The online booking platform features a wide variety of tourist activities and services in Querétaro.
Querétaro has launched an online booking system for tourists to help facilitate contact and sales between local tourism providers and visitors.
The Querétaro Tourism Ministry (Sectur) and the company PriceTravel Holding have joined forces to create the webpage under the domain queretaro.travel, where travelers can find destinations in the state, search for experiences, discover discounts and make reservations.
Information is available in Spanish and English and the language can be changed by clicking on the “Idiomas” icon, which is a small globe on the top right hand side of the page.
The head of Sectur, Mariela Moran Ocampo, said the new platform could see the state’s tourism reach new heights. “This commercial alliance has come to strengthen and widen the tourism promotion efforts that we have implemented from the start of Governor Mauricio Kuri’s administration. We have the objective of taking Querétaro to the next level as a tourist destination through the growth of sales and opportunities for our tourism providers,” she said.
Moran added that the website would make tourism more accessible for potential visitors.
The director of commercial alliances at PriceTravel, Juan Socas, said the new platform meant more business for Querétaro. “We are happy to concrete our first alliance with Querétaro, a standout tourist destination in Mexico which has a unique history. We are sure that the technological experience of PriceTravel Holding will allow a greater number of sales and will benefit all travelers,” he said.
PriceTravel will also offer a 24/7 contact center specific to the state, the news site Agencia Informativa de México reported.
One of Querétaro’s main attractions is the Wine and Cheese Route (Ruta de Vino y Queso), which shows off its dairy farms and proves its credentials as Mexico’s second largest wine-producing area.
There are four Magical Towns in the state, which are Tequisquiapan, Bernal, Cadereyta de Montes and San Joaquín.
Querétaro city also offers another way to sightsee in style, in electric replica Model T Fords on citywide tours.
2024 was likely a record year for remittances to Mexico. (File photo)
Remittances totaling US $27.56 billion were sent to Mexico in the first half of the year, a figure that represents a new record for the January to June period.
Central bank data shows that remittances — which are mainly sent electronically by Mexican workers in the United States — rose 16.6% in the first half of the year from $23.65 billion in the same period of 2021.
The bank Banorte said the annual growth “is even more notable when considering some tentative signals of a slowdown” in the United States.
In June, remittances totaled $5.15 billion — a 15.6% annual increase — and were received by some 4.9 million Mexican households. It was the second consecutive month that Mexicans working abroad sent over $5 billion home.
Alberto Ramos, chief Latin America economist at Goldman Sachs, said the United States government’s generous fiscal support and a “competitive” dollar-to-peso exchange rate contributed to the high level of remittances in the first half of the year. A greenback was worth about 20.4 pesos on Monday afternoon.
The 12-month figure for remittances to the end of June was also a record at just over $55.5 billion. The figure represents just over 4.2% of Mexico’s gross domestic product, according to Ramos, and is almost double the revenue brought in from crude oil exports, which totaled $30.2 billion in 12 months.
Ramos said the “solid flows of remittances” have helped Mexico’s current account and supported private consumption, especially that of low-income families, “who have a high propensity to spend and are the main recipients of the transfers.”
If remittances remain at the level registered in the first half of the year, 2022 will be the best year ever for incoming monetary transfers. A new calendar year record was set last year when over $51.5 billion in remittances flowed into the country. Banorte is forecasting remittances will total $56.5 billion in 2022.
The newspaper El Financiero reported that over $154 billion in remittances has been sent to Mexico since President López Obrador took office in December 2018. The president has characterized Mexicans working abroad as “heroes.”
Remittances sent to Mexican families are particularly valuable right now as inflation is at a two-decade high of 8.16%. López Obrador has predicted that inflation will begin to moderate in October or November, but the Mexican economy could subsequently fall into recession, according to Moody’s Analytics.
El Cuchillo dam in Nuevo León. Gobierno municipal de Camargo
A new 15.7-billion-peso (US $770.5 million) aqueduct will be built to convey water to Monterrey, the head of the National Water Commission (Conagua) said Friday.
The El Cuchillo II aqueduct will transport water approximately 100 kilometers from the El Cuchillo dam in eastern Nuevo León to the state capital, where harsh water restrictions have been in place since early June.
