San Cristobal de las Casa in Chiapas is an enchanting place to visit for a lot of reasons, but two at the top of the list for gastronomes are chocolate and coffee.

This is a land that grows cocoa beans used since the Aztec and Maya times, plus it grows some of the most distinctive coffee in the world. Like a brew from Hawaii or Sumatra, you know it when you taste it.

Fortunately it’s easy to find good versions of both in this tourist center of Chiapas state, Mexico. Start off at the excellent Kakaw, also known as the Museo del Cacao (to get both the Maya and Spanish versions of cocoa in there). This is a chocolate shop on the first floor, dispensing excellent “Mexican hot chocolate” and a variety of natural and molded chocolates you can see them making on site through a glass window. These make great gifts to bring home, all nicely presented. The prices are a bargain.

Upstairs is a collection of artifacts and explanations about how the cocoa bean was used in historic times before exploding in popularity around the world post-conquest. The photo at the top is a collection of drinking vessels unearthed at Maya sites in the state. Back then, hot cocoa was not sweet and it was not for commoners.

The photo below is a collection of the stirring tools used to make hot chocolate in Mexico. You see these for sale in nearly every market and some of them are quite intricate. If you live here, you need at least one in your kitchen. Other displays show money from around the world featuring cocoa, art inspired from chocolate, maps of where beans are grown, and much more. The official Kakaw site is in Spanish only, but there’s a good explanation on this Travel by Mexico page.

You won’t have any trouble finding a good cup of coffee in the center of San Cristobal de Las Casas, but if you’re serious about your coffee you should make a beeline to Carajillo Cafe. Their website is nothing more than contact info, but there’s an active Facebook page if you can read Spanish.

It’s just a small, unassuming place, but they put a lot of care into what they serve. They get the finest local beans, grind them fresh before serving, and do the whole coffee press ritual right in front of you if you’d like. Distinctive coffee, served with flair, and not a paper cup in sight. Here you’re meant to sip and savor, not grab something just to dash off to a day of pointless meetings.

If you prefer, you can order a drip filter version, all the expected espresso variations, or specialty coffees with bananas or tequila.

Carajillo Cafe is expensive by Mexican standards, with most options running $2.25 to $4, but definitely worth it.

10 million say "This isn't so scary after all"

The U.S. Department of Commerce just released its outbound tourism numbers for the first half of 2011. Despite all the thumping negative drone from 24-hour news outlets during that time, approximate one out of every three Americans leaving the U.S. went to Mexico. Around 10.3 million people.

You could argue that a chunk of that was probably cross-border trade and family visitation, but three million of those were by air. To put it in perspective, more people flew to Mexico than all of Asia combined and that number was just slightly below the total for all of the Caribbean.

As far as I know, not a single one of those 10 million got beheaded.

See all our info on luxury travel in Mexico.

My first visit to Chiapas, Mexico started with a wet adventure but then the time in San Cristobal was bliss.

Unfortunately I was hob-nobbing with delegates at the Adventure Travel World Summit most of the time and didn’t get to explore the city as much as I would like. Also, the mayor apparently made a strange decision to “clean up” the city before we arrived and all the street markets were banned from their usual spots. So we got a sanitized view of the city, coupled with double the number of women and children trying to sell things out of a bag to passersby on the sidewalks.

I need to go back.

This is a city that serves up lots of strange, sometimes disconcerting pairs of images. It has a large indigenous population, many of these people still wearing traditional garb. But it is also a bit of a gentrified, hippy-dippy traveler hangout, so you’ve got lots of restaurants and bars in the center that only tourists can afford. (See my review of the awesome Tierra y Cielo restaurant.)

There are little Zapatista revolutionary dolls for sale with masks and guns, plus tables of literature prodding people to rise up and demand more from the government. At the same time, anyone who bought property or opened a business after the revolution petered out wants nothing to do with all that—-life has gotten 10X  better than it used to be.

This is the yin and yang of progress we often see when a no-go zone becomes a tourist hot-spot in a decade or less. There’s probably no right answer on how to deal with this really. Some people prosper from the new influx, some hate it and wish there was a more fair distribution of wealth. All we can do as travelers is try to make sure what we’re spending locally is spread around a bit and is helping to improve local lives.

