As we came out of the final S-curve of the mountain pass, the town of Taxco slid into view. Hundreds of white facades grinned at us from odd angles all up and down the sun-scorched hillside. Miranda and I had read about and seen plenty of pictures of this well-hidden town of 50,000 inhabitants prior to our drive, but it wasn’t until we came around that bend – after a nearly four-hour drive with very sketchy directions – that we became aware of the architectural, geographic and geological treasure that awaited us for the weekend.
Taxco, a Nahuatl word meaning “what the hell is a Greek village doing in south-central Mexico,” is famous for much more than emulating Santorini sans the sea. It is one of the oldest silver mining sites in the Americas, and home to some of the most fascinating silver jewelry and art you will see anywhere in the world.
If you can get there.
Even if you are able to survive the GPS- and death-defying driving directions – which take you on single-lane roads chock-full of double-loaded big rigs through the mountains – there is no guarantee that your vehicle will be able to fit through or make it up the skinny and exceedingly steep streets of Taxco. Nearly 100% of the town’s ex-patriot population is comprised of tourists who simply were never physically able to turn their SUV around and go home.
Of course, what makes the town a terror for drivers is precisely what makes it a treat for pedestrians, provided they haven’t recently had hip or knee-replacement surgery, nor are wearing heels. Every year in Taxco, 20-25 wealthy yet witless female tourists are killed after one or both of their Manolo Blanhiks become lodged in the cobblestone in front of a bus. (How buses are able to maneuver through the streets of Taxco remains a mystery; it’s believed that the drivers coat their tour coaches in Vaseline.)
One of the best things to do as a pedestrian in Taxco is get lost. One moment you are in the sunny tourist-infested zocalo (central plaza), and the next you find yourself in a steep and narrow alleyway lined with humble homes, tiny silver shops and even tinier restaurants. Losing your bearings has never been so gratifying, as long as a car doesn’t decide to turn up the alley, forcing you to make love to the nearest wall to avoid getting clipped by a bumper or side mirror. I left a layer of nose skin on some stucco while dodging an unsympathetic local Toyota.
Not that all automobiles detract from Taxco’s charm. The town’s entire fleet of taxis is comprised of white Volkswagon Beetles – the original model, not the one driven by American sorority sisters and public relations assistants. There are hundreds of these vintage vehicles, scampering up and down antiquated avenues in search of tourists suffering from leg cramps, twisted ankles and dehydration.
When Miranda and I weren’t busy getting lost and dodging motorized bugs, we were popping into silver galleries and dropping our jaws. The master silversmiths of Taxco have been creating exquisite pieces ever since the arrival in 1926 of William Spratling, an American architect and artist who, upon discovering the rich silver mines surrounding the town, transformed it into a haven for modern metallic masterpieces. Not only did he create his own silver jewelry and art – each piece a solid structure somehow exhibiting the qualities of a liquid – he also set up an apprentice program for locals that has had a lasting artistic influence to this day. Therefore, there are nearly as many silver shops/galleries in Taxco as there are white beetles and wounded tourists. If you ever visit, just keep in mind that not all silver purveyors offer quality goods. Try to stay clear of the vendors pedaling silver sculptures of the Jonas Brothers or places that offer a free bowl of pozole with every purchase.
Exhausted from all the hill-climbing and silver-searching, Miranda and I couldn’t wait to sample the cocktail for which Taxco is (regionally) famous: La Berta – described in our guidebook as a combination of tequila, fresh lime juice and a touch of honey, served over ice. Allegedly the drink was invented by legendary American novelist John Dos Passos while he was passing through Taxco. A consummate artist, he was looking to create a new alcoholic beverage to help him cope with the danger of being run over each day while walking the town’s streets. La Berta was a big hit with the locals, as well as with Ernest Hemingway, who reportedly spent most of his time in Mexico in a Berta-induced coma.
We decided to try our first Berta in a place called Bar Berta, which, according to our guidebook, was THE place to taste the famous concoction. So, sitting at a table on the second floor balcony overlooking the zocalo in the afternoon sun, Miranda and I took our first sip of our inaugural Berta… and nearly spit the shit out. I’m quite certain that macho-man Hemingway – an infamous imbiber – would not have been caught dead sipping something so hideously sweet. He’d sooner eat a shotgun than toss back this drink so short on ethanol and so long on sugar. On our way out of the joint – greatly disillusioned and far too sober – Miranda and I spied a bottle of Squirt lemon-lime soda behind the bar, at which point we realized that the original Berta recipe had been barbarically modified.
