One of the Mexican Tourism Secretariat’s flagship programs in recent years has been its Magic Towns designation. This is a program after my own heart, and one that was long overdue when it was finally begun in 2001. Mexico’s Magic Towns (Pueblos Mágicos) range from tiny, almost undiscovered villages on the coast to sizeable inland […]
Continue Reading
Posted by Tim Bowen on July 12, 1999 I am going on my honeymoon in 30 days, and I was told by someone who just returned that the beaches at Puerto Vallarta were not very nice to visit. I was told that the beaches were very pebbly and that there was dog crap and garbage […]
Continue ReadingPoint your car (or take the bus) along the south side of Lake Chapala, past San Pedro Tesistan and San Cristobal Zapotitlan and San Luis Soyatlan and San Nicolas and Tepeguaje to Tuxcueca. Make a right turn and keep your eyes wide open. You may encounter official Mexican soldiers conducting inspections. Sometimes they just look. […]
Continue ReadingIt is my sad duty to inform you that the times they are a changing, at Barra de Navidad.Our favorite spit of Pacific sand, sticking out just a little bit from Highway 200 along the west bank, is not what it used to be. Oh no, nothing has happened to the T-shirt sale — still […]
Continue Reading
After an all-Mexico breakfast of fresh-squeezed orange juice, honeydew, banana, raspberries and mango, we dusted off our faithful VW bug and pointed it toward Tapalpa. (Tom McEwen of the Tampa Tribune used to begin columns with his morning menu. Then, I thought it goofy. Now, I think such small talk might calm a raging appetite, replace a […]
Continue Reading
Granddaughter Kim couldn’t resist. Our slender, pert redhead scampered along the flatland toward the water. Thousands of white pelicans immediately got the message. After a second or three of awkward, cumbersome struggle, they got the heck out of there. Aloft, these majestic birds are among God’s most handsome creations. Big. Graceful. Glorious. Soaring. Gliding. Circling. […]
Continue ReadingIn the early years of the 21st century, the beautiful Mexican town of Sayula had a wildly fluctuating gringo population. Half of it was lost in one day — when Paul and Debbie Katz moved to Chapala. It doubled 10 months later when they returned. Don Sellers was the stable 25 percent. He’s there and […]
Continue Reading
Waiting for the crowds, umbrellas frame a popular snorkling location at Tenacatita on Mexico’s Pacific coast. © Gerry Soroka, 2009 Despite hurricanes and earthquakes, political turmoil, higher gas prices and global warming, Mexico’s marvelous Bay of Tenacatita remains a sea of tranquility. White gold sand, the soft slope of the beach and shallow water gently […]
Continue Reading
After many downhill twists and turns, at the very end of a road built for Nayarit royalty, is a little lake that could have spilled from a book of fairy tales. La laguna Santa Maria del Oro, in the crater of a long-ago volcano, is near enough to perfect to forever please Christopher French. He’s been […]
Continue ReadingHenry Wadsworth Longfellow waxed poetic about the bronze bells of San Blas without seeing or hearing them. These less eloquent westwords are about the bugs of San Blas, a very up-close and much too-personal accounting with scars as proof of participation. From a distance, San Blas is just another beach town, in the state of Nayarit, on […]
Continue Reading