Mexican Yummy Mummies...

Latest Observer column is published today so here's the text below, we're still enjoying the earthy charms of the Costa Esmeralda over Christmas and New Year, before heading to the Pacific Coast to meet friends from Spain on January 3rd. Wishing everyone a gorgeously slow, low carbon Hogmanay!

22nd Observer Column

The generally reliable Mexican bus system conveyed us efficiently south through the sun-bleached dusty highlands and plains of the ‘Wild West’ country. The only discomfort we experienced was on a bus to Durango on which our seats were stuck in ‘full recline’ position. The sensation was not dissimilar to travelling along in a speeding dentist’s chair as we entered the colonial heartlands. We were certainly in the right place to pick up a few cheap fillings.

The extraordinary architectural wealth of the Mexican ‘silver towns’ is based on the rich seams of precious metal-bearing rock that have been mined for almost half a millennium. In Zacatecas we visited ‘El Mina’, plunging deep into the hillside down a rough-hewn tunnel on a rickety little train. We explored the huge cavernous gash, from which the valuable ore had been excavated, the chasm dropping away from the grille beneath our feet into dizzyingly deep misty darkness. There was also a nightclub, which brought new meaning to the expression ‘All back to mine’, and a small museum of rocks and minerals that managed to achieve the impressive feat of making geology seem sexy. Fabulously coloured crystals from across Latin America included violet Fluorites, vibrant orange Creelites and viridian green Malachites that shimmered and twinkled in the artful lighting. There was even a rock sample from the less exotic ‘Old Croft Quarry’ in Leicestershire with the unfortunately distasteful sounding name ‘Analcima’.

At Leon bus station the following day we met ‘Dr London’. He was a bizarrely baby-faced bloke who looked to be in his early fifties and whose American accent buried his supposedly Ukrainian roots. As he was now living in Guanajuato we enquired as to what he did. ‘I run Mexican tourism’ he replied humbly ‘amongst other things. They say I’m one of the best educators in the world’ he continued warming to the heat of his own fevered ego. ‘I am the most powerful man in the world, if I have a problem I just call up the President of the United States’ he intoned solemnly. ‘You must have an amazing phone book’ I observed, but there was no stopping him now. ‘I can literally send people to Hell’ the Doctor informed us gravely. ‘Literally?!’ Fi exclaimed unable to suppress her incredulity. He claimed his latest book had sold 50 million copies and was at number 17 on Amazon. Allegedly. With book royalties of that scale it can only have been his inherent modesty that led him to be catching the bus with a couple of skint travellers like us.

On arrival in Guanajuato we were instantly disorientated as most of the roads that run through the city centre are underground. They’re buried in tunnels that used to carry the city’s river, long ago diverted into a natural cave system to reduce flooding. We hopped off the bus in a dark passageway and climbed a small, stone staircase to emerge blinking into the sunny street culture of a city largely uninvaded by cars. Why can’t it always be like this I thought as we wandered the convoluted narrow alleyways that twirled between buildings painted cheerfully in a typically understated Mexican palette of pink, lime and purple.

We continued the subterranean theme with a visit to the city’s famous ‘Museo de las Momias’. Instead of mummies of the carefully prepared ancient Egyptian variety, Guanajuato’s are the relatively young, naturally desiccated cadavers of townspeople whose families were unable to pay the local grave tax. Failure to cough up meant the deceased’s body was exhumed and plonked on public display. Tours of the grisly remains began surreptitiously in the late nineteenth century where a glimpse could be had by slipping the custodians of the tomb a few pesos. Now the museum attracts almost a million visitors a year and the profits go to municipal funds - coffins contributing to coffers.

There were over a hundred, slack-jawed seemingly screaming leathery mummies inside, preserved by the region’s uniquely dry climatic conditions that avert normal decay. The most recent corpse was that of a drowning victim who’d only been added to the collection in 1984 - not even a lifetime ago let alone a few centuries like preserved Egyptian Pharaohs. Despite this contemporary ghoulishness the museum managed to maintain a respectful, contemplative and poignant tone in what could easily have been a crudely voyeuristic, or exploitative exhibition. Sadly this reverence evaporated outside where enterprising vendors were hawking ‘Candy Mummies’ to those for whom looking at dozens of dead bodies is an appetite-stimulating experience. How sweet.

