For anyone travelling to Mexico---
Our first week in Mexico was, upon reflection a baptism of fire. A cross between Moscow and Dalston Market. There is a huge square, the Zocolo in the middle of Mexico City, where the catherdral is and where the Aztec temple was. It was by all accounts the scene of mass human sacrifice. In one huge cul, over four days 20 000 people had their hearts ripped out. Their hearts were fed to their idols with a silver spoon. The killing only stopped when the priest collapsed from exhaustion. Not the sort of thing you’d expect from the local vicar but the times they are a changing.
The population of Mexico City is 20 million in a space smaller than London. We are apparently sitting in vast volcanic crater at an altitude of 3000 meters. I have felt quite overwhelmed by the density of people. Despite this they move gentle and deftly between each other. The markets are vast, a maze of lots of gaudy plastic. Everyone seems to be selling something from the young to the old. Fortunately it is easy to escape the hubbub into a quite courtyard. We watched one day from the window as the street sellers had to constantly flee with the goods wrapped in a plastic sheet on hearing a whistle only to return ten minutes latter. All that is apart from one old woman who sat selling five tins of peanuts who was to frail to move. There is apparently a clamp down on street sellers.
We have eaten big breakfasts at The Best Western Hotel on the sixth floor over looking the Zocolo and eaten street food mostly cheese and mushroom quesadillas during the day. Mexico City smells of cooking tortillas. Doughy and acrid.
Emile has apparently bears a resemblance to the Christ Child with his curly blond hair, and is constantly touched and blessed by woman.
Tom has been a great if not occasionally challenging guide. I am well versed in Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, We have travelled the Mexican underground which is orange with rubber tyres and come up for air at the Archeological Museum, San Angel, Coyocan, been whizzed back in the small tin buses. Esme loves these journeys as it is like being on a circus ride.
I spent the first week thinking I had made a terrible mistake, feeling far from home. Missing bad weather, dark nights, friends, radio, and newspaper. Which was ridiculous as I had spent a whole year waiting to get here. I have prolonged unnecessarily conversations with anyone willing to speak English.
We are off to San Miguel Allende on the early bus tomorrow.
26th December 2005
We are on Mexican time. Our days pass in blue, blessed blur. The more I am here; the more I am falling in love with Mexico. Our lives back in England feel like mechanical operations. We are being to feel like sentient being.
The Mexican people are peaceful and calm. We are always greeted with smiles. The old womans' faces look like geological rock formations. So worn by the sun but they are strangely elegant.
Tom is currently planning on buying a car; he had his eye on a Renault from 1971. I sited a lot of reasons for not buying a car, most of them fictitious, the true reason being that I did not want to break down in the Mexican desert in some clapped out old banger in the middle of no where. Tom struggles to get down the M4 without breaking down. He is now looking for something more robust so I will keep you posted.
Christmas was spent in the Jardin, where there is a nativity scene with two donkeys and three sheep. And talking to the Mexican lady trying to sell embroideries in fluorescent coloured threads. She is unwittingly teaching me Spanish for which I buy her cans of coke, her preferred beverage. I can’t face buying her embroideries.
10th January 2006.
Hola Mis amigos,
We are still in San Miguel and although we talk of leaving it is always tomorrow.
Our days start cold. San Miguel is one mile high; it is their winter (which lasts about 2 months) and is unseasonable cold. We walk out of our room and into the sun and blue sky and sigh “not another beautiful day”. We usually eat breakfast at Mama Mia. Which is where Jenny and Tom saw Sarah Ferguson around about the toe-sucking incident with her Texan financial advisor.
I am still acquainting my pallet with the savoury food. However their cakes, pudding and ice cream are the stuff that dreams are made of. I have eaten chocolate cake that is as good as a swim in the sea. Perfect in texture, taste and not too sweet. Maybe this is inevitable Mexico is the home of chocolate. When Cortes demanded gold form Montezuma the Aztec’s emperor, such little value did they attach to it that he would have been better understood if he had asked for chocolate.
Their flans (crème carmel) are pudding sonnets. Although the Italians have the edge on ice cream. Mexico must come a cool second. The ice cream is delivered by a carthorse to the Jardin, the main square in milk churns and stays cool by ice. The flavours run the gamut from Vanilla to cheese to Avocado. The ice creams are generous and Emile’s always melts before he finishes it.
After breakfast we usually go to the jardin and Tom’s buys the newspaper and catches up on the football results and South American politics.
Between two and four Mexico sleeps. We haven’t yet adopted this habit but linger between the sun and the shade, too hot and too English to opt for either one or the other. Esme and Emile usually find some other children to play with. Guavas, oranges and cherimoya fall and the clock chimes.
In the evening we venture back to the jardin for hot chocolate or soup.
After the children are in bed we make another plan to leave San Migel.
Our lives back in England from a distance appear steely, grey, mechanical, lacking in colour. Although in the detail in this is not entirely true.
We will return to credit card bills and no home. I have a funny thought about arriving at Heathrow getting on the circle line and just going round and round and round.
