Santa Ana Xalmimilulco

Anyone driving the México–Puebla highway brushes past Santa Ana Xalmimilulco: the road runs right along its northern edge, and that stretch offers some of the clearest views of Popocatépetl. The village takes up the northern tip of Huejotzingo municipality, where it meets San Martín Texmelucan and the state of Tlaxcala, at 2,221 metres. In 2020 it had 17,865 residents and it belongs to the Puebla–Tlaxcala metropolitan area. A state road links it south to the town of Huejotzingo, a few kilometres away, and the state capital is about 27 km off in a straight line. Its most notable celebration is that of its sanctuary, on the fourth Friday of Lent.

Huejotzingo covers 250 km², from the valley plains up to the summit of Iztaccíhuatl, the country's third-highest mountain, whose peaks known as the Head, the Chest and the Feet all top 4,700 metres. Xalmimilulco is on the low side, the plains, where the land is almost flat and rises only slightly westward before turning into foothills and then sierra. Two thirds of the municipality is farmland, with extensive irrigation in the east, and pine, oak and fir forests remain on the slopes. Streams from the sierra such as the Actiopa, the Xopanac and the Alseseca run down to the Atoyac, and the climate on the plains is temperate with humid summers.

The municipal seat is worth the trip for history and for a drink. There stands the great Franciscan convent, with its porter's lodge of two arches resting on a monumental column, and the church of San Diego, built between 1598 and 1600 on a spot chosen, so the story goes, because of a well that now lies inside it. Huejotzingo is also cider country: the house founded by Miguel Ortega y Rojas has made it since 1920, and the municipality also produces fruit wines, punch and preserves. Artisans make traditional costumes and small crates woven from huejote, the long-stemmed willow, and the table always has mole, pipián, tamales, fruit pastes, amaranth alegrías and candied squash.