Though you can play golf, go fishing, hiking, diving, or whatever, anywhere, you'll be doing them in Mexico, a different country with its own unique traditions. But make sure you experience the local culture, too, whether it be browsing a market or attending a musical or dance performance. Visit some of the Mexico's excellent museums and be sure to try the local foods.

City/Country Tours/Sightseeing

Tour operators like Tauck Tours offer tours to Mexico, but often they're geared to older travelers. When traveling with a family, it's best to purchase an independent tour package, including air, hotel, and sightseeing tours. You can take a city tour in any of Mexico's major cities to give you an overall view before striking out on your own.

Archaeology/Cultural Activities

Mexico is a veritable open-air museum, with over 11,000 archaeological sites throughout the country. A good starting point for understanding Mexico's past is the National Museum of Anthropology and History in Mexico City. Afterward, you should visit the Templo Mayor downtown. The next most important site is Teotihuacán, thirty miles northwest of the city, where you can climb the 207-foot Great Pyramid of the Sun.

Another must-see archaeological site is Monte Albán, six miles southwest of the city of Oaxaca, where more than 26,000 people lived for centuries on terraced slopes leading up to a flattened mountaintop city. The Zapotec ceremonial center of Mitla isn't far away.

The Mayan ceremonial center of Palenque lies ninety-five miles southeast of Villahermosa in the state of Tabasco. Regarded by many as the most beautiful of Mexico's archaeological sites, its exquisite Mayan temples stand silently amidst dense green jungle. However, the most famous Mayan site is Chichén Itzá. For many centuries sacred ground to the Mayans, its buildings reflect the contrasting architectural styles of the Mayans and the later Toltec civilization. Uxmal, another Mayan ceremonial center lying fifty miles south of Mérida in the state of Yucatan, has beautifully proportioned and lavishly decorated buildings.

Mexico's awesome past comes alive at these and scores of other intriguing sites. Most sites and museums are open year-round, and entry fees are minimal. You'll find text explanations are in English, though you may want to take a guided tour since many sites are complex and mysterious. Accommodations, such as Club Med's Villas Arqueológicas (800-258-2633), can be found at most of the major sites, and if you stay over, you'll get an opportunity to see the sound and light shows at either Teotihuácan, Chichén Itzá, or Uxmal.

Shopping

Next to lying in the sun and drinking margaritas, shopping is the favorite pastime for many Mexico vacationers. Mexico is a country rich in handicrafts, offering top-quality goods made of the finest in natural products, fashioned by craftspeople who have the skills of Indian and European designers and who still use old techniques.

Whether selecting handmade products of glass, precious and semi-precious metals, leather, pottery, or fabric, you'll find unique products to take home. While you can purchase many items in stores throughout the country, the markets yield not only the best buys but also the chance to meet and mingle with the craftspeople while bargaining for the best prices. If you're interested in local handicrafts, you should visit regional markets, especially on market days. Mexico City's Bazaar Sabado (Saturday Market) is a good spot to select merchandise from around the country.

For silver, head for Taxco, southwest of Mexico City on the way to Acapulco. You'll discover more silversmiths in this colonial town than all over Mexico. You can browse the shops and galleries for days.

Throughout Mexico there's an impressive range of pottery. Some have pre-Hispanic origins, such as those found in Oaxaca and Chiapas. Others have a Spanish influence, such as the Talavera of Puebla and Guanajuato. In most places you can purchase pieces direct from the factories and have them shipped home at a reasonable cost.

Besides handicrafts, some parts of Mexico overflow with folk art. Imaginative figures of papier-mâché are made by a number of artisans for special holidays such as Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) or Semana Santa (Holy Week). Artisans also create piñatas, an important part of fiestas and festive ceremonies, using clay pots decorated with colored cardboard and tissue paper.

If you love metal work, you'll find it in distinctive styles all around Mexico. While Santa Clara del Cobre in the state of Michoacán is especially famous for copper objects, metalsmiths also work in silver in Guadalajara, in copper and brass in San Miguel Allende, and in gold in Puebla.

Some craftspeople specialize in woodwork, producing colonial-style furniture in Mexico City, Cuernavaca, Guadalajara, Colima, and Taxco. In Michoacán, chip-carved pine furniture is popular. You'll find carved ironwood animals along the Pacific Coast. The states of Guerrero, Michoacán, and Chiapas are known for fine lacquer work on gourds, masks, boxes, chests, and trays. Opals, extracted from local mines and cut locally, and in colors like nowhere else, can be found in Querétaro.

Festivals

Mexico's cultural riches and deep historic roots find their most spectacular expression in the more than 4,000 fiestas, festivals, and holidays that are celebrated each year throughout the country. Every town and village has a celebration for its patron saint. Whether the occasion is a small village's fiesta or a national celebration such as Easter, Fiestas Patrias (Independence Day), Christmas, or the Day of the Dead, Mexico's festivities involve millions of people in the excitement of music, dance, fireworks, and regional cuisine.

Festivals serve to renew and preserve local traditions in the form of food, music, and art. Local traditions and history give each event its own special flavor, yet every celebration has features that make it uniquely Mexican. Three thousand years of civilization converge in song, dance, and processions, where traditional rituals, drawings, and handmade masks help keep alive the heritage of ancient times.

Special festival foods may use ingredients that reflect the local environment, such as prickly pear cactus and tequila from the northern deserts; abundant seafood from coastal areas; tropical crops like mangoes and pineapple; and high-altitude plants such as chocolate and coffee.

Many festivals include charreadas (Mexican rodeos) and a special tianguis, or traditional marketplace where you can buy local handicrafts and foods. And no Mexican celebration is complete without fireworks. While national holidays and other major events have fixed dates, local celebrations may vary. When traveling in Mexico, check with your hotel or the local tourism office for details.

Bullfights

Bullfights are an integral part of Mexican culture, and although they're not for the faint of heart, you should try to see one if you want to grasp an important part of Mexican culture.

They're held regularly on Sunday afternoons from December through March at the Plaza Mexico in Mexico City, the largest bullring in the world, seating 60,000 people. Amateur bullfights happen the rest of the year. Mexico's second major bullfighting center is in Guadalajara, but the border towns of Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez regularly schedule bullfights as well. To see how the bulls are bred, you should visit the state of Tlaxcala, Mexico's smallest, about ninety minutes east of Mexico City.

Most of the Mexican beach resorts also have a bullring. However, often you'll pay more as a tourist to get in than a local. While most resorts hold their bullfights on Sunday afternoons, Cancún holds theirs on Wednesday afternoons to accommodate passengers from cruise ships in port.