Orizaba, Sortín y Córdoba

To Xochimilco for the gondola trips through the canals of the Floating Gardens. The Mexican people have the capacity to enjoy life and you'll never find happier people anywhere than in Xochimilco on Sundays. There is music in the canals and laughter, sweet Mexican laughter. The air is heavy with the odor of flowers. Vendors in little canoes drift about selling everything from photographs to tortillas. In the central part of the garden is a dance pavilion and a restaurant, but you don't have to go there for music because there is an orchestra at every turn of a canal. Compared to the busy world outside, Xochimilco is a hidden and delightful chapter in a glorious fairy tale. It's a kind of unreal wonderland, peopled with the most carefree and lighthearted people. One of the delightful things about México is that the shrines of beauty are not reserved for the few but for the many. Whole families throng to Xochimilco for the afternoon, bringing lunches and taking part in the Sunday parade of music and flowers down the canals. There is a delightful familiarity between all visitors. And if you should go to Xochimilco some evening, when the moon is on and has turned the canals into gold-moonlight sonata at Xochimilco and if your light-of-love does not respond to your whispered words of love and sweet nonsense-well, brother, you had better get a new girl.

Xochimilco is a hidden and delightful chapter in a glorious fairy tale. It's a kind of unreal wonderland.

Aside the water. All this is the music of Xochimilco but on Sunday they serve the thousands seeking the rest and the beauty that is Xochimilco.

Orizaba, Sortín y Córdoba WHERE BANANAS, COFFEE AND ORCHIDS GROW WILD

Two HUNDRED miles eastward and to the south of Mexico City is the famous valley of La Joya in the state of Vera Cruz. Before you get to the valley you must climb a steep shoulder of the Sierra Madres. On one side of the range are Garci Crespo, the famed spa, and the little town of Tehuacan, in the state of Puebla, both famous for their health-giving hot springs. On the other side of the range is a tropical paradise where you find Orizaba, Fortin and Córdoba, in Vera Cruz.

Overlooking this valley is the Pico de Orizaba, the highest peak in Mexico and the second high-est peak on the North American continent, raising its cold and snowy brow over countless colorful and variegated miles of Mexican land scape at an elevation of 18,225 feet. Mountain waters from the never-ending snows of the Pico de Orizaba, flow into the valley of La Joya working mills, making power, and even entering the process of making cerveza, or beer (and good beer, too.) The valley is protected by the encircling Sierra Madres, which ward off the cold and the winds causing the valley to bloom as only a tropical garden can bloom. You can pick your bananas for breakfast right off the growing stock, and you can pick your own coffee beans, too, if you wish. And you gentlemen who gallantly send your lady an orchid now and then should go to Fortín and buy them by the dozen.

Fortin (Four-teen), or to give it its full and proper name, Fortín de las Flores, is a little village between Orizaba and Córdoba, the latter two being distinctly rather-large, rather-old Spanish-Mexican cities. Flower vendors will besiege you at Fortín carrying circular boxes made of trunks from the banana tree. These boxes contain rich, lush gardenias or the more aristocratic orchid, and you'll soon load yourself with these flowers and camellias and hibiscus, and you'll blink in amazement at what a few cents will buy. The principal business of Fortín is sending growing plants of these exotic flowers to places like New York. The pro-fusion of flowers in this little Vera Cruz village drugs your senses. Even a chambermaid will have three orchids in her hair and, with a friendly shake of her head, will go about the business of dusting and sweeping your room. Yes! If you like flowers you'll like Fortín.

Córdoba and Orizaba are noted for their fruits and their very superior coffee bean. They'll even show you a rubber tree or two, which the American traveler would like to take home to grow his own tires in his own backyard.

Orizaba (Oh-ree-za-va)) is an important industrial city of the state of Vera Cruz, with cotton mills, a sugar refinery and the Moct-zuma brewery, one of the largest in México. Surrounding Orizaba are many small villages, each with a singular charm of its own, the inhabitants of which have a simplicity and a graciousness that goes well with the richness of the countryside. Surely there should be no surly people in such a tropical paradise. Good Dame Nature, which stints much of other parts of Over the roof tops of Orizaba tropical trees stretch their leafy fingers into the sunlight. Pico de Orizaba, always snow-covered, looks down on the tropical vegetation of the fertile valley. This peak is the highest in México.