Esme has learnt how to swim and dive in the hot springs just outside of San Miguel. It is like being in a bath and Esme and Emile stay in there for hours.I ear drop on American divorcee complaining about their lack of funds. I think about the lady who sells embroideries in the jardin so she can eat. We took the back road home through medieval looking farms.
Emile insists that he is Spiderman and Tom is Spiderman’s daddy. He takes an inflatable Spiderman that we brought him for Christmas to bed. We lost his favourite teddy Bossy in Mexico City Bus Station. I have to keep reminding myself that he was only a stuffed toy and won’t feely lonely and lost. Emile on the other hand hasn’t mentioned it.
Tom has brought a camionetta, which translates as a small bus. It is an eight-seat people carrier with room in the back for three more. It is pretty suburban but can probably get away with it travelling around Mexico. It has been the main cause of our delayed departure from San Migel.
We drove to a small mining village called Los Pozoz. It was a silver mining town with 80 000 habitants but now has only four hundred inhabitants. It was deserted in 1910 just after the revolution. Americans, Germans and Italians all came here to work. We brought some water, I looked into the eyes of the man behind the counter and they were blue. Apart from the restaurant on the Plaza, it was like something out of a western; banging doors and tumble weed. There was a boy plaiting cow guts chatting to two girls texting on phones. We did not find the mines, or stumble on them accidentally, they are just holes in the ground. Coins take 15 seconds to drop to the bottom of them.
My Spanish is gradually improving with Michael Thomas tapes and children’s literature. Favourite words are le gato ensombrerado and mantiquilla du cacahuete
All our love Tomjetesme and emile
26th January 2006.
Dear Amigos,
We finally escaped the spell of San Miguel Allende and headed to Guanajuato via Dolores Hildalgo. We headed first across desert scrub and then hit the edge of the Alto Plano. We zigzagged our way down steep valleys and up mountains. All vast and beautiful with donkeys, cows and small hamlets.
When we got to Guanajuato with were led into the underground tunnels where we went around in circles for about 45 minutes. Guanajuato is in an impossible steep valley only built there because of the silver mining (20 % of the World silver for 200 years). All the road traffic has to use the underground tunnels, as the streets are too narrow otherwise which makes for a quite town. Guanajauto most famous homeboy is Diego Riveria. The food was great, the architecture more French than Spanish and people more
reserved than San Miguel Allende.
As we sat down to eat, I clearly remember thinking no one told me Mexico was going to be so beautiful.
It was our intention was to spend our time in Mexico based in Morelia. A couple of decent cathedrals but car choked otherwise which at 2100 meters high you notice. Six lanes of traffic around the Jardin so we stayed for a couple of nights and moved on. I was all for returning to San Miguel but Tom said life was too easy there and I should see the real Mexico. I suggested giving up the car and getting two donkeys instead for a more authentic Mexican experience.
We are now in Volcano country. Lots of mountains with no tops. None with smoke coming out of the top but the low clouds sometimes trick our eyes. It is much greener than the area around San Miguel and today it looks like the Lake District with cacti. Clouds shrouding the mountains. Infact we smelt and then felt our first rain in six weeks. Apparently unusual at this time of year.
We are staying at Patzscuro which to be honest is a dreary but pretty town overhanging eves. Grinding poverty and 70’s fabrics don’t make great bedfellows. There is none of the energy and zest of San Miguel but a sense of ennui induced from lack of opportunity. This could just be my aversion to village life. But to be fair it was the inspiration of the Milagros shop sign and the air smells of pine (not from air fresheners) However we have found one decent restaurant that it is run by a guy from San Francisco who use to sell the same glass that we sell in San Francisco. The food is delicious lots of dishes with flor de calabaza.
Our hotel is rather nice too, fire places, courtyard, wireless Internet connection, hot and powerful showers, a turkey and his family, a friendly jack russel who jumps in the window and cable TV. So Tom has been catching up with sport, tennis and football and I’ve been watching Sex in the City and Prime Suspect to improve my Spanish.
Tom has been taking us on long drives in our car to villages half way up volcanoes to buy some ceramics and copper pots.
We are heading town to the Pacific cost to look at the turtles.
All our love
Tomjetesmeandemile.
Friday 3rd February 2006.
Hola Amigos,
From Patscuro, we wound our way downwards past volcanoes, fields of maize, bananas, papayas, avocados, and mangos trees. After an hour’s driving we’d taken off our woolly jumpers and were sweltering. And then wilderness, tiny shack villages with names like Infernillo and “watch out for crossing armadillo” signs. Finally the Pacific Ocean. We arrived a Playa Azul not as quaint as it sounds after the 1985 earthquake had left building twisted and bent, and poverty left them empty and slowly crumbling. We spent our first night on the Michoacan coast, sweltering under a creaking fan and strip lighting all for £8 a night. For breakfast, we found a juice bar and chatted to the guy who recounted his experience of the earthquake twenty one years. He was standing at his juice bar. The epicentre was Lazaro Cardenas.
Work happens at altitude in Mexico. The beach is for relaxation.
