Tickets for the new route start at 899 pesos for a one-way trip. Aeromar
Residents of Guadalajara are about to gain better access to the Pacific coast with up to five flights per day from Guadalajara International Airport to the tourist city of Puerto Vallarta.
Aeromar is set to expand its flights on the route by 20% with seats for up to 7,500 passengers per month between the two cities starting July 11.
A statement by the Jalisco state government said that fares would start at 899 pesos (US $45) one way. Flights are an attractive option for beach goers: bus transport between the cities costs up to 680 pesos ($34) with flagship company Primera Plus, and takes six hours, compared to a 45-minute flight.
State Tourism Minister Vanessa Pérez Lamas said Puerto Vallarta has plenty to offer to tourists. “This is great news for tourists because there will be a substantial increase in the number of seats and scheduled flights so that in under an hour they can enjoy Puerto Vallarta and its beautiful beaches, delicious cuisine, in addition to the cultural and commercial experiences that the destination has. By increasing frequency on the route, we will make it easier for travelers … through Aeromar we’re increasing flights to 54 from Monday to Sunday on the route Guadalajara-Puerto Vallarta … with up to five flights a day,” she said.
Aeromar has a fleet of 10 airplanes and operates 19 national routes and three international routes to Havana, Cuba, and McAllen and Laredo in Texas.
Nationwide, Quintana Roo was the state with the biggest increase in prices for houses and apartments in 2022.
House and apartment prices have increased above the national average in states such as Quintana Roo and Baja California Sur partially due to high demand generated by foreigners, according to the director and cofounder of a real estate company.
Data from the Federal Mortgage Society, a government agency, shows that the average price for a dwelling in Mexico for which a mortgage was taken out was 1.47 million pesos (about US $72,000) in the first quarter of the year, an increase of 7.7% compared to the same period of last year.
Quintana Roo recorded the biggest year-over-year increase with a 12.4% jump, followed by Baja California Sur, where the average price for a dwelling rose 12.2%. Both states are heavily dependent on tourism and popular with home buyers from abroad, especially the United States. Houses and apartments in Nayarit, which includes the resort town of Nuevo Nayarit (formerly Nuevo Vallarta), also rose by 12.2%, while Michoacán, Morelos and Sinaloa saw increases above 10%.
The director and cofounder of Ancana, which sells vacation homes, said that low housing prices make Mexico attractive to buyers from the United States, especially because high inflation in the U.S. has caused property prices to go up.
Los Cabos, with a 13% spike, was the municipality with the biggest rise in home prices.
“During the pandemic, there was a boom in the vacation home sector, not just [because of demand] from local clients but also from foreigners,” Andrés Barrios added in an interview with the newspaper El Universal.
“At the start of 2022, in certain destinations more focused on Mexicans, we’ve seen a … reduction in terms of the number of sales compared to last year, but we’re still seeing a lot of interest from foreigners,” he said.
Favored destinations among foreigners include the Riviera Maya – where Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Tulum are situated – and Pacific coast resort towns such as Los Cabos, located on the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula.
At the municipal level, Los Cabos – made up of the twin resort towns of San José del Cabos and Cabo San Lucas – recorded the biggest increase in property prices between the first quarter of 2021 and the first three months of this year with a 13% spike. Solidaridad, a Quintana Roo municipality that includes Playa del Carmen, ranked second with a 12.7% increase, followed by Bahía de Banderas in the Riviera Nayarit (up 12.6%) and Benito Juárez (up 12.2%), which includes Cancún.
Sales in Tulum this year have been strong, and the planned Tulum International Airport is likely to keep prices rising, said Ancana director Andrés Barrios.
Barrios said that almost all recently-built three-bedroom homes on the Baja California peninsula – with prices between US $700,000 and $2 million – have already been sold, while sales of yet-to-be-built houses of the same size have been strong.
There is a lot of construction happening in Tulum, and sales there have also been strong, he added. “And now, with the new airport, prices will continue rising,” Barrios said. “[The airport] will bring more tourists to the area.”
Barrios said that foreigners have also snapped up new housing stock in the Jalisco resort city of Puerto Vallarta and in San Miguel de Allende, a colonial city in Guanajuato that has long had a significant foreign population.
He said that foreigners who have bought properties in Tulum and on the Baja California peninsula haven’t displaced locals but noted that some Mexicans have sought cheaper housing farther away from the coast in Playa del Carmen.