Mexican Yummy Mummies...

Latest Observer column is published today so here's the text below, we're still enjoying the earthy charms of the Costa Esmeralda over Christmas and New Year, before heading to the Pacific Coast to meet friends from Spain on January 3rd. Wishing everyone a gorgeously slow, low carbon Hogmanay!

22nd Observer Column

The generally reliable Mexican bus system conveyed us efficiently south through the sun-bleached dusty highlands and plains of the ‘Wild West’ country. The only discomfort we experienced was on a bus to Durango on which our seats were stuck in ‘full recline’ position. The sensation was not dissimilar to travelling along in a speeding dentist’s chair as we entered the colonial heartlands. We were certainly in the right place to pick up a few cheap fillings.

The extraordinary architectural wealth of the Mexican ‘silver towns’ is based on the rich seams of precious metal-bearing rock that have been mined for almost half a millennium. In Zacatecas we visited ‘El Mina’, plunging deep into the hillside down a rough-hewn tunnel on a rickety little train. We explored the huge cavernous gash, from which the valuable ore had been excavated, the chasm dropping away from the grille beneath our feet into dizzyingly deep misty darkness. There was also a nightclub, which brought new meaning to the expression ‘All back to mine’, and a small museum of rocks and minerals that managed to achieve the impressive feat of making geology seem sexy. Fabulously coloured crystals from across Latin America included violet Fluorites, vibrant orange Creelites and viridian green Malachites that shimmered and twinkled in the artful lighting. There was even a rock sample from the less exotic ‘Old Croft Quarry’ in Leicestershire with the unfortunately distasteful sounding name ‘Analcima’.

At Leon bus station the following day we met ‘Dr London’. He was a bizarrely baby-faced bloke who looked to be in his early fifties and whose American accent buried his supposedly Ukrainian roots. As he was now living in Guanajuato we enquired as to what he did. ‘I run Mexican tourism’ he replied humbly ‘amongst other things. They say I’m one of the best educators in the world’ he continued warming to the heat of his own fevered ego. ‘I am the most powerful man in the world, if I have a problem I just call up the President of the United States’ he intoned solemnly. ‘You must have an amazing phone book’ I observed, but there was no stopping him now. ‘I can literally send people to Hell’ the Doctor informed us gravely. ‘Literally?!’ Fi exclaimed unable to suppress her incredulity. He claimed his latest book had sold 50 million copies and was at number 17 on Amazon. Allegedly. With book royalties of that scale it can only have been his inherent modesty that led him to be catching the bus with a couple of skint travellers like us.

On arrival in Guanajuato we were instantly disorientated as most of the roads that run through the city centre are underground. They’re buried in tunnels that used to carry the city’s river, long ago diverted into a natural cave system to reduce flooding. We hopped off the bus in a dark passageway and climbed a small, stone staircase to emerge blinking into the sunny street culture of a city largely uninvaded by cars. Why can’t it always be like this I thought as we wandered the convoluted narrow alleyways that twirled between buildings painted cheerfully in a typically understated Mexican palette of pink, lime and purple.

We continued the subterranean theme with a visit to the city’s famous ‘Museo de las Momias’. Instead of mummies of the carefully prepared ancient Egyptian variety, Guanajuato’s are the relatively young, naturally desiccated cadavers of townspeople whose families were unable to pay the local grave tax. Failure to cough up meant the deceased’s body was exhumed and plonked on public display. Tours of the grisly remains began surreptitiously in the late nineteenth century where a glimpse could be had by slipping the custodians of the tomb a few pesos. Now the museum attracts almost a million visitors a year and the profits go to municipal funds - coffins contributing to coffers.

