Tamazunchale

The bus from Ciudad Valles drops you into Tamazunchale before you’ve had time to adjust to the altitude change — or rather the anti-altitude change, since the road from the altiplano sheds nearly a thousand meters in an hour of switchbacks, arriving in a basin of banana trees and cloud forest so sudden it feels choreographed. I stepped off onto Calle Benito Juárez on a Saturday afternoon in late October, the humidity settling on my shirt within thirty seconds, a smell of copal and diesel and something frying in lard coming from somewhere I couldn’t immediately place. I had booked one night.

The Drop Into the Huasteca

The Sierra Madre Oriental does not ease you into the Huasteca. From the high desert of San Luis Potosí’s altiplano, the mountains crack open along a dramatic escarpment, and Tamazunchale sits at the bottom of that break, pressed against the Río Moctezuma in a narrow valley that forces the town into vertical layers — streets climbing the hillsides, houses perched on ledges, the cathedral visible from angles that seem wrong until you accept the logic of the terrain.

The gorges around town are the real draw if you come without the crowd that gravitates north toward Tamul and Xilitla. Barranca del Infiernillo, reached by a twenty-minute colectivo ride and a path that descends along a ridge of ferns and wild orchids, ends at a swimming hole so cold and clear it makes you doubt the tropical surroundings. I went on a Tuesday morning when the trail was empty except for a man leading two mules in the opposite direction who looked entirely unsurprised to see me. The falls above the pool drop maybe fifteen meters into what is essentially a cathedral of rock and green, and the sound at the bottom is total.

The Sunday Market Before the Light Comes Up

Tamazunchale’s tianguis on Sunday starts before sunrise. By five-thirty in the morning, Nahua women from the surrounding sierra villages have already set up along the streets radiating from the Mercado Municipal. The ground cloths hold things you will not find with any reliability north or south of here: fresh chayote alongside wild mushrooms gathered from cloud forest at elevations above 1,500 meters, dried herbs bundled in quantities that suggest a different relationship to cooking than the one I grew up with, and zacahuiles the size of a small child wrapped in banana leaves and sold by the slice.

The zacahuil is the Huasteca tamale, and Tamazunchale’s version is the best I’ve eaten anywhere — masa roughly ground and stained dark with chile ancho and chile guajillo, the pork inside properly braised rather than shredded from a bag, steamed overnight in a leaf bundle that perfumes everything within range. A slice costs twenty-five pesos. The women selling them are operating by a different set of priorities than the tourism economy, which is exactly why the market functions the way it does. I arrived at six, ate standing up with my coffee in a plastic cup, and felt entirely irrelevant in the best possible sense.

Staying, Eating, Orienting

Tamazunchale is a real working town rather than a tourism infrastructure, which means the accommodation is modest and the food is better at the market than in the restaurants. The exception is a small comedor on Calle 20 de Noviembre where a family sells enchiladas huastecas — not what you know from central Mexico, but corn tortillas folded around beans and chicken and bathed in salsa verde, topped with fresh cheese and raw onion — for lunch only, noon until they sell out, which is usually by one-thirty.

For the gorges and waterfalls, go Tuesday through Thursday when you have the trails mostly to yourself. The colectivos heading toward Xilitla leave from the corner nearest the market entrance and cost next to nothing. I stayed an extra two nights without particularly deciding to.

Getting There

From San Luis Potosí city, direct buses on Autobuses Coordinados take five to six hours, routing through Río Verde and Ciudad Valles. From Mexico City’s TAPO terminal, the route via Pachuca and Huejutla is more direct than going via Tampico. From Ciudad Valles, it is forty minutes south on Federal Highway 85. There is no airport; that is not a problem.