IDYLLIC COMMUNITY THREATENED

THURSDAY, MAY 25
This is a long blog. Be patient. It concerns a small Mexican village on The Pacific coast, a community in which the villagers take turns collecting the garbage, being police officer or whatever requires doing. The community is under threat.
I heard of the village at the Hotel Central, Oaxaca, from a charming young Irish traveler, Eoin Hennesy. Eoin was flying home from Mexico City after traveling thru much of South and Central America. He has a web site: www.slackpackers.org
Eoin was the first person with whom I had talked in English since boarding the bus in Dallas. He suffered my verbal diarrhea patiently, learnt of my interest in students and told me of a Korean-American teaching school on the Pacific coast: surely a curious and unique combination? I was tempted. True, it was out of my way. One hundred and forty Ks out of my way...

What a morning. Rain had fallen heavily in the night and you could taste a sharp fresh cleanliness to the air. An excellent highway unwound thru hills speckled with the white blossom of frangapani trees and of a tree that I think was a wild fig and sudden patches of a deep rose creeper and one of startling blue. Vultures and buzzards floated overhead on dawn patrol for whatever had been flattened by the night's traffic. The sea and miles of deserted beach appeared between the hills. I had rested the previous day. My bum had un-numbed. Biking at its best!!!
A newly concreted track led off the coastal highway. The concrete dipped over a hill and ended. I rode cautiously downhill on the dirt and discovered a small square. I stopped at a home opposite an obviously official building and enquired of a man seated in one of those bought-on-sale white plastic chairs whether the building was the school. He asked why and I related my search for a Korean-American teaching school.
"Sit a little," he invited and introduced himself as Eduardo. The Korean (no villager referred to him as the American, nor even as the Korean American) didn't teach at the school. He gave private lessons to children and adults. He lived in a house nearer the beach. Normally the Korean would be watching the sea thru his binoculars. Eduardo would show me his house. Eduardo would collect the village garbage later in the black Ford pickup he had brought back from El Norte. Then Eduardo would show me. Meanwhile I must give an account of myself and why did I wish to meet with the Korean.
Children surrounded us, a small tribe, the elders perhaps listening while the young ones giggled and pushed at each other. I was off the highway. There was no hurry, nor moving Eduardo from the slow course of his investigation.
I told of my journey and that I was a writer and an Ingles.
Inglaterra? Was that close to El Norte?
Not close, I said. In Europe. In the North of Europe.
Perhaps satisfied, Eduardo related a little of his own life, of the three years in Taos where he had worked as a roofer for a gringo, a good employer who had insured his workers, even the ilegales (fortunate, as Eduardo had injured two fingers while on a roof).
In turn, I spoke of my father-in-law, a fine, dearly-beloved Irishman; how he had come to England in search of work and who's arm was trapped in a cement mixer when he was working alone on the roof of a tall apartment building.
My father-in-law and two brothers came to England on the false promise of well-paid work. Eduardo paid a smuggler $1,500 US to lead him across the frontier. Later Eduardo saved enough to pay the same amount to have his wife brought across. A daughter had been born in El Norte and had papers.
Eduardo had intended returning to Taos in June. He was a good worker. His job waited. Now there were new laws and greater difficulties and dangers in crossing the frontier. Eduardo was unsure whether crossing was possible.
The economy of his family depended on his going. These were anxious times.
Did many villagers go to the North?
Many, Eduardo said. To Taos, alone, more than one hundred.
Did they return?
My question was stupid. Naturally people returned. This was their village. Though now - those that were away - they would be afraid to return home. The new conditions might force them to stay in the North to be sure of sending money home. How could families survive without money? Here in the village, there was no work.
Then, almost casually, Eduardo mentioned the torneo.
In June an international surfing tournament would be held on the village beach.
Outsiders were organizers of the tournament. The tournament would be on television and reported with photographs in magazines and newspapers. The village would be famous. Many people would visit.
"More money will come," I suggested.
"Yes," Eduardo said, though he seemed uncertain, hesitant.
"The value of property will rise,"
"Yes," Eduardo said. "Yes, many people would wish to buy lots."
I told him of the early days in Ibiza, the Fifties, and that all the young men were friends. We , the few foreigners, together with the Ibicencos, partied together, we went to the beach together, went fishing: that twenty years later my then wife, Cate, and I were dining in The Olive Tree in San Antonio. The owner was one of those young men.
"How is Paco Tuels?" we asked. "How is Juan Jesus? Antonio of the ferry?"
The restaurateur's replies were noncommittal. Later, when the rush had cleared, he sat at our table and we drank brandy together and he told us, sadly: "In the days you remember, we were all friends. Now we have become competitors."
I followed Eduardo thru the village and waited while he loaded garbage from other families. Many of the homes are in that, to us, curious and very Mexican state of waiting for more funds to be extended or finished or painted. It is a small village, few more than a hundred houses, and easily swallowed - a small mouthful to a rich, powerful investor with the right political links. This was the story of Ibiza.
The road to the beach is gated. The village charges visitors an admission of ten pesos.
Eduardo enquired for the Korean. Yes, he had gone thru the gate an hour or more ago.
Eduardo stopped me in my hunt for change. The gate was opened. Thus an obligation of friendship to the village was placed on me. This seemed to me to be quite deliberate. I am, of course, a writer, and possess a writer's imagination...
The dirt track to the beach has been graded. A rich huerto lies below the track to the left with papaya and other fruit trees. The huerto ends in a lagoon that fills at high tide and is flooded with fresh water when there is heavy rain. The track leads to a sand parking lot shaded up close by a few small trees. A small concrete building houses clean lavatories and showers, his and hers. A big palapa shades a bar and kitchen and a score of the standard white plastic tables and white plastic chairs. An adjoining palapa shades a few hammocks. A steep hill surrounds the right end of a gently curving mile of perfect sand. The hill jabs a point of massive boulders into the sea. The surf breaks at the point. The surf is vertical and forms a perfect barrel again and again and again...and again.
The palapas belongs to the community. Two young women tend bar. One is remarkably pretty. And there is an older woman who I presume is the cook. If so, she should be described as a chef. The snapper she grilled was perfect. But I get ahead of my story...
I drove into the parking lot and spotted the Korean crossing from the palapa toward a four-by-four. He was unmistakable. He has the perfect body of a movie Kung Fu warrior. He was wearing a towel draped over his head as if he were a monk striving to concentrate on his brievary - or merely exclude the distractions of the outside world. The villagers call him the Korean. I prefer the Monk - though I doubt that he is celibate.
I said, "I think I've come to see you."
Even monks can be surprised.
I explained my mission, that Eoin had told me of him and told me that he taught English at the village High school: that I had already learnt that this was incorrect, that he gave private lessons.
Much was happening in the village and my sudden appearance made the Monk anxious. He asked how I learnt of Eoin's mistake and how I knew where to find him. I replied that I had been told by Eduardo and added that this was a small village and that most villagers must know his movements - certainly those who were interested.
The Monk admitted this truth. However, he remained suspicious and excused himself. He had students in the afternoon and must prepare.
Perhaps later, I suggested.
Yes, perhaps later - though he was unenthusiastic.
I ordered a beer in the palapa and watched the surfers out at the point. Later, I noticed the Monk in conversation with a tall young blond woman under the second palapa, the palapa shading the hammocks. The towel was back protecting the Monk's privacy.
A loud confident voice heralded the entry of four men and a young, tall, good-looking woman, perhaps a gringa. The voice was a big burly man over-accustomed to dining people on a corporate expense account: black hair streaked with silver, clipped moustache, fleshily sensual ears. Confident of his power, he wore shorts and a T shirt while the other three men were uncomfotarbly warm in slacks. One wore a long sleeve shirt and wore glasses and carried a briefcase. The gofer, I thought as he crossed to the bar to order. I caught his attention. We spoke and found that we shared Cuba as an experience, he having studied tourism in Havana for two years. Now he was an official at the Tourism board.
"The torneo," I presumed - as if fluent in village happenings.
Yes, the torneo.
Mister Big represented the money, the sponsors. He laid out plans and papers and all the talking came from him. I was at the wrong end of a double table to overhear clearly. Frustrated, I ordered the grilled snapper at the bar, then returned to the end of my table closest to the money group. Now I could overhear much of what Mister Big said. He had plans for the torneo, where marquees must be sited, new palapas, judges' stands.
The gofer was a non-contributor - perhaps he held a watching brief. Of the remaining two men one was quiet, yet clearly necessary and in need of persuasion. Later I discovered that he was the President of the community. The other man I will call Mister Keen. He wore a shirt with no sleeves and a baseball cap and and, in eagerness, leant across the table towards Mister Big. The woman interjected on occasion and ordered water melon from the bar (was she with Mister Big? Perhaps the sponsors? Or a TV company?).
Listening, I wondered what Mister Big really wanted. Unbelievable that those behind him would fund, out of the goodness of their hearts, an international torneo on an unknown beach that possessed no infrastructure? I looked down the perfect beach with the perfect surf and saw the apartment blocks and the hotels and the swanky surf club at which the villagers would be servants. It seemed to me intolerably sad. Yet this was the perfect moment for the money men to make their move. The villagers were afraid of a future in which passage to the north was closed. How many would hold out against alternative blandishments? How many could hold out?
I imagined that Mister Keen must be already mounting the Yes campaign. And the President?
He seemed almost bewildered, and as much by the physical force of Mister Big as by Mister Big's fluent exercise of the language of persuasion.
The discussion ended. Mister Big passed my table. He had noticed my conversation with the gofer and was professional in his attention to detail. Could I be important in even the smallest way?
Am I being cruel, vindictive? Am I demeaning a decent man, a man who was naturally friendly (though friendliness was also his stock in trade)?
He delighted with the open warmth and charm of his greeting.
"How's it going?" I asked with equal warmth.
"Difficult, though we're giving them everything they ask for," he said - then dismissed the weight of difficulties with a lift of those powerful shoulders. "Though I've had easier tasks in the capital on a major project."
"In the capital you know who to pay," I said.
"Precisely." My understanding was proof that we were on the same side - what ever the side was. He was employed by a company of lobbyists, men who knew the right people to make things happen. He wrote down his address and his e:mail and we shook hands and I watched him walk toughly to his vehicle and thought, sadly, that the teeth were already here, the teeth of the mouth that would devour a community...
The staff of the palapa had watched Mister Big's and my conversation. Now they were watching me, perhaps waiting. I worried that I was arrogant in judging the best interests of a community of which I knew so little. A surfer's paradise could be a villager's purgatory. And yet...
So I ordered a fresh beer and sat facing the three women and with my back to the sea. The torneo, what did they think?
There were small shrugs of uncertainty. "We will see," the pretty one said and the others nodded. Yes, they would see. Yet it seemed to me obvious that they had no concept of what they might see. I recalled for them my first visit to a small town on a lake near the wondrous Maya site of Tikal in Guatemala. Thirty or more years ago the women of the town met at a different house each night to arrange the flowers and decorate the church. A mere ten years later, television had reached the town. I found only three women arranging the flowers. The rest were at home watching a screen. The companionship of those evenings was dead. The rich sense of community was dead. Nothing remained that would tempt their children to return.
The older woman, the chef, was the first to nod. I asked where I could stay and the women directed me to a row of small, wood-walled palapas by the entry gate. The owner had been the first of the village to reach Taos. In Taos, he was legal and had his own business. He had returned. What did he think of the torneo?
"We will see."
I unloaded the bike, showered, changed into shorts, and returned to the beach. The Monk was reading at the centre table beneath the palapa. The towel protected him.
Brave, I approached. I asked if he was free. Might I sit with him? So we began what quickly became a friendship to be treasured.
The Monk had come to the US when eleven-years-old. He told me of his schooling in the US: of scholarships to private school in California, to Berkeley and Grad school at Harvard. He interspersed his later studies with spells in the world of banking. He was respectable. He did the right thing. He wore the right suit and the right shoes and the right tie...And sometimes he surfed.
Harvard undid him. He was studying finance with grad students from similar money-management backgrounds. He discovered something missing in them. They had no fixed belief in right and wrong. These were the future leaders of Corporate America. The Monk saw an endless parade of Enrons, of small investors bankrupted or robbed of their pensions. At first he was merely uncomfortable in their company. Perhaps he became nervous of infection. Perhaps he became nervous of his father's judgment, his father a famously crusading and respected newspaper editor back in Korea, a poet, a writer of important books. So the Monk loaded his surfboards on his truck and drove south and discovered a beach with the perfect wave.
Only later, and bit by bit, did he discover a community that was self-protecting and to which each member contributed. The Monk taught English. This had seemed to him sufficient contribution until the torneo surfaced. He found remarkable that I understood the threat and that we shared a near apocalyptic vision. He suspected that I was an investigative journalist. He hoped that I was an investigative journalist.
Merely a mediocre novelist.
But I would write of this?
Certainly.
Would I write that Mister Big and his backers were paying the community 4,500 pesos for the use of the beach (approximately five thousand dollars US) - that the community was to provide a workforce of two hundred men to complement the three hundred men Mister Big would import?
That the community accepted so small a fee underlined the danger. Mister Big must be licking his lips.
For the moment no land could be sold to an outsider without the community's agreement. That could change. For the right people, political pressure is easily acquired - such is Mexico's history. A major tourist development must be in the nation's interest (the developers' interest being synonymous with the nation).
The Monk's nightmare is not the destruction of his perfect beach. It is that these people with small experience or understanding of the outside world, people who have welcomed him warmly, will lose the very special dignity that accompanies their independence, that they will be dispossessed and become servants in their own house. Already Mister Keen was working on their fears and tempting them with profit. Others had approached the Monk for advice. He was a banker. He knew the worth of holding a torneo. So he advised them and was summoned by the representative of those with power and warned that it was dangerous for him to interfere.
Threatening the Monk is an error. He is his father's son. He marshals his forces.
We shared a simple dinner of tortillas that evening on the terrace of a local store. We drank cold Corona beer and listened to the quiet anger of the store keeper: four thousand five hundred pesos - a town with no health centre, a town with so many children. At least, they should have demanded a health centre for the community.
We sensed, without looking, that other villagers listened, men and women in the background and hidden by the night.
I paid the princely sum of $37 Mexican for 6 beers and a plate of meat-stuffed tacos.
And I bore, with good humor, the belittling of my Honda by a chemically-recalibrated surf addict of LATE middle-age. Hah!
And later, in bed, I thought of the senators and congressman in Washington and of the decisions they make concerning the frontier that is not a frontier and of how little interest or understanding they have in the destructiveness of their decisions. Their snouts are in the pork-barrel. They wish to keep them there. A small community in Mexico? Let it die in the name of progress...

