Cuatro Ciénegas, Coahuila, Mexico

June 9 – 12, 2025

After a fine time in Parras, our bus leaves Saltillo and we’re back into those high dry desert lands and rugged rock-shot mountains that we’ve traveled since leaving Monterrey. Most everybody on the bus seems to think it’s a good time for a nap, but I never want to miss seeing anything along the road. So I’ll sleep later, wherever we bed down for the night.

After a while we arrive in the small industrial city of Monclova and at first I wonder how many people I’ve ever known who might have somehow been to Monclova. I mean, you know, willingly.

Within another hour or so we’ve passed a number of small villages, and the “Tony Fat Burger” restaurant, and we’re dropped off at the outskirts of Cuatro Ciénegas. We don’t know the town yet, so we call for a taxi to our local lodging. 

Cuatro Ciénegas is a quiet little town. It’s even smaller than Parras, and each of them is a fine contrast to the large busy cities of Monterrey and Saltillo. There are the sad remains of a few old adobe buildings whose last walls are badly undermined by erosion, yet somehow remain standing. 

It’s always a pleasure to find a nice little coffee shop wherever we go, and the Arena Dulce is a cosy place for a good cup with a sweet something on the side.

The plaza is well-tended yet largely empty, and maybe awaiting the crowds of a coming fiesta, or some such event. There’s a statue of Venustiano Carranza who was born here and opposed the endless dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. He became the governor of Coahuila, and was a major player in the Mexican Revolution until his assassination in 1920 on the train from Mexico City to Veracruz. 

There’s a museum here to the memory of Carranza, but we’re kinda museumed-out by now and we’re content to just explore these quiet streets. 

We mostly came here to experience the nearby natural wonders of Cuatro Ciénegas (the ‘four marshes’), where a rare collection of springs emerges in a desert valley to support a great variety of native wildlife. We sign on for a tour to these attractions, as the desert quiet is pierced by the sound of a small Learjet cruising above us. 

The tour begins with the artful reuse of an old quarry site that was carved off the end of a mountain that overlooks the vast desert landscape. It has since become a sculpture garden containing some large and fantastical creatures. The whole site actually looks dinosaurial, as if these monsters really could have been found within the stone. And a dog is sleeping unperturbed in the shade of a huge leftover marble block.

I search out the restroom facilities, which are down a ramp beside a giant skeletal T-Rex that’s roaring out of a leftover stone face. And the relief station is worth a visit of its own. Especially for the fine view from the urinals overlooking the desert, where you can watch the occasional car or truck passing on the highway below. It’s more creative than most restrooms, and much less boring than staring at a blank tile wall.

The dunes are next, and shoes are optional. It’s a sublime experience to feel the finest of warm gypsum sands between your toes while climbing dunes that have collected here during countless passing winds as warm air lifts over the mountains and drops its sandy load at this special spot. In the distance the process continues, as the warming afternoon desert breeze rises over the tallest mountains and the moisture condenses into clouds to feed rainfall back into the marvelous cycle that nourishes this rare desert oasis.

Just to experience this rare event in the desert is really the main reason we’re here in Cuatro Ciénegas. There’s an area for swimming, and it seems inviting. But we’ve come to see the rare fish and other animals that have managed to survive and evolve in this environment over millions of years of geologic upheaval and isolation. There are also dozens of tiny creatures hidden in the aquatic plant life, and each of them is an important part of what makes this environment work.

By the end of the day, we’ve managed to collect armfuls of entry tags – trophies of a sort. And it’s been a good experience.

We return hungry from the tour, and settle into a quiet courtyard with cold drinks as we recount the day. From there we migrate to platters of delicious evening fare, and some good Mexican wine.

Magnificent evening colors paint the sky along with the artful lighting of the church, and it beckons us to explore more of this fine little city. We follow the lights of an interesting street to where we encounter the Callejon de Guevara. We have no idea what lies in store, but it’s a pleasant surprise to find such an exuberantly lighted entryway to what appears to be a classy residential area – a place for those with the means and inclination to sequester themselves here in the quiet desert. 

The brilliant shifting colors playing onto a huge stone slab are mesmerizing. And a convenient bench is an inviting place to enjoy our last quiet evening in this special little town. 

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* A note about how we find places to stay. When we decide where we want to go, we start looking at lodging possibilities. Normally, we don’t book things far in advance, as we want to be flexible should we choose to stay more or fewer days. But when we’re ready, I check mostly on Booking.com, as it has been very reliable and provides lots of details, customer reviews, easy booking process, and great discounts for regular users. (No, I’m not getting a commission!) My process is to enter the dates and location, then do a search for highly rated listings. We look for the places with a match of good prices and high ratings: and, of course, we try to pick things near to the sites we want to see, or that have good public transport to those places. In the photos, we look for beds that have reading lights on both sides! And handrails on the stairways.  — Carolyn