Hasta Mexico siempre !!!!!

First day: We arrive in Mexico City, "El Mostro" as the chilangos, its inhabitants, affectionately call it, 25 million of them; an agglomeration of ancient and modern, shanty towns and opulence, contrasts quite evident, if you like, for a country that is suspended between North and South America and in very strong growth and economic evolution. Contrasts that increase even more its Latin charm. Our driver takes us to the hotel, facing the Catedral de la Asuncion, the most imposing on the Continent. The long journey that brought us from Italy to the heart of Mexico comes to an end, and tomorrow the adventure begins in this splendid country of a thousand souls and faces. Second day, our journey through Mexico begins. Many things await us to discover, many new realities, and the expectations are not few.

We inaugurate our visits starting from the historic centre of Mexico City, considered the largest in the World. Besides the Plaza de la Constitucion, also called Zocalo, and the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, where Baroque and pre-Columbian meet, we also go to discover many evocative corners of the capital, some famous like the Alameda district, with its splendid aristocratic buildings, others unknown like the Iglesia de San Juan de Dios, unique on the Continent for its façade with a concave apse, the Palacio Arzobispal and other picturesque corners of the Centro Historico. After lunch our eyes remain spellbound by the majesty of the pyramids of Teotihuacan, the place where men become gods, fascinated by the geometric perfection of the buildings, the Avenue of the Dead and the temples of the Moon and the Sun, symbols of one of the most enigmatic and ancient civilisations in human history.

In the evening we go out for a walk in the historic centre, among the people, the clubs, the restaurants, the museums and art galleries open until late at night and the very lively nightlife both inside and especially outside, among the sounds, the colours and the thousand streets teeming with life of what is one of the most energetic capitals which, despite its problems and its bad reputation – not entirely true considering that it has the same crime rate as Milan or Paris – remains one of the cities "mas hermosas del mundo" as its inhabitants proudly say Third day is also the last in Mexico City. In the morning we spend a few hours visiting the extraordinary Anthropology museum, one of the largest and most prestigious in the World, an enormous collection on the country's 5,000 years.

A fleeting lunch in the Polanco district, behind the Chapultepec woods (which in Aztec means hill of the butterflies), where the museum is, and in the afternoon the visit unfolds between the two bohemian artists' districts, the splendid Coyoacan where Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul is, and San Angel, a little open-air picture. We dine in one of the colonial restaurants of the district and bid farewell to the capital with the last night spent on chilango soil, in the "Ombligo del Mundo", as many often call it: the largest city in the World for one of the largest countries in the World (careful with criticism!!!! Mexicans are very patriotic and love their nation very much and are proud to present it to the visitor). Fourth day heading for Oaxaca, the "city of jade", as well as the birthplace of Juarez, the first indigenous president of democratic Mexico.

We first visit the colourful Cholula, with the splendid Capilla Real in Moorish style and the pyramid of Tepanapa, the largest in the World, with a perimeter and surface area 5 times larger than that of Cheops and apparently built in 6000 BC, and the colonial city of Puebla, among churches, noble palaces and the Palafoxiana Library where the Nuremberg codex is kept, with the thousands of hieroglyphs and Mayan pictorial codices. We arrive in the evening in Oaxaca, in a fairy-tale atmosphere of other times, typical of the timeless charm of this city of raw but profound beauty.

Fifth day entirely dedicated to the Zapotec sites of Monte Alban, the Mixtec one of Mitla, with the palace of the Columns, and the artisan pueblo of San Bartolo Coyotepec, where the prized black ceramics are produced still following the old pre-Columbian firing method, to conclude with the city of Oaxaca, whose elegance we are captivated by in the cathedrals of Santo Domingo and de la Soledad, masterpieces of Plateresque Baroque. Sixth day, we get up well before dawn, we take the bus (long-distance – with reclining seats and on-board service), heading for Chiapas.

We have breakfast along the way, near Tenuantepec, famous for its isthmus, the narrowest point of Mexico – just 100 km from North to South – and for its "valley of the winds", and we continue, on an exciting 8-hour journey that takes us from the Central Cordillera to the Southern one, with a few touches of the tropics here and there along the way. Arriving at the pueblo of Chiapa de Corzo, we board a fast launch for an excursion of about 45 minutes, along the Grijalva river, sacred to the Lacandon Maya, through the Sumidero canyon, a spectacular gorge crossed by this river which together with the Usumacinta constitutes the main water basin for all the Maya indigenous people straddling Chiapas and Guatemala.

In the afternoon, we visit the small and lively San Cristobal de las Casas, with its workshops, its colourful little houses, the indigenous women who come down from the mountains for the market and its suggestive "porcelain churches" in very vivid and intense colours. Seventh day, a stop in San Cristobal de las Casas to discover the two best-known native pueblos, the Tzeltal Zinacantan, with traditions intact for centuries and still carried on with pride despite the Spanish persecutions, and the Tzotzil one of Chamula, known for its astonishing church of the shamans and witches, in which Christianity blends with the Maya religions of the area.

Before sunset we return to San Cristobal to visit the museum of Maya Medicine, an interesting exhibition of the pharmacopoeia and pre-Columbian medical traditions still today passed down from father to son in the shamanic families of the forests and the neighbouring mountains. Eighth day, the most exciting, due to the sudden change of landscape and climate, from the alpine and temperate one of San Cristobal de las Casas to the tropical and humid jungle of Palenque. We make a brief stop at Agua Azul, to acclimatise to the new altitude and environment and to admire the waterfalls that give life to the Usumacinta river and eat a lunch based on river fish.

In the evening, zigzagging among the roads and curves of the jungle populated by the Lacandon (and for which you must nevertheless have a very good spirit of adaptation – given the condition of the roads in Chiapas, which I recall is the most backward area of Mexico), we arrive at Palenque where we dine and stay overnight in the lodge wrapped in the sounds and silences of a typical rainforest (p.s. those who detest geckos must get used to seeing a few sleeping on the windows of the rooms! it's normal considering we are on a humid plain of the sub-tropical belt, just as it's normal that they are harmless animals!!!).