Once you get off the cuotas—the toll roads—driving in Mexico becomes an adventure. For one thing, you're more likely to be held up for extortion by the police. Most corrupt in my experience are the cops in the State of Mexico. I have driven through that state four times now, and I have been stopped three of those times, threatened with impoundment of my car. This trip to Tepoztlán was no exception.

For another, you get lost. The number and accuracy of directional signs is improving, but I usually wind up asking for directions several times on a long stretch. At the small town of Santa Martha, near the border between the states of Mexico and Morelos, we asked about the road to Cuernavaca en route to Tepoztlán.

Santa Martha is a sweet town with friendly people. We were given good directions by a group of smiling taxi drivers just like we have in so many other little pueblas. What made Santa Martha stand out for me, though, was its church.

Architecturally speaking, it's not particularly pleasing. Absent the bell towers, the design is more suited to a warehouse. But its appearance is nonetheless arresting. I screeched to a stop when it came into view.

What is it about this building that caught my attention? For one thing, there's the color. Bricks don't come in that shade of red. A close look revealed that the church had been painted red, and the mortar lines, white. Also unusual, the crosses atop the bell towers support solar collectors, even though CFE power lines run to the building. Isn't that sacrilegious or something?

Over the gate to the church courtyard, someone mounted a large image of the Virgin Mary rendered in neon tubing. She's carrying a torch, a symbol I'm not familiar with. More oddly, she's depicted standing on what appears to be an outline of the State of Morelos.

The decorations on the church doors are a marvel—a riot of plastic flowers. Plastic ornaments usually strike me an abominations, affronts to my sensibilities, but here the effect is somehow pleasing.

In preparing these images for posting, I corrected keystone distortion (the effect that makes buildings look narrower at the top than at the bottom) and camera tilt. Only after I had completed the work, I realized that I had inadvertently removed the church's most endearing characteristic. The whole building is out of plumb. Check how the roof line and the beam immediately beneath fall at different slopes.

This place of worship apparently was built by community members who weren't skilled in construction techniques. Well, the lines may be skewed, but as a symbol of the faith and devotion of the residents of Santa Martha, this building is perfect.

No visit to a town is complete, in my opinion, without a visit to its mercado. Tepoztlán has a good one, entered through a gate adorned with a remarkable mosaic depicting Mexico's history, in the manner of so many muralists.

Instead of tiles or pieces of glass, this mural is made of seeds and beans. The detail shows an Aztec ball player.

As in almost every mercado, the bulk of the place contains food vendors.

The old man with his back to the camera had food on his mind. He asked the woman on the right for some. He comes here every day for a handout of tortillas and whatever else vendors are willing to give him. Nobody goes hungry in Mexico, they say.

This woman sells grilled chicken. You can see the flames from her grill just below the edge of the table. She flings the carcasses around with abandon—a real eye-catcher.

Toña's Carniceria specializes in pork. Ropes of yummy-looking chorizo hang on the right; not-so-yummy-looking pigs' heads hang on the left. I love the mascot on the sign: a smiling pig holding the severed head of one of his brothers, a knife in his right hand.

Gross-out time. Loops of small intestine hang on the left. I find them tasty when boiled in lard. Tasty, that is, if you don't think about them too much. On the right, we have what seems to be the trachea and lungs of a larger animal, perhaps a steer. I don't know if these are tasty or not. Between the two there's a black, organ-like thing hanging. From its appearance, I can't imagine it would be tasty.

Room-temperature meat display somehow doesn't make me as nervous as it might in California. Maybe that's because meat usually goes from slaughter to stomach in a single day in Mexico. No plastic wrapped cuts fermenting in pink liquid in some cold case, their pull dates ominously near.

Many of the food stalls serve meals to be eaten right in the mercado. Tacos, huaraches, gorditos, I found everything to be delicious. In many ways the food served here is every bit as good if not better than that served in regular restaurants.

