Chiapas: hairy skirts, pipe-toting terrorists and dogs in bandanas

It is all too easy when describing a country to fall into that old cliché ‘a country of great contrasts’ but, when it comes to Mexico, it surely is impossible to avoid.

We’ve been in this huge country for a month now and yet we are still frequently surprised at the variety it has to offer.


Most noticeable has been the constantly changing kaleidoscope of landscapes we have passed through - from sparse deserts to huge mountain ranges, thick forests to sprawling cities - and their associated different climates.

We’ve taken it all, sweating in the parched north, shivering in thin mountain air, baking on the beaches.

All that is, except rain. It never seems to rain in this dry, dry, country.

Our backpacks are groaning with the sizeable wardrobes required to suit these varying conditions, our hat collection expands inexorably as we delve into the local millinery delights.

And still it continues to change, as we head further and further south, leaving the beaches of Oaxaca for the mountains of Chiapas.

Twelve hours on a tarmac ribbon separates them yet, once more, we stepped from one world into another.

Yesterday afternoon we finally tore ourselves away from our beachside idyll, swinging out of Mazunte in a rattling old camionera heading for the inland town of Pochutla, and our bus on to Chiapas.

These converted pick-ups bomb along the dusty roads, a hail-and-ride service ferrying villagers and tourists alike between tiny coastal communities for the price of a few pesos.

Hopping into the back you park yourself on a narrow wooden bench, sat between hawkers heading home and sacks of oranges bound for the market.

The flimsy canvas roof flaps wildly in the breeze as the road weaves up and down little hills, the camionera frequently stopping for passengers or veering wildly off onto a bumpy little dirt track, where neatly-pressed children are dropped off at a church and plump chickens peck in the dust beneath stubby banana trees.

As the road bent north for Pochutla and the camionera lurched over a hilltop we said goodbye to the sunkissed sands upon which we had lounged, the patrolling pelicans and the slow pattering of flip flops, the pounding surf and the strange goose which paid a daily visit to the sands, honking indignantly at the sunbathers as if they were invading conquistadors.

We bade farewell, too, to the Pacific Ocean, the last time we will see this sporadic companion of the last two months.

We have swum in its waters in the east and the west, and indeed have taken a dip right in the middle, albeit in the Hugo’s pool, which drew its waters from the briny aqua through which it passed.

The next sea will be the Caribbean, when we visit Belize; perhaps it’s just the beach but it felt to me like we’ve had a taster of what is to come: bougainvilleas, ‘coco loco’ (’crazy coconut’) cocktails, the laid back pace of life and reggae booming out of palm-thatched shacks.

We won’t find out for sure for a few weeks yet, I reminded myself as we pulled into Pochutla and boarded a night bus for Chiapas, for we were now heading for the mountains.

It was a long night, an arduous journey, as the road rose and rose and chubby fellow passengers serenaded us with nocturnal calls blasting out through their cavernous nasal passages.

In the dark outside we could see little of the famed beauty of the mountain scenery through which we were weaving, only the odd provincial bus station or lonesome army checkpoint, where jeeps idled and jumpy-looking recruits fingered large automatic weapons.

We recalled the advice of our guidebook: try and avoid night buses in Mexico, particularly in this part of the world, for Chiapas is the home of the Zapatistas.

As dawn broke and I scrapped the crud of a disturbed night’s sleep from corner of my eyes, our destination hove into view: San Cristobal de Las Casas.

Soon we were zipping along the narrow empty streets, through inextricably-wound down windows our taxi blasting out salsa and sucking in fresh mountain air.

Too fresh for us - the thermometer now barely creeping up to single figures having merrily hovered in the mid 30s back down on the coast.

The Chiapas highlands peered through the mist, mountain peeks soaring above the undulating streets. Low grey clouds blocked out the sun and seemed to press down on the low buildings, squashing them into the ground, resentful of their bright liveries.

Only the blinged-up churches dared to rise above a single storey, their exteriors coated in pastel blues and yellows, a wigwam of plastic flags fluttering over their yards.

