UNESCO

Franciscan Missions in the Sierra Gorda

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Californians will be familiar with Father Junípero Serra, who built the mission above in Jalpan as well as four others nearby in the mid 1700s, before moving on to California after the Jesuits were expelled from New Spain. The military had ‘pacified’ most of the tribes, to make the roads safe to extract silver dug by enslaved natives. The tribes in this remote mountainous region were relatively cooperative and the fusion of cultures is reflected in the art on the facade.

Serra took St Francis of Assisi’s simple life of charity and poverty and enhanced it with productivity and abuse. Serra brought ‘civilization’ here, replacing native beliefs, burning villages and increasing yields. He flagellated himself regularly and publicly, and he volunteered to lead the Spanish Inquisition in the area, accusing a dark-skinned local woman of witchcraft, of flying around caves at night and of worshipping goat-like demons. The missions are beautiful though. Despite protests, Serra became a saint in 2015.

The Mexican Revolution was unkind to such churches, but due to the rugged terrain, these five were more forgotten than destroyed. Rediscovered in the 1980s, in 2003 UNESCO recognized their facades as among the best examples of Spanish colonial baroque architecture, making these a world heritage site. Much of the region has been preserved by national park and preserves, with Sierra Gorda also being a UNESCO biosphere. There are waterfalls, beautiful rivers, and many places to hike. I drove up the steep dry mountains on one side and along a green river valley on another. But I missed the descent through jungle towards the coast.

All the publicity has made the center of Jalpan—where the first mission above is—quite crowded and touristy, but the other missions are in more traditional, smaller communities nearby. This is a fascinating area to explore, with miles of winding mountain roads, scenic views and more.

Wixarika Route

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Collette Lilly photographed* this musician decades ago after moving to Mexico in the 1960s with her husband John and while living with the Huichol people for 17 years. She curated an amazing exhibit at the Zacatecan Museum which displays the art, crafts, religious objects, rituals and spiritual journey of these fascinating people.

Every year Huichol shamans and some families walk from their tropical mountain homeland near the Pacific, stopping on sacred hilltops, gathering peyote, until they reach their sacred Huiricuta land above the Tropic of Cancer hundreds of miles away, and then they walk back. The ancient journey of their ancestors takes months, and last year UNESCO recognized 20 sites along the route as a world heritage site, helping the Huichol people to protect their land and culture.

I visited the museum and the easiest site in Zacatecas city, taking the teleférico to Cerro de La Bufa. From there you can see another hilltop site at the south of the city. Zacatecas is in the middle of the route, and the colorful Huichol artwork can be seen in the local artisan shops in this delightful world heritage city center.

I also visited Real de Catorce, a remote mining town accessed by a ridiculously long cobblestone road and long narrow tunnel, which marks the northeastern end of the journey. The route passes through town on its way up to Cerro el Quemado in the sacred Huiricuta area, best reached by guided horseback trips easily arranged in the town square. Real de Catorce is only one long day’s drive from Laredo, Texas.

* My photo at top is an edited section of Colette Lilly’s exhibit photo. Several photographers have their photos on exhibit, including her late husband John Lilly, who also invented the isolation tank and wrote the book Altered States.

Zacatecas

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I’ve looked at Zacatecas from both sides now, from up and down, and still somehow I can’t believe this beautiful historic city doesn’t have more foreign tourists. I know the US State Department has the whole state of Zacatecas as ‘do not travel’, but the city of Zacatecas is safe, as even the State Department acknowledges—if you fly. Well, I don’t fly, so I drove the short toll highway from neighboring Aguascalientes without any trouble, and I passed a tour bus from Mexico City. Plenty of Mexican tourists were enjoying the world class art museums, the UNESCO world heritage designated historic center and more.

I think the city is at least on par with Guanajuato, with similar features including a silver mine tour, a teleférico (much better than a funicular), historic places, and lots of museums. Perhaps due to silver wealth, both cities had battles for both Independence and Revolution, with Zacatecas’ hill above being the site of Pancho Villa’s decisive victory.

But, especially due to the lack of foreign tourists, walking around feels much more like travel was decades ago, with that immersion into a centuries old Spanish style neighborhood with local culture but without distractions. I enjoyed the low price hotel with a fabulous location, inexpensive delicious local food, and uncrowded galleries and shops with reasonably priced handmade local crafts. At Eden Mine, they even provided a personal English speaking guide for no extra cost (Alan got a decent tip though). In the photo above on the far left you can see the teleférico from where I took the photo below looking back down at where I took the photo above.

