Ciudad Guzmán, where I live, is a small city of around 100,000 people and the main commercial centre for the predominantly rural region of the south of Jalisco. It is surrounded by small towns, each of which – as I have come to appreciate more over the years I have lived here – has its own distinctive atmosphere, culture and traditions. A key part of these traditions are the fiestas that each town celebrates.

Many towns have more than one large fiesta, notably Tuxpan which is known as the town of the “fiesta eterna” for its almost continual fiestas.

The day for what is usually the main fiesta for the town is the Saint day for its patron saint or a day chosen for one of the many manifestations that Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary can take – in the case of María she can assume the names of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, la Virgen de la Defensa, Virgen María de la Medalla Milagrosa, la Madre de Dios, la Virgen de la Inmaculada Concepción, la Bienaventurada Virgen María, la Santísima Virgen María amongst many others.

Atemajac de Brizuela is a small municipality of about 5000 people in the Sierra de Tapalpa about an hour and a half to the north-west of Ciudad Guzmán. Its main fiesta on 5, 6, 7, 8 & 9 September celebrates the Virgin Mary in her name of the Virgen de la Defensa. However, the Virgin is shared with the major town of Tapalpa and the small village of Juanacatlan, spending three months in Atemajac, three months in Tapalpa and six months in Juanacatlan. She also has a well-travelled replica who journeys between Guadalajara, Mexico City and many cities in the USA.

On 6th September every year, the Virgen enters Atemajac de Brizuela from the small village of Ferrería de Tula about 8 kilometers away. She has spent two nights in this tiny village. On the morning of the 6th September, a mass is celebrated in her honour in Ferrería de Tula, after which she is carried out of the church, along the road out of the town to the main road to Atemajac, accompanied by the townspeople, a group of local dancers called sonajeros, and a brass band.

A kilometer or so down the main road, under a welcoming march, she is met by the people of Atemajac. As often in Mexico, due pomp and ceremony has to be first observed with various speeches made to the crowd of several thousand people who have gathered.

A key part of the  welcoming committee is a group of four moros – moors. They are wearing traditional Arabic clothing – or at least what the Spanish who colonized Mexico considered was their traditional clothing – and enormous crowns. These are made of paper and wax and weigh 15 kilos. They at first look identical but are different in details such as the flowers they display.

The same four families have been making these crowns for hundreds of years.  They have already walked from Atemajac, a distance of about 6 kilometers. Each moor has three assistants to help him with the crown and take over if necessary.

Before the virgin passes over to the people of Atemajac, there is a relato, which is a dramatic re-enactment of the struggle between the moros and  the cristianos, largely contested by two men on horseback representing the different sides.

I could not quite figure this out, because logic seemed to indicate that the Moors won, as the virgin is then accompanied by them back to Atemajac, but this did not seem to be consistent with the sense that in a strongly catholic country like Mexico, the cristianos should really be the winning team.

Having handed the virgen over to the mayordomos from Atemajac, she is then accompanied by the several thousand spectators, young men on horseback, a group of men wearing T-shirts with the name cuetero on it – whose job is to set off rockets at all points along the way (usually from their hands) which whizz into the air and explode with a loud bang – groups of traditional dancers (sonajeros), groups of Aztec dancers, and what seemed to me some very culturally eclectic groups of dancers.

The photo above is of someone in a dance group who are all wearing a combination of native American costumes adorned with traditional Mexican imagery such as the Virgen of Guadalupe, and heavy metal plates attached to the soles of the feet so as they walk they make a sound like thousands of knives being sharpened. Mexico, is indeed a mestiza (mixed) culture.

All along the road to Atemajac there are stalls selling every kind of food and drink, as well as religious icons. The Virgen even has a couple of stopping points where she can rest.

When the virgen arrives in Atemajac, her entry into the town is marked by a particularly intense bout of cuetero activity. She is taken to one of the many chapels in the town, where she spends the night, before being taken to the main church the following morning, once again accompanied by a large crowd and various groups of dancers.

This tradition has been occurring for 368 years. Every year, many people from Atemajac travel back to their place of birth, from all over Mexico and the United States, to participate in the fiesta. The event even has an international organizing group, with two mayordomos from Atemajac, two from Guadalajara, two from Mexico City and two from Los Angeles, one from Oakland, one from San Francisco y one from Seattle.

There are two different stories about the origin of the virgin. One says that she came from Arabia as a gift, which raises all sorts of questions about why and how. The other more plausible story is that she was presented to the people in this area of Mexico as a present from the Bishop of Puebla because the people here did not have their own virgin.

I had gone to the fiesta with a group of ten fellow students of a Diploma program in the Culture of the South of Jalisco which will prepare us to be officially certified tourist guides for this area. We went to experience this fiesta together as a live case study. As one of our number was from Atemajac, she invited us all to eat at her home after the virgen had been safely delivered to her chapel.

Once again it struck me how true the stereotype of Mexican hospitality can be. Our companion’s family opened their house to us, prepared us all a delicious carne asada (slices of grilled meat cooked on the barbecue) – with all the accompaniments such as locally made chorizo, a range of salsas (medium, hot, and very hot), guacamole, frijoles and of course tortillas. All this was done with warmth, simplicity, grace and no fuss.

One of the extraordinary things about Mexico is that nearly every small and large town and city will have its own fiesta, with some features in common, but each with its unique character. The effort, organization and money that goes into these fiestas is impressive – my companion on the Diploma  told me that just the fireworks in the evening cost 7000 USD. All this dispels the myth of Mexicans being lazy and incapable of organizing anything. Events do indeed get successfully organized but not in the typical western pattern.

A couple of weeks ago, after a pleasant overnight stop in Tehuacán in the state of Puebla, I set off for Huautla de Jiménez, a small town high in the Mazatec sierra in the Northern corner of the state of Oaxaca, close to the border with the state of Puebla.

Huautla is famous – or notorious – for being the place where María Sabina lived, worked and died. María Sabina was originally a subsistence farmer from the Mazatec indigenous people who also worked as a respected curandera (healer) within her local community, conducting ceremonies where she used diffeernt local mushrooms, which she called santos niños (holy or saint children), all containing the psycho-active ingredient psilocybin.

She became catapulted to fame when in 1955, a visiting amateur ethnomycologist, Gordon Wasson, whose day job was Vice President of the investment bank J.P. Morgan, together with his fashion photographer friend,  became the first westerners to participate alongside María Sabina in a velada – the night-time sacred ceremony involving the santos niños.

Despite being sworn to secrecy by María Sabina, Wasson published an account of his experiences in the May 13th 1957 issue of Life magazine – at that time the most influential magazine in the USA. This article has been claimed to have initiated the psychedelic revolution, as it particularly influenced Timothy Leary and others to start experimenting with these mushrooms.

Soon, all sorts of people – including it is said, John Lennon, Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan – started to make their way to Huautla in the sixties to experience the veladas with María Sabina. She became an icon of the counter-culture. Much of the effect of the foreign visitors, however, was negative. They expressed their sixties ideals and customs – for example, making love naked in the maize fields – with mostly no respect for the local culture. In 1967 and 1969, the army was brought in to evict long haired foreigners, or “jipis” as they were locally known, from Huautla and they were prohibited entry to the town until 1976.