BAD TEETH PAY

WEDNESDAY, MAY 24
Tehuantepec is home to a tribe of Bodicaeas. For the ignorant, Bodicaea was a Brit queen reputed to have minced invading Roman soldiers beneat scythes attached to the wheels of her chariot. Tehuatenpec's Bodicaeas stand in the back of moto-caros - small three wheel trucks based on a motorcycle and always driven by men (I haven't seen these elsewhere in Mexico). The women wear long dresses and apear imposingly fierce. I avoid being minced and discover the Cafeteria Pearl on the street opposit the Oasis Hotel: excelent breakfast (eggs, ham, juice - $28).
I then hit lucky.
Idiot, I dropped my false teath my last morning in Oaxaca. Part of the gum shield snapped. The concierge at the Doraji directs me across the church square to an orthodontist - curious route to a fellow writer! Fifteen minutes later I am privileged to be seated across the desk from Fernando Villalobos Peto. I am reading a polemic. Here is deep anger at the PAN, its bosses and their servants in the media. Fernando has no expectations that the candidate of the PRD (centre left), Obrador, can cure the ills of Mexico. At least Obrador would try.
So much for politics. We progress to Fernando's first novel, almost complete. We discuss personal loves. Fernado recomends the Mexican realists (Jose Emilio Pacheco: Las batallas en el desierto). My teeth are fixed. Fernando drives me to his home. We drink beer. Fernando's wife, Elena, feeds us enough nibbles to feed an army. Their sons arrive, Juan Pablo (18) and young Fernando (almost sixteen). They have a band. They won a national youth competion with their rendition of Californication - Red Hot Chili Peppers - Josh's number one group. Josh has seen them live twice.
The sons' electronics possess the sitting room. We sit in the dinningroom. Out come electrical guitars. Juan Pablo sings Pink Floyd - Josh's other favourite. We drink more beer. Elena places more food on the table. Young Fernando fails to connect to my web site on their new computer already infected with whatever from downloading music (Fernando keeps his laptop locked in his office). The sons protest that they need a new computer. This one is six months old and already an antique. Where have I heard this conversation? Guess. We are in Old Home week!
Fernando insists that I must see a side to Tehuantepec no foreigner will find. Juan Pablo accompanies us. Young Fernando must be back at school. Elena has a business to run.
The side (I should have guessed from Fernando's girth) is a restaurant 10 K out of town. The family swim in the canal on Sundays before and after eating. Fernando orders. We are served the most massive shellfish cocktails I have ever seen: shrimp, pulpo, oysters, crab in a hot sauce. A dish of grilled crayfish follows. And we talk...
Juan Fernando is off to Mexico's top University to study history and intends to be a research historian. We discuss Bush and Blair and an ignorance of history that has led them into the Iraq war. We discuss the border which is not a border (they refer, as do many Mexicans, to El Norte rather than to the US).
Fernando has brought a bottle of Terry brandy. We discuss the European Union. Then racism...
My doctor friend from Oaxaca suffered from racism at medical school. So has Fernando. Fernando wonders at the Islamic ghetos created in English cities. He asks how he would be treated in an English taverna - a pub. Would he be mistaken for a Muslim and be in danger?
More probably a West Indian, I answer and, No, he wouldn't be in danger.
I am seated across the table from Fernando and his son. Beyond them I see the canal and the line of great trees that shade the water. I am eating one of the great meals of my life. We are enjoying great conversation. I am incredibly fortunate and deeply grateful.
Back in town I duck into Elena' shop to offer thanks for such hospitality. Elena gives me a medal of the Virgin of Guadelupe to watch over my travels. I leave her store. The steel security shutter isn't fully raised. My head crashes into its edge. Blood flows down my face. Rather than display the Virgin's failure, I stride off across the square. Elena must think me exceedingly rude for not turning back for a last goodbye...

TO THE PACIFIC OCEAN

TUESDAY P.M., MAY 23
I swoop back down the mountains and take the coast road to Tehuantepec. The road follows a river, the river escapes, the road recaptures it. The road surface is excellent. I make good time. The coastal heat beckons. Vast trucks creep upward or race passed on their way to the port at Salina del Cruz. Coaches gleam in the livery of the OCC company.
I stop for a juice at a roadside shack. The woman owner is thrilled that I am a Brit. Her daughter, Patti, is learning English at Highschool. Patti is shouted for. Patti has fled. She is captured and returned to a table in the shade at the side of the shack. She ius a shy gfirl, charming smile, remants of puppy fat fast disapearing.
The mother waits expectantly. Patti looks glum. I imagine doing the same with Jed should a Spaniard pass. Jed would kill both me and the Spaniard. Patti, thank God, is a pacifist.
A car stops and Mum leaves to serve the driver and passngers. Patti and I speak in Spanish. Patti tells me that she knows words and can write a little but has no practice in speaking. Jed and his friends would say the same of school French - though, as with Patti, they would succeed in conversing if left alone with someone of their own age.
Mum returns and I assure her that we have been speaking English.
Mum beems.
Patti looks grateful. I give her one of my visiting cards: EL VIEJO Y SU MOTO.
A further fifty Ks and we are finally on the flat and on a straight road. The Honda kicks its heels up, all 125 cc. We speed at 90 KPH. Hah! to Jed and his friends who mock that all I ever do back home at the wheel of our Honda Accord is creep and even delay other Oldies.
Tehuantepec is a small town, peaceful after Oaxaca. Few houses are more than a single story high. Good sighnposting leads me directly to the central square. A heavily built townman is parking a big Nissan. I ask directions to an economical hotel and find myself a block away at the Doraji. The hotel has a welcoming central patio and large cafe area. I take a spotless single room with fan and functional bathroom on the top floor. $175 pesos - the US dollar has fallen too far over the past weeks to make the ten for one conversion meaningful.
Late and most restaurants are closed. Fortunately the cafe round the corner at the Hotel Oasis is open I eat (yes, once again) camarones a el diablo - $70 and delicious. So to bed...

