Mexican Days: Journey Into the Heart of Mexico by Tony Cohan: Travel Writer’s Pick of a Dozen Mexican Destinations

If you’re ripe for traveling in Mexico as shown through the eyes of a hip, literate writer with a flair for sensuous detail, Tony Cohan’s second book about Mexico may lead you to start planning your trip to that country-or even a first visit.

But be forewarned, the novice traveler will not find Mexican Days: Journeys into the Heart of Mexico (Broadway Books, 2006)a how-to book. It is a where-to, why and what book, to the Mexico seen through Cohan’s take on a dozen destinations, some of which he visited as a travel writer for Conde Nast Traveler and the Los Angeles Times, among others. Tony speaks Spanish well and has lived in Mexico for twenty years.

Cohan takes us to places I also have visited in my two early trips and seven years living in Central Mexico-San Miguel de Allende, Mexico City, Xilitla in the Sierra Gorda, Oaxaca, Guanajuato-and a few places I’ve never been like Tlacotalpan, a photographer’s dream town on a river in Veracruz state and the site of a famous music (son) festival. Even when my own take has differed, the details brought each place back into focus. Of course comparing experiences is part of the fun of even armchair travel, part of what this book is all about.

I think seasoned Mexico hands will appreciate Cohan’s compact reflections on what he has seen. For example, after brief comments on Cuernavaca, Tepotzlan and Valle de Bravo, all within comfortable weekend driving distance for Mexico City residents, Cohan writes: “The pressures of the swelling capital had tainted its old getaways, it seemed.

After resonant Oaxaca, they seemed tinny.” Or near the the gritty yet historic center of Mexico City by the Zocalo, Cohan gives readers more historical perspective “It hadn’t always been this bad. Fifty years ago Mexico appeared to be on its way to first world prosperity,” followed by a pile of historical details.

Then there are the visual details Cohan piles up artfully, for example of the road leading upward to the five Junipero Serra missions north of Queretaro: “A hairpin ascent led through dry, silvery, cactus-dotted scarp. Gradually the mountains softened into alpine forests near the summit before snaking down into lush forests of banana, tamarind, bougainvillea, and poinsettia.” A lot of information there for the reader to swallow in passing or digest slowly.

There’s no doubt Cohan is a writer who likes to read. After twenty years living in the Hispanic-Indian world of Mexico, he likes paradox. He starts off by quoting one of his literary heroes, Ferdinand Pessoa, who wrote “One sunset is much like another; I don’t have to go to Constantinople to see one.”

Then when Cohan describes a sunset in Guanajuato, he captures exactly the qualities that make it special. “From the downstairs living room, I watched the sun drop into the mountain cleft. The piled cubist arrangement of buildings opposite flared red.” What I now take for granted in my adopted city, Cohan has engraved indelibly in my mind.

Cohan lets the reader in on details of his own life while at the same time keeping Mexico his target whether he is writing about the ruins of Palenque or the frontier he flies over on a trip to California. About the latter, he makes sure his reader knows that a Mexican has to pay $3000 to walk perilously into a country a North American can reach by plane for far less.

Mexican Days does not cosset its readers with an index. Occasionally Tony Cohan conceals identities or even hotel names. But, with its clear arrangement by destination, the book is easy to follow. Mexican Days lets readers return take information in through the skin as they revisit familiar places or anticipate new destinations in their lives.

Guanajuato, the city where I live, Tony writes: