Reflections of traveling to Mexico

As a certified travel agent, international airline employee, researcher, writer, teacher and photographer for four decades, travel, whether for pleasure or business, has always been an important and integral part of my life. Some 400 trips to all parts of the world, by road, rail, sea and air, involved both worldly and exotic destinations. This article focuses on those from Mexico.

Mexican tours, spanning nine states and the Federal District, can be subdivided into five broad areas, stretching across the country from east to west.

The first island of Cozumel is accessed by ferry and explored by road. Its important sights included San Miguel and the San Gervasio Archaeological Zone, an archaeological site of the pre-Columbian Mayan civilization.

The Yucatán Peninsula was blessed with its beaches, such as Playa del Carmen, which were served by a number of hotels and resorts, but the Mayan archaeological site of Chichén Itzá in Tulum, with its stepped pyramid, offered a serious study of this ancient town. .

Mexico City, the sprawling metropolis in the Federal District, offered true Mexican cuisine, not Mexican-American, and visits to the Zócalo, the Cathedral, the Las Lomas Residential District, Chapultepec Park, the National Museum of Anthropology and the Basilica. of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Bullfighting has to be experienced at least once and often puts me on the line between the excitement of the spectator’s sport and empathy for the defenseless animal.

Mexico City also served as a gateway to several progressively distant daily and night trips, specifically to the Floating Gardens of Xochimilco, the Aztec pyramids of Teotihuacan, the silver city of Taxco, and Cuernavaca, the capital of the Mexican state of Morelos, whose The jewel in the crown was its 16th century Palacio de Cortes.

A two-night stay and a tour of Chihuahua, in the northern interior of the country, reminiscent of the American West with its cattle and cowboys, included the Quinta Gameros Museum, the university, the government palace, the Hidalgo Museum, the Gallery de Armas, the House of Pancho Villa, and the Cathedral. It preceded a two-day train journey through the Copper Canyon with stays at Posada Barrancas at the midpoint and Los Mochis at its end.

Baja California, on the Pacific coast, involved trips to Tijuana and Ensenada, the latter with a visit to the Ensenada Museum of History, and Cabo San Lucas, whose glass-bottom boat sailed to the tip of the peninsula and its famous arches. formed by rocks. -o “Los Arcos” in Spanish.

Further south, the Mexican Riviera stretched to Mazatlán with a visit to its Golden Zone and a day trip to Concordia and Copala, a four-century-old silver mining town in the Sierra Madre mountains.

Important attractions in Puerto Vallarta included the old town, Plaza de Armas, Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, and Mismaloya Beach.

And Acapulco, with its own sun-drenched beaches and top hotels, evokes memories of La Quebrada’s cliff divers and alfresco dining overlooking the bay.

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