After all the patriotic hoo-hah, Jenny and I (with two other friends) made a foray into northern Zacatecas state to see the spaghetti western/desert part of Mexico. There is a cool national park there called sierra de los órganos, which is littered with rock formations. I took all of the above photos, except for the one with the dinosaur, which is from "Caveman" with Ringo Starr. They've filmed a number of movies here, but this is the only one of them that I've seen. (I watched it as a kid on a double bill with "Quest for Fire" and thought it was hilarious, which I now blame on our not having a TV when I was a kid. Television and movies almost always seemed really, really good).
The park is outside the large town/small city of Sombrerete, which makes a rather half-assed attempt to bill itself as a tourist destination. It has very nice architecture for a dusty redneck town, but it didn't feel terribly friendly and there wasn't much to do. The main thing I remember is sitting in a cavernous restaurant trying to pick all of the gross processed ham out of our quesadillas when the waiters weren't looking. Oh, and that one of the restaurant's bathrooms featured two side by side toilets. This is so typical of Mexico--your toilet doesn't have a seat (needless extravagance; a waste of money!), but no expense is spared in installing a second toilet inches away from the first one in case you should want to hold hands with the person you're taking a crap next to.
The national park was really awesome though. It is a peaceful, isolated, and beautiful place. Despite it being a holiday weekend, we were the only ones staying in the tattoine-like cabins. We hiked a couple short trails (under an hour) that were about right for the time we were staying there. For more ambitious treks, you would want to hire a guide.
And finally, in case someone has stumbled upon this while trying to plan an excursion to Sierra de los órganos, here are a few things we found out by virtue of having done it: 1) It would be hard to do this trip without a car. 2) The cabins have gas stoves and refrigerators, but no utensils, dishes, etc., although we talked the ranger out of one small cooking pot. 3) You can buy firewood from the ranger and have a campfire. 4) Driving from Sombrerete, there is a little town whose name I can't remember, but you have to go through it. This pueblito has at least one grocery store by the side of the road which seemed to have as much variety as anything we found while driving around in circles through Sombrerete.
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