Before leaving Playa Azul we went to the turtle sanctuary. A man dug a big hole with his hands where a post was and out came about 80 turtles and eggshells. He put the turtles into a big plastic bowl and an hour later they had woken up and were let loose into the sea. These were the eggs of the giant turtles and the government runs the program to protect them.
We made our way to Castela de Campas. Where we stayed in an air conditioned recently built, hotel with beige interior and pool for £40 a night. Castela de Campos was a little bit rough and ready. For some reason rubbish was just thrown out on to the street. We thought we saw the rubbish truck but realised three days later that it had broken down and had been used as a dustbin. However the beach was fine and they sold seafood, which kept Tom happy. We met an American couple who were sailing across the world for five years and a guy from Texas who was buying up land along the coast and trying to convert the Mexicans to some obscure branch of Christainity. Mexico is saturated in religion.
At this point we said goodbye to hot water, petrol stations, cash point machines, working telephones but not an Internet connection.
We then moved five mile further along the coast to Nexpa. Where we stayed in lovely Cabañas for £15 a night. This is a surfing beach and is populated by American and Canadian surfers. Unfortunately we were hindered by a lack of money, fuel and Tom’s impending Vat return.
We returned briefly Castela De Campasto connect with the outside world.
We look distinctly English and very uncool. Like we’ve been living in woollen jumpers and wellies all our lives. Our legs are white (now lobster red). I’ve had to improvise with my pyjamas, everything else is too hot. Tom has brought some new snakeskin sandals for £1.25. We hover on the wrong side of cutting edge. In fact we look like we are on day release but to be fair that is generally how the English look at the seaside.
We finally made our way further along the coast to a little bay called Pichilinguillo, which is where I am now, listening to the night fisherman coming in. The village was only accessible by donkey along a dirt track until 1980. They have only had electricity for three years. Until then everything came by boat along the coast. It is the stuff of romantic novels, the Mexican equivalent to Cornwall in the 1700 and 1800’s. Except here it is drugs from Columbia and the army and navy frequent the beaches with guns, stand on rocks pear out to see and then drive away. The sand is white and the sea is turquoise. We have seen pelicans, iguanas and numerous crabs that hang out on the cliffs, scuttling like spiders when they see us. The first evening we were watching strange spurts of water on the horizon and suddenly the black silhouette of a whale leapt and dived into the ocean. We felt blessed and despite the lack of amentities we decided to stay longer. We’ve met a sane and lovely man called Jeff who is a wild salmon fisherman down from Oregon.
The fisherman land mostly red snappers. They are guttered on the boat, often while they are still alive and are on our table half an hour later. One fisherman had a big catch and kindly gave us a huge fish. The restaurant cooked it for us. It was delicious like tuna. There are no freezing facilities so the fish are just sold to the three local restaurants. One of the fishermen took us out on his boat to look at the numerous sea caves along the coast. Outside of our sheltered bay, in a small boat the ocean became a dark swelling mass.
Rural isolation, however does equate to nylon, flowery bed sheets, no flushing toilets, a concrete unfinished ramshackled hotel, electricity power cuts and an endless diet of seafood and walkers crisps. Despite this the hotel owner has been very hospitable endless cups of tea and tried to convince Tom to go into business with him doing up his hotel.
Today is Monday and we are in Colima which seats under two active volcanoes and hence a switch of neurosis from tsunami to earthquake and volcanic eruptions. This is also the land of car tyre sandals so if you have a request please email foot size.
Before we left Pichilinguillo the grandson of the hotel owner took us along a dried riverbed to a hot spring and cold river. A beautiful walk into the mountains behind the ocean. Lots of lizards, Brahmin cows and the smell of orange blossom. The hot water from the Spring was too hot until it empty out into the cool stream. Although I thought we were in the middle of nowhere, we were close to the footpath and a gentle stream of people passed herding cattle and chatting.
A drive to Maruata along the coast, which on the map appeared as a straight line but zigzagged its way in and out of steep coastal valleys. Past trees with yellow, white, green flowers and no leaves.
Going in the sea at Maruata was a little like going in the washing machine. This is the favourite haunt of the giant turtle. We didn’t see any but the whole beach double up as farmyard chickens, cockerels, chicks, donkeys, cows and horses.
Esme has become addicted to jumping the waves and Emile to building sandy constructions.
All our love Tomjetesmeandemile.
15th February 2006
Dear All,
Despite living in the double shadow of the volcano and earthquakes, Colima is not weighed down by sense of impending doom but instead the people and the town have a lightness of being about them. Earthquakes have ravaged the city. The only building more than a story high is the cathedral. However this is a city and people that seem affluent, at ease with themselves, well dressed. The president call is the jewel in Mexican crown because of its affluence and low crime rate.
We spent the first couple of day peering into the distance looking for the volcano and its now extinct twin sister that we had clearly seen on our journey into Colima. We realised later that the streets all run at a slant hiding it from view.
In Colima we found a shop which was packed full of goodies. We treated ourselves to Green and Blacks chocolate. Tom brought some Taylors of Harrogate tea for my birthday. At a cost of £6 a packet.
