Some time before 8pm the regular cacophany of car horns began to take on an unusual insistency. Then another voice joined in. It sounded like cowbells, but not the tinkling accompaniment of an Alpine idyll; this was the steady mounting soundtrack of a thousand fervent Friesians. I opened the balcony window onto the five-lane avenue that streaks past our living room. Our eighth floor location provides a handy vantage point for observing the not infrequent demonstrations on the street below. Today was different, though. The whistle-toting pedestrians and horn-happy drivers weren't competing with the blare of a television from across the [View Full Entry]

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Determined to make one more tourist stop before returning to Mexico City, we spent New Year's Eve in Puebla. Given the city’s population of over a million, and its claim to fame as home to - amongst other things - the chocolate-based sauce mole (pronounced 'moh-lay'), a retired Popemobile, and a local Oktoberfest, we imagined that New Year's Eve would prove a lively date on the calendars of the gastronome, the religious, and the reveller. We managed to find an establishment on the main square or zócalo which would provide us with dinner and the 12 grapes that tradition requires be [View Full Entry]

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Mérida’s Plaza Grande was a Tippi Hedren nightmare. Swarms of birds blanketed the trees of the square, their individual shapes barely distinguishable in the nebulous mass and their macabre chorus almost deafening. Had the carpet of bird droppings not suggested otherwise, I would have been convinced that the high-pitched screeching was produced by an army of bats, not birds. Bathed in the glow of several illuminated reindeer, smitten couples, spongy grandmothers and sleepy-eyed children strolled about the town square, defiant in the face of the faecal fusillade and ceaseless squawking from above. Holidaymakers in horse-drawn buggies chased the last wisps of [View Full Entry]

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Arriving in Valladolid at night, we fell victim to its inhabitants’ amiability. Everyone was eager to tell us where the hotel was, even when they had no idea. Dawn revealed a modest town more or less built on a grid system, and the fact that we had unwittingly passed our accommodation by about five times the night before. Ostensibly chosen for its proximity to the Mayan ruins of Chichén Itzá, Yucatán’s Valladolid was really serving as a surrogate hometown for Raúl, unable to spend the holidays in his own Valladolid thousands of miles away in Spain. The relaxed colonial town is [View Full Entry]

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I'd been having a week of shattered myths. First, I’d learnt that it’s never tequila that has the worm, but mescal. Then, after a visit to the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, I discovered that the trumpet is not, in fact, a traditional mariachi instrument. Cooped up in a hotel in the Santa Fe neighbourhood I had come across little evidence of the clichéd Mexican male - the office workers and Sunday strollers of this relatively affluent district revealed a dapper dress sense and a penchant for pink. And where were all those macho moustaches? Mexican men seemed to [View Full Entry]

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Before the Mother of God began making appearances in grottos and pastures around Europe, she turned up on a hill-top near Mexico City. It was December 1531, the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire had begun 12 years before, and Catholicism was being peddled to the indigenous population. The apparition of the Virgin to a recently converted local man named Juan Diego led to the subsequent evangelization of millions, the construction of a basilica on the hill-top, and the designating of December 12th as the feast day of the Virgin, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. The pilgrimage to the site of the [View Full Entry]

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It seems it wasn't guerrilla groups or murderous drug barons that we were to be wary of in Colombia, but rather the weather. The ominous clouds blanketing Bogotá we assumed were typical of the rainy season; the temporary closure of El Dorado airport due to flooding as we sat on the runway, a brief, barely remarkable hiccup. One flooded hotel room and another closed airport later, and we began to exchange nervous glances. Following the tourist trail, we were practically oblivious to the much-publicised problems which fuel alarmist warnings from armchair commentators - our biggest issues were the typical afflictions of [View Full Entry]

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“Yo soy Miss Colombia.”* The bold claim leapt defiantly from the text. My eyes flicked back up to the accompanying photograph. Catalina, the septuagenarian fruit vendor, undoubtedly had the poise of a beauty queen and certainly wore her age well, but I wasn’t entirely convinced. Reading an in-flight magazine from cover to cover on a grounded plane, I had chanced upon an article about the palenqueras of Cartagena. Characteristic figures in this Caribbean city, these vibrantly-clothed women negotiate the streets of the ciudad amurallada and the beach at Bocagrande, their palanganas laden with luscious fruits or syrupy confections. A small bill [View Full Entry]

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For a political cartographer, the island of San Andrés is Colombia. For some nicaragüenses, it’s Nicaragua, part of an archipelago unfairly allotted to Colombia by a 1928 treaty which Nicaragua claims was signed under duress during U.S. occupation of the Central American country. And for a tribunal in The Hague currently dealing with the dispute, it is… to be decided. The archipelago - which also includes the islands of Providencia and Santa Catalina, as well as a number of islets, cays and sand banks - is located in the Caribbean, approximately 720km from the Colombian coast and 220km from Nicaragua. Early [View Full Entry]

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When I was young, I had an article about an English convict, torn from a newspaper, pinned to a corkboard in my room. All I knew was this man had taken part in something called the Great Train Robbery, escaped from jail, and was now living happily in Rio de Janeiro. Something about this seemingly insouciant rogue appealed to my preteen self. I decided I would one day go to Rio and visit this Ronnie Biggs character. The article grew yellow, and in the meantime I slowly added to my 'Rio - To Do' list: See massive statue of Christ atop [View Full Entry]

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