Real estate analysts cited by El Universal said that within a context of high inflation in Mexico – 7.88% in the first half of June – housing prices will continue to increase this year.
A stray dog has had a dramatic turn in fortune and is now a valued member of a San Luis Potosí police patrol.
The small mixed breed canine affectionately known as “Coyotito” (Little Coyote) was a puppy when he arrived outside the installations of the state security ministry in San Luis Potosí city just over a year ago.
Coyotito attempted to find his place with a pack of dogs that congregated in the parking lot, but was not welcome and was chased away whenever he tried to get some of the food or water left by generous people. The pup didn’t give up and went to a nearby booth of the State Civil Guard, where he sheltered from the cold.
At first Coyotito was afraid of the guardsmen he met, but in just a few days he became more confident around them, and they started to feed him. The canine successfully made a new home and now accompanies the Guardsmen on patrol. He wears a small Civil Guard vest, making it clear that he’s very much part of the team.
Coyotito with a fellow member of the Guard.
The pup’s charm has spread to the wider community: local woman Doña July frequently carries a bag of croquettes in her vehicle to give to Coyotito and the other dogs that assemble outside the security complex.
Dogs are some of Mexico’s most celebrated public servants. The rescue dog Frida was reported to be alive and well in March, after fears that one of the heroes of the Mexico City earthquake in September 2017 had died. Frida was honored with a statue in her likeness in Puebla in 2018 and there is a mural dedicated to her in Roma, a Mexico City neighborhood that was hit hard by the 2017 earthquake, depicting the beloved Labrador as a saint-like figure.
Residents of Chililix, Puebla, high in the Sierra Norte of the state, are hoping to join their neighbors in achieving denomination of origin status for the vanilla they grow and harvest there. In this small town in Puebla’s Hueytlalpan municipality, many residents still speak their indigenous language, Totonaco, and most making a living from farming the coffee and other crops that grow in their high mountain terrain.
Until a few years ago, the vanilla that grew here was just another one of the verdant green trees that grew besides the waterfalls and the orange trees. But a program administered by the Ministry of Rural Development (SADER) has many residents now believing vanilla might be their future so they are petitioning to be added to the list of 39 other municipalities in Puebla and Veracruz where this vanilla is endemic.
Like Champagne in Champagne, France, or Tequila in Tequila, Jalisco, a denomination of origin will not only provide an international spotlight on these small producers but, they believe, will mean more assistance from local authorities.
Farmers must both protect their crop from theft (which generally happens in December when the fruit is rip to pick), and other threats — rot due to excessive rain, the fungus stem rust, bella moths, and firebugs — all which threaten the health of the vanilla trees and the viability of the yearly harvest.
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Salvador Gómez, a SADER technician working with residents toward their certification, says the denomination of origin will also mean that local authorities are pressured to keep the land where the vanilla is grown safe and healthy, both physically and biologically, that it will help to preserve traditional farming techniques, and certify originality for international buyers.
He also believes the designation will mean that producers in Hueytlalpan will be able to make more formalized sales to larger buyers, instead of simply bartering or selling in the local market.
Gómez, along with a technical team from SADER, is working with locals to ensure their vanilla crop is healthy and prosperous. They are teaching them how to properly pollinate their plants, how to make and use organic compost, how to separate coffee plants and vanilla plants to avoid insect infestations and how to use pesticides to control any infestations that appear.
Local producers attending these workshops hope to produce between 30 and 40 kilos of vanilla a year that they can sell in powder or liquid form. Many families were formerly coffee producers but have switched to vanilla production either as a substitute or in addition to that crop.
María Pérez has been producing vanilla for four years and says she appreciates that it can be grown in a much more reduced space than other crops. Another grower, María Jiménez, hopes that by cultivating vanilla she can make enough money to send her children to college. Cecilia Galicia and her husband Martín Fernández once farmed only coffee, but last year they produced 23 kilos of vanilla to sell.
The high price of vanilla in the market and the fluctuation of coffee in the past few years have likely influenced many of these small farmers to convert to vanilla production. They are counting on denomination of origin status to be the push they need to succeed in their new venture.
An architect's conception of Puerto Vallarta's new airport terminal.
The Puerto Vallarta International Airport has begun constructing a new terminal that officials say will be a net-zero energy building — the first of its kind at any airport in all of Mexico and Latin America, according to the newspaper Milenio.
The new terminal 2 will be equipped with solar panels that will help save 4 million pesos (US $197,000) per month in electricity costs, and there will be a water reuse plan that is expected to reduce water consumption by at least 35%, the project’s lead architect told Milenio.