After four days in Colima reacquainting ourselves with hot water and vegetables we wound our way slowly towards the volcano. We stopped in a small town called Comala where we met an English lady running a vegetarian restaurant. It is funny that you would still concern yourself with the neurosis of London life, organic vegetables etc living under a volcano and in an earthquake zone but apparently so. Comala is the setting of the novel by Juan Rulfo, Pedro Paramo. Just outside Comala is the zona magico. It appears that we are going up hill when we are going downhill and vice a versa.
We stopped a small town called Suchitlan, where they make masks and a type of chair that is called Equipale. They are found everywhere in Mexico. The chair maker house was a hovel, made out of old cardboard boxes, plastic bags and corrugated tin roof. Their kitchen was a dirt floor. They had an oven that they had some how converted to a fire. A chicken sat in a washing basket attached to a wall next to the bed. My first instinct was how could people live like this? The old lady was desperate for us to sit down and when we finally did she offered us a glass of orange juice. To which, so not to appear rude I said yes. I had seen the bottled water earlier. The orange juice was delicious straight from the tree. The old lady was desperate to give us something despite having nothing. She was so dignified. It was somehow an insight into kindness and gentleness of these people.
Finally arrived at Monte Azul, this time as lovely as it sounds at the foot of the volcano. Our room for the night had a view of the volcano on one side and a view down the hill towards Colima on the other. In the morning while drinking orange juice, Esme shouted, “look!” The volcano was billowing smoke. As a geologist daughter this is the equivalent of being catholic and blessed by the pope.
We took the slow road around the volcano. Quite quickly the green lush vegetation on the south side of the volcano turned to dry arid, fractured landscape on the north side. In front of us was a huge rigid and to our right a canyon. We must have gone into the canyon because shortly after the tarmac stopped and we drove along a dirt track for about half an hour. Past donkeys and the local bus (at this point we knew we would make it). We rejoined the tarmac road at Zuichitlan. An old lady limped out of her shop and told us to go very slowly as the road wound its way around seven canons. We did and found ourselves in Paradise Plane. Again vast and beautiful dotted with extinct volcanoes.
The Mexicans tend to travel in four by four open topped trucks. Two or three in the front and the rest in the back windswept, laughing and gazing at their beautiful country.
We arrived at Guadalajarra at rush hour, trapped and lost in traffic for about an hour, the city equivalent of driving through a canyon. Finally found our way to Tlaquepaque and a hotel for the night with threadbare sheets, lousy mattresses but cable TV with Bob the Builder in Spanish.
A busy time, cosmopolitan time in Guadalajara visiting the glass factory and a Mexican trade show. We took a horse and carriage around Guadalajarra on Valentines Day with the children, who do a like for like impression of a bickering couple. I was expecting Birmingham and got Edingburgh.
This morning Tom unfortunately had a collision with a motorcyclist. Although Tom and Esme are both fine, the car just a small mark on the bumper. The motorcyclist has a possible broken leg. The ambulance was there in minutes, the police very sweet but Tom is now caught up with Police bureaucracy.
All our love Tomjetesmeandemile
Quierdos Amigos,
Our time in Guadalajarra was unfortunately marred with a small collision with a motorcyclist. Although the accident itself was not serious the repercussions meant we lost the car and had to deal with the rank underbelly of Mexican bureaucracy. I will bore you with the details. Tom was nudging forward on a junction when a motorcyclist hit his bumper and fell off his bike. Thankfully missing the two roadwork holes and the boulder either side of the junction. Despite not having a helmet he only grazed his leg. Unknown to Tom the traffic running east west has priority and as Tom was going north south it was technically his fault. It later transpired that the motorcyclist had no driving license, had borrowed his son’s bike, was a fifty eight year old diabetic and had failing eyesight. Tom was taken to jail for 10 hours in order to reach some agreement with the motorcyclist, this is normal under Mexican law. Tom agreed it was his fault and paid £400 for damages. This was the easier part. The next day was spent driving around Guadalajarra with the son of the motorcyclist arranging to get his car back, which had been taken to a car pound. Although the only damage was a small scratch on the bumper, again this normal until an agreement is reach. Under Mexican law the two vehicles in an accident can only be released at the same time. The son of the motorcyclist fortunately worked for an insurance company so knew his way around the system. He was also surprisingly amicable considering Tom could have killed his father. He drove like there was no tomorrow. Palm top in one hand, mobile phone in the other juggling the two when he had to change gear or steer. Driving straight into oncoming traffic and swerving out of the way only at the last possible minute. It was so bad we could only laugh. Tom needed to get a document to get into his car to get the documents to show that he owned the car. The car was not in the designated car pound and it took an hour before the men working at the car pound thought to tell Tom that there was a central number to call to find out where it was. It happened to be in a different car pound. They took the documents to the office to release the car. However according to the office Tom did not have the correct documents so neither his car or the motorcycle could be released. The office in Guanajuato, which was dealing with the change of ownership, had a computer failure so the circulation document that he needed would not be ready until the middle of March. He also needed something called a Factura and a Pedimento both of which had been lost by the previous owner. We rang both the British and the American embassy hoping for a dual assault on the office (Tom has an American passport). The least we hoped for was that the British would have a gentle word in a Mexican ear something along the line of it not being cricket. But no they said we should pay a notary. The headmaster who previously owned the car also said we should pay a coyote. Apparently the same thing, a wild dog. This in the end turned out to be our only option. So some slime ball drew up a document that said two life long friends of Tom’s had seen the documents before he lost them. Highly credible! Of course it was all baloney and everyone was in cahoots with everyone else. When we got to San Miguel the office said the documents that we did have were perfectly acceptable. So now we understand why the Mexicans pray to the Virgin of Guadalupe with volcanoes and earthquakes and a bureaucratic system that is devoid of logic and reason. Bureaucracy requires the ability to think in the future and Mexico lives, for the most part; it’s life entirely in the present. Throughout this Tom exercised the patience and understanding and goodwill of a saint unlike me who was hoping that war would be declared to get our car back. We finally did get it back minus a lot of our belonging including all our Mexican car tyre sandals.