Zacatecas is my favorite city to visit in Mexico. Here are my road trips to Baja and to Mexico City.

Paquimé, Casas Grandes

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This UNESCO World Heritage Site in Mexico is a large complex of Native American buildings dating back over 1,000 years. Set on ancient trading routes, these Casas Grandes (large houses)—or Paquimé in the native language—thrived for centuries in the Chihuahuan Desert, trading goods between communities like Casa Grande, Chaco and Mesa Verde, in what is now the US, with Tenochtitlán and the Yucatán in Mexico. Culturally the natives here are considered Mogollon, like those who built the Gila Cliff Dwellings.

Paquimé is built on the ‘Chaco Meridian’, the same north-south longitude line with the great kivas—holy sites—of Chaco and Aztec Ruins in New Mexico. Why build cultural centers on the same longitude beyond line of sight? That’s a good question. Also, how?

Latitude lines (west to east) are relatively easy to calculate by measuring the angle of the apex of the sun or the North Star against a calendar. But calculating longitude to this degree of accuracy (~108.95º West) requires a time piece. Line of sight techniques might explain Chaco and Aztec being built on the same meridian, but not Paquimé, which is 400 miles away over rough terrain. So, like the Ancient Greeks, the ancient Native American original builders here must have been able to calculate time to within a minute or so. Perhaps, like the Greeks, they used a water clock—which works like a large, stationary hourglass—, as the natives here were extremely sophisticated users of irrigation systems, as well as calendars and geometry. That would explain how.

If you sat outside your home all night to watch the stars on the same day every year, the stars would rise and fall at the same time each year. You could even tell stories about Gods or great people moving through the heavens, like the Ancient Greeks did about constellations. And if you knew the day’s story well, you would be able to name which constellation would rise first. But if you tried telling the same stories on the same day but in a different town or state, the timing would be different. Only if you are on the same longitudinal north-south line does the timing stay the same and keep your narrative aligned with the movement of the stars. If the ancient people told such stories about the stars, that would explain why they built these kivas on the Chaco meridian.

Some Americans wrongly view Native Americans as separate tribes that were always at war with each other and didn’t build anything. I think it goes back to the US War on Native America, where the military used ‘divide and conquer’ as a tactic and spread misleading and demeaning descriptions of Native American culture. I was told by a docent at Hopewell Culture quite confidently that there was no evidence that parrots were traded as far north as Ohio despite obvious signs they were. And I was repeatedly told in the Midwest that natives never built any permanent structures, even nearby the native pit dwellings used by early settlers or near giant ancient mounds of a native city larger than London at the time.

Paquimé offers proof that parrots and macaws were traded from the jungles of southern Mexico to people in the north, as the birds could not survive the desert and were kept in pens and bred here. Bird shaped sculptures & mounds, elaborate feather designs, parrot & macaw bones, and aviaries have been found here. Despite being burned, Paquimé rebuilt and thrived, demonstrating that peaceful trading was the norm. A complex system of dykes, irrigation canals and cisterns were built here to sustain folks in the harsh dry climate.

This is a fascinating and important site that can easily be visited by Americans on an overnight trip. The excellent on site museum has information in English on every exhibit, as do the signs throughout the site. Fees were waived on the day I visited, and I found an atmospheric hotel with a good breakfast just a few minutes from the entrance. Without a single delay, I crossed and got my TIP at Santa Teresa, charged once and returned by Tornillo the next day. (There’s also an Evergo charger at the Sueco intersection, but you need the app and an adapter). The town of Casas Grandes is quite safe and quaint, and everyone I met was friendly and welcoming.

Here are previous my road trips to Baja and to Mexico City.

All UN Sites in Manitoba and Saskatchewan

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These two Prairie Provinces have a world heritage site, a tentative WHS, and two biospheres (plus the Int’l Peace Garden). Far from featureless, the boreal forest, First Nations cuisine, huge flocks of birds, polar bears, and even the sight of giant combines harvesting at sunset, indelibly mark my memory. While the transcontinental highway is comfortable, I pushed my electric vehicle to its limit, driving hundreds of miles to remote locations even on unpaved roads, digging out of snow and charging at places few EVs ever use. But it’s worth it.

World Heritage Sites

Pimachiowin Aki WHS is a First Nation area east of Lake Winnipeg encompassing forests, rivers and lakes with exceptional wildlife.

Wanuskewin tentative WHS is a First Nation cultural interpretive center and preserve near Saskatoon.

