Veracruz is a long ribbon of a state down the Gulf, and the place where Mexico as a mixed country began: Cortés landed here in 1519, the first Africans arrived here, and the music that resulted — son jarocho, harp and small guitars — is still played in the plazas.
Veracruz city is the port, hot and loud, with a fortress built against pirates and a café culture that runs on lechero poured from a great height. Boca del Río adjoins it.
Inland the land climbs fast. Xalapa, the capital, sits in cloud and coffee at 1,400 metres and has the best anthropology museum outside Mexico City — the Olmec colossal heads are here. Orizaba lies beneath Pico de Orizaba, at 5,636 metres the highest mountain in the country and the third highest in North America.
Tlacotalpan on the Papaloapan river is a UNESCO town of wide streets and houses painted in colours that should not work together and do. Catemaco sits on a crater lake in the Tuxtlas and is known across Mexico for its brujos.
North, the Huasteca coast at Tuxpan and Tecolutla is where Mexicans holiday and foreigners rarely go. El Tajín, the Totonac city of niches, is near Papantla.