Conagua director Germán Martínez Santoyo told President López Obrador’s press conference that half of the funds for construction will come from the federal government via the state-owned development bank Banobras and the other half will come from state and municipal authorities. He predicted that the project would be completed by late 2023.
However, López Obrador on Monday set out a more ambitious timetable. “The plan is to do it in eight months, 10 months, but starting now,” he said.
Residents line up at a water truck in Monterrey. In some parts of the city, water service has been unreliable for months due to the drought.
The president said that officials including Interior Minister Adán Augusto López and Martínez would travel to Monterrey on Monday to meet with Governor Samuel García to discuss the aqueduct project. “We also want [private] companies to participate,” López Obrador said, explaining that the government officials would seek a commitment to that end from the Nuevo León business community.
“… We’re going to provide the resources, it’s a tripartite investment: federal government, state government, municipal governments. But the issue isn’t just investment, but rather the fact that we have to finish this project in eight months and we can do it if it’s divided into 10 sections [with] 10 serious, responsible companies [working on them],” he said.
AMLO advocated a similar approach to that taken by military engineers that built the Felipe Ángeles International Airport in 2 1/2 years, saying that work should be undertaken “day and night” with “everyone helping” to get the aqueduct finished.
Federal Interior Minister Adán Augusto and Nuevo León Governor Samuel García at “Together for the Water of Nuevo León,” a recent press event held by the state.
In a video message posted to social media on Friday, Governor García pledged that the aqueduct project would begin “now” to ensure it’s ready for use next year. “It will give us double the water,” he said without citing specific quantities.
García also raised the possibility of desalinating water from the Laguna Madre in the neighboring state of Tamaulipas and bringing it to Monterrey, but didn’t say how or when such a plan could come to fruition.
Permitting irregularities, fake doctors and bad practices were a few reasons some clinics were shuttered. DepositPhotos
Clinics and other facilities that perform cosmetic surgeries in Baja California have come under increased scrutiny after the death last week of a 37-year-old woman undergoing liposuction in Tijuana.
The death of Lilian Carolina Gastélum, the mother of three children from ages 7 to 11, allegedly occurred when she was having a Brazilian butt lift on July 27 at a clinic called Beauty Diagnosis in the busy, upscale Zona Río shopping area.
On the facility’s website, a Brazilian butt lift (BBL) is offered as part of a “Mommy Makeover” and several other surgery packages.
One local newspaper reported that last week’s death was the third such fatality this year at a cosmetic surgery facility in Tijuana — “one of the capitals of medical tourism and international cosmetics,” it added — and another reported it was the second. Regardless of the correct figure, it was enough to send the state’s health protection commission (Coepris) into action.
An ad from the shuttered clinic for a liposuction and BBL surgery package deal.
Beauty Diagnosis, which had previously been cited by Coepris in 2021 for not having proper permits, was suspended shortly after Gastélum’s death — bringing to 23 the number of similar clinics in the Tijuana area that have been suspended so far in 2022 for bad practices, fake doctors, and/or lack of proper permits and documents.
Erwin Areizaga Uribe, the state Coepris commissioner, said inspectors immediately went to Beauty Diagnosis after being notified of Gastélum’s death and shut it down “due to lack of documents.” Apparently there was no open investigation or active suspension of the facility despite it getting into hot water last November.
Areizaga also said that Coepris will become more proactive going forward and not wait for fatal cases to occur.
“It is clear to me that this should not happen and that is why we will increase our performance as a verification institution,” he said. However, he did stress that it won’t be Coepris, but rather the state Attorney General’s Office (FGE), that will investigate Gastélum’s death and whether negligence was involved.
Erwin Areizaga Uribe, the Baja California health commissioner.
Coepris, meanwhile, will continue to review all aspects of Beauty Diagnosis, such as clinical records, maintenance logs of surgical equipment, and documents that certify the medical and nursing staff.
The family of the woman who died at there was up in arms last week over irregularities and being kept in the dark, telling the Punto Norte newspaper that it will “sue the responsible doctor for wrongful death and negligence.”
The family reported that Lilian entered the operating room shortly before 10 a.m. for BBL liposuction, a popular procedure that takes a couple of hours. Lilian’s sister, Karen, apparently stayed at the clinic, asking “every half hour” how her sister was doing, “and the doctors answered that everything was going well.” Around 12:15 p.m., the doctor “came out of the operating room and gave a thumbs up.”