Benjamín Romano, the founding director of Mexico City–based LBR&A Architects, also said the terminal will have a smaller footprint than originally anticipated, which means less spending on the installation and maintenance of an air-conditioning system, as well as lower construction costs overall.
The building is drawn to be 61,200 square meters (659,000 square feet), with additional space for adjoining car rental lots, parking lots and roads.
“When I saw the jungle, I made the decision to reduce the [size of the] building,” Romano told Milenio. “We can’t avoid having eight gates of 42 meters, because that’s what a plane measures, but the rest we decided to make it smaller … Between the footprint of the conceptual plan and the one we did, there is 54% less impact on the environment.’
For example, he said, “some trees with gigantic roots” that were found on the property will not have to be removed.
Construction began earlier this year and is tentatively scheduled to be completed in two years, according to Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico (GAP), which is overseeing the project. However, one report from when the project was first announced in 2019 said it won’t be completed until 2025.
Milenio wrote that the building is not only “recognized as a beautiful aesthetic work,” but that it will also have “a high level of functionality,” will be sustainable and that its goal in the medium term is to be zero energy.
Romano told Milenio that there will be zero wastewater, as all water will be reused within the daily processes of airport operations. A system for converting water flow into electricity will be installed, he said, which will help reduce energy costs, as will solar panels on the roof.
According to a report last year in Vallarta Lifestyles magazine, the new terminal will be a “net-zero smart building” with “an energy saving of 40.78% and a [tap] water saving of 58.3%.”
LBR&A, which has designed many eye-catching structures, will be using matatenasas a key design element. Matatenas are jacks, the six-pointed item you try to scoop up in your hand while bouncing a ball in the tabletop game, and their shape will be used as both a visual and structural component of the project.
The Puerto Vallarta airport, officially named the Licenciado Gustavo Diaz Ordaz International Airport, is located 10 kilometers north of the center of town. Currently it has two terminals, A and B, but they’re in the same building, connected by a long corridor, and the space often gets extremely crowded.
According to reports from GAP, which operates 12 airports in Mexico, the new terminal will have the capacity to move 4.5 million passengers per year. The airport is also investing in a new runway and other improvements, according to a December report in the English-language Puerto Vallarta Daily News.
The construction of terminal 2 will completely change the passenger experience, Cryshtian José Amador Lizardi, the airport’s director, said as quoted in the PVDN. “The surface area and passenger screening lines [will be] more than doubled.” There will also be “50% more telescopic aisles [jetways] and checked-baggage screening systems,” he added. “All this gives more space to passengers and makes them enjoy their trip more.”
The crime has been reported in the boroughs of Cuajimalpa, Tlalpan, Coyoacán and Cuauhtémoc.
Police in Mexico City have been seeing more instances of an ATM crime in which criminals not only get the customer’s money, but also details of their ATM card.
According to the newspaper Milenio, the fraud works like this: First, the criminals place traps inside an ATM to prevent the dispensed money from being accessible to the customer. Then, they place a professional-looking decal near the ATM that offers a telephone number to call for help.
When the ATM user’s money doesn’t come out, they unwittingly call the phony number, after which they are asked for their PIN, their name and other information, such as account number.
In short order, one of the thieves will return to the ATM to collect the money that was “trapped” inside.
One Mexico City ATM user complained on social media that the scam is increasingly common. At this Citibanamex ATM, the slot for dispensing cash was blocked by a strip of plastic, but she was able to remove the barrier, she said. Twitter @karla_CCruz
Such crimes have taken place at various banks in four boroughs of Mexico City, according to the Citizen Security Ministry (SSC), one of the two primary law enforcement agencies in the capital.
SSC officials told Milenio that the fraud is being conducted by a criminal group and cited instances of the crime in the Cuajimalpa, Tlalpan, Coyoacán and Cuauhtémoc boroughs. The police received complaints from citizens and bank workers between June 17 and 18.
Much of the nefarious activity was captured by the banks’ closed-circuit and government cameras, and police were able to pinpoint one particular vehicle that was near or around at least eight ATMs that were hit. After locating that car, police not only arrested three members of the criminal group but also found 56 “doses” of marijuana, a bag of cocaine and 300 pesos inside the car.
Police sources said the same gang is also involved in crimes such as gota a gota, home robberies and theft of bank cards. Gota a gota, or drop by drop, is a form of extortion in which people are granted short-term loans (three or four weeks) at interest rates as high as 40%.