Despite, or because of, this rapid rise to fame, María Sabina’s life ended in 1985 tragically and in poverty. She had become ostracised by her local community – through a combination of envy and for having revealed its secrets to outsiders. Her house was burned down, and her son murdered. Towards the end of her life it was claimed she said:

“But from the moment the foreigners arrived to search for God, the saint children lost their purity. They lost their force; the foreigners spoiled them. From now on they won’t be any good. There’s no remedy for it…”

Another respected male curandero said:

“What is terrible is that the sacred mushroom no longer belong to us. The language has been spoiled and is indecipherable to us … “What is this new language like?” “Now the mushrooms speak English! Yes it is the tongue the foreigners speak”.

To read a post that explores this exploitative legacy of the West in relation to María Sabina and the Mazatec community in Huautla, click here.

María Sabina has become a very ambiguous figure within Mexican culture. Heriberto Yépez, in an insightful and thought-provoking article about María Sabina and her link with Malinche, the generally despised indigenous woman who was Cortés lover and helped him in the conquista through her ability to translate between Spanish, Maya and the Aztec languages, says that:

“There is no doubt that unconsciously the public at large granted Sabina the attributes of a pop-culture version of Malinche, famous because she facilitated the invasion of famous people from around the world. In this view she was a woman dedicated primarily to helping rock-stars, beatniks, poets and adventurers from the United States and Europe have a nice trip in Language Land – Huautla as a little rural Disneyland for New-Agers. Sabina suffered the stigma of being involved in sell-out tourism, becoming in the popular mind one of those persona of popular culture that, thanks to their friendship with the dollar, are almost non-Mexican:border prostitutes; jumping frijoles; Tijuana; and María Sabina, an Indian healer turned chic guide for crazy gabachos, a betrayer of the nation.”

I was not aware of most of the above when I set off to go to Huautla. A friend of a friend had given me contact details for her cousin who lived in Huautla, and recommended that I get in touch with him if I wanted to participate in a velada, as there are many charlatans offering their services to outsiders.

As others have commented in relation to their experiences of going to Huautla, the drive there is vertginous and spectacular. From Tehuacán to Teotitlán the road is flat as it follows the plain for about an hour, but from Teotitlán, there is a steep and dizzy climb to the heights of the Sierra.

After a long initial climb, the road levels off somewhat and there are attractive views of the Sierra, before a final descent and ascent to Huautla. Overall from Teotitlán it is about 75kms and a two hours drive.

Huautla is a sprawling town set into the hillside with steep streets. My first impressions were not good. It is one of the ugliest Mexican towns I have been in, full of corrugated-iron roofed houses. In places, it smelt of sewage, dog shit, rotting vegetables and garbage. After I parked my car and walked around the narrow, enclosed streets trying to locate my friends’ cousin, everywhere seemed dark. The people were minimally courteous and there seemed none of the infectious enthusiasm and spontaneous warmth that I have found before in other small Mexican towns.

Rooftop view of Huautla

I finally located my friends cousin. He explained to me that he was no longer involved in giving ceremonies but he recommended two people to me, so I set off to locate them. The first person, Ines Cortes, was known to me from two blogs on the internet (click here and here). Her house is located above and behind the Casa de la Cultura.

I had intended to visit both people recommended to me, but on meeting Ines I decided to participate in ceremony with her. She emanates warmth, compassion and humanity. In addition, she has been a curandera for 40 years, working first with her uncle and then with María Sabina for nine years. She told me that John Lennon had indeed visited Huautla for five days in 1968 – I had suspected it might be a myth – and that she had met him.

She also said I could stay in her house in a simple room on the third floor for 70 pesos a night. I really enjoyed my stay with Ines and her family, and ended up staying for three nights. As time went on, and I got to know her family better, I felt very welcomed and well looked after. Although we had not talked about food, the family naturally invited me to eat with them, though I was mostly fasting in order to participate in the ceremonies.

Her husband Juvental, when he heard that I was keen to go walking, invited me to accompany him to the land he works. Our walk took us past a brand new building, never used, which Juvental explained to me was meant to be a new university in Huautla. His view was that APPO, a social movement in Oaxaca opposed to the former state governor, and initiators and organizers of the widespread rebellion in Oaxaca in 2006, had prevented this building ever being opened. I was surprised by this, as I had always been an instinctive supporter of APPO, and it gave me a glimpse into the complexity of Mexican politics.

The walk was part of my preparation for the first ceremony, which started at around 8pm. I was the only person present apart from Ines. Later, her husband joined her with the singing and at one point her grandson popped in. Ines gave me six mushrooms to eat. Fresh mushrooms are only available in the rainy season between June and September. Ines told me that there are three types of mushrooms used in the ceremonies and that the most powerful can only be found in June. Whilst I started to feel the effects of the mushrooms, Ines gave me a cleansing, a reading using the burning of copal, said prayers and sung songs in Spanish and Mazatec.

The ceremony is a syncretic mix of indigenous and Spanish catholic elements. Ines’ altar (which is the first photo on this entry) is an extraordinary and eclectic collection of religious and non-religious images from all over the world, including pictures of her family, and proudly displaying a plastic Mexican flag.

It was a real treat to have the ceremony directed just at me as I was able to ask Ines to sing more songs in Mazatec, rather than Spanish, and also to ask her to include the names of my family in a beautiful and simple song she sang which mentioned different peoples’ names.

My experience finished around midnight. Ines then gave another ceremony to two people who had just arrived by bus from Oaxaca and were to go back to Oaxaca early the following day. This seemed a crazy and overly-rushed way to participate in a ceremony of this kind.

Initially, I had only intended to participate in one ceremony, but as I felt the process I had been through was still incomplete, I asked Ines if I could participate in a ceremony she was running the following night with four other people and she agreed. This time the experience was very gentle, and the following day I felt I had been through an important cleaning process.

Ines and Juvental

As I got to know them better, I talked to Ines and Juvental about the unfavourable first impressions I had received of Huautla. I had begun to think that maybe María Sabina’s tragic story hung heavily over the town. They told me that, first, many of the people there did not speak Spanish well, as Mazatec was their native language, so they were reluctant to talk to Spanish speakers. In addition, they said the people were, in general, very closed. When I later read about the town’s history with outsiders and the “jipis”, I could see why they might have reason to not embrace foreign visitors.

I would wholeheartedly suggest that anyone going to Huautla to participate in a traditional ceremony look for Ines. I am sure there are other good curanderos in the town, but there are also people selling mushrooms and offering ceremonies, even as people get off the bus from Tehuacán, Oaxaca or Mexico City, who have no real training and experience of the traditional healing processes.

Postscript: see here for an interesting New York Times article about the renewed research interest in the use of psilocybin to treat people with terminal illness in the USA.

As part of the two week road trip I made in central Mexico in August, in one day I drove from Cuernavaca, in the state of Morelos, to Tehuacán in the state of Puebla, a distance of about 450 kms. It is possible to do this journey in a more direct manner going mostly on autopistas via the city of Puebla, but I wanted to travel on smaller roads and explore a little known area of Mexico.

From Cuernavaca, it is possible to take the libre to Cuautla and then join the autopista that crosses Cuautla near Oaxtepec, which has the double advantage of avoiding the toll and also being able to travel very quickly through Cuautla towards Izúcar de Matamoros.

Main church in Izúcar de Matamoros

Izúcar de Matamoros is a busy, bustling, traditional market town. To my surprise, it had an Italian Coffee Company outlet in its main square. The town is known for its ceramics – I once saw some intricate, stupendous arboles de la vida in an exhibition in Los Angeles which came from a craftsman in Izúcar.

