Jake Garrett

From one magic town, to another. Tepoztlán is two and a half hours away from Taxco by bus, not including the wait when changing (again) in Cuernavaca. The town, which very much feels like a village, is on the south side of several national parks that stop Mexico City expanding further south. If Taxco was the city of silver, Tepoztlán could be the community of copper. Not because its full of craft shops selling copper trinkets, but because its name could translate to “place of abundant copper”. Though, I must admit, that is contested.  

Tepoztlán is a simple little town. It has a small central area with shops and hostels and restaurants. The best gordita, a cheesy Mexican dish, I ate in the country was in a very popular restaurant here. Go to Antojitos Magicos if you don’t believe me. Despite the tourists the town feels authentic. The centre is pretty, with scenic green mountains looming nearby, but it’s also a little run down.  There’s plenty of street art and graffiti, the church looks on brink of collapse, the buildings are a mishmash of styles. The whitewashed, red roofed standardization of Taxco it is not. It’s not ugly though, it feels sincere.  

There is not a long list of things to do in the town, but I felt I had to include it as a potential destination because I enjoyed it so much. There is small archaeological museum, Museo de Arte Prehispánico Carlos Pellicer, a famous ice cream shop with a large variety of traditional and peculiar flavoured ice creams, Tepoznieves Matriz, and several small pulquerias (Places that sell Puque, the pre-Hispanic drink I first mentioned in Oaxaca). If you still haven’t tried pulque I recommend you give it a go here, as some people, for reasons that will become clear soon, say that pulque was invented in Tepoztlán.  

The town does have one major attraction that draws in the crowds though. If you were thinking that Tepoztlán could be a sleepy little stop off to rest in before plunging into Mexico City, this might ruin that plan. Up, high above the city, not visible from the streets below, is a small Aztec temple. A temple dedicated to Tepoztēcatl, the Aztec God of pulque. The temple and surrounding ruins are not all that special on their own, but the views from their vantage point are wonderful, and the trail that leads to them is pretty spectacular. It’s a steep, stone path, that twists up between sheer cliffs, song birds sing encouragement from the trees as you climb. The last section of the trail is a staircase, wedged in a crevice between two huge rock faces. All the time you’re climbing, you are having to think to yourself, how on earth did the Aztecs build a temple up here?