On a more pleasant note, we passed our days eating mangos, which have just come into season. They are the colour of Colman’s mustard and taste sublime.
Esme, who is four, met a girl called Maya, who five and is Canadian. They became partners in crime and we lost them for twenty minutes while they went on a shopping trip, trying on ponchos and trying to buy orange juice with a peso (5p). It was quite scary at the time but we laughed afterwards.
On Monday we went to see the monarch butterflies. We stayed at a town called Angangeou, at an altitude of 2800 meters. It sits in a steep valley with houses and shrines perched precariously on the slopes surrounding it. Forget sombreros and cacti, it looks like the French Alps green with pine forests and cold. We reminded ourselves that it was about the same temperature as England in May but with blue skies. They mined lead and silver here until five years ago when the mine was closed and eighty percent of the male population left to find work in the states. This is a similar story all over Mexico. Over breakfast we arranged horses and a family left us their small son to show us the way to the butterfly sanctuary. We drove up and up until we came to a pine forest and then drove for half an hour down a dirt track. We came to a small shack village surrounded by pine trees. There was a nip in the air and a strong scent of pine. We were at the same height as the High Alps 3700 meters. We got on our horses and were guided by an elderly woman walking, who considering the altitude went at a fair lick. The forest was the stuff of fairy tales. Goldilocks and the three bears, Hansel and Gretel. The forests of childhood and maybe of previous generations but not a forest that you could ever find in England now, as there is always the sense of others, the hum of cars, tarmac paths. The sense of mystery lost and a country shrunken by the motorcar. Occasionally we glimpsed fantastic views. We walked the last half a mile and first heard the flapping of the butterflies and then saw them. There were thousands, maybe millions of them hanging on the pine trees like swarming bees or floating in the air like confetti, clouding the sky. I was expecting to take lots of photos but we were all completely spellbound. It was magical. The butterfly starts it’s life in Canada and flies on thermals to Mexico in November where they stay until March and then the next generation returns. No one butterfly completes the whole journey. We rode back though the forest and sat down in a clearing to eat our picnic of mangoes and Walkers crisps. At this point things took a sour twist, as we became the unwitting witnesses to Cock fighting. They strap a sharp hook onto the bird’s foot so the injuries they inflict, which would otherwise be harmless result in the bloody death of one bird. It was a strange contrast, the beauty of something so peaceful and the pointless death and suffering of an animal whose only crime is to cockerdoodle do at four in the morning.
We are now back in San Miguel sorting out the car documentation. We have returned to the fragrance of orange blossom warmer morning and evenings and hot afternoons and people with ash crosses on their heads as it were Ash Wednesday. After touring around the rest of the country it is definitely a sugary version of Mexico but I like it all the same. A town booming on the American OAPs escaping the cold and stretching their pensions. No crumbling half completed buildings. It is a perfect marriage between the Americans and Mexico. It has history, beautiful buildings, public spaces, colour and eternal spring (although not an eternal English spring which is damp, pubescent and grey) and the Americans have cash and give the place energy and a confidence that is otherwise missing from the rest of Mexico.
All our love, sleeping all but one Tomjetesmeandemile.
Oaxaca 26th March 2006.
Quierdo amigos,
We met our friend Carlos in San Miguel and recounted our car story and he told us that at least Mexico is democratically corrupt unlike our countries, which are corrupt just at the top.
From San Miguel we drove late at night to Guadalajara braving and surviving the terrifying Mexican traffic. Turning right across a dual carriage way and swerving out of the way of an oncoming bus on our side of the road.
