At the End of the Tunnel

By Christopher Spencer

There are places in the world that reveal themselves gradually. You see them from miles away, growing larger with every turn of the road until, eventually, you've arrived.

Real de Catorce in Mexico asks something different.

To reach it, you first disappear.

The long, dusty road through the high desert of San Luis Potosí eventually gives way to a twenty-mile cobblestone road that will rattle your teeth if you drive too fast. It continues steeply up to 3000 feet along cliff edges and giving dramatic panorama’s until it eventually ends at the mouth of the Ogarrio Tunnel, a narrow passage carved through solid rock more than a century ago and today is the only entrance to the town. Built to carry silver from one of Mexico's richest mining towns, the tunnel became the town's only reliable connection to the outside world. Even today, driving through it feels less like entering a destination than leaving one behind. The darkness stretches farther than you expect, and when daylight finally returns, you've emerged into another time.

I wasn't there by accident.

For more than a decade, I traveled regularly between Dallas and San Luis Potosí—and several other cities in central Mexico—helping oversee our family's manufacturing operations. Business was the reason I came, but it wasn't the reason I stayed connected to the country. Over those years I developed friendships that reached well beyond the factory floor. One weekend, two of those friends suggested we disappear into the mountains and spend a few days exploring a place unlike any of us had experienced before.

Real de Catorce doesn't feel abandoned, although in many ways it is. Silver was discovered there in the 1770s, and the town exploded in growth, reaching its peak during the late nineteenth century. Disruptions from the Mexican Revolution and a collapse of the global silver market had most residents abandoning the town right after the turn of the century. Once among the wealthiest silver mining towns in Mexico, its fortunes rose and fell with the mines beneath the surrounding mountains. What remains today is a remarkable mixture of faded grandeur and quiet resilience. Narrow stone streets climb steep hillsides where horses still outnumber automobiles. In fact, cars are not allowed anywhere in town except a parking lot. This town you walk. Or hop on a burro, your choice. Weathered Spanish colonial doorways and fading façades hint at the remarkable wealth this town once knew, while the surrounding mountains seem determined to keep the town hidden from the modern world.

Parroquia de la Purísima Concepción, Real de Catorce. Photographed during my visit in the early 2000s.

We settled into a beautifully restored hotel whose history stretched back centuries. Time moved differently there. The thick stone walls softened the outside world, and every creaking floorboard seemed to carry stories from generations of travelers who had arrived before us. It wasn't luxurious by modern standards, and that was precisely its charm. Places like this don't impress you with perfection. They invite you to become part of their history for a little while.

That evening we wandered until we found what passed for nightlife—a tiny bar with only a handful of tables and a karaoke machine that had probably entertained the same familiar faces for years. Before long we were singing songs we barely knew, laughing with people we'd only just met. At some point, someone produced a Daniel Boone-style coonskin cap, and before long it was making its way around the room as everyone insisted on taking another photograph. Once again, I was reminded that hospitality rarely depends on sharing the same language. Some of my favorite travel memories have never involved famous landmarks. They've happened in places exactly like this, where nothing remarkable was supposed to happen and yet somehow everything did.

The following morning, we traded stone streets for mountain trails.

On horseback, we climbed into the rugged landscape that surrounds Real de Catorce, leaving the old mining town farther below with every switchback. The crisp November weather with cloudless skies made for a mostly pleasant trip up the mountain. There were a few spots along the way where the path was so narrow, I spent a few stretches of that ride thoroughly puckered up, hoping neither my horse nor I decided to test the laws of gravity. The higher we rode, the quieter the world became. the views stretched for miles in every direction. I wish I could say something more transformational about looking out over the Mexican landscape, but the reality is, I was more caught up with the history of the town and was more impressed with the architecture than any spiritual meaning. Eventually we met an elderly local man who welcomed us into a moment that felt far older than any of us. He shared peyote as part of a spiritual tradition rooted in these mountains long before silver was ever discovered beneath them. With a bit of Comanche ancestry in my family history, I'd always been curious about the role peyote played in indigenous spiritual traditions. Experiencing that high above Real de Catorce wasn't about seeking a thrill. It felt like being briefly invited into a tradition far older than the mining town below. It wasn't offered as entertainment or novelty. It was simply another reminder that every place has layers of history most visitors never see if they're only looking for attractions.

Standing on that ridgeline, looking across the vast mountains of northern Mexico with two good friends beside me, I realized that the most meaningful journeys rarely begin with guidebooks or carefully planned itineraries. They begin because someone who knows a place says, 'Come with me. There's something I'd like you to see.'

Years have passed since that weekend, yet when I think about Real de Catorce, it isn't the horseback ride or the old hotel that comes to mind first.

It's the tunnel.

I still remember driving into darkness, knowing almost nothing about what waited on the other side. I remember emerging into daylight and feeling as though I had crossed an invisible border between the modern world and one that had quietly refused to disappear.

Perhaps that's why the journey has stayed with me for so many years.

The finest destinations don't simply give us photographs to bring home. They change the way we understand a place, a culture, and sometimes even the friendships that brought us there in the first place.

Real de Catorce did all three.