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Friday, August 4, 2017

A Day in Tepoztlán - Hike to Tepozteco / the Dominican Ex-Convent

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

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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