Valle de Santiago is a small town in the state of Guanajuato, located 200 kilometers east of Guadalajara. “Valle de la Luna” might be a better name for it, because it is surrounded by at least a dozen very impressive volcanic craters.
I’ve just returned from visiting the most extraordinary of them and I’m pleased to have found yet another natural wonder inside The Magic Circle around Guadalajara.
It all started a month ago, when I got a telephone call asking me if I was “that Belgian speleologist.”
“Belgian I’m not, but I like to explore caves,” I told the caller, Juan Antonio Alvarado, who lives in Guanajuato. He went on to inform me about the unexplored caves in the craters around Valle de Santiago and I decided to go take a look.
I easily found three interested adventurers and one Saturday morning we got onto the toll road to Guanajuato only to find the highway blocked in both directions by burning buses.
“Ho hum, maybe another narco blockade,” we wondered while waiting for firefighters to arrive. Despite the delay, we reached Valle de Santiago in less than four hours and let Google Maps lead us toward La Hoya del Rincón de Parangueo. This tactic worked only up to a certain point, after which we simply shouted, “el cráter?” through the window until we found ourselves in front of a tunnel – man-made to be sure – where two young boys offered to illuminate us with a) a bright flashlight and b) their historical knowledge of the place. As we plunged into the darkness, the smaller guide began: “Había una vez un Gachupín ...”
After a few minutes I stopped him to ask a question. Instead of answering, the little boy looked at me with astonishment and confusion. I tried rephrasing my question, but still my little Cicerone remained tongue-tied and wide-eyed.
“John,” said my friend Rodrigo in English, “he has the whole thing memorized and you’ve just interrupted him. He doesn’t really understand everything he’s saying.”
The boy looked relieved when I said I´d like him to start all over from the very beginning, so I could record his talk. “And I promise not to interrupt even once.”
He blinked and restarted his torrent of words with hardly a waver. It was a real pleasure to watch oral tradition in the making! Here’s the story as I understood it:
Once upon a time there was a Spaniard named Don Manuel Gutierrez living here with much land and wealth. However, he did not have enough water to irrigate his fields. So he hired a man he trusted and had him fill two jugs with the water from the crater lake, to get it analyzed. This campesino took the samples and started off for Mexico City. On his way he came to a cantina, inside of which his best three friends were drinking. Later, well lubricated, the campesino stumbled out of the bar and very soon broke the two jars. So the next morning he explained to his friends what had happened. “Don’t worry,” one of them said, “we will find you more water from around here.” So he took the water to Mexico City and they said it would be fine for agriculture because it was rainwater. Don Manuel then approached local officials about digging the tunnel. He got permission and hired 16 Guanajuato miners who began digging the tunnel from both ends simultaneously, with nothing more than picks and shovels.
They started the tunnel in 1910 and finished it in 1915. Five years it took! Then the owner bought a very expensive pump and started irrigating his fields with the water. But, desgraciadamente, this water (which was extremely alkaline) killed all his crops. So the Spaniard arranged to meet the man who had taken the water for testing, supposedly to reward him, but actually to kill him.
There were six soldiers hiding in the tunnel, two at each end and two in the middle. The campesino made it halfway through the tunnel where they murdered him and, it is said, buried him. And his body remains there to this day.
If the story of the tunnel was so filled with drama and passion, I wondered what we would find in the crater. I was not disappointed.
You have to catch your breath when you first step into this crater, which is enormous, and shimmering white. If you are from colder climates, your eye sees ice and snow although the temperature is warm and pleasant. Start climbing down through deep white fissures into the old lake bed and I guarantee you will feel like you are walking on another planet.
According to Mexico’s National Commission for Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (Conabio), the powdery white surface is some kind of soda, clearly containing at least some sodium bicarbonate. Put a little vinegar on it and watch it fizz. Before the 1980s this was a big lake, but excessive pumping of groundwater in the area caused all the local crater lakes to drain, turning each one into a little desert. Technically speaking what we found ourselves in is called a maar volcano, meaning it was formed by a violent explosion when water worked its way deep underground and came into contact with magma.
This crater lake looks about 1.5 kilometers wide. We hiked across it and were surprised to find what appear to be stromatolites. Stromatolites are the oldest fossils in the world, composed of a mix of sediments plus cyanobacteria, also called spirulina, the first living thing on earth. Apparently spirulina was happily propagating in this lake right up to 1998. At the far end of the crater, we found another surprise: thousands of naturally formed stone balls. At first I thought they were spherulites, but my geologist friends say no. However they still have not come up with an explanation for what they really are.
It is claimed that this crater is one of “Las Siete Luminarias,” seven craters lying in the same configuration as the stars of the Big Dipper. It is also claimed that this is the birthplace of the Aztecs, the center of the world, and a great place to see UFOs. Even the Loch Ness monster has been spotted here, I was told.
Well, I can only tell you what I saw and that was a crater, but what a crater! It was certainly well worth the trip. If you visit this place, I recommend you hike all the way across the lake and return around the perimeter. This otherworldly landscape has different characteristics in different parts of the crater. If you can manage to go on a weekday, you may have the whole place to yourself.
As for caves, we found not a one deeper than five meters ... not nearly long enough to hide the Loch Ness monster!
How to get there
Google Maps shows three routes from Guadalajara to Valle de Santiago, two via toll roads. All of them require about four hours of driving. From the town, drive west on Heroico Colegio Militar to N20 24.054 W101 15.216 and turn north. My route is on Wikiloc.com under Parangueo Crater Hike.