Oaxtepec

Oaxtepec, a town in the municipality of Yautepec just south of Tlayacapan, has drawn visitors for more than five centuries. Its warm springs and shady amate trees made it a retreat for the Mexica rulers, and after Moctezuma Ilhuicamina conquered the area in the 1400s the Aztecs planted a garden here with fruit trees, flowers and medicinal plants gathered from across the empire. Hernán Cortés later praised it in his letters. The name comes from the Nahuatl for "hill of the guajes", a kind of acacia.

The Dominicans arrived in the 1520s and built the convent of Santo Domingo de Guzmán on top of an old ceremonial platform, which is why its atrium sits higher than the church. It is one of the sixteenth-century monasteries on the slopes of Popocatépetl that make up a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Inside you'll find Gothic ribbed vaults, painted floral motifs, two wooden altarpieces from the 1600s and a cloister with faded murals, some still showing traces of an unusual blue. Part of the cloister works as a small museum. The town also keeps the ruins of a colonial hospital, the Hospital de la Santa Cruz.

For most Mexican families, though, Oaxtepec means swimming. The huge vacation center built by the IMSS social security institute, with its pools fed by spring water, now operates as the Six Flags Hurricane Harbor Oaxtepec water park, and it fills up on weekends and school holidays.