to Cuatro Ciénegas, it displayed the most direct route across town. While that may work easily in the US, I suspect Google maps is a bit too objective in its selection of the most direct route. Things it appears to fail to take into account are the numerous speed bumps and road conditions.

On more than one occasion, the streets were so narrow, I was worried it was going to lead me into a dead end alley. Another challenge was trying to comprehend the street name that Google told me to turn on. Sometimes, it would use just a fraction of the name, and other times it didn’t match at all the actual pronunciation. Though this was the case when I was instructed to turn right onto Jesus street, I knew it meant Heysus; at least that’s how it’s pronounced here, and I looked forward to finally encountering the son of God.

Whatever spectacular scenery I had missed in the morning, I was treated to in the afternoon as the fog finally burned off. Again, I was grateful to be at the wheel of my own vehicle that I could pull over whenever I liked to stop for photos. The moment I rolled into Cuatro Ciénegas, I knew the town was a true Pueblo Magico. The place was alive with Mexican tourists and locals, and I drove through the photogenic town square on my way to the hostel.

I was fortunate that the hostel had parking so I didn’t have to deal with the parking urchins that are ubiquitous throughout Mexico. These are people who are probably just a few pesos away from homelessness, and they guard open parking spots or race down the street to assist in parallel parking your vehicle. I suppose I have an inflated ego with regards to my parking ability since I grew up in San Francisco where, as a teenager, I learned to parallel park backing uphill on the left side of the road into a space only slightly larger than the length of my car. So I admit to taking offense to someone, who probably doesn’t even own a car, attempting to direct me into a spot that could fit a car one and half times the size of the one I was driving. On top of that, they want me to pay them for their assistance, as if they actually made the space available to me.

In some cases they actually are so bold as to block the space with a cone or a piece of garbage, and you have to pay them to clear the space for you. They do offer the added service of cleaning your car with the filthy rag they used to flag you to the open space that they think you would have otherwise missed. It was a rental so I certainly didn’t care if they cleaned it, and even if it was my own car, I imagined that rag making it dirtier than it was when I pulled into the spot.

This is just one of many of the ways in which money is extorted from car owners in Mexico because who wants to take the risk of returning to a car with a broken window? Another popular ruse is when you’re stopped at a stoplight and they manage to get the water onto your windshield and start wiping the window before you have a chance to tell them no. I think there is a little profiling going on there, and they know a foreigner will just have to pay the fee once they get started smearing dirty water all over your windshield.

One tactic I’d forgotten about until this trip was the people who stand in the middle of the street asking for money. They station themselves strategically at speed bumps where you’ve already had to slow to a snail’s pace to keep from taking out the undercarriage of your car. The solicitors can take the form of someone missing a limb, or policemen, or in my case the day before, ambulance drivers. 

I don’t know how much the government supports these services, but I feel like it’s the government’s responsibility to pay them appropriately. Still, I wondered about my karma if I refused to give them something, and I later found myself upside down in the car just a few miles further down the road. Would they look inside and say to each other in Spanish, “take your time; that gringo pretended he didn’t see us when he passed by earlier.” 

Cuatro Ciénegas was a lovely little town with a central square filled with activity, and I was able to absorb it all as I enjoyed a late lunch at a terrace overlooking it all. I could tell that the couple of days spent here would be delightful whether or not I got to the attractions I came to see. Since they were so close to town, however, I decided to go scope them out after my meal.

The first was a pool of water that was so crystal clear that you could see 20 feet to its bottom, which is an unusual experience in Mexico. It turns out that this was one of the four swamps and was more picturesque than any I’d seen before. The only disappointment was that you weren’t allowed to go for a dip, but that is probably why it was so clean.

Intoxicated by my visit to the swamp, I continued out to the sand dunes. I have a love for the desert that only those who share that love will understand. It’s an orgasm of the senses. The radian heat of the sun off the sand, the smell of salt and sage, the sound of silence, and the visual details that are originally missed when looking from afar, like the tiny flowers that dot the otherwise spiny flora of desert plants. Those who believe there is nothing living in the desert are wrong. It is filled with life, and the lack of density allows you to see it so much more clearly.

