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Considered one of the magical towns, Mexcaltitán is located just 75 km away from the Riviera Nayarit, departing north of San Blas through the highway that leads to Villa Hidalgo and Santiago Ixcuintla.

If you wish, you may start from the City of Tepic going over a distance of 63 km towards north on international highway No. 15 until you reach Santiago and 45 km from this point the Island of Mexcaltitán is found, which in Nahuatl means “In the House of the Moon”.

Known as the “Cradle of Mexicanity” or “The Legendary Azltán”, since it was from this point that the Aztec pilgrimage started in search of what later became Mexico-Tenochtitlan.

In Mexcaltitán the climate is warm and dry with a rainy season between June and October, and more intensely during July and August. The hottest months are from May to October and the average yearly temperature is of 26°C.

Surrounded by estuaries and channels where white mangroves and Tule domain, as well as a rich fauna with a diversity of cranes and birds, in Mexcaltitlán there is the La Batanga wharf, from where boats start off onto the Island in a 10-minutes ride, at a cost of 70 pesos. The wharf offers its services from 6:00 a.m. to 19:00 hrs.

At the Island you may enjoy the delicious specialties of the Mexcalteca cuisine, besides being able to walk through peculiar streets where mangrove and adobe get together to roof the almost sixteen hundred inhabitants distributed throughout 200 houses.

Mexcaltitán streets provide a touch of charm to the visitors. Ochre and reddish tones flood the sight when walking through the island of the moon, where the streets are of packed dirt and tall sidewalks of an uncanny height. This due to the rainy season, when the waters of the lagoon rise, so that the height of the sidewalks prevent the houses from flooding and this is when the town acquires some echoes of the Old Tenochtitlan, for the dwellers, in order to be able to go on with their daily life and routine must move about in canoes, projecting a fantasy aspect. Thus it is also called the Mexican Venice.

The Main Plaza, geographical and social center of the Isle, is the ideal place to enjoy the last rays of the sun to patiently await a small moon-rays bath towards the night. If the sun should not allow you to sit on the benches of the plaza, we suggest you to step on the kiosk, where under the shelter of the shade, you may enjoy the quiet time in Mexcaltitán. You may also purchase handcrafts offered at the surroundings.

The Temple of the Lord of Ascension, built in the XIX century, has a two-body door and a three-level turret.

At the Museum of Origin you may enjoy a local archeology room, where the discoveries of the surroundings of the Isle and the adjacent lagoons may be appreciated, where vestiges of what may have been native neighborhoods have been found, placed in sections as per their craft. There is also a room dedicated to the Mesoamerican cultures, especially the Mexica, which parted from this place to the Central Highlands.

In this fishermen town, under the shelter of the moon and legend, the festivities are a tide of flavors and color. The patron saint festivities of the town are held on June 28 and 29, when the shrimp season is opened and their patron saints are honored: San Pedro and San Pablo, to whom the people ask for the benediction of their nets and the abundance of fish and shrimp in the lagoon.

In addition to the novena, the inhabitants organize a picturesque contest for this celebration, which consists of a canoe race between two teams of fishermen that represent, respectively, San Pedro and San Pablo. This way, now the pilgrimage is not directed by Huizilopochtli, but by two Christian middlemen: San Pedro and San Pablo.

In Mexcaltitán you may try the typical dishes of its coast, based on fish and seafood. Among the delicacies kept by the dwellers of this land we may mention the famous white fish “zarandeado” style with shrimp, mullet on the grill, or the “taxtihilli” prepared with a hearty shrimp broth with corn dough and spices; this is a dish that comes from the times when the Mexica did not yet rule over the great lands of Mesoamerica.

This is Mexcaltitán, magical town of which it is said, it is the moon’s anxiousness to set her body on the ground. Some others say that its oval shape is a perennial sign of the moon’s image on the water, trapped by magical spells to the land and its surroundings.

And it may for sure be true, because anyone can be spellbound among the air and the land of this lunar disc amidst the water.

Legend, history, grandiloquent myth of the empire that seeks to return to its origin. Mute origin amidst the uncertain tilting of the water. Communion of salty and fresh waters. Land and sea, wind and light, song and silence….

Mexcaltitán, a refuge of history, nature and memory that binds daily remembrance to the ancestral memory of a unique place in this country.