The rugged Baja California peninsula and the Sea of Cortez, or Gulf of California, have been bewitching hardy visitors for decades. Some of the early fans were John Steinbeck and Earl Stanley Gardner, who took time out from Perry Mason to produce a magnificent photo book on the Sea of Cortez and its villages. Until […]
Continue ReadingCandelaria is back, with her special logic, folk wisdom and Mexican home-style recipes in the bilingual ‘Las Recetas de Candelaria,’ or ‘Candelaria’s Cookbook.’ Readers of Dane Chandos’ charming ‘Village in the Sun’, about life around Lake Chapala in the ‘40s, will recall Candelaria as the cook who ‘could carry in her head scores and scores of recipes.’ […]
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For a city named Peace, it has a rather grim history. A Spanish expedition sailed into the bay in 1533; the leader and several of his soldiers were killed by the indigenous residents soon after, by some accounts because they raped the native women. Hernan Cortes arrived two years later looking for pearls (he found […]
Continue ReadingThe fog of hallucination that occasionally seems to envelop Mexico hovers over San Blas most of the time. The amiable residents talk of their future as the next Puerto Vallarta while they wave towels to keep off the abundant mosquitoes, and inquire if you don’t find their town tranquilo while you yawn, stupefied from a night clamorous with the […]
Continue ReadingThe mangrove swamps of Mexico’s Pacific Coast shelter a seldom-visited jewel of a day-trip destination. Legend has it that the man-made island city of Mexcaltitan, was Aztlan, the ancient home of the Aztecs, and that it was here a priest had a vision of an eagle perched on a nopal cactus, eating a serpent, which he interpreted […]
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“Here is a contribution of the unforgettable Maya Indians, whom we have abandoned,” is the wistful introduction to a pamphlet on the chaya plant, from Desarollo Integral de la Familia (DIF), which goes on to call chaya “an ideal food and medicine.” According to the National Institute of Nutrition in Mexico City, ingesting chaya will: […]
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