Time of visit: November 2021

Duration of visit: 2 hours

Mode of transportation: by rental car, en route from Puebla to Oaxaca

Review and experience

Tehuacan-Cuicatlan Valley features beautiful landscape full of cacti, particularly the unique single column cacti that reminded us of garden eels in an aquarium. We visited the Zapotitlán-Cuicatlán portion of the site and were so glad we made the relatively last minute decision to make this detour happen.  Along the main highway connecting Puebla and Oaxaca, we really didn't see many cacti, even as we were approaching the site (driving south from Puebla). However, a few minutes into our turn into the valley, it's as if the landscape just exploded. There were so many. Despite being a desert, it's truly a forest. 

Due to COVID, the specific site mentioned in several other prior reviews - Helia Bravo Hollis Garden - was closed. Instead, we visited the nearby Las Salinas Grandes salt mine. It's directly off the road, and as we arrived during the day, there was a worker there who gave us a lovely tour of the facilities (for a very reasonable fee). We learned that this particular salt farm has been continuously functioning for the past 600 years, and it was interest to walk on the pond, taste the salt water (don't recommend... it was gross and putrid) and finished salt (recommend tasting!). We left the tour grateful to have had a brief taste of the cultural aspect of this WHS. 

From the natural aspect of the WHS, we were honestly surprised to learn that so much of the cacti family is endangered, considering the rampant amount of succulents being sold commercially. Apparently there are a lot of illegal operations in Mexico and around the world to harvest cacti for household and commercial landscape, and it's a big problem!