Tamazunchale
The famous Thomas and Charlie give way to a deeply historic and inviting town still in the cold and cloud bedecked mountains of the southern Huasteca.
Tamazunchale is one of the most real of the beautiful little towns that pepper the Huasteca region in the very south of San Luis Potosi. The town is often the first that people driving north will encounter after crossing the state line from equally ruddy and mountainous Hidalgo. Huichintla, on the Hidalgo border, is about 40 minutes south of Tamazunchale, although the Hidalgo Capital of Pachuca is about 5 hours further.
The jagged and forbidding landscape here starts to give way. And deeply historical Tamazunchale is where to people come to start to understand the great clashes of human history that obscure our view of what the Huasteca is and was. Inhabited since probably 2000 BCE by unknown peoples, the town came to host Olmecs by about 300 CE. These people are thought to have later influenced and even come to be both Maya and Huastec people. But they were conquered, after more than a thousand years, by the Nahuas under Moctezuma the first in 1454.
Even today, many of the place names in the greater Huastec region bear these Nahuatl language names. The sheer terrain is magnificent and inviting, but here you find just a glimpse of the gravity and profundity of peoples and meanings. It is still a majority Nahua population within the overall population of about 25,000 people. The confluence of the Rio Moctezuma and Rio Amajac gives the entire town a river-town feel, and the bridge seems positively out of place.
But it is a remarkable place of forest ventures, a river side market, and plenty of places to stay. Xilitla is a further one hour to the north and west. But for those tired out by a long drive from the south, it is a remarkable and comforting place to stay. Not yet as fanciful as points north in the Huasteca, Tamazunchale is every bit as jaw-dropping in terms of landscape, panoramic mountainous views and a significant local food scene.
Some buses from Mexico City will insist that you changes buses at Huejutla de Reyes, still in Hidalgo. The entire trip takes about six hours, but check with Ovnibus or Frontera for a more direct route.