Biospheres

Redberry Lake is an important migratory bird sanctuary for whooping cranes and many other birds.

Riding Mountain is a wildlife management and environmental cooperation zone centered on the eponymous national park.

Bonus: Churchill is the best place to see wild polar bears.

Wanuskewin

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This tentative world heritage site in Saskatoon Saskatchewan offers a broad view of northern plains indigenous culture. While there are other sites that focus more on specific cultural aspects, like Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump or Writing-On-Stone, this site includes these elements and more all together. The exhibits here cover art, celebrations, ecosystems, language, and oral traditions, from ancient to contemporary, history and current creativity. I saw an original treaty #6 on loan here, one of the land agreements signed by the Canadian Crown and many First Nations in 1876. And the place serves as a community center, holding regular events, private and public, helping the culture continue to thrive. Walking the trails in the peaceful valley along opimihāw Creek, I felt connected to the place, the people who have lived here since pre-history, and their traditional way of life. Looking up at the sharp bluffs where bison were hunted, seeing the clearings, canoe launches, medicine trail, and out over the reintroduced bison paddock, you learn more from the experience than from reading. And the bison stew was delicious too!

Here are my visits to all UN sites in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Pimachiowin Aki

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This 10,000+ square mile world heritage site in Manitoba and Ontario is over 100 miles from the nearest slow charger, and most of the road is unpaved and washboarded in some sections. That made the round trip challenging for my Tesla which no longer has the range it used to. I shouldn’t complain, as the all season road is less than 10 years old; before that, there was only an ice road. The site is both the largest protected boreal shield in North America and home to four First Nations, making it a rare dual natural and cultural UN site. Unless you hire a guide on some multi day paddling trip or stay at Loon Strait, there’s really no tourist infrastructure yet. If you want to try First Nation cuisine, I recommend Winnipeg. Still, I made it into the core area of this remote UNESCO heritage site and into the community of Bloodvein itself.

They were checking cars and ids at the gate, and they added a few questions about my travels. Just past the checkpoint I spotted a bear, and for once I managed to get a photo, above. I also saw many beaver lodges, but missed a picture of a beaver playing near a mud slide. A bald eagle flew over the Bloodvein River below, but as usual, I couldn’t get a decent picture of the majestic bird in flight. Still, three wildlife sightings in such a short visit is exceptional. I credit the First Nations community for protecting wildlife, as well as members. The road in town was very muddy that day, challenging my all wheel drive, and the coffee place was closed. On my way out, they didn’t seem impressed by my wildlife sightings, but they were interested in the range and cost to charge my car. Hopefully, visiting places like this in my EV gets more people thinking about how to lower their own carbon pollution to protect such beautiful natural areas.

Here are my visits to all UN sites in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Miguasha

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This Canadian world heritage site reveals the age of fishes, the Devonian Period of evolution around 400 million years ago, when sharks and cod invented themselves. In 1938 in South Africa, a fishing captain showed a local museum curator a weird looking fish they caught, and it was identified as a coelacanth, despite being presumed extinct some 65 million years ago. That ‘living fossil’ also dates back to the Devonian Period, as does another fish you may have heard of, the African lungfish.

In evolution, we see the development of vertebrae and lungs as important, as we inherited them from fish. But obviously, we didn’t descend directly from cod, coelacanths, lungfish or sharks—except maybe lawyers. Paleontologists, or fossil folk, figure out such distant ancestry. And Miguasha is a good place to look for fossils, as it lies in the Canadian Appalachian Mountains. Americans may believe the trail ends in Maine, but the International Appalachian Trail continues into Canada, up to the Gaspé Peninsula and continues on Newfoundland. The Appalachians are much older than the Rockies, and they were a defining land feature during the age of fishes.

Miguasha is on the south side of the Gaspé, with high sedimentary cliffs, lots of pretty rocks, and many fossils, often well preserved in large flat layered rocks, like in the photo. Around 15 years ago, a visitor apparently found a rock at the water’s edge that had split, revealing a large fish tail. They did the right thing and left it for the local fossil experts to examine. Shortly thereafter, the experts found more pieces, fit them together with the earlier find, and put together a 5’ 3” fish fossil puzzle. While the site had been producing Devonian fossil finds for decades, this one was the King.

