For words about the place, see my article about Las Pozas, and here’s a link to my article on the town of Xilitla.

Las Pozas, Surreal Architectural Fantasy of Edward James is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

We went there  to see Las Pozas, but we also took a walk into town.  I’d noticed that the tourism literature often uses the phrase “Shangri La” about Xilitla, which is stretching things a bit.

But the setting, naturally jungle with coffee trees and orange trees replacing parts of the jungle, is gorgeous. There is an old church, a lively plaza, and some of the steepest walking streets I’ve seen in Mexico. It population was listed as being around seven thousand people in one of my guidebooks.

Our walk into town was on a quiet dirt road uphill all the way from Las Pozas. I had seen it described as a 20 or 25 minute walk, but it took us longer uphill. We came out on a street which went past El Castillo, a mansion which Edward James’ friend Plutarco Gastelum Esquer had built. It’s run now as a bed and breakfast, and if I were to spend a night in Xilitla, that would be my first choice, even if it were a splurge! I think you may often need reservations. There are plenty of other hotels in Xilitla too.

El Castillo

We climbed a walking street past El Castillo to the town plaza and 16th century church. We stopped at a bakery where an extremely friendly man told us of his years working in the U.S., and how he liked it better there — something we have often heard from Mexicans.

He said the bread would be ready in “un ratito,” (a little while) and when I joked that could mean anything from five minutes to two weeks, he laughed and admitted it would be a couple of hours. We were ready to leave, so we went on back down to Las Pozas, did a little more touring there, said goodbye to the spirit of Edward James, and drove back to El Banito, our home base for the past two weeks. The hot spring was just what we needed after all that walking and climbing!

Getting to Xilitla and las Pozas

We were camped just south of Ciudad Valles on Highway 85, and we drove our little Toyota Dolphin RV to Xilitla. We’d been told it was about an hour’s drive and it took us about an hour and a half. (That’s typical… we pass the overloaded sugarcane trucks but not a whole lot else.) We went roughly south on Highway 85 for most of the trip, then turned right at a well-marked intersection onto Highway 120, which 14 kilometers later goes through the town of Xilitla, then continues on across the mountains toward Queretaro. Just as we were coming into the general Xilitla area, there was a sign pointing to Las Pozas. It also said Edward James, or maybe just James, on it, and mentioned the restaurant. If you turn right there, you will also see a billboard labeled Mapa Touristica, and showing a variety of things to do in the area.

At first, we didn’t make that right turn. We wanted to get a sense of Xilitla a little, so we stayed on Highway 120, which crossed a bridge, went up a long hill, and went through the edge of town. Any rig could do this, assuming the driver was up for narrow and winding mountain roads — the bus lines go this way, as do trucks. We could tell when we were near the center of town, as vehicles were parked everywhere. Once we were on the far side of town, we turned around and went back to that dirt road, and went on it something around a mile to Las Pozas. There we parked, and when we left, we turned around and came back out the same way.

Our Dolphin is about 22 feet long. Anyone hauling a tow car would be advised to park at the sign just off Highway 120 and then take their tow car. For longer rigs, the tricky part would be turning around near Las Pozas. Kelly, who can drive anything (we used to have a 40 foot bus conversion) says it would have been awkward to try turning something that long around, and I’d add it could be impossible depending on where other visitors had parked their vehicles. But rigs under 30 feet with capable and slightly adventuresome drivers would be fine on the dirt road.

This dirt road does continue past Las Pozas on into the town of Xilitla, and we walked it. You wouldn’t want to try it with an RV, as there are some tight curves and when you reach the town, the streets are narrow, steep, and confusing.

Okay, enough about motorhomes — most people will be coming by car or by bus, and that should be fine. There are plenty of buses, good second class ones (likely without bathrooms) and maybe first class ones, from other cities in the region. Some bus tours are offered in English, from south Texas and no doubt other places, combining visits to Xilitla and Las Pozas with stops at other places in the region.

However you go,  it’s worth the trip! It’s likely extremely hot in the summer.

Xilitla is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

As we wandered around Las Pozas a few days ago, I was more fascinated than delighted, giving myself over to the total weirdness rather than trying to make sense of it. It doesn’t make sense. It is not supposed to, not on any rational level. Surrealism is enigmatic by its very nature, and Las Pozas could not be more enigmatic.

