Watch: Driving the Espinazo del Diablo: Durango-Mazatlan Highway► 1:03 Leaving Durango, the highway tilts upward into the Sierra Madre and the world drops away on both sides. This is the Espinazo del Diablo – the Devil’s Backbone – where the road once clung to knife-edge ridges with sheer pine-clad canyons falling thousands of feet below.…

Watch: Driving to Bahia de Kino: Sonora's Quiet Sea of Cortez Beach► 1:05 An hour west of Hermosillo the pavement runs out at the sea, and Bahía de Kino exhales. Kino Nuevo strings beach houses and a few RV parks along the shore; Kino Viejo, the older fishing village, keeps the pangas and the taco…

Watch: Driving to Veracruz: Mexico's Oldest Port on the Gulf Coast► 1:01 The Gulf reveals itself flat and silver as you roll into Veracruz, the air heavy and warm, palm fronds barely moving. The old port hums with a tropical looseness – danzón couples turning in the plaza at dusk, the rattle and strum of…

Photo: Wbaron / CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons Watch: McAllen & Brownsville Border Crossings: What to Know First► 1:03 Down in the Rio Grande Valley the river runs low and the bridges come close together – Pharr and Hidalgo lifting you toward Reynosa, the Brownsville spans handing you to Matamoros. This is the green,…

Watch: Driving to Copper Canyon: Mexico's Canyon Bigger Than the Grand► 1:03 The El Chepe rolls out of the lowlands and starts to climb, and somewhere past Creel the ground simply falls away. One moment you are running through pine forest; the next the train is hugging a ledge above a green abyss so deep…

Photo: U.S. CBP / public domain Watch: El Paso to Juarez: Which Border Bridge Should You Take?► 1:03 El Paso and Ciudad Juárez are really one sprawling city split by a river and a line of bridges. Stand on the Bridge of the Americas and you watch two downtowns hum into each other – the…

Watch: Driving to Puerto Escondido: The New Highway Changed Everything► 1:03 The drive down from Oaxaca city is all switchbacks and cloud forest, hours of mountain road that finally spills you out where the land flattens and the air turns thick and salty. Then you smell it – the Pacific, and the low roar of…

Watch: Mexico City to Oaxaca by Car: Is the 6-Hour Drive Worth It?► 1:05 You drop out of the mountains and Oaxaca lays itself out below – low buildings the color of terracotta and turquoise, the green stone towers of Santo Domingo catching the late light. The air smells of wood smoke, toasted chiles, and…

Watch: The World's Largest Pyramid Hides 2 Hours From Mexico City► 1:05 The highway east of the capital threads between two volcanoes, and on a clear morning Popocatépetl trails a ribbon of smoke against the blue. Then Puebla arrives – a colonial grid of tiled facades, every dome and doorway glazed in blue-and-white talavera, the…

Watch: Teotihuacan by Car: The Easiest Epic Day Trip From Mexico City► 1:03 The road out of the capital flattens into the high plain, and then they appear ahead of you – two stone mountains built by human hands, rising from the scrub. You park, walk through the gate, and the Avenue of the Dead…