President López Obrador tours the refinery as part of Friday's inaugural events. Presidencia de la República
President López Obrador on Friday officially opened the new Pemex refinery on the Gulf coast of Tabasco, even though the facility is unfinished and not expected to begin refining oil until late 2023 at the earliest.
Despite that, AMLO declared that the inauguration of the Dos Bocas refinery – officially called the Olmeca Refinery – is “a dream come true.”
The refinery, whose final cost could balloon to as much as US $18 billion, is the first to be built in Mexico since the 1970s. Once fully operational, it will process 340,000 barrels of crude per day, a capacity that will increase national output by 20% and which López Obrador says will allow Mexico to become self-sufficient for fuel and protect itself from global volatility.
“We’re getting ready to stop importing gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, in order to be self-sufficient, create employment in the country, and direct these fuels to the internal market and national development,” he said Friday during an opening ceremony attended by cabinet ministers, Pemex CEO Octavio Romero and prominent business figures such as billionaire Carlos Slim.
Tabasco Governor Carlos Manuel Merino Campos, Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, President López Obrador and Pemex CEO Octavio Romero celebrate the opening. Presidencia de la República
“… This is a moment of big change, a major turn, from selling crude oil to transforming the raw material, producing the fuel ourselves, and selling it on the internal market,” AMLO said.
In building the refinery, the president boasted, “we didn’t pay attention to the siren calls, the voices that predicted, perhaps in good faith, that the oil era was over, and that electric cars and renewable energy were arriving en masse.”
Such a scenario if still a long way off in Mexico, AMLO asserted. The president railed against his “neoliberal” predecessors’ management of the national oil sector, which has long been an important source of government revenue even as Mexico imported large quantities of fuels from the United States.
“They bet on selling crude and buying [fuel] abroad. The leaders sought to destroy the national oil industry. They left the six refineries in a deplorable state,” said López Obrador, whose government is upgrading the existing refineries and purchased Shell’s 50% stake in a Texas refinery that company owned with Pemex.
AMLO has set a goal of achieving self-sufficiency for fuel by 2023, but that timetable could be difficult to meet given that that Dos Bocas – which according to the news agency Bloomberg looks more like a tech campus than a place where dirty crude is processed – might not even begin refining oil next year. According to experts cited by the newspaper El País, the refinery won’t start producing gasoline until the end of 2023 or early 2024. A lengthy period of testing – up to nine months – is needed before extensive refining can begin, and that can’t commence until construction is completed.
Energy Minister Rocío Nahle declared that the refinery has “the most modern technology in the world,” but it can’t yet be put to proper use as the different plants of the facility are not connected to each other. Two people with knowledge of the refinery project told the news agency Reuters that it will be 2025 – after López Obrador has left office – before the refinery will be working at near capacity.
Oscar Ocampo, an energy expert with the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO), a think tank, said before Friday’s inauguration that there was a lack of information about the progress that has been made on building the refinery and when it will be operational.
There have been no public responses to basic questions about the project, he told the newspaper El Financiero. “We’re going to see the cutting of a ribbon and a government report, but we don’t know what’s behind [the ribbon] and this is very concerning given that it’s one of this administration’s priority projects,” Ocampo said.
An overhead view of the the facility. Presidencia de la República
Gonzalo Monroy, an energy analyst and consultant, described the new refinery as a “monument to opacity,” built according to political rather than technical specifications. “To add more layers of opacity, the government used affiliated companies of Pemex” whose work isn’t easy to oversee or evaluate from an accountability point of view, he said.
The refinery was developed by PTI Infraestructura de Desarollo, an affiliate of the state oil company. IMCO said in a note that affiliated companies, unlike subsidiaries of Pemex, “operate under private law and therefore don’t have the same transparency and contracting obligations.”
Meanwhile, Arturo Carranza, an energy expert, predicted that the useful lifespan of the Dos Bocas refinery will be short given that a transition to renewable energy is underway.
But López Obrador, a staunch energy nationalist who was born and raised in oil-rich Tabasco, believes that the heyday of fossil fuels is not yet over, at least in Mexico. In addition to betting big on the oil sector with the construction of the new refinery, his government has made it difficult for private renewable companies to operate in Mexico – although such firms breathed a sigh of relief when an electricity reform that would have guaranteed the state owned Federal Electricity Commission over half the market failed to pass Congress in April.
