Restaurante Los Primos and Garcia Caves

The small town of Garcia is located 18 miles northwest of Monterrey in Nuevo Leon, Mexico in the shadow of some beautiful mountains, the Sierra Madre Oriental. This mountain range runs from the Rio Grande at the U.S. border in Coahuila, down to Puebla, southeast of Mexico City. This section of the Sierra Madre Oriental is known as the Sierra del Fraile, or Friar's Range. 

Sierra del Fraille or Friar's Range

Before going on to our main destination, Grutas de Garcia, or Garcia Cave, located 5.5 miles northeast of Garcia in the mountains, we stopped at a small restaurant called Restaurante Los Primos, for breakfast. 

My nephew, John, in front of the restaurant.

It was small and unassuming and one of my favorite meals of our trip. We had a number of bowls of different kinds of salsa, one of the things I love about Mexico, and I got a plate with eggs, chorizo, tortilla, and refried beans. It was simple, cheap and amazingly good. 

After breakfast we drove northeast through a canyon which divides the range to the eastern side and found a cable car near the road leading high up into the mountains where the cave is located. It is about a five minute ride on the cable car to the platform where we were dropped off. 

Garcia Cave

The route of the cable car can be discerned by the line (a path near the cable) going up the mountain.

The entrance to the cave is about half way up in the picture, on the left. 

Cable car at the platform.

Looking down to where we came up from. 

The cave is quite spectacular, discovered in 1843 by Father Juan Antonio Sobrevilla. I assume the name of the range may have come from this priestly explorer. 

Cave entrance

Although the formations inside are spectacular, they looked quite dry. We followed a route up, around and down on a metal pathway much of the way. As good as the cave was, my fondest memory of the area is of Los Primos, simple but deliciously good food.