There were over a hundred, slack-jawed seemingly screaming leathery mummies inside, preserved by the region’s uniquely dry climatic conditions that avert normal decay. The most recent corpse was that of a drowning victim who’d only been added to the collection in 1984 - not even a lifetime ago let alone a few centuries like preserved Egyptian Pharaohs. Despite this contemporary ghoulishness the museum managed to maintain a respectful, contemplative and poignant tone in what could easily have been a crudely voyeuristic, or exploitative exhibition. Sadly this reverence evaporated outside where enterprising vendors were hawking ‘Candy Mummies’ to those for whom looking at dozens of dead bodies is an appetite-stimulating experience. How sweet.

Feliz Navidad!

We're off to the Caribbean coast today for Christmas and New Year so there'll be a few quiet days on the blog no doubt as we enjoy the undeveloped coastline of Veracruz (staying with friends of friends who are in the process of, sensitively no doubt, developing it and sleeping in their half-built hotel), where stray dogs rule and the oil industry lurks offshore...

So, Feliz Navidad to everyone and here's a pic of the Christmas tree in Durango at sunset...

Masks & Missiles...

As we left Durango on the bus we were amused to see huge signs saying ‘Liverpool’, the brand of a rather swanky and upmarket Mexican department store. At risk of ‘doing a Boris’ I’d suggest that this lent a hitherto well-hidden sheen of glamour to the city that those of us who’ve actually been there might not be so familiar with. (Unless you count Coleen McLoughlin as 'glamorous'. I don't. It's hard to look glamorous with an expensively dressed potato on your arm.)

In the gorgeous city of Zacatecas we visited the Museo Rafael Coronel where they had a mind-blowing display of over 3000 masks (from a collection of 11,000!). Housed in a rabbit warren of rooms amongst the atmospheric ruins of an old convent, the masks ranged from bestial and ceremonial types, to a whole room full of red-lit devilish ‘Diabolo’ disguises, to grinning skull-like death masks and almost comical carnival headgear with long blonde straw wigs and ‘Carlos Valderrama’ afros. The cumulative effect of this vast array was amazingly impressive and I got so carried away taking pictures I’ve had to set up a whole separate album to accommodate them via this link.

That evening a 70-strong brass band were playing a seasonal selection of Christmas classics near the cathedral, next to a Christmas tree irritatingly decorated solely with Coca-cola insignia. We perched ourselves on the steps behind three sturdy sousaphone players (the size of your horn matters in Mexico) and hummed along to familiar tunes (Jingle Bells and Frosty the Snowman feeling vaguely surreal in sunny Zacatecas) and felt properly festive for the first time. Not bad for December 14th…usually I reach Christmas overload by the START of the month back home because the commercial juggernaut of over-consumption begins to accelerate so bloody early!

Later we had a ‘Margarita night’ at the hostel, an initially slightly forced affair its amazing what several buckets of tequila do towards oiling the wheels of conversation. I’d earlier been impressed by the Spanish talents of a huge flame-haired Irish looking bloke staying at the hostel. Turned out he was Mexican! “‘El Churro Rojo’ they call me!” (The Red Cowboy) he roared, ‘I am Mexican inside! Ouside? I don’t know!’ he said shaking his red, sunburnt face topped by a tuft of ginger thatch. His parents had emigrated to Mexico from the Emerald Isle before he was born which went some way to explaining his extremely Celtic looks!

Fuelled by high-octane alcohol we went to a wrestling themed bar where we were soon all happily ensconced in brightly coloured ‘gimp’ masks around a table of ‘beer missiles’. These were tall, bong-like tubes of beer with taps that held several litres so you could serve yourself at your own table. A recipe for drinking with immoderation. In the early hours a small electrical device appeared, in ‘shock-offs’ pairs of you each clutched an insulated handle and the current was steadily increased until one of you let go (or your heart went into spasm). Nothing like DIY electrocution to round off an evening out if you ask me.

El Sol de Durango...

After our ‘Sleepless in Los Mochis’ experience we caught the famous ‘Copper Canyon’ train to Creel. It was an eleven hour journey over 37 bridges and through 86 tunnels, the astonishing track winding its way up and through a seemingly impossible landscape of narrow dead-end valleys, pointed pinnacles and up onto a cool, piny mountain plateau. We stood between the carriages sticking our heads out of the window and playing ‘chicken’ with the approaching tunnel walls. Mindless, but thankfully not headless, fun.

