Zona del Silencio

The Zona del Silencio — officially part of the Mapimí Biosphere Reserve — sits in the Bolsón de Mapimí desert, roughly 500 kilometres north of Torreón near the Durango-Chihuahua-Coahuila border junction. The zone earned its name from alleged radio interference and compass anomalies reported over the decades, and it has accumulated a mythology of crashed spacecraft, strange lights, and unusual fauna. The reality is a spectacular and genuinely remote stretch of Chihuahuan Desert with interesting geology and, in good years, remarkable wildflowers.

Getting here is a serious undertaking: the last stretch of road is unpaved and requires a high-clearance vehicle, and the heat in summer can be life-threatening. The best months to visit are October through March. If you are not driving yourself, guided tours depart from Durango (closer) and occasionally from Torreón. Bring more water than you think you need. The landscape — flat desert broken by strange rock formations and the occasional lagoon — is extraordinary whether or not you believe any of the legends.

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A story
In 1970, an Athena rocket launched from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico went off course and crashed in the Bolsón de Mapimí. The United States sent a team to recover the radioactive payload, and the operation drew attention to the area's unusual reputation: compasses behaved erratically, radio signals were unreliable, and locals had long reported strange lights. Whether any of this is attributable to actual magnetic anomalies or to the remoteness of the terrain is genuinely debated. Mexico eventually built a research station here — the Biosphere Reserve of Mapimí — which studies the real ecological oddities of the desert.

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