Analysts have questioned the wisdom of building the new refinery as it has diverted resources from Pemex’s more profitable exploration business. The project has also been controversial from an environmental standpoint, partially because mangroves had to be cleared before construction could begin.
The original estimated price tag was US $8 billion, but Bloomberg reported last month that the value of Energy Ministry contracts for work through to 2024 increased to over $14 billion in May. Bloomberg sources said that the final cost of the project will probably be between $16 billion and $18 billion.
A photo of one of the cubs, shared by the mayor of Orizaba. Facebook / Juan Manuel Diez
Two lion cubs are the newest members of an animal sanctuary in Veracruz after a lioness gave birth last month.
The mother and cubs were isolated for 10 days for their privacy at the Reserva del Río Orizaba (Orizaba River Reserve), a Wildlife Management Unit (UMA). They will join two cubs that were born at the sanctuary in October.
Orizaba Mayor Juan Manuel Diez Francos posted a photo of one of the cubs and credited staff at the sanctuary on social media on Thursday. “It fills me with pride to know that the conditions offered in Orizaba for the care of animals that cannot return to their natural habitats allow for the reproduction of species,” he said.
“Don’t forget to visit the Paseo del río [sanctuary]. The little ones are surely having fun …” Diez added.
The young cubs in a video shared by the Orizaba local government on Facebook.
In the post, Diez also announced that a new unit had been created at the sanctuary to provide improved care for dogs, cats and other animals.
The Reserva del Río Orizaba was created in 2010 and currently houses some 550 animals of 37 species that can be viewed by the public. Each animal wears a chip so that it can be closely monitored by staff.
The UMA has previously provided conditions for reproduction of endangered species, including jaguar, fallow deer and spider monkeys. It houses crocodiles, ostriches, llamas and tigers, among other wildlife.
A radar image of cloud cover on July 4 at 9:40 a.m. shows Hurricane Bonnie off the Pacific coast of Mexico. Conagua
Hurricane Bonnie, a Category 1 storm located off Mexico’s southern Pacific coast, will bring intense rain to parts of five states on Monday, the National Water Commission (Conagua) said.
In a statement issued at 7 a.m., Conagua said that Bonnie – which formed as a tropical storm in the Atlantic Ocean before moving across a narrow section of Central America into the Pacific – was 265 kilometers south-southwest of Puerto Ángel, Oaxaca, and moving west-northwest at 30 kph.
It said that the hurricane – which is not forecast to make landfall in Mexico – would advance parallel to the coasts of Oaxaca and Guerrero and that its extensive cloud bands would interact with two low pressure channels to bring intense rain of 75-150 millimeters to regions of Chiapas, Guerrero, Michoacán, Oaxaca and Veracruz.
Very heavy rain of 50-75 mm is forecast for parts of Puebla, while heavy 25-50 mm falls are predicted for areas of México state, Morelos and Tabasco.
In a rare journey from the Atlantic basin to the East Pacific, Tropical Storm #Bonnie has traversed a narrow section of Central America and revving up toward hurricane strength offshore southern #Mexico, as seen in storm-centered MIMIC microwave imagery. https://t.co/V0Va4edyARpic.twitter.com/o0DyLfgYwd
Bonnie – which felled trees, caused widespread flooding and claimed the lives of at least three people in Nicaragua and El Salvador – had maximum sustained winds of 130 kph at 7 a.m. with gusts of up to 155 kph. Conagua forecast gusts of up to 90 kph and swells of 3-5 meters on the coasts of Oaxaca and Guerrero.
The United States National Hurricane Center (NHC) said early Monday that swells on the coasts of southern and southwestern Mexico are likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip conditions. With regard to its forecast path, the NHC said that the center of Bonnie is expected to move parallel to, but remain south of, the coasts of southern and southwestern Mexico during the next couple of days.
Although the hurricane is not on track to make landfall, authorities along Mexico’s southern Pacific coast are on alert for risks generated by Bonnie’s proximity. In addition, authorities in Oaxaca are restricting maritime activity due to the dangerous conditions at sea, while those in Guerrero decided to close schools Monday in six of seven regions. More than 750,000 students have been told to stay at home.
Bonnie is the fourth named storm in the Pacific this hurricane season after Hurricane Agatha, Hurricane Blas and Tropical Storm Celia. It was given a name starting with B because it was the second major storm to develop in the Atlantic this hurricane season.
Agatha made landfall in Oaxaca May 30 as a Category 2 hurricane, causing significant damage and claiming at least nine lives. Neither Blas nor Celia made landfall in Mexico.
