We could regale you with exciting tales of derring-do, travelling the Mexican mainland, following crazy remote routes and being chased by bandidos through the Sierra Madre, but we’d be telling fibs! This wasn’t one of our wildest rides. Instead, we’ll regale you with tales of a fun pootle through Mexico, featuring a Pueblo Magico or two, a new windscreen (finally), some Nun’s Farts (yes, really), and a bit of ‘road-block palaver’ on the way to the border.

The Pueblo Magico

First, for the Mexico-noobies, we’d like to introduce you to the brilliant tourism concept that is the ‘Pueblo Magico’ (Magical Town). Back in 2001, Mexico started designating its most attractive and historic villages/small towns as ‘Pueblos Magicos’. It’s a great idea, letting tourists know which small towns are worth a visit. Some are internationally known (e.g. San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato). But the majority are small rural towns/villages with special architecture, history, culture and other attractions.

We’ve visited many of these Pueblos Magicos over our time in Mexico. The larger, more famous towns tend to be full of international tourism and expats (aka ‘Gringoland’) and have extortionate prices. The smaller lesser-known ones seem more authentic but equally beautiful. A few of our faves are Cuetzalán, Bernal, Orizaba, Real de Catorce and Tequisquiapan but there are 132 of them, so take your pick! They’re each unique and most are worth a stop if you’re passing.

Scroll through some of the Pueblos Magicos on our trails

Tequila Town

Meanwhile… back on the road in Sonora… no sooner had we disembarked the Baja ferry in Mazatlan, we received an invitation that just couldn’t be refused… to Mexico’s most famous Pueblo Magico: Tequila! Our Baja travel mates Peter and Michaela were ahead of us and had found a distillery tour for us to join them. Well, who can say ‘no’ to that, eh? We’d been to Tequila before, but good friends and a nice selection of tequilas made it worth a re-visit. And it wasn’t just the tequila sampling… we learned new life-skills too… making a tequila cocktail!  We also learned that our host, Jose, had been mayor of Tequila some years ago. He was responsible for getting the prestigious Pueblo Magico status for the town.

Tolantongo and Tradition

Another ‘revisit’ we were keen to do in central Mexico was to the fabulous Grutas Tolantongo. These are grutas (caves) in a spectacular setting, with hot waterfalls in the caves, a hot river flowing down the valley and some rock-face hot-tubs cascading down the cliff-face. No trip to Mexico is complete without a visit to this beautiful place. But take our advice people: do not repeat… do not go at a weekend! We cannot stress this enough. Crazy busy!

Spectacular Tolantongo

Moving on to the Queretaro area, we stopped off in one of our favourite Pueblos Magicos, Bernal, for some traditional food (yes… there’s more to Mexican food than tacos you know). 

First, we had ‘Chile en Nogada’ – a classic dish representing the colours of the Mexican flag: poblano chiles (green) stuffed with meat and spices, covered in a creamy walnut sauce (white) with pomegranate sprinkled on top (red). It is indeed a yummy dish, and the follow-on Pedos de Monja are equally yummy. Sounds good… what’s Pedos de Monja?  Well… it’s ‘Nun’s Farts’. I kid you not! Nun’s Farts are a delicacy of the Queretaro region. They were brought over as pastries by the Spanish in the 1800s and adapted locally to become light, fluffy chocolates. If you can get past the name… Nun’s Farts are a rather tasty treat! They even have their own Facebook page!

Windscreen… Again!

Now let’s take you back with a bit of ‘Cuthbert history’. Longer term Cuthberteers may recall back in 2018 we cracked the windscreen in Belize. In 2018/9 we spent 4 months at Overlander Oasis in Oaxaca with hosts Calvin and Leanne Mackenzie, waiting for a new one to be shipped-in from Europe (see full palaver here).

Scroll forwards a few years, in 2022 we cracked the windscreen badly again, this time in Alaska. In this second windscreen palaver, we attempted to get one delivered to a friend’s address in Reno, Nevada. We had, what we now realise to be an extremely misguided assumption that it would be easier to import to USA than to Mexico. Ha ha ha… Suckers!!!

