Author explores lesser-known tourist destinations in Mexico
As winter approaches and Canadians start dreaming about warm weather getaways, Mexico is a sun destination that often springs to mind.
Despite the competition from such Caribbean islands as Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, Mexico remains a favourite for Canadians with its rich culture and history.
Of course, most Canadian visitors are interested in the beach at places like Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta and Cancun.
These destinations can be the ultimate tourist trap, filled with highrise hotels, tacky stores and hawkers offering myriad tacky souvenirs.
It’s a different Mexico that attracts Tony Cohan, an American who spends much of his time in Mexico. San Miguel de Allende, a mountain town about four hours north of Mexico City, has become a haven for U.S. and Canadian retirees.
Cohan uses the town as a jumping-off point for travels to a Mexico that is largely undiscovered by mass tourism (although certainly not unknown to seasoned travellers).
One such destination is Guanajuato, a small city near San Miguel de Allende.
At one time Guanajuato was probably the richest city in the world, home to mines that supplied most of the world’s silver.
With the collapse of silver prices and competition from other mining centres (including many in Canada), the city sank into decline and today is a small backwater that remains a vibrant cultural centre and a fascinating destination.
It is honeycombed with tunnels, many used as pedestrian walkways and underground streets, and home to probably the oddest museum anyone could visit.
It’s an institution entirely appropriate to Mexico, which has a culture that is comfortable with death and celebrates it with several feast days, including Day of the Dead, at the beginning of November, when families decorate the tombs of their ancestors and pass out candies moulded into skeletons, skulls, coffins and the like.
Guanajuato, as Cohan puts it, is “a place Edgar Allan Poe might have dreamed up” and celebrates death all year long at the mummy museum, the Museo de las Momias, which lies (if that’s the word) a short walk from the city centre.
It seems the city’s cemeteries, because of the mineral content of the soil and the dry mountain air, contain many mummified remains. The unique soil preserves the bodies, which don’t decay. Because of overcrowding at the cemeteries, annual fees are charged for burial plots. If payment is not received, the bodies are dug up and disposed of. Several have found their way to the mummy museum.
Among the star attractions, Cohan observes, is a French physician named Leroy who died in 1865. With no one to pay his fees, he was resurrected as a mummy in 1970. Beside him at the mummy museum is his mummified Chinese cook.
In Mexican Days, Cohan also devotes chapters to, among others, Mexico City, a prime example of the horrors of unchecked human sprawl; Sierra Gorda, which Cohan describes as Mexico’s “Napa Valley, its Provence, its Tuscany, undiscovered and undeveloped;” the troubled area of Chiapas, where Mexico’s downtrodden indigenous people have rebelled against government oppression; and the Mayan ruins and modern resorts of the Yucatan peninsula.
It is a pleasurable travel narrative, but also an illustration of the joys and revelations of a country that shares North America with the United States and Canada but could not be more different.