Boiling on the beach to freezing in the mountains. Sea level to 6500 feet. All within half a day’s travel.

We feel we’re entering new lands, new zones of influence where the US is far over the horizon and Guatemala - and central America - is hoving into view.

We can see this in the changing ethnic makeup of the people amongst whom we walk.

The inhabitants here are markedly difficult from those farther north; smaller and slighter, their faces darker, their appearances wilder and stranger.

These ‘Indigenous people’, descendents of the Maya, are now greater in number, comprising some 40% of Chiapas’ population, their numbers almost equal to those of the majority mestizo (mixed European / Indian ancestry).

They come in a bewildering range of ethnic groups; many don’t even speak Spanish, even more still wear their traditional costumes.

Tzotzil women scuttle about in black, hairy, woollen skirts and multicoloured shawls, heaving children and wares on their backs in brightly-coloured bundles as they hawk heavy strings of beads to the multitude of Goretexed westerners.

Their menfolk trot alongside them, sporting cream, sleeveless jackets made of wool and dusty black cowboy hats. Some seem to dispense with trousers altogether, preferring instead a rather short type of woollen tunic tied at the waist and hanging several airy inches above the knees.

I tower above these strange people, shivering under four layers of Karrimor and nylon, trying to avoid our icebox of a room, a chilly wendy house set amongst the gardens of a hostel, where hummingbirds hover as bundled-up staff tinker with malfunctioning gas heaters.

In an effort to warm ourselves up we go for a hot chocolate in the town’s traditional Spanish plaza, taking in the ornate iron bandstand and the neatly kept gardens, admiring the dirty yellow walls of the Cathedral and the smart wide colonial-era municipal buildings.

It was hard to imagine what the scene must have been like here on 1st January 1994, the day the Zapatistas came to town.

As Mexico celebrated the day that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into effect, these guerrillas shook the nation, a rag-tag army of balaclavas and bandoliers army which emerged out of the Lacandon jungle and temporarily assuming control of San Cristobal and other towns.

Also known by the catchy acronym of the EZLN (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional), they draw their inspiration from famous 18th century revolutionary Emiliano Zapatista and his rallying cry ¡Tierra y Libertad! - Land and Liberty!.

As the state with the largest proportion of indigenous people, is also the poorest and life many seems to have improved little for them, in comparison with their mestizo compatriots, ever since the first conquistadore showed his pointy beard in these parts over 500 years ago.

It’s hardly surprisingly, then, that after all this time, some of the impoverished and disenfranchised indigenous peoples of Chiapas might turn to more drastic measures in order to improve their lot.

Whilst the violence might have abated somewhat the sentiments remain.

The signs of this are everywhere: graffiti on walls; impressive EZLN murals in cafes and Zapatista merchandise on sale in shops and markets.

Revolucion is, as ever, a nice little earner and you can leave San Cristobal with a mountain of Zapatista memorabilia, from balaclava-clad dolls and Zapatista t-shirts on sale to postcards and hand-woven cushion covers.

With the latter, the revolutionary pin-up of choice is, of course, the enigmatic figure of ‘Subcommandante Marcos’, one of the leaders of the EZLN and very much the modern revolutionary.

The secret of his success surely lies not in his deeds so much as his image.

In the battle for hearts and minds Marcos would have the Pentagon drooling, a savvy spin-doctor who has carefully crafted his image so that he has gained an almost mystical status, attracting a level of adoration amongst some which is almost as intense in its adoration as that of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Marcos’s image is striking and enticing: a romantic revolutionary, a rebel with a cause. Like Batman, another hero of the people, his identity is unknown, hidden behind his ever-present balaclava. Clad in olive combat fatigues he tops this off with the ultimate in revolutionary accessories: a pipe.

Forget Che and his beret, Fidel and his cigar, Marcos has a pipe . And not only this but he sports it through his balaclava.

I make a mental note to refer his balaclava and briar antics to The Chap magazine. whilst ascending the slippery cobbles back to our hostel.

Another dog siddles by with a bandana tied round its neck and again I ponder whether the townspeople do this to their pooches out of fashion or to distinguish their pet from the many wandering strays.