The "burrow houses" of Hotel Tapasoli are based on the shelters built by the lowland paca, a small native mammal. Leigh Thelmadatter
The lodgings at the Hotel Tapasoli aren’t for hobbits, but the misnomer has worked out to the benefit of the community where the hotel is based in the Huasteca region of San Luis Potosí.
By far, most people come to the area to visit Las Pozas, the much-hyped surrealist home and gardens of English poet Edward James, in the Pueblo Mágico of Xilitla. The town proper is packed with small places to stay almost up to the gates of the gardens.
There are some resorts and other lodging up the canyon walls that promise more than just a place to sleep, but I don’t think any of them can surpass Tapasoli, the brainchild of Alberto Muñoz González, in the nearby community of Apetzco.
Apetzco (sometimes spelled Apexco) is a mostly indigenous community also located in the Xilitla municipality, and Tapasoli means “bird’s nest” in Náhuatl. Muñoz had the unusual idea of creating lodgings here that hang from the rather large trees on his family’s land. Their shape and thatching are based on the nests of the Altamira oriole, a bird native to northeast Mexico. Built for coziness and with a camping feel, they have room only for a bed or two and up to three people maximum. Bathrooms and showers are communal and located under the restaurant. They are not completely rustic, having steel cables for support, waterproofing against the very rainy climate, and mosquito nets.
The design of Tapasoli’s “nests” take inspiration from the nests of the native Altamira oriole. Facebook / Hotel Tapasoli
They still have six of these nests, but by 2016, Muñoz realized he needed to offer another option.
His next idea was what he calls “burrow houses,” based on homes created by local lowland pacas, small mammals that are also native to the area. Taking advantage of the steep incline on part of the land, with its stunning views of Xilitla below, the rooms are dug into the rock, and then enclosed with a front with a circular door. The rooms have more than a passing resemblance to the houses of the hobbits of “The Lord of the Rings.” In fact, Mexican media simply refers to Tapasoli as the “hobbit hotel.” These “burrows” have been quite successful with 15 now built in a span of only six years. All have one or more beds, a fireplace, bathroom, climate control and Wi-Fi, but no television. All have spectacular panoramic views, and the newest overlook a new artificial pond with two small waterfalls. Although Muñoz insists the hobbits had nothing to do with the design, he does not mind the comparison, finding it rather amusing.
The area is small, but everything you need for an intimate weekend away is right there. The restaurant specializes in dishes from local kitchens in Apetzco, made by local women, no chef. Foodstuffs are local and everything is cooked over traditional wood stoves. Representative dishes include enchiladas huastecas, eggs cooked in banana leaves, roasted chayote and plantains roasted with the peel on and served with cream. Oil and other fats are generally avoided, and are not missed.
“We want people who visit us and stay here to have a unique experience.” Muñoz says.
At the restaurant, local cooks use traditional methods to prepare enchiladas huastecas, eggs cooked in banana leaves, whole-roasted plantains with cream, and other regional specialties. Leigh Thelmadatter
Over 90% of those who make reservations are women, often looking for a romantic weekend getaway. He has been in contact with people in other parts of Mexico and even Germany who have expressed interest in building something similar.
Tapasoli does not market itself as an ecological resort, although there are ecological elements. First is that its buildings do not clash or seek to dominate the landscape, but rather blend in. As few trees as possible have been cut and in some cases, built around. Firewood is used judiciously (as in many homes), and there are composting facilities, rainwater capture, and greywater reuse for plants.
Tapasoli also “blends in” with the local community. Muñoz’s maternal family has been here for over four generations. Before the hotel, they primarily used the plot of land to grow corn, oranges, bananas and coffee, one reason why there are still larger and older trees on the property. Tapasoli sources both supplies and labor locally, employing 47 local people directly and doing business with about 70 others.
Muñoz is not done yet. His immediate project is to rework the nests. New COVID regulations mean he needs to provide separate bathroom facilities for them. But the long-term challenge is getting more people to the hotel. The road to Apetzco from the valley below is in bad shape, apart from the fact that Xilitla itself is not easy to get to. The community has been fighting the municipality for some time to repair the road, and Muñoz is looking into providing transportation from Tampico and Mexico City.
Until then, it is best to use a car and drive up slowly – but it is worth it.
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 18 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture in particular its handcrafts and art. She is the author of Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta (Schiffer 2019). Her culture column appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.