Not only was this a complete Epistostegalian, it also had the bone structure of a Tetrapod. In common words, that means it had vertebrae, lungs, and a bone structure resembling not just our arms, but our wrists and fingers as well. That put it within the strict definition of a tetrapod, previously believed not to include fish. This big guy used his fingery fins to climb up out of the water and breathe. Most of the animals you can think of have arms, wrists, and fingers bones, although they may appear very different on the surface: frogs, turtles, bats and horses. Oh, and whales too, although their ancestors decided life on land too hectic and returned to the sea trading in hooves for flukes. The fish fossil found here may have been our ancestor. Exciting evolution!

I learned (or relearned) a lot in the museum from the informative exhibits, and a bilingual guide was kind enough to answer a whole bunch of questions without throwing me off the cliff. Tours are mostly in French. There’s a 2 mile hiking trail on the bluff for exercise, but when the site is open, you can access the beach by stairs from the beginning of the trail. If you visit, note that the park is on Quebec time, not Atlantic, although most cell phones still show the latter. I used my unexpected extra hour to charge my car on the Flo-compatible J1772 charger, while I hiked around on my own.

Here are my visits to all UN sites in Quebec province.

Anticosti

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This windswept island in the Gulf of St Lawrence is larger than the state of Delaware and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, rich in early fossils from the Ordovician-Silurian extinction era when mollusks and arthropods thrived and land plants first emerged. With shallow shoals and terraced ledges, the island was known for shipwrecks, contributing to its isolation. In 1895, a French chocolate magnate, Henri Menier, bought the whole island as a private hunting and fishing game preserve. In 1974, Canada bought the island from loggers and set aside about 1/3 of the island for hunters, fishers and tourists. In 2023 the coastline and several deep river canyons were preserved for fossils as a WHS, with the north coast being the oldest. With 24 salmon rivers, canyons, waterfalls, fossils, shipwrecks, cliffs, an undeveloped coastline known for lobsters, and forests stocked with deer, the island is unique.

Now with a long wharf and an airport, the island is more accessible, although the most famous site, Chute Vauréal—the 250’ waterfall below—, is over 100 miles away from town over an unpaved but decent road. Most summer tourists take cruise ships or fly in on upscale package tours. Deer hunting is big business with off grid lodges; one offers a week with a personal guide, ATV driver, 3 meals per day, including a 5 course dinner of ‘renowned cuisine’, and all your game and fish packed up for you to take home. With about 1,000 deer per winter resident, it’s easy to find deer, who often show up at your door looking for handouts. And there are large, mixed-color foxes roaming around town too.

Yet Anticosti Island is so off-grid, off-radar and ‘off the beaten path’ that I couldn’t figure out how to visit, especially due to my lack of French and preferring DIY EV travel over hotel + flight package tours. But there is a boat on the north coast where roads are scarce with regularly scheduled stops at seaway ports up to Labrador. On the way upstream, the M/V Bella Descagnés goes from Havre Saint Pierre to Port-Menier on Anticosti, and it reverses the trip downstream a couple days later.

Though cabins are often booked months in advance, it occurred to me that they must take walk-on passengers between the closest two ports. Without a Canadian address, I couldn’t book my ticket online, and the hold times were depressing. So I just drove up the coast and arrived barely 10 minutes before they left. (The boat had gained almost an hour on its schedule overnight.) I parked on the wharf, walked on, paid my fare at the desk, and they welcomed me aboard! Some folks thought I was crazy and others thought I was a worker commuting cheaply to the mainland, but I had a pleasant time relaxing in the lounge and eating in both the cafeteria and the dining room. Optimistically, I had booked a B&B with an island day tour, and the everything worked out well. While the waterfall is less impressive in the autumn, it’s still taller than Niagara Falls, and the weather and foliage were lovely. On the way back, I even got a bunk for the overnight trip.

Here are my visits to all UN sites in Quebec province.

Red Bay

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500 years ago Basque whalers set up whaling operations here in Labrador for 600 whalers on 15 ships per year for about 100 years. They rendered the blubber of right and bowhead whales into oil, barreled it and returned it to ports in what is now France and Spain. Be sure to take a small boat out to Saddle Island to see where the whalers worked. Over 100 Basque whalers are buried on the island, and several shipwrecks have revealed the sophisticated marine designs they employed. The visitor center has a chalupa, a small whaling boat they used.

After some grim weather in Newfoundland, the sun came out in Labrador. On a pretty day, this UNESCO world heritage site is a particularly beautiful spot with lingonberries or partridge berries growing on the rocky island. On a bad day, I imagine it is inhospitable, as the crew of the pictured 1965 wreck knew too well. While walking around, I spotted a minke whale feeding in the harbor, splashing and putting on a show. I’m glad whaling is almost entirely a thing of the past.