Mazatlan has the virtues and vices of any tourist destination. But all the bad stuff – or good, depending on how you plan to spend the evening – is buffered by the decency and solidity of a working town. Unlike the hotel cities dreamed up by governments beholden to tourist dollars, Mazatlan, the second city […]
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Someone has mistakenly put shrimp into the ice cream or else I’m reading the sign incorrectly — always a possibility as my Spanish certainly needs some work. But then again, when I order camarones at restaurants, I get shrimp and so camarón must be shrimp, right? But then what is it doing in the ice cream? The answer, according […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya by Jeanine Lee Kitchel Enchanted Island Press, Hawaii, 2004 Paperback, 217 pages Available from Amazon Books: Paperback And also on Kindle from Amazon.com at $9.99 Here’s another of those ‘coming to Mexico to live’ books – but with a difference. It’s not concerned with […]
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Have you ever found a place in Mexico that mirrors your own life? For me, it’s Tamazunchale, San Luis Potosí. “Every bend of the road reveals a more stunning mountain panorama,” gushed Nicki, a first-time visitor to Mexico. “Yeah. And there are lots of bends to this road,” I muttered, trying to keep one eye […]
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Bob and Judie Terry are not only veterans of the Peace Corps — which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year — they actually met at a National Peace Corps Association meeting. Judie (whose mother was one of the first female pilots in the United States) had always had a longing for far-off places and for […]
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Climbing Mexico’s volcanoes Pico de Orizaba (Citlateptl) 5700m 18,700ft Popocatepl 5452m 17,887ft Iztaccihuatl 5286m 17,342ft A Mexican Mountaineering Expedition On Pico de Orizaba, Mexico’s highest volcano (Citlaltepetl in Veracruz) – with PHOTO GALLERY Exploring caves in Mexico: the speleologist’s new frontier El Pozo de la Pestilencia, La Cueva de la Villa Luz, Naica caves and […]
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Nestled in the mountains of the Sierra de Guanajuato is the picturesque city of Guanajuato. Its name originates from the word Quanax-juato which, in the indigenous dialect of the region, meant “Place of Frogs” – because the indigenous tribes thought the place was fit only for frogs! Little could they have known that the Spanish would later […]
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Sunday afternoon, at about ten minutes before 4 p.m., local time, in bullrings all over Spain and Mexico, matadors kneel in arena chapels and pray to La Virgen de la Macarena to protect them. For precisely at 4 p.m., a bugle will blow and they will go forth to meet their destiny. Moments later, a […]
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The Sunday open air stalls at the Lagunilla in Mexico City, the expansive roadside shops just north of San Miguel de Allende, the stores and weekend marketplace at Los Sapos in Puebla, and good old fashioned picking in the state of Oaxaca. Each provides a fruitful avenue for acquiring antiques and collectibles in Central and […]
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I took one look around the tiny, dingy room I had rented and began questioning my sanity. It was December 2 and I was in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, after a tiring 24-hour bus ride one thousand miles south of the border. During an earlier October visit, I had rented the cheap second-floor room […]
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