Cabo Pulmo on Baja California Sur's Sea of Cortés has several competing dive shops, with similar priced offerings and confusingly similar names.

Cabo Pulmo: from beaches and baskets to mines, music and marine park (part two)

To Part 1 Cabo Pulmo We arrive in Cabo Pulmo as the sun is setting, relieved to finally find the end of the initially paved, then dirt access road, which has been bounded by barbed wire ever since we caught our last clear views of the coast near La Ribera. At intervals behind the barbed […]

Continue Reading
Windsurfers at La Ventana, an hour's drive southeast of La Paz, Baja California Sur on the Gulf of Cortés.

Part one – La Paz and El Triunfo: from beaches and baskets to mines, music and marine park

To Part 2 La Paz La Paz was almost unrecognizable. I’d enjoyed the small town atmosphere when I first visited it in 1980 but it now has the big city pretensions that I find far less appealing. Despite my reservations, the family enjoyed several days in La Paz in December 2007, wandering about the downtown […]

Continue Reading
Former Jesuit College Tepotzotlán, State of Mexico

Did you know? Mexico has more World Heritage sites than any other country in the Americas

The status of World Heritage site is a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) denomination. The status is conferred on selected sites under the terms of “The Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage”, adopted at UNESCO’s 17th General Conference in November 1972 and subsequently ratified by 186 member […]

Continue Reading
Oaxaca's zócalo, with facade of presidential palace in background, is a pleasant place to spend the afternoon. © Dan Ellsworth, 2009

Eight surprises from a senior year abroad in Oaxaca, Mexico

In college I fantasized about a junior year in Paris and, even after having children, I concocted schemes to move us all overseas. Only after the children left home, however, did I finally seize the day and talk my husband and myself into a “senior” year abroad. My husband took early retirement, and I left […]

Continue Reading
Xalapa, Veracruz

Xalapa, Veracruz: city of flowers

Here’s a place for retirees and snowbirds to seriously consider. I previously extolled the charms of Morelia and wondered aloud why there weren’t more ex-pats living there. After continuing our tour of several colonial cities throughout Central Mexico I’m even more puzzled as to why Xalapa hasn’t become more of a permanent residence for Americans […]

Continue Reading

A return to the city: How Mexico seduces

I recently returned from three weeks in North America’s highest and oldest capital— La Ciudad de México, La Capital, el Distrito Federal, or simply “ De Efe” for short—researching Moon’s new Mexico City Handbook, and I fell in love. Maybe I always fall in love with cities I write about, but It’s difficult not to be impressed […]

Continue Reading
mountaineering expedition on Pico de Orizaba

Mexico mountaineering expedition on Pico de Orizaba (Citlaltepetl)

“The mountain, she is not innocent….” Senor Reyes’ voice trailed off as his words hung in the dry air of the climber’s hostel in Tlachichuca. John and I toned down our giddy anticipation and shifted uncomfortably in the sudden gravity of the moment. Reyes was perfect, exactly the type of mountain man you expected to […]

Continue Reading