As it happened my 1978 six month solo sojourn across Canada in 1978 was just a prelude to a longer, and somewhat more exotic, trip.  In November of 1978, as the days and nights grew colder, it was clear that continuing to camp in Canada, as beautiful as Canada may be, was not going to be comfortable – or fun.  But the Canada trip had really just whetted my appetite for travel.  I’d started on the road to discovering Canada – and myself – but I wanted to keep going.  I’d decided to go to South America.   I was disappointed, but not surprised, at how little support I received from family and friends for this travel adventure.  Some were concerned for my safety.  I heard countless warnings of the lawlessness in Central and South America, the muggings and murders, and the duplicity and complicity of the police, who commonly extorted money from anyone they apprehended.  I was warned, repeatedly, of the risk of being m...

 

Mexico City’s Metropol Hotel is a perfect reflection of the city itself.     What it lacks in glamour and amenities it makes up for in a riot of colours: purple wall-paper, red-rug, orange and yellow swirl-checkered curtains and bed-spreads (on twin beds), and ‘matching’ orange and yellow vinyl sofa and chairs.     Gay, but not restful.     But sleep in this city is well-nigh impossible in any event – there is a constant cacophony of car and truck engines and horns; it seems Mexicans prefer to use their horns instead of brakes, turn signals or waves.     And... there are so many cars.     The streets are choked with them, and I am choking on their fumes.     My nose, throat and eyes are constantly irritated by exhaust fumes, even in this room with all closed windows.     It’s so pervasive.   I’ve spent my first few days  here wandering around, taking in the sights and sounds of one of the largest, and d...

Mexico City was just a transit point - t he first place I landed on my South American journey.     In a way, I wasn’t truly there, more caught up in the novelty, strangeness and scariness of what I had embarked upon.     And preoccupied with thoughts of ‘now where’ and ‘how to get there’.     I’d heard good things about a quiet, paradisical beach town called Puerto Escondido, southeast of Mexico City.     The road there went through Oaxaca, a not-to-be-missed traditional market town.     With the rudiments of a plan in mind I ventured out, found the huge central bus station, and bought a ticket to Oaxaca.     It was an all-day bus ride to get there, and I wouldn’t have a pre-booked hotel, as I did in Mexico City, when I got there.     So now I felt my trip had actually begun.    Now I was truly traveling.   The bus ride to Oaxaca started out okay.  The bus itself was of course old and tired, a...

Jonathan and I stuffed ourselves into Ken’s VW bug and we all headed to Puerto Angel.     Lucky me, I got to sit in the front seat!     The first part of the journey – across a rolling landscape of dry red soil studded with cacti and cornfields – was like driving through a Mexican cliché.     Peasants tilling fields with old ploughs, mostly with one or two oxen or burros, but sometimes by hand; or carrying large colourful sacks of corn on their backs; the burros carried the stalks – their supper – on their backs.     It’s too easy, for those of us who have never worked at subsistence farming (or any farming), for those of us who eschew the highly mechanized approach to agri-business now prevalent in North America and Europe, not to see or appreciate just how hard and back-breaking this ‘real’ farm work is.     We see the bucolic photo-op, the ‘indigenous people in traditional clothes working on, and in harmony with, the land’.   ...

We drove from Puerto Angel to Acapulco through a flat, red, parched, and barren landscape.      Around five we pulled into a sleepy little town called Copala.     There was a basketball game going on in the main square; it looked like the entire town was there.     So we asked one of the locals if there was a hotel.     He said there wasn’t one, but there was a house where a woman rented rooms, and pointed us to a small casa where a young girl was sweeping the ‘sidewalk’.     We asked her if there were any rooms to rent, and without saying a word she led us through the front door and main room of the house, which seemed neat and clean enough, albeit very sparsely ‘furnished’, to the back ‘porch’.     The porch was roofed and contained a double bed, and the family’s stove.     So presumably it was the ‘kitchen’.     It looked clean and there were sheets on the bed.     We asked if there was a ‘...

Now seated in the cool of the evening on the roof of our little pension-hotel in Taxco.  What a delightful little town.  It reminds me of Israel with its narrow cobble-stone streets, twisting and threading their way through  old colonial buildings.  Stone stair-streets climbing the many hills in the town – no access to cars, not even inviting to cyclists – a place to stroll.   The architecture here is colonial – many buildings of white adobe with red-tiled rooves, domes, spires.  Others constructed of pink and orange rock, giving off a lovely warm glow in the late afternoon sun.  Behind me now the central cathedral, a massive semi-baroque structure of pink granite, is ringing its bells.  There are plants and flowers everywhere – bougainvillea vines growing over walls, on the sides of buildings – huge poinsettia trees and palms in inner courtyards, potted flowers on window ledges, often red geraniums, their colour...