Mexico Travel Guide and Destinations

Acapulco (formally: Acapulco de Juárez) is a city and major sea port in the state of Guerrero on the Pacific coast of Mexico, 300 km (190 miles) SSW of Mexico City, at 16°85′ N 99°92′ W. Acapulco is located on a deep, semicircular bay, almost land-locked, easy of access, and with so secure an anchorage that vessels can safely lie alongside the rocks that fringe the shore. It is the best harbour on the Pacific coast of Mexico, and it is a port of call for shipping lines running between Panama and San Francisco, California, USA. In 2003 the estimated population was 638,000 people.

The town is built on a narrow strip of low land, scarcely half a mile wide, between the shore line and the lofty mountains that encircle the bay. There is great natural beauty in the surroundings, but the mountains render the town difficult of access from the interior – or at at least did, until the construction of a 2-km-long tunnel to the waterfront from the hinterland in the 1990s. An earlier effort to admit the cooling sea breezes by cutting through the mountains a passage called the Abra de San Nicolas had some beneficial effect.

The city of Aguascalientes is the capital of the state of Aguascalientes in western central Mexico. It stands on the banks of the Río Aguascalientes, 1888 metres above sea level, at 21°51′ N 102°18′ W.

The city was founded on 22 October 1575 and elevated to city status in 1816. It became the capital of the newly formed state when it was split off from neighbouring Zacatecas in 1835.

People from Aguascalientes (both the city and the state) are known by the whimsical Spanish demonym hidrocálidos.

The city is home to the first-division football team, Necaxa. Aguascalientes also organises the largest fair held in Mexico, the San Marcos National Fair (Feria Nacional de San Marcos), which takes place over the last two weeks of April and the first two of May, and receives almost 7 million visitors every year.

Campeche is a city of Mexico located at 19°85′ N 90°53′ W, on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico. The city’s population estimate for 2002 was 230,910 people.

The city was founded in 1540 by Spanish conquistadores as San Francisco de Campeche atop the preexisting Maya city of Canpech or Kimpech. The Pre-Columbian city was described as having 3,000 houses and various monuments, of which little trace remains.

The city retains many of the old colonial Spanish city walls and fortifications which protected the city (not always successfully) from pirates and buccaneers. The state of preservation and quality of its architecture earned it the status of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999.

Campeche was the principal port of Yucatán until the mid-19th century, when it was overtaken by Sisal, and then Progreso. It was historically the second largest and most important city in the Peninsula (after Mérida) until the end of the 20th century and the increased development in Quintana Roo. In the 1840s the city had a population of about 21,000.

Cancún is a coastal city in Mexico’s easternmost state, Quintana Roo. It is the municipal seat of Benito Juárez municipality and a world renowned tourist resort. The city has grown rapidly over the past thirty years to become a city of approximately half a million residents, covering the former island and the nearby mainland. There are actually very few true ‘cancunenses’ (people originally from Cancún) because of the rate at which the resort and its service areas grew. Most people living here are from mainland Mexico and a growing number are from the rest of America and Europe.

In Cancún there are about 140 hotels with 24,000 rooms and 380 restaurants. Three million visitors arrive each year in an average of 190 flights daily. The hotel zone is one of the most exclusive internationally, with upmarket restaurants, bars, and the like which have catered for quite a number of the rich and famous. The hotel zone tends to be rather expensive as it is aimed at visitors and relies on the all inclusive hotels to keep them all in this area allowing prices to soar. Downtown is home to less expensive places to shop like Walmart, Comercial Mexicana and Soriana, not to mention several flea markets like the one in the hotel zone.

Celaya is a city in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico, located at 20.52°N, 100.82°W. It is the third most populous city in the state, with an estimated population of about 382,958 in 2000.

Explosion of inproperly protected gunpowder and fireworks warehouse in September 1999 killed over 60 people and badly injured over 300.

Chetumal is a city on the east coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. It is the capital of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. In 2000 it had a population of 238,520 people.

The city is on the western side of Chetumal Bay near the mouth of the Rio Hondo, at 18.50° North, 88.29° West. Chetumal is an important port for the region, and Mexico’s main port of trade with Belize.

History of Chetumal

In Pre-Columbian times a city called Chactemal (sometimes rendered as “Chetumal” in early European sources) was the capital of a Maya state of the same name which controlled roughly the southern quarter of modern Quintana Roo and the north-east portion of Belize. This original Chetumal is now believed to have been on the other side of the Rio Hondo, in modern Belize, not at the site of modern Chetumal.

Chilpancingo (formally: Chilpancingo de los Bravos) is a city in the state of Guerrero, Mexico, located at 17° 33′ 0″ N 99° 30′ 0″ W. It is the capital of Guerrero. In 2003 the estimated population of Chilpancingo was 152,600.

It is crossed by Federal Highway 95 as it crosses the state towards Acapulco from Mexico City.

Cholula is a small city in the state of Puebla, Mexico. The legal, though little used, full name of the city is Cholula de Rivadavia. The city of Cholula is divided into two municipalities, San Andrés Choula and San Pedro Cholula. Both of them are considered to be part of the conurbation of the city of Puebla.

Cholula is located at 19°6′ N 98°31′ W, about 15 km west of the city of Puebla, at an approximate elevation of 2135 meters (about 7000 ft) above sea level. The population of San Pedro Cholula is somewhat less than 100,000 people, and the population of San Andres Cholula, a little less than 50,000.

Cholula was an important city of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, dating back to at least the 2nd century BC, with settlement as a village going back at least some thousand years earlier. It was later the second largest city of the Aztec empire.

The city of Colima, Colima, is located at 19°24′ N 103°73′ W. It is the capital and main city of the state of Colima.

In 2003 the city had an estimated population of about 125,400 people. It is one of the oldest cities in Mexico, after Veracruz, Veracruz, and Mexico City – following the fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521, the Spanish conquistadors were quick to reach the west coast.

Comitán (formally: Comitán de Domínguez) is a small city in the Mexican state of Chiapas. It is the seat of government of the municipality of the same name.

It is located near the border with Guatemala at 16.25°N 92.13°W. In 2003 the estimated population was 75,600 people.

The original name given by the Maya people is Balún Canán ("Nine stars"). It was later changed to Comitán de las Flores. Comitán de Domínguez is named after Dr. Belisario Domínguez, who gave a memorable speech in the Congress against the dictator Victoriano Huerta for which it was murdered.