It was so cold in Creel we were glad of the carbon monoxide spewing ‘Death Machine’ gas heater in the corner of our room. A slow, lingering gaseous demise seemed preferable to being frozen into unconsciousness. As the heater warmed up it performed a passable impression of Rolf Harris on a wobble-board, it’s casing buckling and boinging with the heat.

To warm ourselves up we hired bikes and set off to see some of the local weird, wind eroded rock formations. The Valleys of the Frogs and Mushrooms were a little underwhelming, I think someone had been on the peyote when they mistook the blobby boulders for amphibians, at least the ‘mushrooms’ looked vaguely fungal. Far more impressive was the Valley of the Monks, where huge rocks stood sentinel-like in meditative groups along a narrow chasm. (That’s me…the tiny black dot in the photo to the right to give a sense of scale).

Next day we caught the bus to Hidalgo del Parral. We never made it. The bus was rammed with country folk and carried the heady aroma of earthy bodies and woodsmoke. The tortuous winding mountain roads did for one passengers stomach and added the pungent piquancy of puke to the already fragrant cocktail. Then the bus broke down. To this day we’re not entirely sure where, and we spent an unplanned night in a roadside motel.

A couple of days later we were in Durango – the home of the Mexican film industry. We stayed at the ‘Hotel California’ which wasn’t exactly as I’d imagined it from the lyrics in the Eagle’s song. I’m sure Don Henley didn’t have to sleep on a plastic sheet for a start, and it’s location was less ‘dark, desert highway’ than ‘dingy, suburban backstreet’. Durango itself was a handsome city however and the setting for a slew of classic westerns ‘A Man Called Horse’, ‘Jeronimo’ and…er ‘The Mask of Zorro’ (starring that famous Mexican actress Catherine Zeta Jones). So we strutted around town doing our best bow-legged John ‘The Duke’ Wayne impressions.

We must have caught someone’s eye as the following day a truly bizarre set of coincidences aligned themselves. Catching the bus to Zacatecas we bought a roast chicken and some tortillas to nosh on the six-hour journey. Lacking napkins and wishing to avoid an on the bus grease-fest I bought a random newspaper to wipe our mitts on. After devouring our tasty bird and sacrificing a couple of oily sections of the paper I was idly flicking through the remnants of the local rag. Attempting to exercise my meagre Spanish reading talents I spotted a familiar looking couple in a picture accompanying an article about tourism. ‘We’re in the paper’ I deadpanned to Fi. And sure enough we were:

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.

Loud in Los Mochis...

We left La Paz on a ferry across the Sea of Cortez to the Mexican mainland. True to form the lounge on the ship continued the trend of Mexican buses for showing hideously inappropriate films, treating us to a helping of tasteless splattergore involving reality TV show contestants being hunted down in grisly fashion by inbred cannibalistic hill-billies. Fun for all the family. The ship was also patrolled by a phalanx of armed security guards causing me to nervously ponder exactly what sort of trouble they might be expecting at sea. Passengers rioting in disgust at the choice of films perhaps?

In Los Mochis we made the unfortunate choice of the Hotel Los Arcos as our place to stay. Our room was clean enough but the window had been taped and boarded up so there was no natural light and it reeked of cheap Brut-like aftershave so was a bit like sleeping in Henry Cooper’s armpit. The shower head had a built in heating element to warm the water which was wired to the mains in suitably quirky Mexican fashion. What safety-paranoid idiot said electricity and water shouldn’t mix anyway?

An alarm bell should have rung in our heads when we saw the bar next door as we arrived: ‘Chicass & Beer’. The clientele seemed to be having a contest to see who could make the loudest, most irritating noise throughout the night. The competition was intense, early contenders started on slightly obvious tactics such as playing Mexican pop at speaker-fuckingly loud volumes on the stereo of your parked car, demonstrating your new air-horn to your friends and shouting to people 500m away. This initial promise was trumped later by what sounded like two guys ululating into a microphone followed by the enormous crash of a heavy object being thrown from an upstairs window into the street below. The winner by a clear lead, for sheer bollockular bravado alone, was the silencer-free motorbike that was ridden repeatedly at high, roaring revs along the pavement outside our room. The challenge was concluded just before 3.40am when everyone seemed to have had enough and finally fucked off home. Thank. God.