GOODBYE OAXACA

TUESDAY, MAY 23
Oaxaca has been good to me. The Hotel Central, its staff, and its lovely patio, provided a home from home. Doris and her husband were immensely kind and hospitable and both informative and intelectually provocative. All but four of the students at Blaise Pascal were courteous and patient with the fat old toad. The kids at the orphanage were loving and should be much loved.
The church congregation blessed me with their companionship. Now back on the bike...
I take the road to Mitla. Describing archeological sites is for guide books. However I am anxious to reach Guatemala and discuss with Eugenio a difference I perceive between the treetment meeted to the indigenes by the Spanish Conquistadors and by the largely British Conquistadors of what is now the USA.
Out of cussedness, I head north east from Mitla towards Zapetec. Why? Because the road is bipassed in the guide books. The road climbs for eighty kilometres. The cimb is far more gradual than the ascent from Tuxtepec. I feel fine. However experience of Tuxtepec has taught me the Honda's responses and I know that we are above the 2,000 metre mark.
This is dry country and the mountains seem endless. Cactus forest gives way to a forest of strange (to me) conifers with needles midway between a bright green lavatory brush and the grass skirt of a whirling ballet dancer.
For the traveller, the views are preposterous. I stop often to admire and photograph. However real people inhabit the scattering of villages that cling to the mountain side. I fail in imagining an existance of such harshness.
I pass thru a small town. Election time and an obvious politician (white, naturally) waves and wastes on me a dentifrice smile as I bump over a sleeping policeman. One of the boys for the day, he stands beside a gleaming double-cab pickup in pearl grey. I stop for a bottle of water and watch a while as he glad-hands the townsfolk.
A vast building is under construction above the town. It might be mistaken for an aircaft hanger but for its site and the arched window spaces. I ask a middle-aged male passer-by and he tells me it is a conference centre. Here? Up a mountain? A conference centre? The entire population of these barren mountains might fill half of it.
The man grins and says, "Algo politico." Something political - magnificently visible proof of a politician's interest in his electorate - what North Americans refer to as Pork Barrel Politics.
I ask how people survive and am told that every family has members in El Norte.
"Ilegales?" I ask.
"Claro," he replies.

APOLOGY FOR A SMALL DOSE OF POLITICS

TUESDAY, MAY 23
7 a.m. and the ten central city blocks together with half the Zorcalo are blocked by the teacher encampment. Starting to smell! Imagine if the strike continues for a week, or even a month - as it has in the past.
This strike is an anual afair and coincides with the run up to final exams. The exams are cancelled with all students given a fictitious pass grade into University. Universities then have no idea as to the true achievements of their entry students. Meanwhile hotels and small shopkeepers are in despair at the certain loss of tourist income.
How will the strike, as represented by TV comentators (white and right) effect the June 2ndPresidential election? In the polls, over the past few weeks, a vituperative press and TV campaign (financed by the oligarchy) has put the PAN (Conservative) candidate marginally ahead of the Centre left.
Mexico's TV comentators are invariably white and right.
Interesting to learn in what way their portrayal of this strike effects the outcome of the election.

PROFESSOR TOAD

MONDAY, MAY 22
I have been a scab. I appologise to my eldest son, Antony, an elected official in the Transport and Maritime Union and someone for whom I have great love and admiration - also the father of my three grandsons to whom I dedicate this journey in hope that they will learn a little, both of Hispanic America, and of who their grandfather is.
Two teachers had called in sick. The head of the English department, an Englishman, was delighted to inflict me on his students. This was her first day at the school for a young Mexican-American teacher charged with my first group.
These are classes in English and I have been told to speak in English. I relate a little of my background as a writer and the purposes of my journey. I search faces for irritation, boredom, contempt. I ask, in Spanish, if they understand more or less. More ? Or less? This raises a small laugh. I ask for questions. Teenagers? Stand out from the group? Am I crazy? They will keep their questions for out of class - great if it raises a discussion.
So I ask the questions. How many have relatives in the North (the US)? Four raise their hands. What do they think of Bush's intention to build a wall?
"Stupid," a girl says and the class nods.
They know Condeleeza Rice? Yes. She made a speach in Europe stating that Americans never torture: Do they agree? Nobody moves. Have they understood? I rephrase the question: "How many of you believe that the Americans torture?"
They look at each other. One raises his hand, then another, than all together - these are teenagers; outside their own circle serious stuff is embarassing, so not high, more shoulder height.
I ask what differences exist between their parents' generation and their own.
"The way we think," a girl answers to general agreement.
"Think in what way," I ask.
"You know," accompanied by a teenage shrug that I recognise from home as definite full stop.
I try a different track. "I have sons. Jed is sixteen, Josh, twenty. I asked them and they would say that I wouldn't understand - end of conversation. That's what you tell your parents, right?"
Laughter.
A boy/man asks, "What do you think the differences are?"
This seems of general interest - or it gets them off the hook of needing to supply answers themselves.
I say that that I don't recall on my first trip thru Mexico ever seeing young people kiss on the street. Now it is moderately commonplace.
"What else?" a girl asks.
I think to myself, What the hell, go for it, and tell them of my previous day's conversation with the doctor and that I had been watching them at the canteen.
They wait.
I say, "I'm a foreigner. I can't tell. I don't know how to look - though it seems to me that, if racism does exist, it is less in your generation."
Will they discuss this amongst themselves after class? Or dismiss me as a silly old foreign fool?
I take two more groups, the last on the approach to the next break with everyone keen to get out of class. I slow them by relating, as a lone travel, that I recharge my batteries in shaking hands after mass. They have a natural generosity and all smile as I take their hands.
After break, I have one more group for a full fifty minutes. I see at once that I am in trouble. Three of the male students make clear that I am a nobody and talk instead to their girlfriends. One of the girls asks to go to the bathroom. I say that I am not a teacher - that whether she goes to the bathroom or not is her decision. A second girl asks and I give her the same answer.
Three girls in the front ask me about writing and what books I read and what I know of Latin Aerican writers. Great. We make a foursome and leave the rest to their own devices. I love that they only discuss Hispanic Amercan writers. I have just read Sweet Water And Choclate, first novel by a Mexican woman so I earn a little street cred. Two of them are admirers of the Marquez/Allende brand of fantasy/mysticism. I suggest Sulman Rushdi as Marqez' equal and more directly political. The third girl is more taken by reality and politics. Fun.
I end by telling all that remain in the classroom, the conversationlists (those that haven't gone to the bathroom and stayed there or wherever they stayed), that I had been asked by the first class what changes I saw between them and their parents. I had seen four male students enter the Head Mistress' office wearing base ball caps. None of their parents would have been so ill mannered....

TOAD, THE SCAB

MONDAY, MAY 22
A day of expectations - due to talk to students at two public High schools. Rose early, brushed, showered and shaved. Clean shirt. Clean pants. Shoes were polished the previous evening. Breakfast in the patio and watch a hummingbird beaking the red hybiscus. Wheel the bike out to the road. The road is blocked. The entire centre of Oaxaca is blocked. Teachers are out on strike. Every teacher in Oaxaca State is heading for the city. They stretch tarpaulins across the streets, make beds of flattened cardboard boxes on the sidewalks. By nightful I am reminded of a refugee camp. Hundreds of the disposessed sleep on the sidewalks and in the centre of the street. They lie curled and they lie on their backs and some, used to good matresses, can't sleep. On each street and square, small groups of district Union officials gather in conclave. Tourists duck under the tarpaulins as they wend their way back to their hotels from the cafes on the Zocalo. I introduce myself as the father of a Union official. I should introduce myself as a traitor: with the public schools closed by the strike, I have spent the day talking to (or talking at) students at the city's top private school. While waiting to be interviewed by the Head Mistreess, I sit in the shade of a jacaranda tree outside the school cafeteria. Mid morning break heralds the any-school-in-the-world charge for toasted buns and sodas. Stuffed tortillas make the only change from Bishops or John Masefield.and the dress is less formal: jeans, trainers, school sweatshirts. Yesterday I was asked by a friend, a Mexican doctor, a specialist, whether I found Mexico racist. I replied that it was difficult for a foreigner to be sure, that I believed that it was less so amongst the younger generation. Now I watched the younger generation in their break. At my age, so much is a reminder of the past and I immediately spotted one splendidly sulky heavy-joweled Catalan matron of fifty going on seventeen. A mixed group at a table were identical in gesture and in the way they laughed to my son, Josh, and his friends. I could see no demarcation by colour in the groups. Racism was a deep concern to my friend of the previous day, something he had suffered at University and in his first years of practice.
Did I know how to look?

NEW FRIENDS MAKE A GREAT DAY

SUNDAY, MAY 20
I was taken today to a small orphanage run by two nuns, one Mexican and the other from Chile. We arrived at the children´s midday meal. The We is a pediatrician who gives his time to the orphanage, his architect wife, their few-months-old daughter and the Toad. The children ranged from six to eighteen. Not all if them are true orphans, some have only one parent deceased. However all come from a background of crippling poverty. Some have been permanently damaged by protein deficiency. Some are extremely intelligent.

I congratuated the Chilean nun, a woman in her early sixties, on the extraordinary peace that reigned in the refrectory. "La lucha," she replied. "La lucha." A daily struggle...
So would answer any Cuban.

A six-year-old held out her arms to me to be lifted, then buried her face in my shoulder. Later, a small boy installed himself on my lap as I talked to a fourteen-year-old Teadora who has ambitions to be a secretary and, as she admitted shyly, a writer. These kids have acess to computers and the internet. Come on, you Spanish students back in England, blog a message to them. Use my other Blog site: EL VIEJO Y SU MOTO - HABLAMOS.

Boys, four to a room, sleep on the ground floor, girls upstairs. The older girls share with the younger, mother substitutes. Oddly what I found most revealing were the rows of toy rubber and plastic animals aranged on the dividing walls between the girls´ showers. This is a gentle place for kids to grow up. Unlike those erstwhile Irish hellholes...

OAXACA

WEEKEND, MAY 19/20
Oaxaca, city of churches. Sunday evening I went to mass at the first church built in Oaxaca, San Juan de Dios; very simple in decor, white altar piece decorated with eight big vases of white dhalias. Away on my solitary travels, I recharge my batteries in shaking hands with neighbours at the end of the service.

The exteriors of Oaxaca´s churches are uniformly beautiful. As to the interiors, my predjudices are in good shape. The cathedral is awful. Gates close off the side chapels. The central aisle is seperated from the laity by railings. All that magnificent space chopped into tiny pens.

The vast altar piece at San Filipe Neri reminds me of the worst excess of Ukraine´s Orthodox decor. Yet, loving simplicity, why am I overwhelmed by the interior beauty of San Domingo? All that gold leaf on white...Yet to see this one great church alone is worth the trip to Mexico.

