The town of Tepoztlán, where I spent two nights and a day at
the home of my friend Adrian Smith, is a small colonial-era village nestled in a
spectacular mountain setting, about an hour South of Mexico City.
The dramatic mountains of Tepoztlán seen from
the mirador of the Dominican Ex-Convent
the mirador of the Dominican Ex-Convent
It’s listed as a “Pueblo Magico,” one of Mexico’s officially
charming towns, but its hold on the certificate has been slippery, perhaps
reflecting my feeling that its charm was skin deep. Like many colonial towns or neighborhoods it
features narrow, cobbled streets (nightmarish for traffic or low-slung cars),
fronted on each side by a lineup of colorful shops and enticing restaurants,
with, in the center, a beautiful central plaza around a venerable church (in
this case a Dominican ex-convent). As
the town rises toward the foothills the streets become rockier and steeper, and
they’re not short on hanging flowers and pretty perspectives, especially with that
green-clad cliff-lifted wall of mountains ever in the background. But a closer look reveals that many of the
buildings are of cheap cement-block or brick construction, and overall I felt a
dusty pall of makeshift poverty hovering behind the facades.
That didn’t stop it from being a wonderful place to stay and to explore. It helped that
with Adrian’s guidance I was taken to some of the loveliest restaurants, like
La Miga in a shady garden of ranch-style buildings where everyone seemed to be
friends, or El Corazon de Mexico with its outdoor tables rocking on the
cobblestone courtyard and its tasty Mole dishes. On our first evening we stumbled into an
event in the town square where a festive crowd was setting aloft a homemade fire
balloon.
Tepozteco
But the star attraction of the town, which occupied most of
my full day there, is Tepozteco, a small Aztec temple high in the mountains,
reached by a steep and arduous hike on a trail that starts a mile or so North
of town.
I began my hike in the morning, walking uphill through the narrow
streets, helpfully guided by signs for the pyramid. The trail got progressively more primitive
from there: starting in a leafy enfilade of last-chance vendors, it climbed
through the greenery first in well-built stone stairways; then, more steeply, in
narrow tracks of broken rock where you had to place your feet carefully; finally,
funneled into the last niche-like gorge, straight up on a system of metal
ladders hammered into the rock.
The tourists were plentiful, and at 7,000 feet the combined
gasping added humidity to the hot jungle around us. But every step was accompanied by the relief
of gorgeous patterns of sun and green shade and, above and below, appalling vistas
of the rock-clawed shafts of the mountain from black gorges to sun-laureled brows. And finally (ta-ra!) the temple appeared.
The pyramid was relatively small, a mountain-ridge fort
easily clambered, but the view from it was large, to say
the least.
It was worth staying for a while, in the welcome breeze, before essaying the long downward
trail.
The Dominican Ex-Convent
After lunch back in town (where hopefully my sweaty presence
didn’t disturb the colorful Mexican ambience) I headed over to the main church,
the Dominican ex-convent or Parroquia Nuestra Señora de la Navidad.
Its entrance boasts some lovely bas-relief figures and Dominican
insignias, and inside one finds a typically tranquil convent courtyard of white
arches around a central fountain—a pleasant place to rest my still-sore feet,
with a rare corner vantage suitable for self-timer photos.
The convent, like others I’ve seen, has restored its once-covered
trove of original 16th-Century wall decorations—in this case curious patterns featuring
the heads of kings in (and extending from) floral designs. I’m not sure what to make of those.
But in Tepoztlán everything leads back and up to the
mountains, and the highlight of the church was its mirador room, an open-air
gallery whose arched windows framed the eternal green glory of the landscape.
There was a gentleman occupying the mirador with a telescope
pointed at the Tepozteco pyramid, from here a microscopic square breaking the
cauliflower crust of the distant jungly ridge. I
didn’t need to look.
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