However, Karen said she began to feel that something wasn’t right. She felt the procedure was taking too long, and she also noticed that some women who entered the operating areas for breast implants came back out without having had any procedure performed. She allegedly was told that their surgeries were called off because “the medical devices were not working well.”
Karen told Punto Norte that as late as 3:15 p.m. staff told her that her sister was fine and the surgery was almost done, but at 3:30 p.m., she was told to go into the recovery area and speak with the doctor, who allegedly told her that Lilian had died between 2 and 2:30 p.m. due to complications. Karen said Lilian was a healthy woman, without any chronic diseases and had undergone all preoperative exams.
Zeta Tijuana reported it was the second fatality at a cosmetic surgery clinic in recent weeks. The first was suffered by María José Chacón Herrera at the Jerusalem Hospital, a private facility in Playas de Tijuana, “which was supposed to have been suspended from Jan. 31.” Chacón was the wife of Henry Ortiz, the Guatemalan consul in Denver.
Protesters said there was no need for bullfighting at the annual apple festival. Facebook / Protectores Animalistas de Zacatlán
Protesters in a Magical Town in Puebla have demanded that a bullfight be pulled from the schedule of an upcoming festival.
Members of animal rights groups and other citizens protested peacefully outside the Zacatlán government building last week to demand that the event be scrapped from the town’s 80th Feria de la Manzana (“Apple Festival”).
Mayor Pepe Márquez previously announced the event would take place and, speaking at the coronation of the festival’s beauty queen, said the bullfight had been requested by citizens.
However, protesters denied that the blood sport was in popular demand and said it wasn’t traditional to the festival. “It’s an activity requested by a very small group, what the residents of Zacatlán really want is for our traditions to be promoted, not for animals to be killed,” one protester said, according to the newspaper E-Consulta.
“Our municipality has many things that make it unique which have nothing to do with animal abuse. That is why it’s a Magical Town,” another protester told the news site.
The festival runs from August 13-21 and the bullfight is planned for August 20.
Bullfighting is an ancient tradition which was repopularized in medieval Spain and later exported to its empire. In more recent times, the sport’s future has been put in doubt: in some parts of Spain, it is now illegal.
Likewise, in Mexico, there have been a number of high-profile court decisions on bullfighting. A definitive ruling in June banned bullfights at Mexico City’s Plaza México and later that month the Supreme Court invalidated a three-year-old decree that gave bullfights and cockfights intangible cultural heritage status in Nayarit.
Cristerna's first body modification was a nose piercing at age 12. Guinness World Records
The “Mexican Vampire Lady” is still turning heads a decade after Guinness World Records recognized her as having the most body modifications of any woman in the world.
María José Cristerna of Guadalajara, Jalisco, “has a total of 49 body modifications, including significant tattoo coverage, a range of transdermal implants on her forehead, chest and arms, and multiple piercings in her eyebrows, lips, nose, tongue, ear lobes, belly button and nipples,” Guinness World Records said in February 2012.
Ten years later, she is still the world’s most modified woman, and continues to catch the curious — and sometimes envious — eyes of passersby when she’s out in public, according to a Milenio report.
Cristerna — who is also a mother, lawyer, tattooist, exercise fanatic and avid beer drinker — spoke to that newspaper about the modifications she has made to her body, the meaning behind them and the discrimination she faces due to her unusual appearance.
Cristerna on a night out with friends. Instagram
“The first piercing [I got] was one I did myself in my nose when I was about 12,” said the mujer vampiro, who was given her nickname during an appearance on Mexican TV.
“Then [I got] a tattoo of the logo of a black metal band when I was 14,” added Cristerna, who is now in her mid-40s. “It was strange, something different for our culture, and even more so at that time.”
She told Milenio that she began making more extreme modifications to her body after leaving an abusive relationship while still a teenager. However, the transformation of her appearance occurred over a period of years.
“After I turned 18 is when I started doing more things,” Cristerna said. “I worked in the tattooing and piercing field, but [the transformation] has been gradual, it’s taken several years.”
She explained that each of her tattoos and piercings has meaning and is very important to her. “They’re usually [related to] internal things and [getting a tattoo or piercing] is my way of bringing what’s on the inside to the outside,” Cristerna said.
Making a modification to one’s body is a meaningful commitment, she said, adding that she thinks deeply about any potential changes to her appearance. “I’m not the kind of person who gets a tattoo every day,” Cristerna said.