However, most touching to me is the church of the Society of Jesus. Here in Oaxaca, Mexico, on the wall of a side chapel, names familiar from my Catholic childhood welcomed me: Edmund Campion, Hugh Walpole, Edmund Arrowsmith, Hugh Morse. Such English names amongst the saints of the Jesuit Communiy and I sat in the peace and quiet of the chapel as if amongst old friends. High above the arched entrance to the chapel was this simple inscription: Companeros de Jesus, amigos en el Señor. And in the Chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary is written in thirteen Mexican languages and in Spanish and English: Am I not here for I am your mother...

The Catholic church may be disgraced for its protection of sexual predators in the USA and in Ireland and England. Here it lives. These churches are the temples of today´s Mexico. Services are full. You will find a scattering of people at private prayer at any hour. Watch people cross themselves as they pass on the sidewalk.

Only beware that a reactionary Pope may force the Latin American church´s withdrawal from leadership in the struggle for social justice.

WEIRD NIGHT IN THE RAIN

THURSDAY, MAY 18
The road down from the pass was equally twisting. As I braked, I had to remind myself to sit back and not put all my weight on my hands or my fingers cramped. The valley into which I descended was dry and dusty, the trees scrappy and the greens less full of bounce.
The road signs are immaculate and the black curves must be hand painted on the yellow background. Each sign is an attempt to portray the road ahead. Common is a broad squiggle rising to a strong arrowhead. There is the tight bend and the right angle bend and sometimes a double rightangle. Most serious is the written warning of a dangerous curve - a curve tighter than right angle, that turns back on its self. The Boys on the Bikes would have a ball!
I stop midway down at a cafe opposit a school and drink fresh orange juice and chat with the owners. They have a son in the USA. The road rises agin over the next, but lower, pass.
Finally I arive in Oaxaca. I have ridden 230 Ks. Apart from the first short stretch and the immediate approach to the city. I have encountered no more that two straight stretches of road of even two hundred metres.
My intendeded hotel has disapeared since the publication of my guidebook. I find another, shower and find a shoemaker to replace the leather soles on my only shoes. I sit in the shop and chat to the woman owner for an hour and a half. I then stroll in reshod splendour to the Zocaro (central square in front of the cathedral). On the way I spot the Hotel Central on Independencia, posessor of a charming patio, and book a room for the following night: $18.50. A the zocaro, I sit at a cafe table, order a cold beer and chat to my neighbors at the next table. Rain spatters the square and I delay leaving. The rain only strengthens. Suddenly very tired, I walk the few blocks in the rain to my hotel. It isn´t there. The stores are closing. Everything looks different in the light of the few street lamps. I walk and circle and retrace my steps and begin again. The rain has become a torrent. I can´t see thru my spectacles. My feet hurt. Everything hurts. I spot, thru and open doorway, an obvious foreigner, a blond young woman, at a computer doing her mail. I circle the block once more, the rain ever heavier. I return to the young woman, an American, explain my predicament (that I can´t find my hotel and don´t recall its name) and ask if she had a guidebook. She had the Lonely Planet. My hotel isn´t listed. I try one last time to find it, then return to the Hotel Central and take a second room.

Looking back, I guess I was simply tired and a little confused. I found the hotel immediately in the morning. It was where I knew it was. Hence my decision to take an entire day off and do little other than leave the bike at the local Honda agent for its first service...

DAY OF THE CONQUISTADOR

THURSDAY, MAY 18
Cortes first saw what is now Mexico city from the head of a mountain pass at 3,000 metres. Ahead of me lies a pass of 2,900 metres. Cortes road a horse. I ride a 125 cc bike. Cortes was the boss and could commandier a fresh horse from his companions. I can´t change bikes. Cortes went on to conquer Mexico. Reach the top and I will have conquered much of my fear of this trip and may go on to reach Tierra del Fuego. This is not so grand an ambition but I am not a great man. I am merely a writer of novels of medium repute.
Tuxtepec is 30 metres above sea level. I leave at 6 a.m. The first 60 Ks is over rolling hills of sugar cane and follows a river. The mountains ahead are hidden in cloud and the valley closes in. I top up the gas tank at Petromex and put on a long sleeve shirt.
Up, Up, Up. The road is carved out of the steep mountainside. Rainforest blankets the almost vertical mountain face. The road twist and turns and twists, some bends turning back on themselves. UP, the sun hidden behind cloud and mountain, up into chill mountain air and I stop again, putting on a thermal vest and second sports shirt beneath the long sleeved shirt.
UP. The climb is endless. I overtake a bus. I pass an abandoned pick-up truck. I am in second gear, sometimes in first. Fear for the bike is paramount, for the engine. UP.
I have a pain in the right side of my chest that could be a muscle twinge. It could be my heart. I am scared that I won´t make it. I think that it is extreemly foolish of an old Brit to be on a tiny bike on a Mexican mountain pass. I take deep chill drags into my lungs, testing the air for oxygen. My fingers are numb (cold or tension?). I stop and wave my arms around to restore the circulation and put on a third sports shirt. I can see, thru a gap in the undergrowth, the clouds way below. I take photographs. I mount the bike again and turn down hill and freewheel to start the engine. UP.
First a lone pine appears amonst the broad leaf canopy. A further five kilomtres and the pines have the victory, the road twisting up through an open forest carpeted with small feathery ferns. I catch futher glimpses of cloud below. Previously I have only looked down on cloud from an aeroplane. The cramp in my left side is fractionly more intense - or is this pain the product of a fiction writer´s over-vivid immagination?
UP. The sun hits the pines and I inhale the familiar tar scent of childhood Scottish summers. The trees thin. The summit must be close. The road follows a ridge and I see down to my left for the first time on the climb. I stop in the sun to take a photograph. The bus that I had overtaken earlier creeps by and stops. The driver and another man jump down to ask if I need help.
I want to ask how far it is to the top. Instead, I play British and say that I am just fine.
Up the last few hundred metres, then over the brow and stop at a cafe on the right side of the road. My legs shake as I dismount. The driver and few passengers from the bus gather round. One of them asks, "Hey, grandfather, how old are you?"
I tell him and another asks where I am going.
"Argentina," I say. "Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego..." For the first time, I truly believe that I can make it.
The woman of the cafe brings me a coffee and I sit with my back to the wall and absorb the sun while the bus passengers ask questions as to my true intention and where I come from and what does my wife think of my travels and how many children do I have and what do my children think.
I answer with what has become my standard reply: "What should I do with the last years of my life? Sit in front of the TV?"
"No," They all agree. "It is a good thing to travel, to meet different people."
In the background I hear the woman of the cafe shouting at her daughter to check the hens for fresh eggs. I eat the eggs scrambled with chorizo, a side serving of refried beans and warm tortillas. The fresh orange juice is perfect. The coffee is the usual disaster. For once I don´t give a damn. I have climbed 2,900 metres. The sun is warm. Ahead lies that queen of Mexican cities, Oaxaca. Beyond lies country after country, pathways to the romance of exploration and experience...


I

WHERE WAS I?

SATURDAY, MAY 20
I am sitting in an internet cafe without the coffee and a connection that takes forever. In San Andres Tuxlas I spent an hour trying to get photographs thru to Blogger. No hope. Oaxaca is as bad. And the mice have a habit of sticking. I took yesterday as a rest day so have a great deal to write. Let me start with Wednesday, May 17.
Up at 6 a.m. and rode south over beautiful green hills to a magnificent lake set against a backdrop of mountains. The Medicine Man with Shaun Connery was filmed in the nearby eco-reserve. I ate breakfast amongst old friends of the flower and bird kingdom on a lake-side terrace. Bourganvilla shaded the terrace, orchids and bromiliads, eagrets, herons, cormorants, and a bad tempered road runner up a palm tree. One bird insistently called weeah weeah weeah; another, peepee peepee, while a third imitated a cat´s meow! Men were diving from their row boats for tegogolos (a type of crab?). Sun breaking over the water, distant mountains smoky blue, cool breeze off the water, bliss! Except for the coffee - watery wishwash.

Rode back thru San Andres to San Salvador Tuxlas. Charming and very clean small town of low, single story buildings set on a river. Central to the town square is the largest stone Olmac head yet discovered. The head sits in a small temple. The sculpture depicts a deeply depressed gentleman - probably having received his tax bill in the morning post. I will post a photograph once I find a connection with sufficient speed. The museum on the square houses some superb ceramics. Charming curator said, "The English invented football."
"No," I replied, "We invented rules."
A horseman with a bridle and sadle of true Mexican finery rode by as I kicked the bike alive. Gorgeous horse. In fact saw nothing but fat horses for the next fifty miles, the road following the river thru rolling hills, farms changing from predominantly grass paddock to big fields of pineapple. Hitting Federal highway 175, I turned north to Tuxtepeca, convoys of big trailer trucks thundering pass but all giving me plenty of space. The country drier, fields of pineapple, clumps of big trees. I stopped at a fruit juice stand run by a plump, goodlooking single woman in her early thirties. The whole pineapple went into a press operated by a five-foot long length of pipe on which she put all her weight. I drank juice to the Beattles (Lucy in the sky with Diamonds) while the woman related her dream of living in Canada and marriage to a different type of man: "Mexican men are too machisto." Departed to Yellow Submarine and reached Tuxtepec at 4 p.m., modern agro-industrial city of no great interest. However I found a good folding knife for $5, a spoon and a small plastic bowl to cut my own fruit salad. Enormous grapes, a mango, crisp apple. I have completed 470 kilometres since Veracruz on 13 litres of gas, or roughly 100 miles to the British gallon. More important is the freedom of being on a bike, taking what ever road I wish, stopping where I want and for as long as I want. Tomorrow is the biggy...

SAN ANDRES TUXLAS

TUESDAY, MAY 16
San Andres is mostly modern and OK, though not worth a detour. I found a hotel that could have had charm with a minimum of thought. Kind if someone had offered to help lug my bags up. The plus was a beard trim at a unisex barber. A woman was in the chair: her friend, also a woman, shared a sofa with two men. One of the men was giving advice to the other on collecting a debt.
"Go when you know he's not there. His mother-in-law is always home. Give her the impression that what ever is between you and her son-in-law is a secret. Say you'll come back the following evening. She'll have a whole night to get out of him what you want. You know what she's like, a real demon. She'll make life hellish for him. He'll be happy to pay."
This same man, small, dark, enthused on the subject of Veracruz cuisine, me in the chair, he listing dishes, his friend and the barber discussing each dish's merits. Great, except that San Andres restaurants close by 7 p.m. We ate at an open front booth run by a very plump grandma, four plastic tables with chairs, walls and floor tiled in white, three gas burners, a fridge. We ate sopa de mariscos and it was as good a soup as I've eaten: prawns, shrimp, octopus, crab, and spicy.

