Cancún is the most popular of 12 national tourist destinations this summer, with over 150,000 domestic and international arrivals per week. (Shutterstock)
Cancún is expecting 150,000 visitors per week over the summer high season, making it the most popular of 12 national tourist destinations monitored by the Tourism Ministry (Sectur).
The Quintana Roo beach town registered 73% hotel occupancy in the second week of July, down from 82% in the first week of this month, but still beating Los Cabos, Puerto Vallarta, Villahermosa and Acapulco. Occupancy has been at over 75% for much of the first half of 2023 and is expected to boom again over the holiday season.
Tourists swim and lounge on a Cancún beach. (David Vives/Unsplash)
“You can see that a good season is coming, and we hope so because the last few weeks have been average,” tour operator Jesús Zambrano told the PorEsto newspaper. “But based on the hotels’ numbers, many people are expected to arrive, and I hope that we all do well.”
Cancún has long been one of Mexico’s most popular destinations, renowned for its white-sand beaches, crystalline warm waters and vibrant nightlife. Domestic tourists make up the largest proportion of visitors, followed by U.S. citizens and Canadians.
Like many tourist destinations, Cancún was hard-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, but it bounced back quickly,closing 2022 with a higher number of annual arrivals than in 2019. These numbers have continued to grow in 2023.
Cancún remains popular despite its recent struggles with unsightly sargassum seaweed (which is forecast to be at low levels over the summer) and anincrease in violence linked to organized crime.
The presence of law enforcement authorities has become increasingly common on Cancún beaches due to a recent uptick in violence involving both local and international beachgoers. (Elizabeth Ruiz/Cuartoscuro)
Commenting on the upcoming tourist season, the mayor of Cancún, Ana Peralta stressed that a special security operation has been in place since July 14, which reinforces preventive surveillance to combat crime and other disturbances throughout the summer season.
A team of 21 lifeguards is also employed to monitor the beaches and ensure the safety of vacationers in the water.
Wearing space suits, kids emerge from the dome in a simulated Martian environment. (All photos courtesy of Katya Echazarreta Foundation)
Thanks to Katya Echazarreta, the first Mexican woman to visit space, 100 Mexican youths are participating in a unique space camp.
The event, which consists of workshops where the 13- to 15-year olds learn about various disciplines related to aeronautics and space travel, is being organized in and around the city of Guadalajara by the Katya Echazarreta Foundation under the direction of education specialist Manuel Maciel.
Mexican astronaut Katya Echazarreta at the Space Camp inauguration: “I promise to create the opportunities kids need.”
“This year, most of our kids are from the state of Jalisco,” Maciel said, “but we have a few visitors from Monterrey, Chiapas, Morelos and a few other places. We are very happy to be holding the first space camp in Mexico and Latin America … and at the same time, we’re setting a precedent: that we are capable of carrying out this kind of training right here in our own country.”
The space camp project was born from Echazarreta’s concern for children in Mexico.
“One of her priorities,” says Maciel, “is to give kids opportunities that she and many other Mexicans never had, opportunities to get into STEM areas.”
“Dr. Katya wasted no time in turning her ideas into something concrete,” Maciel added. “After a week of workshops and experiences, the participants are capable of carrying out a simulated mission.
Studying robotics at the Lunaria Planetarium and Interactive Science Museum.
Named “Mars Mission 2023,” the space camp manages to combine the fun of a summer camp with the benefits of true, hands-on learning.
The program is running for four weeks (July 10–August 4), and each week, 25 children housed in a Guadalajara hotel are bussed off to various sites each morning.
On Mondays, participants go to the PLAi Tower in Guadalajara’s Ciudad Creativa Digital (Creative Digital City), famous for offering cutting-edge workshops in robotics, coding, virtual reality, audiovisual production, computer-controlled laser cutting and more.
On Tuesdays, they visit the Pan American University of Guadalajara for a full day of activities, studying everything from Martian rocks to maintaining mental health while in space.
Katya Echazarreta and Manuel Maciel with trainer José Ernesto García, a robotics whiz kid from Bolivia.