Spent a couple of days back in Guadalajara buying pink chickens and talking to the glass blowers. Our last night in Guadalajara we were invited to the American Consul for drinks and a presentation about Barro Sin Plomo who work with the indigenous potters making their products more commercially viable and teaching them how to use lead free glazes. Hence avoiding cashing up in Wal-Mart in the USA. We are all looking pretty healthy after a constant 30 degrees all winter) although a little bit scruffy a natural tendency only enhanced by being on the road for so long. We were all a bit dubious when we arrived at a house in the middle of an immaculate housing estate with the verges being trimmed by a gardener with scissors, absolutely no pedestrians and all the houses dripping with alarms. We were lost but eventually found out where we were by the armed police either end of the street. They did let us in despite looking like modern day gypsies. We gorged ourselves on tequila, tasty nibbles and looked at the pottery.
The following night we drove to Ochumicho. A village at the foot of an extinct volcano and ten miles up a dirt track. The women were all immaculately dressed with rebozos and pinafores and plaited hair and plastic shoes. All bright and patterned and in sharp contrast to the adobe, wooden and now concrete houses. Until the 1960’s this village had made just plain earthenware pots when one of the men folk decided to make devils on bicycles, on bulls, in bed etc. They started to sell and the whole village instead of making brown pots and laughing at him (he also made his own tortillas) now started making devils and mermaids. The man died young in a bar brawl but he has left the legacy of devils, mermaids and everyday folk doing everyday things. One piece was of the twin towers collapsing with oversized people on their mobiles tumbling out and flames licking the towers. A Bayeaux tapestry of our times. They also let me use there posh loo which instead of being just a hole in the ground was a unplumbed toilet sat over a hole in the ground!
We returned to Patzcuaro, which I loved on my second visit. There is a restaurant called Cha Cha Cha a run by an American from San Francisco. We ate avocado, strawberry and sesame seed salad and chipotle risotto with shrimp. Each evening a guitarist and a dancer sang and danced Peruvian songs. Something about the sadness and beauty of this lone dancer and the echoing music always made our eyes stream with tears.
Barro Sin Plomo (earthenware without lead) took us on a guided tour of the village where some of the pottery comes from.
On Tuesday, we drove to near Uruapan to find Paricutin. In 1943, Dionisio Pulido, a farmer was ploughing his cornfield when the ground begun to shake and swell and to spurt hot ash and steam. He tried to cover it up but his attempts proved futile and he fled. He left leaving a mound the size of a haystack when he returned with the priest it was the size of a house. A volcano emerged out of the farmland and rose to 410m within a year. It was active for ten years submerging the nearby village of Paricutin in lava. The only trace of this lost village is a lonely church spire sticking through the lava field. Earthquakes had blighted the area and now fire and smoke coming from the soil, in a ferociously Catholic country they naturally assumed it was The Day of Judgement. We took horses to the volcano. Our now preferred option to get off the beaten track with children. Emile was very brave and had his own horse. When ever we asked him if he was all right, he said he was stroking his pussycat!! It was a long horse ride of about three hours. We finally got to the bottom of a perfectly shaped sandy cone. At this point the horses rested under the tree and we climbed. It was like climbing treacle. Esme gave up very quickly so I sat at the bottom while Tom proceeded upwards with Emile on his shoulders. The guide had said 25 minutes up and five minutes down. After two hours waiting for Tom my anger had turned to worry. After another half an hour the guide went to look for him as the sun was starting to set. About 25 minutes later I caught sight of Tom looking very hot with Emile on his shoulders and the guide. The climb had been almost impossible for Tom with Emile on his shoulders so instead of 25 minutes it had taken an hour. Tom had walked around the edge of the rim and instead of descending the fast route he had taken the slow route down. All’s well that ends well. I’ve never seen Emile look so happy as he rode back. We started our descent at dusk. Through the trees to our right we saw an electric light only to realise that it was the moon just raising, low in the sky and full. The moon lit our way passed farmland and through a pine forest. Although we could see for miles around there were only two electric lights in the distance. Esme and Emile slept while we trotted. We arrived back at Angahuan and ate blue maize quesadillas, which have never tasted so good and finally drove home.
We spent a few lazy days in Patzcauro while Tom recovered from a flu bug that made his eyes weep. We headed south, first stopping at Metepec and finally Taxco. Taxco is another colonial city founded on silver. It has impossible topography sitting on the side of a steep hill. A strong smell of burnt clutch plates pervades the streets. We left on Thursday and drove to Izucar Matamoros and then a late night drive to Acatlan with a thunderstorm in the distance lighting up the whole of the sky. When we arrived the streets were wet.
The following day we took the lonely and beautiful road to Oaxaca. Organ Cactus in flower, (maybe they had sensed the rain from the night before) and leafless trees just on the cusp of life, waiting for the rains. The day before had been unbearable hot so we set off early but the sky stayed grey and the desert was chilly. Our route was marked not by Little Chefs but by church spires and ruined monastaries. This is the Mexico that you imagine cactus, desert and improbable remote villages perched on hilltops. Sometimes the road rose up high and we could see miles and miles of blue mountains and other times the road followed a tiny green slip and little villages clinging to life like the leafless trees. We arrived in Oaxaca, to be passed free drinks through the car window. Later we learned in honour of the Samaria woman who gave Jesus water.