GOODBYE VERACRUZ

TUESDAY, MAY 16
As a departure gift, I treated myself to an early breakfast at the swish aircon cafe frequented by the business elite. A tall man entered, early fifties, perfectly groomed, an all encompassing smile of good will to all men. He was a pleasure to watch as he circled the cafe, a soft squeze of the shoulders for those he knew, a word here, a word there, each gilded with such absolute sincerity. I have seen Blair perform in exactly that way - though Blair has never managed to appear elegant nor, even, decently dressed. It is the way Blair walks, elbows out. Bush has the same walk. You know? Hey, I'm a real man's man.
I imagined, watching this gentleman in the cafe, that his sincerity would lose its grip and slide down his perfectly creased trousers to form a little puddle round his immaculately polished shoes.
Mexican elections are on June 2. A truck with a speaker sytem drew up alongside me at a traffic light on the way out of town. The speakers were blaring a chant of Vote for Vote for Vote for to a sell-soap-powder jingle. A poster on the side of the truck showed the candidate: the gentleman in the cafe. Nice to be right...

Judged by the speed they drive, drivers of short hall buses are either paid by the kilometre or are holidaying race drivers.

Picked up warranty and stuff at Honda and headed South. Why South? Because I hope to reach Tierra del Fuego which is South - and after all the discussions I've had with Mexicans over the past few days, South was sensible. A man I was talking with late yesterday analysed my situation: At seventy-three, it is not sensible to be riding in the oposite direction to your destination. As Anya's mother pointed out while I was in New York. Yes, well...

The road runs along the coast. A blustery wind off the sea made riding a light bike interesting. The engine has settled or I am more confident: we cruised at 80 kph on the flat. My hands were loose, no cramps. The only suffering was a numb bum. At first the road ran across flat ranch land: cowboys pushing cattle into a compound. Further south the road runs over what were the dividing dunes between sea and a vast lagoon but are now grass covered. I was following a truck up a blind hill marked with double yellow lines when a white Chevy Surbuban hurtled past. Federales waved us down on the next down-slope. The wind had tipped a lorry piled high with sugarcane. The truck was sprawled three-quaters of the way across the road. The Suburban's driver may have needed to change his pants. Good...

The road climbs into the hills of Los Tuxtlas. Guide book refers to them as the Switzerland of Mexico. Why? Because the hills are steep and green? The only similarities - and that fat cows graze the paddocks. Here the trees are far more beautiful. I reached San Andres at 2:30 p.m., the best part of two hundred Ks for my first day is enough. The luggage system works. I dumped some clothes with the cleaner at the hotel. What I have left should do me a while...

SUNDAY NIGHT IN VERACRUZ

VERACRUZ, MAY 14
Watched a charming program of 1930s dancing in the Plaza. Happy people back from the beach in shorts and short skirts. Then attended a sung mass at the cathedral, full with a mixture of the sedate and holidaymakers - many young and much the same number of men as women. Lit by chandeliers, the cathedral was beautiful and the faces of Communicants is the same world wide.
Had a long conversation with two businessmen and a recent Cuban emigre whose dream was to be reborn English, German - or American as a third choice. One of the Mexicans, small, intense, and with a habit of leaning into you when he talks, brought up the Falklands/Malvinas war. How could I defend Britain's Colonial seizure of Argentine territory the far side of the world? To which I could only answer by asking how he could defend permitting a bunch of particularly unpleasant Fascist Generals a military success that would have kept them in power a further ten years. Would that have been preferable for Argentinians?
The Cuban was vague as to the location of the Malvinas. He gave as his reasons for wishing to live in England or Germany: that he wanted to live somewhere where everyone is white-skinned, has blue eyes and blond hair. Imagine his surprise!!!
The second Mexican preferred discussing food. So do I. I have no wish to be the spokesman for British foreign policy. The Iraq war is universally unpopular here. Oil isbelieved to be the reason for the war. Britain is believed to do what the Americans tell us to do (in return, the US helps us in Big Brother/Little Brother fashion - the Falklands).

BAGGAGE SALVATION

VERACRUZ, MAY 15
Up early. No problem starting bike. Rode out to Honda/Diez and collected stuff I had left on Saturday. Gave the suitcase to the mechanic who expressed delight. I had been directed the previous evening to an area of metal craftsman. Turned out to be an alley, difficult to find, twenty or so small, open-fronted workshops. Half an hour of drawings and consultations ended with my getting exactly what I wanted: a plate each side of the rear mudgaurd to keep bags out of the wheel - cost $25 plus two bags and a light backback at a further $32. Any solution from a bike shop would have cost double, so well pleased. The word spread in the alley of my trip and we ended with a dozen onlookers all voicing opinions of the work and the trip and why I shoudn't or should take a particular road. I shall miss the unfailing frindliness of the Veracruz people...and the food!!!

TOAD MOBILE

SUNDAY, MAY 14
The Toad is mobile. As with all bikes, there is a knack to starting them first thing in the morning. I failed, only to be helped by a young guy down from the capital who has the same bike back home. I headed out of the city on the freeway, easy, confident. Then spotted, at the last moment, a metre square hole two feet deep right ahead. The hole would have done for me. The secret is never to drive in the inside lane - if forced to do so, ride with extreem care and attention. The freeway took me out thru a rolling countryside of paddocks and clumps of big trees - reminiscent of the fincas inland from the Rio Dulce on the road to Morales, though not so tidily farmed. I took the turn off to Antigua - where Cortes originally sited Veracruz a couple of miles up river. This is a toll road and bikes and cars pay the same charge. $3.50!!! Seems exhorbitant for twenty kilometres. I must concentrate on keeping my hands loose on the controls and regualrly exercise my fingers as both hand were cramping by the time I reached the village. Antigua is cobbled streets tall trees, a few ruins, a few houses that look destined for ruin, the rest best described as scruffy. The ruin of Cortes' house has roots growing over the walls and an unlikely canon posted at the corner. The church is charming from the outside, and central to the community with its entrance opening to a plaza with swings and slides for the children. The inside is wrecked by some seriously gruesom saints. One laid out on his back in a glass case would give a normal kid nightmares for a year. AND THE FLOWERS WERE PLASTIC within spitting distance of flamboyant tree and frangapani.
Launches were taking Sunday trippers down the river(a hundred yards wide, slow moving brown water). I watched a fisherman land his catch and followed him to a restaurant. The kitchen was indoors one side of a dirt road, chairs and tables aranged on a concrete floor under an thatch roof on the river front. I was mobile and celebrated with a shrimp cocktail and one of the fisherman´s fish fried in a wafer thin crisp cornflower batter and covered in a green chile sauce (a la Antigua). Add two large glasses of frsh orange juice and this was most expensive meal yet: $10. A three piece marimba band set up: two men playing and an 11 year old on drums. One musician might have been a minor official in real life, blue shirt, pressed jeans, specatacles. The other had a girth problem valiantly covered by a flowered shirt. Americans get fat all over. Mexicans appear to restrict their fat to the belly. Why?
I am watching them as I write. The kid has a Tin Tin quif and seems embarassed at being here - replacement for an uncle who got drunkl last night? The belly musician is a latent anarchist. Every few tunes he make a run for it, breaking out of the routine dadedaddada with a fast riff and intricate flourishes, only to surrender to the reality of a hot midday Sunday on a river bank with an audience of six only one of whom is listening - me.
The musicians join my table inbetween sets and I discover that the gourd thee kid scratches and taps is called a guiro. Mostly I sit and finish a book Anya gave me, a wonderful first novel by a Mexican writer. I feel on familiar territory. I recognise the trees and the humidity and the scents and the people taking their time at doing whatever they are doing. I´ve never enjoyed cities much . London, we lived out in Kew which is a village in atmosphere. Cuba, we lived fifteen kilometres out from Central Havana in Santa Fe. And our home in England is the perfect village setting, garden backing on to two cricket fields with not a house in sight beyond.
So I rode back reluctantly to Veracruz. Keepeing my fingers loose worked - no cramps. 60 to 70 kph is a comfortable cruising speed. I will need to stop every three-quaters of an hour. I can't see riding much more than 200 Ks in a day. Maybe 250. How far is Tierra del Fuego?
Had a long talk this evening with a Mexican in his late forties. Owner of a big luggage store, he had visited Europe a few times and was amused at the envy for other people´s lives that made so many Northen Europeans move to the Mediteranean countries. He loathes the term Latin America, preferring Hiberican America. His jaundiced view of the US was typical of most Mexicans to whom I have talked so far.
I quoted Don to him: "Everyone is trying to get here..."
"No one with any choice," the Mexican shot back. As to his own people, "Everyone of us is a mixture: Indian, Black, Spanish. We are all meztisos."

TOAD LIVES

SATURDAY, MAY 13
I sorted thru clothes this morning, discarding half. The remainder won't fit in the rack box with the lap top, etc and reference books. Books are irreplaceable while I can buy more clothes (bought three heavy cotton quality sports shirts for $9 each). Left one full suitcase at the hotel, left an almost empty suitcase at Honda. Set off to ride. Great. Got 300 yards and ran
out of gas! 46 degrees centegrade! Pushing the bike back would have killed me. Walking was bad enough. I parked the bike at a store. Mechanic appologised and rode me back on a scooter with a can of gas. We said our goodbyes agin. Off he went. The bike wouldn't start. Kick, kick, kick...
Suicide. Know that I can´t cope. Store keeper (a woman, naturally) suggests I try turning the ignition key. Dumb toad...
I am on the rong side of a VERY busy six lane highway. I don´t have the courage to pull into the outside lane to make the turn. I ride a while (crawl) behind busses that halt on every block. Then take a right and do a U on a road that has traffic lights on the highway crossing. Is this clear?
A six lane highway is not the best learning terain.
I stall a couple of times, manic cabs and busses hoot, I miss a red light (they are on the outside lane and overhead, not alongside the sidewalk). Bikers hurtlepast in search of death (memories of the BMW Boys). I crawl. I make third gear. I make fourth. For a short stretch (five yards), I make fifth. I've been riding bikes for years. I've ridden bikes in seriously weird places. So I was younger. What's changed? Modern bikes are easier to ride. The brakes work. They use their cubic capacity more effectively.
I pulled alongside a cab to ask directions. I rode into the city centre. I rode round the city and all over the city in search of a solution to my baggage. I even had to warn myself not to get over confident! Having looked at plastic paniers and leather paniers and leather bags coated with studs (a la Harley), I now have a solution which I will work on Monday.
Pleased with myself, I parked the bike in the hotel garage and went for a very late lunch down the road at a stall upstairs at the fish market. Huge glass of fresh orange juice and once again, devilled prawns (best yet and cheapest yet). I am overweight. I have cut down to fruit breakfast and evening with one meal sometime in between. But what fruit...!