I climbed up and down the dunes, intrigued by the fingerprints of the wind left upon the sand. Though wind is something you can feel against your skin, sand gives you a glimpse of its form as it caresses the tiny molecules of sand that so easily take the form of that which disrupts it, like my own footprints I observed behind me. I’d taken my shoes off the moment I entered the dunes to feel the sand as it gave way and then enveloped each of my footsteps.

As the shadows grew longer on the ridges of sand, I observed that the sun was about to drop below the horizon. I knew that the temperature and visibility would soon drop precipitously, and I headed back to the car. Forty minutes later, I was back in the town square enjoying the best quesadilla I ever had.

I’d walk past the converted VW bus several times in an attempt to determine what it was that was sold from there. To be honest, it was more to document the unusual example of a food cart with a roof that had been cut on three sides and lifted at an angle from its forth hinged side. I inquired with a man sitting on a park bench across from it whether it was his vehicle and complimented him on his unique approach.

He then shared his unique approach to making a quesadilla, and I gave it a try. It was the traditional folded tortilla with melted cheese, but the magic was in the meat filling, which in this case was a combination of pork and beef. I asked him if he could add onions as it’s always a challenge to avoid scurvy when exclusively eating street food in Mexico.

The next morning I awoke with a new challenge. I knew there was a swamp in the desert just south of town that, when still, reflected the sky above like a mirror laid down on the floor of the desert. I’d inquired the day before, and it was clear that you could drive out there on your own but that it was not signed. In that way, they force you to employ a local guide. The line between extortion and employment in Mexico is very fine indeed.

Having closely looked at satellite maps the night before, I decided to at least give a shot at finding the swamp without the services of a guide. The only unknowns were places where I could see the dirt road crossed a river. There was no way, in advance, to know the depth of that water or whether I would encounter any at all.

I was heartened to come across an occasional sign pointing me in the right direction and by the fact that any side roads were much less traveled than the one I’d chosen. I’d gotten about ⅔ of the way to my objective when I ran into an impassable obstruction. Apparently there were more than just the four named swamps in this desert, and before me was a body of water that dared me to cross it. Whether I paid a guide or a tow truck, I was not to get to my destination without cost.

I parked my rental to the side of the road and continued on foot after wading the intermittent swamp. About 20 minutes later, I encountered a tour group with a couple of four wheel drive vehicles. The guide informed me that it was at least an hour and a half walk to the swamp I was looking for and, to no surprise, recommended that I pay a guide to take me there.

He did, at least, give me a ride back to my car. As we forged the stream in his high clearance truck, he said I could probably make it in my car if I tried, but I suspected he had a brother or cousin in town who was a tow truck driver. Having made the mistake too many times before in my youth of thinking, “I’ve got this”, I turned my compact rental around and returned to town. 

Once there, I went to the tourist office and inquired about tours. I was informed there was the price of admission to the area, the price of the guide and, if I couldn’t do it in my vehicle, the cost of a guide to use his vehicle. 

The price came to the equivalent of $50 USD, and I began to reconsider my motivation for getting to the lake. Really, I only wanted to get out there to take a picture of this giant mirror in the sand. I then began to evaluate the odds of me being able to take the picture I’d seen on the internet. It would require no wind and no one in the water to cast ripples across the reflection. Given that there were also buy up options to paddle board or kayak the lake, I figured my odds of getting an undisturbed reflecting plane to be very low so I decided against it. 

Spending the remainder of the day in town was not at all disappointing, especially since everyone had checked out of the hostel and I had the entire property to myself. In the morning, I checked out and headed for my next destination. Originally, I’d planned to stay in Torreon the whole time and make day trips by bus to the surrounding sites. Having the car meant more flexibility, and after comparing pictures of Torreon to the sites I wanted to visit, I decided to spend as many nights outside of Torreon as possible. I soon discovered that making a decision solely based on those photos was a mistake.