This plastic colander is filled with flor de calabeza—squash blossoms. One of my favorite meals is quesadillas de flor de calabeza: squash blossoms cooked with chopped onions and seasonings, then spooned into a flour tortilla filled with melted Manchego cheese. Usually two is all I can manage, but I always wish I had room for another.

A large number of non-food items is sold in the mercado. Here a young patron evaluates a potential purchase—a handbag.

Embroidered huipiles (I think this is a huipil) add color to the scene.

I wanted to buy a large turned wooden salad bowl from this vendor of handmade wood items, but somehow I was never at his place just before I was planning to return to my hotel, up a few steep blocks from the mercado. I didn't want to lug bulky items around with me.

I don't have the temperament to sit in a stall or a store all day and sell stuff. I wonder how people manage to do it. Clearly the vegetable lady and the ice cream man find the whole thing tedious, napping as they are between customers.

Other activities kept me from giving Tepoztlán as much attention as I wanted to, so I'll be back, if only for a workshop or retreat. There's a lot to do packed into this small town. Well equipped to serve visitors. a surprisingly large number of them on weekends, it still manages to retain the character of a working Mexican town and has a strong indigene presence.

Located less than an hour from Mexico City, and given its charm, Tepoztlán attracts a sophisticated and affluent crowd of weekenders. Catering to them, tourist-class restaurants have sprung up, and I ran into some that are noteworthy.

My favorite is Los Colorines. The name means bright colors. It also refers to a type of flowering tree.

Vivid colors are what greet you when you step through the violet and pink doors.

All those colors somehow combine into a unified theme. The effect is warm and cozy.

The cuisine is traditional Mexican with a twist. Some dishes are served from a counter full of cazuelas, the flared pottery bowls pictured below.

(I like the purple and white papel picado, left over from Holy Week.)

I ordered capeadas—vegetables mixed in a fritter batter and deep fried. OK, OK. Heart patients shouldn't eat them. But these were too unusual to pass up.

Several varieties were on offer: cauliflower, sweet corn. I wouldn't have paid the saturated fat price for these. Then I spotted capeada de flor de colorín, and I was lost. The coral tree, currently in bloom in central Mexico, has brilliant blossoms, and I've occasionally seen them for sale as a foodstuff. This would be my chance to try some.

I ordered one other kind: capeada de huazontle. Huazantle is a green that tastes vaguely like broccoli. Only the tiny flower buds are eaten. The leaves are tough and the stems are woody.

I'm told that huazontle fritters are sometimes prepared by separating the buds from the stems and mixing them into the batter. But real men eat them with stems still attached. You pick up your capeada by the stem end and scrape the flower buds off with your lower teeth, like you would eat an artichoke.

The capeadas de huazontle were tasty. The capeadas de colorines didn't seem to have any flavor other than that of deep-fried batter.

For something completely different, La Diferencia offers a variety of Greek, Italian, North African and other dishes, all excellent. They specialize in fondue. A mother-daughter team owns and operates the restaurant; delightful people. Some friends ate their dinners at La Diferenca exclusively. The only downside is that it tends to be closed except on weekends, because midweek traffic is thin.

Finally, we have La Vista, an upscale place offering Mexican and American dishes, all well prepared. Most of the seating is outside on a terrace with a wonderful backdrop of mountains; hence, La Vista. I included a view of the terrace in my April 23 post.

Misspellings and typographical errors often creep into the English-language versions of Mexican restaurant menus. La Vista's contains an item, "Nachos with beans, Oaxaca cheese and crack."

Hmmm. Surely not what it sounds like. I never did work out what the third ingredient was.

Los Colorines and La Diferencia are inexpensive. For finer dining at higher prices, La Vista is a good bet, but not on weekends unless you have reservations. All three are excellent.

What we're looking at here is a view of Ehecatepetl, Hill of the Wind, one of the names of the place where the ancient pyramid, El Tepozteco is located. The window through which we're viewing the mountain belongs to another religious building, Tepoztlán Convent.