Fortunately, there are almost no chain hotels or foreign chain restaurants in San Cristobal de las Casas and many of the vendors are no more than one step removed from the handicraft makers. The city and state pumped a lot of money into building upgrades and other public works before this conference, which supplied a lot of jobs. The arrival of 800 tourism professionals certainly helped the cause last week, some of the tour operators probably making plans to bring visitors here in the future.

There’s one luxury hotel in town, Parador San Juan del Dios, and we’ll be posting a review of it in November. Meanwhile, enjoy the images here. I must confess half of them were taken by my wife while I was holed up in a conference room or theater. Next time, more time to wander!

For more information on this beautiful spot in the mountains of southern Mexico (the state borders Guatemala), see the Chiapas Tourism site or the San Cristobal de las Casas section.

I just spent a week and a half in the state of Chiapas in Mexico and kicked off my too-few days in San Cristobal de las Casas at Tierro y Cielo hotel’s restaurant. I can’t say for sure that this is the best restaurant in the city after my limited time there, but it would certainly be a hard one to top. Through two meals, from start to finish, it was “Wow!” over and over.

Chef Chef Marta Zepeda has been doing great enough work to be recognized by the national government for promoting regional cuisine and you can see her pictured with the Mexican president on the hotel’s home page. It’s what’s on the plate that matters most to diners though, of course, and in my experience what’s on the plate is amazing. “This shows you what Mexican food can be like” exclaimed a European diner near me and the international crowd in my group seemed to agree. It was a reaction of surprise, joy, and enjoyment through breakfast and a tasting menu lunch. (In between, we visited the local market in San Cristobal.)

The opening note was sublime Mexican hot chocolate in a bowl shaped like a cacao bean, setting the tone for recognizing the origin of the ingredients. Throughout the experience the drinks were as key as the food, each time making use of something local, like chia seeds, fermented ginger, or—at the end—mezcal.

Breakfast was a play off local dishes enjoyed for thousands of years, with two kinds of tamales based on corn and filled with pork or beans, but presented with more flair and a mole sauce. Marmalade for the kitchen-baked bread was made from local fruits.

Lunch was a tasting menu of nine items that were a delight from start to finish. I’m never a fan of raw meat in any form, but I had to admit the citrus-cured beef tartar was quite good. That photo at the top is actually the main dish—not dessert. It’s a stack of plantains and tender chicken breasts with a multi-flavored mole sauce. Fantastic.

Everything was a delight for the taste buds at Tierra y Cielo (“Ground and Sky”), but none of it was a desperate attempt to be edgy or international. Sure, the presentation was sophisticated and on par with what you would expect from a gourmet restaurant, but it was all about what grows or can be harvested in Chipas.

To top it off, dessert made use of chocolate, sugar cane, mezcal, and coffee. Sure, three of these are common dessert ingredients around the world, but here they grown in abundance.

You can stay at Tierro y Cielo for around $120 per night and not have to walk very far to eat there, but it’s also a short walk from the main plaza if you’re elsewhere. See more at TierrayCielo.com.mx.

When people think of travel to Mexico, they are more likely to think of lying on a beach than of doing adventure activities. That’s not for lack of offerings though. With almost as much geographic diversity as the U.S., plus a jungle, coral reef, and cenotes, this country has plenty to get the pulse racing.

They’re committed to getting the word out too. Right now I’m at the Adventure Travel World Summit, which is held in a different destination each year. This time it’s in Chiapas, Mexico, in the beautiful city of San Cristobal de Casas. Before arriving here I spent four days touring around the jungle areas of this lush state, rafting and hiking. (Plus I got to see Palenque for the first time in my life.)

Besides laying out all the money to host some 800 adventure travel people from 40+ countries, the featured speaker was someone quite special: the president of Mexico. Yes, the leader of the whole country, Felipe Calderon. There’s a show coming out this fall, Peter Greenburg’s Royal Tour, that has Senor Calderon rappelling down into a cave, ziplinging, and scuba diving in a cenote, so I think he’s the real deal.

I’ll be talking with lots of tour operators here trying to figure out who is a step above the pack in catering to upscale adventure travelers. We hope to bring you feature stories later on some of these unique offerings.