Such disappointment and deception, however, was short-lived. Upon returning to our historic and inexplicably affordable digs – the Hotel Los Arcos – Miranda and I grabbed a bottle of wine we had brought from Puebla and headed to the rooftop terrace. Accompanying us and the wine was a small pizza we had picked up at a café next to the hotel to hold us over till dinner. From the rooftop, we were afforded a much more amplified version of the same view that mesmerized us the minute the city came into view upon our arrival late that morning. A panorama of white stucco houses clinging to each other and dangling from cliffs paired very well with our bottle of red and our thin-crust pie. On nearby restaurant and café rooftops, people we’d never met and never would joined us in drink. Taxco’s spectacular rose-colored cathedral – split evenly by sun and shade – dominated the foreground and didn’t judge us as we sat there slaughtering the seventh deadly sin of gluttony. Laughter ricocheted off of cobblestone and stucco all around us while we feasted and inebriated one hundred feet above the streets, gleefully wondering how we had managed to slip through a Mexican portal into a Mediterranean scene.
Happy-hour euphoria never seems to last long into the night, not even in Nuevo Santorini. It wasn’t that the evening came crashing down; it was that carbon monoxide came flooding through. While traffic is of little issue in Taxco by day, it brings the city – and one’s respiratory system – to a standstill on Saturday nights. Double the number of white Beetles come crawling through the cracks to gobble up tipsy tourists; teenagers and twenty-somethings from Taxco’s outskirts pour into the city center in cars that haven’t had their emissions tested since 1983. Miranda and my wine buzz quickly got its ass kicked by exhaust fumes. It was as if the Greek gods had decided we had had experienced enough silver rapture and sunlight for one day and dropped us into downtown Pittsburgh during rush hour.
But we didn’t let the pollution completely ruin the night; we enjoyed ambling up and down the twisted streets in a slightly drunken state despite our struggling lungs. The headlights of the gridlocked cars created a sort of contorted trail of lights, and these visuals – coupled with the cool night air – were enough to distract us from the fact that we were risking emphysema with every breath. Oxygen levels must have dipped a bit too low at one point, for the next thing we knew we were regaining consciousness in our hotel bed and it was time for breakfast.
Fortunately, we were able to restore the pink color to our pulmonary tissue that day by spending the first part of it at a nearby modest mountain hotel/resort, which could only be reached by a cable car affording gorgeous views of the entire area.
We didn’t let the fact that we were not guests hinder our ability to swim for free at the hotel pool. When it comes to sneaking into private, pristine places to take a dip, Miranda and I are hard to beat. We’ve slipped past the gate guards at the Lost Pines Resort outside of Austin on multiple occasions by posing as people with culture and class. Thus, the lethargic staff at a sleepy Mexican mountain resort were no match for us. It didn’t hurt that most of the staff by the pool were male and that Miranda’s bikini was miniscule. If one of these guys had been bold enough to ask us to exit, he likely would have been pummeled by one or more of his drooling peers. After months of seeing mostly just 60 year-old German ladies in one-piece ruffled bathing suites that didn’t cover nearly enough flesh, these guys weren’t about to let anybody oust a woman who looked more like a Brazilian model and less like a Bavarian barmaid.
But the joke ended up being on us, or on me, at least. Despite having ancestors who survived decades in the desert, this little Semite burns easily without sunblock. I’m toast with anything under SPF 15 – especially in early tanning season – and Miranda and I were not equipped with any lotion whatsoever. True, I could have sought shade during the hour we spent by the pool, but I figured I had already contracted lung cancer the night before, so what was the use in worrying about a touch of melanoma.
During the cable car ride back down to the base of Taxco, we took one last long look at the splendor surrounding us, silently sulking over our imminent and somewhat treacherous return to Puebla. We had been merely grazed by Mexican Greece, and wanted more. We even considered staying an extra night and missing half a day of work the next day, but worried that Taxco’s Monday morning rush-hour fumes would be truly toxic, thus we decided to pack up and make a Sunday escape as originally planned.
We watched through the rearview mirror as the white houses and rose-colored cathedral waved goodbye. Much to Miranda’s chagrin, we left silvertown silver-less, as we couldn’t find just the right piece at just the right price. But as we slipped deeper and deeper into the mountains, I started to regret not purchasing anything made out of the metal that made Taxco Taxco. Perhaps it would have set us back a bit wallet-wise, but had we extended a bit back in our favorite shop near the square, we would now have in our possession a piece of a perfect element from a rare and wonderful place that’s practically built out of it.
Instead of silver, we left with black lungs and red epidermis, wondering if we would ever return to our little Santorini south of the border. The slight physical discomfort and health hazards we experienced would not deter us. Sometimes you have to endure some carcinogens and sunburn if you hope to get even a distant glimpse of the gods on Mount Olympus.
