Gazing from a platform hanging over the crystal clear waters where small fish dart between stands of marsh grasses, it's easy to forget the somber reality that you are, in fact, in the midst of a desert where, just outside the valley, life is hard and rattlesnakes and scorpions are the species that reign.

In one small valley though --- the valley of Cuatro Cienegas --- an isolated wetland environment has existed for thousands of years and species have evolved in this microcosm. Species that exist nowhere else on earth. Species that draw scientists from around the world, and that has even drawn NASA researchers, who believe the valley may hold a key as to what kind of life may have once existed on Mars.

All this lies in one small valley. A federally protected wildlife refuge of about 200,000 acres, just a short 4 hour drive south of the U.S. border. Just a world away from your typical vision of what a desert should be.

The valley has been called "The Galapagos of Mexico". National Geographic called it "Mexico's Desert Aquarium". I just call it "unexpectedly fascinating."


What Makes Cuatro Cienegas Special...
The valley floor of Cuatro Cienegas percolates with mineral water, pushed upwards through hundreds of bubbling springs. I don't know how many pools of water exist in this valley. One guidebook said 200. The park guides say it's more like 500.

The number is not as important as the fact that, throughout the valley, are marshlands with pools and streams. There are aquatic grasses, and exotic flowers and the kinds of ornamental plants that you'd pay top dollar in a garden store to have in your home. There are frogs, turtles, and small fish living in the pools and rivers. There are species of birds that you would never expect to find in a region that gets essentially no rain.

It's a fragile ecosystem. Small, and unique.

The pools, called pozas, are the heart of the protected area. It's in and around the pozas where most of the biodiversity is found. And civilization's constant thirst for more water is what most imperils the valley.

Officially, Cuatrocienegas is a federally protected region, with a status like the U.S. government uses to protect its national wildlife refuges. It isn't officially a "park", and the region does not really promote the touristic value of Cuatro Cienegas. That's probably a good thing, since too many visitors would probably overwhelm the ecosystem, much as local businesses might appreciate the business that steady streams of visitors would bring.

As it is, most visitors tend to be scientists, or enthusiastic eco tourists with an appreciation for the environment. Unfortunately though, word about Cuatrocienegas has gotten out a bit too widely, and local authorities have had some problems with uncouth visitors. It might be better if I didn't tell too many people that this wonderful little slice of nature exists, but then, I'm sure you are part of the enlightened minority and not the unwashed masses. Right?

Right!

So, let me tell you about some of the highlights of visiting this unique ecosystem...


Poza Azul
Every trip to Cuatrocienegas starts at Poza Azul. That's where the visitor center is located, and that's where you can get an introduction to the area, buy your armbands that are your passport into all of the federally controlled lands of the refuge, and best of all, you can see one of the most stunningly beautiful pools in the entire valley --- the Poza Azul.

Poza Azul is one of the most carefully protected pools in the valley. It's open to the public, but there are guides monitoring it and visitors are prohibited from getting into the water. There's a nice observation platform that will give you a bit of a birds eye view into the depths of the brilliantly blue, crystal clear waters.

Most of the guides speak only Spanish, but if you can speak-a dee lingitty, you'll get a lot of information from the experience, plus you'll see things that you'd miss on your own. There's no cost for the guide services, though they do expect tips (I think 50 pesos per car is reasonable for the Poza Azul tour, and 100 pesos per car for the much longer, more remote Dunas tour....more on that in a moment).

Cuatrocienegas is home to a wide range of desert and aquatic life, with more than 70 kinds of animals living in the pools (roughly 30-40 of which exist nowhere else in the world). It is, quite literally, a nature lover's wet dream.

In Poza Azul, you'll get an excellent chance to see some of the fish species for which the valley is famous. Cuatrocienegas has been called "the natural aquarium of Mexico", and it's observing life at Poza Azul that really gives validity to that claim.

Plant life also abounds around the pools, and numerous kinds of grasses, and lilies, and flowers grow all around the marshy wetlands and just under the surface of the water itself. I'm not a botanist or horticulturalist, but it's places like Cuatrocienegas that really make me wish I'd done a bit more reading up on the natural sciences before I'd gotten there.

At Poza Azul, there's another pond called Poza Tortugas that our guide said was man-made and that was intended as a hands-on pool for children visiting the nature center on field trips and such. However, nature claimed the pool for itself and the endangered Coahuilan box turtles evidently found it to be an ideal breeding ground, since they moved in to the pond in numbers. Now, the pond is as clear as other pozas, hosts as many endemic species, and is an excellent place to get up close to one of Earth's disappearing shelled critters.

Poza Azul is really a showcase kind of nature center. It's a bit geeky, with everything being formal and very scientific oriented. But it's excellent and relevant, and it introduces you to the region and lets you know what to expect in other parts of the valley, where there probably won't be any signs or guides to help you figure out what it is you're seeing.

If you want to just get right on into the swim of things, head to Poza la Becerra or Rio Mezquite.


