Tepoztlan

A popular escape from Mexico City, Tepoztlan is a smallish rural town nestled in the top end of a steep valley that slopes downward for a thousand metres or so towards the open plains to the south-east. (The huge cone of Popocatepetl is just about visible down in that direction, amidst many other lesser and less-active volcanoes.)

Described in the tourist literature as one of Mexico’s ‘Magical Towns’, it’s also popular with the magical crowd: signs everywhere for ‘masaje’, ‘fotografia de aura’, ‘luz azul’ and suchlike wonders well-known to the Glastafari (aka the equally mad denizens of Glastonbury, back in England). And in many ways it is magical: it’s very friendly, it’s easy to wander safely amongst the cobbled streets, it has a wonderful open market in the centre of town and an even busier street-market at weekends, for example, and high up on the vertical cliffs that tower above the town stands the Tepozteco pyramid, a survivor from Aztec times. To my great relief, most of the police here do not carry guns – a hugely pleasant change from Guatemala! And whilst the place I’m staying in is quite a long way up a very steep hill, and the colleague I’m working with is based on the far side of town, everything is compact enough that I can walk anywhere I need – or take one of the many taxis that seem to be everywhere, and cheap (even though the fare can often miraculously all-but-double on the first sign of a tourist-like face!)

But there’s one thing that Tepoztlan doesn’t have: silence. There seems to be an almost religious avoidance of it, more like. Right now the bells at each of the churches are clanking out the hour, preceded every quarter-hour by a slightly mangled version of the Westminster-chimes sequence. Dogs bark all day, all night, everywhere. Cocks crow for a couple of hours before dawn, and often an hour or more after dawn too, just in case you hadn’t heard them the first time. Huge B-double gas-tanker trucks blare their exhaust-brakes all the way down the grade of the autopista on the far side of the valley; smaller trucks grind up and down the impossibly steep cobbled streets of the town, announcing their wares loudly through huge built-in megaphones. The church – which has an apparently unquestioned right to do whatever it likes – sets off enormous thunderflashes at any time of day or night, apparently at random, sometimes two or three in a row. And some mad evangelist has taken to gathering the faithful with a mixture of loud pop-music and even louder religious ranting, amplified to fullest distorted volume, frequently up until 1:30am or later, and starting all over again at 6:30am with massed drums and a marching-band. And since this town is in a natural bowl with thousand-foot vertical cliffs all round, every single sound echoes and echoes back and forth; and, of course, also bounces off the almost perfectly sound-reflecting blank walls and polished tiles of every house in the district. The resultant cacophony can be very hard to block out, even with ear-plugs and noise-cancelling headphones combined. The final result: no sleep. And no sleep. And more no-sleep…

After this, even the strain of Guatemala City – where I’m going back to at the weekend – may seem like a rest!

But other than the lack of sleep, Tepoztlan has been a great place, with great people that I’ll miss. Quieter next time, perhaps?