Cuetzalan

Cuetzalan pours down its mountainside in stairs and cobbles, white walls and red roofs slick with the cloud that gives the Sierra Norte its rainforest lushness. This is Nahua and Totonac country - the town's name honors the quetzal feathers once traded here - and tradition is worn daily, not performed: on Sundays the tianguis fills the plaza with growers of coffee, cinnamon and vanilla, women in embroidered blouses and older men in white cotton calzones, bargaining in Nahuatl beneath the Gothic-spired parish church. Voladores - the flying men of the Totonac rite - launch from their pole by the church on weekends, spinning earthward on unwinding ropes. Around the town, the karst mountainside is riddled with attractions: the multi-tiered Las Brisas and Corazon del Bosque waterfalls, swimmable pools, the cathedral-sized caverns of the region's cave systems, and the moss-covered pyramids of Yohualichan - a Totonac cousin of El Tajin with the same niched architecture - twenty minutes away. October's coffee-and-huipil fair crowns the calendar.

What you actually see

• The Sunday tianguis - coffee, vanilla and embroidery in Nahua dress.
• The voladores - the Totonac flying rite from the plaza pole.
• The waterfalls and caves - swimming pools and caverns in the green.
• Yohualichan - niched pyramids in the cloud-forest.

When to go

October for the fair; October to May for the least rain - though mist and drizzle are the town's climate and half its beauty. Sundays are essential for the market.

Honest expectations

Everything is steep - lanes, stairs and the walks to falls demand knees and grip; stones stay slick year-round. The sierra drive is long and winding. Rain gear is not optional most months.

Nearby

Yohualichan's ruins, the Tzicuilan caves and the coffee fincas of the surrounding sierra fill every extra day.