Sihuapan

Sihuapan stretches along Federal Highway 180, the Gulf coast road, between San Andrés Tuxtla and Catemaco: central San Andrés is about 5 km away by road and Catemaco about 7. With 3,803 people in 2020 it is the fifth-largest of the municipality's nearly 300 localities, and on its southern side it merges into Calería with no visible boundary; together the two have around 15,000 residents.

The village takes its name from the Sihuapan stream, which runs just east of the city of San Andrés. In Nahuatl the word joins cihuatl (woman) and apan (river). The stream drains into the San Andrés river, which flows on to the San Juan and finally the Papaloapan. Locals are known as sihuapeños.

Sihuapan sits at about 250 metres in the valley between the volcanic cones of the Sierra de Los Tuxtlas, the northernmost tropical rainforest in the Americas. To the north-west rises San Martín Tuxtla volcano, 1,680 metres high, whose 1664 eruption pushed earlier inhabitants down into this valley; its last eruption was in 1793. The climate is hot and wet, averaging 24 °C.

The plaza has a pink bandstand under large shade trees, and the Instituto Tecnológico Superior de San Andrés Tuxtla is close by. For visitors Sihuapan works mainly as a base or stop between San Andrés and Catemaco and a starting point for the Salto de Eyipantla, the waterfall formed where water flowing out of Lake Catemaco joins the Comoapan river.