What with over five years on the road, 46 countries, 180,000km ‘n all that… we think we’ve seen a fair chunk of the world. But rarely have we come across an area so jam-packed with things to see and do as middle Mexico. Around almost every corner is a new chance to marvel, sense, taste, smell, gawp, laugh or smile. I hesitate to offer one of those ‘we went here, then we did this…’ list-type blogs…. but here’s a teeny little insight into our whirlwind of activity…
Southbound(ish)
Our mission, in a nutshell, was to drive some 2,500 km from Copper Canyon back to Oaxaca, collect much needed new tyres for Cuthbert, then head north up the eastern-ish side of Mexico. At the top we plan to meet Uncle Sam at Trump’s Wall into Texas. We had around two months left on our visas within which to achieve said mission.
First stop was Guadalajara and the Lake Chapala area. It’s oft referred to as ‘Gringo-Central’, but there’s a good reason the Gringos flock there. It’s nice. We lounged around in hot-springs and sampled Tequila from the place of the very same name, saw the weekly rodeo, and puzzled at some quirky street art. But the dominant activity here was some serious dental work for me. Serious. But it’s gotta be done 😧.
We also saw an amazing traditional Mexican show of macho bravado – the ‘Voladores’. Get this… four crazy guys climb up a 30m high pole. That’s thirty… three-zero metres. They tie ropes around their waists, then hang off the pole upside down, and descend as the ropes unfurl. On the way down one of them plays a flute, and the crowd gawps.
What else…? We did some trials with Omar for the new iOverlander App (due to be launched soon) – that was interesting. It’s going to be good. And oh yes… we got some sour-dough starter from Omar, which has opened up a whole load of new food options for us. It’s curious stuff. It grows and shrinks, and needs feeding often… bit like travelling with a hungry husband 😊
Last stop on the run south to Oaxaca was the Teotihuacan pyramids near Mexico City. It was a fun morning, but we’ve seen a lot of historic sites on this trip. Our tolerance of ancient rubble is reaching saturation point, but the ‘Top Notch Rubble’ sites are still worth seeing.
Finally, we’re back in Oaxaca… yes, that place where we spent 4 months this year waiting for a new windscreen. We’re happy to see Calvin and Leanne again at the great Overlander Oasis. Cuthbert’s happy to get a bit of attention with some refurbished wheels, new tyres and a few other random improvement tweaks (click here). Then, we’re all set for the ‘final’ northbound run.
Northbound(ish)
How about a bit of the Gulf side of Mexico? We thought we’d pop over the mountains to the east and have a look at the Veracruz coast. Not, we must admit, one of our finest overlanding decisions. It’s not particularly attractive down there, and the heat/humidity at this time of year is horrendous. We managed a few nights to explore between Tlacotalpan and Chachalacas but soon retreated bravely back up to the central high ground.
In cool Coatepec I reaffirmed my complete affinity with all things coffee. Not only do I love a decent macchiato, but I love the climate in which it grows and seeing the plantations. Anywhere that coffee grows, gets my vote. Meanwhile, in nearby Xalapa we saw a world-class anthropological museum. Not usually our kind of thing, but we heard good things about it which, it turns out, were all true! We learned about the ancient site of El Tajin which, being down on the hot/humid lowland, we had planned to avoid. But at the museum, the El Tajin model drew us in, with its huge, beautiful pyramids. Hmmm… for better or for worse, we made a tactical decision to adjust our (admittedly rather vague) plan and put El Tajin on the list for our route north. Haven’t we always said that ‘flexibility’ is the key to overlanding? 😊
Onwards inland a bit, we’re back in volcano land. Orizaba has one of the highest peaks in the Americas, but the town also has a potentially mis-placed palace of the French tower-man himself – Gustav Eiffel. His Orizaba masterpiece is full of interesting displays and a small science museum.
Not far up the road is the city of Puebla and its little sister town, Cholula. Both live under the shadow of the fabulously named Popocatépetl. Say it again… fun, huh? 😊 The volcano, known as Popey to his mates, is highly active belching-up random plumes of dense guff (probably not the correct geological term) throughout the day. Its activity is very hard to predict. Maybe it will… maybe it won’t… but people in the area live under the daily threat of the next looming full-scale eruption.
Big volcano 
Little volcano
So Puebla is famous for one of the world’s largest and most active volcanos, but here’s a little factoid… did you know that it also has the world’s smallest volcano? In a Puebla suburban plaza sits the long extinct Cuexcomate. It’s just 13m above ground with a subterranean chamber 23m deep. There’s a staircase down inside the 8m wide crater. Can’t say it’s spectacular, but a great little curiosity if you happen to be passing by.