My thoughts are cut short though when a strange liquid hits my cheek. Then another. And another.

What is this strange watery thing falling from the sky.

It cannot be, it is…rain!

Read more...

The Oaxaca coast: Great-tailed grackles, magnetic sand and fat-fighting trees

It might sound spoilt but we were beached out. Lara has absorbed more sunrays than Brighton beach did in a year; I’d ingested enough saltwater than the Gray Whales cruising off the coast.

It was time to get away from the bracelet-braiding hippies and the bongos of Mazunte, the nudists and the rudists of Zipolite and see some birds of an altogether different plumage.

And where better a place to spot them than Ventanilla lagoon, a murky tract of water and dense mangrove swamps tucked away off a beach just a short Camionera ride away.

Half an hour later we found ourselves gingerly crossing Ventinilla beach in flip flops, the sand too hot for bare feet.

The dark patches streaking the sand denoted the high iron content of the sand, something proven to us by our young guide who whipped out a magnet which, quite extraordinarily, instantly sprouted a Ken Dodd-style hairdo when passed near the sand.

Perhaps the unusual geology also helped explain the wreck of an old aeroplane, lying in the surf up ahead like a prop from Lost.

According to local hearsay it was running drug smugglers, who then cut and run (excuse the pun) - the locals must have had a big party.

More unusual sights awaited us as we clumsily clambered on board a small rowing boat and headed out into the lagoon.

It was like entering the Lost World, a multitude of strange birds call ascending our ears, calling and cackling, whooping and whistling.

Our eagle-eyed guide, armed with a well-honed knowledge of the lagoon and the creatures that dwelt within it was soon picking out a veritable menagerie from the shadows that this short-sighted Englishman would have glided right by.

The birds came in all shapes and sizes - from tall, elegant fish-eating egrets to tiny, flitting seed-eaters - and were painted in the most fantastical palate, a range of surrealist colours which might have come from the mind of Syd Barrett.

They had suitably bizarre names too, to match their strange appearance, reading like a list of characters from a Roald Dahl book: boat-billed heron; yellow-rumped cacique; pelagic cormorant; tropical kingbird; green kingfisher; pileated woodpecker; great-tailed grackle.
But no Norwegian blue.

The waters beneath held no less impressive an array of creatures.

It being the tropical south we encountered crocodiles, passive yet disturbing in only the way a crocodile can be, their eyes and the scales of their backs just breaking the water, lying still, all brooding malice.

Turtles poked long, thin necks up out of the water into the brilliant, seemingly unconcerned by the deadly killing machines eyeing them from the banks.

Back in Mazunte’s turtle centre we had seen these creatures up close, staring out at us from behind plastic windows, their expressions strangely human. When a staff member told us that turtles could cry, I believed him.

Mexico boats seven of the world’s eight species of these incredible creatures yet, strangely enough, it wasn’t until 1990 that the government banned their hunting.

Old, faded posters, dating from this time, are displayed in the centre, seeking to puncture the popular myth that turtle eggs were an aphrodisiac.

Two feature different people which appeal to Mexican machismo: one a scantily-dressed woman posing below the caption ‘My man doesn’t need turtle eggs’; the other featuring a lucha libre (Mexican wrestling) legend, Santo ' vs. those who eat turtle eggs’.

Back in Ventanilla, we edged further in, out of the green waters of the lagoon into the dark recesses of the mangrove swamps.

The trees closed in, the water grew shallower. Here dwelt the red mangroves, bizarrely-shaped arboreal wonders, upside-down organisms reflected the right way up in the water.

These trees are crucial to the local environment, serving as natural barriers against the encroaching sea, filtering out pollution and in the process turning the water a dark, brackish colour, their odour eggy and pungent.

Dead bodies of their larger brethren scattered the narrow waterways, victims of 1998’s Hurricane Paulina, which laid waste top large tracts of the Oaxaca coast.

Green iguanas scuttled amongst the trees, crazy patterns down their backs descending into a long, thin whip of a tail. Prehistoric-looking creatures in an primeval-looking habitat.