From Izúcar, Highway 180 winds southeast on its way to Oaxaca through the Sierra del Madre Sur to Acatlán. I liked Acatlán. It had good and very cheap handicrafts, and an attractive church. It is one of many places in Mexico that never makes it to the tourist guides but is interesting precisely because it is an ordinary Mexican city.

Principal church in Acatlán

Highway 180 continues southeast towards Huajuapan de León which is just inside Oaxaca near the border with Puebla. Before there, however, I wanted to take what looked like on the map a good short cut heading North East from Saltrillo to join Highway 125 to Tehuacán near San Pedro y San Pablo.

The route started well enough and was signposted to Tepejillo, which, according to the map, was on my route.

Church just outside Tepejillo

The road continued to Tulitlán, relatively straightforwardly, and then very suddenly and surprisingly turned into a dirt track. By now there were great views over the surrounding sierra.

The dirt track was getting increasingly rutted when I came to a fork – I took the left side signposted to Tehuacán, my eventual destination, whereas my original intention had been to go through the villages signposted to the right. In retrospect, this was a mistake – but an interesting one. The road got rougher and rougher, more and more isolated, and did not seem to be heading anywhere.

Then, bizarrely, in what seemed to be more than the middle of nowhere, I came across a group of people in the process of building the road I was travelling on. It reassured me to see signs of human activity but also meant a number of longish waits whilst the bulldozers cleared the road of rubble to allow the traffic to pass.

Finally, and suddenly, the dirt track reverted back to a shiny new road, cutting its way through the sierra. Given it was the rainy season, though thankfully not raining at that moment, there were frequent remains of past landslides on the road.

I was now feeling happier as I appeared to be back on the map and was able to identify the village of Joluxtla, with its pretty church.

Church at Joluxtla

Finally, I appeared to arrive where I wanted to be heading, on Highway 125, and was hugely relieved to see the following road sign.

The next town on Highway 125 was Santiago Chazumba, which like many of the small towns and villages I had passed through, had an attractive church.

Entrance to the church at Santiago Chazumba

Shortly after Santiago Chazumba, Highway 125 enters the Reserva de la Biosfera Tehuacán Cuicatlán. This is a huge – almost 500,000 hectares – protected area, important for its biological, geological and cultural diversity. Contrary to what is normally thought, and, on first sight appears to be the case, there is actually great biological diversity in these dry tropical areas in the south of Mexico. The scenery driving through the reserve, is very distinctive. From a distance, the hills appear to be full of needles, which then differentiate as you get closer into long, tall, phallic cactuses.

As the road approaches Tehuacán, situated in a valley surrounded on the south side by the Sierra del Madre Sur and the north side by the steeply rising Sierra de Tehuacán, there are fine views over the city.

The city itself is spacious, flat, and very easy to negotiate by car. It has a very calm, pleasant, relaxed vibe.

Typical street in the center of Tehuacán with the Iglesia de Carmen in the background

The main square has a good example of the kind of architecture found in the historic center of Puebla, which houses the city’s government offices.

In the Iglesia de Carmen, there is an interesting figure of Christ, known as Nuestro Padre de las Maravillas, wearing all the petitions that have been made to him for help.

I stayed in Bogh Suites hotel just off the north west corner of the Zócalo which was fine for one night. Finally, and this is definitely worth mentioning, I had the best ever Chiles en Nogada at the restaurant Mi Generala on the east side of the Zócalo. It had the perfect combination of hot and cold, smooth and crunchy, spicy and plain. It was so good I went back to Tehuacán after visiting Huautla de Jiménez just to eat there again – but that is another story.

On my last morning in Valle de Bravo, I decided to go paragliding. After all, this was meant to be one of the prime spots in the world to do it, and I had already done it once before on the Isla de Juventud in Cuba, and if I had not then conquered my fear of heights, I had at least managed to endure the terror.

Besides, I had met Spencer, the young American who would be my pilot, in the hotel where we were both staying and he seemed a steady, balanced kind of a guy, from Utah. When I enquired about the price he directed me to the hotel manager who appeared to be organizing the show – 1000 pesos (about 70USD) all included, which was indeed very competitive with all the other paragliding outfits in the Valle.

So at 9.30am on the appointed day, I met with Spencer in the hotel lobby and we waited for the taxi organized by the hotel manager – the taxi driver was a friend of his – to take us to the point of take off, and to collect us from the landing point. And we waited and waited.

I thought I should ask Spencer about his experience and qualifications for doing this and he quietly reassured me about the number of hours he had in the air, how many times he had taken people with him, his qualifications as an instructor etc.

Around 10.15am, Spencer was at the point of ordering another taxi when the hotel manager rang his friend and assured us he was very close to the hotel, had been delayed because of the volume of traffic, and would be there within minutes. In about another twenty of them, the taxi driver arrived, a friendly voluble young Mexican. We climbed into the taxi, me in the front, and Spencer in the back with his equipment packed into a large rucksack.

We headed slowly out of town – there was indeed a lot of traffic – and turned off the main road heading north out of town to the hill from where we would take off. As the road changed from asphalt to dirt, and my anxiety level started to rise, I thought it would be a good idea to go to the toilet before I took off and interrupted the taxi driver’s discourse on his wife and three lovers to ask if there was somewhere where we could stop so I could go to the toilet.

His reply was “¿Quieres chiflar o cantar?”, which literally translated means “Do you want to whistle or sing?”. This nonplussed me, and I was not certain I had heard him correctly. Though I did have an intuitive sense of what he meant, I asked him to repeat the words and then give a little explanation. It was indeed what I had guessed. He was asking me if I wanted to take a pee or have shit. I have to say it sounds much better in Mexican Spanish. It’s moments like that that I love in Mexico.

We established that I wanted to chiflar which was straighforward. After a short stop to chiflar, there was a steady climb in the taxi to arrive at the top of the hill.

Whilst Spencer unpacked the paraglider, straightened it out on the take-off area, and unravelled the strings, I steadied myself and went to look over the edge of the hill in the direction we would be taking off. It was high, much, much higher than the hill in Cuba and much steeper. There was no margin for error. Once you launched there was no going back, unlike in Cuba where it had been possible to abort the take off.

I noticed one area in the town below that I had not seen before and could not identify from its shape. “What is that area?” I asked the taxi-driver pointing to it. The cemetery he replied. Not a good omen, I thought. People did indeed die here paragliding.

Despite his Mexican machismo about his love-life, the taxi-driver did admit to being scared shitless – I now wonder if that could be translated as sincantardor – of doing paragliding. On the one hand, that made me feel like a fearless Englishman in contrast, on the other hand I thought maybe he was right not to want to do it.

Spencer coached me on the take-off procedure. We would run at a moderate pace to the line that almost marked the edge of the hill and then run like hell. That was simple. Spencer hooked me to him, after putting on my harness, and lifted the sails gently. He said we would wait for a stronger breeze.

When it came, he said run and we ran. Just at the point of the edge, I felt this huge force catching me and pulling us back. The wind had fully caught the sails. “Run!” shouted Spencer again. For a moment, it was like one of those dreams where you try to run but you feel like you are stuck in thick treacle. Then miraculously we moved forward, gathered pace and took off.

Of course, being in the air is a wonderful sensation, and this time I was able to enjoy it more. Unfortunately, there were not strong thermals that day, so we gently glided down to the landing site, a small, green field on the edge of the lake.

