Today was a long weekend because of the celebration of the Mexican Constitution on February the 5th, The holiday is moved to the previous Monday to allow for more productivity and rest for workers.

To celebrate, a group of church friends and I rented a log cabin in a place called: “El Pinal” in the eastern Sierra Madre Mountains of Nuevo Leon.

I barely slept there because of the cold, and getting there was an ordeal of climbing steep and narrow mountain roads in rain and fog, in a rental car, because the friend who was driving us there cancelled at the last minute. Precipices thousands of meters high fell away from both sides of the road.

But, even in the stress, we had a lot of fun; in fact our faith was strengthened. At one moment, after the car had started skidding in a particularly wet uphill climb, my friends and I asked God for the rain to stop. Amazingly, a few seconds later it did! After the tense climb and close to the highest point of the road, we asked God to let us see the road, which was very difficult because of fog. A few seconds later the fog cleared enough for us to clearly see our way.

The rain didn’t return until 5AM or so, and in the meantime we even got to do some stargazing. We built a fire in the fireplace, drank hot chocolate, toasted marshmallows, made quesadilllas, played Scrabble and Monopoly, and had wonderful conversations.

The next day we got up late and visited a small canyon. All the way into it we were led forward by trees covered in Spanish Moss, which made them reminiscent of willow trees. I couldn’t help comparing the trees and rock walls to those in the movie Avatar. We met a group of Canadian and Mexican climbers inching up the steep and overhung canyon walls. We also met a Mexican rancher and his son in their Stetson hats and speaking with the characteristic norteño twang.

We had a wonderful relaxing time, ate good food, had loads of fun, one of the best weekends in a long time for me. Here are some of my pictures.