She advised others to think carefully before making a permanent body modification and urged caution “because I’ve heard of cases of women suffering assaults” committed by tattooists and other body modification artists.
Although tattoos and other body modifications are more common now than 10 years ago when Cristerna officially became a world record holder, she told Milenio that she still faces discrimination.
“There are still a lot of prejudiced people,” she said. “… [Body modification is] demonized mainly due to religion but it’s an ancient art, as Meso-Americans we must understand that it’s cultural.”
Cristerna said people should realize that “a tattoo doesn’t make the person” and warned that those who least suspect it might one day find that their own child has adorned their body with ink. “You’re not going to discriminate against your child” so there’s no reason to discriminate against other people with tattoos, she implied.
“People have to understand that there is an evolution and we have to progress hand in hand with what’s new out there,” Cristerna said.
As for the criticism she receives for the extensive modifications she has made to her own body, the mujer vampiro — who has embraced her nickname and even named her Instagram account after it — says it’s like water off a duck’s back.
“It slips off me, I don’t give it any importance,” she said, because “I’m a person like anybody else.”
A wide variety of the fried or baked dough balls known as gorditas can be found across Mexico.
Many of Mexico’s favorite snacks are noted for their colorful names, but one term for a stuffed corn tortilla has fallen foul of some social media users.
Gordita is the feminine form of the word for “chubby,” which some say is inherently discriminatory and should therefore be changed.
Proposals for a new name include masa con relleno (“dough with filling”) and masa frita (“fried dough”), the newspaper Proceso reported. Baked and deep-fried variants of gorditas are found all over Mexico.
Although the proposal gained some support on social media, other users considered the campaign misguided.
“They’ve been called that for a lifetime. It’s like wanting to change the name of burritos,” wrote one user, referring to another stuffed corn snack which translates literally as “little donkeys.”
“They have been, are and always will be gorditas. If anyone is offended, lose weight,” another user crudely suggested.
It’s not the first time a snack’s name has caused controversy. In 2013, the bread company Bimbo changed the name of its cake from Negrito, a racially derived nickname common in Mexico, roughly translating to “black boy,” to the less controversial Nito.
Faced with a similar issue last year, Swiss food giant Nestlé changed the name of a cookie from Negrita, roughly meaning “black girl,” to Chokita.
The kindergarten teacher was at his new post for less than four months before the group of mothers reported him, leading to his resignation. Kimberly Farmer / Unsplash
A kindergarten teacher in a remote village in Guanajuato is accused of sexually abusing six girls.
Ernesto “N,” known by his students as “Teacher Ernesto,” was a trainee teacher who had only arrived at the José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi kindergarten in Camino Real on March 1, but was deemed ready to teach classes alone. He allegedly abused the children after covering the windows of the classroom under the pretext of showing movies, the newspaper Reforma reported.
Mothers from the village of some 280 inhabitants became concerned about Ernesto’s unconventional teaching style but were assured by the kindergarten that his classes were educational. Suspicions of abuse surfaced after a 5-year-old girl told her mother that Ernesto had touched her.
Other parents asked their children, and their fears were confirmed: five other children also said they were abused. The 25 square meter (82 square feet) kindergarten only had a total of 18 students, from 3-6 years old.
On June 24, the victims’ mothers made a legal complaint in Silao and said their concerns had been ignored by officials at the kindergarten. That same day, Ernesto resigned.
According to education experts in the state who spoke to Reforma, it’s common for trainee teachers to teach groups alone in remote communities, a decision which rests with the administrator of the kindergarten.
An investigation was launched into Ernesto on June 27 and the administrative officials at the kindergarten have been suspended.
The Guanajuato Education Ministry (SEG) has offered legal and psychological support to the victims and parents. A new trainee teacher was assigned to the kindergarten on July 4.
A man, left, holds up a chair as if to throw it at opponents at a polling station in Durango on Sunday. Voting was suspended at some polls across Mexico due to such violence. Internet
The ruling Morena party’s internal elections were marred by violence and other irregularities for a second consecutive day on Sunday, but President López Obrador nevertheless characterized the democratic exercise as a success.
Morena members went to the polls Saturday and Sunday to elect party officials across 300 districts. Some of the successful candidates will take a seat in Morena’s National Congress, the party’s most important decision-making body.