The first town I visited outside of Torreon was Mapimi. The pictures online showed a deep canyon with buildings along its edge. As it turns out, the canyon is outside of town, and the buildings are all part of a ghost town from the mine that used to be there. The town of Mapimi was actually a dusty little village that had somehow also cajoled its way onto the Pueblos Magicos list. While it wasn’t as much of a charlatan as Bustamante, there were not a lot of choices in restaurants and the town wasn’t especially picturesque.

I’d called a couple days before to book two nights at the hotel and was delighted to find they hadn’t recorded that, and I paid for just one night in the simple hotel. It reminded me of the kind of town you’d find in the days of the American wild west: quaint but not much beyond the bank, mercantile and saloon. In fact the place I stayed suggested that it was once such a lively place where cowboys might spend the night.

In the morning, I headed out to the town’s main highlight, a suspension bridge across a canyon to an old silver mine. The drive up the one way road was spectacular, and I made several stops to document the ridiculous road that was certainly of the type I wasn’t allowed to bring the rental car. When I returned down the road, the guard had to call to the entrance station to make sure another car was not on its way up this single lane road. I wondered how they managed on a busy weekend and was grateful I’d come in the middle of the week.

The visit to the suspension bridge didn’t take nearly as long as I’d expected, so in order to avoid arriving too early at my AirBnB, I decided to take an alternative route to Torreon. The road became more alternative the further I continued. I was given a false sense of confidence in that there were signs for Torreon along the way, and I thought, “surely they wouldn’t sign it if the road was impassable”. It’s incredible how often I forget how what seems logical doesn’t apply equally across the world.

Even before the turnoff to the second most popular tourist attraction, the road turned to dirt, and I had to reduce my speed significantly. Paved Mexican roads are bad enough, occasionally dotted with potholes big enough to eat a tire, but this was an unimproved road. It behooves you to stay behind other vehicles to watch for their brake lights or swerving to warn you of upcoming obstacles. In this case, the only thing I shared the road with was cows, who were no help in avoiding obstacles but obstacles in themselves.

I’d arranged to meet my host in Torreon at 1:30pm, and assumed the 2 hours I’d given myself to drive 50 miles would be ample. I even began to figure out what I’d do if I arrived early. At 1pm, I was still 25 miles away from Torreon and texted my host to tell him I would be late. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem in Mexico, but my host replied that he had to get back to work and that he could meet me at six.

Not wanting to drift around town for four hours, I texted that I could meet him at his work to pick up the keys and he agreed. Keep in mind this was all done while I was driving, translating, and trying to avoid my rental car from being eaten or beaten by an oversized pothole or speed bump. Probably the most impressive multi-tasking I’d ever done.

I was delighted to get into the quaint little apartment in time to take a nap to unfrazzle my brain after almost three hours of dirt road driving. While it was a beautiful shortcut, I was not able to take my eyes off the road as I navigated around stray boulders, cows and river washes. Google should definitely remove that route from its maps.

Torreon was an unexpected surprise in that it had a number of nice restaurants and two vegetarian places within walking distance of my AirBnB. While I am not a vegetarian, I take every opportunity I can to eat fruits and vegetables in a country that makes them so elusive. While it is the seventh largest city in Mexico, I didn’t expect it to have the food options of the largest cities, especially being located in the northern desert of Mexico. 

In addition to a delicious filet, I went daily for a bowl of seasonal fruit and one day tried a soup and salad.This place definitely surprised me after the disappointment of Saltillo, the place where, seven days ago, I decided to rent my car. Originally, I had planned to drive the car back to Saltillo because the charge for picking up and dropping off at a different location was $100.

I’d scheduled my flight back to Mexico City from Torreon because I thought I’d be traveling by bus. Traveling by car meant I either had to drive back to Saltillo or pay the fee for the one way use of the rental car. Once I considered the 7 hour round trip, plus the cost of the bus and gas for the rental car, I decided the $100 was worth it.

Just like rental cars in the US, the end price turned out to be triple what I was quoted online, but a third of that was the drop off fee, so it wasn’t too bad. I had seen parts of northern Mexico that could only have been seen with a car, and my experiences were well worth the price. I was also glad to have driven Mexico without being stopped by any bandidos, unless you consider those pesky parking urchins.