As we sat under the plumes of Popey, I glanced through a travel guide. Well, wha’dya know… there’s a fiesta just down the road… tomorrow! Our timing is rarely this impeccable, but this time we couldn’t have pulled it off better if we had tried. Just at the other side of Malinche (yes, another volcano) is the town of Huamantla with its ‘Noche que nadie duerme’ (Night that Nobody Sleeps). Once a year, they decorate some 8km of street surface with amazing, brightly coloured sand patterns. The sand colours are sifted, layer by layer, through a series of huge stencils, to build up patterns of ‘carpets’ throughout the town. Late afternoon the teams come out to start the artistry, by midnight the work is complete and a procession starts, destroying the beautiful sand-patterns as they go!! All this fun was topped off with a generous sprinkling of fireworks around dawn.
The morning after the night before, it’s time to shuffle-on northwards again. Remember that new detour we just planned? It’s time to head back down to the heat on a small, winding, scenic, cross-country route. On the way, the tiny village of Cuetzalan is well worth a stop – definitely one of the nicest we’ve seen in Mexico – and that’s saying something.
The late inclusion of El Tajín ruins into our route plan turned out to be a good decision. Not only were they impressive, but they blew our self-imposed limit on visits to piles of ancient rubble, right out of the water. In the same way as we became ‘Inca’d Out’ by too many ruins back in Peru, we were worried about the corresponding Mexican condition known as ‘Aztec’d Out’. But we narrowly escaped this well documented medical condition. As with Teotihuacan, El Tajín is worth a gander.
Looking around for other things in the El Tajín area, I spotted a little something of interest… a visit to a vanilla farm. Who has ever seen a vanilla plant, or knows how it’s cultivated and produced? And who knew that before the French nicked the idea and took it to Madagascar, Mexico was the world’s supplier of vanilla par excellence? Interesting stuff… but not quite interesting enough to keep us down in the heat for any longer than necessary. We wasted no time in hot-footing it back up to the cooler altitude, passing some interesting geological basalt columns at Presa San Antonio on the way.
Next stop… pasty town. Mineral del Monte is popular with Mexicans for mountain hiking. For British visitors it’s popular for, guess what… yes… the humble Cornish Pasty! The original mining community here was established by Cornish and Welsh immigrants. They brought the pasty with them and it stuck! The pastry here is absolutely spot-on with the British original, but the Mexicans have added a little local twist to the fillings. Think traditional Cornish with a few green chillies added! Delicious.
A tip given to us by fellow overlanders Geneva and Mike is to visit the hot springs at Tolontongo. When we got there, we found more than just hot-springs and a hot river. There is a huge, dark cave full of hot water, with natural hot waterfalls crashing from a hole in the cave ceiling. The water is deep in places, the current is powerful and it’s pitch-black with no lighting, but we pulled ourselves through the caves on the ropes. In Europe this would be a highly controlled ‘elf ‘n safety environment with life-jackets, hard hats, safety briefings blah, blah, blah. But in Mexico you just jump in and go for it 😊
Mexico isn’t famous for it’s wine production, but it’s an ‘up and coming’ industry here, or so they tell us. We had to check out the proof in the small wine area of Tequisquiapan staying on a vineyard. And just up the road is the world’s third largest monolith at Bernal – good for a bit of a hike. Impressive, huh? Don’t say you can’t get a bit of variety here in Mexico 😄
Finally for central Mexico, we have the popular Huasteca Potosina. It’s said to have exquisite waterfalls, but not for us… “Sorry, it’s dry, no water this season” ☹ What a disaster for the local tourism industry. But waterfalls aren’t the only reason Mexicans flock here. There’s a slightly bizarre garden Las Pozas, created by eccentric British aristocrat, Edward James in the ‘40s and ‘50s. It gets rave reviews, but its charms were frankly rather lost on us. It’s a pleasant jungle setting, but full of half-built concrete structures and bits of exposed rebar. Oh well… the locals seemed to enjoy it.
One thing we did enjoy nearby was the very cool Sotano Golandrina. This is a huge sink-hole into which thousands and thousands of white-necked swallows dive-bomb every evening to roost for the night. Standing on the edge at dusk, it’s an extraordinary sight and sound as the birds plummet in groups from high in the sky, past us at ground level, and down into the depths of the sink-hole. One of those amazing marvels of nature.
So ladies and gentlemen… here endeth the Tucks’ Grand Tour of Middle Mexico. There’s actually even more to central Mexico in the western side that we did earlier this year (click here). Bearing in mind that all this has the fabulous Mexico City sat right in the middle of it all, it really is a super—duper jam-packed place, full of stuff that we could highly recommend for a 2-3 week fly-drive holiday. Why do USA when you could do Mexico at a fraction of the cost? We’re taking a few days off in San Luis Potosi to catch-up on general admin and make the final plans for northern Mexico and entering USA. Toodle-pip.