As a certified travel agent for four decades, international airline employee, researcher, writer, teacher, and photographer, 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 destinations both mundane and exotic. This article focuses on those in Mexico City.
Spanning nine states and the Federal District, Mexican travel can be subdivided into five broad areas, stretching across the entire country from east to west.
The island of Cozumel, the first of them, was accessed by ferry and explored by road. Its places of interest include San Miguel and the San Gervasio Archaeological Zone, an archaeological site of the pre-Columbian Mayan civilization.
The Yucatan Peninsula was blessed with its beaches, like Playa del Carmen, which were serviced by a number of hotels and resorts, but the Mayan archaeological site of Chichen Itza in Tulum, with its stepped pyramid, offered a serious study of this ancient people. .
Mexico City, the sprawling metropolis in the Federal District, offered true Mexican cuisine, not Mexican-American, and visits to the Zócalo, the Cathedral, Las Lomas Residential District, Chapultepec Park, the National Museum of Anthropology and the Basilica of Our Lady. Madam. Lady of Guadeloupe. Bullfighting must be experienced at least once and I have often been placed on the line between the thrill of spectator sport and empathy for the defenseless animal.
Mexico City also served as a gateway to several increasingly distant day and overnight 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 crown jewel 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 Copper Canyon with stays at Posada Barrancas at the midpoint and Los Mochis at its terminus.
Baja California, on the Pacific coast, involved trips to Tijuana and Ensenada, the latter with a visit to the Ensenada History Museum, and Cabo San Lucas, whose glass-bottomed boat sailed to the tip of the peninsula and its famous arches. formed by rocks. -or “The Arches” in Spanish.
Further south, the Mexican Riviera extended 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, the Plaza de Armas, the Church of Our Lady Guadalupe, and Mismaloya Beach.
And Acapulco, with its own sun-kissed beaches and premier hotels, evokes memories of La Quebrada cliff divers and alfresco dining overlooking the bay.