Destination: Mexico

LONELY PLANET'S OFFICIAL ITINERARY INFORMATION

Itinerary: Indigenous Mexico

THREE WEEKS

Anthropologically-minded travelers who follow this whole itinerary will cover around 4000km and will need a good three weeks to take it all in.

Mexico possesses some of the American continent’s most colorful and unusual traditional cultures, all directly descended from people who were here long before Europeans arrived. One place you can make contact with central Mexico’s Nahua people, related to the ancient Aztecs, is the hill village of Cuetzalan, north of Puebla. The largest indigenous populations tend to be concentrated in the south of the country, especially the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas. The Zapotecs and Mixtecs of Oaxaca are wonderful artisans in ceramics, textiles, wood and much more – see their wares at bustling markets and in city stores. Oaxaca City stages the country’s most exciting celebration of indigenous dance, the annual Guelaguetza festival in July. In the remote Chiapas Highlands, Maya groups such as the Tzotziles and Tzeltales cling to mysterious, age-old religious, social and medical practices, and their colorful traditional costumes, still worn daily, are complex works of art and symbolism.

In Veracruz state, the Totonac people regularly re-enact ancient rituals with their spectacular voladores rite, ‘flying’ from a tall pole at places like El Tajín. The Huicholes from the borders of Jalisco, Nayarit and Zacatecas in western Mexico make an annual pilgrimage across the mountains and deserts to seek the cactus that bears the powerful hallucinogen peyote, essential to their religion and art, near the remote town of Real de Catorce.

In the northwest the Tarahumara who dwell in the rugged canyons of the Barranca del Cobre (Copper Canyon) are famed for their amazing long-distance running feats.