Xochimilco: The Stunning Ancient Canals of Mexico City's 'Place Where Flowers Grow' Christine Delsol - SFGate
go to original March 13, 2015

Visit the stunning ancient canals of Mexico City’s Xochimilco (Seth Miller)

Xochimilco — variously translated from the Aztec's Nahuatl language as "garden of flowers" or "place where flowers grow" — is an outlying borough of Mexico City today; one of the capital's most cherished Sunday traditions is spending an afternoon floating through the canals on brightly painted, covered wooden pole boats called trajineras, having a long lunch and enjoying mariachis playing on passing barges.

This is the last remnant of the vast system of causeways, canals, manmade islands and floating gardens created out of the vast lake system that once covered today's Valley of Mexico before it was blotted out by Mexico City's sprawl. It's a glimpse into not just pre-Hispanic, but pre-Aztec Mexico.

UNESCO, calling Xochimilco "the only reminder of traditional ground occupation in the lagoons of the Mexico City basin before the Spanish conquest," declared it a World Heritage Site in 1987. The Parque Ecologico de Xochimilco, a great green area with trails, endemic wildlife, wetlands, bird reserves, and aquatic and land activities, was established in 1993. Yet development pressures, natural forces (earthquakes being the most violent) and pollution have accelerated the deterioration of the canals and chinampas that began with the Spanish conquest; some officials and scientists predict the canals and gardens will be gone within a generation.

Read the whole story at SFGate

If you have a fondness for the macabre, take a boat to uninhabited Isla de las Muñecas, or "Island of the Dolls." (Thousands of bodies, and YOU)

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!