Old Mexico

Post and Photos by Bobby

After leaving La Manquina Campground, we made our way towards Cascada Cola de Caballo. Our path took us along the outskirts of Monterrey, which is a huge city. It even had a Tim Horton’s!

The campground where we wanted to stay (Don Soteros) is high up in the Sierra Madre Oriental. The road was steep and curvy and we had to pull over two different times to let the transmission cool down. That probably wasn’t necessary, but we weren’t taking any chances on a breakdown.

The views along the drive were amazing. Unfortunately, when we arrived at Don Soteros, the man there said no pets were allowed. He explained that this was because we were in the Cumbres de Monterrey National Park and the campground had a lot of deer. Fabian explained that the dogs would stay in the camper most of the time and would always be on a leash when we took them out, and I think the man was about to let us stay. But then he moved closer to the truck and our alarm system, Banner, let out a bark and that was the end of that.

I had another spot marked on my map so we continued on to La Cienega de Gonzalez, which is a popular place to rent cabins and also four-wheelers. We finally found a way to drive into the canyon and made our way into it until we found a nice spot.

The only negative thing about the camping spot was it seemed every four-wheeler that went by had to stop right outside our camper to take a photo of the canyon or wait for other people in their group. And every time this happened, Penelope and Banner (but especially Penelope) had to let us know someone was out there. At least we know our alarm systems work …

The next morning we drove back down the mountains to Cola de Caballo, which means “Horse’s Tail.” It was a lovely little park. I took some photos of the little falls directly downstream of the main falls.

After that I made my way to the main falls.

After our visit to the park, we made our way down to Santiago to fill up the truck and have some lunch. We returned to the camper and bundled up because at night the wind funneled through the canyon and it got fairly chilly.

The next day we drove through the canyon just to see what was down there. For the last two days we had seen climbers walking into the canyon in the morning and not coming out until evening, so we were curious. We made it to the wall they were climbing.

We also took out the drone and shot some video and photos of the canyon, so I’ll leave you with this for the end of the post.