Trip Pic of the Day

Approaching Mexico along Guatemala's Pacific plain, one can hardly fail to notice that almost every highway-fronting structure has been comprehensively stained with the colours of one the three local cellphone networks, Tigo, Claro and Movistar. But as soon as you are over the border the branding saturation becomes far more subdued. All your base are belong to Carlos Slim, I suppose. But it doesn't even look like Coke and Pepsi ever really got it on up here either.

The competition is fierce however amongst the mobile marimba units. Pairs of players lug their instrument from restaurant to restaurant, and at an al fresco table one is likely to find onself at the cacaphonic intersection of several tapped out tunes.

In Chiapas one also finds oneself back in rum territory. The local stuff is called Fandango and I felt like dancing one when I discovered that a 940ml bottle costs just 35 pesos. (approx. $2.5).

Trip Pic of the Day

It was lure of the Cañón del Sumidero that had drawn me up into Chiapas originally, though it ended up being my final stop. This particular view of it features on the state escudo (shield).

I'd arrived at Tuxtla Gutiérrez just before dawn and wasn't due to catch my next bus until 22:15, so a boat tour along the Rio Grijalva - through the canyon and up to the Manuel Moreno Torres hydroelectric dam, and then back again - was a fine way to burn up some of those hours.

There were still quite a few left when I got back to the terminal, so I was pleased to discover that it backed onto a smart new mall. This isn't a side to Mexico that the Rough Guide encourages its readers to look for. A temple of generic international consumerism comprising Starbucks clones, endless casual-wear emporia and fast food outlets galore, plus a multiplex cinema, where I took myself off to see Operación Valkyrie.

I imagine that this place might be more than a little disconcerting for a certain type of gringo visitor — a world turned upside down, where the duskier underclasses have been mysteriously afflicted with a chronic strain of affluenza. Think perhaps of a gun-totin' Charlton Heston as astronaut Taylor, stressing about how long it will be before they come to wrench the pizza slice out of his cold, dead hand.

After the movie I was gripped by a powerful Cheesey Bread antojo, and after presenting my last few pesos I was presented with a little device featuring a picture of my order which vibrated enthusiastically when it was time for me to return to the Domino's counter to pick it up.

Trip Pic of the Day

A Cornish cove with cacti was my first impression of Mazunte from high up at Balamjuyuc.

I was saddened to learn yesterday of the accidental death here of Aura Estrada, wife of the Guatemalan-American novelist Francisco Goldman. It seems she drowned whilst body surfing back in July 2007.

Aura was also a talented writer and essayist, and following her death a prize for young Latina scribblers has been created in her name.

Ever since being knocked almost senseless by a wave at Monterico I have had a healthy respect for the dangers of the Pacific shoreline. At Mazunte I was careful not to go out much beyond the point where my feet could touch the bottom. Every seventh or so wave is a real monster and they tend to swell up fairly late in their approach, limiting the swimmer's options. You find yourself being literally sucked into their jaws, so powerful is the undertow, so any attempt to escape in the opposite direction is usually pointless. Your best bet is to rush to meet them, hoping to get there before they break over you.

Trip Pic of the Day

ET phone home...

The Centro Mexicano de la Tortuga in Mazunte was founded in 1994, four years after Mexico's marine turtles were granted fully protected status.

The centre's motto Conocer para Conservar testifies to its on-going task of binding local communities to its conservational objectives — only a single generation after they were forced to abandon practices of exploitation on which they had been dependent for many more.

I recall that back in the late 80s turtle was an almost unavoidable dish in Placencia (Belize). Nowadays they are absent from both the menus and the Caribbean waters around the spit. Along this stretch of Pacific coastline the hunting ban appears to have been imposed in a more timely fashion.

Trip Pick of the Day

This ancient Ceiba tree also known as La Pochota was already in situ when the Spanish arrived in 1524 and established Chiapa de Corzo as their first city in what was to become the state of Chiapas.

