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Mexico
Let's explore one of the world's most fascinating countries — packed with surprises, stories, and pen pal potential.
The Basics
3 Things That Will Blow Your Mind
Genuinely. You'll want to tell someone immediately.
Mexico City is slowly sinking because it was built on a lake
The Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan was built on an island in the middle of a large lake and was connected to the shore by causeways. When the Spanish arrived in 1521 they drained the lake and built Mexico City on top of the soft clay lake bed. That clay is still compressing under the weight of one of the world's largest cities and Mexico City sinks by as much as 50 centimetres in some areas every single year. Several old buildings now lean visibly.
Chocolate was invented in Mexico and the Aztecs used cacao beans as money
The ancient Maya and Aztecs had been growing cacao and drinking it as a bitter, spicy ceremonial liquid for over 3,000 years before Europeans ever saw it. They considered it so valuable that cacao beans were used as currency and a slave could be purchased for about 100 beans. The Spanish brought cacao back to Europe and added sugar and that is how chocolate as the world knows it began.
Every year hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies travel to the same forest in Mexico
Each autumn, hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies fly up to 4,500 kilometres from Canada and the United States to a small area of mountain forest in the state of Michoacán in Mexico. They cover the trees so thickly that the branches bend under their weight and the sound of their wings is like rushing water. Scientists still do not fully understand how individual butterflies find the same forest their great-grandparents used.
Famous For
Ancient Civilisations
The Maya built cities with sophisticated calendars and astronomical observatories and the Aztecs created Tenochtitlan, a city on a lake with canals and floating gardens that astonished the Spanish when they first saw it. Mexico has 35 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, more than any other country in the Americas.
Food
Mexican food is a UNESCO-recognised intangible cultural heritage. Tacos, mole, tamales, pozole, and guacamole are just the beginning of a food culture that varies dramatically from state to state and region to region and bears very little resemblance to what most of the world calls Mexican food.
Día de los Muertos
The Day of the Dead on 1 and 2 November is a joyful celebration rather than a mournful one. Families build colourful altars with food, photographs, and flowers to welcome back the spirits of their ancestors for one night. The graveyards fill with colour and music and the whole thing is an expression of love rather than grief.
Biodiversity
Mexico is one of only 17 countries in the world classified as megadiverse, meaning it contains an extraordinary proportion of all the species on Earth. The monarch butterfly migration, the whale sharks off the Yucatán coast, the axolotl that can regrow its own limbs and is found only in one lake near Mexico City — Mexico is home to creatures found nowhere else.
Did You Know?
The axolotl is a salamander found only in a single lake system near Mexico City and it can regenerate almost any part of its body including its heart, its spinal cord, and parts of its brain. Scientists study it intensely because understanding how it does this might one day help humans heal injuries that are currently permanent. It is also bright pink and looks like it is always smiling and is one of Mexico's national symbols.
Pen Pal Connection
A child in Mexico might write to you about Día de los Muertos and what the colourful altars in their home are for and why it is a celebration rather than something sad, a school trip to ancient pyramids that were already old when Europe was building its first cathedrals, the food in their particular state which is probably very different from anything the rest of the world calls Mexican food, or the monarch butterflies that arrive in the forests every winter in numbers too large to picture.