This 16th-century convent was built by the Dominican Order. It was occupied by the builders for a couple hundred years after which it passed through a number of hands including Napoleon III's troops, and the military during the Mexican Revolution.

In 1939 it was placed in the care of INAH (National Institute of Anthropology and History). Subsequently it moldered for decades. Stunning frescos deteriorated—a loss of priceless cultural and historical images.

More recently, INAH has undertaken restoration projects at many historical sites. Work at Tepoztlán Convent began in 1993, and today, large parts of the buildings and its murals have been brought back to life.

Besides elaborate repeating patterns, some of the frescos depict scenes. In this nicho, we see a representation of Calvary, along with what looks like an open tomb and a sarcophagus.

The running patterns include motífs mysterious to me. Here two mermen-kings hold a tablet containing a vase of flowers inscribed "Maria". What is the symbology here?

Portraits of unidentified church figures, undoubtedly important ones, surround a doorway leading back to the convent entrance, where the only admission requirement is signing a guestbook.

Little remains of objects and structural details indicating people actually lived here. A pair of crude sinks are all that remain of the kitchens that once fed scores.

Maintenance, once neglected, seems now to be in good hands. Inside and out, the place shows the results of frequent cleanings.

A museum associated with the convent houses colonial-era artifacts, some of them quite good. A bookstore and gift shop occupies a room. Little of what is sold there is relevant to the convent, but many good books and art objects are for sale. I acquired a fine book of poems by Pablo Neruda.

INAH is making wonderful restorations of Mexico's historical sites. Emphasis seems to be on historical accuracy and authenticity. Mexico, once a country of dusty, overgrown ruins, is acquiring places that tell us much more about what life was like 500 years ago.

Two of my friends tell me that they got their start as expatriates living in Mexico in the town of Tepoztlán. For decades, the place has been a magnet for artists and other creative types, new agers, unreconstructed hippies, spiritual seekers and the mildly insane. In recent years, the wealthy have followed the more creatively-inclined pioneers. Today it serves as a weekend playground for well-heeled residents of Mexico City.

The vast majority of Tepoztlán's 35,000 residents, though, are ordinary Mexican people living quiet lives. They attend masses at one of the many churches.

From my hotel, I can hear the masses being said over public address systems set up for overflow crowds. Sunday school classes are held in church courtyards, in the near-perfect subtropical climate.

The bells in the foreground all have large cracks. In the Sixteenth Century, large bronze objects often contained flaws, unsurprising given the state of metallurgy at the time.

Images of the Virgin abound here as in most Mexican towns. A non-Catholic, I've accepted her comforting presence and miss seeing her image when I visit el norte.

Tension between the sacred and the secular exists here, too. A poster promotes birth control with a cartoon figure, "The Wandering Condom".

Elegant restaurants cater to visitors. I've eaten better meals here than in most San Miguel restaurants. But tourists usually come on weekends. I photographed this restaurant on a weekday—typically devoid of patrons. It was jammed on Sunday.

Everywhere you go in Tepoztlán, the surrounding craggy mountains provide a dramatic backdrop.

More modest eateries cater to ordinary people. I enjoyed the food I ate in places like this every bit as much as the fare in the ritzy joints.

The big chain markets—Gigante, Soriana, Wal-Mart—have been kept out by fierce community resistance. The Super Tepoz, below, is the biggest supermarket in town.

Some businesses are tiny. This mercer sells his ribbons from a shop; no wider than the doorway.

The Similar Pharmacy reminds me of Bob's Pretty Good Bank from Garrison Keillor's Lake Woebegone. The motto at Bob's is "Never a borrower or a lender be." The motto at the Similar Pharmacy is "The same but cheaper."

Many internet cafés are scattered throughout town, catering to younger people

The anime image in the poster in this cybercafé warrants a closer look. She's an iPod, complete with Apple logo and control wheel!