The following day, the kids attend a private flying school in Zapopan called Leap Sky Aviation Training. Here, they operate flight simulators and learn to use Leap Sky’s Curiosity Rover, which is operated by “immersive virtual reality.” They are also introduced to aerodynamics and how to design food for space flights.
On Thursdays, the kids head out for a full day of activities at Planetario Lunaria in Guadalajara, a combination planetarium and interactive science museum that introduces visitors to everything from astronomy and chemistry to biomechanics.
On the last day, Friday, the participants are taken to a large sports center at Ixtlahuacán de Membrillos, located near the shore of Lake Chapala.
“The interior of this building,” says Maciel, “has been transformed into a simulated Martian landscape: the ground, the sky, the dust, the rocks, everything.”
Trainers in gray work with space campers in blue at Guadalajara’s PLAi Tower.
Here, the kids don real space suits and are challenged to carry out a series of “missions” with the guidance of a group of professionals. It’s about as close as you could ever get to Mars without leaving Earth.
The children participating in the space camp were almost all chosen by individual municipalities of the state of Jalisco. Each municipality developed its own criteria. Some held a lottery, and others asked the kids to make a video. The camp is free to the children who are chosen and their families.
During the second week of the program, I asked Maciel what kind of results his team was seeing.
“You know,” he said, “these children are immersed 24/7 in a series of practical experiences linked to different disciplines, with a chance to interact with kids like themselves and work in teams. They are really learning in a very practical way.”
Kids learn about aerodynamics at Leap Sky Aviation Training.
“As director of this program and as an educator, I can assure you that at the end of the week, the first group left here totally fascinated, convinced they had lived an experience that they never dreamed they could possibly have with respect to technology, robotics, programming and other themes related to space,” he recounted.
“All this tells me we’re doing a good job and that the beneficiaries are los jovenes, the youth. Yes, I think we are succeeding,” he said.
Maciel insisted that much of the project’s success must be credited to the team that gives the workshops.
“[The instructors] are mostly students at the Instituto Politécnico,” he told me, “and they have great energy. Many of them have international experience, and many are leaders in robotics and mechatronics.
Wearing space suits, kids emerge from the dome in a simulated Martian environment.
“We hope these experiences will sow the seeds of new vocations; we hope many of these young people will become future engineers and technology developers — and maybe even astronauts.”
Echazarreta was born and raised in Guadalajara and moved with her family to California at the age of seven. While working as a full-time engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, she was chosen out of more than 7,000 applicants to fly to space with Blue Origin. On June 4, 2022, she became the first Mexican-born woman to visit space.
Since then, Echazarreta has dedicated her time to getting children interested in space science. At the inauguration of the Mars Mission 2023 Space Camp, she spoke of the subject most dear to her heart since she went to space:
“The children of Mexico asked me a question,” she said. “They asked, ‘How can I do what you did? What do I have to do?’ I replied to those children: ‘You will have to study hard, and you will have to work hard because this is not easy. But I will promise you something. I promise that while you study, while you work, while you do your best, I will do the same.”
The first group of 25 Mexican teens are off to Space Camp.
Echazarreta told the children that she would be working to create the opportunities they needed.
“And when you are ready, the opportunities are going to be there waiting for you,’ she told them.
The space camp running this month in Jalisco is the fruit of that promise.
“We have just succeeded in setting up a space camp in Mexico,” she told the children currently participating in this month’s event. “We are creating real possibilities for you to go into space.”
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, since 1985. His most recent book is Outdoors in Western Mexico, Volume Three. More of his writing can be found on his blog.
The facility being fought over is the Sac Tun company's marine terminal in Punta Venado, Quintana Roo, near Playa del Carmen. Sac Tun is a subsidiary of Vulcan Materials. (Sac Tun)
President López Obrador said Thursday that the government would offer 6.5 billion pesos (US $389.7 million) to United States construction aggregates company Vulcan Materials for its property on the Caribbean coast of Quintana Roo.
In March, Mexico forcibly occupied Vulcan’s marine terminal on the property, owned by subsidiary Sac Tun, so that the Mexican company Cemex could unload a shipment of cement there. Cemex and Sac Tun eventually reached a temporary agreement to continue cement deliveries there, but the incident added to already high tensions between Vulcan and the government. (Internet)
He said that the Ministry of Finance had appraised the company’s 2,400-hectare property at 6.5 billion pesos. Vulcan operated a limestone quarry on the site near Playa del Carmen for about 30 years, but the current government shut it down last year due to alleged environmental damage and the company’s alleged failure to obtain required permits.