Incidents of violence, vote-buying and acarreo — in which voters were not only given an incentive to vote for certain candidates but also transported to polling places — sullied the elections, according to various reports.
Violence led to the suspension of voting at polling places in some parts of the country, such as Gómez Palacio, Durango, where there was a clash Sunday between supporters of opposing candidates. The newspaper Reforma reported that chairs were thrown, ballots were burned and one man was hit with a baseball bat during the confrontation.
Ballots set on fire in Chiapas. Internet
Ballots and/or voting booths were also burned at polling places in some other states such as México state and Chiapas.
Vote buying and acarreos were reported in several states including San Luis Potosí, Morelos, Guanajuato and Querétaro.
In Morelos, Governor Cuauhtémoc Blanco was accused of supplying government buses to transport Morena members to polling places so that they could cast a vote for his brother. In Guanajuato, voters were taken to polling places in taxis, buses and Uber rideshare vehicles, El Financiero reported. Their votes were allegedly “bought” for packed lunches, groceries, or cash — 1,500 pesos or about US $75 — in some cases.
Similar incentives — which were widely used by the once-omnipotent Institutional Revolutionary Party — were on offer in other states: social media posts showed that some accareados — as herded voters are known — carried slips of paper to remind them who to vote for.
Morena party members also denounced other irregularities such as the failure to guarantee a secret ballot, inadequate checking of voters’ credentials and the exclusion of designated scrutineers.
John Ackerman, a Morena supporter, academic and husband of former cabinet minister Irma Sandoval, denounced “shameless acarreo and voter pressure” in Coyoacán, a Mexico City borough. “Enormous disappointment. We’re gathering an unbelievable volume of evidence,” he tweeted Saturday.
In another Twitter post on Monday, Ackerman said the Morena National Convention would put together a “fraud expo to demonstrate that the irregularities … weren’t ‘isolated’ but generalized.”
He also said that the national convention was committed to “cleaning up the process” used to elect party officials.
Morena members elected party officials in 300 districts. Some polling sites saw large crowds; in Cuernavaca, hundreds slept overnight in the Palace of Government’s atrium.
Alejandro Rojas, an advisor to Morena Senate leader Ricardo Monreal, described the internal elections as “the fraud Olympics.”
“We saw all the practices of coercion and vote buying as well as manipulation, deceit [and] the rude and outrageous mobilization of beneficiaries of the [government’s] social programs,” he said in an interview.
On Twitter, Rojas called the elections “a carnival of acarreo and simulation” and asserted that Morena had “opened the doors to the scourges of politics: patronage, self-interest and cronyism.”
“This is the first step toward a new state party and an anti-democratic and authoritarian regression,” he added.
For his part, Morena national president Mario Delgado said Saturday that where there was evidence of acarreo, election results would be annulled. Old practices of other parties won’t be allowed in Morena, he said.
López Obrador – Morena’s founder – accepted that the elections were marred by acarreo and other bad “practices,” but rejected claims of widespread irregularities.
“[The irregularities occurred] at very few polling places. It wasn’t generalized,” he told reporters at his regular news conference on Monday. “It wasn’t as the opposition would have liked.”
AMLO highlighted that some 2.5 million people cast a vote and declared that the elections were a good democratic exercise. “The participation was massive for an internal election,” he added.
Morelos Governor Cuauhtémoc Blanco was accused of using government-owned vans like these to transport voters to the polls so that they could vote for his brother.
The president also responded to criticism from opposition political figures, asserting that the irregularities reported over the weekend were nothing compared to those that have plagued their own parties.
The Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve offers some amazing natural beauty. Google
Way back in 2011, my husband Alex and I did a road trip from Mexico City to the Sierra Gorda in northern Querétaro. I remember being pleasantly surprised at the good road conditions on the libre highway from the town of San Juan del Río northwards. More recently, someone told me that she had done the drive and liked it as well.
So in June 2022, I decided to drive the road once again. This time, my goal was to make it to Xilitla, San Luis Potosí, to see the Edward James surrealist gardens. I’m happy to report that the drive is still very enjoyable, but do it leisurely as there is so much to see along the way.
Whether you come from or pass through Mexico City or Querétaro, your adventure should start at the rapidly growing city of San Juan del Río on Route 120 north; but the sightseeing really begins at the Pueblo Mágico of Tequisquiapan.
