At least one of our vehicles (my 68 Chevy truck with new red camper (TX), Jeep truck with camper (FL) and Dodge Ramcharger (placas de Coahuila fronterizas), will likely be at La Florida. See itinerary about our plans for timing of explorations here and at San Rafael de los Castro. Here's an extract from my field notes from my first visit:
We took the road toward Gomez Farias II (signs on hwy 85) and turned S from it just before it took a right to wind uphill into the sierra. A sign here says "La Florida". Entering town "El Nacimiento" one goes straight at the first fork and a little ways down there's a fork to the right with a sign pointing to "La Florida". The road goes past a tall, white water tower and descends to a new balneario in construction for semana santa along the river coming from El Nacimiento. If one drives right to the river at the balneario ($N 5 requested), crosses the river, heads up the brecha immediately across the river through a barbed wire gate, the brecha curves to the left. Before hitting the potrero, take a small path to the left, which goes down to the fenceline along the river. Here there's a bamboo and cable suspension bridge across the river (I think a trail from near the outhouses at the balneario probably arrives to the other side of the bridge as well), and an angled fence passage point for people through the fence. We went up through the potrero toward the house and dropped to the left along the fence in front of the house to the arroyo. Where the fence crosses the arroyo are some springs, but filled with rock and sand. We continued up the arroyo to a large concrete presa-like structure with sandbags at the top. It is actually an aquaduct which crosses the arroyo. It carries a massive amount of water and runs only a short distance, coming out of the hillside just upstream and being routed back into the hillside 100 m below. We walked up the top of the covered aquaduct channel to Poza Azul, but it would be much easier to cross the canal here (there's a little bridge at the gage house) and walk up the road on the other side. Poza Azul is amazing. Just above the diversion structure are hundreds of large springs issuring through a boulder-filled stream bed. The springs probably total 200+ cfs and extend over about 100 m. I explored up to above the uppermost spring, and a ways above it.
After getting back I learned that there is a cave above the spring. I must have been close. It has a vertical drop to water that we'll be exploring.
SAN RAFAEL DE LOS CASTRO
As we entered Mante on hwy. 85, we took the first right, following signs toward Tampico, but turned right immediately at the first light, passing the airport and a water park following a canal on our left for quite a ways (Carol has mileage readings). We eventually crossed the little canal we had been following and took the road on the north side of a now much larger canal flowing west. At the point where there was a bridge over that canal, another road left the canal (which turned more toward north) and we headed straight west toward the sierra to San Rafael de los Castro. At the T there one turns down past the school and a piece of town to the nacimiento.
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