There’s a very famous festival in Santiago Tuxtla that lasts until Twelfth Night (Jan 6). Widely observed, especially in Huatusco, Cotaxtla and Amatlán de los Reyes, near Córdoba. Día de la Virgen de Guadalupe (Dec 12).Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead Nov 2).In La Antigua the patroness of fishermen is honoured with processions of canoes on the river, while Alvarado, outside Veracruz, enjoys a fiesta filling the first two weeks of the month. Fiesta de la Virgen del Rosario (Oct 7).Widely celebrated, particularly in Tlapacoyan, where you can see El Baile de los Negritos, and with a week-long festival in Tuxpán that includes dancing and the voladores. In Tlapacoyan you can see the bizarre Baile de los Negritos. Celebrated with fiestas in Santiago Tuxtla and Coatzintla each lasts several days. At the same time, Xico has a week-long celebration of Mary Magdalene. A massive pilgrimage to Catemaco, accompanied by a fiesta which spills over into the following day. Día de la Virgen del Carmen (July 15–16).Celebrated with dancing in Santiago Tuxtla,and in Martinez de la Torre, near Tlapacoyan, where the voladores perform. The start of a major four-day festival in Papantla with regular performances by the voladores. Corpus Christi (variable the Thurs after Trinity Sun).Feria del Cafe (first two weeks of May).Also celebrations in Catemaco and in the port of Alvarado – a ribald Fish Fiesta following the spirit of the Veracruz Carnaval. Naolinco, a beautiful village near Xalapa, stages a mock Crucifixion on Good Friday. You can witness them in Papantla, where you’ll also see the voladores in Coatzintla, a Totonac village nearby in Cotaxtla, between Veracruz and Córdoba and in Otatitlán. Re-creations of the Passion are widespread in this area. Semana Santa (Holy Week, March/April).In Espinal, a Totonac village on the Río Tecolutla, not far from El Tajín and Papantla, you can witness the spectacular voladores. In Naranjos, between Tuxpán and Tampico, a fiesta with many traditional dances. Shamans, witches, wizards and healers from across Mexico attend purification rituals and celebrations in and around Catemaco, amid a festival that attracts plenty of visitors. Congreso de Brujos (first Fri in March).Carnaval (the week before Lent variable Feb–March) is celebrated all over the region, most riotously in Veracruz.Colourful fiesta in Jaltipán, near Acayucán, which includes the dance of La Malinche (Cortés’ Indian interpreter and mistress, who is said to have been born here). The final day of a week-long fiesta, complete with dances, boat races and bulls let loose in the streets, in Tlacotalpan. The area is renowned as a meeting place for native brujos and curanderos, witches and healers. To the south, Catemaco is a spellbinding lake set in an extinct volcanic crater, where you can see the last remaining tract of Gulf coast rainforest. This area, and the high mountains around Córdoba and Orizaba, are the playground of the adrenaline tourist too. The colonial cities in the mountains are also delightful: Xalapa, seat of the Veracruz state government, is the finest, with its balmy climate, beautiful highland setting and superb anthropology museum. El Tajín, near the coast in the north of the state, is one of the most important archeological sites in the country, and Filo Bobos, only recently excavated, is also well worth a visit. Less than an hour north lie La Antigua and Villa Rica, where Cortés established the first Spanish settlements on the American mainland, and Cempoala, ruined site of the first civilization he encountered. Veracruz itself is one of the most welcoming of all Mexico’s cities too busy with its own affairs to create a separate life for visitors, the steamy tropical port draws you instead into the rhythms of its daily life, and its obsession with music. That said, domestic tourism to the area is on the rise, both to the beaches and, increasingly, for adventure tourism – whitewater rafting, kayaking, canyoning, climbing and more – around the eastern slopes of the Sierra Madre and the rivers that flow off it. Though there are long, windswept beaches all down the Atlantic coast, they are less beautiful than their Pacific or Caribbean counterparts, while the larger coastal towns are primarily commercial centres, of little interest to the visitor. Yet even in the rainy season the torrential downpours are short-lived, and within a couple of hours of the rain starting, you can be back on the streets in bright sunshine. In part, at least, this is because the area makes no particular effort to attract them the weather can also be blamed – it rains more often and more heavily here than just about anywhere else in Mexico. The few non-Mexican tourists who find their way here are usually just passing through.
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