The forebears of this lagoon’s inhabitants dwelt on this planet long before Adam started eyeing up Eve, long before the happy couple’s descendents discovered the potential of burning carbon, and certainly long before billions of these buggers swarmed all over the planet, heating up their home and threatening to turn it into an uninhabitable place once more.

Back to the ancient gloopy stuff out of which they once crawled? Certainly tearing up the mangroves won’t help avert this.

These extraordinary habitats are the most threatened in the world, with only 1% of the planet’s mangroves protected.

In Mexico they are destroyed to make way for shrimp farms and new hotels, their durable wood harvested for western markets.

This is tragic: the world needs mangroves. These vital ecosystems support a huge diversity of wildlife, preserving endangered species, providing local communities with the essentials of life, protecting coastlines from erosion by the sea and even absorbing the impact of tsunamis.

And Mexico needs them too. Even if you are the most landlocked citizen, even if you don’t care for the environment think of the fatties, for here the mangrove’s bark has been used to treat diabetes.

Given the obesity crisis facing the country - now the second ‘fattest’ in the world and the accompanying diabetes crisis (this disease is now the number one cause of death amongst Mexicans, threatening to financially cripple the country‘s health care system) it looks as if these trees might be required to strip a little bit more.

That’s unless Pepsi’s new computer game, designed to help kids live healthy lifestyles can reduce waistlines instead.

Obesity-fighting computer games? Perhaps it was time to head back to the beach.

You can help preserve mangrove forests by buying environmentally-sustainable products. When buying shrimps or wood products check the label to ensure that the product you consume is not contributing to the destruction of mangroves. Visit http://www.mangroveactionproject.org/ for more information

Read more...

How to…travel around Mexico

Mexico is all about buses. There are no trains - apart from the Copper Canyon Railway from the desert mountains of Chihuahua to the Pacific coast at Los Mochis and something called the Tequila Express, a tourist special that we are yet to find - but the buses are good and many.

The roads in Mexico have tarmac and bus journeys are pleasant. There are various classes of bus and hundreds of bus companies to choose from, often departing from different stations across town. The list below is based on experience, of first class buses, minibuses and collectivos, and hear-say, about second class buses. Not that we usually travel first class, but we were advised by many that travelling first class greatly reduced the risk of thievery and highway robbery because these buses use the toll roads. So far we have been lucky, but apparently it does happen.
First class buses are more direct, stopping less and using the faster toll roads. There is no lunch or toilet stop unless there is a major town on route. The buses are hideously over air-conditioned, so even in the hottest of climes take a jumper or two. Luggage is checked into the hold and you are given a receipt. First class buses vary:
*Luxury - the crème de la crème. With only eighteen seats these buses are more like a lounge than a bus. The seats are like plush arm chairs, there is a non-stop showing of recent films with personal headphones, a packed lunch is provided, tea and coffee are available throughout the journey and the toilets on board are clean and usable.
*Executive - more seats than the luxury bus but they are still large and soft. The film selection is good and drinks are sometimes provided. The quality of the toilets is more variable.
*Primera - more like your standard National Express with comfy, reclining seats but not as much leg room as luxury or executive buses and the film selection is much more dubious. The toilets are okay.

Second class buses are, apparently, reminiscent of an old National Express or Greyhound bus. Less comfortable, less direct (not using toll roads) and stopping more often, therefore making for a longer, less predictable journey.

Minibuses - some routes simply aren’t suitable for large coaches, such as Highway 175 between Oaxaca - Pochutla, so smaller minibuses take the direct route leaving the larger buses to take a detour on the larger roads. It’s a minibus, so fellow passengers are few and leg room is limited. There are no films, no toilets and no frills. But the driver will stop whenever you want/need to get out for the loo, to eat etc.

Collectivos - are large shared taxis. In cities they are normally minibuses, on the coast they are open back vans. They pootle along picking up and dropping people off where they want. You just have to flag one down and clamber on the back. They’re cheap and usually connect to larger transport hubs for onwards travel.

