Tuxtla Gutiérrez
— — the city at the gate of the canyon.
Not only on a wall.
“Tuxtla Gutiérrez sits in a wide valley below the Sumidero, the canyon the Grijalva River cut a million years ago through walls that rise more than a kilometre straight up from the water. The city itself is warm and low and busy — marimba in the central park most evenings, the smell of tamales chiapanecos near the cathedral, the ZooMAT on the southern hill where the animals are only those native to the state. The canyon waits a half-hour north. Boats leave from Cahuaré, and the cliffs open as the river bends.
Tuxtla Gutiérrez, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Tuxtla Gutiérrez is the capital and largest city of the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, set in the Grijalva River depression at about 520 metres elevation. The metropolitan area holds roughly six hundred thousand people, making it the commercial and administrative anchor for a state better known for its highland indigenous towns. The Pan-American Highway runs through, and Ángel Albino Corzo International Airport, thirty kilometres southeast, is the principal air gateway to Chiapas and to ruins at Palenque, Yaxchilán, and Bonampak. The name honours Joaquín Miguel Gutiérrez, a 19th-century Chiapanecan federalist.
Cañón del Sumidero is the reason most travellers route through Tuxtla. The Grijalva River runs through a narrow gorge whose walls climb to roughly 1,000 metres above the water, protected since 1980 as a national park of about 21,800 hectares. Boat tours leave from the embarcadero at Cahuaré, a short drive north of the city, and run upstream past the Christmas Tree waterfall — a moss-covered cliff that drips year-round — and crocodile basking ledges. Five miradores along the canyon rim, reached by road through Chiapa de Corzo, give the view from above.
The city centre clusters around the Plaza Cívica and the Catedral de San Marcos, whose tower carries a carousel of twelve apostle figures that emerge each hour. The Parque de la Marimba, five blocks west, hosts free marimba concerts most evenings around seven — the marimba is the state instrument of Chiapas. ZooMAT, on the southern edge of the city, holds only species native to Chiapas, including jaguar, tapir, and the resplendent quetzal. From Tuxtla, colectivos and ADO buses run east to San Cristóbal de las Casas in about an hour.