Mixtlán is a small town located about halfway between Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta. Its name means “the place of the clouds,” but in recent years it has become better known as the land of mushrooms.
This is thanks to Mixtlán’s director of tourism, José de Jesús Preciado de León, founder of the town’s popular Feria del Hongo: the Mixtlán Mushroom Festival, the seventh edition of which was held this year over the weekend of July 15 to 17.
Preciado told me festival’s aim is educational, with an emphasis on science and ecology.
“For example, we have activities that take place during guided tours in the woods. On Saturday and Sunday mornings, groups leave town at 8 a.m. and they head up into the highest parts of the hills surrounding us. Each group is accompanied by an expert mycologist from the University of Guadalajara. The mycologists identify the varieties of mushrooms the group finds and explain how to distinguish them from other mushrooms and also how to pick them and how to transport them.”
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