Mapimí is a small, dusty former silver town in the north of Durango, and the gateway to one of the stranger corners of Mexico.
The Ojuela mine above the town produced silver and gold for four centuries. What is left is a ghost settlement on the mountainside and the Puente de Ojuela, a 318-metre suspension bridge built in 1898 across a ravine, now a plank walkway that you cross on foot to reach the mine tunnels on the far side.
Beyond the town lies the Bolsón de Mapimí, a closed desert basin, and within it the so-called Zona del Silencio. The name comes from a 1970 incident when an American test missile went off course and crashed here, and from claims that radio signals do not carry — claims that have never survived measurement. What is genuinely unusual is the biology: the basin is a UNESCO biosphere reserve with a high rate of endemism, including the Bolsón tortoise, the largest land reptile in North America.
The folklore brought the visitors, and local guides will run you out into the basin. Treat the meteorite stories as entertainment and the desert as serious — there is no water and no phone signal.