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THE TREK FROM QUERÉTARO
TO THE MOUNTAINS
“We should have passed at least seventeen dead
bodies by now, according to the news reports about drug
violence,” wryly observed our Méxican friend Eduardo.
My husband and I were passengers in his small car,
along with his wife Araceli, as we drove from their
hometown of Querétaro, winding our way on the
well-paved blacktop that steadily climbed up into
the enormous mountain range known as the Sierra
Gorda, a branch of the Sierra Madre Oriental.
Our entire trip – several days spent in the
huge metropolis of Guadalajara, another multi-
day stint in the charming and astonishingly historic
colonial city of Querétaro, then our long-weekend
pilgrimage to the Sierra Gorda missions – was notable
for its distinct sense of safety and the warm hospitality for
which México tourism is famous. Without a single disturbing
incident, our faith was restored that it was still possible to
(sensibly) visit our colorful neighbor to the south, despite sensational
news reports of border-town lawlessness.
“Generally,” continued Eduardo, “no one has encounters with drug
dealers unless they are involved with drug dealing themselves.”
The purpose of our trip was to retrace the path of Father Junipero
Serra and nine of his Franciscan cohorts, who in 1750 set out from
Querétaro’s
Colegio de San Fernando
to do what no Catholic order had
done before, despite repeated efforts: to successfully establish permanent
missions in the Sierra Gorda. The group of ten included two of Father
Serra’s former students who would also play important roles in the later
missionary efforts in
Alta California
: Father Juan Crespí (1721-1782)
and Father Francisco Palóu (1723-1789), who would ultimately serve
as one of California’s first historians and Junipero Serra’s biographer.
Although 260 years have passed between Father Serra’s journey to
the Sierra Gorda and our own modern-day pilgrimage, the landscape
remains unchanged from what he saw throughout the approximately
one-hundred-mile-journey. Once we left the main highway leading out
of Querétaro, passing enormous factories where millions of books,
especially textbooks, are printed every year (due to conducive conditions
provided by the dry climate), we began our ascent on a two-lane road.
Surely Father Serra marveled as we did at the ancient monolith now
known as
Peña de Bernal
. The 2,000-foot-tall rock rises straight out of
the ground behind the colorful town of Bernal, our first stop two hours
into the drive. Said to be the third tallest monolith in the world (after the
Rock of Gibraltar and Sugar Loaf in Rio de Janeiro), it’s also considered
the second largest in mass (after Australia’s Ayers Rock). Bernal’s
enterprising residents have capitalized on the appeal of the monolith by
making their town a prime shopping venue for various woolen goods, as
well as
dulce de leche de cabra
, sweet candies made from goat’s milk.
The gaily-painted buildings are a preview of the vivid mission façades
that wait in the mountains above.
Leaving Bernal, the road becomes downright twisty, and the
scenery for the first half of the trip can only be described as
seco
–
dry. Ascending through the arid desert to mountains of volcanic rock,
we couldn’t help but admire the fortitude of the intrepid mendicants,
traversing this forbidding landscape on foot to reach far-off valleys
occupied by hostile Indians. But we appreciated that the lack of
vegetation made it easier to comprehend the vastness of the Sierra
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