Buying a bus ticket can be an ordeal. Buses do book up in advance, especially around holidays when we were travelling, so it’s best to book ahead. The easiest place to do so is at a bus station. Here you can compare timetables and prices between the different companies ploughing the same route. Some companies, such as Autoexpres Atlantida between Oaxaca-Pochutla (951 514 70 77) and ADO/OCC in Pochutla (958 584 0274), allow you to make a reservation over the telephone and then pick up and pay for your tickets an hour before departure. Some companies also have provision for booking tickets on line including http://www.ticketbus.com.mx/, ETN and ADO.

If you cannot book in advance, you can just turn up at the bus station and hope for the best. As we did at 2am in Los Mochis. The bus station staff couldn’t tell us when the next bus to our destination would turn up, nor if we would be able to get a seat on it. You just have to wait and hope. Luckily at 4.30am we got some returns and took the last two seats on a bus to Mazatlan.

Having taken the advice to travel first class to stay safe we have, so far, had no problems. Naturally don’t leave bags open or unattended in the bus station or onboard. We were also advised against travelling at night, as bandits are more likely to work at night (either posing as passengers, boarding on route or in the worst instance forcing the bus to stop). However, based on our one night bus experience it was comfortable and trouble free. We’re taking another one tomorrow (for 11 hours) and fingers crossed we’ll be ok on that one too…
Read more...

From the highlands to the lowlands

From the American flavoured cowboy desert states in the north, to the sprawling colonial Mexico City built on Aztec ruins in the mountain heartland, to the nudist wave machine beaches on the Pacific coast. In travelling through Mexico we have experienced the highs and lows both in attitude and altitude.

The most extreme journey, to date, was from Oaxaca city to Zipolite beach. This journey took us from a height of 1,455 metres up to 2,750m and back down to sea level. It is one of the windiest journeys I have ever taken and I now understand why the large coaches take a six hour detour to avoid the route we took. But we opted for the ‘direct‘ route in a minibus along Highway 175.

Highway 175 is a spectacular 245 kilometre stretch of road that takes your stomach and breath away as it chicanes its way up and down forested mountains. The road up from Oaxaca is dry, dusty and flanked by cacti. At the highest settlement, San Jose Del Pacifico, the sun sharply cuts through the cool, crisp, pine scented air to illuminate magnificent valley views. It gets cold up here, or so we surmised, given the number of local women selling thick hand-knittted woolly jumpers, ponchos, hats and socks. As well as being naturally high (2,750m) this village is also known for its natural highs in the form of magic mushrooms.

On the winding descent - more stomach lurching and leg rolling - the slopes became greener, still pine forests but more lush and with undergrowth. Then signs started appearing advertising coconuts for sale and banana plants started to pop up amongst the trees. The further we went down the more tropical it looked. Four hours into our five and a half hour journey the minibus driver turned on the air conditioning.

Down and down we wound until we were dumped in Pochutla. An unremarkable transport hub of a town that links travellers to the beaches. Relieved to be out of the roller coaster minibus, our taxi driver gave us a fairly similar experience. His style was, however, more Grand Prix. He chose not to see corners and bends and speed bumps were considered prime overtaking ground. After ten more minutes of being thrown around in a moving vehicle we spotted our first glimpse of the Pacific since we disembarked from MV Hugo in Long Beach.

We were left on the hot, sweaty, windy (not windy) Playa del Amor in Zipolite. Sea level at last. With cowboy boots and jackets packed away we wandered about dazed for the afternoon. The beach was lined with palm trees, hammocks and thatched cabanas and there were scores of naked people (mainly men), try-hard hippies and Mexican families playing and strolling on the sand. Our hostel was filthy in a seaside manner - sand blasted floors and barnacle encrusted bathroom taps that looked like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean. All very laid back. A far cry from the grid patterned streets, pillars and plazas of Oaxaca with its high society dinner and theatre scene. It all felt very odd indeed.
Read more...

Happy New Year!