The place calls out for photography, and Kelly and I kept passing our digital camera back and forth. Here’s a  a photocollage where I played with a few of the images. There is a whole page of photos of Las Pozas of Edward James here.

Who was Edward James?

Born in 1907 to an aristocratic and extremely wealthy British family, James grew up in a time when the world was falling apart. The First World War killed the men of the generation before his. His adolescence was described as being spent in a continous state of distress. He became closely allied with surrealists, and helped Salvador Dali and others to create by helping them financially. He married a ballerina but they were soon divorced, with no children, and he never remarried. He left Europe in 1940, going to the United States and then to Cuernavaca, Mexico, in 1944. There he met Plutarco Gastelum Esquer, who worked with him for many years. Plutarco married in 1956… he, his wife, and their four children were like family to James. Edward James lived until 1984.

I would love to read a good biography of James and Las Pozas… the best I found was this article on James.

The Creation of Las Pozas

In 1945, Edward James first came to Xilitla, and two years later he bought land there and began building. He cultivated thousands of orchids but after an unusual severe freeze, he put his attention on the architectural fantasies. He often left Xilitla to gad about the world.

Construction went on for decades, supporting as many as 65 families at a time and ultimately costing something around five million dollars. Things didn’t get finished before others were begun. Edward James lived in one of the buildings at times, and at other times, lived in nearby Xilitla, at El Castillo, built by Plutarco. (You can stay at El Castillo as a guest now, as it is a bed and breakfast.) See my blog entry on Xilitla, just before this one.

We bought a very nicely done magazine/book in English and Spanish, called Las Pozas de Edward James, Xilitla, San Luis Potosi (only 40 pesos, about $3.70 at present, with color photos… contact information for the publishers is revistahuasteca@hotmail.com, I don’t know if they read English.) From it, we learned many more details.

One interesting fact is that in 1952 in Xilitla, Edward James met Carmelo Munoz Camacho, a local builder, who became his architect and creator of many of the forms and methods used at Las Pozas. I got the impression that he was essential to the creation of this place, which might otherwise have been little more than a surreal fantasy in the notebooks of James.

Our Explorations at Las Pozas

After paying a small entrance fee, we followed what seemed to be the only way to go, though I did notice a small walkway going uphill that I remembered later. We walked along past a small river, more of a creek on this January day, and came to one of the many pools for which Las Pozas (“the pools”) is named.

Then began my own encounter with surrealism. For as long as I can remember, I have had dreams of having to climb strange and impossible flights of stairs, never with railings, always dangerous. In some dreams I have succeeded, in many others I have not and have awakened in a sweat. Now, wide awake at Las Pozas and wearing my comfortable sandals instead of my better-gripping walking shoes, I had to climb a series of steps that were straight out of my dreams, like some form of Jungian initiation.

I did it.

Later, I was relieved to discover I would not have to go back down that way. There were several other ways to enter the maze that is Las Pozas, ways that were much easier walking. But my having done it turned out to be a kind of Jungian ritual that put me into a deeper connection with the mystery of the place. The steps in my photo-collage above are not the ones I climbed… but they are a striking part of Las Pozas, and they capture my dream feeling.

There are maps of the layout of Las Pozas, and much as I adore maps, I was glad we didn’t discover that fact until we had been there a couple of hours. Not having a map put me more into a surreal frame of mind!

I loved being in the jungle, where many plants we know as houseplants were running wild. I loved hearing a Mexican woman singing from atop one of the multi-storied structures that I wouldn’t climb. (Jungian initiation or no, I still made a lot of choices about where I would go.) I enjoyed sitting with Kelly in the restaurant there, eating a meal and talking about houses we could design inspired by Edward James. Kelly is working on one now, which will eventually find its way onto his site of ecological house plans.

I thought how much fun it would be to have a flying dream over Las Pozas. On a more realistic level, there are cabins you can stay in at Las Pozas itself, and that would be great fun too, I’m sure. Maybe at full moon! For practicalities of getting there, see my blog entry on Xilitla.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This article attracted a lot of comments on the old blog, so I am going to see if they will survive cutting and pasting. I was thrilled to hear from the family of Carmelo Munoz Camacho!