On our first day in Oaxaca we learned that Eddy had died in a fire. Tom worked with Eddy for five years and he was a close friend and partner in crime of my cousin Barnaby. I didn’t know Eddy well but he was part of the fabric of our lives. Tom relayed amusing anecdotes about him and we met once in a while for a drink. He was a chimney sweep of a boy, Barnaby described him as Dickensian half a black tooth and always scruffy. He was charming and as I’m sitting here writing I can see him rolling a fag telling a story or taking off his crash helmet for the Italian Vesper he rode. I heard a lot of stories about Eddy before I every met him. His and Barnaby’s mad dash on their bikes to the RCA through the underpass at Hyde Park and their drunken nights out. It is heartbreakingly sad when someone dies young.
We spent today wandering around Oaxaca in a daze and hardly speaking. The sun was just about becoming unbearable when we found some shade and had an ice cream. When we got up the sky was grey and reminded me of home. It rained a little, but now, as I write this it is pouring down. The wet season has arrived. We saw chocolate being made from the bean and ate grasshoppers, a speciality in Oaxaca. Apparently you can buy chocolate-coated grasshoppers but we will have to wait for that little luxury. Tom ate them too, apparently being a vegetarian doesn’t count, as they are a pest. Now I know what to do with the garden slugs.
Oaxaca as beautiful as it is, leafless purple flowered trees against blue desert mountains; buildings of pink and gold; cathedrals of stone that look like precious metal oxidising; the desert glimpsed through streets has seemed lonely and empty. It is so full of gentle life, yellow butterflies on pink bougainvilleas; a brass band playing classical music in the jardin; street vendors selling embroideries; the smell of coffee and chocolate. All this has sharpened our sense of loss. Our heads have ached with sadness and Tom has sighed Eddy’s name numerous times as if he had painted a wall the wrong colour. If only.
All our love Tomjetesmeandesme.
14th April 2006.
The winter that was a summer has now become a fully-fledged Mexican summer. April is the hottest month. In May the wet season arrives and turns the desert, which is the colour of a brown envelope green. When Cortes was asked by the Spanish King to describe Mexico he crumpled up a piece of paper and threw it on the floor. I love this story. Mexico rises steeply from sea level to form the Alti Plano, it’s highest point, an extinct volcano Pico de Orizbo just outside Mexico City, snow capped at 5610 meters. It is a high plateau, which has been twisted, lifted and folded again and again by geological forces and left thousands of mountains. In a town that has similar latitude to Timbuktu in Mali. It is the altitude that makes the summer bearable, the evenings and mornings cool. During the drive to Oaxaca it felt like we were flying, we could see mountain range after mountain range. Tom says on our return to England the difference in scale will make the English countryside look like an embroidery.
We have somehow in our slow way found a house for the month and a nursery school for Esme and Emile. This has freed a little time for me and Tom to waste unencumbered. Our days weave seamlessly together. Twelve hours of day and twelve of night. The rhythm, pattern and colour all similar. The difference is only in the detail. The smell of shoe polish, the smoky acrid smell of chocolate being ground, the purple haze that seems to engulf this city, Tom says it is my sunglasses but I’ve seen it in photos too. I had this vague notion that it was called the purple city. The purple shadows in the desert, the blue mountains, that look like headless lizards, the purple flowering leafless Jacaranda tree, the blue sky and the painted buildings pinks, reds, ochres, oranges and blues and of course the stone of the cathedrals and churches which seems to quiver between the colour of copper oxidising and turquoise. We move from an internet café to an embroidery shop selling sequined Madonnas; to a woman selling quesadillas and orange juice out of her front door; to a shop which grinds maize, corn, coffee, chocolate on the spot; to buying an airport card for my Mac. Like all places it moves between the present and the past, the first world and the third world in moments. In the jardin there is invariable music, marimba bands, brass bands, pan pipes, sometimes dancing and women selling flowers from the top of their heads. We often spend our afternoons in courtyards, escaping the heat and acquainting ourselves with Mexican painters Siquieros. Orozco, Morales, Tamayo . Yesterday, we saw a Mexican man decked out in tweeds, neckerchief and a black umbrella that he used as a parasol. The tweed jacket was just a little too yellow but apart from that an English gent. A few days before, an indigenous family were stuck at the top of an escalator in a cheap clothes shop. Laughing but too scared to come down. A week before, a protest inside the Archaeological museum. The staff had gone on strike because the building was being used for a fashion show. Their argument was that it had been bequeathed to the State and not for the enrichment of individuals. The toads in suites arrived and then the riot squad, just boys in uniform with guns, tear gas and riot shields and the square was cordoned off. It made me laugh the English equivalent of the staff at the VnA striking because Karl Lagerfield wanted to use it for a fashion show and the riot police arriving with tear gas and riot shields. It would never happen either way but you can’t help but love the Mexicans for it. This quiet, radicalised and politicised people. Tom said there was always a protest in the jardin but since they have broken up the square with flowerbeds it doesn’t lend itself to big gatherings.
