Fredrick Catherwood’s Lasting Legacy

Fredrick Catherwood’s Lasting Legacy


In  the early 1840’s, two haggard men on mules emerged from Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula telling stories of a lost civilization discovered and unknown cities explored, long before the days when Nikon cameras and National Geographic magazine told us of these things. Between the years of 1839-1842, American John Lloyd Stephens...

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Buying on the Beach

Buying on the Beach

Defining Mexico’s Federal Maritime Zone


  Defining and measuring the Federal Maritime Zone The Federal Maritime Zone is legally described as the 20 meter wide strip of land that is transitable and next to the beach (playa mar). Let’s break this down to make sure we are clear on what we are talking about: 1....

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The Secret to Raising Fish

The Secret to Raising Fish

The Holy Trinity of Resonance


Do some boats raise fish better than others? You bet they do, but why? And, how can a 25 foot Mexican panga raise more fish than a “no expenses spared” 45 foot sport fisher? It is all about the Holy Trinity of Resonance, Vibration and the Horsepower to Weight Ratio....

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Wine and Cheese

Wine and Cheese

Breaking with tradition


The theme of an eternal discussion among sommeliers, the pairing of wine and cheese is without a doubt the most difficult.  This despite the fact that both are a result of the blending of yeast and bacteria.  A good cheese can better a low quality wine or a powerful cheese...

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Pacific Coast Pirates


…a 27 year old English Captain by the name of Thomas Cavendish, was bearing down on him with distinctly unfriendly intentions.”   An account of the Manila Galleon and English pirates off the coast of Mexico The Spanish galleon Santa Ana slowly tracked the coast of Baja California in November 1587 under clear skies and favorable sailing conditions. She was four months out of Manila and only days away from dropping anchor at her home port of Acapulco. She carried in her hold an immense fortune in Oriental treasure: gold, pearls, silks from the China, ginger, cloves and cinnamon from the Spice Islands, jewels from Burma, Indian ivory. Lookouts from the Santa Ana spotted distant sails as the overloaded ship passed by Cabo San Lucas. Captain Tomas de Alzola reduced sail and ordered camouflage netting to be hung. Weapons were issued to those among the 160 passengers and crew capable...

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Latest ADIP Articles

Second Annual Resort Homes Conference

If you are interested in Mexico’s dynamic second homes market and want to combine business and pleasure, then save the date and make plans to attend the MINT Second Homes Conference and Expo on April 19-20, 2007 in Cancun, Mexico, which will be officially opened by Lic. Rodolfo Elizando Torres, Mexico’s Secretary of Tourism. TradEx,...

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Decorating with Color

Decorating with Color

My great-grandfather used to say that there were very few things that couldn’t be fixed with a can of paint. How right he was. Paint can make your surroundings (no matter what they are) seem warm or cool, relaxing or stimulating, or even welcoming and inspirational. This month, I want to cover colors and how...

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Babel: The Children are not Alright

Babel: The Children are not Alright

With Babel, Alejandro González Iñárritu has created a multi-layered, cinematic collage that takes us around the world where adults have problems, true. But the poignancy of the film lies in the fact that no matter where, privileged or poor, children are subjected to harsh absurdities lurking like a sub-terra contagion. González Iñárritu, the current master at...

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Spanish Idiomatic Expressions

Spanish Idiomatic Expressions

Idiom: a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words; a commonly used phrase that means more than it says. The man in my life had run the León Marathon in Guanajuato a day earlier, and I was searching the sports section of a local...

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Music to Build a School

Music to Build a School

During Zihuatanejo’s languid, steamy, summer months, after the tourists and snowbirds have flown north, Zihua’s musicians finally have time to take a deep breath and relax. That doesn’t mean that they stop playing however. The hottest live-music venue in town simply shifts to Ed Litchfield’s house in El Hujal. Several Saturdays each month, with a...

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Tails of the City

Tails of the City

“You become responsible forever for what you have tamed.”-Antoine de Saint-Exupery, “The Little Prince” Ninety thousand. All of us blink incredulously at the implications of this mind-boggling number, but this is what we came up with in our relatively conservative calculations. One hundred female cats could theoretically produce 90,000 offspring in only three years. 90,000...

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Fruit from the Garden

Fruit from the Garden

Fruit is a reminder of the garden of Eden, when everything nice to eat was there for the taking and all meals were alfresco picnics. When a plant fruits, it broadcasts chemical signals, wantonly crying out to be eaten. This is a reproductive goal, ensuring that the plant’s seed is spread. Sexy stuff. And even...

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A Wearable Tribute to Mexico's Cultural Diversity

A Wearable Tribute to Mexico’s Cultural Diversity

Huipiles, Mexico’s festive native blouses, look good on anyone, from indigenous women to gringas. They come in colors and patterns to suit all personalities and body types, but all share a basic boxy shape. Mexican artisans elevate this simplest of garments to an art form by decorating them with embroidery, ribbons, lace, beadwork, inlay and...

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Magic Carpets, Oaxaca’s Master Weaver Preserves a Zapotec Tradition

Magic Carpets, Oaxaca’s Master Weaver Preserves a Zapotec Tradition

When you enter The-Bug-in-the-Rug store in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, you are greeted by the master weaver himself, Isaac Vasquez, a friendly, soft-spoken man with salt and pepper hair. He invites you into his workshop, housed in the sunny courtyard of his family compound. Your eyes are immediately drawn to the carpets on the adobe...

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The Palms of Paradise

The Palms of Paradise

They are the standard of vacation, the flags of beachy climes. Their shape makes them one of the most easily identified plants in the world. Palms belong to the Arecacea (Palmae) family, order Arecales. There are more than two thousand species, most of which are native to tropical and subtropical climates. The widely recognized growth...

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The Incredible Trajectory of Benito Juarez

The Incredible Trajectory of Benito Juarez

Scour the annals of Mexican history, from Independence through the present day, and you will find no man more admired than Benito Juarez. The 19th-century president is almost universally beloved by his forebears, with only those unaware of him withholding their veneration. A full-blooded Indian from humble origins, Juarez dedicated his career to modernizing Mexico,...

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Long Legs on the Beach

Long Legs on the Beach

Ok, so I may have conned you into reading this with that title…but this is just another article about birding in Zihuatanejo. Most of those long legs belong to a group of egrets and herons, easily found in the canal at Playa Madera, which empties onto the beach, so I’m not too far off. I...

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