Despite us ordering in August, delivery had not arrived when our visas expired in early November (see this blog for the story). We had to re-arrange delivery to Mexico. And guess what? Our friends Calvin and Leanne (yes, the very same lovely people who hosted us for so long back in 2018/9 but now living near Queretaro) kindly offered to receive a windscreen for us again. This time, with the benefit of lessons learned back in 2018/9, we knew the system in Mexico. Delivery went without a hitch and Calvin found a local windscreen fitter for us. Marcus took the opportunity to do some routine maintenance on Cuthbert and we spent a lovely week catching up with Calvin and Leanne.

Southwards

South from Queretaro our first stop was another revisit to Mexico City.  It’s a truly fabulous and cool city with lots to see and do. But Marcus isn’t a city-kinda-guy and didn’t fancy doing the sights there again. Instead, I had a long overdue girls’ day out with my lovely friend Jess who lives there now. We arranged a date and spent a fab day wandering the sights, shopping, eating, chatting. Then on the way back home to Cuthbert, my FB account popped up with a ‘Memory’ post. Turns out, it was exatly three years to the day since I last saw Jess when we had an equally great day out together in Seattle, WA. How spooky is that, eh?       

Next stop southbound was Cholula (yes… a Pueblo Magico) and then our ‘old haunt’ of Oaxaca, yet another Pueblo Magico and one of our favourite areas of Mexico… we know that because we spent 4 months there waiting for a windscreen in 2019😊. This time it was only a one week stay! We met up with overlanding friends (check-out: Peter & Michaela, Peter & Denise, and particularly the fab photos of Heinz) ate and drank too much, and generally had a very sociable time before moving on south again to another of our fave Mexican haunts (yup… you guessed it… another Pueblo Magico) San Cristóbal de las Casas.

Bloqueo

From San Cristóbal it’s a short run of 175km through Chiapas State, down the decent 190 to La Mesilla border into Guatemala. Shouldn’t take long, eh? Well, it shouldn’t… buuuuut… the good people of Teopisca (very much not a Pueblo Magico) decided that our transit-to-border-day would be a good day to try to oust the town’s Mayoress.  Josefa Sánchez has annoyed them with some shenanigan or other, so they reckon she’s got to go. Blocking at key locations on trunk-roads is a common tactic in Latin America for protesters to make a political point. We’ve been held-up in long queues on roads (or unable to leave a city) on several occasions over our years overlanding South and Central America. Sometimes it’s for hours, sometimes days, occasionally weeks (as we found in French Guiana). It’s what they do.

Joining the long single-lane queue of cars and trucks snaking down the road ahead at Teopisca, I walked ahead to the front to try to get an idea of how long this protest was likely to last… maybe we could just have some lunch, chill-out in our home for a few hours before the protesters get bored and let us all travel on?  But the set-up at the head of the line was clearly prepared for the long-haul. Lots of people hanging around, a huge truck parked across the road, a large canopy erected for shelter, and crates of food/drink supplies for the campaigners. A guy who appeared to have some authority explained that they would be there ‘indefinitely’, until Josefa left office. Unless she packs her bags pronto, this bloqueo was clearly going to stay put.

We had to make alternative plans. There were several route options available, but all were significantly further than we could drive that day… of course they were. These protesters know where to put their bloqueo for maximum inconvenience! No point in blocking a point that has a mere 10 km detour is there?

We eventually chose a route with around 200km extra to drive (with traffic and road conditions, that’s around 4-5 hours). You’ve got to hand it to these protesters; if their intention is to cause havoc, then it’s ‘Mission Accomplished’ for them! It set us back a day in reaching the border. But really, for us it’s just an inconvenience rather than a major problem that it probably is for some local people. Hey-ho. That’s life on the road.

Next instalment features our return to Central America: Guatemala!

PS: turns out, our decision not to wait for the bloqueo to lift was a good one! As we go to press with this blog, over a week later, Josefa is still in office and the bloqueo is still in place!