Discover South And Gulf Coast of Mexico

This is the southern and Gulf side of Mexico, running from Veracruz round through Tabasco and into Oaxaca and Chiapas. It is the oldest inhabited part of the country in terms of complex civilisation: the Olmec, who carved the colossal basalt heads and are generally treated as the mother culture of Mesoamerica, were here three thousand years ago, and the Zapotec, Mixtec and Maya followed.

Oaxaca is the reason most people come. The city is a compact grid of green volcanic stone with the mountaintop Zapotec capital of Monte Albán above it, and the state has more Indigenous languages in daily use than any other in Mexico — sixteen recognised peoples. It is also the country’s most serious food region, with seven distinct moles and the mezcal distilleries of the valleys around Tlacolula. Further east, Chiapas holds the highland town of San Cristóbal and the jungle Maya city of Palenque.

The Gulf coast itself is humid and tropical, with Veracruz as the port through which everything and everyone entered New Spain for four hundred years — which is why the music here has African and Caribbean lines in it that the highlands do not. Rain is heaviest from June to October, and the north winds that hit the Gulf coast between November and February are strong enough to close the port.