Red (for luck), yellow (for money), with banana or lace? This was the choice of New Year’s Eve pants for sale across Mexico. I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide what we went for…

Oaxaca is a wonderful colonial Mexican city that smells of chocolate and burnt meat. On New Year‘s Eve the zocalo (central plaza) was decked out in fairy lights and beds of poinsettias and was abuzz with families sipping soft drinks (drinking alcohol in the street is prohibido) and buying balloons. The city’s many elaborate Catholic churches were packed full of incense and people reflecting on the year past and present.

Pants are just part of the Oaxacan New Year’s Eve celebrations. You also need to drink cider - not a problem - and eat a grape for each of the chimes at midnight, making a wish with each. Sadly we left ours in the fridge. However, as there was no Big Ben there were no chimes to welcome in 2009, so we wouldn’t have known when to eat them anyway. Instead we waited until the amateur pyrotechnics reached a peak and then surreptitiously chinked and slugged our warm lagers. We know how to celebrate in style!

The rest of the midnight hour was spent trying to dodge the mini-rockets and jumbo sparklers that ricocheted around the zocalo, and keep out of the way of the foam spray and eggs that were being lavishly spread over party goers. It seems to be a tradition to break eggs full of flour and/or hole-punch clippings on people’s heads.

It’s been quite a year for World In Slow Motion. We’ve travelled over 30,000 miles across three continents and sixteen countries. We’ve slept in the wilds of Siberia, worked amongst bears in Japan, eaten our body weight in rice, drunk ‘proper’ tequila, travelled on some of the best and worst trains in the world and got engaged on a cargo ship. With only three more countries to go, we’ll see what adventures 2009 brings…Happy New Year!
Read more...

Is it a man, is it a butterfly…

Two sets of flying things have amazed us this past week.
‘Los voladores’, aka the flying men, who pole dance with a difference,
and the migratory monarch butterflies of Piedra Herrada.
Both incredible feats of strength, nature and travel in slow motion.

Tom’s birthday treat was a trip to the Piedra Herrada butterfly sanctuary outside of Mexico City. I was expecting something similar to the Wye Valley Butterfly Zoo, but was instead blown away by the little known natural phenomenon we beheld.

After breathlessly scaling a deeply dusty uphill trail through a pine forest we came upon millions and millions of monarch butterflies. So called because their chrysalis is shaped like a crown, apparently named after William III. The air was thick with the sound and sight of gently fluttering butterflies and the floor littered with the dead confetti of their relatives. These butterflies are not native to Mexico, but had travelled for two months over two thousand miles from their home in the United States and Canada to winter in Mexico’s warmer climes. They started arriving from mid-November and will stay until the beginning of March when the mating period is over and the weather warm enough to return home.

The monarch is an enigmatic butterfly. Scientists are still debating why it is only every fifth generation of butterflies that makes this trek to Mexico and how they know to return to the same spot each time. A pre-historic Sat Nav perhaps? The monarchs have a taste for high altitude (2,800m) oyamel fir trees, but not any old tree will do, they apparently return to the exact same trees over a sixty square mile area year after year.

The voladores don’t travel quite so far, but their job is also death-defying. Their pole dancing performance originates from Papantla, Mexico, but is now performed at tourist attractions including Mexico City’s Museum of Anthropology and Teohuatican pyramids. Dressed in traditional Totonac costume five brave men ascend a thirty metre pole without rope or safety harness. Four then descend headfirst on ropes gracefully and slowly revolving around the pole exactly thirteen times. A sort of bungee jump in slow motion. The fifth member remains at the top of the pole playing a bewitching tune on a pipe. [See video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoIBD2y-g9k]

This spectacle is also steeped in mystery and myth. Some believe it to be a fertility rite calling to the four corners of the earth to bring rain and sun; others link it to the pre-Hispanic calendar.

Two groups of flyers travelling in slow motion. Both gracefully practicing mysterious rituals. I do not understand why either man or butterfly does what they do, but their courage and might make for very good tourist attractions. So when visiting Mexico, make sure you look up.

Read more...

Presents, piñatas and Paxo: A Mexican family Christmas:

¡ Feliz Navidad!

Christmas. Whilst I love the festive season I loathe spending it away from home.

