La Peñita de Jaltemba means “Place on the sandy shore, across from the cliff.” Its beach is not the most beautiful in this area. One might say it is a little rough around the edges, being frequented by fisherman at the main entrance, and with a crumbling cemetery on the far north end. That said, […]
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Mexico’s famous Te-Amo cigar comes from Sihuapan, near Catemaco, Veracruz. The producer — Turrent, Nueva Matacapan Tabacos, S.A. de C.V. — takes its name from the owner, Alberto Turrent, the fifth generation of the cigar manufacturing family. I’m a cigar aficionado myself, and I had the pleasure of talking with Alberto Turrent at length. During […]
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Driving to Yucatan, I made a wrong turn and wound up in the town of Catemaco. A shady beach drive along a huge lake provided a tranquil setting reminiscent of Hollywood’s 1930s America. I pulled to the curb to enjoy a walk and a cigar. The setting totally captivated me. The delight I discovered from my […]
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Playa San Francisco is a beautiful wide, sandy beach, fierce and riotous, set in the artsy town commonly referred to as “San Pancho.” Like most towns along the Nayarit coast, San Pancho was once a fishing village and mango processing town. It is now an up and coming small Mexican town bejewelled with the striking […]
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Lorena Rodríguez is shattering stereotypes about Mexican women one brushstroke at a time. “When I first started exhibiting outside of Mexico, I realized that a lot of people have this image of a Latin American woman as subdued, ignorant and in the shadow of men,” says the 34-year-old artist from Monterrey, Nuevo León. “They were […]
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The Mestiza Madonna. La Virgen Ranchera. The Queen of the Americas. Mystical Rose… no matter what name she is called, one thing is for sure: the beloved Virgin of Guadalupe is the mother of all Mexicans. Legend has it that she first appeared on December 9th in 1531 to an indigenous widower by the name […]
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A life-sized Virgin Mary statue with imploring, heaven-raised eyes welcomed me into the courtyard of my favourite café in Oaxaca, Mexico. Dozens of what looked to me to be chia pets surrounded her. While the holy lady shed tears, forever frozen in time, small clay rams and turtles sprout tiny chia leaves all over their […]
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The biggest event of its kind in Latin America, the International Balloon Festival in Leon, Guanajuato, takes place in the middle of November. Attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors over the four-day festival, and some two hundred hot air balloon teams from all over the world, it is a spectacle that justifies the early morning […]
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Celebrations for El Señor de La Conquista (The Lord of the Conquest) completely filled the Jardin Principal of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Hundreds of colourful conchero or “Chichimeca” dancers dressed in pre-Hispanic style outfits arrived from the surrounding towns, representing different styles of dance and dress. Flashes of colour. Hypnotic drum beats. The shake, shake, shake […]
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Adriano is a sixteen-year-old surfer who helps his mother run one of the many small beachside palapas in the resort community of Playa Azul, north of Ixtapa. You won’t read about Playa Azul in most guidebooks as it is a resort that for the most part has yet to be “discovered” by anyone other than the […]
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