It has since served as a symbol of indigenous solidarity and narrowly survived combustion on October 9, 1945 when it was intentionally set alight, destroying over a third of the branches.

Trip Pic of the Day

Puente Talisman frontier post.

I had an interesting dinnertime discussion in Mazunte on the question of exactly how much love is lost between these two neighbours. 

"The Guatemalans hate the Mexicans, but the Mexicans don't hate them back," opined my host, a man who'd grown up as a Mexican in Chiapas after his parents had fled Guatemala during the civil war.  

The Mexicans can't have been too chuffed though when Guatemala cost Hugo Sanchez his job as head coach of the national team by dumping them out of the qualifiers for the Olympic soccer tournament - first by beating them and then by losing by an unseemly margin in the next fixture, just to make sure that el tri failed to make it out of the group...on goal difference. 

There also has to be a reason why the Tapachula Pollo Campero appears to be doing its best to pass itself off as a bona fide Mexican institution. All the staff had little tricolor banderas on their orange and yellow uniforms, and the rear wall was emblazoned with images of Chiapanecan beauty spots and a big flappy Mexican flag, under which appeared the oddly familiar strapline: "Nuestro Orgullo". 

Pedestrian Signals in Oaxaca

These are even better than the ones in Sofia because the animated man speeds up as the clock counts down!

Trip Pic of the Day

Acutus croc, La Ventanilla, Mexico

Moctezuma got me again

I was chamuscandome this afternoon, running a temperature of 39.46 degrees (103 in F.)

I took two paracetamols around midday which failed to hault the gathering fever. Just when V was offering me some warm consomme (concocted with the cubes enhanced with tomatillo that I found in TGZ), I suddenly realised that I had accidentally deleted over 800 megs of photos from my SD card. And then flushed the recycle bin. Boy did I come out in a cold sweat. Instantly.

Chicken soup may be an ancient Yiddish technique, but just try imagining an unrecoverable clusterfuck. Like reversing over your dear mother's cherished pooch or sending an email destined for your lover to your spouse. I'm sure any number of variations of such a tragic burrada could have similar fever-breaking properties!

Fortunately, I downloaded something called Pandora Recovery (gratis) and got every image back....

How did I end up in such a state? Traversing Chiapas in the ADO bus on Wednesday morning I realised that the rule about only doing No1s in the lavatory was one I might have to flout in order to prevent an interior effect similar to a full-on Zapatista roadblock outside.

The most obvious culprit was the gourd of Pozol I'd downed in the market earlier in the morning (see pic) - a mix of cacao, corn and nutmeg - which looked like it had been scooped directly out of the turbid waters of the Rio Grijalva (AKA the Usumacinta in Guate).

I thought my stomach wouldn't settle in time for the bogless stretch from Guatemala City to La Antigua, but aside from a complete set of skeletal aches and an overpowering sense of fatigue I made it back in one piece.

The killer thirst I then developed this morning I put down to two consecutive evenings sealed within the bubble of primera clase aircon. But soon after breakfast I realised that something more serious was afoot.

I wonder why the Mexicans like to add an "e" on the end of certain Guatemalan/Chiapanecan dishes such as guacamol and pozol?

In the case of apasote, given that there's already an "e" and that only someone from way up in the highlands might say "apasott", our neighbours swap out the first letter, rendering this ingredient as epasote.

La Ventanilla

It had been my intent to follow in the tyre-tracks of Julio and Tenoch and seek out the legendary beach from Y Tu Mamá Tambien - La Boca del Cielo. Down in Chiapas there is a collection of huts beside the Pacific that goes by the name of Boca del Cielo (Heaven's Mouth) but somehow I don't think they used it for the location.

Anyway, Mazunte has been perfect enough for me. What a spot.

This morning I walked 2km west out of the village towards La Ventanilla. For much of the way the only sounds were intermittent, scratchy bird calls and that of little lizards slaloming through the dead leaves at the tarmac's edge. And then you hear the ocean, like the roar of a jet reverse-thrusting down a distant runway.

