Nothing to Declare by Mary Morris
Mary Morris is an intrepid and courageous lady. She was living in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, in the Mexican part of town, when she decided to take off on her exploration of Central America. The trip took her to countries such as Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras and San Salvador. Just about all of the transit was on local buses and very little of it seemed to be very tightly planned. Most of the time she seemed to be traveling the back roads.
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The Best of San Miguel de Allende 2005 by Joseph Harmes
Here's a guidebook with a very definite difference. It doesn't just set out in the usual way to give you a rundown on the community and make suggestions on what to do and where to go. Rather, Joseph Harmes, has put together a rather incredible list of 'bests' - some 126 pages of them in fact - to be found in San Miguel de Allende. These range, alphabetically, from Best Art Displays to where to find the Best Yogurt. In between you can mull over several hundred "bests", from Best Views to Best Dance Classes; from Best Tennis Courts to Best Places to Take Out-of-Towners; from Best Parks to Best Hidden Attractions; from Best Tortillas to Best Ways to Avoid Travellers Diarrhea… and so on.
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Oaxaca, Mexico: a day in one of the New World's finest cities
Given the long and illustrious history of Mexico, it is only fitting that just a few kilometers to the east of the oldest urban center in the Americas is one of the loveliest present-day cities in the Americas - the city of Oaxaca. All visitors to Mexico should consider Oaxaca (pronounced Wah-hah-cah) a "must-see". Over the centuries, Oaxaca has become particularly adept at preserving the old and the interesting, while simultaneously keeping pace with the demands of even the most discerning foreign visitor.
read moreDancing Alone in Mexico from the Border to Baja and Beyond by Ron Butler
Here's a book of travel essays from a man who obviously admires this country. He's covered Mexico from coast to coast and from north to south in a criss cross journey that's well described here. Thus we get informed accounts of places like Cuernavaca, Puerto Vallarta, Oaxaca, Mazatlan and so on, along with a lengthy look at Mexico City. But rather than simply giving us the usual guidebook account of a place, Butler finds all kinds of interesting facets and people, too, wherever he goes. Along the way you're also treated to history, politics and whatever attractions are available locally.
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Sonora - Mexico's wild west
During the heyday of westerns, films showed cowboys riding through the Great Sonoran Desert from Arizona to what is now the State of Sonora in Mexico. The desert is still there and so are the cowboys.
...
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Zacatecas: an easy step into Mexico
"Zacatecas is the town everyone wants to go back to," a friend said to me when I mentioned that we were going there. It is a charming, colonial city, and a fairly well-to-do university town with nice hotels, friendly, well-dressed people and some good attractions. In fact, on that first day, we liked it so much we decided to stay another night
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A bay, two towns, three beaches
Deep down in all of our hearts, there is that desire to escape the everyday world in which we feel trapped and find our personal paradise. Or, to be more precise considering the limitless alternatives ...
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Hidden time revisited: Puerto Escondido
To annotated Photo Strip 191
(Each image below clicks to an
annotated enlargement.)
...
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Miraculous Air: A Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico by C. M. Mayo
Most of us think of the Baja Peninsula as a vast, sprawling, empty, underpopulated space on the Pacific Coast with hundreds of miles of desolate beaches. To a great extent, that's what it is. What Ms. Mayo gives us in Miraculous Air is a beautifully researched account of the history, geography, ecology, oceanography, the folklore, the wildlife and the incredible fishing in this vast area. We read of cave paintings of people who lived in the area some 10,800 years ago. And along the way, we meet a few quite interesting and memorable people.
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Sliced Iguana: Travels in Unknown Mexico by Isabella Tree
Isabella Tree tells about her solitary travels to various parts of Mexico. Is this becoming a sort of literary sub-category - single ladies taking on the world? This book largely consists of a half dozen essays covering specific geographic areas that Ms. Tree visited, including Mexico City, Chiapas and Lake Pátzcuaro. My own personal favorite was "Holy Week," the one on San Miguel de Allende.
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Oaxaca Journal by Oliver Sacks
Oliver Sacks is obviously too seasoned a traveller and too astute an observer to confine himself to ferns. One encounters a host of pleasures as he ruminates on a variety of topics. He muses about the New World's contributions to civilization -cocoa, tobacco, potatoes, tomatoes, chilies, gourds, pepper, maize, chewing gum, cochineal and exotic hallucinogens. In Monte Alban he considers the production of rubber which the Zapotec people used to make balls.