I could try and blame sleeplessness for the poverty of our Spanish but this is more down to cloth-eared incompetence than disturbed nights and exhaustion. I have at least managed to establish that ‘cuevas’ are caves and not, as I’ve been led to believe in my first 35 years of life, a light cheesy snack. Thanks to the gravely tones of Michel Thomas we can conjure up enough ‘survival’ Spanish to ask directions, book accommodation and shop politely. The only downside is our superficially fluent delivery of the basics tends to open the flood gates of conversation with perennially garrulous Mexicans leaving us utterly befuddled and gaping fish-like in confusion.

My response is usually to try and answer the question I think they have asked. Fi mistook this for innate linguistic talent rather than the seat of the pants blagging it quite blatantly is. At breakfast the other morning a Stetson’d hombre greeted us and, we guessed, asked where we were from. He followed this up with, I assumed, a question about how long we were visiting Mexico for. ‘Dos mesas’* I confidently replied.

*’Dos mesas’ = ‘Two tables’ (The word for months is actually 'meses')

Logs and salty sea dogs...

We arrived in La Paz in the rain. La Paz, Baja California that is, NOT Bolivia as one of our travelling mates thought. They accused us of flying in the process as they’d (probably correctly!) concluded there’s no way we could have got there overland in a week from northern Baja. Me? On a plane? On this trip? With my reputation?

To enhance the damp ambience La Paz’s main street was being resurfaced creating an obstacle course of wet cement, open man-holes and drains, piles of new metal street furniture and the odd dangling electrical cable to add to the excitement. Ravenous we ate a spicy ‘sopas mariscos’ in a very local cantina, complete with obligatory blind guitar player strumming away in the corner. The soup later repeated slightly on us and our Spanish travelling companions but it wasn’t as odd as the meal the following night - ‘Pollo Perchuga’. Which consisted of half a deboned chicken, stuffed with spinach and goats cheese then liberally smeared with what looked and tasted like half a jar of apricot jam. Just plain weird.

Many years ago one of the books that inspired me to become a marine biologist was John Steinbeck’s ‘The Log from the Sea of Cortez’. It’s about a trip he made with his friend the legendary American marine biologist Ed Ricketts, in the days when field work was all about catching bizarre new species and shoving them into glass jars of formaldehyde. Being in La Paz and gazing out over the same azure blue waters I wanted in. However as I haven’t dived in a decade and can’t tell an ‘O’ ring from my arse-hole we went snorkelling.

Our boat took us out to Los Isolotes, a series of pinnacled crags jutting out of the sea and home to Baja’s biggest colony of California sea-lions. The rocks were red but topped by a thick white crust of dried guano – ‘shite-washed’ by the resident sea-birds. We could hear, and smell, the sea-lions as they honked away at us like marine dogs from beneath the cliffs.

In the water they effectively demonstrated the millions of years of evolution that separate us from our marine mammal cousins, gliding elegantly around our flailing limbs in mutual curiosity. The sleek young pups swam right up to our masks, barked in our faces, bit our mate Laia’s blonde dreadlocks and generally swam, sleek rings around us. As well as the sea-lions the water teemed with a kaleidoscope of coloured parrotfish, surgeonfish, groupers and jacks. Whilst on the rocks above massive bull seals aggressively defended their harems of breeding females from adolescent males attempting to sneak in for a crafty shag.

We shared the boat with a group of Spanish divers and in the afternoon they did a wreck dive that was too deep for us to snorkel down to. The ‘Fang Ming’ was a Chinese people smuggling vessel that the Mexican authorities had intercepted, impounded and then sunk deliberately to form an artificial reef. One assumes they removed the cargo first.

Slideshow Bob...