Spencer had also coached me on the landing. Again it seemed relatively simple. Ease yourself out of your seat and let your legs slide on the ground. The ground though did seem to be coming up very quickly. Perhaps that was good because there was no time to think – just get out of sitting back in the seat and make the best job of hitting the ground. We landed, slid and both fell down. Spencer congratulated me on the landing, which surprised me, but I took it as real praise.

The final part of the voyage was packing up the sail which reminded me of packing up a large tent. Spencer said that the equipment was increasingly getting better and lighter and new sails had a glide ratio of 11:1 (which means that you can go 11 units along for every one down) in contrast to earlier sails with ratios of 5:1.

Now that we had landed safely, I asked him about his most difficult experience paragliding. He told me of a time in Valle de Bravo when he had been sucked up into a cloud, tossed around by some particularly turbulent winds, which led to him losing control of the sails as the strings became entangled, and starting to freefall. This was the moment to use the emergency parachute which brought him safely down to earth, narrowly missing a group of pinetrees.

I had not realised we had an emergency parachute. That would have been nice to know beforehand.

Anyone wishing to paraglide with Spencer can contact him via the Hotel Posada Familiar Hotel de los Girasoles on the corner of the main plaza. He really is an excellent, experienced pilot.

One of Mexico’s many charms is its endless capacity to surprise. I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting when I decided to visit Valle de Bravo as part of a two week road trip though the states of Estado de México, Morelos, DF and Oaxaca but Valle de Bravo has not been quite as I had imagined.

Certainly many Mexican friends had told me it was a lovely destination, and I could see from the map and from reading guides that it was located by a large lake, but I had not expected the landscape to have such a European feeling.

With its high, green, wooded hills surrounding a beautifully sculpted lake and large, fancy houses on the waterfront, I kept having thoughts of the French Riviera or Swiss/Italian/French lakes. Perhaps because it is an artificial landscape caused by creating a man-made lake in 1947 as part of a hydroelectic scheme named after the Mexican President Miguel Alemán at that time, it does not feel entirely naturally Mexican in some way.

But however much the landscape may have resonances with old Europe, the culture is distinctly Mexican. I was expecting the town to be more touristy – it is one of the 32 pueblos mágicos in Mexico – and indeed it has more than its fair share of galleries and too many kitsch gift shops, alongside a few interesting shops selling handicrafts – but the town still has a sense of having its  own distinctive life and identity, even though it has become a popular weekend destination for the vast metropolis of Mexico City, being only 156kms and about two hours south-west of the city by autopista, and many rich Mexican families have bought houses here.

The main plaza adjoining the church San Francisco has a relaxed, lively feel with families and couples hand-in-hand wondering around day and night and lots of ice cream shops and people selling jewelry in the portales. On one corner, every morning, there is a hugely popular stand of three men selling tacos of barbacoa out of a huge steaming container, made out of pigs and cows heads cooked  in the leaves of the maguey.

I still have not acquired the taste for all the parts of the animal that most Mexicans love to eat but I did find a similar taco stand selling barbacoa de borrego (sheep) in which the whole sheep is cooked in maguey leaves in a hole dug in the earth, and where it was possible to ask just for la maciza (‘normal’ meat).

I was also not expecting Valle de Bravo to be something of a gourmet’s paradise in a small way. Near the Iglesia de Santa María Ahuacatlán – which has an extraordinary Cristo Negro, a black wooden figure of Christ dating from the sixteenth century of which there are only two others in Mexico, one nearby at the famous pilgrimage site of Chalma and the other in Zacatecas – in the lower part of the town near the embarcadero (the jetty), there are a few specialist food shops.

One of them, at Calzada Santa María number 203, is owned and run by José Guadarrama, the baker featured in the photo above, whose artesanal bread could happily grace a Californian farmers market or London’s Borough food market.

Nearby, at 134E Calle Manuel Archundia, is an organic food shop, La Cosecha, from which I bought delicious trout pate and Manchego cheese for a waterside picnic at the lakeside which was interrupted by a sudden and heavy storm  – it is the rainy season here after all. At the embarcadero on the lake it is possible to go on a variety of boat trips – a one hour trip costs 60 pesos – less than five dollars and is pleasantly relaxing.

view from the terace of La Michoacana restaurant

One day, following my hotel owner’s recommendation, I ate breakfast at La Michoacana, which not only had spectacular views both towards the lake and back to the San Francisco church and main plaza, but also served an excellent chilaquiles with chicken. Following breakfast, I walked through the cobblestoned local streets nearby which had a lovely, mysterious early morning feel to them.

One of the big plusses of a town attaining Pueblo Mágico status is that all buildings in the city center have to be constructed and maintained in a traditional style and painted in the traditional colours and all the telephone and electricity cables should be run underground – unlike in the photo below.

Still on the theme of food, I ate lunch at Los Veleros, which is said to be the best restaurant in Valle. The food was good rather than exceptional, though the setting is delightful, on a terrace overlooking a garden with views towards the lake and the French owner who has lived in Mexico for 42 years is charming.

Apart from eating in Valle de Bravo, I also went on two morning walks to different viewpoints. The first, El Mirador Cruz de Misión, is about thirty minutes up Calle El Deposito at the back of the Church San Francisco. The walk takes you past some huge houses with impressive views towards the lake.

San Francisco

On arriving at the Cruz de Misión, with its accompanying statue of San Francisco, it is possible to continue walking up the mountain, where the large wealthy homes suddenly and surprisingly give way to much poorer houses. I wonder how long those houses will be there before their inhabitants are dislodged.

View of La Peña from a boat on the lake

The other viewpoint is Mirador la Peña. This is about a forty minute walk from the main plaza, which happily takes you past the taco stand selling barbacoa de borrego, at the entrance to the ascent of La Peña. Climbing La Peña is relatively easily as the local government have recently cleaned up the site. It used to be a haunt for drunkards – some of whom were killed falling off the rocks when plastered – and also for delinquents attacking people doing the  climb. It is possible to make a worthwhile small diversion to visit la cueva del diablo (the devil’s cave) en route to the top.

I was told by two women I met at the top that the main cross in the picture above is only one year old, and was placed there as part of the cleaning-up operations. The original cross is the thin iron one. Likewise, the Virgin of Guadalupe, in the photo below, apparently encaged, is also only a year old.

I had an interesting discussion with the two women I met about Mexicans’ attitude to the environment, and the sad fact that Mexicans are given to decorating with rubbish their most beautiful natural sites. One of them said that because of the history of Mexico, including the pre-hispanic era, there is an enormous amount of suffering in the Mexican psyche. She thought that Mexicans could not bear any external beauty as they felt so unworthy inside, so they despoiled it with rubbish.

She also told me that she had been involved in politics, but had stopped when her mentor told her that the only way to succeed was to lie and promise voters things that you knew could never be delivered. Rather than simply blame the politicians though, she had a sophisticated view of the way that people collude with the politicians, in that they expect to be deceived and almost prefer to be lied to, rather than face the truth.

The same woman also told me an interesting story about Valle. When the Franciscans had first arrived here to evangelise the local population, the response of the indigenous people was to hang them from the branches of the tree in the picture, which now is at least 600 years old. This tree is popularly known as el pino but its real name is an aguahuete.

On a final note, for the four nights I was here, I stayed at the Posada Familiar Hotel de los Girasoles. This has a great location, right on the corner of the main square, and is simple, clean and comfortable. The staff are wonderfully helpful and there is wireless internet access in the lobby. After two nights they gave me a good discount for the next two nights.