Our lives have resumed a familiar domestic hum. Tom is cooking and a cleaner comes once a week. It feels like the heating is on full blast although the children complain about being too cold. Our fridge is full of mangoes, avocados, smoked chillis, courgette flowers, guava, cheese that unravels like a ball of string. There is a supermarket a short walk away which we invariably use for convenience. It is somewhere between Morrisons and Tescos with a similar effect of making one feel not in the least hungry. However they do sell earl Grey tea, black pepper and Arborio rice. One afternoon last week I went out of the door to get some paper for Esme’s homework, forgetting where I was. I looked up and there were the blue mountains. I turned the corner and in a small courtyard there was a group of children in Mexican costume dancing. Each child had a matching partner of perfect height dancing joyfully and all with downs syndrome.
We have made a few trips into the valleys. One to the indigenous market in Tlacolula. It sells pirated DVDs next to maize flour next to Yoke for Oxon next to woman selling turkeys held upside down by their legs. It is full of women with golden smiles; literally they wear their money in their mouths. At first I thought, there must be an overly vigorous state run dental service. Their dress is usually a pink frilly top with lace and other trimmings, a knee length skirt, hair plaited with ribbon, an apron, a reboso and plastic shoes and they are always smiling, maybe it is the gold teeth. The reboso, the traditional Mexican woven scarf has a hundred uses, a sun canopy, a blanket, for carrying small children, for carrying firewood, for wrapping chickens in and curling round the top of heads with a bag balanced on top. Young and old are dressed exactly the same. Minimalism would never see the light of day here. In Mexico, more is definitely more.
We went to find a swimming pool that looks over the desert. We drove for 50 minutes and then took a white dirt track. It zig zagged up the hillside and then followed the valley round, precariously steep on one side. It hooked over into the next valley and went downwards. The car smelt hot, eagles were over head and it felt like we were flying we could see small villages sitting on lower hilltops. We got there and it was closed for three months of building work. So we wound our way back. We passed a farmer with a pair of oxen and cart, a herd of goats and three donkeys. Hence the photo.
Spent the day at Monte Alban, it sits at the top of a flat mountain just outside Oaxaca. It is an archaeological site dating from 500 BC. That day it was unbearably hot with little shade. We looked onto the aeroplanes as they descended into the valley and turned right to land. Tom bought heads, an armadillos,a funny man sitting cross-legged with elaborate headdress and an owl. All sold as genuine artefacts and with their own stories, found while ploughing the soil in the wet season. Not given to the museum because his uncle had found a beautiful piece in a field and had taken it to the museum. He was thrown in prison for grave looting and the piece disappeared. All plausible and Tom has since spent the week pondering over their authenticity. They are too cheap to be made as fakes and too cheap too be genuine.
Today is Good Friday and there are endless processions crisscrossing the streets. Carrying a purple Christ with a crown of thorns and dripping blood and a Virgin Mary in pink and white lace with a rose belt and turquoise headdress. I went to look at the church yesterday it was flooded with candles and Christ was lying in a glass coffin.
Emile has started calling me Mama and Esme comes home with a new Mexican hairdo everyday. Must be part of their curriculum.
We return on the 9th May to a summer that is a winter.
All our love Tomjetesmeandemile.
24th April 20006.
We have already left Mexico. We are fretting about our lives back in England. I have caught myself looking at house prices, property booms and property busts graphs.
This trip to Mexico was hatched out of desperation. Our lives in one way or another had become joyless. Tom was living in Finsbury Park, which looks and smells like a hangover on a Sunday morning. And neighbours with car number plates that spelled THUG. I was living in Bristol where middle class English politeness in any other country would be construed as hostility.
Work and two small children had left us worn and frayed.
It was Tom’s suggestion. I remember on the train from London to Bristol, thinking it had to be better than enduring another cold winter and the monotony and isolation of looking after two small children. I called him and agreed to it. We did endure another cold winter and a month or so of the proceeding one. Arriving in Mexico City on 5th December.
These have been happy days. We have lived lives of utter privilege. Money, time, each other’s company and our two children who have been the instigators of so many chance meetings.
Mexico is a vast and exquisitely beautiful country. From pine forest to volcanoes to deserts to oceans. It is the familiar and the unfamiliar. European and Indigenous American.
The Mexicans are so sensitive and graceful in their human relationships. We have basked in the milk of their kindness. We know little about their lives. The grinding poverty, the lack of opportunity, joblessness. But there was something missing in our lives and whatever it was, I can’t put my finger on it, something between joy, magic and love or maybe all three, we found it here in Mexico. We have rarely been happier or felt safer. Our children so cherished (as opposed to policed).
We are married to England like a termite to its mound. We will return to this grey land of golden opportunity.
We are bringing back the Mexican winter for you as good as any English summer. I don’t think they will notice it in the baggage allowance as radiant, fair and as light as it is.
All our love Tomjetesmeandemile.
And so we did, the hot summer of 2006. Oaxaca unfortunately faired less well as the teacher protest escalated, resulting in the shooting and death of teachers, protestors and journalist. A state of emergency was declared and the army brought in.
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