Airport Code: VSA
Location: 13 km east of town
As we race towards the
21st century, it's hard
to imagine finding a
frontier region in the
confines of North America. In the last 20
years, jets, package tours, and an appetite
for travel to lesser-known destinations
have uncovered nearly every corner of the
continent. Yet Mexico's two most southern
states - Tabasco and Chiapas - have
enjoyed anonymity as mainstream tourist
destinations, and offer a true backroads
adventure into a land rich in cultural and
ecological attractions.
Wedged between Veracruz and Campeche
states and spanning Mexico's narrow
southern waistline (known as the Tehuantepec
Peninsula), these two states are
models of geographic contrast. Tabasco,
with its wide rivers, swampy lagoons and
fertile tropical lowlands sits on Mexico's
steamy Gulf Coast, while Chiapas is a
mountainous pine forest-clad land that
stretches to the Pacific Ocean and neighboring
Guatemala.
The Gulf Coast State of TABASCO is one
of Mexico's smallest but wealthiest states.
Its fertile plains support year-'round agriculture,
while vast oil deposits have created
an air of relative prosperity and affluence.
Humid and hot, the state's climate is
notoriously disagreeable (heavy rains
from May-October). The flat coastal plains
give way to undulating foothills that eventually
rise to become the Sierra Madre
de Chiapas mountain range. Swamp
land, rivers, and lush jungle dominate the
scenery. Most visitors regretfully bypass
the state's spruced-up capital city, never seeing more than
their Villahermosa hotels, and head directly into the
neighboring State of Chiapas, and the
mystical Mayan ruins of Palenque. |