Another good accommodation option is an old building on the left – as you look at it of the Posada Familiar Hotel de los Girasoles. Here it is possible to rent a comfortable double room or an apartment for up to six people at very economic rates. Contact Emma Rodriguez at 01 726 26 20 134.

One thing I have not mentioned so far. Valle de Bravo is a world center for paragliding because it is possible to fly here all year round. If I can muster the courage, I may well take a flight as a pilot is staying in the hotel and has offered to give me a flight at a reasonable price. More news of this next.

Of all the colonial cities in the center of Mexico – San Miguel de Allende, Morelia, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, each of which has its distinctive charms, and all of which, part from San Luis Potosí are UNESCO world heritage sites – my favourite, at least for the moment, is Guanajuato.

For one thing, Guanajuato is much more a walkers’ city. Its physical site, spread out over a number of hills, has made conventional road building difficult and so it does not have the grid lay-out of many Mexican cities. Instead it is full of windy streets and alleys, called callejones. I was informed there are around 20,00 callejones in Guanajauato, of which around 3,000 are named.

One of Guanajuato’s great and simple pleasures is to gently amble around the city, allowing oneself to get lost, yet knowing that the easiest way to find oneself is to walk downhill and return to the center.

Another great attraction of Guanajuato is that the buildings, by and large, are on an intimate, human scale. There is little monumental architecture, however impressive, wanting to impose itself on the viewer, which served to assert the dominance of the Spanish over the indigenous population. Walking around Guanajuato in warm sunshine, a source of continual delight is to discover, just around the corner, a simple, brightly coloured, beautifully proportioned house, blending into its surroundings, and with an obvious human touch like flowerpots or the name plaque of the family who live there.

I recently had the chance to spend a few days in Guanajuato, which was my fourth visit to the city in the six years I have lived in Mexico. Americans particularly, terrified by the bad US press about Mexico, and imagining it as a failed state overrun by drug gangs, should take the chance to visit Guanajuato. The atmosphere is deliciously relaxed. This is not, of course to underestimate the difficulties of other Mexican cities like Ciudad Juarez, Matamoros, Torreon, or Chihuahua but just to point out that Mexico is a huge country and cities like these and Guanajuato are worlds apart.

Guanajuato has traditionally been a destination for Mexican tourists, in contrast to its neighbour, just over two hours away, San Miguel de Allende, which has particularly been a magnet for US tourism. This is changing now as more foreigners are discovering the delights of Guanajuato.

Such delights include – what I still think is the best regional restaurant I know in Mexico – Las Mercedes. I, along with other people, for example Steve Sando, have written rave reviews of this in the past. I visited it again, and found it more up-market than I remembered – for example the waiters now wander around with dinky little high-tech mouthpieces and microphones to communicate directly to the kitchen, which I found a little off-putting – but the food is still exquisite. It is both a distinctly regional restaurant and also a highly creative modern one, which makes extensive use of local ingredients – notably the fruit of the cactus, Xonocostle, whose repertoire ranges from being a key ingredient of the  Margarita of the house to the base for a tuna steak.  A meal for two, including three cocktails and two glasses of excellent Mexican wine, cost around $60, which is great value for such elegant, high-class cooking.

Incidentally, one of the peculiarities of Las Mercedes is its location. It is in a residential area high on one of the northern hills of the city, which means it is not a restaurant that will attract passing trade. You have to know about it to go there.

Plaza del Baratillo

Although there are a plethora of largely mediocre restaurants in the center of the city catering to the tourist trade, with a little effort, it is possible to eat very well in Guanajuato. The owner of the B&B where I was staying (more of him later) recommended that I visit El Abue (short for el abuelito, the grandfather), which is just to the north-west of one of the nicest squares in the city, Plaza del Baratillo. I liked it very much. I also went back to a small Japanese restaurant, the food writer and historian Rachel Laudan recommended to me, which is in a narrow callejon just to the north-west of the Plazuela San Fernando, and this was as good as I remembered it from beforehand.

Talking of Rachel Laudan, who used to live in Guanajauto and so knows it well, I remembered that she had written in her blog about excellent candied fruit that can be bought in Guanajuato. Following her blog’s recommendation, I visited the shop Dulces El Cubilete, about half a block from the main Hidalgo market – also well worth a visit. From a large selection of candied fruit and local sweets,  I bought candied figs, lemons, peaches, and Xonocostle, all of which were terrific. Rachel’s advice, apart from just eating them as they are, is to bake them in bread and cakes.

Mercardo Hidalgo

As often now, before visiting somewhere, I look on Trip Adviser to see what restaurants and hotels are being recommended. Not surprisingly, Las Mercedes is their number one restaurant by a mile. By a similar huge margin, their number one B&B is la Casa Zuñiga. All of its considerable number of reviews are five star, and many mention the great breakfasts, the lovely comfortable, spacious rooms and particularly the friendliness of the American owner, Rick, and his Mexican wife, Carmen.

In addition, the Casa Zuñiga has an interesting location, just below the famous monument of El Pípila – the miner who courageously managed to burn down the door of the Alhóndiga fortress in the first battle of the Mexican movement for independence when Hidalgo and his 20,000 army arrived in Guanajuato to find the Spanish troops holed up in the heavily fortified Alhóndiga. This location offers fabulous views across the city. It would not be ideal for anyone unable or not wanting to do a little walking up and downhill – though all guests are given free passes to the funicular – but really it would be hard to find a more impressive location.

The cost of the B&B, at 1000 pesos per night for a double room (about 70 USD) is more than I typically pay in Mexico – it is usually easy to find good hotels at cheaper prices – but for the quality of the experience here it is more than worth it. I reckon I ate the best tamales, home-made by Carmen’s cousin, that I have ever eaten in Mexico at one of the breakfasts. Especially if you stay for more than a couple of nights, the feeling is of having a very comfortable and decidedly private room in a friend’s house, with spectacular views over the city, where you also get to eat huge and tasty breakfasts.

The owner, Rick, more than goes out of his way to make everyone welcome and share his knowledge about and enthusiasm for Guanajuato. For example, when he learned that I had arrived in my car, and that it smelt of gasoline following a spill of petrol in the boot, he offered to clean the boot carpet for me the following day using a high-pressure hose. When this had more or less got rid of the smell, he then arranged for the inside of my car to get the most thorough cleaning it had ever received, during the course of which a set of keys I had lost two months ago were happily rediscovered.

As if this was not enough, when I got talking to him about Guanajuato’s history and the role of the mines in its past, he offered to take me, my friend, and another couple, to visit the mines on a Sunday morning. This was not something I had done before, and it was fascinating.

Entrance to the Valencia mine

Guanajuato is important in Mexican, Spanish and world history for having a huge and rich vein of silver, along with other deposits such as lead and copper. This was discovered by the Spanish in the early sixteenth century and they immediately set to work exploiting the mines, and creating a workforce of indigenous people, who were little more than slaves. Twenty per cent of the wealth coming out of the mines went directly to the Spanish Crown, which basically funded the Spanish army and maintenance of the Spanish empire. At one point, the owner of the Valencia mine (an early forerunner of Carlos Slim?) was the richest man on the world. The Valencia mine is still being mined and part of it can be visited.