I can’t help missing everything about a good ol’ traditional British Christmas - friends and family, presents, rotten weather, Bond repeats on telly and the stuffing. Especially the stuffing.

So if we were to have to spend this Christmas away then we would have to find a nice place to spend. And where better than Mexico.

A country full of devout Catholics, Christmas is huge in Mexico. The whole country is swathed in festive bling; as we travelled down from the north every village, town and city we passed through seemed to be indulging in festive celebrations which would put little old Blighty in the shade.

It was therefore with considerable anticipation that we approached the great megalopolis of Mexico City.

And not a little trepidation either. Mexico City is a massive place - with 18 million inhabitants it’s the second biggest city in the world (by population), a huge, sprawling, urban mass devouring all in its path as it expands in its seemingly inexorable quest to meet the needs of its residents.

This doesn’t make it an instantly lovable place for visitors, nor the most liveable for its residents, suffering as it does from high levels of pollution.

The city is also afflicted with more than its fair share of pollution and crime. We had been warned that it was a bit ‘edgy‘, not to venture into certain parts after dark, to leave our credit cards behind, and to take taxis everywhere, making sure you lock the doors once inside.

If what the locals did were anything to go by this was prudent advice: most residents seem to hide themselves away behind heavy metal gates, set into high walls lined with barbed wire.

No wonder the British felt that there was only one man up to the job of British ambassador here. Who else but a Paxman (in this case Jeremy’s brother Giles) could fearlessly represent his country’s interests in such a foreboding place?

With Paxo at the helm, surely we were safe and could focus fully on the festivities instead, spending the Christmas period with an old university chum, Monica, and her family .

It was to be a wonderful and very memorable occasion.

Unlike in Britain, the big day for Mexicans is the 24th, Christmas Eve. We arrived the day before and despite Christmas being a family occasion we were welcomed into their home with open arms.

The whole family had gathered for the festivities, four generations represented, from a delightful grandmother to a wide-eyed two year old, all arms and legs, the goo flowing permanently out of his mouth.

Mother was there, smiling benignly on proceedings and patiently attending to the many pans bubbling away on the stove, along with five of her eight brothers and sisters and their attendant husbands and wives.

Then there were their various children, shy teenagers and a mob of younger kids with a worrying predilection for running through the crowded rooms, high on sugar and the promise of presents.

And the family pets, a menagerie of a dog, a cat, a vociferous parrot and 4 tiny caged birds, housed in the outhouse toilet.

Together we all squeezed into the rambling house, part of traditional old Mexican courtyard,
bequeathed to the family by the grandfather, along with a large collection of dusty old lathes and stand drills which lined the entrance.

Ancient old motors lined the street outside, coated in dust, their tyres long flat. Inside the festive decorations lined every available surface and hung from every hook. Even the toilet seats had suitably seasonal covers.

It wouldn’t be Christmas of course without a tipple and our wonderful hosts soon introduced us to bountiful stock of booze at their disposal. The fridge groaned with a whole host of Mexican beers, many of them new to our palates.

Uncle Beto and Aunt Elizabeth went one further than this and introduced us to the pleasure of their sizeable mini-bar, a Bacchanalian banquet to rival the food. Rum, whisky, vodka, advocaat (a uniquely festive drink) and of course tequila.

They seemed to have them all, every fearsome variant of the local firewater, each distilled from a modest little cactus and guaranteed to send one’s head spinning.

“This is my favourite”, Uncle Beto told us, fondling a particularly weighty dark bottle, Tres Generaciones.
I politely supped the fearsome liquor I was passed, the memories of too many messy nights out still too strong to indulge uninhibited. Lara, on the other hand, eagerly swigged away, mixing it with a rather briny red liquid called Sangrita (‘little blood’). They colour it bright red for a reason.

Suitably tanked up we were then invited across the road to Uncle and Auntie’s house where we all sang a posada (hostel) song, a traditional song which, as I understood it, represents the pilgrimage of Mary and Joseph.