11 Comments:

• At January 10, 2005 1:35 PM, Anonymous said…

  Rosana,

  Thank you so much for that wonderful story on Las Pozas. It has always been on my ‘want to see’ list but now it has moved up to the ‘must see’ list! Great pictures and descriptions and I very much appreciate the RV info on getting there and parking.

  Great work!

  Jonna

• At May 17, 2005 10:30 PM, Daniel Rogelio Muñoz Castro said…

  Great story about Las Pozas.
  I feel honored that you like it and that you told your advententure to the world.

  Daniel R. Muñoz Castro
  (Carmelo Muñoz Grandson)

• At May 18, 2005 8:36 AM, Rosana Hart said…

  Thank you for your comment, Daniel. Your grandfather must have been a remarkable man. Do you share his interest in architecture?

• At May 31, 2005 3:47 PM, Horacio Flores Muñoz said…

  well, Im another of the many grandsons of carmelo… we all are really glad to read about him in your blog.

  When I was a child (Im 28 now) Carmelo used to talk to me about Mister James, And we used to spend a lot of time seeing a lot of pictures about las pozas in the old 50,s when all of that was just a really weird project from a really weird British man… Pictures of james and Carmelo and the workers and plutarco, etc… It was really cool to me, being there at my grandmother little store, talking with Carmelo. By now, Otilia, his wife and our grandmother, used to tell a lot of stories about James, Carmelo, Xilitla and las pozas… my favorite is when Otilia, Carmelo and Don Eduardo met each other…and belive me, it is really great.

  Well I used to go to Xilitla every year, just because I like it so much.

  Thanx rosana

  H.

• At June 06, 2005 9:14 AM, Rosana Hart said…

  Hi Horacio — I’m so pleased that both you and Daniel enjoyed my blog entry. When we were at Las Pozas, I kept thinking that many people have wild and amazing imaginations… but how many people can then follow through and make their visions happen? That’s why I wrote about your grandfather. Without him, would Las Pozas be anything but some sketches in a notebook?

  I am back in the US right now for a few months, taking care of business here, but we will be back as soon as we can, to the house we’ve rented in Bernal, near Queretaro. If you or any of your family are ever near there, or if we travel to wherever you live, I would love to meet you and hear some of your family stories. If you would like this too, please email me directly at rosana at mexico-with-heart dot com. (I put my email this way so spammers won’t get it from the webpage.)

  Thanks again,
  Rosana

• At February 16, 2007 5:53 PM, Anonymous said…

  Feb 15, 2007 I just saw a program on HGTV that showed Las Pozas and its owner(?) who fixed up the house and has lived there for the past three years ??? what gives? I thought it was open to the public? I was there sometime in the early 90′s when there was only ruins.

• At February 16, 2007 8:54 PM, Rosana Hart said…

  I would have enjoyed that program. When we were there, we noticed an area that was fenced off. I asked about it and was told that it was a private residence, so that must be where the owners are living.

• At May 18, 2007 5:52 PM, monymoon said…

  hello, i’m from xilitla, and the owner of LAS POZAS doesn’t live there,but he does live in xilitla, and EL CASTILLO now is a hotel, which is located in the town, las pozas it’s open to the public, in general. it is a wonderful place to go. he owner’s name is KAKO…

• At November 25, 2007 5:25 PM, lyle said…

  Hi Rosana, I was reading through your blog and came across your article about Edward James and his architectural fantasy near San Luis Potosi.

  I was greatly interested because I had known Edward James in North Malibu, Ca. in about 1954. We were near neighbors. I lived with some Dianetics people about 4 miles up above Zuma beach .

  Edward lived on the beach near us and we visited back and forth. He told us that he had a banana ranch in Mexico and left it with his caretaker who was very responsible and trustworthy. He was a very nice guy, slight of build and very companionable but said little about his earlier life.

  He employed a houseman, a friend of ours, a black UCLA student named Curt Von Williams who drove down with me to my bullfighter’s house in Guadalajara in my Jeepster on my second trip to Mexico.

  I stayed to live and work in Mexico and had never heard any more of Edward until I read your fascinating article.

  Ken Edwards

• At November 25, 2007 8:58 PM, Rosana Hart said…

  Interesting, Ken, and all the more so since I was going to mention this blog entry to you yesterday when we were emailing. Just another surreal touch!