On Thursday, López Obrador said that Vulcan “shouldn’t reject the offer we’re making.”
“What is the offer? We’ll buy everything from them, we’ll pay immediately and we’ll turn this part, 2,000 hectares, the largest area of the land, into a natural protected area,” López Obrador said.
“They’ll feel satisfied, they’ll be able to say, ‘we’re contributing to stopping climate change.’ And we’ll declare a natural protected area and we’ll only keep [one part] to carry out an ecotourism development … with a … cruise ship pier,” he said.
President López Obrador on Thursday appeared to make a veiled threat of seizing the 2,400-hectare property without compensation if Vulcan Materials didn’t accept the government’s offer before the end of his term in September 2024. (Presidencia)
The amount the government intends to offer for the Punta Venado property is well below a US $1.9 billion valuation included in papers filed by Vulcan before an international arbitration panel.
According to an Associated Press report, López Obrador “left open a vague threat of seizing the property” if the government’s offer isn’t accepted before he leaves office at the end of September 2024.
“Before I leave [office], this is going to be resolved, one way or another,” he said.
López Obrador also said that as soon as an agreement is reached with Vulcan, the company would have to withdraw complaints it has filed with the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), which is part of the World Bank Group. Vulcan filed a complaint with the ICSID in 2018 over a disagreement with the previous federal government.
In addition to shutting down the company’s quarry in May 2022, the federal Environment Ministry prohibited Vulcan from exporting stone that had been used in construction projects in the United States and Mexico. The company is seeking US $1.5 billion in compensation, arguing that it had all the required permits to operate its quarry and export the extracted gravel.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in March that Mexican authorities’ takeover of Vulcan’s marine terminal could have a “chilling effect” on future U.S. investment in Mexico.
Undisputed ownership of the marine terminal would allow the Mexican government to ship gravel and cement into the country much more efficiently for the Maya Train project. (Government of Mexico)
The takeover allowed building materials company Cemex to unload cargo at the terminal. Vulcan and Cemex reached an agreement in late March that allowed the latter to use the former’s facility.
If the government’s bid to buy Vulcan’s property succeeds, it could use the marine terminal to bring gravel and cement into the country for the Maya Train railroad project, which is scheduled to start operations in late 2023. The government has imported crushed stone known as ballast from Cuba for the project because there are no local suppliers of the material.
AP reported that ships bringing the stone to Mexico have had to dock in Sisal on the Gulf of Mexico side of the Yucatán Peninsula because the only private freight dock on the Caribbean side capable of receiving such shipments is that owned by Vulcan.
The distance between Sisal and Cuba is considerably longer than that between Punta Venado and the Caribbean island nation. Ballast arriving in Sisal has been trucked some 300 km to some Maya Train construction sites, AP said.
Los Cabos has now become the most popular place to rent a short-term house or apartment, says the property management company Alterhome. (Christopher Michel/Wikimedia Commons)
According to data from the property management company Alterhome, Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, now beats Mexico City in revenue from short-term rentals.
While Mexico City generates US $290 million per year, Los Cabos generates US $320 million. Together, both markets could generate around US $600 million per year. Along with Mexico City and Los Cabos, Cancún and Tulum in Quintana Roo are next as Mexico’s largest markets for short-term rentals on the Spanish platform.
Founded by siblings Chema and Patricia González, Alterhome manages more than 300 apartments for short-term rental — both to tourists and to companies — and seeks to grow that figure to 2,000 in 2025.
As part of a global expansion plan, the company arrived in Mexico in February 2023 with an investment portfolio of 1.4 million euros to deploy its business in 12 regions across the country. Its goal is to accommodate up to 12,000 travelers in its properties. In the near future, they plan to expand to Panama, Colombia and Miami.
“Mexico is a very large market that’s growing even more than the European one,” Chema, Alterhome’s CEO, told the newspaper El Economista in an interview. “With what is going on with nearshoring and the behavior of the peso against the dollar, years of good economy are forecast that will benefit vacation rentals.”