Having finally managed to get the files to upload on a creaking Mexican connection, here are the slideshows that I pulled together whilst tossing about in the Pacific on the Hansa Rensburg. I´ve set the images to vaguely appropriate music so the Chinese shots bounce along to Don Drummond´s reggae classic 'Eastern Standard Time', the Australia pics move to The Cat Empire's 'Hello' (which you either love or you hate) and the New Zealand photos shuffle along with Katchafire´s excellent 'This world'. Turn up your speakers or pop on some headphones and enjoy...

The Chinese Way:



Getting down, Down Under:



In the Land of the Rings:

Wrestling gimps...

Long Mexican bus journeys are at least partially leavened by movie screenings of the often highly inappropriately violent or horrific variety (it’s good to toughen up the kids from a tender age). Boarding one bus we were tantalised by a Mexican wrestling DVD flickering on the screen. Paused at a critical moment in the bout one gimp-masked meathead held another in a complicated, enfolding embrace that wouldn’t look out of place in the Karma Sutra. We never did find out what happened next, though I’ll assume it wasn’t penetrative.

Military checkpoints are also a regular feature of travel down the Baja. Bored recruits in sandy desert fatigues hunch disinterestedly over sand-bagged machine gun nests, long, live cartridge belts hanging menacingly beneath. Strangely, despite being stopped around half a dozen times they never shook down the bus for drugs – Mexican ‘narcos’ clearly travel in classier fashion.

In Mulege, a small town sleepier and dustier than a sloth in a flour-sack, we got our first taste of the spectacular wildlife of the Baja peninsula. A sea eagle flew past gripping a large live fish in it’s talons, which it then proceeded to leisurely dispatch on the tall stump of a palm tree. At the small crude concrete lighthouse we watched as magisterial frigate birds whirled overhead, flanked by their aerial henchmen the black vultures. Below us in the surf ‘The Mexican air-force’ was in action. Synchronised squadrons of brown pelicans and cormorants plunged headlong into the fertile fish-laden waters.

Intending to hitch-hike the short hop down the coast the next day the first vehicle to pass was actually the bus. We flagged it anyway and the kindly driver gave us a free lift 25km down the road. On disembarking we swiftly realised our intended destination, a beach camp, gallery and environmental education centre called ‘Ecomundo’, had not only been closed for sometime but was utterly derelict. We later learned that the departing owner, having failed to secure his evidently too steep asking price for the business, thoughtfully burnt down all the seaside palapas (palm shelters). ‘Ecomundo’ my arse.

Resuming our hitching we were picked up by Vin Diesel lookalike Mario, all bulging muscles, thick bands of tattoos like road markings and wide-boy banter. He might as well have had ‘100% Geezer’ stencilled on his forehead. ‘Are you English?!’ he shouted back a little incredulously to us as we squatted in the rear of his pick-up. ‘No, Scottish!’ Fi roared perhaps marginally too triumphantly. Turned out he was from Haringey, ‘Norf Lahndahn’ and been in Baja on and off for ten years absorbing perhaps just a tad too much UV and an excess of locally plentiful combustible herbs. “I’m not thick, I just talk slow” he drawled whilst drawing on another hefty refer. He’d also had a minor novelty hit record with a song about ‘being a Mexican and drinking tequila in the sun’. You can take the man out of Haringey…

What's for desert?

After the depressing desolation of Ensenadan suburbia and a couple of hundred miles further south on the bus we arrived in Catavina at dusk. Not quite qualifying for the dizzyingly aspirational status of a ‘one horse town’ (the best they could probably rustle up would be a few mangy dogs) the Spaghetti Western style hamlet sprawled along either side of Highway One in dusty dribs and drabs of aged and mostly abandoned buildings.

The setting was magnificent however. A rugged plateau of massive broken boulders, some house-sized and squatting threateningly in precarious teetering piles beside the road, stretched to a horizon of dark, venerable and long extinct volcanic cones and distant rocky ridges. Amongst the fragmented rocks grew a variety of enormous cacti. Their sparse but crudely even distribution lent a curiously ‘hairy’ texture to the landscape, like the bum fluff an acned teenager is unable to shave for fear of removing the peaks of his pimples with the razor.