Here roughly 25 local families have formed a cooperative to protect the wildlife of their mangrove-bounded lagoon, which sits just behind a mile long stretch of beautiful and completely empty beach. Too rough to swim or surf here, my guide informed me.

The lagartotes are the big draw. These Acutus crocs are the largest of three species in the region, sometimes attaining a length of 6m. (The others are the Crocodylus Moreletti aka De Pantano crocs, and the yet more compact caiman.)

I saw a caballo gingerly wading through the tanin-tinted waters and asked the obvious question. No, these crocs are rather anglo in their attitude to horsemeat. Their favourite meal is dog however. And pisote when they can get it.

There are two main species of mangrove here, white and red. The white mangrove helps regulate salinity and the red variety emits the inky black tanin stain into the water. We spotted several turtles keeping KV on a half-submerged tree trunk, and one crocodile which had been doing a passable impression of a floating log itelf, then made a less than elegant facsimile of a snorkeler's dive the moment its snout made contact with the fibreglass hull of the lancha.

I was rowed to the far end of the lagoon, stopping for iguana, heron and grey toucan photo ops and then led around a small visitor centre which is also home to Itti, an aggressive little coati (pisote) who paw-swiped at my lens, and a dainty little male fox with no name. The cooperative also keeps one big female crocodile called Susanna who subsists on a diet of poultry, and a pool full of snappy crios (yearlings) that have to make do with chicken nuggets. 10x zoom lens or not, I felt brave when I stepped up close to Susanna to get a shot of her ponderous eye.

Under the trees close to where the boat was tied up there was a sad looking burro who looked as if the falling coconuts had really shot his nerves...

Anyway, I'm now in a world-class dump called Pochutla waiting for the 20:00 bus to Tuxtla. You hardly see any girl over 14 here not carrying a young baby.

There are rumours of yet another paro tomorrow, but once I'm in Chiapas and near the border I should be able to make alternative plans more easily than it has proved up here on the coast. I plan to watch the last 3 episodes of Generation Kill on tonight's journey.

Mazunte de Sobra

I missed my bus last night.

They've only had electricity here for about a year and such as it was in my cabaña, it wasn't going to recharge my camera battery. Emiliano kindly agreed to plug it in in his kitchen and then vanished for the rest of the day, locking the door behind him.

By the time he reappeared at 9:20pm I had already mentally committed myself to a night in a hammock and doused myself in appropriate quantities of DEET. I still had a chance to make it to the OCC bus station in Pochutla, he insisted. So I set off down the hill in the a pitch blackness relieved only by the candles flickering in the boneyard. I did manage to find a taxi driver, but he was lolling on top of his g/f and when he stood up he twice stumbled to his left. Steadying himself, he asked for three times the going rate for the drive and then, looking wistfully at the woman still swinging gently in the hammock, he resolutely embarked on a bid to convince me that such a mad dash to the bus station would end in almost certain failure. By this time I only had sufficient pesos for one successful break-out.

And so I stumbled back up the hill and claimed a spot in the 'Tortuga' cabaña underneath my penthouse of the night before. The combination of powerful standing fan and mosquito net is one I am yet to master.

Shortly after dawn I spotted Emiliano loitering outside. When I opened the door he called me over to a little bench overlooking the bay and offered me a drag on his porrito, as one might offer such a thing to a condemned man. From the look he adopted before opening his mouth I imagined he might be about to inform me that the Islamaniacs had finally done it and that all my friends and family back in London were now floating on the breeze as so many specs of radioactive dust. But no, it is in fact this country that is 'so fokkedopp', he informed me. In short there was a paro nacional, a general strike. All buses were halted and roadblocks erected from here to Tapachula. Orale!

Two extra nights in paradise I thought. Tant pis?

Enter clouds stage left...

Still, if I had made that bus last night I'd be stuck in Tuxtla right now, a circumstance that barely bears thinking about.

