An Affordable High-Design Vacation Home in Mexico

In Mexico City, fresh air and a quiet stretch of grass can seem like the greatest of luxuries. To secure these things, Alfredo Oropeza and his family head 60 miles south to Cocoyoc. Set amid fertile highlands that, like neighboring Cuernavaca, are bathed in a more or less perpetual spring, the town has attracted city folk since the 15th century, when Moctezuma I built his pre-Columbian version of the Alhambra here.