Chiapas, from pine forest to rainforest

Chiapas is Mexico's southernmost state, pressed up against Guatemala, and it changes altitude so fast that a single day on the road takes you from pine forest at two thousand two hundred metres to lowland rainforest where howler monkeys start before dawn. The highlands, Los Altos, are the cultural centre. San Cristóbal de las Casas is the base almost everyone uses, a cool colonial town of pedestrian streets, amber workshops and coffee roasted from beans grown on the slopes towards the Pacific. Around it are the Tzotzil and Tzeltal villages that give the region its character: San Juan Chamula, where the church floor is covered in pine needles and candles and the rites belong to no other church; Zinacantán, where families grow flowers under plastic and then embroider them onto everything they wear. North and east the land drops away. Palenque stands where the last hills meet the Tabasco plain, a Classic Maya city under jungle canopy with the tomb of Pakal beneath its Temple of the Inscriptions, and on the road towards it the water turns turquoise across the terraces of Agua Azul and falls in a single thirty-five-metre curtain at Misol-Ha. Deeper into the Lacandon forest, Bonampak keeps painted murals of court ceremony and battle, and Yaxchilán can only be reached by boat along the Usumacinta, the river that marks the border. Between the highlands and the lowlands the Grijalva has cut the Sumidero canyon a thousand metres deep; boats leave from Chiapa de Corzo and pass crocodiles, vultures and a moss-hung rock face shaped like a Christmas tree. Comitán, the Montebello lakes and the amber mines of Simojovel fill out the rest of the state. Rain falls from May to October, and the highlands stay cool all year, so bring a jacket even in April.