By the end of breakfast Emiliano had informed me that his abuelo was a Colonel in the Guatemalan army, that his father was a radical and that he himself had grown up in a refugee camp in Chiapas. He also told me that he knew I was working for MI5!

Today's mission has been to find an ATM within 60 pesos of Mazunte so I can pay Emiliano for his Mayan bitter hot choc and Huevos a la Mexicana...and for another night in Tortuga. This was accomplished a little way up the coast in Puerto Angel, an otherwise missable destination where they also have payphones so I could call V and try to persuade her not to issue me with my P45 just yet.

Mazunte is certainly the key beauty spot on the coast. Not a lot seems to happen here in the evenings. Every day a girl comes up to me on the beach and hands me a little leaflet promoting some sort of activity in a bar. She's so beautiful - penninsular Spanish or from the Cono Sur - that each time I feel a pang of embarrassment for her that she had has to interact like this with random people such as myself. And 'Live Music' here tends to mean some dreadlocked dickhead from Michegan banging on a West African drum.

But there is one amazing, and gratis, bit of nightlife here the like of which I have never come across in all my years in Central America: star-gazing. Across this peerless night sky, so bright as to almost leave a perpendicular anti-shadow across the glimmering sands, stretches the Milky Way, like some giant celestial roll-bar.

Mazunte

Now this is more like it. Mazunte is so lovely I was almost tempted to give it the kind of bum blog review I gave to Puerto Escondido...just to help keep the numbers down! But this is about as far from barfbag as you can get.

I've been staying in a 'penthouse' cabaña called Concha with gasp-inducing view of the bay. The complex - Balamjuyuc - is run by an excellent cook from Chiapas and his Argentinian wife. The name means Jaguar Mount in one of the Mayan dialects, but this is still basically Zapotec country.

Quibble time. Aside from the fact that it's dead dog hot for around three hours of the day, there's also something a little bit girly about Mazunte. Most of the visitors you see on the streets are attractive, earnest-looking young ladies, travelling in pairs for the most part. The only non-local blokes you tend to see are a bit girly as well, too busy plucking their guitar strings, or twisting their ringlets in their sun-bronzed fingers to actually pick up a board and surf - Sol drinkers.

Meanwhile the native, naturally-pigmented surfer dudes and the beach chuchos hang ten in much the same way - running after the retreating wash and flipping around in the follow-up batch of breakers as they crash on the beach.

There's a faintly Caribbean vibe here too. Wander down the narrow alleyways between the local homes and you could almost get high. But the ocean is most certainly the same Pacific I came across and learned to respect in Monterico - the one which left me face down underwater with a mouth full of sand. On the other side of the isthmus the most there is to fear is a sudden infestation of your swimming trunks by a passing shoal of tiny fish. Here you can be in water up to your navel when it suddenly drops to your ankles with an undertow which yearns to topple you before that humungous wave does...

Back to Chiapas tonight and the Sumidero by lancha tomorrow.

Puerto Escondido

I'm missing Oaxaca already.

I used to think that if I had to nuke just one place in Mexico I'd surely pick Cancun...around spring break time ideally. But now I'm not so sure...

Downtown P.E. is like a mix between Playa las Americas in Tenerife with Playa del Carmen's Quinta Avenida...packed with shambling 'silver' surfers.

No sooner had I descended from the bus than some cockney bloke appeared at my side like the shopkeeper in Mr Ben, albeit fezlessly. Using a clipboard he started hustling the charms of a hostel named after a major London landmark. "Aircon, boards to rent...and I've just picked up a pair of lovely girls who'd be pleased to meet a young man like yourself..." It sounded all too horrendous, so as if to spite him I checked into a place which appears to be full of silent, retired Canadians - quite possibly the only place in town worse than the one he'd been pitching to me. I did eventually spot someone there under forty, but she turned out to be the Italian owner's moll.
Everything here is overpriced, including this Internet joint. 10 pesos for 30 mins, compared to 8 for an hour in Oaxaca. It's located on a strip of tourist tooteries selling phoney machine-woven rugs, beady necklaces, sombreros and inflatable gekkos.

