Latest Observer column...

Just woken this morning in the fantastic Mexican silver town of Guanajuato, where they have buried most of the roads in old tunnels beneath the city leaving the narrow lanes above free for the people and a vibrant street culture - bloody marvellous! But more about that later...

If you're looking to catch up on our latest Mexican news click here for 'Loud in Los Mochis'. My latest (twenty-first!) Observer column is also published today which looks at our journey across the Pacific and Mexican arrival. Click here to go directly to the Observer website or read on below for the text with some appropriate pictures.

21st Observer Column

We spent the night before departure onboard our New Zealand to Mexico cargo ship in Auckland harbour. After breakfast I realised with horror I’d left all the cables for my laptop in an internet café the previous day. Facing the prospect of sixteen days at sea with a useless computer I ran downstairs to Les the Captain’s cabin. ‘What time are we sailing?’ I blurted, explaining my dilemma. ‘At 10am. With or without you’ he informed me sternly. I had one hour.

Hailing a taxi in Auckland’s morning rush-hour is about as easy as finding jellied eels in Chelsea. I ran in and out of the traffic like a man possessed frantically flagging anything vaguely resembling a mini-cab. Spotting my clearly agitated state an already occupied taxi pulled over. ‘Need a ride?’ asked the cabbie. ‘Yes!’ I squeaked as I apologised profusely to the very understanding female passenger and leapt in.

Nash the driver was originally from Delhi and, having dropped off the woman, expertly negotiated the comparably simple traffic of Auckland to convey me across town and back, recover the cables and board the ship before it sailed. ‘So you’re a journalist are you?’ probed Les warily. ‘Of a sort’ I confirmed. He then enlightened me of his low opinion of the trade as every time he’d spoken to one he’d been ‘stitched up’. I promised to behave myself.

Sitting down to dine with Les and John, the ship’s Chief Engineer, thrice daily for a fortnight meant we covered huge tracts of conversational ground. Both John and Les were close to, if not past, retirement age. As a result there were some striking inter-generational differences in attitudes that like bath-time flatulence occasionally bubbled up to the surface to leave a bad smell in the room. Their opinions weren’t that unusual amongst a certain demographic in New Zealand however. One grey-haired acquaintance had even grilled us on whether we would buy a German built car. ‘From our enemies’ he added with a conspiratorial wink.

Les empathised with our US visa hassles when he’d had to fly into San Francisco to captain a ship. ‘Do you intend to enter the United States to commit terrorist acts?’ enquired the immigration form. Having avoided that cunning trap in the subsequent face-to-face interview at the US Embassy in Auckland he was asked ‘Why do you wish to enter the USA?’. ‘Because I have to for work’ was Les’s weary reply. ‘You should have said ‘It is God’s will’’ I suggested not entirely helpfully.

Through the lively dining table discussions we built up a fondness for the curmudgeonly stance that Les and John often adopted as we took them to task on their circa 1971 views. When we left the ship in Ensenada, Mexico it was with genuinely mixed feelings - palpable relief to be on dry land again after over two weeks at sea, but with a pinch of regret that the shipboard routine was over. We’d become institutionalised worryingly fast.

Mexico soon worked its way into our affections though as we bumbled our way down through Baja California. The further away we got from the US border the more sensible the portions served up at meal times became. Twice in Ensenada we’d physically reeled at the sheer, vulgar amount of food we were expected to shove into our faces at one sitting. Fearing a Stateside style bloating of the belly we swiftly swung into a ‘one meal a day’ routine, aided from an extreme dieter’s perspective by a rigorous bout or two of what the Mexicans cutely refer to as ‘las turistas’.

The Baja is Mission country and peppered with seventeenth century Jesuit constructions built to convert the indigenous peoples of the peninsula. In Loreto we visited a Mission museum that described the impact of their activities with knowing understatement. ‘Some natives were resistant to changes like becoming sedentary, wearing clothing, giving up their religious beliefs and the practice of polygamy’. Faced with a credo of ‘stay there, wear these, worship this and stop all this sex’ frankly I was surprised there wasn’t more resistance.

The Missions flourished and expanded rapidly over the first few decades despite the relatively harsh environment. Their success was somewhat undermined by the minor problem of a tragically diminishing congregation. In less than a hundred years the indigenous population of Baja fell from over 40,000 to under 4,000 largely due to diseases the Jesuits and others introduced. Now that’s what I call salvation.