Seven hours on a cross-country bus, curled up contortionist-like in a dank, humid compartment with the window as company was enough for me to realise that I was now travelling on my own. Sharing a space is not always sharing an experience. The person at your side may brush off you in absent-minded intimacy, but you're miles back down the road. Or up ahead. Or you've already crossed into another country. When the journeyings are over and all that remains are a fistful of photos and shockingly disparate recollections, someone else's memory may be of the oppressive smell of shower-deprived fellow-passengers and the glare of an over-exposed TV showing a version of Tarzan in syncopated English; mine was the silent movie of the passing countryside, a hypnotic landscape where cerulean mountains swayed beyond the tall grass ... read more

Some time before 8pm the regular cacophony of car horns began to take on an unusual insistence. 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 hall, the drone of a vacuum cleaner in the flat above or the wailing of a baby three floors below. The entire building had its attentions turned to the rapidly advancing army of noise. And ... read more

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 twilight through the crowded streets, waving cameras at clusters of colonial edifices and confettiing the air with squeals of laughter. Built on the site of a Maya city, Mérida was once considered to have one ... read more

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 be pursuing a campaign of upper lip liberation. I was beginning to doubt that the Mexican Hat Dance actually involves hats (it does) or that ‘La Bamba’ originated in Mexico (it did). Would any of ... read more

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 the holidaymaker: a diverted plane, a leaky patio door, a grey sky spoiling that perfect holiday snapshot. Beyond the comprehensive airport security checks and the moderate police presence on the streets, in the tourist destinations ... read more