According to Chema, an average home in Cancún or Mexico City can generate an average annual income of US $33,000 through short-term rentals, even with a property manager taking a commission of 9% to 12%.
With Alterhomes, Chema said, anyone can benefit from the rental business by managing up to 100 homes in a year, even if they don’t own property.
“We have created technology that allows anyone to set up a business to manage from 30 to 100 homes in a year. To achieve this, we provide training and digital tools specialized in property management,” Chema said.
The Alterhome digital platform uses Big Data for strategic factors such as pricing, digital keys to access homes and agreements with OTAs (online travel agencies).
Short-term rentals are a profitable business, but they’ve also garnered complaints by local residents in places like Mexico City, who say these rentals have caused a decrease in traditional rental inventory as well as rent inflation.
In December 2022, Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum expressed her intention to regulate Airbnb in the city after concerns put forward by residents of neighborhoods that have experienced a rise in prices.
To fix the problem, Chema suggests regulation of the market to relieve the pressure on inventory and to “improve coexistence between neighbors and travelers.”
“Surely Mexico will come up with a similar regulation,” Chema concluded.
Looking for a way to fit a massage into your busy schedule or short vacation? Turns out there's an app for that. (Shutterstock)
In today’s fast-paced world, finding time to relax and unwind is essential for maintaining overall well-being. Fortunately, technology has made it easier than ever to enjoy massages and relaxation treatments in the comfort of your own home.
This article highlights some of the most popular apps available in Mexico that connect users with professional masseuses, offering a wide range of services for ultimate relaxation and rejuvenation.
Scape is an app that offers home massage services provided by carefully selected professional therapists. From relaxing and deep tissue massages to couples’ and prenatal massages, you can choose from sessions of 60 to 120 minutes.
Scape also uses massage oils created by experts from Natura Bissé, which offer aromatherapy benefits as well. So far, the app is only available in Mexico City, however, they intend to reach more cities across Mexico.
Zen To Go is the only technological platform for professional home massages in the Riviera Maya. They have expanded to cities such as Mexico City, Cancún, Playa del Carmen, and Puerto Aventuras. Zen To Go boasts a team of rigorously selected and certified therapists with over 9 years of experience. With this platform, you can conveniently, easily, and safely request a massage for a truly relaxing experience.
Relax brings their expert massage therapists to your doorstep within an hour in Mexico City. With operating hours from 8:00 AM to 9:00 PM, 365 days a year, Relax ensures you can unwind at your convenience. They offer seven types of massages, and two facials to address your body’s specific needs, as well as options for 60, 90, and 120 minute massage. Simply schedule an appointment through the app and let relaxation come to you.
On-demand massage apps have become a convenient and popular way to indulge in relaxation treatments at home for people on the go. With these three options above, residents across Mexico can easily access professional masseuses and can customize treatments to suit their preferences and needs.
Next time you need a massage or wish to unwind with a rejuvenating treatment, simply open one of these apps and book an appointment to bring relaxation to your door.
Major musical artists like Bad Bunny, left, and Peso Pluma, right, have songs that would be disqualified from public performance in Chihuahua city. (Internet)
Many reggaetón and corridos tumbados concerts — and any other musical or other kinds of performances that involve the denigration of women — are no longer be welcome in Chihuahua, under the argument that they promote gender violence in a municipality with high rates of the violence against women.
The city has implemented a new ban against performances with content denigrating women that carries a hefty fine for violators.
The reform to the Regulation of Amusements and Public Shows, promoted by councilwoman Patricia Ulate and approved by the Chihuahua city council on Wednesday, will apply to all events regulated by the municipality.
Artists likely to be affected include performers of the reggaetón and corridos tumbados genres, the bread and butter of well-known stars such as Peso Pluma and Bad Bunny. The corrido tumbado is an emerging style that fuses Mexican ballads with elements of reggaetón and hip-hop.
One of Mexico’s fastest-growing genres, corridos tumbados have drawn criticism for glorifying drug use and violence, including fromPresident López Obrador.
However, Ulate, who is head of the city commission on women, families and gender equality, stressed that Chihuahua’s reform “is not aimed at a particular genre,” but will apply to material denigrating women in any musical style and in any format, such as video.