Besides the classic ‘Cardon’ cacti there were bizarre and unique endemic species like the Cirio. Round and broad at the base these distinctly odd, alien-looking flora tapered like an inverted 20 foot high root vegetable to a fine point bearing a small yellow flowery growth. The surface of the narrowing shaft was covered with strange little projecting leaflets and their presence made us feel we were on a low budget Star Trek set of an extraterrestrial planet.

That night a huge full moon illuminated the surreal panorama in bright monochromatic light and we slept fitfully in a roadside Cabana, regularly awoken by the monstrous, resonating air-brake flatulence of passing trucks. Up at dawn we were treated to a serene scene of simultaneously rising sun and fat waning moon, the soft early light picking out the protruding cacti from between the shadowy rocks. It was strikingly beautiful until a rangy mutt took an unhealthy and toothsome interest in my wanderings, so I retreated to the Cabana before becoming canine desayunos.

Later that day we searched incompetently but eventually successfully for some ancient indigenous Cochimi cave paintings, fascinating but somewhat visually underwhelming petroglyphs on the roof of a compact rocky overhang. They resembled the spaced-out doodlings of dope-fuelled adolescents convinced through a haze of ganga that their scrawlings constitute ‘art’. Other more recent visitors had left their own graffiti ‘tags’ on nearby rocks. Why only be known as a mindless idiot in your own time when you can vandalise a heritage site and secure your reputation as a mindless idiot for centuries?

Eating lunch in the afternoon at Catavina’s lone café we got talking to a multicultural group of three Los Angelinos from India, Serbia and Russia who’d driven down for the weekend. ‘How are you guys getting around?’ they enquired. ‘Bus’ I explained. ‘You can do that?!’ they exclaimed in surprise. Yes my American friends, it is this strange thing we call ‘public transport’ I restrained myself from elaborating.

From Dawn till Dusk

As we chugged into the port of Ensenada, Mexico the Pacific was oily calm and the first rays of dawn were breaking over the dark craggy hills of northern Baja California. Our Mexican naval escort had failed to materialise (we had some radioactive cargo onboard) and the harbour seemed a microcosm of Mexico itself, extensive development of new facilities on one side, rusting hulls of half-sunk ships protruding grimly from the water on the other.

In town we checked into the ‘Ritz’ hotel, which was trading libellously on the reputation of it’s, ahem, ever so slightly more prestigious London namesake. Eager to get our lips around some Mexican nosh after the dire meat and mash monotony of the cargo ship we ate dirt cheap Quesedillas from a cheap, dirty and hygienically challenged food stall. As a result I enjoyed an almost instant bout of ‘Las Turistas’ within hours of making landfall, the first time my bum has exploded in nine months of travel (this is probably too much information).

You could hardly walk anywhere in Ensenada without tripping over a Mariachi group. Splendidly moustachioed geezers in leather jackets and Stetsons armed with guitars, violins and oh so portable double basses conducted musical guerrilla warfare by ambushing unsuspecting tourists with their folk classics and close harmonies. With the sound of ‘La Cucaracha’ ringing in our ears back at the hotel we wrestled the grubby cover from the bed as it seemed to be providing an attractive dancefloor on which the song’s eponymous beasties might shake a leg or six.

Exploring the town further the next day we strayed a couple of blocks away from the well-trodden cruise-ship tourist route. There was a creeping realisation we were suddenly out of our comfort zone as we became aware of the dubious loitering characters and working girls. We passed a hard-faced bloke preparing to inject outside a seedy brothel cum bar that was eerily reminiscent of Rodriguez’s ‘From Dusk till Dawn’. ‘Maybe he’s diabetic’ Fi offered rather charitably.

After acclimatising for 48 hours we were keen to head south so caught a bus towards El Rosario. We’d barely left town when the drivers pulled over to replenish their already ample waistlines at their favourite taco stall. As we left the outskirts we entered a parched, dusty landscape strewn with glass and plastic rubbish. Impromptu fences of wooden palettes and old tyres collected wind-blown debris and divided the dirt into graveyards of decaying vehicles, abandoned buildings and piles of unkempt junk. Scrawny and perceptibly mangy dogs prowled through the filth and I was starting to wonder what the hell we were doing in this apparently joyless and derelict destination.