Filled with colonial charm and wrought iron, it has become popular both with weekenders from various cities as well as a growing population of expats. It is also the beginning of the state’s Wine and Cheese Route (Ruta de Vino y Queso), celebrating Mexico’s second largest wine-producing area, which also happens to have dairy farms as well.
The Peña de Bernal monolith looms over the Magical Town of Bernal in Querétaro’s wine country. Alejandro Linares García
From Tequisquiapan, you will want to veer off Route 120 onto 200, then onto 100 toward Bernal. Along the way, you will see a number of vineyards helpfully marked, allowing easy visits.
Bernal is another of Querétaro’s Pueblos Mágicos, most famous for its Peña de Bernal monolith rock formation, one of the largest in the world and one of Mexico 13 Natural Wonders. It, too, is popular with weekenders, in part because the big rock has a reputation for having positive energy, so services such as ritual cleanses and temazcals (like a sweat lodge) are available here.
A little further up the road is Tolimán, an area noted for its strong Otomi-Chichimeca traditions, which prompted UNESCO to add the town’s culture onto its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2009.
Route 100 rejoins Route 120 to continue onto the Sierra Gorda of Querétaro.
Father Juniper Serra started his mission building not in California, but in Querétaro, like this church in Jalpan. Alejandro Linares García
The Sierra Gorda essentially is a high, rugged mountain area that blocks much of the moisture coming in from the Gulf of Mexico. As you make it up and over, the changes in the vegetation are quite noticeable in a short distance (as the crow flies).
It is a rugged region with various microclimates and an important national biosphere reserve. Until you reach the town of Peñamiller, which calls itself the gateway to the Sierra Gorda, the climate is dry; the land relatively flat; and the road relatively free of potholes, speed bumps and really tight curves.
From here on, your luck with potholes and speed bumps continues, but not with the curves.
To be fair, I have been on far curvier roads in far worse condition with far fewer guardrails, but in more than a few places, there are curves where you can just see yourself just going off a cliff. And there are crosses on the side of the roads to drive that idea home.
View of the town of Pinal de Amoles, Querétaro, and its surrounding forest. Juan Carlos Fonseca Mata/Creative Commons
Peñamiller, on the southwest edge, is bone-dry, but as you make your way up to Pinal de Amoles, the flora gradually changes to cloud forest — pines at the highest elevations. From that point, the descent begins, the air gets more humid and the pine forest eventually gives way to semi-tropical.
When you cross the Querétaro border into the Xilitla municipality in San Luis Potosí, there is no doubt you are in rainforest. The abundance of rain here is quite striking.
But before you jump into Xilitla — another Pueblo Mágico — the Sierra Gorda has a lot to offer in the way of natural beauty and history. It is home to the second largest pit cave in the world, the Sótano de Barro, with its numerous hiking trails and camping.
It is also home to five Franciscan missions established by Father Juníper Serra in the 18th century, the forerunners of his famous California missions. The most noted is in Jalpan de Serra, which is yet another Pueblo Mágico.
Salvador Dalí famously quipped about Edward James — who built this sculpture garden in San Luis Potosí’s rainforest — that he was ‘crazier than all the Surrealists together.’
It and the other four in Tancoyol, Concá, Tilaco and Agua de Landa together are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Upon crossing the border into San Luis Potosí, you leave the natural protected area, but there is no lack of natural beauty. While very rainy and humid, the area is only semi-tropical because of its elevation. It is a coffee-growing region, which becomes apparent in Xilitla with the prevalence of cafes and tours to the coffee fincas (farms).
But the real reason people come here is the former house and gardens of British surrealist poet Edward James.
Built over time in the mid 20th century, the remains of his never-finished compound continue a valiant battle against the constant moisture, moss and jungle growth that threatens everything here with complete ruin. The box canyon with its waterfall is still beautiful and was probably every bit the paradise that James called it when he came to the area in the mid 20th century.
As good as the road conditions are, I would not recommend driving back the same way. The stretch in the Sierra Gorda is challenging. You drive that road to enjoy the journey, taking it bit by bit.
For the return, I recommend Xilitla to the city of San Luis Potosí (worth visiting as well), then south back to the city of Querétaro. Yes, it is longer, but it is certainly faster and easier.
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.