Poza la Becerra
Poza la Becerra is the most activity-friendly of the vallye's many pools. It has an excellent swimming area, with roped off areas marking depths, lifeguards on weekends and peak periods, areas with outstanding visibility that just beckon for snorklers to dive right in, and soft powdery sand that feels and looks like the magnificent beaches of Cancun, but that actually gets its texture from gypsum, rather than coral.

The waters feel like bathwater when you get in --- the pool is actually 32 degrees Celsius (about 90 degrees Fahrenheit). When I first felt the water, I thought that perhaps the water in the valley was from hot springs coming up from the earth. Not the case! The water comes up cold, but the pools are warm from being constantly under the heat lamps of the hot desert sun.

As if warm pools weren't inviting enough, there's also the bonus factor of all the water in the valley being mineral water. Little wonder that nobody seems to want to get out of the pool...

There are palapa shelters on the beach (no, it's not naturally occurring) where you can kick back and have a picnic. Grills are provided in the area, and so are scattered plastic tables and chairs, but only enough to handle mid-week crowds. Locals flock to Poza la Becerra on the weekends, and even though you have a good chance of snagging a palapa for your own picnic, it's unlikely there will be any tables or chairs since weekend is family time if you're a Mexican, and bringing the family to the poza means bringing grandma, 10 or 20 cousins, the neighbor's kid, and maybe even a dog or two. It's wonderful to see, but it's a pain in the tookus when they go raiding every palapa on the beach to get enough chairs for their clan. If you go on a Sunday especially, you'll want to throw a few folding chairs in the back of the car so you don't have to sit on the cooler (of course you'll have a cooler --- nobody wants to be out in the desert all day without lots of cold drinks and a meal or two at the ready).

Speaking of being ready for the desert, I should mention that most commercial sunscreens are a no-no in the pozas because it damages the flora and fauna, but you'll sure want it if you're doing any hiking in the mountains, or if you decide to hoof it back to the gypsum dunes.


Rio Mezquite
Throughout the valley, there are underground rivers that flow just below the spongey feeling valley floor. There's a couple irrigation canals too, but there's only one good visitor-friendly surface river, and that's the Rio Mezquite.

The river is about 5 to 7 km off the highway along a rough, sandy dirt road. It's an absolutely beautiful place to swim, plus the river is big enough to do a little kayak paddling, or bring one of those inflatable 2-man boats that you can buy for $10 at a K-Mart. Snorkling is great, there's a lot of space, the river meanders through tall grassy marshes at an imperceptibly gentle pace (no currents), and most of the area is plenty shallow for kids.

The public area is actually privately owned, and you need to pay a fee to the owners to get in (it was 70 pesos for us --- or about US$7 for 4 people in one car).

The picnic shelters are roughly made and in deteriorating condition with concrete tables that are servicable enough and trash cans at every shelter. There are no showers at the river, and the bathrooms are out-houses located near the gates and fairly far from the waters (thankfully).

Luxury it is not. A fun picnic outing with great snorkling and swimming it most certainly is.


Dunas de Yesu
You can see the dunes from miles away. They look like shimmering white cliffs at the base of the mountain. It's only as you get closer that you realize what they really are, and that they're not really very close to the mountain at all.

Thousands of years of frequent afternoon wind storms in the valley have left a vast sea of powdery white gypsum sand in the place where the winds roaring down the six different mountains around the valley tend to butt heads and cancel each other out.

It's easy to forget you're in the middle of the desert when you're splashing around in pools of warm mineral waters, surrounded by towering trees and thick stands of tall aquatic grasses. The Dunes of Yesu (also called Dunas Arenales), are a stark reminder of reality.

Climb the dunes, gaze out across the apparently endless sea of flat sandy wastelands, dotted with endemic cactuses and desert plants. Marvel at the odd boulders and sandstone formations, scattered along the desert plain like they were tossed aside by giant children.

The entrance to the dunes is next to the Poza la Becerra, though the dunes themselves are at least a good 5 to 7 km in from the highway (about 3 miles). It's possible to walk in, and I saw one person doing so, but be sure to bring a lot of water and sun screen since it's desert walking and you're going to need to get back out the same way you get in. Better to drive in with an accompanying guide --- it only costs 50 pesos per car (US$5), and the A/C and lack of wear and tear on your feet means you'll be all primed for some dune climbing when you finally do get back into sand country!


Maybe Hit, More Likely Miss...
There's a couple places in Cuatrocienegas that may or may not be options to you...

Don't bother driving the backroad to La Playita. Every single guide on the Internet recommends it for the swimming, but the place has been closed for at least the past couple months. Story I heard from one of the guides at Poza Azul was that crowds of visitors had trashed the place, leaving junk everywhere, killing plants and animal life, and ignoring local regulations. Result: a newly off-limits poza (some tourists can be such *ssholes).

Unlisted in pretty much every guide, is another poza --- Poza Churince. This is kind of a stealth poza, since it's only usable during the winter months. Most of the year, it is closed due to low water levels. When it is open, there are palapas on-site and the poza is open for swimming, much like Poza la Becerra. To get to Poza Churince, exit Poza la Becerra heading south (towards Torreon) and drive about 5km. There's no official blue signs marking the site --- just a rickety, hand-painted white wood sign. This past weekend, the sign was falling down, partly obscured by bushes, and the gate was locked up with nobody in sight. We could see the palapa area, but it doesn't look nearly as inviting as Poza la Becerra...