• At November 26, 2007 10:40 AM, Anonymous said…

  Just came back from Xilitla, I visited “Las Pozas”, and talked with one of the new owners, he told me that the bigger part of las pozas has a new owner Roberto Hernandez former Banamex shareholder. They are planning attract more visitors to the place.
  At the end of this place there is a beutiful water fall, bring swimming suits and enjoy the place.
  If you have kids, they never will forget this experience.
  The place looks like a scene from a Tarzan movie.
  I recommend to stay in Taninul Hotel (15 min from Ciudad Valles)
  and drive from there, is about one hour driving, this a hotel has a thermal water swimming pool.
  From there there are some other beutiful water falls (Micos, Tamasopo, Tamul)among Las Pozas in Xilitla.
  rodriguezjf at webxcreen.com

Las Pozas, Surreal Architecture of Edward James in the Mexican Jungle is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

January 2005. — Today we went to the tianguis, or weekly open-air market, in Aquismon, a town of several thousand people, largely Huastecan. The Huastecs are little known compared to the Mayans or Aztecs, but they are one of the most ancient peoples of Mexico and there are still many of them. In Ciudad Valles, a city of over 100,000, we had seen very little traditional clothing though people told us that many Huastecans did live there. As in most places around the world, jeans and modern clothing are taking over.

We had lunch in a little restaurant in Ciudad Valles a couple of days ago, and our waitress was a bored-looking teenager, standing in the open doorway, watching the street. I said to her, “You can see the whole world go by.” She turned and began talking with us, her boredom falling away. It only took a couple of questions to learn that she is from Aquismon and lives there now, taking the bus in to work at the restaurant in Valles (probably a half hour ride or so) and going home to her quiet town at night. She wished she could continue her education, but there were twelve children in the family, and “we older ones have to work to help feed the young ones.” The children range from 22 years to 3 months. “My mother was only 18 when she got married,” she said, “and she has suffered much.” She explained something about her father, but by now she was speaking very softly and rapidly, leaning toward us as she spoke, and and we missed that part.

“How many children do you want when you get married?” I asked.

“Only two! Or maybe three. That’s much better. But now, in our town, eight children is still a small family!”

She also had dreams of going to the United States to work. As we drove out to Aquismon this morning, Kelly and I talked about how much more prosperous Mexico is than when we took a long trip around many parts of Mexico twenty-five years ago. We wondered how much of that prosperity came from the dollars sent home by the many Mexicans who work in the U.S. “That’s a topic worthy of a Ph.D thesis,” I reflected. Kelly commented on the tremendous industriousness of Mexicans everywhere.

Aquismon turned out to be a pretty little town. We parked several blocks away from the central plaza and followed other people walking to the tianguis. It had rained in the night, and people had strung up large tarps over the plaza and surrounding streets. Some of the streets had a very slick clayey mud, so we chose our route with some care.

At first, we were disappointed. Most of the items offered for sale were the usual fresh produce, plastic shoes, and cheap electronic or household goods. Most people were dressed like other Mexicans anywhere.

But then, here and there, we started noticing older women wearing the typical blouses, headgear, and simple black skirts of the Huastecan people. I saw a couple of these women selling something wrapped in plant fibers. It was pilon, which is minimally refined sugar, like an extremely dark brown sugar in a solid block. I bought a package from one of the women, and she crossed herself with the ten-peso note (worth just under a dollar). Kelly asked permission to take their photo, and they shyly agreed. That’s the picture above.

The pilon was surprisingly heavy. Here are pictures of it on the table in our RV, with the computer showing the size.

A man was selling plastic bags of a white vegetable. I asked him what it was and he said “yuca.” He pulled a cooked piece out of a basket, and I ate it. It was kind of like a very starchy and dry potato. He explained that it was often eaten with hot chili peppers. He also had some bags of yuca that had been boiled with pilon. I bought one of those bags, and it was tasty. Kelly and I had had yuca deep-fried in Cuban-Puerto Rican restaurant in San Francisco once, and it was exquisite. Here’s a little more information about it, from a food distributor’s site: “Yuca (YOO-kah) is a prime crop of tropical and subtropical countries. Also known as manioc or cassava… When yuca is dried and ground, it becomes tapioca. Fresh yuca is available year-round.”