She compared the move to a 2015 reform in Chihuahua, which banned public events from playing music that advocates crime, at a time of growing insecurity in the city. Popular musical act Los Tigres del Norte fell afoul of this law in 2017 and was fined.
Chihuahua city Councilwoman Patricia Ulate, who pursued the ban, says it is not aimed at any particular genre of music. (Twitter)
“Today, another of these harsh realities has motivated reform,” she said. “Chihuahua is one of the five municipalities in the state with a Gender Alert, declared due to high rates of structural violence against women. Any action that contributes to eradicating these circumstances counts.”
Breaking the new rules will result in fines of up to 1.2 million pesos (US $71,800), which will go to domestic violence shelters and women’s programs in the municipality.
Chihuahua is not the only Mexican city clamping down on music that promotes criminality or violence. In May, the Cancún city council banned public events from playing narcocorridos — a musical genre notorious for glamorizing drug traffickers — under similar reforms to the Regulation of Amusements and Public Shows.
“Every time there is an event like these, the reality is that there are attempts at violence,” Chihuahua City Council Secretary General Jorge Aguilar Osorio said at the time. “The municipal president [mayor] has instructed that events are not allowed where any form of violence is promoted.”
The peso fell to almost 18 to a dollar Friday morning before rebounding. (Shutterstock)
The Mexican peso appreciated on Friday morning to its strongest level since late 2015, reaching 16.62 to the US dollar before weakening slightly.
That position was an improvement of 26 centavos, or about 1.5%, for the peso compared to the USD:MXN rate of 16.88 at the close of trading on Thursday. One greenback was trading at 16.68 pesos at 10:30 a.m. Mexico City time, according to Bloomberg.
Analyst Gabriela Siller at Banco Base shared this graph on her Twitter page on Friday, asserting that if this trend continues, the peso “could reach 16.40 to the dollar this year.” (Gabriela Siller/Twitter)
The strengthening of the peso came after fresh data showed that the annual headline inflation rate in the United States slowed to 3% in June, the smallest year-over-year increase in consumer prices since March 2021.
The decrease in annual inflation from 3.8% in May – as shown on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index – increases the probability that the interest rate hike announced by the U.S. Federal Reserve this week was the final one in a tightening cycle that began in early 2022.
The Fed, which increased its funds rate by 25 basis points to a range of 5.25% to 5.5% on Wednesday, closely watches the PCE index.
Analysts cite the Bank of Mexico’s high benchmark interest rate – currently 11.25% – and the significant difference between that rate and that of the Fed as one factor in the current strength of the peso. Strong incoming flows of foreign capital and remittances are among the other factors cited.
Banco Base analyst Gabriela Siller said Friday that slower inflation in the United States and better-than-expected economic growth in the U.S., where GDP increased 2.4% in the April-June quarter, contributed to the weakening of the dollar and appreciation of the peso.
“What’s happening with the peso right now is due to weakness in the dollar, but also because of optimism surrounding the Mexican peso … and with this international investors keep buying Mexican pesos and it may keep appreciating,” she said.
Siller wrote on Twitter that the “inflow of foreign currencies to Mexico, the restrictive monetary policy of the Bank of Mexico and foreigners’ preference for investing in pesos is what has caused the appreciation.”
The latest strengthening of the peso comes three weeks after the US dollar dipped below 17 for the first time since 2015.
The peso has appreciated by around 15% this year after beginning 2023 at 19.5 to the dollar.
Children from Tlatlauquitepec, Puebla, participate in one of the Pueblo Mágico's many annual festivals. (Goverment of Mexico)
Don’t let the difficult-to-pronounce name deter you — because if we did that, we wouldn’t be able to visit half of Mexico; Tlatlauquitepec (Tlat-lau-key-tay-peck), Puebla, is an absolute gem.
Affectionately known as Tlatlauqui by the 9,400 or so inhabitants, this tiny pueblo is set around el Cerro del Cabezón, an area from which adventure-seekers can mountain bike, rappel, hike, and rock climb.
