Xilitla is a coffee town in cloud forest on the southern edge of the Huasteca, and the reason to come is Las Pozas: thirty-odd hectares of jungle in which the English poet and patron Edward James spent twenty years and a fortune building concrete surrealist structures — staircases to nowhere, columns shaped like flowers, doorways and pavilions, all now half-reclaimed by the forest and threaded by waterfalls and pools. It is the strangest place in Mexico. Visitor numbers are capped by timed ticket.
The Sótano de las Huahuas, nearby, is the other swift cave — less famous than Las Golondrinas and with the same dawn and dusk spiral of birds.
From here the rest of the Huasteca Potosina is within reach: the waterfalls at Tamul and Micos, the river at Tamasopo, and the rafting on the Tampaón, all of which the Xilitla operators run. The dry season, November to May, is when the rivers run turquoise.
Xilitla's own hills grow coffee at altitude and the town is cooler and wetter than the lowlands an hour north.