We encountered another American couple, the only other foreigners we’d seen there, and fell into conversation. John and Shirley Ladd have lived in Aquismon for many years. He is a doctor at a clinic there, and confirmed Kelly’s and my feeling of the greater prosperity over the past 25 years, even though there is a larger population now. Potable water is still an issue, he said. They live next door to their church, a Baptist one, and invited us to stop by. As it turned out, we didn’t feel like we had the time, but maybe we will some other time.

We were impressed by their deep involvement in the community… Both of them said hello to several people who walked by as we stood and chatted, and they introduced us to one or two. (I realized later that the Ladds were living many aspects of a dream of mine, to live in Mexican community long enough to be involved in it in a meaningful way — perhaps teaching English or internet marketing in my case — and to speak good enough Spanish to not feel like an idiot every time I open my mouth.)

I asked Shirley for any advice she might have for Americans thinking of living in Mexico. She recommended that you visit the place you are thinking about at several times of the year. It was a very pleasant temperature as we stood chatting on a January morning, maybe in the mid-70s, but she said it got very hot in Aquismon in the summer… they had seen 109 degrees in their living room! By visiting at different times, not only would you see the climate variations but you would have more chances to really get to know the place better.

Kelly and I had already decided this region would be too hot for us in the summer, or we’d have wanted to explore Aquismon further for ourselves. Mexico is sure full of fascinating towns. In any event, the smiles of the Huastecan ladies of Aquismon will stay with us!

Aquismon, a Huastec town near Ciudad Valles is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

A guidebook indicated that the Villa del Mar hotel had places that RVs could camp very inexpensively, so we tried them. With solar panels on Cando (our motorhome) and plenty of water in our tanks, they only charged us $6 a night. A peaceful spot. We got our internet satellite dish working.

…and sat back to enjoy the sunset. We liked this spot so much that we stayed a layover day there.

La Pesca, on the Gulf Coast is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

This is a fascinating historial spot. For many decades, the road that runs out front (Highway 85) was the main highway from the U.S, Texas to Mexico City. It was a larger trailer park then, with many caravans coming through. Now it’s pretty quiet as a campground (which we like fine), and the restaurant bar is a pleasant spot mostly enjoyed by people from Ciudad Valles, just 3 or 4 miles from here. The pool you see is a sulpher hot spring, very lightly sulpherours, and warm rather than hot — an easy temperature to get in and swim a bit. El Banito is managed by Chayo Cespedes, a friendly man who’s been very helpful to us. Noe Santos Velazco (in the white shirt) is the waiter. And the iguana lives near our RV.

One evening, we had a long visit with Tony, the owner, and his family. He grew up here, as his father was adding to the trailer park and other features. Tony’s English is excellent, which he credits partly to learning it here from the many Americans who came through. The next day, another man who remembers El Bañito from his childhood came by. He’s an American from Texas who married a woman from Ciudad Valles.

We’re getting quite a sense of what this place was like in its heyday!

Someone later asked me how to get there. t’s just beyond Ciudad Valles, on the main highway south. I think that’s hwy 85. Going through Ciudad Valles from the north, after you have gone through town you’ll see a Soriana store (like a much smaller WalMart) on the right and just a couple of blocks or so past that is the periferico or ring road with a traffic light. Stay on your same road and youl will pass a hospital on the left. When you see a golf course on the right, you are getting close. El Banito is on the left, just before the road curves to the left. There is a sign but I don’t remember how prominent it is. All this is maybe 15 or 20 minutes from the ring road traffic light.

El Bañito: Camping by Ciudad Valles is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

The region has been marginalized from the national project and its history and culture are seen to differ from Mexico as a whole. Thus the region is defined in Mexican ideology as a frontier, a remote and lawless place that “has not yet been immortalized in textbook or mural” (p. 51).

But the region is believed to have its hidden sources of wealth. Central Mexicans are convinced that Indian peoples of the Huasteca can predict weather or cure diseases that modern medicine cannot. The Huasteca is widely believed to be the location of hidden treasure or untold mineral wealth (it does in fact contain major oil resources).

The region is a kind of untapped periphery that remains unexplored and unexploited. Yet paradoxically this reserve of physical and cultural wealth “is seen as quintessentially Mexican because it represents the great, dormant, untapped Mexico” (p. 51). The Huasteca serves national elites as a metaphor of untamed possibilities, both the strength and the potential of an unrealized Mexico.

We lived the area a lot, as it turned out. Hot, though!

The Huasteca Region of Mexico is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico