Feb 26, 2020
I was woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of rain on our roof. This was a problem since we had hung our swimsuits and towels outside to dry. Oh well, guess they were not going to dry. It was a good thing I had upgraded to the MaxxFan Deluxe ceiling vents since they could remain open in the rain. With the original ceiling vents I would have woken up to a wet bed instead of just the sound of rain.
We got off to a late start from putting everything away so we didn’t get going until past 11:00 AM. It was a two and a half hour drive to our next destination Xilitla where we were going to visit the gardens of Edward James, Los Pozas. Edward James was an eccentric rich British man who in 1945 decided to go to Mexico to create a “Garden of Eden”. He proceeded to spend the next 35 years building Los Posas until his death in 1984. Los Pozas turn out to be a surrealistic, whimsical set of structures and art built into the side of a mountain.
The drive to Xilitla was beautiful along windy mountain jungle roads and through small towns which offered artisanal ice cream. We stopped at one roadside ice cream stand and found that in addition to the regular fruit flavors they had tequila ice cream. It turned out to not just be tequila flavored ice cream but actual alcoholic tequila ice cream and Holly said it was delicious. It got me thinking, why don’t we have tequila or wine or rum ice cream in the US? The only iced alcoholic drinks are things like Pina Coladas and Margaritas. Why don’t bars serve tequila ice cream in a cone? Why hasn’t anyone set up an adult Dessert Bar serving alcoholic ice cream, alcoholic candy, rum cake with real rum, lemon ice with red wine in addition to the standard Pina Coladas in a pineapple and Margaritas?
We got to Xilitla and the GPS directed us onto a narrow, badly rutted dirt path. I won’t even call it a dirt road because it wasn’t even graveled, just compacted and now rutted dirt. What always amazes me about Mexico is that there will be famous, major tourist attractions that can only be accessed along a narrow badly maintained dirt road. Being a class C RV we do not like narrow, badly maintained dirt roads. However, we persevered until we got to Casa Caracol, which iOverlander indicated was a hotel that had parking for RV’s. Just outside we found Kara and Jeremy, the Youtube couple we had met in San Miguel.
The entrance to Casa Caracol was you guessed it a narrow, badly maintained dirt road but for a little more fun it was also very steep. Fun! Jeremy helped us scoped it out and direct me down the road with trees and bushes scraping our sides along the narrow road, over a small bridge until we got to the mostly level parking area. They even decided to join us for the night and drove their much more off-road ready vehicle down to park next to us.
By the time we got parked it was almost 4 and much too late to go into Los Pozas so we just chatted, had dinner and turned in.