The Tule Tree just outside Oaxaca City is one of the little known wonders of Mexico. A Montezuma cypress roughly estimated to be around 1,400 years old, the Tule Tree has a circumference of 42 meters (138 ft), greater than any known tree in the world. To find a competitor which is even roughly approaches the Tule Tree, skeptics have to play some serious mathematical games. The massive plume of green foliage is so large that it Continue…

I have to admit it’s been a while since we featured a purely natural attraction on the blog. Clearly, we’ve been enjoying colonial city life a little too much. To mix it up, we pried ourselves away from cobblestone streets and multi-colored casas and did a boat tour through the spectacular Sumidero Canyon in the state of Chiapas.

Entering through the southern end of the canyon at Chiapa de Corzo, we were quickly swallowed up by vertical walls reaching heights of up to 800 meters or more. Absolutely breathtaking! The two-and-a-half-hour tour travels 35 kilometers through the canyon and across a resevoir to Continue…

After only a day in San Cristobal de las Casas, we totally fell in love with the town and decided to stay a little longer than we had originally planed. So we moved from our hotel to the lovely Casa Lily Ixim. After our wonderful experience in Merida, this was yet another special find as the casa is truly unique.

Designed and built by Swiss artist and architect Frédéric Burkhard, the apartment boasts lots of light, interesting angles, organic forms and an amazing view of Guadalupe Church. But what really impressed us were the Continue…

The archaeological site of Palenque has been on our must-see list for over a decade. When we visited Tikal in Guatemala in 2001, we were very close to crossing the border into Mexico, but decided to put off Palenque for a future adventure. And now, here we are.

What makes Palenque even more special to us is that it is our last Mayan site on the Yucatan Peninsula. As we move west, we will be encountering other pre-Columbian civilizations, but in terms of Mayan ruins, this is it. So did Palenque hold up to our expectations and was it a worthy contender as our lasting image of a Mayan site? Continue…

I wonder what the evolutionary advantage of big bright yellow feet might be? Or is this just the avian version of Manolo Blahniks?