The best waterfalls in Nuevo León

Most people who visit Monterrey are surprised by how quickly the city gives way to mountains. You can be sitting in traffic near the Macroplaza one hour and standing under a waterfall in the Sierra Madre Oriental the next. Cascada Cola de Caballo is the reason a lot of those day trips happen, and it has been pulling in regiomontano families on Sunday outings for longer than most of them can remember.

The name translates to Horsetail Falls, and it earns it. The water doesn't drop in one clean sheet — it fans out over the rock face on its way down, splitting into thin white strands that really do look like a tail caught mid-swish. It's not the tallest waterfall in Mexico, and it won't remind anyone of Niagara. What it has going for it is setting: a narrow limestone canyon inside Cumbres de Monterrey National Park, thick with vegetation, with the falls arriving almost without warning after a short walk from the parking area.

Where it actually is