The history of the mines is a terrible story of exploitation. For many years, including the first half of the twentieth century, the average working life of a miner was ten years. This was the time it took for the dust they inhaled as a result of using heavy jack hammers to kill them. An American company arrived in the early part of the twentieth century to help pump water out of the mines, noticed that the listings were rich in valuable deposits of silver and other minerals, and promptly took it all back to the USA to be processed.

I had not appreciated before the extent to which Guanajuato was key in the Spanish colonialization of Mexico, which is why it was the site of an important early battle in the movement for independence. Rick told us how when Hidalgo and his make-shift army confronted the Spanish troops in the Alhóndiga, one of their weapons was to stone the Spaniards by hurling stones at the rate of 9,000 every two seconds, which led to a covering of 60cms of stones on the roof of the Alhóndiga.

Active mine shaft at Mina de Rayas

Curiously, despite all this significant history in relation to the mines, it seems to me to be relatively little exploited for tourism in measure to its importance. Rick seems to be doing an effective one-man job to reverse this situation.

If it seems like I have raved about Rick and the Casa Zuñiga too much and for too long, all I can say is that I believe generosity deserves to generate a response in kind. As you can see, I think that if you have a 1000 pesos to spend on accommodation per night, have a good appetite, and want to visit a delightful Mexican city, you should definitely stay at Casa Zuñiga.

There are obvious, clearly visible ways in which cultures differ from one another. They have different language, architecture, food, customs and behaviours. At this level, cultural differences are easy to recognise and relatively easy to negotiate and assimilate. But there are deeper levels in which cultures are different – different values and morality, and different assumptions about key areas of human activity such as orientations to time and society.

These deeper differences are harder to get hold of. We tend to interpret other cultures within the framework of our own culture, and may not even recognise or understand the depth of the differences. Perhaps the best way to approach these differences is through stories, as theorising about them does not often do them justice.

Recently, I have been pondering two incidents which illustrate to me in a significant way the ways in which Mexican culture is different from my own English culture. Both stories have to do with humour.

The first story is connected to my work as University Professor in a class of undergraduates studying ‘Socially Responsible Business’. I had asked each person to write a short essay about why they thought more was not being done to deal with climate change in the face of increasing evidence that it is having an increasing impact. I decided to have a number of these essays read anonymously in the class to show the range of responses to the essay topic, and ask my students to assess the quality of the different essays. When I had been marking the essays, I noticed that two were almost identical.

So, to make a point, I got two people to stand in front of the class and begin to alternately read sections from each of these essays. As it became obvious that the two essays were more or less identical, people started to laugh, and the hilarity grew in proportion with the increasing recognition of the similarity of the two essays. When I showed the class that the two essays, as well as having an almost identical content, were formatted in an identical way, most of the students fell about laughing.

When I thought about this afterwards, I wondered how English students would have reacted. I don’t think they would have found the situation funny, at least not as funny as the Mexican students clearly did. I think they would have been shocked, possibly, even outraged. The only trace of outrage appeared when I asked the students what mark they thought these essays should receive out of 10. One of the more able students made the sign 10 with her fingers. When I looked surprised, she explained that one should get 1 point and the other 0 points.

The other story goes back a number of years. I used to go cycling with a Mexican friend. One day he suggested to me that we take his sister’s dog with us, a young, black, over-weight labrador, as he thought it was not getting enough exercise. So we put the dog and our two bikes in his van and drove to the place outside the city to start the bike ride.

The first part of the ride was all downhill. The dog ran happily alongside us at first, but as time went on the dog clearly started to have problems, was sweating profusely and breathing heavily. I started to get worried about the dog, thinking it might have a heart attack. My friend’s reaction was hilarity to the dog’s predicament. Finally, when it was clear the dog could not continue, we stopped and my friend tied the dog to  a tree, whilst we continued on our ride and picked up the dog on the way back.

In these two stories, humour is expressed in a context in which I think typically people from an English  – or possibly any western cultural  – background would not have found funny. They both remind me of an incident recounted in a wonderful travel book about Mexico.

The book is called “A Visit to Don Octavio”. It is by Sybille Bedford and was written in 1953. As Bruce Chatwin says of the book:

“A work that evokes Mexico, that disturbing and paradoxical country, as vividly as anything by D.H. Lawrence and, to my mind, more vividly than Malcolm Lowry’s ‘Under the Volcano’….. A wonderful book”

It is indeed a wonderfully written, acutely observed, and very witty book. In one part, the author and her companion are travelling across Mexico on a bus. One of the passengers, a little old man, is drunk, and, as a result, becomes increasingly talkative and boisterous. In the words of Sybille Bedford:

“He was making rather a nuisance of himself. Nobody paid him the slightest attention. Then two men got up, seized him, opened the door of the moving bus and with the driver stepping on the gas hurled the old man out into the road. ………everybody craned to get a receding glimpse of a man lying bent double in a pool of blood. Then the whole bus burst into laughter.”

Perhaps what a culture laughs at tells us a great deal about the culture. Mexican culture is well-known for laughing at everything including death.

Do you have a favourite story about laughter in Mexico?

I first became aware of Talpa as a pilgrimage destination when I read Juan Rulfo’s bleak, acerbic short story called ‘Talpa’ in his brilliant collection of short stories set in the South of Jalisco “Llana en Llamas”. The mother of a friend here has invited me to make the pilgrimage with the local group she goes with the last two years but each time I have been ill and have not been able to go.

In all, there are about 20 different groups here who walk the 300kms or so to Talpa, all leaving from Ciudad Guzmán in early March. Talpa is one of the three most important pilgrimage sites in Jalisco – the other two being San Juan de los Lagos (which is the second most visited religious site in Mexico after Tepeyac en Mexico City) and the Basílica of Zapopan on October 12th.

Most people initially go to Talpa because they have a manda – that is a commitment with the virgin of Talpa who has answered their prayers and in return they want to honour her through the pilgrimage. Having been once, however, many people want to repeat the experience.

The oldest and youngest members of the group

A friend invited me to go this year with a group of 110 people mostly drawn from people who work at the Tianguis which is the large local food and clothes market. In fact, the group was socially very diverse and ranged in age from 80 to 15. My friend told me that he wanted to take his mother with him, who had died the previous year.

Previously I had been reluctant to go with this group as they aim to do the pilgrimage in a shorter time than most other groups, starting walking at 2am most days, and continuing through the night to avoid walking in the heat of the following day. As my friend’s mother, however, was not able to go this year for health reasons, I decided to go with the group from the Tianguis.

We left Ciudad Guzmán at 7.30pm on Tuesday 16th March after a mass at a local church, passing by the statue of the Goddess Tzapotlena on the outskirts of the town.

Our first stop – after a steep climb up the hill, known as the media luna, to the north of the Volcán del Nevado – was at Sayulapa, a tiny, tiny hamlet just on the other side of the volcano. I arrived there around 11pm, to find a welcome supper of atole and tacos of frijoles and carne. This was the first example of what I experienced as the remarkable organization of this pilgrimage, providing food twice a day for over 100 people.

There were three female cooks and another five people comprising the support staff, who helped set up the kitchen for breakfast and at the destination for the night. They used two medium sized lorries to carry the food and the cooking equipment and one large lorry onto which they daily loaded and unloaded all our luggage.

The whole question of organization in Mexico fascinates me. Often, by rational Western standards, it is appalling. Other times, like on this pilgrimage, it is highly impressive. It seems Mexicans are brilliant at organizing fiestas and religious events, which shows of course that it can be done when it is judged important. It was only at the end of the pilgrimage that the organization reverted to type and we had to wait four hours in Talpa for the bus to arrive to take us back to Ciudad Guzmán.