The Town of Cuatrocienagas
The pozas are beautiful works of nature. Ditto the dunes and the mountains and the praries. The town though. Umm. It's okay, but not exactly a beauty, and there's not much to do in the town itself. You're basically talking a town of maybe 1,000 people that supports the rural countryside. There's a church that's kind of nice, and the town does pride itself in being the birthplace of Venustiano Carranzo (famous caudillo of the Mexican Revolution and President of Mexico from 1914 to 1920). There's a nice, but small, museum about Carranzo near the main plaza, and there's an imposing statue of the man astride his steed, towering over the road on a hilltop as you enter the town (you can climb up via steps, or if you have a 4WD vehicle, can drive up the steep rocky road).

Sitting in the plaza is pleasant enough, and visiting the Carranza Museum, the main church, and the statue are entertaining, but it's all stuff you can do within a couple hours. After that....well, bring a book if you're planning to stay in the town of Cuatro Cienegas.


Logistics
Cuatrocienegas is a big valley, but a very small town. Driving is the only practical way to get there. By car, it's 3 to 4 hours driving time from the United States (crossing at Eagle Pass Texas / Piedras Negras Mexico) on good roads. The nearest real city is Monclova, located exactly 80 kilometers and 1 hour away. There's an airport in Monclova (IATA code: LOV), but its dinky, and really intended mostly for small aircraft (though Continental Express has a daily non-stop from Houston using an Embraer regional jet). It is also possible to rent a car in the Monclova airport (though Hertz is the only company with a desk there, and you will likely have a choice of 1 car --- it's just that kind of place).

You can get to Cuatrocienegas by bus. Grupo Senda has excellent service throughout the state of Coahuila, and their Coahuilenses buses are immaculately clean, new, first-class buses that run frequently (but stop frequently too). You can get to Cuatrocienegas by catching a bus on the border at the Piedras Negras bus station, or from Monclova, or from the larger cities of Monterrey or Torreon. Any bus running between Torreon and Monclova will let you get off in Cuatrocienegas. Of course, how you get around the valley once you're in Cuatrocienegas is a bit more problematic. As I said, you really want a car in this area (ideally, an SUV with good A/C and 4WD --- lots of back country here, lots of dirt roads, lots of mountains).

There are several hotels in Cuatrocienegas, even though most guidebooks will tell you there's only one place (maybe 2) to stay. The Hotel Santa Fe is right on the main road coming into town. It's a well-kept motor court style motel that is a decent choice for most American travelers. There's a couple small inns on Ocampo street, and you can get rooms at the Quinta Santa Cecilia for under US$40 in a colonial hacienda style location. Families might be happier at a place called El Nogalito, where you can rent a rustic cabin. There's a few other options as well. Check out the Coahuila Hotel Association's web page for info about hotels in the area: www.hotelescoahuila.com

If you're a camper or backpacker, there are decent campsites next to the Poza la Becerra, where you can find showers and flush toilets at the public beach area, a small store (mostly drinks and chips), a kids playground, and nice palapa shelters in the camping area that are big enough to shade a 4-5 person tent. There's no facilities for RVs anywhere in the valley. Tent sites cost $5 per night.

In the town of Cuatrocienegas, there are several basic restaurants, but nothing that's really upscale or distinctive. Cuatrocienegas is very much a place with infrastructure that's geared to locals --- not to tourists. You can find the necessities of life. You just shouldn't expect much pampering.


Bottom Line
The valley of Cuatro Cienegas is a fascinating trip to a place of unexpected biodiversity and a glimpse of a very endangered ecosystem that your kids or grandkids will likely never be able to experience as you could. Scientists make up the bulk of visitors to Cuatro Cienegas, but there's enough there to keep an active family busy for a couple days, to keep an eco tourist or adventure traveler busy for a week, and to keep a curious biologist busy for a lifetime.

Its also a place that's well off the radar for most travelers to Mexico, despite some publicity that its gotten from nature shows and publications.

The Chihuahua Desert of northern Mexico might not seem like the kind of area that would attract "green" eco travelers, but at Cuatrocienegas, its a different kind of desert.


A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words...
To really get a feel for what Cuatrocienegas looks like, check out a few of my snapshots!

I put two pages online: one that shows only the protected natural areas of Cuatrocienegas, and the other of nearby points in Coahuila (showing some of the countryside, as well as the cities of Monclova and Piedras Negras). Go to...

tiogringo.funtigo.com


Closely Related Reading...
Relevant Epinions...
* Eco Travel in Mexico
* Driving in Mexico


External links about some of the scientific research and conservation efforts going on in the region...
* http://www.rice.edu/sallyport/2005/summer/features/livinglab/index.html
* http://www.aventura-mag.com/ENGLISH/Adventures/Mexico/oasis.html
* http://parksinperil.org/wherewework/mexico/protectedarea/cuatro.html





Recommended: Yes

Best Suited For: Students
Best Time to Travel Here: Dec - Feb