Ciudad Valles, Mexico

Ciudad Valles, San Luis Potosí

February 25, 2018

     What makes a good journey? A fun trip? Good food, amazing sights and fun activities! That was all here in Ciudad and the Huasteca Potosini area, but what made Ciudad Valles even more memorable were the people. The people in each place we visit is what makes the city, the state or the country most memorable. This isn't a story about a temple we visited but about two members who made an impact on us. 

     We arrived in Ciudad Valles after having been to Tampico. It was a town surrounded by fields and mountains, rivers and forests. We got there and walked to our hotel where we got some information on what to do. We wanted to go to tamul waterfall in the morning and spend most of the day doing that but we talked to the person at the front desk and we could find a way to make it cheap enough for us. Because there was only two of us it would have cost a lot more than with a group. 

     So we changed our minds and decided to just go to a smaller waterfall near the city. Because of this we also decided to go to church in Ciudad Valles. We looked online and found the address and the times. It was at nine and so we went to sleep early since we were so tired already. 

     We woke up early and headed to the Church. We arrived and were welcomed by a few very friendly people. If you know Mexicans very well you’ll know that they show up whenever they want to and it's usually ten minutes late, but no one cares because everyone is accepting. So we were there with five other people until five minutes after 9:00. 

     After sacrament we decided to go since it was all in Spanish and we had no idea what was being said. We talked to a member to see how we could get to Cascadas De Micos, a waterfall not too far from the city. To book a tour to go and see it was about $100 per person and so we wanted to do it ourselves. 

     The member introduced us to a man, Mario, who explained in Spanish with a little English how to get to the waterfalls using buses. He told us how we could do it and it ended up saving us around $180. He then gave us his phone number and proceeded to tell us how large his house was and that if we needed a place to stay that we could stay at his house with him and his wife. We said thank you and then left the church. 

     Although we left early from church and sacrament meeting was in Spanish it still felt really good to go. We felt renewed and fresh and it felt more like a Sunday. We then walked to the city center, found a policeman who walked us to the bus station and then bought our bus ticket. We took the bus to a small village thirty minutes from Ciudad Valles. 

      We got off the bus with one other guy who was carrying pastries. We were in the middle of a forest with a couple huts here and there. There were green fields and farms everywhere and they were beautiful. The area is known for its sugarcane and while driving around the area we saw thousands of fields of sugarcane, and hundreds of trucks carrying loads of sugarcane. 

     In the town we began walking and people pointed us where to go. We felt like we were in the middle of nowhere and we didn't know how there could be beautiful waterfalls nearby. We walked down a dirt road for a quarter of a mile and came to a parking lot with tour buses and cars. We paid 60 pesos and then continued down a dirt road. 

     This is where we first saw the beautiful blue river. The color was so pretty and we were hot and excited to swim. We eventually came to the first waterfall of many that was beautiful! We asked an old nice couple to watch our bags as we rented some life jackets (they were required to swim) and jumped in. The water was surprisingly warm and welcoming. We swam to the waterfall and then climbed up the side of it. Behind it was more waterfalls and we swam and climbed up a few more. 

     We then turned around and jumped off the waterfalls on the way back down. It was so fun and felt a lot like Beaver Falls near Havasupai in the Grand Canyon, except for it was greener and there wasn't a desert surrounding us. 

     Afterwards we grabbed our stuff and headed back to Ciudad Valles, hitch hiking in the back of a truck for a little bit. We were going to take another bus after and go to Aquismon, a small little town in the mountains where we had a hotel booked. We then felt like we should call that member who offered us his house and go and stay with him. We called him and he was excited! It was hard to talk to him since he knew only a few words in English but we made it work and he left his home to come pick us up. 

      Luckily for us the hotel we had booked we hadn't paid for it yet and so we cancelled it. Mario and his wife Mercedes then picked us up in the middle of town in their beat up car. We were apprehensive at first and a little nervous, but we started talking about the church more and temples and we became more relaxed. 

     We got to their typical Mexican hom of brick and concrete on a rundown road. It was nice and clean inside though which is also normal. It wasn't as large as they made it sound but it was big for a house in Mexico. It had two extra rooms upstairs, one with no air conditioning and one with good air conditioning, which was much needed since Ciudad Valles was in the nineties that day and incredibly humid. 

     Mario and Mercedes then sat us down and fed us a delicious dinner of soup, homemade tortillas and a delicious smoothie. It was really hard to talk to them because they hardly knew any English and so we used her computer and google translate to communicate it was interesting but fun. 

     We were so grateful for them for helping us out in so many ways and we asked them why they were giving us a place to stay and food. Mercedes then told us, over google translate, that the day before she read Matthew 25:40, which says:

     “40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

     After she read this she wanted to help others that weekend and she didn't know how, but then when she offered us a place to stay she felt like we were an answer to her prayers to help give them a way to serve and to give them company. 

     It was a spiritual night in a way even though we couldn't understand each other very well. Mario and Mercedes are a wonderful couple who were so kind to us and great examples for us. The next morning they even fed us an amazing breakfast and gave us some fruit to go. They dropped us off at the bus station and said farewell.

      We were sad to say goodbye to such kind members but were so happy to have met them. They added us on Facebook and we still keep in touch with them. They continue to be good examples to us by trying to find ways to serve their fellow men and even accommodate more people as they did us. 

     After Ciudad Valles we took a beautiful  bus ride passed thousands of orange tree orchards and more sugarcane to Xilitla. In Xilitla we waited for our next bus which went to Queretaro, a city near where we live. We walked around the beautiful mountain town, ate a pineapple filled tamale, I got a haircut for 50 pesos, and then we took a gorgeous bus ride through green mountains on twisted roads. 

     Although our plans didn't all work out as we hoped, we feel like we were guided by the Lord to do what we did and go where we went. We were reminded that Church should always be our number one priority even on vacation. Us going to church in that ward later affected other people as well but that is another story.