From internet technology to ancient hand weaving techniques. Men who reweave rush seats ply their craft on sidewalks, not in shops. Customers invite them to come to their homes where they take chairs outside to renew them.

This man is one of your high-end re-weavers. You can tell because he's sitting on an upended plastic crate instead of the curb like most of the others do.

In Tepoztlán, garbage is collected using hand trucks with steel drums attached. Cuts down on congestion caused by garbage trucks stopping every block for fifteen minutes while neighbors bring out their trash. Plus it employs a lot of people. San Miguel Mayor Jesús Correa please take note.

In the vicinity of the central plaza, tourists like me wander around with digital cameras glued to their foreheads. New age devotees get their bodies massaged, their chockras aligned, and their colons cleansed. Spiritual seekers attend retreats. 95% of the people here don't care about any of that. They eat cecina (dried salted beef) in the mercado and plan their daughters' quincianeras (fifteenth birthday parties). They live peacefully in their beautiful town, the quality of their lives perhaps better than ours who live north of the border.

One reason for visiting Tepoztlán is to climb up to El Tepozteco, the ruins of a pyramid built in the 12th or 13th Century by early Aztecs. The monument is dedicated to Ometochtli-Tepoxtécatl, god of pulque (an alcoholic fermented maguey drink), fertility and abundance. Today, people make the difficult climb up Ehecatepetl, the mountain where the pyramid is located, to satisfy their own particular spiritual longings.

Walking north out of Tepoztlán, city gives way to country, and the street becomes lined with scores of vendors, some offering souvenirs and handcrafts, but most selling food and drink. Fluids are important because the climb is hot and arduous, and hikers cannot obtain water along the way. I bought two liters: they barely lasted till I reached the summit.

Vendors' tarpaulins create a welcome tunnel of shade. I once thought the ubiquitous booths that spring up next to important archeological sites and historical monuments were a desecration. Today I welcome their presence. Hungry? Thirsty? Forgot your hat or jacket? No need to do without. The little shops along the way are inviting, comforting. How much friendlier would be the mall between the Lincoln and Washington monuments if it were lined with kiosks selling fresh fruit cups, paletas and aguas de sabor?

The path to the pyramid consists of a crude stairway. You have to climb 400 meters of steps. It's like ascending to the observation platform of the Empire State Building in the stairwell, except the Empire State Building isn't as high and the steps aren't as treacherous.

Oh yeah, keep in mind you're climbing at mile-high altitude, so you need a good cardiovascular system. A sign at the bottom warns people with heart problems not to attempt the ascent. So of course, even though I have a scarred heart and an implanted defibrillator, I took the sign as a challenge, not a warning. I set off to prove I could do it. Dumb, I guess.

The stairway ascends through clefts in rocks where a seasonal creek runs. In this view, you can just make out part of the town of Tepoztlán

The trail ascends through pleasant woodlands. I would have enjoyed them more if I hadn't been gasping for breath and seeing spots before my eyes.

Pictured below is the last fifty feet of the climb. The building at the top of the stairway is—you guessed it—a refreshment stand.

What appears to be rubble here are actually walls built to support a score of narrow switchbacks. Any steeper, and you'd need ropes and pitons.

A fit, young person can make the climb in 45 minutes. I needed an hour and a half because of stops to catch my breath. For all that effort, this is what I got.

If you are looking for a spectacular, or even a mildly interesting archeological site, you'll be disappointed. El Tepozteco is small and most of the carvings and paint are long gone. You can cover the site in five minutes. But nobody visits the pyramid for sightseeing. At least smart people don't. They come to experience whatever energy exists here. They come for a spiritual experience, perhaps for some kind of enlightenment.

People sit and meditate, or pray, or just gaze at the view for an hour or two. One man blew notes on a conch shell. I sat and tried to feel the presence of the old gods that once inhabited this place.

Some visitors came to talk on their cell phones. Go figure. Before I get too superior about telephones, I have to admit that I called Paul (El Guapo) from up here (he was at the beach in Manzanillo) so I could share the experience with him.

