Huanímaro

Huanímaro, a Purépecha name translated as "place where maize is toasted" or "place of barter", stands at 1,715 metres in the southernmost Bajío of Guanajuato, with the Lerma river as the natural border with Michoacán. For a long time it depended on Abasolo; today it has 5,740 residents in the seat and another 27 localities across 130 sq km. The climate is semi-warm, averaging about 22 degrees a year with 781 mm of rain in summer.

The centre revolves around the main garden, with pink-quarry-stone arches, commercial arcades and, above it all, the Cerrito de la Cruz. The church of San Juan Bautista forms a complex with the town's former hacienda and holds its patron fiesta on 24 June; there is a second church to the Virgen de Guadalupe and a Casa de la Cultura with exhibitions through the year. Near the seat is the quarry bank that supplies the carved stone seen on façades, and on top of Cerro del Mono there are archaeological remains.

The best-known outing is the Santa Regina Cave, about 10 minutes from town, in a ravine inside a state nature reserve. It is named for Regina Chacón Jaramillo, daughter of a family from Paso de Cobos; an inscription on the rock was renewed in 1923, until 1971 people went by a narrow track carrying food on donkeys, and on the cliffs to the north a seep drips into a hollow basin in the rock. Its fiesta on 7 September brings a walk and a picnic; the rest of the year families use it for gatherings.

The food is worth a stop: red pozole with pork head, ash and sugar tamales, oven-baked young-corn gorditas, uchepos, oven-roasted goat birria and menudo after Sunday mass. The community of Joroches is known for its wind bands.