AM I CRAZY?

SATURDAY MAY 13
Lay in bed this morning thinking that I am crazy to attempt this trip and that I should be safe home weeding a flower bed and preparing for the hereafter. Or cooking a lasagne for Bernadette, Josh and Jed. I miss them and I wish that I had stayed longer with Anya.
Why does it have to be the thirteenth?
Last night I watched a performance of Mexican/Hispanic dancing in the square. Dancers dressed in white, high heel Spanish boots and the familiar stamping - great, all under a near full moon softened by the humidity, Cathedral in the background, stage protected by trees at the rear and sides. almonds, palms. One great dance, the women carrying glasses of oil with lighted wicks on their heads. That finished and I stroll to the small plaza near the hotel and watch the old folks dance to a five piece band (two guitarists, percussionist on a pair of small drums, singer with a serated gourd that he struck and stroked). Mostly middle-aged couples who had been joyfully dancing with each other for thirty years or more. Good dancers, great rythm. One show-off dancer in his forties with a blond companion in her late twenties always took centre stage and called to the band - know the type? He wore a wedding ring. She didn´t. They were having fun on the dance floor, arguing off it. His mobile rang and he disappeared round a corner to answer (so who ever ever was calling wouldn´t hear the music?).
Plastic tables and chairs belong to the two cafes each side of the plaza. A row of wrought iron benches on the sidewalk are city property. A young courting couple, neatly dressd, were sharing a bottle of water on one of the benches. They danced on the sidewalk, shy with each other but gaining confidence. I noticed the girl´s high heels, new or nearly new. And that, seated again, she sureptitiously scratched her ankle. That is the staple of the tropics: there is always one mosquito...

VERA CRUZ

FRIDAY, MAY 12
The Toad is beat and feels the weight of all his 73 years. Went to bed late after a long conversation with 78 year old pensioner at a cafe in a small square round the corner from the hotel where there is live music and a chess club - weird combination but seems to work. The chess players were elderly, maybe they were deaf. Then up at 6 a.m. and was first in the queue at 6.45 - gave that privilege to a woman who arrived a minute later so I would have someone to lead the way. Doors opened at 8. First disaster: impossible to register a bike unless you have an address to register it at. Senior official told me to go find an address, any address. Back to Honda where the head of the motorbike division told me to use his address! An hour later I had my plates! Back to Honda and road gently round their parking lot. Bike is fine. As to the Toad...I road a scooter ten years ago and am seriously out of practice. I will take the bike out properly tomorrow, Saturday, when (hopefully) there won't be so much traffic. Intend riding up the coast to Antigua to see Cortes' first house and sit on the beach. I am less worried now that the bike is registered and, this evening, have been both walking the city and seeing it for the first time (you can walk without really seeing anything).

HERE IS A MESSAGE FOR STUDENTS AT BISHOPS, JOHN MASEFIELD AND BREDON: I HAVE BEEN IN MEXICO FOUR DAYS. I HAVE NOT SPOTTED A SINGLE MEXICAN IN A BIG HAT, NOR WITH A BIG MOUSTACHE. ONLY POLICE AND BANK SECURITY CARRY GUNS.
MAYBE I AM IN THE WRONG PLACE: MORE PROBABLY YOU SHOULD UPDATE YOUR STEREOTYPES.
BETTER STILL, DONT HAVE STEREOTYPES.

I have read fearful accounts of foreigners's encounters with Mexican officialdom. Those officials with whom I have dealt have gone out of their way to be helpful.
So what have I seen now that my eyes are open. A toy castle, 1660. What every kid wants: a ramp leading to a drawbridge. Gate into fierce walls mellowed by age. A square keep with a pepperpot on top. Parapets with canon in every aperture and a second pepper pot on one corner. Perfect size for a TV make-over program. Immagine the dialogue betweent the two presenter/designers!
The central square Plaza de Armas) is good rather than great - cathedral along one side has a good interior lit by chandeliers and is small enough to feel intimate rather than overbearing. There's a good cloister dwn one side, a plush hotel opposite, a line of cafes across from the cathedral, palm trees round the sides, clump of leaved trees (must check what) in the middle round a bandstand with live music in the evening.
I threaded my way thru the market today on my way to somewhere else, crowded and very friendly. Cab driver told me: "In Veracruz you can walk anywhere at half past one in the morning. Mexico City you'd be murdered."
The city is tidy for a Mexican city. Lots of trees, masses of small shops (how do they make a living?), masses of small restaurants and ice cream parlors and ten-table cafes. Street vendors don't bug you, are happy to give directions and like to chat.
I read in a guide book that Veracruz has a strong black influence. I haven´t seen a single black person. The standard skin colour is a rich pale golden moca - imagine a good sun tan without the red. And very goodlooking, especially the younger generation. Long trousers on the men is obligatory. Girls show their tummys. Given the heat, this seems an unfair advantage. Though I wouldn't want to show mine.
OK - I am off to sit in the Plaza de Armas, drink a cold beer, listen to music and watch the folk dance.
And I shall probably worry much of the night as to how I will handle the Honda and the traffic...

BUS TO VERACRUZ

Thursday, May 11
Most people I meet consider this entire trip an act of lunacy. Taking three consecutive long-distance busses direct from Dallas to Vercruz might be judged a little demented. I wanted to get here. I am here. I spent three hours with the main Honda agency yesterday. I was in bed by 7 p.m. and slept 12 hours! Today I feel great.
The bus trip.
Dallas to Monterey 10 p.m. - 9.30 a.m. $46. Don and his friend made jokes as to Mexican busses falling over cliffs. There are no cliffs. The road runs straight and flat. I sit directly behind the driver and watch while he eats a TUB of caramel icecream. The US is tough to get into. Getting out is easy. We wiz thru customs and immigration. I have a moment in which to note a queue several hundred metres long of Mexicans aspiring to enter the US. Then we are at the Mexican border. I still have my US entry card. The US frontier is way back and the bus driver tells me that I paid to leave the US and that I have left the US, what more do I want? The Mexican immigration officer tells me not to worry. He asks how long I will be in Mexico. I explain my trip and make a guess at four weeks. He examines me with interest, age, fat, etc., grins and gives me a visa for six months and says, 'Just in case...' As to my US status, he suggests I drop by a US consulate somewhere on my travels.
Monterey I am taken by my driver to the bus company that does the run to Tampico. A bus leaves at 10 a.m. $36. This bus is more comfortable than the first. The seats tip all the way back. The seat belts are easy to wear. The first movie is good: Japanese? fabulous ballet of men swinging thru tall bamboos in chasing a woman. Jed will know the title.
I doze on the road to Tampico and wake down towards the coast. I spot my first palm tree of the trip, sisal fields, jacarandas in flower, a flame tree.
We pull into the Tampico bus depot at 4 p.m. Busses leave for Veracruz every hour ($34). I find a restaurant and eat a steak ranchero (piece of grilled beef skirt served in a tomato and onion sauce with a basket of fresh corn tortillas - dishes of red and green chillie sauce, red is most piquante) $4.
I call the Ampara hotel in Vercruz and book a room. The hotel is open at 6 a.m. I will have half an hour to wait at the Veracruz bus depot. $115 for 1214 kilometres.
This bus is the most comfortable yet. Again I sit directly behind the driver and can watch the speedo. We crawl through hill country on a double lane road packed with trucks. This is oil country I see gas burning off beside collecter tanks. Most people in the UK suppose that the US imports most of its oil from the Middle East. Mexico is the US's largest source. What happens to all that oil money? That's the question asked by Mexicans...
Back to the busses.
Bus travel in Mexico has the comfort and conveniance that we used to associate with air travel. Each city has a main terminal used by all cross-country bus companies. The terminals are spotless and staff are smart and imensely helpful. Buy your ticket and chose your seat off the bus plan. Porters load your luggage and issue luggage receipts. The drivers are excellent (this from a notoriously nervous back-seat driver). Busses leave on time and arrive on time and are met by porters. Best of all, you go to the Taxi kiosk, give your destination, pay and receive a ticket that you present to the taxi driver at the head of the queue - no fear of being ripped off in a new city. I write here of the long distance express services. These I recomend to any tourist of any age. Chicken busses are altogether different...
So here I am in Veracruz- HOT.
The Amparo is a block from the pretty central square and the Cathedral. I have a room with shower and toilet and a fan. $14 a night. The hotel is clean. My room is quiet, I have two windows. And I am now the proud owner of a white 125cc Honda as shown on my web site (simongandolfi.com). Click the Journey link. I have a removable waterproof box on the back which will take my computer, etc. And the Honda agent, Moto Diez, presented me with a smart helmet. The bike is being specially prepared by a serious grey-haired mechanic who assure me that it will carry me to Tierra del Fuego sin problemas. Tomorrow I queue for the plates. I am told this may take all day. Today I celebrated with a dish of devilled prawns and a bottle of Mexican lager at a restaurant out in the agent´s barrio (colonia in Mexican) . $7 and delicious!
Vercruz is famous for the friendliness of it people. True...and I have maps, courtesy of Moto Diez. The route I intend taking follows in the steps of Cortes. Much of it is on very minor road. Even these appear to leave gaps of twenty or more kilometres. Perhaps there is a dirt track...