To climb the pyramid itself, you pay a $35 peso admission fee at this ticket office. Heaven help anyone who makes the climb without bringing enough money to pay it.

The ticket takers, the snack stand employees, the maintenance employees make the climb every day. They are thin and look fit. I forgot to ask how all those bottles of water and Coca Cola at the snack stand got to the summit. I think they were packed in on the backs of people. Parts of the trail seem too steep and narrow for mules.

Site workers need at least one meal during their shifts, and nobody in Mexico thinks a ham sandwich is a proper lunch. The midday meal is supposed to be hot. Here a crude fireplace and a comal constitute a kitchen where proper meals can be prepared. I see this arrangement all over the country, especially at construction sites.

Mexican people are more energetic and strong than their norteamericano neighbors. This toddler was carried up the mountain, as were several others. I was hauling just my Nikon SLR and managed to injure my back.

Maybe this little girl will forget to pick up her dinosaur (on the ground next to her right foot). What might future archeologists think if they found it in another thousand years? I wonder if they'll attach too much significance to it: a ritual image, a shaman's fetish, an offering to the gods.

I wonder if we get any of this stuff right. Signs tell us priests lived here. What if they were just rich guys, living in a posh view neighborhood?

As I sat on the pyramid, resting for the descent (really tough on the quads), none of this mattered. I had a couple of hours in a high place, allowing my spirit to join with all of yours. Which was why I made the climb.

Christopher Reynolds of the Los Angeles Times writes, "Who knew Mexico had its own Sedona?" The small colonial town of Tepoztlán, just one hour south of Mexico City, certainly fits that description.

Tepoztlán is sited in a narrow valley, the topography of which seems to focus spiritual energy in a way similar to Sedona or Big Sur. Steep, unusually shaped mountains high overhead, early morning calls of hundreds of roosters, a rising sun glowing through mist cause consciousness to shift in an inexplicable way.

Before the Spanish arrived, Tepoztlán was home to a Náhuatl-speaking group of Aztecs who built El Tepozteco pyramid high in the mountains overlooking the present-day town. Built to honor Ometochtli-Tepoxtécatl, the god of the intoxicating drink pulque, fertility and harvest, today pilgrims make the trek up the hundreds of steps from the valley floor to the pyramid on their own spiritual quests.

Tepoztlán is believed to be the birthplace of the feathered serpent god Quetzalcóatl, whose image has been adopted by the city government.

Many residents are of indigenous descent, and take great pride in maintaining prehispanic traditions. Even the graffiti has an Aztec flavor.

In 1995, the indigenous people of Tepoztlán discovered that their mayor had secretly sold out to a developer that wanted to build a large hotel and golf course complex. The people occupied city hall and ran the Mayor out of town. Today, despite development pressure to meet the demands of middle class visitors from Mexico City, Tepoztlán has been able to maintain its small-town character.

—§—

Among the scores of American and European expats who have arrived [in Tepoztlán] in recent years, many are of the New Age/holistic/herbal persuasion, spiritual seekers eager to keep ancient rituals alive alongside imported ones. So now you can get your chakras harmonized and ions cleansed just down the street from where you get your fresh guacamole and pollo en mole.

—Los Angeles Times, November 1, 2007

Alternative medicine practitioners, psychics and spiritualists abound here. I have never seen such a concentration of such offerings anywhere else.

I find it difficult to buy into the concept of a photo of my aura. Too easy to fake with a light leak in the camera. Ionic detoxification looks just plain gross. The photos on the sign display time lapse photos of a really bad pair of feet, the cleaning fluid turning progressively more yellow, with brownish fragments floating in it.

Where New Age people congregate, reminders of India pop up. Below we have the Govinda Traditional Hindu Vegetarian Restaurant.

Lakshmi offers clothing made in India, unexpected in Mexico.

A lapidary shop advertises ovoid stones using a Sanskrit word I first read in the Kama Sutra: Lingam means penis.