Everyone merrily sang back and forth, one group the ‘pilgrims‘, the other the ‘hostel keepers’ whilst I mumbled embarrassingly along, wondering what on earth I was singing about.

This merry ritual over, we were then invited to participate in another Mexican Christmas tradition: the piñata game, or smashing the hell out of a papier mache figure dangling from a rope, with a great big stick in a bid to get at the sweets inside.

It’s not as simple as it sounds of course: alongside the alcohol coursing through one’s veins one has to contend with wearing a blindfold, being spun around until nicely disoriented and thence having to jump up thrashing wildly into the air as one of the Uncle‘s teasingly tugs the rope up and down.

As we made complete fools of ourselves, our fellow revellers sang another song, which loosely translates as: “Hit it, hit it hit it, don’t you lose your aim.”

Of course I did and hit the piñata - this one fiendishly based around a heavy ceramic pot - with my hand.

Dizzy, nauseous and numb with pain I happily passed the heavy wooden stick onto the next person who proceeded to smash the piñata into smithereens. The pieces shattered over a nearby car, setting off the alarms; the sweets inside exploded out all over the lawn, prompting an excitable feeding frenzy amongst children and adults alike.

The danger wasn’t over however, as someone then produced some fireworks and a laidback cousin in a leather jacket proceeded to light them in a rather lacksidasical manner.

Lethal lights and gunpowder fizzed all over the cardboard box they were placed upon, showering everyone in sparks and ricocheting off the walls of the confined space in which we were all gathered.

I cowered with granny behind the safety of a patio door. The kids loved it and eagerly grabbed the sparklers for an encore, great enormous sticks almost three foot long. A particularly young member of the family seemed to delight in the danger, carving great spaces out of the air, hair sizzling, eyeballs searing.

No wonder fireworks are banned in this city.

I was relieved to retreat back inside, as we approached the great present-giving ceremony.

Somehow, everyone squeezed into the small living room, crammed on and around two sofas, lounging in doorways, perched on stairwells.

A massive stack of presents awaited us, a mound big enough to rival the city’s great pyramid of Teotihuacan. Surely we’d be going all the way through into the New Year if we were to tackle all this lot.

Wrong. The family had a cunning answer to this problem: speed present-giving. A present is picked, the receiver gets ten seconds (counted down by everyone else) to unwrap it before they must select a new present and give it to that receiver, and so on, and so on.

It’s genius. No long, meandering hours of lingering over new socks and unwanted oven gloves. Just a frantic ripping of paper, a quick nod of thanks and on to the next.

And it’s great fun. Everyone gleefully gave and received. Everyone got something they wanted, something they didn’t want and something they never expected. I think my present of some chilli-flavoured crickets must surely fall into the third category.

Finally, the mountain was levelled. Midnight struck and it was time to eat.

This being Mexico there were huge amounts of food. Industrial quantities. It was as if they were expecting the entire city to turn up.

There was a mountain of mashed cod, a steaming heap of potatoes, a great forest of salad, a groaning basket of bread, a huge school of prawns, great lakes of mole and several large dishes of spaghetti.

There was a turkey of course, one that looked as if it had been pumped up on steroids and primed to take on Rocky Balbao and, just in case you were left feeling a bit peckish after all this, a choice of three different delicious puddings.

I dug in with the rest of the family, blissfully gorging myself on this medieval feast. After six months on the road my instincts seem to have reprogrammed themselves to resemble those of a wild animal, prompting me to feed frantically whenever the opportunity presents itself.

It was a good job I did too: with several charming Mexican mothers surrounding this scrawny Englishman - hardly a carbon copy of the typically tubby Mexican male - found it hard to refuse their kind, concerned insistence to try just one more spoonful…

But the best was yet to come. A familiar smell wafted in to the room: stuffing!

Shipped in fresh from a little Leicester delicatessen called Tesco. It had been lovingly prepared, gently cooked with thin slices of ham around it, and was devoured in an instant. An big hit with the Mexicans.

No wonder they put Paxo in charge in this town.



* Many thanks to the wonderful Rodriguez family for kindly hosting us over Christmas and giving us such a marvellous time


Read more...