Colima is tiny, fertile and dominated by a volcano that rarely stops. The Volcán de Colima is the most active in Mexico, and from the capital you see it smoking behind the dormant, snow-dusted Nevado de Colima beside it.
Colima city is a calm provincial capital with palm-filled plazas and a museum of the state's pre-Hispanic ceramics — the round, cheerful Colima dogs, modelled fifteen hundred years ago and found in shaft tombs across the west.
Manzanillo on the coast is Mexico's busiest Pacific container port and, simultaneously, a resort town — two black-sand bays, and a sailfish reputation that brought the sportfishing crowd here from the 1950s.
Tecomán grows most of Mexico's limes, which is a larger claim than it sounds.
The state is small enough to cross in two hours, which makes the volcano, the beach and the colonial centre a single easy loop.