Tepoztlán is reputed to be the birthplace of pulque, a fermented liquid I have heard described as "alcoholic snot". This shop offers homemade pulque made in the tradition of the proprietor's grandfather.

At one time, drinks were sold from sidewalk kiosks the way hurricanes are sold on Bourbon Street. Rowdy young people from Mexico City got drunk and caused problems. Also, some indigenous people had difficulty handling readily available alcohol, and so public consumption was outlawed. This sign warns residents and visitors alike the police will arrest people who break this law.

Tepoztlán attracts a cultured and sophisticated crowd. Artists hang out in cafés. Frequent concerts are held. Last month, a production of Franz Kafka's The gorilla was staged at the civic auditorium—something I wouldn't expect to see outside of Berkeley.

Apparently no further productions are planned for a while. Some sort of construction is blocking the theater entrance. The work involves breaking concrete and digging an enormous hole. All of it is being done by hand which means it'll take a long time. Meanwhile, untidy heaps of escombro (rubble) block the sidewalk—a reassuring sign that construction of public works is performed the same way all over Mexico.

Tepoztlán hosts many facilities for retreats and workshops, making it vaguely reminiscent of Esalen in Big Sur as a place where people can explore consciousness expansion and spiritual development. And the town has even more to offer, which I'll cover in future posts.

Chauvinism can take many forms. Having come to love my adopted country, Mexico, I want to think I am free of bias. Lorena Reyes, a reader, identifies one of my blind spots. Here's what she wrote:

HI i was searching in internet and found you blog,is very nice that you give you point about our culture, i was to U.S.A in december and i really i cant understand why the people choise death in the desert,i think you pictures are goods, but i think like mexican that  i would  like if you want show our country,show place more prety and moderns, like Monterrey,Guadalajara, Veracruz,that show that in mexico Can have progress if you work a lot, not only the poor side,cause in  U.S A. i Looked many poor people and not latin,is my point. thank you.

Lorena is exactly right. And eloquent. I responded in my inadequate Spanish to put our communication on an equal footing, asking her if she would allow me to quote her email in this post, a request to which she graciously consented.

Many poor people do live in the United States, but they represent only a part of the story. Fifth Avenue, Silicon Valley and Beverly Hills need to be included. Looking back through old posts, I see that my subjects often are poverty, people in traditional dress, cultural oddities deriving from inadequate education. Missing are observations about the progress this country has made, the emergence of a working democracy, the growing middle class of well-paid professionals.

I'm taking Lorena's observation to heart. In the future, I'll include more posts that deal with the accomplishments of modern Mexico, in addition to those topics that seem different and noteworthy to northern eyes.

I'll begin with a look at the work of helicopter pilot Oscar Ruiz, who has taken a wonderful series of Aerial Photographs of Mexico City. I've posted two below, but I encourage you to follow the link and look at this work: there's nothing like it anywhere else.

Oscar identifies these as more than three hundred low income homes in Ixtapaluca. He says the entire complex has more than 10,000!

It's hard to believe this is a real photograph, but it is. More importantly, it shows that Mexico is a mature country that is able to provide subsidized housing of high quality on a huge scale.

Mexico is home to some of the world's greatest architects and has a wealth of interesting structures, like this apartment building.

Clearly, this is not low income housing. But I suspect that apartments like this are affordable to professional and managerial workers, suggesting that the historical imbalance in wealth distribution, while still severe, is beginning to moderate.

Here in San Miguel de Allende, we have an apartment tower under construction. Several modern condominium projects have been completed. A huge Nick Faldo golf and residence complex is being built on the north edge of town. Hell, we now even have a Starbucks right on the Jardín. Not everyone is happy about all this, especially immigrants from the north who came here to see the charm of women washing clothes outdoors in concrete tubs at the lavendería pública. But maybe someone should ask those washerwomen if they wouldn't prefer to use a modern washer and dryer in a nice condo somewhere. We all know what their answer would be.