Puebla’s breathtaking Cerro del Cabezón. (Government of Mexico)
My friend and I arrived at Tlatlauquitepec after a more-than two-hour Uber ride from the picturesque city of Puebla, our jumping-off point, to a variety of Pueblos Mágicos still ripe for exploration.
We checked into Hotel San Jorge, perched on the side of a mountain with an unobstructed view of the aforementioned Cerro del Cabezón, if you don’t count the hazy mist of fog that gracefully drifts across the mountain range for several minutes most early mornings.
Inside this charming hotel are clean rooms, each with a sweeping vista, a museum of quirky local artifacts and a traditional Mexican-style kitchen from which a homemade, local breakfast is provided each morning. The hotel is surrounded by flowers, fruit trees and a lovely orchid garden. Arriving from CDMX, the abundance of fresh, crisp air is a real treat. The owners, Lolita and Jorge, are jolly and doting, as are their staff.
After dropping off our things, my friend and I immediately tucked into one of the very few restaurants in town. Terra Restaurant has an extensive menu, most of which we bypassed in favor of fish. Tlatlauqui is just two hours from the coast of Veracruz, so the seafood is fresh, bountiful, and so delicious that we returned the next day for more.
The writer learns to make traditional tlacoyos. (Bethany Platanella)
As we filled up on fried róbalo and copious tragos of mezcal, a guitar player strummed and sang Mexican classics. And then…it rained. Poured, in fact. From the covered porch where we dined we could enjoy the storm and fall deeply into this oh-so-romanticMexican moment.
After dinner, we strolled to the traditional zócalo (main square). There were a handful of casual eating establishments and, of course, a church. The town wasn’t buzzing, per se, but it was lovely nonetheless.
The next morning, I decided to take a cooking class while my friend wandered the local market. At La Cocina Tradicional “Doña Tere,” I learned how to make traditional tlacoyos, a pre-Hispanic snack of corn tortillas stuffed with delicious fillings like frijoles, habas (broad beans), or chicharrón (fried pork rinds). Doña Tere herself taught me how to knead the maiz, form the dough, stuff it and cook it on a comal — the traditional griddle on which many Mexican foods are prepared.
The number of tlacoyos I ate is none of your business, but I will admit that despite being stuffed to the gills, I proceeded to the zócalo in search of something sweet. What I found here was one of the best markets I’ve been to in Mexico.
The Thursday tianguis gathers vendors selling local produce collected from the top and bottom of the Sierra Madre Mountain range, which leads to a wide variety of fruits and veggies for purchase.
There is an entire section dedicated to fresh fish from Veracruz, which you can take home to cook or eat right there at the stand. It was absolutely brimming with locals, and my friend and I quickly realized that we were probably the only foreigners there (I loved it).
Tlatlauquitepec’s name comes from Nahuatl, meaning “colored place,” and it lives up to that name. (Datatur)
That evening, we had big plans. So we returned to Terra Restaurant for a mid-afternoon feast of fish and mezcal before our 6:30 p.m. pickup from the hotel lobby. We hopped in the SUV of a local guide and thus commenced one of my favorite activities — of all time.
From town, we proceeded to drive down the mountain, passing through a certified rainforest. We made several stops to soak in the humidity and snap photos of waterfalls, rivers and deep valleys.
We arrived at the Soledad Reservoir at dusk, a massive lake that’s 4 km in length. It provides electric energy to the nearby cities. For its hydroelectric use (and not because it’s stunningly beautiful and full of wildlife and delicate ecosystems), it has been protected by the government.
My friend and I slipped into some very gaudy life jackets and hopped into a lancha (small boat) with “Sixty”, a sixty-ish year-old man about 5 feet tall and strong as an ox who rowed us from one end of the lake to the other, without stopping, for a 90 full minutes. We passed only two other lanchas during our tour.
As the moon rose, the trees began to sparkle as if they were covered in Christmas lights. And they were, in a way, as July is prime luciernaga (firefly) season — giving us exactly the dreamlike vista we were after.
“I think this is what happens when you die,” my friend whispered to me, not wanting to disturb the tranquil setting; all we heard were the sounds of birds, bugs, and the breaking of the oar on the lake’s surface.
