Sightseeing in Cuatro Ciénegas

After a big breakfast we drove to the first location, an abandoned marble mine. It’s about 10 minutes away from the town center. We paid 80 pesos ($4) each and drove up to the parking lot. From there we had to walk five minutes to the open-air mine site. There you can see the cut out marble blocks and individual works of art distributed over the area. The most prominent artwork is a dinosaur that appears to be walking out of a marble block.

The mine is elevated over the valley so you have a great view. This made it an excellent starting point for us because we could see both places we wanted to go next: Dunas de Yeso and Río Mezquites. It’s also a good place to take photos of the desert and portraits with nice backgrounds like the dinosaur and the marble blocks.

After the marble mine we drove to the Dunas de Yeso. These are completely white sand dunes in the desert. To access the dunes we had to pay 100 pesos each ($5). It’s a 15 minutes drive on a sandy road. It’s not difficult to drive because it’s all flat and the road was in good condition but it was extremely hot that day and the white dunes reflected so much light that we could not remove our sunglasses without getting blinded. We also applied sunscreen multiple times.

We did a short hike around the dunes and we took some nice photos. There is also a small shop that sells water, sodas, and sunglasses. It’s a really special place for me because I’m not used to the desert at all and the white sand makes everything look magical.

After being cooked for half a day we decided to go back to our Airbnb to relax a bit and cool down. It was really nice to stay in an air-conditioned room for a while and wait till the hottest time of the day was over. At 5pm the sun felt less strong so we drove to Río Mezquites to swim in the clear spring water. This place is the closest to the village so we arrived after only five minutes of driving.

We had to pay another 120 pesos ($6) to enter the area. Because it was later in the evening there weren’t many cars left. This was great so we could find a parking lot easily and we had the river almost to ourselves. The river is beautiful and extremely clear. You can see a lot of fish and even some turtles swimming in the water. Amby and I spent a lot of time in the water while our friends organized food and drinks. There is a restaurant selling fast food so we got hamburgers with fries and beer. We could swim until everything was prepared and they served it directly to our picnic bench.

While all the sites were interesting in their own way, Río Mezquites was my favorite. The water was refreshing and it was nice to see all the small animals.

If you have the chance to go to Cuatro Ciénegas, a day spent visiting these attractions would be totally worth it.