3 Best Sights in Mexico

Kids and adults alike enjoy wandering through the galleries, gardens, and animal enclosures of this offbeat natural history museum that's devoted to the region's remarkable biodiversity and incredible vast array of bichos, or critters. Insects, spiders, butterflies, scorpions, snakes, turtles, and lizards native to the area take center stage here, where you'll have the chance to actually touch and maybe even hold many creatures (at least the ones that don't pose any threat). There's also a well-tended botanical garden, a very cool shop that sells all sorts of dried animal specimens as well as cacti and other plants, and a terrace café serving light snacks (some of them made with insects) and refreshments. Be sure to try a "bichelada," the museum's version of a michelada---the rim of the glass is coated with sal de chapulines (grasshopper salt). 

In this small, slightly quirky museum and aquarium inside Parque Ecológico Presa Tarango, in a hilly west-side neighborhood between Santa Fe and San Ángel, you can learn about one of Mexico's strangest and seemingly unlikely creatures, the axolotl. This small (averaging about 10 inches in length) and entirely aquatic relative of a tiger salamander once proliferated in the lakes beneath Mexico City, but rampant urbanization has almost entirely destroyed their natural habitats and axolotls have become nearly extinct in the wild. Lake Xochimilco and Lake Chalco, on the southeast side of the city, are the only places in the world where these underwater animals are still found. In the three geodesic-dome buildings and surrounding gardens that make up this museum, you can view exhibits about these unique amphibians and their conservation, and view them up-close in aquariums. The easiest way to get here is by Uber---it's a 15- to 20-minute ride from Santa Fe and San Ángel (or its nearest Metro stop, Barranca del Muerto).