Not an adventurer? Perhaps a relaxing boat ride around the lake in one of Tlatlauquitepec’s lanchas is the perfect way to spend an afternoon. (tlatlauquitepec_pueblomagico/Instagram)
I felt immediately that she was right. When I arrive at the pearly gates of whatever-might-be-next, I had better arrive on this very boat, in this lake, with this view.
After wiping away tears of nostalgia and awe at the beauty of this experience, Sixty asked if we wanted to try rowing the boat toward the dock. While I wasn’t quite as adept as he was, it was the perfect ending to a perfect evening.
The following morning, we headed to the zócalo for a leisurely coffee and then accepted a ride from Jorge to the bus station, as Uber does not exist here. There are two stations one can use to return to the big city (Puebla in our case), but an accurate online schedule for them doesn’t seem to exist. (We missed our first bus.)
Our ride back took about three hours and landed us at CAPU, the less fancy of Puebla’s two bus stations, and within 20 minutes, we were snug in our hotel in the historic center. Over dinner, we raved about our days spent in the mountains and how soon we could feasibly return.
For those craving a deep dive into the contrasting layers of Mexico’s landscape, Tlatlauquitepec is a true Magical Town and shouldn’t be missed.
Bethany Platanella is a travel planner and lifestyle writer based in Mexico City. She lives for the dopamine hit that comes directly after booking a plane ticket, exploring local markets, practicing yoga and munching on fresh tortillas. Sign up to receive her Sunday Love Letters to your inbox, peruse her blog, or follow her on Instagram.
An oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is showing up in photos as spattered crude, covering an area that NGOs and academic say is 467 square meters and Pemex says is only 0.06 square kilometers. Locals are reporting crude washing up on beaches in Campeche, Tabasco, Veracruz and Tamaulipas. (Michael Balam Chan/Cuartoscuro)
The CEO of state oil company Pemex said Wednesday that an oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico was mainly caused by a natural phenomenon rather than an oil spill and denied that it was as large as academics and nongovernmental organizations have claimed.
Using satellite images, researchers at the Institute of Geography at the National Autonomous University (UNAM) and the same university’s National Earth Observation Laboratory calculated that on July 12 there was a patch of oil covering 467 square kilometers in the Bay of Campeche.
Pemex CEO Octavio Romero held a press conference in Mexico City on Wednesday to provide Pemex’s explanation for the oil slick. He dismissed reports by academics and environmental NGOs about the size of the slick and said most of it was coming from natural vents in the Cantarell oil reserve. (Galo Cañas Rodríguez/Cuartoscuro)
More than 20 NGOs, including Greenpeace and the Mexican Center for Environmental Law, said last week that satellite images showed there was an oil slick of some 400 square kilometers — more than double the size of the city of Guadalajara — caused by an oil spill that the state-owned company had not informed the public about.
Pemex chief Octavio Romero told a press conference that the patch of oil seen in the images was primarily caused by natural seepage from ocean-floor vents in oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico’s Cantarell field. He acknowledged that a second factor was a “small leak” of light crude from an aging underwater pipeline in the Ek-Balam field.
Pemex said last week that the NGOs’ claim of a 400-square-kilometer spill was a “bad faith estimate,” and that the spill’s true size was 0.06 square kilometers, or 365 barrels of oil.
Romero said that the oil seep consisted of light rather than heavy crude.
En redes sociales pescadores y ambientalistas de Tabasco, Tamaulipas y Veracruz reportan la aparición de los residuos de petróleo en sus costas y playas, producto del gigantesco derrame originado en la Sonda de Campeche pic.twitter.com/AtH9kQH9KN
Fishing boats and environmentalists in Tabasco, Veracruz and Tamaulipas have been reporting spotting crude in their water and washing up on their beaches.
“With the currents and waves,” the oil seeping from the Cantarell field — estimated to be 387 barrels per day — “is incorporated into the marine environment,” he said.
Romero said that the National Research Council in the United States has concluded that seepage is the cause of 46% of oil that leaks into ocean water on an annual basis.
The Pemex chief said that if the oil slick was as large as claimed by academics and NGOs, the disaster would be much worse than the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill off the coast of Alaska.
“If an area of 467 square kilometers is considered, … Pemex would have had to have spilled 3 million barrels. If this were true, … the event … would be 12 times more catastrophic than what happened with the Exxon Valdez ship,” Romero said.
