San Luis Potosi & Rio Verde

By Ali Karim
This post is part of a series called San Luis Potosi & Huasteca February 2016
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Arrived on a regional jet from DFW; a 76 seater. Using the washroom was an experience; I wanted to pee, and had to lean over backwards due to the small plane fuselage curvature. Any taller, and I would have fallen backwards. I guess I could always pee sitting down. Travel and learn 🙂 Towards San Luis

Arrived at the small airport; walked across the tarmac as no jetbridges here. After Immigration/customs, rented a car, and drove into the city to spend half a day. San Luis Potosi (SLP) is a town founded in the late 1500’s by Spain when they discovered gold in the area. So multiple mines sprung up, and SLP center is built up around 7 barrios or neighborhoods that sprung up around such mines.

These barrios each had their own cathedrals and squares (Spanish Colonial), so today, the SLP centro area is actually spread over these 7 Barrios, each with their own unique squares, cathedrals etc, and narrow cobblestone roads. Found parking in the city streets and got some help from a very nice young lady called Marianna, who voluntarily took us on a short tour of the centro, explaining its history and showing us where to eat, what to see etc. Marianna was happy to be able to practice her English, which was just perfect for us. Several of the squares were getting ready to host outdoor concerts that Saturday night. Too bad we were not staying overnight here.

In an SLP Barrio, with Marianna, our “volunteer” guide

Typical square with gardens, cathedral and a bandstand gazebo in the middle

Narrow streets opening into a square

One square getting set up for an open air concert

After walking around the various Barrios and small streets in the barrios, people watching and the street entertainment, we had dinner of tacos typical to the SLP area. Very few people spoke English here, but we were able to be understood.

Food and fruit carts everywhere

More street foods; note the roasted corn in Dilshad’s hands

Another Barrio

Chilling in yet another barrio square

True meaning of hand-me-down clothing

Street entertainment

In the evening started driving to RioVerde, a town about 2hrs east of SLP. The drive was on a 2 lane undivided road, through steep mountains; trucks and the curved mountain roads meant it took us 3hrs to get to RioVerde. The landscape changed drastically along the way, starting with semi-arid, to stunted trees to taller trees and then back to semi-arid landscape, all in very short distance.

Arrived in RioVerde, and after getting lost, we found the B&B Hotel El Molino. This is a B&B in a converted sugar cane mill. Apparently, this area was famous for sugarcane and there were 50 or so sugarcane mills in the area, all powered by rivers to crush the sugarcane and extract and process the sugarcane juice. Alicia, the daughter of the owner, was very nice and gave us a run down of the area.

Interesting Information
This Place was a Sugar-mill region before but they converted to other buildings

We asked her where we should go for diner with some music/party. Turned out, her brother-in-law was having a party at his house and she invited us! Of course we accepted, and she took us to a typical Mexican home, where the party with family, friends, was in the backyard; with live music by a famous folk singer (Andres Herrera) in Mexico, who was a friend of the family. So we had typical Mexican BBQ (buffalo, chicken) and other typical Mexican dishes.

Andreas played the guitar, and sang folk songs with social messages about rich/poor, poetry about love and rejection etc etc; a typical Mexican music party. Of course we understood very little :); but enjoyed the party regardless.

Great first day.

Onto Huasteca Potosina tomorrow

This entry was posted in Mexico, North America, San Luis Potosi & Huasteca Feb 2016

One thought on “San Luis Potosi & Rio Verde

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