Burrowed deep in the heart of the Sierra Madre Mountains, San Sebastian's remote setting has made it one of Mexico's last remaining secrets and 7 of us went there to find it.
While this tiny mountain town (elevation 4500 ft) isn't far from Puerto Vallarta, it's still not one of the usual tourist haunts you find on the coast. Last week we got an email from Del Goad (Louise’s cousin) letting us know that he was going to be in the PV area for about 10 days so we took advantage of that and asked him to join us for this over-night journey.
So our first stop after picking him up was San Sebastian and then onto two more mountain towns, Mascota and Talpa but first let’s explore San Sebastian.
Of course one of our first stops is always the community church or cathedral, and in this case it’s a church. We found our parking place just outside of the plaza and from that point we could see the steeple on the back side of the promenade so we headed that way.
As we passed through the doors we were struck by a sign at the front entrance
and the most wonderful aroma of fresh flowers that graced the whole alter. Now for the other side of San Sebastian…we visited the town jail
which was also part of the town museum dating from the 1700’s and could only imagine what it might have been like to spend a little (or a lot) of time there…no thank you. We were also traveling with Sol and Carol and George and Lis. San Sebastian was originally settled in 1605 and quickly found that it sat on one of the richest silver areas of the world. Fact is, the Spanish shipped all of it to Spain after mining and smelting during the 17th century… Mining continued through the 1930’s until recently when one of the mines was re-opened. I doubt they will see the production that they had in the past but anything will help the people and this economy. Although those gold/silver rush years are long gone, this beautiful mountain village of just 600 residents has kept its true colonial heritage. Today it’s a shining example of an ancient Mexican village and well known for its corn and cattle trade, cultivating coffee and blue (tequila) agave (I can speak highly for the taste of both of them) on its lush mountainsides.
RSS Feed