Local cleanup efforts in Campeche. (Michael Balam Chan/Cuartoscuro)
He also said that the navy flew over the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Campeche, Tabasco, Veracruz and Tamaulipas on July 18 but saw no oil patch.
However, in the last few days, crude has been spotted in the Bay of Campeche in aerial photos and has been washing up on some Gulf of Mexico beaches in Tabasco, Campeche and Tamaulipas, prompting local cleanup efforts.
Gabriel Gómez, one of the UNAM academics associated with the 467-square-kilometer estimate, said in a statement when they released their report that ocean currents would likely take the slick east-northeast to the Gulf coast in Veracruz, Tamaulipas or the United States.
Romero said that crude that has recently washed up on Gulf of Mexico beaches in Tabasco and Tamaulipas didn’t come from the pipeline leak. He insinuated instead that seepage was to blame but didn’t explain why the quantity of oil reaching beaches had appeared to increase recently.
Pemex says the oil showing up on beaches is not due to a spill but due to seepage from ocean-floor vents within oil reserves in the Cantarell offshore oil field — the location of a Pemex platform that caught on fire earlier this month, killing two. (Michael Balam Chan/Cuartoscuro)
Romero said that the delay in repairing the leak — which started in early July during the installation of new pipelines — was because Pemex didn’t initially have the required tools on hand. The firm said that it reported the leak to the Security, Energy and Environment Agency (ASEA) on July 6.
The state oil company CEO criticized the media’s reporting on the spill, saying that local outlets had “distorted” the news.
The pipeline leak began several days before a large fire broke out on an offshore Pemex platform in the Cantarell field. Romero said that the fire, which killed at least two workers and injured eight, was linked to a subcontractor’s failure to follow Pemex protocols.
“I can’t speak about it much because analyses of the cause of the accident are still being done, but it wasn’t due to a lack of maintenance but rather due to the failure [to do] a job that a company contracted by Pemex [Cotemar] had already scheduled,” he said.
A Facebook user posted photos of dead fish and smatterings of apparent crude on Baghdad Beach in Tamaulipas.
Car exports, up 20.5% compared to June 2022, likely contributed to the trade surplus. (El Mirador/SCT)
Mexico registered a slight trade surplus of US $38 million in June, with exports totaling $51.8 billion and imports totaling $51.76 billion.
This balance contrasts with a deficit of $3.97 billion in the same month of 2022, according to a press statement by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI). The first six months of 2023 still showed a trade deficit of US $6.34 billion, however, this is 50.4% less than in the first half of 2022.
Mexico’s exports have been steadily increasing, but the country is still running a trade deficit in 2023. (Depositphotos)
Mexican exports in June showed an annual increase of 1.1% and a monthly increase of 0.92%, though they fell short of the March record of $53.56 billion in exports. Non-oil exports were worth $48.95 billion, up 3.7% from June 2022, which compensated for a 28.8% drop in the value of oil exports, to $2.85 billion.
Mexico’s non-oil exports include products from the booming manufacturing sector, such as the automotive industry. This has benefited from strong demand in the United States and companies relocating Asian plants to be closer to U.S. markets, a phenomenon known as nearshoring.
However, while Mexico’s non-oil exports to the U.S. in June showed an annual increase of 2.7%, those to the rest of the world increased even more, by 8.6%.
Backward trends have been observed both in imports and exports of oil. This is partly due to the government’s policy of achieving energy self-sufficiency and exporting less. (Jaochainoi/Istock)
Meanwhile, Mexico’s imports showed an annual decrease of 6.2%, resulting from a 56.3% drop in oil imports and a 3.3% growth in non-oil imports.
Imports of consumer goods decreased by 11.5% and intermediate use goods by 8.4%. However, imports of capital goods such as factory machinery increased by 28%, again reflecting the boom in Mexico’s manufacturing sector. The same phenomenon was seen in May, when Mexico’s capital goods imports reached arecord $5 billion.
The decrease in both exports and imports of oil may reflect progress in President López Obrador’s policy of refining more crude oil at home, with the aim of achieving energy self-sufficiency, rather than exporting crude oil and importing gasoline.
