Travel Guide Real De Catorce

Perched at an altitude of 2,750 m, Real de Catorce is a small mining village founded in 1772. Once prosperous, it was abandoned at the beginning of the 20th century when the first salvos of the Mexican Revolution broke out. It owes its name to the 14 bandits who once settled there and devoted themselves to stealing the silver production that was brought to the region. Today, Real de Catorce looks like a ghost town, but that is precisely what makes it so charming. Its small cobbled streets, its old houses and the surrounding wild-west landscapes attract a large number of Mexicans and foreigners who appreciate the calm of the village and its magical atmosphere. Since the 1970s, Real de Catorce has also been frequented by travelers in search of peyote, a cactus with hallucinogenic properties that grows in the Wirikuta Desert, located below the village. It is a small fleshy cactus, without columns, topped by a grey-green bud from which emerges a tuft of white hairs. The peyote has long been consumed by the Huichol Indians who use it to contact the gods and the cosmos.