In Sayulapa, I set up my yoga mat and sleeping bag on the grass and fell asleep until we were awakened at 4am to begin walking at 5am. The next day was a long descent down the western slopes of the volcano by road, then a stretch of brecha (a dusty track) to the breakfast venue, then another long road walk to Apulco, a small town principally known for being the birth place of Juan Rulfo and for its production of tequila.

By now I had two blisters. Fortunately my friend treated me with the well-known remedy of using a needle and thread to pierce the blister and leave the thread within the blister so that it continues to drain fluid. This was the first example of the kindness and support that I found throughout the walk.

In Apulco, we slept in the small central plaza, and washed either with cold water via a hose in the priest’s front yard, or better, a shower in a private house. The next day we were woken at 1am with tea and pan dulce to start walking at 2am. The walk at night first took us to Tonaya, a largish town.

For all the pilgrimage we were accompanied by music. Marcos, in the photo above, has gone on this pilgrimage for at least the last ten years and has the key role of providing the music. He has an enormous selection on his MP3 player, ranging from recordings of special prayers to contemporary banda music and corridas to ballads from the 40’s and 50’s to western disco music. Whenever he saw I was flagging, he would play me “Staying Alive”.

You might think that entering a town at 4am would be a good reason to turn down the music. But not in Mexico. If anything it seemed louder and people sang along more fervently.

From Tonaya, there was a further steep climb out of the town, and then a gentle descent along some lovely paths, before breakfasting around 9am at the side of a river in a tiny town called San Miguel.

I had not fully understood the timings of everything yet so I walked seven hours getting increasingly hungry and without finding anywhere to buy anything. By the time I arrived in San Miguel and saw the lorries parked by the side of a river, I was so hungry that I could hardly eat. One of the constant delights of the walk, however, was arriving for breakfast and finding a huge vat of freshly squeezed orange juice and an abundance of traditional Mexican food.

Ejutla

From San Miguel we walked to Ejutla, which is a very pretty small town ringed by hills. On return to Ciudad Guzmán, I met someone who told me that this town enjoys the best quality of life in Jalisco – I have no idea on what basis he said that, but the town did seem to have a particularly good feel to it. Like many towns in this part of Mexico, the main plaza had a statue of one of the priest martyrs from the particularly vicious civil war known as the Guerra Cristera, that gripped the region in the 1920’s.

In the above photograph, it is possible to see to the right of the statue of the priest, the virgin that was taken from Ciudad Guzmán in a pick up truck and unloaded at every stop.

In Ejutla, we slept in the portales surrounding the main square. One of the many great things about Mexico is that everyone takes this in their stride. In every place where we stopped for the night and essentially took over the main local plaza, we were made to feel welcome and never given a sense that we were inconveniencing people.

Another wake-up call at 1am followed, before climbing one of the hills that ring Ejutla. It was a long days walk to the next stop at Ayutla. By now I was just beginning to get into the rhythm. After going to bed at 6pm in Ayutla, the next call at 1am did not seem so severe. And fortunately I had no more blisters – only a continually burning sensation in my feet called escaldado – which appropriately translates as ‘scalded’.

I had been warned this next day would be pesado (heavy) and so it was. Thankfully, having slept well, I did not feel so exhausted, but still did not arrive at that night’s stopping point until 5.30pm. The walk, this day was particularly beautiful.

View from the top of the Campana

We climbed a high hill, called the campana because it is shaped like a church bell, from which it was a gradual descent to La Jacal where we slept the night.

At La Jacal, we were only about five hours walking from Talpa. I was told that now it would be easy. The following day we were given a lie-in until 3am, but then it was still a four hour mostly road walk to breakfast. After eating, there was a touching ceremony where we all met in a circle and gave thanks to the Virgin of Talpa for having brought us this far.

For the first part of the final one and a half hours walk into Talpa along the road, we all walked in single file, led by someone carrying the standard. However, once we moved off the road and onto a path, the discipline no longer held.

Led by Marcos and his blaring banda music, the younger people raced ahead and this group did the steep descent into Talpa dancing. Only in Mexico, I thought.

At the entrance to Talpa, we regrouped and then walked the final 2kms to the church in a more disciplined manner in ranks of four people accompanied by Mariachi music. The closer we got to the center of Talpa the more crowded it became.

Finally, after what I was told was 325 kms, we arrived at the church holding the Virgin of Talpa, where a special mass was to be held for us. The church was, however, so packed that we had to wait outside in a queue for nearly an hour. I know of few places in the world where there are queues to get into church and you almost have to fight your way through to attend mass. Such is the continuing power of the Virgin de Talpa.

¡Viva la Virgen de Talpa!

Soñajeros – Traditional Dancers

In a recent article I read about writing for the internet, which  claims it is different than other kinds of writing, the advice is to write lists. It seems people like lists. I have read this advice before on another specialist site for blog-writing.

Yet I notice that on all the English language blogs I regularly enjoy reading  – Malcolm Leith on the narco-wars in Mexico, Gancho on life and politics in Mexico, David Lida and Jim Johnston on what is going on in Mexico City, Nicholas Gillman on ‘Good Food in Mexico City’, Daniel Hernandez on art and life in Mexico, Rachel Laudan on food and food history, Mark Lynas and Jonathon Porritt about environmental issues – there is a barely a list in site.

It is true that Nick Gillman did break rank recently and publish a-just-passed-the-New-Year list of his favourite Mexico City restaurants in different categories – which is definitely worth reading if you live in or plan to visit DF – but that is the only list I can recall seeing on these blogs.

So, partly in an experiment to see if writing a list boosts my readership, here goes.

In my last but one post, I commented that a number of Mexican friends living in large cities cannot understand why I am living in Ciudad Guzmán. So what better reason than to make a list of the seven reasons for living in Ciudad Guzmán? (As an aside perhaps I can piggy-back on Steven Covey and  turn this into a best seller – The Seven Highly Effective Habits of Living in Ciudad Guzmán.)

1. Location.

As Estate Agents are generally imputed to claim, location is everything. I think Ciudad Guzmán has an ideal location. It is about ninety minutes south of Guadalajara so all the attractions and vices of that 5 million-peopled city are within easy reach for a weekend outing – without having to brave the traffic, noise, pollution and increasing insecurity there every day.

The delightful city of Colima – which regularly wins surveys for the city with the best quality of life in Mexico – is one hour to the south. This of course begs the question: why not live in Colima? The answer to me is clear. Colima is only about 500 meters above sea level (unlike Ciudad Guzmán’s 1500 meters) which makes the heat there in summer unbearable for me.

In addition, if you like large beach resorts, Manzanillo is about two hours away. But better still in my view, the lovely small resort of Melaque-Barra de Navidad is less than three hours away, as are the beautiful unspoilt beaches of the Michoacán coast. But be careful if you are thinking of visiting the Michoacán coast as my last post warned.

2. Surroundings.

Sayula

Apart from having a great location, the whole area around Ciudad Guzmán is very interesting, in terms of culture, history and nature. The small towns of Sayula, Tuxpan, San Gabriel, Atoyac, Amacueca – to name just a few – are full of history and traditions and each has its own distinctive, unique atmosphere. The three ‘Pueblo Mágicos‘ of Tapalpa, Matzamitla and Comala are all within easy reach.