GOODBYE USA

MAY 9th
Goodbye to Dallas and to the United States. I leave with great memories: the joy of being with Anya and the beauty of the farm and the horses; Michael´s company; the fun of the Hummer/bike trip; watching Don at work; enjoying the link with home that Jane represents, the pleasure in talking with Elspeth, 11 year old sage. I leave with memories of the generosity, courtesy and kindness of Texans and their friedliness and their openess. I also leave behind me a country that is bewilderingly foreign. We speak the same language but are fundamentally different. Size accounts for part of the difference. England is tiny. We citizens treasure and use each inch that we own or lease. We fence it, we hedge it; we wall ourselves in and wall our neighbours out.
The United States is vast and Americans treat their land casually. Pass thru small towns and see no visible division between one house yard and the next. A flower bed is a rarity in the US while almost obligatory in England. In small town America, a business fails and the building is left to dacay--there´s lots of room, build somewhere else.
Americans who do take an interest in the land have interests so different to ours and on so vastly different a scale. Don and Paul with their newly purchased hobby ranch are only beginners. My last evening, we shared a beer with a friend of Don´s. This friend has a business leasing mobile road barriers, traffic cones and signs to contractors. He and his father share a 7,000 acre hobby ranch in Oklahoma. Like Don, they are obsessive hunters and commited conservationsists. The ranch is ring fenced with deer fencing and they've sunk a million dollars in damming a creek to form an eighty acre lake. British, they might have a holiday apartment on the Costa Bravo. This isn´t a difference in spending power: it is a difference in immagination.
You must understand the breadth of this imagination to understand the size and wealth of America ( real wealth rather than the paper wealth of Wall Street) . Watch the construction of a freeway. Don and I passed a new stretch on the outskirts of Dallas. Thirty or more enormous trucks and traillers were queueing to unload enormous concrete girders. I doubt that there are that many trucks that size in the UK. Three cranes were swinging the girders into place. A mobile concrete mixer that would be thought a factory in the UK had been errcted in the middle of the new road. One column of trucks fed it while it fed a second stream of trucks. Time is money. There's need for a road, get it built. It is this attitude that has made the US the power it is.
So much for the good.
There is also the disturbing.
The US is increasingly what I can only describe a colonial culture.
On Michael's farm, mangement is 'white'. All labour is Mexican.
The same is true of Don and Jane´s construction business.
The diference between a true colonial culture and the American model is in the pay scale. In these two cases, both the farm and construction labour are well paid. The similarity is in the dependence for labour on those whom the owners and managers perceive as being different.

BASEBALL - TEXAS RANGERS

MAY 3
Hi. I remain in Dallas writing up the past week and preparing for the great adventure. I discussed the trip with a Mexican here. I enquired whether he judged it dangerous.
"Dangerous, no," he said. "Crazy? Definitely."
Don took me to my first baseball match in the evening. The Dallas field resembles a Spanish bull ring, layers of arches on the outside while, once inside, it is high teck with every imaginable fast food and beer stall occupying a spacious lobby that circles the tiers of seats.

Guys carrying ice coolers of cold beer and sodas continually walk the aisles yet no one appeared unpleasantly drunk or agressive. To the contrary, the atmosphere was oddly intimate, a few thousand friends getting together to enjoy each other's company.

The Rangers naturally harvested the loudest cheers, however there was no animosity towards the Orioles. A good play, no matter from which team, earned applause. I was reminded of a county cricket match (though this was less boisterous than the final or semi-final of a one day competition). And always the Texas hallmark of courtesy and consideration...

I shudder at the thought of that much alcohol being so easily available at a football match in the UK.

TEXAS TRAVELS

APRIL 30
Sunday at the ranch: Texans like to hunt. Don is a leading member of the Dallas Safari Club. He has shot game in about every country where there is game to shoot: Alaska for bear, the Argentine for dove, pheasant in England, South Africa for what ever has big teeth, big horns, or tusks; even all the way to New Zealand for a mountain something-or-other. He and Paul purchased the ranch a few months back as a hunting preserve. They will install a weekend trailer home next month.
Don and Paul transfer to the Hummer for the drive to the site while Eric and Jack scatter dirt competitively with their rear wheels. The site is on the crest of a bluff and has views for miles over what, in Africa, would be called bush. Texas bush is mostly dwarf cedar and mesquite. The bluff forms a hook and falls steeply away right below the site to a fifty acre patch and a spring fed-pond. Thin the mesquite and scrub cedar and you could watch the game come to the water - a Texas version of Kenya's Tree Tops Hotel. Paul isn't much into hunting. His dream is to sit out on the deck of an evening and watch the animals.
Jack imagines mounting a twin barrel heavy machine gun on the deck so he can blast anything that moves.
We drink beer while Don drives us round the property on the ring road they've cleared and down a track that twists between the trees to a second pond. Jack is searching the track for hog tracks. Hogs are domestic pigs gone wild back twenty or thirty generations. Jack has a hog obsession. He wastes a hog, he imagines he's wasting an Alqueda bomber.
We leave the ranch around 5 p.m. faced with a four hour drive home.
We are two hundred miles short of Dallas on a stretch of road under repair. Don hits a hole and bottoms his oil pan on a rock.
So then there were three (bikes)...
And Don gets to drive the last part of this epic in the Hummer while I sit in the front passenger seat and watch the country fly by and ask Don endless questions.
I have travelled one thousand two hundred miles of Texas in two days in the finest of company. We enjoyed ourselves the way boys do. I have been met with extrordinary courtesy, kindness, generosity and good humor every place we stopped. We have burnt enough gas to raise the planetry temperature a couple of degrees. And I have been saved from disaster by two angels: she of the Bourbon Street Cafe and Elspeth Weempe (wise way beyond her years). Thank you from the bottom of my heart.....

THE SPORTING CLUB at TURKEY, TEXAS

APRIL 30
Sunday midday and we are back filling gas tanks in the town of Turkey. This is the third time the Hummer has needed gas. The tank takes thirty five gallons and filling the tank takes a while. We are in a dry county. The help at the gas station reports that we need to drive sixty-five miles in one direction or thirty-five in the other to fill the beer cooler.
The Sporting Club is across the street from the gas station. A big square dinning room has a ceiling twenty feet off the ground and the standard Texas decor of dead heads on the walls together with framed photographs from the old days of Old Timers crouching over dead meat on the hoof, game or cow. Complete a membership form and you can order a beer. A bufet is set up in the next room: a dozen different salads; fried chicken, grilled pork, broiled silverside, all the vegetables; finish with custard and appple pie. I have the beef. Delicious.
The service is typically Texas friendly, full of smiles and good will How-are-yous.
A party of freshly barbered weekend Harley riders occupy the next table. They ride bikes with all the fixings: matching luggage, satelite radio, central heating, shoe polish and a gold-tap toilet. $30,000...and are acompanied by a Harley support team hauling a Harley trailer behind a 3/4 ton Ford truck.
Texans are generous. A visitor has to be fast to grab the check (bill). Finally I succed by catching the waitress midway thru the meal. $44 for an excellent three course meal for five! England it would cost double without the smiles.
Our route onward is a zigzag in search of corners to excite the kids. Paul tends to hold back a little on the curves. He has the power to catch the pack which is something I have to work at in the Hummer. Beer is legal at our next gas stop. You have to drink it off the premises. The premises include the forcourt. Eric finds a patch of grass to sprawl on the other side of a tellephone post that marks the forcourt boundary.
Next stop is a five-hundred acre ranch Paul and Don have bought. The ranch is off a
dirt county road. The GS BMWs gambol on the dirt. The Harley irons the dirt flat. The Honda is a little skitish and Paul is a little anxious. I drive the Hummer with the windows down and blast Texas with opera...

BLISS IN A HUMMER

APRIL 30
Sunday a.m. The road we follow from Palo Duro back to Turkey has humps and corners and views forever. Eric and Jack lean into the corners and are gone, chasing each other round the school yard, speedometres registering 120 m.p.h. Don sits on his Harley, solid and sensible as a granite Texas rock. The Harley vibrates. The Harley makes noise. Lots of noise. Only a rock could survive.
Meanwhile, Paul, a good lawyer, cruises along a little to the rear in absolute comfort in the law office silence of his new Honda while I bask in the massive comfort of the Hummer.
Saturday was Country and Western.
Sunday started with Swan Lake turned up high and crystal clear on the satelite radio as I swooped across the void.
Now I have Bethoven's Heroica ramming me through the curves and over the low hills.
Hey, Josh.
Hey Jed.
So you'd plisten to the Chillie Peppers or whatever.
But a BIG Hummer? And the Texas Panhandle?
Believe me, kids, what ever the choice of music, THIS IS SERIOUS SERIOUS BLISS.
Jealous? Hah!

GROWING CADILLACS

APRIL 30
Sunday is the day of rest. We have miles to cover and are up at 7 a.m. First stop is a farm twenty miles out of town. The farm grows Cadillacs. The Cadillacs are planted out in the middle of a vast field that may stop at the horizon but probably doesn't. The field is flat as a skate rink. The Cadillacs are nose down up to their windscreens in the earth. This is sculpture both impressive and seriously weird. I will post a photograph once I find out how.
Next halt is nowhere. This is the Texas panhandle and Galileo was talking nonsense when he said the world was round. The world is flat, believe me.
The road runs straight for thirty miles: not a house in sight, no animals, not even a tree. Telephone and power cables that have nowhere to go weave pointless patterns across this vast expanse of nothing. The Boys on The Bikes ride in a bunch. Travelling a British country lane the Boys and I would be BIG. We would fill the road. Children and old ladies out walking their dogs would find us threatening. In the Panhandle we are the minute pieces in a board game. The sun sparkling on bike helmets is the controlling ray operated by whoever is operating the game. Reach the end of the board and we fall off.
Midmorning we enter the Palo Duro State Park. Tough Stick...which is what the player of the board game has done: gouge a stick viciously across the board.
The result is ripped red cayon country right out of a Hollywood Western.
We stop. I take pictures. Eric and Jack strike attitudes at each other and swop bike seats. Jack's is a custom seat three inches lower than the standard model. He has long legs that have been cramping up over the past day and has to stand on the foot rests or stretch his legs out over the engine, shift arse from side to side. Eric has the standard seat and has shorter legs. He claims to be comfortable with Jack's seat. I suspect Eric would claim to be comfortable sitting on six inch nails.

