My oldest friend came to visit my newly adopted country over Christmas and the New Year. We met in Merida, in Yucatan, and spent a delightful couple of weeks exploring a corner of the country hitherto undiscovered by me, soaking up sunshine on the Riviera Maya, and getting to grips with arguably the best of…
Tag: Travel
San Juan Chamula
I wasn’t expecting to find a dualist heresy in rural Mexico, much less one governed and guided by narcos, but there it was in Chamula, a small town outside San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas. The town perches on the side of a mountain, roads plunging down steeply, converging finally on the central square….
Stuffed cheese, sinkholes, pink lakes and jam
As I’ve mentioned previously, they take Christmas pretty seriously in Mexico. Our Christmas decorations went up in mid-November, and as I sit here on the 11th January, they remain up. Los Reyes Magos have been and gone, the posadas, rosca de reyes and parade of gifts are all over, but almost everywhere Christmas lingers on….
Los colores preciosos de Puebla
We popped out of town for the weekend. Myriam was working on Saturday night in the next city over, and I tagged along for the ride, keeping out of the way, trying to look like I belonged, and accepting a free cocktail in return for a small acting role. There’s a chance I will now…
Life in the upside down
I usually pride myself on my ability to get to know a city quickly. Not a massive claim to fame, I know, but my sense of direction, my orientation within the hustle and bustle of a metropolis, is something I feel genuinely confident about. I’m not, external evidence to the contrary perhaps, a particularly self-confident…
Speak like a local or look like an idiot or: How I learned to stop worrying and love Spanish
One of the biggest frustrations for me since moving to Mexico has been, unsurprisingly, the language barrier. Not from a practical side, I have to say. Despite not studying Spanish at school, the occasional holiday to Spain, coupled with the similarities it has with my residual french, and the millennial’s weapon of choice in being…
Normal and exceptional – one and half weeks
I’ve been in Mexico City for one and a half weeks. My experiences so far have been on the whole…normal. Sorting out public transport, cooking, writing, sorting out the flat. So much for an exciting travel blog you’d think…but I couldn’t be happier, and I feel like the whole thing has been exceptional. After all,…
Dogs, fish, and no tacos
Mexico City has been an overdose for the senses, from the very first moment I saw it framed in off-white through the aeroplane window. I peered out, bleary-eyed and fuzzy-headed after a long flight, at the seemingly endless array of lights stretching away almost as far as I could see, until abruptly quenched by the…
