Mexico City sits in a valley ringed by mountains, and an hour or two in any direction reaches something entirely different.
Teotihuacán — 1 hour
The pyramids, and the obvious first choice. A city of well over a hundred thousand people that collapsed around 650 AD and was already ancient ruins when the Aztecs named it.
Bus from Terminal del Norte, twenty minutes’ frequency, an hour, very cheap. Ask for las pirámides.
Go early; there is no shade.
Puebla and Cholula — 2 hours
Puebla is a UNESCO-listed colonial city of tiled façades, the home of mole poblano and Talavera ceramics, with the extraordinary gilded Capilla del Rosario.
Cholula next door has the largest pyramid in the world by volume, overgrown into a hill with a Spanish church built on top of it.
ADO bus from TAPO, every twenty minutes.
Tepoztlán — 1.5 hours
A village in Morelos below a wall of cliffs, with a pyramid on a clifftop reached by a steep hour’s climb — the Tepozteco, dedicated to the pulque god.
A serious weekend market, a sixteenth-century convent, and a reputation as a centre for the spiritually inclined that is either charming or trying depending on temperament.
Taxco — 3 hours
A silver town built vertically into a hillside in Guerrero, with white houses, red roofs, cobbled lanes too steep and narrow for ordinary cars — the taxis are old Volkswagen Beetles — and the pink stone Baroque church of Santa Prisca, paid for by a single silver strike in the 1750s.
Silver is sold everywhere and the quality is genuinely high; look for the .925 stamp.
Long for a day trip, better as an overnight.
Valle de Bravo — 2.5 hours
A lakeside town in the mountains west of the city, where wealthy Mexicans keep weekend houses. Sailing, paragliding off the ridge, cobbled streets and pine forest.
The monarch butterflies — 3 to 4 hours
November to March only.
Hundreds of millions of monarchs migrate from Canada and the United States to overwinter in the oyamel fir forests of Michoacán and the State of México. The reserves at El Rosario and Sierra Chincua are the accessible ones.
The trees are covered so densely that branches bend, and when the sun warms them the air fills. It is one of the great natural spectacles.
It is a long day — leave before dawn — and the sites are at 3,000 metres, which is a serious climb after Mexico City’s 2,240.
The volcanoes
Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl stand south-east of the city, both over 5,000 metres.
Popocatépetl is active and has been in a state of eruption since 1994. The exclusion zone and alert level change; climbing it is prohibited.
Iztaccíhuatl can be climbed, and the Paso de Cortés between them is reachable by road for the view.
Practicalities
Long-distance buses are excellent in Mexico — ADO, ETN and Primera Plus run comfortable coaches from four main terminals. Book online or at the terminal.
Terminal del Norte for Teotihuacán and the north. TAPO for Puebla and the east. Terminal Sur (Taxqueña) for Taxco and the south. Terminal Poniente (Observatorio) for Valle de Bravo and the west.
Match the terminal to the direction; getting to the wrong one costs an hour.
The buses, in practice
Mexican long-distance coaches are excellent — reclining seats, air conditioning, and often a snack. ADO, ETN and Primera Plus are the main operators and you can book online.
The four terminals are on the four sides of the city and are named for their direction, which is a useful piece of logic: Norte for Teotihuacán and the north, TAPO for Puebla and the east, Taxqueña for Taxco and the south, Observatorio for the west.
Each is on the Metro.
Timing
Leave early for everything. Traffic getting out of the city in the morning is heavy, and most of these destinations are outdoors and at altitude, where afternoon sun is punishing and — in the rainy season — the rain arrives around five.
For the monarch butterflies specifically, leave before dawn; the butterflies fly when the sun warms them in the late morning and the site is a climb.
Choosing between them
One spare day and it is your first visit: Teotihuacán, without much argument.
One spare day and you have seen the pyramids: Puebla and Cholula, which is a complete colonial city rather than a site.
Travelling with a car or willing to overnight: Taxco for the silver and the streets.
Here between November and March: the monarch butterflies, which is the one thing on this list you cannot see anywhere else on earth.
What not to attempt
Oaxaca, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato and the Yucatán are all sold as accessible from Mexico City and none is a day trip — six hours, six hours, five hours and a flight respectively. Each deserves two or three nights.