BIG STEAK @ THE BIG TEXAS, AMARILLO

APRIL 29
Saturday evening: dinner at the ultimate Texas Tourist restaurant. The line of white courtesy cars have cattle longhorns bolted to the hood. Inside we are in a fake barn with dead deer heads etc mounted high. Right by the door there's a steak on display the size of a pair of bricks. Eat the steak and they feed you free for a year (eat the steak and you wouldn't want to eat in a year). We are shown to a table beside a dais on which sits a competitor for Colestrol Man of the Year. He already has a serious weight problem. He is midway thru the two-brick steak. He is sweating and wears the defeated look of a foot soldier on the fourth day of the retreat from Moscow (take your choice - German or Napoleonic).
Don says, "Great, so we have to look at that while we eat."
We eat steaks the size of a quarter brick. Good steaks.
Go back to the hotel where Don and I are sharing a room with twin kingsize beds. Midnight and a fourth biker joins the party, Eric, a forty-plus photographer who chews toabcco and rides the same model BMW GS as Jack. Eric has bought his bike in the past few weeks. Jack has bought his bike in the last few weeks. I guess that these two are competitiors in some type of interpersonal rivalry as to who can be hottest forty-year-old teenager on the block.
Eric has a sleeping bag. I worn him to spread it the far end of the room because old men have to get up in the night and I don't want to fall on him.
The kingsize bed is comfortable. We have travelled six hundred miles. I have driven a Hummer at 90 mph without fear and am feeling confident as to the morrow.

AMARILLO ANGEL

APRIL 29
Saturday p.m. The Brit on the Blink: Two young women in long dresses sweep into the Bourbon Street Cafe. I follow (timidly). The restaurant lobby is dark romantic. I have been outside in the light and am momentarily blind as a bat. A woman's voice (friendly) enquires whether I have a reservation. I blink a few times and an extreemly atractive young woman materialises out of the gloom. She is standing behind a wooden music stand that holds her table list.
I am probably sweating. I certainly fidgit my hands. And I am immensely British. "I am so sorry to bother you," I say. "I'm in a real mess."
Why does she listen?
Why doesn't she call the gaurd?
"I'm lost" I say. "I was following three bikers. Friends. I lost them."
The lady is listening. Patiently. And with some curiosity as to WHAT I am.
"I don't have their telephone number," I report. "I don't have the name of the hotel."
Guests are arriving, wanting their tables (smoking or non smoking?).
I appologise again and, beeing a Brit, again and again, for being a nuisance. If I could call directory enquiries? Except I don't have a phone and if I did have a phone, I wouldn't know how to call directory enquiries. The lady calls on her mobile and gets Don's home number. She gives me the number and hands me her mobile. I explain that I am unfamiliar with mobile phones. Added to which, I am old and more than a little deaf.
She calls Don for me and we get an answering machine. I leave a message (panicy). Minutes pass while I wonder what to do next and while the lady wonders what she can do next (other than apportion tables).
Her telephone rings. Don and Jane's daughter, Elspeth, is the other end. I try not to sound panicy. While Elspeth behaves as a calm mature woman of eleven going on thirty.
Elspeth consoles me. She gives me Don's mobile number.
The lady calls Don who is surprised at a woman calling.
I am saved.
And I am deeply, deeply, deeply grateful to the Angel of the Bourbon Street Cafe.
I try to imagine the same scene in England.
Help? From the greeter at a popular restaurant on a Saturday evening.
I'd still be there, out on the sidewalk, lost...

LOST IN AMARILLO, TEXAS

APRIL 29
Saturday p.m., West Texas. My first mistake was in not buying a Bob Wills memorial hat. A Bob Wills hat would have protected me all the way down to Tierra del Fuego. Or at least to the ranch down in Argentina where Bush Cassidy and the Sundance Kid hid out for a few years. I will visit that ranch (if I reach Argentina).
Meanwhile I have sinned.
I have been overconfident.
Pride comes before a fall.
Here is my fall, my plummet from fearless driver of the Hummer to trembling Brit on the sidewalk.
We hit the freeway into Amarillo. The Boys on the Bikes thread the traffic. One minute I am tapping along to Garth Brooks on the radio. Next minute I am in panic. The Boys on the Bikes have GONE.
I drive maybe ten miles with my gut in a knot.
Too late, I spot a biker pulled in at an exit.
I take the next exit and see a biker race by on the freeway.
Oh, God...
What should I do?
Help!

I don't know who to pray to.
Saint Antony is good for finding car keys.
I need to find three bikers. Bikers are bigger than keys.
My address book is back in Dallas.
I don't have a mobile tellephone.
I don't have a number to call Don.
I am a Brit with a Brit driving licence. I am in a Hummer without car papers.
Is this likely to get me shot?

I pull in at the parking lot of the Bourbon Street Cafe (live music Saturday night and all the shrimp you can eat for $10.55).

BOB WILLS MEMORIAL CONCERT

APRIL 29
Saturday a.m. Rain. We speed on thru Fort Worth and halt for breakfast around 7 a.m. Paul joins us, a lawyer on a super comfortable Honda 1300. Jack is new to his bike. He has all the kit, the suit with armourplate caps, etc. Unfortunately his boots have filled with water.
We turn off the freeway onto country roads wide enough to be freeways back home. No cops and the speed edges up. The bikes out acelerate and out corner the Hummer. I lose a hundred yards or more on each corner and have to work at catching up. The speedometre touches eighty, eighty five, ninety. Jed and Josh won't believe me. I need Don and all to swear a certificate.
I am becoming confidant. Nashville on satelite radio, Hummer rock steady, I know where the controls are, the rain has ceased, the sun is bright. Cattle in vast paddocks. Mesquite. I spot a couple of wild turkeys on the grass verge.
I follow the Boys on the Bikes into the town of Turkey in mid afternoon. Town is what, in West Texas, they call fifteen houses and a store that closed in the sixties.
We are in Turkey for the annual Bob Wills memorial concert. Bob Wills? Country and Western singer with his band, The Texas Playboys. Check him out on the web.
The concert is in a dirt field by the town's disused redbrick High school building. Tents are pitched and RVs and trailers are parked in amongst the standard farm mishmash of new and disused agricultural machinery, abandoned pickups and rusted metal stuff that even the manufacturer wouldn't recognise.
Texas and machinery is BIG. The driver climbs a ladder to reach the controls. No place here for a man with vertigo.
The Bob Wills memorial concert is true West Texas. Three plank-and-scafolding stands face a stage which has been in place sufficiently long for swallows or house martins to have nested on the ceiling. Three and even four generations of the same family are seated in their own folding chairs between the stands and the stage. The Texas Playboys are up there doing their stuff - those that remain alive. Practiced? They could play in their sleep. The MC is a doctor. He knows half the audience by name and knows where to direct his remarks.
I remark the quantity of old people's transport: electric invalid chairs, golf carts, etc. AND I AM DRIVING A HUMMER!
This is fun. I am having fun.
Local girls collect dollars for upkeep of the museum.
Jack buys a Bob Wills memorial hat.
I write my name in the visitors book and that I come from England.
If there is another tourist, he got lost.

HUMMERS ARE BIG

APRIL 29
Saturday morning, Dallas. Don reverses the Hummer out of the drive. I climb in behind the wheel. BIG! WIDE! SCARY!
This old man has kids back in England who tease him endlessly as to how slow he drives.
Jed's friends tease me.
Now I must follow Don on a Harley and an airline pilot, Jack, on a BMW GS 1250.
Rain is falling which may slow them down.
It doesn't.
I follow their rear lights out onto the freeway.

DALLAS, TEXAS

APRIL 28
My forty-eight hour journey ends mid afternoon in Dallas, Texas. I have slept in a chair the past two nights. Don Weempe collects me at the Amtrak station. Don and Jane and their daughter, Elspeth, are old friends who visit England regularly while I haven't visited Dallas in eight years. Dumb, because the Weempes are a great family to be with and Dallas is a great city.
So why does Don plan on killing me?
Don and friends plan leaving at 5 a.m on a bike trip. I am to follow the bikes in the Hummer with the gear. The Hummer is in the front drive. It looks BIG! It is BIG!
I lie awake worrying that I won't be able to handle something this big. And I worry that I won't be able to keep up with the bikes. This is Texas. These will be BIG bikes. I know that Don has a Harley, leather seats and studs. I'll meet the others tomorrow.

AMTRAK SOUTH TO DALLAS

APRIL 28
Friday: the same vast corn fields. Here, in the US, freight has priority over passenger travel and we wait again and again while long chains of freight cars creep by. Two and a half hours late so I don't have the time I had hoped for to sightsee Chicago. I DO take a step on/step off tourist trolley along the lake front for an hour ($24). Al Capone was King...I hoped for sight of gangster. How do you recognise a gangster if he isn't shooting or being shot?
Train south is a double decker. Shinny aluminium. New carpets.
I eat dinner in the restaurant car at a table with two black sisters, retirees heading back down to visit familiy in Arkansas. The one sister has a quick mischievious sense of humour while the other is quieter and gives off a sense of home and kindness. Our waitress is a large young lady, also black, with a great smile and humour she is happy to share. We are on the upper deck, the train sways and she is halfway into my lap. I make the sort of joke that, back home, makes Jed and Josh cringe. Engand, people would be embarassed. Here, in the US, everyone laughs.
We have the same vast flat fields either side, low cloud, a few hours of steady rain.
I am recovering my confidence after yesterday's homesickness and talk with fellow travellers in the lounge car. Americans are easy to talk with. A couple of people tell me they are taking the train because of the price of gas: $3 a gallon. I tell them we pay $6.50 in England - true, the distances don't compare.

TEARFUL ADIEU

APRIL 27
Thursday morning: Anya dropped me at the train. A few tears from both of us. $8.45 peak time for a senior's ticket to the city - the same distance as from home in England to London where the fare is $40 AND I have to buy an anual old people's permit. Do you get a rebate if you die during the validity period?
The local train came into Grand Central station - beautiful. The Amtrak train left from Penn Central. The cab driver began yelling at me before I was even in the cab - first rudeness I had encountered since arriving in the US. Cab driver came from Lahore, Pakistan. Maybe American courtsy takes a generation.
Anya's mother met me for lunch at the station. We shared a TexMex starter that would have fed an army platoon. Abby tells me everone she meets says I am insane to take this trip. She says she knows me: that I'll keep going out of pride. She wants me to promies that I'll turn back the moment I get scared. I don't tell her that I already am scared!
Train fare from New York to Dallas, $154 for a senior. Train left Penn Central an hour late. Airplane seats, except wider and with double the leg room, and with a leg support that lifts. Crept for miles right along the bank of the Hudson river. Seemed as if the driver was scared the train would tip into the water. Beautiful Spring day, a few pleasure boats out already and a couple of small tankers pushing against the current. Nothing but trees on the far bank.
Options to eat in the restaurant car or at the cafeteria in the lounge car. I take a sandwich. Running late. Watch the fields go by. This is flat country, seriously flat, vast fields either side, interesting to a first time traveller.
I don't talk with anyone - mostly because I'm a little miserable at leaving my daughter and am a long way already from Bernadette and my sons.