If you don't want to pay the earth for mariscos you will be hard pressed to find much else to eat other than pizza and pasta. I've learned the hard way in Spain that anywhere where the restaurants advertise their delights in German as well as Spanish and English is best avoided.

And it took 11 hours to get here on the OCC bus. 11 effing hours. I could have made it back to Europe on a plane in less time. It's just 300km as the carrion crow flies, but as soon as we reached Salina Cruz I realised that the bus had picked the longest of three possible routes, effectively taking me half way back to Guatemala before heading north-west along the Pacific shoreline.

For my last meal in Oaxaca I ordered a medley dish - Botano de Oaxaca - advertised to include the famous chapulines, as well as quesillo, memelitos, cecina and tasajo. But it arrived sin grasshoppers. "Es que ahora no es temporada," the waiter explained. Liar Liar Calzoncillos on Fire! I'd been offered the little red crunchy things numerous times in the market, but was still choking on my tejate.

Much more to say about Oaxaca, but these thoughts will have to wait until my return home next week.

Oaxaca: Impressions

I met a young Japanese couple at breakfast this morning. They own a restaurant in Tokyo and she came here to do a cookery course. I've been snacking rather than eating since I arrived so am looking forward to trying out some proper local nosh tonight.

I bought some quesillo in the market and drank some tejate which sparked a coughing fit. According to this recipe it has ash in it.

Am yet to feel brave enough to tackle the chapulines (crispy little red grasshoppers).

They put chile on most things here. I bought some coconut strips in the market this morning which came with lemon juice, powdered chile and Valentina (basically more chile). They even serve chile flavoured helados (you can have a cone with that and a ball of tuna-flavoured ice-cream!) and the nuts they serve with the beers are sprinkled in chile grains too. My lips hurt.

Nice to have a bigger selection of cervezas again. Gallo kind of disagrees with me and Brahva is nice and all, but after eight months of near exclusivity it begins to taste a bit like Piss One Chango. Here my favourites are Bohemia and Victoria. XX is OK too.

The handcrafts are a bit disappointing. I suppose that living where I do I'm bound to be a bit spoiled in this respect. In fact a significant proportion of the típicos appear to have been imported from Guatemala.

Hadn't seen any street dogs or tuctucs in the centre but today as we ascended to Monte Albán through hills on which ugly domestic buildings have been strewn like litter, they both started to appear in abundance. Tuctucs are called 'moto taxis' here. I wonder what the local term is for chucho?

There are three well stocked bookshops of a serious nature but I'm yet to locate a copy of 2666. Sadly it seems that its author's reputation has soared a bit higher in the anglophone world. And to be honest these places stock far too much Paolo Coelho codswallop and CD compilations of ethno-lift music. And this a university town....

Oaxaca: arrival

For a place with a population almost ten times that of Antigua, Oaxaca is fairly sleepy. You get the impression that not much happens here before 10am...which makes a pleasant change from the hustle and bustle - the hustle in particular - of Tapachula yesterday.

Down there every other car was a taxi and almost without exception they slowed beside me and honked ecstatically, as if I had the best rack in town. I didn´t see another non-Hispanic on the pavements all afternoon so I guess I was fair game.

Anyway, something must be going on here in Oaxaca because two of the hotels I tried on arrival at 8am were full. Coming in on the bus I couldn´t help noticing the almost familiar Mediterranean-style landscape flecked with cypresses. The Mezcal factories help to localise one well enough though.

The cypresses are native too and I´ve read that in 2005 the local government eco-renovated the zócalo, ripping out the incumbent flora and installing these tall, flint-shaped trees instead, on the basis that they are more local. Didn´t go down well with the two-legged locals however. I´m off now to see for myself...

Guess where I'm going...?