Ciudad Guzmán itself is surrounded by hills, a large laguna (which is an International Wetlands ‘Ramsar’ site) and two volcanoes. From my house, within twenty minutes on foot, I can be walking in the Sierra.

3. Vibe and Size of the City

Whenever I am travelling anywhere in Mexico, and a taxi driver asks me where I am living and I reply Ciudad Guzman, the response is almost inevitably: “Es una ciudad tranquila”. It is indeed a very peaceful city, hundreds of miles away literally and culturally from the violent US border cities which attract so much foreign press attention and create a very distorted picture of Mexico.

I like the dimensions of Ciudad Guzmán. It is a city of about 100,000 people which to me means it has all the facilities of a city  – a range of shops, large market, lots of restaurants, bars, a recently opened multiplex cinema – and yet still feels intimate and not overwhelming. In addition, it has five universities, which give the city a youthful energy and vitality.

4. Local Shops.

In a previous post, I commented that the street where I used to live when I first moved to Ciudad Guzman, has everything. Within a street of not more than 400 meters can be found an excellent baker, a church, three doctors, a dentist, a funeral parlour, two gyms, an optician, at least two cafes, a bar, a little hole-in-the wall shop to copy keys, a natural foods outlet, three largish off-street parking places, a textile shop etc. etc.

In fact, Ciudad Guzmán is full of small specialist shops, which I think we have largely lost in the UK. On one corner, is a cobbler who does amazing work in recovering shoes that in the west we would throw away. There are many small tailors specialising in clothes repairs. The other day, I came across a small shop selling knitting products which was full of women participating in a knitting circle.

There must be literally hundreds of abarrotes, small grocery corner shops. The bad news for them, and in my opinion for Ciudad Guzmán as a whole, is that I just heard Walmart is planning on building a Superstore here along with a Sams Club.

5. The People.

A potential downside of Ciudad Guzmán is that it is a very conservative, catholic city – it was a stronghold for the deeply Catholic Cristeros fighting the Mexican post-revolutionary government in the Civil War in the 1920’s. Like in other strongly catholic areas in Mexico there is an emphasis on appearances. The reality behind the appearance can, of course, be very different.

The good news, which is the other side of the coin, is that the city is full of traditions and the people are extremely courteous, warm and friendly. When I lived in Cuernavaca for a year, I don’t remember anyone ever asking me where I was from in a shop. Here it happens all the time.

Traditional Aztec dancers entering the Cathedral

6. The Traditions.

One of the principal reasons I like living here is that it is a very traditional Mexican city in a rural area. There is very little foreign tourism.

This means that traditional forms of life are still very present here: the observance of the novena in different neighbourhoods leading up to the Día de Guadalupe on December 12^th; the October Feria; the pilgrimage to Talpa starting in early March; the celebration of the Saint Day of each different barrio. I suspect some of the traditions are declining and the city now has a fancy new coffee shop from the Italian Coffee company chain in prime position in the arcade near the corner of the main plaza. And as I commented already, the Walmart Empire will be arriving soon. But it is still possible to see people on horseback or with donkeys in the smaller streets.

One of the most interesting times to be in Ciudad Guzmán is for the three week long Feria in October which culminates in an enormous three hour long procession of different types of traditional dancers, charros (Mexican cowboys, cowgirls and cowchildren), carros alegoricos (displays of bible scenes mounted on tractors), and finally a huge, heavy wooden platform carrying the statues of the Patron Saint – St. Joseph holding el Niño Jesús – and the Virgin Mary. The platform is held upright for the procession around the city, which can take up to six hours, by two teams of around 50 men. It is a great honour to do this.

7. The Food.

Doña Chuey

Like everywhere in Mexico, Ciudad Guzmán has its particular specialities as well as the whole range of typical delicious Mexican food. Local delicacies include: chile de uña (tostadas spread with a finely chopped mixture of chile, tomatoes, coriander, onion and other more secret ingredients);  the enormous Pepe’s tostadas which are also known as ‘tostadas de muco’ for the effect the spicy tostadas have on the nose; ponche de granada which is mexzcal and pomegranate juice; and palenquetas, which are a local sweet made of nuts embedded in a sugary base.

Also like many places in Mexico, there is a whole range of places to eat. Fancy restaurants, cenadurias  which serve pozole, tamales, flautas, enchilidas and tostadas at night, and lots of wonderful street food. Just in the short street where I live there are two really good, cheap restaurants. I can have a soup thick with fresh vegetables, chicken in a mole or pepian sauce, and a home made dessert with the aguafresca of the day for 56 pesos (about 5 USD). When eating out is so good and cheap, no wonder I don’t cook at home as much as I used to in England.

What still delights me is that after five years of living here, I can still discover new food haunts. Only this morning I found a great bakery which I must have passed countless times without noticing it. Shops here have much less emphasis on display and design than their western counterparts so you often have to be told about the food they sell. One of my favourite places is a little juice bar set in a wooden hut in someone’s front garden on the way to the Parque Ecológico. Here for 12 pesos Doña Chuey will make you a ‘levanta muerto’ (‘wake the dead’) – made of freshly squeezed orange juice, carrot juice, pineapple, kiwi, celery, plum, apple and beetroot.

And finally, you never know what is around the corner for you in any Mexican city

“You can look but you cannot touch”

ADDENDUM: JULY 2013:  I have been touched how many people – many of them now living in the USA – have commented on this blog saying how much Ciudad Guzmán means to them.

I recently was sent this video which shows Ciudad Guzmán off very well.

Exactly one year ago, I wrote a post on the Michoacán coast. In this post, I extolled the wild beauty of the coast, its pristine beaches and lack of conventional tourist development. The coast has always had a reputation for danger – and it is still advisable not to travel at night – as there is a lot of narcotraficante activity in the area but generally it is believed to have got much safer in recent years.

In May last year, I wrote another post on the Coast based on the Mexican film ‘Amar a Morir’ which had just been released and which was set on the coast near La Ticla at the 180km mark.

Last summer a conflict surfaced over land between the indigenous communities of Santa María de Ostula, Coire and Pómaro and the townspeople of La Placita, around the 185 km mark on the main coastal highway. The situation rapidly became violent, tense and complicated. I wrote about this situation in my blog, but as my blog then became implicated in the conflict, I decided to withdraw the blog post, and the many comments it had generated, that related to the conflict.

One of the actions the indigenous people had taken was to block the main coast road at two strategic points heading south from La Placita. In this period of a few weeks whilst the road was blocked, two women – not Mexicans – were travelling north along the coast and suddenly, without warning, came across one of these road-blocks with armed men guarding it. Believing they were going to be robbed, they turned around and tried to escape back the way they had come from. Shots were fired at the car, aimed at the petrol tank as can be seen in the two photos, and the car was chased and eventually stopped. Fortunately no-one was seriously hurt but the experience was obviously very frightening for the two women

I am writing this now to warn people that the situation in this part of the coast has become tense again. It seems two regidores (elected officials) from the indigenous communities based in the Municipality of Aquila were kidnapped last week, and I was told that it was possible the coast road could be blocked again. I was due to attend an event on the coast last Saturday but because of the difficulties the event was postponed.

Whilst I don’t like to feed the idea that Mexico is a difficult, dangerous, violent place, it is best not to travel in this area whilst this situation persists and if you are have to travel along the coast take extreme care.

When I have more information, I will update this further.