Overlooked Queretaro

Queretaro, a beautiful colonial city between Mexico City and San Miguel de Allende, is often overlooked by travelers.

That's a shame. Check out these photos.

If you're flying in to Mexico City, you can take a direct bus from the airport to Queretaro. There are several expensive and mid-priced hotels around the zocalo.
     Day trips can be made to nearby hot springs and small towns almost untouched by tourists. San Miguel de Allende is only an hour away by bus.

SECRET PYRAMID TUNNEL

Archeologists are opening a cave sealed for more than 30 years deep beneath a Mexican pyramid to look for clues about the mysterious collapse of one of ancient civilization's largest cities.

The soaring Teotihuacan stone pyramids, now a major tourist site about an hour outside Mexico City, were discovered by the ancient Aztecs around 1500 AD, not long before the arrival of Spanish explorers to Mexico.But little is known about the civilization that built the immense city, with its ceremonial architecture and geometric temples, and then torched and abandoned it around 700 AD.

Archeologists are now revisiting a cave system that is buried 20 feet beneath the towering Pyramid of the Sun and extends into a tunnel stretching for some 295 feet with a height of 8 feet.

New excavations could be the key to unlocking information about the sacred rituals of the people who inhabited the city, later dubbed "The Place Where Men Become Gods" by the Aztecs who believed it was a divine site.

"We think it had a ritual purpose. Offerings were placed at the very end of the tunnel as part of the pyramid's construction process," Mexican archeologist Alejandro Sarabia told Reuters."We want to find out why the Teotihuacan people sealed it and when," he said.

Sarabia said the tunnel was first discovered in the early 1970s but it was closed soon afterward, and most of the information about it was lost when the archeologist who found it died.

Teotihuacan is Mexico's oldest major archeological site and during its heyday in 500 AD, the city was home to some 200,000 people, rivaling the size of ancient Rome at that time, according to archeologists.Today, it is surrounded by slums spilling over from the outskirts of Mexico City, but swarms of tourists still visit the giant Sun pyramid each year to celebrate the spring equinox festival marking the sun's return to the northern hemisphere.

BUS ACROSS MEXICO

(C) Robert Berryhill

We couldn't help but smile at the stunned looks the other couple gave us. They had approached us in the sunny Mexican plaza because we were reading an English language newspaper. Clearly they were exasperated.

"We paid $250 for our flight from Mexico City to Morelia," the man sputtered. His wife shook her head. "And the plane," she added, "was two hours late in taking off."
They asked if we had flown in or rented a car. That's when we smiled and put the other travelers in shock.

"Neither," we replied in unison. Then I explained. "We made the four-hour trip by bus. It cost just $48 for both of us. "It was an executive class bus with wide seats like airline business class, and a hostess served us sandwiches while we watched a video movie."

They gulped in surprise and looked at each other. The woman told her husband, "I've got to get my potassium fix." Then they hurried off.

It's a shame they didn't linger awhile and share our picnic lunch of roasted chicken from a nearby cafe. We would have told them that busing across Mexico has more benefits than just dollars and cents.

We didn't join the cookie-cutter crowd of tourists at airports, or cocoon ourselves in a rental car. We headed for Mexico's clean bus stations teeming with Mexicans from all walks of life. On plush, video-equipped first class buses, we met well-dressed business executives on their way to conferences. Other times we bounced on third class mini-vans with friendly farmers carrying baskets of produce to the next highway junction.

And scenery. Instead of blips from a high-flying plane, from bus windows we saw unmapped lakes, 18th Century architecture, and oxen pulling plows across fertile volcanic fields.
But we would have stressed the most important benefit. We met people who helped us practice our fractured Spanish, a small boy who proudly led us through a burro pasture to an untouristed ceramics plant, and proud craftsmen who showed us how to pound heavy slabs of copper into works of art.

World's Largest Bus System

By becoming part of Mexico's vast bus system, the largest and most efficient in the world, we were able to scratch beneath the surface of a wonderful culture. But because of the lack of solid information, it was scary at first. Did Mexico's more than 800 bus companies mesh together well enough to work?

What we found was a well-working, inexpensive way of traveling that is largely overlooked by tourists. For four weeks we roamed Mexico's countryside by bus, from the Texas border to the colonial city of Guanajuato with several stops in between. Now that we knew the system worked, we made a return trip. This time we flew from New York to Mexico City and then used buses to totally immerse ourselves in Mexican culture.

Every day was different. We ate the fabled native soup in Patzcuaro, watched copper artisans in Santa Clara del Cobre, hiked up the monarch butterfly sanctuary near Acambaro, and enjoyed several days in the silver capital of Taxco. As we met local people, we jumped on buses for sudden visits to places unaccustomed to tourists. Many the tiny mountain village with its marble-paved streets, home of the last Aztec emperor, wasn't the end of the earth, but we could see it from there.

Most travelers to Mexico aren't aware that bus travel is that extensive, dependable, safe, and inexpensive. Mexican bus companies don't readily provide printed schedules, and tourist guide books barely mention bus travel.

After extensive research, the unique new book BUS ACROSS MEXICO shows you how to easily navigate the world's largest bus system.

http://www.busacross.com/
www.mexicobusschedules.com