Baja ha ha ha ha...

Ten days into Mexico and we're already in love with the place, embarking merrily on a torrid if dusty affair with the horizontally laid-back people, wild, weird landscapes and grappling with our survival Spanish. I'm having a writing day today so more news will follow, the final Observer column from New Zealand was published today however so as usual there's a link to the Grauniad website here. I've also pasted the full text below with some appropriate pics. Speaking of which there are also the full New Zealand photo galleries and a few more cargo ship snaps in the photo archive for perusal.


20th Observer Column

In Queenstown, on New Zealand's South Island we made preparations for 'tramping'. This has nothing to do with unfortunates of no fixed abode but is the quaint Kiwi term for wilderness trekking. Many of the 'Great Tramps' were closed due to the threat of avalanches following late-season snowfalls and a recent earthquake. So we opted for the relatively benign Greenstone Track - a three-day route used by early Maori to collect pounamu, the revered jade-like rock found on the west coast.

Leaving under the threat of a severe wet weather warning, we were blessed by sunshine and cloudless skies as we hiked carefully along a crumbling cliff-side track high above a rain-swollen river. Around us stood impossibly dense, fertile ancient forests. Thick trunks of long-dead trees decayed swiftly in the moist air, supporting a carpet of lustrous lichens and mosses. The logs provided a growing platform for tiny saplings, the young replacing the old.

That night we shared the smart trail hut with an assortment of other trampers. A feral cat prowled around outside. 'Needs shooting,' read a terse entry in the visitors' book. Judging by the large pile of well-thumbed copies of Rod & Rifle magazine on the table, some hut guests would be only too happy to oblige.

We woke to the promised cool, wet weather front. Six hours of bedraggled tramping later, through bleak, river valleys, over precarious wire bridges and along paths criss-crossed by knotted, slippery tree roots, we made it to the second hut.

The interior resembled a Chinese laundry as a motley crew of clammy trampers tried to dry their kit over the pot-bellied stove. As darkness crept in and the temperature dropped, the rain turned to snow. Suddenly the door swung open and a sodden Irishman strode in. 'Anyone mind if I bring my dog in?' he barked. We'd probably have objected more if he'd left the poor beast outside in the freezing deluge.

A camaraderie built up as the fire burnt down. The purely medicinal bottle of whisky I'd lugged for the last 18 miles did the rounds - an excellent way to make friends and get people under the influence. Which was good, given that nearly 20 of us were sharing four giant communal beds. Before we retired the full moon popped up from behind the dark mountain ridge above, beautifully illuminating the delicate icing sugar dusting of snow on the trees of the upper slopes. We slept in neat rows, the air damp from drying clothes, scented by fetid socks and rent by the Irishman's buzz-saw snore.

After another day of soggy slogging we took a rejuvenating overnight cruise on the tranquil waters of Milford Sound. Vast cliffs of black, shining granite, their faces sluiced by whitewater cascades, plunged almost vertically into the depths of the fjord. 'What's the daftest question you've ever been asked?' I probed Leah, our dreadlocked nature guide. 'What is the sound of Milford Sound?' she dead-panned. At dusk, the ship moored for 'water activities', a choice between a trip in a motor launch, kayaking or, for the brave, swimming. Still shivery and drenched from three days' tramping in the icy rain our 'water activity' was a hot shower.

These days you can't write about New Zealand without mentioning the Lord of the Rings. The films are as much a paean to the wondrous scenery of the country as they are a recreation of Tolkien's Middle Earth. Inspired, we bagged a relocation deal on a camper van for two quid a day and headed for Tongariro National Park, location of Ngauruhoe which director Peter Jackson chose to represent Mount Doom.

We approached the still very much volcanically active area at dusk with some trepidation. The last eruption in late September had sent several lahars - rivers of liquid mud and ash - surging into the valleys below. To our concern, the hillside above appeared to be glowing red. 'Is that lava?' I asked nervously. Around the next corner we were confronted by a column of smoke and ash, billowing from behind the roadside vegetation. We both inhaled sharply, then the source revealed itself. A steam train. The first time that slow travel has actually scared me.