We didn’t plan our four days in the Yucatán around food. We planned it around Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, Izamal, and the flamingos at Celestún. The food happened anyway — market breakfasts before sunrise, a lunch in Izamal, we almost didn’t order because there was too much to choose from, a fish in Progreso so large we asked twice if it was really meant for one...
Most travellers treat Puebla as a day trip from Mexico City — two hours in, wander the Zócalo, eat a cemita, drive back. We did that math too, then stayed four days and still left with a list of things to come back for. Puebla is Mexico’s fourth-largest metro area, sitting quietly under the shadow of two active volcanoes, with more UNESCO-listed colonial...
Our guide at Uxmal talked for two hours without stopping. He waxed lyrical about every Rain God mask on every temple, explained the difference in style between one carving and the next, told stories of daily life in the ancient city — how they collected water, how they celebrated, how they calculated the movements of Venus to plan their crops. He knew everything and...
We arrived in Celestun on a clear February morning, having driven 90km west from Merida with our driver George, and the first thing we noticed — before the flamingos, before the mangroves, before anything else — was the quality of silence. After the noise and energy of Merida, Celestun felt like someone had turned down the volume on the world. Sandy streets, pastel...
We arrived in Tepoztlan because of three Mexican street dogs. We had accepted a housesitting assignment caring for them, and Tepoztlan was simply where the assignment happened to be. We had barely heard of it. We looked it up on a map, saw that it was 82km south of Mexico City, and thought: fine, a month in a Mexican town, how interesting can it be? Four weeks later...
We arrived in San Miguel de Allende, planning to house sit for two weeks. We stayed for six. That is the most honest endorsement we can give a city — the decision to extend, made spontaneously one morning over coffee at Buen Dia, because we simply could not bring ourselves to leave. San Miguel de Allende is a UNESCO World Heritage colonial city in the state of...
We spent six months travelling in Mexico, and the Yucatan Peninsula was where we kept returning. Not just once, not just to the headline sites, but again and again — to the markets of Merida at 5:30 am, to the extraordinary silence of Uxmal in the early morning before the day-trippers arrived, to the flamingo lagoon at Celestun in the golden afternoon light, to the...
We visited Chichen Itza, having already seen three other Mayan sites on the Yucatan Peninsula — Palenque, Izamal and Uxmal — and we thought we knew what to expect. We were wrong. Nothing quite prepares you for the moment El Castillo appears at the end of the entrance path, rising from the jungle floor in the early morning light, its limestone blocks glowing in the...
We arrived in Tlaquepaque on a Sunday night, expecting a quiet town of 6 kilometres from Guadalajara that had shut up shop for the evening. We were wrong — spectacularly wrong. After checking into our hotel, we followed the sound of laughter and music down four blocks of darkened streets, the noise growing louder with every corner we turned. What we found at the end...
Oaxaca (pronounced wa-HA-ca) is one of those cities that travel writers reach for superlatives to describe and then discover that superlatives are not enough. It is a city of ancient ruins and colourful colonial streets, of rooftop bars glowing at sunset, of markets that assault every sense in the best possible way — and of a food culture so extraordinary that people...
The jungle is louder than you expect. Before you even see the ruins, you hear them — howler monkeys calling through the canopy, birds you cannot name filling the humid air with sound, the creak and drip of a rainforest doing what rainforests do. And then you turn a corner on the path and the Temple of Inscriptions rises out of the green, sudden and enormous, a 23...
Do you need a hotel in San Cristobal de Las Casas? Are you looking for a hotel that is centrally located, funky design, great garden to relax in after sightseeing and a good restaurant? San Cristobal de Las Casas in Chiapas State, Mexico, will always hold fond memories for us, not only for the people, but for our one night stay at one of the best hotels in San...