Taxco

To Taxco, a 3-hour drive south of Mexico City, but worth it. Taxco is one of those tourist towns the Mexico Tourist Office calls ‘Pueblos Magicós’ (of which there are officially 83 scattered around Mexico). Taxco is worthy of the name: it really is a magical place, perched precariously on the side of a hill in the middle of nowhere. Like Guanajuato and several other towns in the orbit of the capital, Taxco is famous for its silver mines and you can’t move for shops selling the stuff. But really it’s a place to wander around and get lost in. It is a maze of steep, narrow lanes where the town’s white VW Beatle taxis scoot around causing pedestrians to hug walls. Thank goodness for the unfeasibly high Santa Prisca church in the centre of town, glimpsed around corners just when you thought you were lost. But the real maze is the market which sprawls down the hill, stairways and alleyways taking you deeper and deeper into its labyrinth.