Maroon 5 Tour in Mexico City (2022)

Santiago Tianguistenco, Edomex, Mexico

Santiago Tianguistenco is a small town in the State of Mexico in Mexico, near the state capital Toluca, accessible by car from Mexico City (the western bus terminal). That cost MXN$55 each way.

Its name Tianguistenco originates from the word “tanguis”, which means a market in the pre-Colombian times, and a tradition that has continued in almost everywhere in Mexico today as informal street markets (usually weekly). Atenco, a former hacienda, is Mexico’s oldest hacienda and where bullfighting was introduced here.

The hacienda was built by the conquistador Cortéz’s cousin, whose family owned the place for 350 years until it was sold to another who developed it to sell products internationally. The bus from the centre to the ex-hacienda cost MXN$13 each way.

Puerto Escondido/Zicaleta/Zipolite/Mazunte, Oaxaca, Mexico

Puerto Escondido is a small tourist town on the west coast of Mexico, in the state of Oaxaca. It was founded in the 1930s, before which never had a permanent settlement. Its beaches with strong waves are its main attraction, and it’s great for surfing. It’s also close to a nude beach Zipolite and a bioluminescent lake.

It had to be very dark to see the bioluminescent phenomenon, but it’s truly amazing inside the tent, even if it’s not possible to capture it in a photo.
I joined a tour that started at 6pm for MXN$350.

To get to Zipolite, I took a minibus to San Antonio, then a combi there.

I joined a two-hour group surfing lesson (MXN$600. $800 for a private one) with a photographer (MXN$500).

Zipolite is Mexico’s only legal nude beach, although apart from the Playa del Amore, for the most part only older people go nude on the main beach. It’s also where our COVID tsar Dr Hugo Lopez-Gatell, Undersecretary of Health, spent his vacation during the pandemic.

Getting there I passed through Mazunte, a “magical town” (pueblo magico) which is known as a capital of turtles.

Surfing was a lot more fun than I had expected – it’s not that difficult once you manage to balance yourself on the board, riding a wave. I was with 2 other people with Surf Travel Friends, and after some basic training, we went to the beach to practise.

Pilgrimage at the Basílica de Guadalupe in Mexico City

The Basílica de Guadalupe, or the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, is a religious complex with several churches on the Tepeyac Hill of Mexico City, where Saint Juan Diego, the first Native American saint, on 12 December 1531 allegedly met the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, who requested a church to be built in honour of her. Historians, and in fact several clergy members, including an abbot at the basilica and a Secretary of State of the Vatican, doubted the historicity of the event. Perhaps the more likely event was similar to the construction of other churches, where a Catholic church replaced an indigenous one, as the site was originally a temple for an important mother goddess.

Regardless, the Virgin of Guadalupe became a symbol of Mexico, and was held on a flag by The Reverend Professor Father Miguel Hidalgo y Castilla, the Father of the Nation who began the independence movement. Before that, Saint Mary supported the Spanish colonialists as the Virgin of Los Remedios. Today, Guadalupe is known as the “mother of Mexicans” and multiple places in the country were named after her, including Isla Guadalupe, the westernmost point of Mexico. The villa is today the most visited Catholic shrine in the world, and the third-most religious site overall, with at many as 22 million visitors in 2010.

Ocampo, Michoacan, Mexico

Ocampo is a very small town in Michoacan in the reserve area of the monarch butterflies, accessible by taxi collectives, combis from Angugueo (MXN$20 for around half an hour).