Reflections of Travel to Mexico
As a certified travel agent for four decades, an international airline employee, researcher, writer, teacher, and photographer, travel, whether for business or pleasure, has always been an important and integral part of my life. Some 400 voyages 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.
The Mexican voyages, which spanned 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 was accessed by ferry and explored by road. Its sights include 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 serviced by a series 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 people. .
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 Neighborhood, Chapultepec Park, the National Museum of Anthropology, and the Basilica of Our Lady. Lady of Guadalupe. Bullfighting needs to be experienced at least once and I have often been straddled on the line between the thrill of spectator sport and empathy for the defenseless animal.
Mexico City also served as the 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 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 Galería de Armas, the House of Pancho Villa, and the Cathedral. It preceded a two-day train ride through the 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. -o “Los Arcos” in Spanish.
Farther 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 Casco Antiguo, the Plaza de Armas, the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and Mismaloya Beach.
And Acapulco, with its own sun-drenched beaches and top hotels, evokes memories of La Quebrada cliff divers and al fresco dining overlooking the bay.