Back in the Game

(To view the picture album click on the picture above)

It has been a while since I last posted on this blog. As it turns out having a baby is a full time activity and our travelling was limited to visiting our family in Chicago to introduce them to Sebastian.

But now Seb is 4 months old and we've resumed our travels around Mexico. Our first outing was a week-end trip to the State of Hidalgo. We'd been meaning to go visit the Basaltic Prisms for a long time and I'm glad we did, the site is amazing!

The Basaltic Prisms are made of igneous rock, known as prismatic basalt, formed into a fifty meters high vertical wall of gigantic columns, decorating the walls of a gully known as Alcholoya. These basaltic prisms were formed by the accelerated cooling of lava millions of years ago. They are at the waterfall formed by the San Antonio Dam, which falls through the prisms and into the river. This geologic phenomenon is unique in the whole continent.

Baron Alexander Von Humboldt, considered the father of modern geography, visited Mexico at the beginning of the 19th century. Impressed by the beauty of these prisms, he made sketches of this formation in 1803; now exhibited in the Museum of British Art, in London.

We stayed in the "Magical Village" of Huasca de Ocampo at a beautiful small hotel called Casa Azul.

The Programa Pueblos Mágicos ("Magical Villages Programme") is an initiative led by Mexico's Secretariat of Tourism, in conjunction with other federal and state agencies, to promote a series of towns around the country that offer visitors a "magical" experience – by reason of their natural beauty, cultural riches, or historical relevance. Curently there are 35 Magical Villages in Mexico.

On Sunday we visited the site of Peña del Aire (Air Boulder). The drive there was breathtaking with deep canyons, rivers, mountains surrounding us. The micro-climate of the area is reminiscent of African Savannah, which is incredibly beautiful.

Before heading back to Mexico City we visited another Magical Village: Real del Monte.

Real del Monte is a small town lying at an altitude of 2700 metres (8,800 ft). The municipality was once the richest in the state when gold and silver were discovered before the Spanish Conquest. The town's steep streets, stairways and small squares are lined with low buildings, some dating back to colonial times. The houses with high sloping roofs and chimneys indicate a Cornish influence, the legacy left by 350 Cornishmen employed by the Cornish firm that ran the mines between 1824 and 1848. Today, typical Cornish pasties (a local speciality known as pastes) are baked here and are unknown outside the State of Hidalgo.

This was a wonderful first trip as a family and I cannot wait for the next one in less than a month!

Check out the pictures from the trip by clicking the picture above.