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San Miguel: the town that parties too much
The Valle de Maiz drops away from the old highway to Queretaro into a narrow, gloomy gulch, the dirt streets bounded by broken walls, unfinished homes, dark shadowed places and an occasional vacant lot...
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Approaching the Cosmos... Hotel: Travelling the World with a Gay Sensibility by Robert Champ
This is a book of travel essays by a man who certainly has covered the world. I've chosen to review it here because so many of the pieces are concerned with places in Mexico, such as Oaxaca, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico City and Guanajuato as well as my own familiar territory here in Ajijic and the Lake Chapala area. Other locations include Russia, China, Ireland, Paris, the French Riviera and some U.S. cities. In fact, for me one of the most interesting articles was about the author's running away from home in Kansas City with another boy and hitchhiking to San Diego.
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Taking the "waters" in Mexico
Ahhhh. Oohhh. Awww. Mmmmmm.” These are the sounds most often heard as bathers first step into a warm mineral pool. More and more North Americans are discovering the pleasures and benefits of soaking ...
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Western Mexico: A Traveller's Treasury by Tony Burton
This useful volume is back in a new and updated edition and it’s still as essential as ever. Whether you’re making a brief visit as a tourist, or escaping the northern winter for a few months or checking out the area more extensively as a place to spend one’s retirement years, this is one item you should have in your survival kit. It’s a nice blend of guidebook, travelogue and history text with lots of local color and some ecological notes sprinkled throughout.
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Mexico City's miracle mile (or two)
"Wait," she protested. She bent over the crouched photographer busily framing the pleasant scene for posterity, his camera at the ready, shutter cocked. She spoke loudly into his ear. "Wait!"
On the v...
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The five faces of God: Mexico's Sierra Gorda missions
They are known as the missions of the Sierra Gorda.
There are others he constructed, to be sure; the California missions are famous around the world. But the most splendid of all of Serra's missions, the ones in Mexico, are themselves a paradox.
These particularly marvelous monuments rest among the mountains in Queretaro state, all within a few minutes drive of each other. They are the crowning jewels of the pueblos of Jalpan, Concá, Tilaco, Landa, and Tancoyol.
read moreMexico mountaineering expedition on Pico de Orizaba (Citlaltepetl)
Mexico's Highest Volcano (Citlaltepetl)
PART ONE: ORIGINS
PART TWO: GETTING THERE
PART THREE: PIEDRA GRANDE
...
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Chihuahua's Copper Canyon: the treasure of the Sierra Madres
IF YOU GO . . .
TRANSPORTATION
ARRANGEMENTS AND ACCOMMODATIONS
REFERENCES
Alongside the railroad trac...
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Cabo!
It all began last Christmas when my husband and I had a delightful dinner out with his two sisters. One sister lives near us in Southern California and the other was visiting from Seattle. The conversa...
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Journey to Patamban, Michoacan
The Fiesta de Cristo Rey has become as famous as many of the Day of the Dead rites in other communities around Mexico. It's the peak of the flower growing season in Michoacán and the residents not only gather the flowers to decorate the streets but they also paint the streets with incredible and startling floral designs.
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Guanajuato: Journey to the center of the universe
The most important visual image in the classic film, " Close Encounters of the Third Kind," was not the alien spaceship, but the imposing stone monolith chosen as the site of the encounter. In an att...
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On Mexican Time: A New Life in San Miguel
"My editor wanted me to write about life here in the region where we live. At that time, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato and Querétero ranked a page or two each in the guide books, day stops or overnighters on a tour of the ‘silver cities,’ the subject of an occasional tourist piece in a Sunday travel section, the ‘charming little town hidden away in the Mexican mountains.’ Don’t put a gloss on it, the editor said. Tell what life is really like, the good and the bad. Tell the truth a good fiction writer knows.”
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Road Trip: Mexico
Mexico City, Querétaro, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Morelia, Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta
Posted by Bill on Mayo 12, 2000
Some of you might find the following article interesting in whic...
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The sky cities of Queretaro
The Saturday movie-matinee feature of pre-television history introduced my entire generation to the mystery and adventure of lost cities lurking in the dank depths of the world's remote jungles. Great ...
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