Underwater Adventure

Countries tend to blend into one another at their frontiers, and in terms of scenery that is certainly true arriving in Belize from Mexico. However, in all other respects, the two places couldn't be more different on first meeting. Apart from the peculiarity of hearing English spoken again, or at least a barely comprehensible creole variant on English, the whole atmosphere of the place seems positively Caribbean rather than Central American. Perhaps that will all change as we venture inland, but life on the Cayes (the island archipelago) is all rastas, rum and reggae music. The people are distinctly creole looking hereabouts and their houses of a style I've not encountered before - gabled buildings of clapper board, frequently raised on stilts and entered via an external stairway that gives access to a shady first floor verandah where you can hang your hammock. They even have a picture of the Queen on Belizean banknotes, smiling out at the laidback life here from a strangely youthful looking face.

We've been chilling for a couple of days on Caye Caulker, a small island behind the Great Belizean Barrier Reef. This place used to be a hippy hangout in the 60s, and is now a centre for some of the best diving and snorkeling in the World. Not being a great fan of swimming underwater I was a little apprehensive about giving snorkeling a go, but I took the proverbial plunge and it's been a hoot. Swimming with nurse sharks and sting rays, as well as vast shoals of indeterminate multi-coloured fish is an experience that makes you want to go home and start studying marine biology. As you cruise around the coral reef in a sail boat drinking rum punch on your way home to the accompaniment of a setting sun, you have to wonder how you're ever going to return to normal working life and the great British weather when this big adventure is finally over.

Lost Cities In The Jungle

Leaving the Chiapas Highlands and entering the flat, humid, formerly inpenetrable plains of the Yucatan, you encounter a bewildering array of Mayan cities lost in the jungle. This area and neighbouring Belize were among the last parts of Central America to be subjugated by the Spanish, and until recently they remained difficult to access from the rest of the country. Even now there is a distinctive feel to the place and a noticeably different cuisine with strong citrus flavours in the cooking.

It's a hot, sweaty and godforsaken place for any civilisation to flourish, but nonetheless, the Mayan cities thrived here long after they had collapsed and been abandoned in their heartlands of Guatamala, and they were still occupied when the Spanish turned up to snuff them out in the mid-sixteenth century. The result is a remarkable collection of sites, with stone pyramids poking out through enveloping jungle at Palenque, and an enormous ballcourt at Chichen Itza with relief carvings showing the sacrificial execution of players at the end of the game - nobody is too sure nowadays whether it was the winners or losers who got the chop.

However, the most perfect location of all for a city must at Tulum, where a smaller fortified site occupies a promontory overlooking the Carribean. The sea here is pure aquamarine, rolling up to embrace an endless stretch of pure white sand. On first arrival we all just gasped with astonishment at the sight of something so inviting, and pretty much lost interest in developing our knowledge of the Mayans any further.

Fried Green Grasshoppers

I definitely haven´t been experimenting enough recently with exotic cuisines, so when I arrived in the stunningly beautiful old colonial city of Oaxaca I made a beeline for the lady selling fried grasshoppers. I bought a mixed selection, though the size doesn´t seem dicernibly to effect the taste - salty and mildly spicy. The larger ones are perhaps a tad crunchier though. All in all, grasshoppers are not nearly as bad as you might imagine, though ultimately you can see why tacos and tortilla chips have given them the edge in the Mexican food export market. Oaxaca is also home to mezcal, chocolate and perhaps the best ice cream in Mexico. And if you ever pass this way don´t miss the chance to try 'tuna' sorbet. No, my Larium malaria tablets aren´t finally sending me out of my mind, 'tuna' in these parts is the unbelievably delicious fruit of the prickly pear cactus.

You reach Oaxaca from Mexico City by crossing some real mountains, something I´ve missed these past months. The town sits at the meeting place of the Sierra Madre ranges and in a sense is a gateway to true Central America. Moving onwards into the troubled state of Chiapas you push over 2000m passes to leave behind cactus forests and welcome the jungle. Chiapas is the land of the Maya, the area of Mexico least penetrated by the Spanish and a bastion of indigenuous Indian culture and beliefs. The Zapatista rebels seem to have quietened down of late, though this still remains the poorest and least developed area of the country. Perhaps surprisingly, therefore, the main centre at San Christobal de las Casas greets the visitor as a vibrant, cosmopolitan town, full of funky cafes and restaurants. It´s a solid, low-rise settlement of brightly coloured houses clustered tightly together as though seeking shelter from inclement weather, and as such it has something about it that reminds me a little of towns I saw in Tibet. Perhaps it is also the fact that the town sits at high altitude within a mountain valley and that the local people seem so predominantly Indian in their appearance and dress.

San Christobal is a great place to kick back for a couple of days and base oneself for visits out to local villages. In some of these settlements the ancient Mayan beliefs continue to hold sway to this day, seemingly barely touched by the hand of the Church, for all that you will find a church sitting proudly on every village square. The external vestiges of Christianity have simply been grafted on top of much older beliefs which continue to shape the world view of the villagers. At San Juan Chamula the cardinal points of the church symbolise the four points of the Mayan cosmos, with the fifth point the very centre of the church, and thus the centre of the World. Local women sacrifice chickens in the church to appease ancient gods that these days mascerade as statues of the saints, and the church is furnished to reflect a view of a world formed by opposite forces - light and dark, day and night, sun and moon, life and the underworld, male and female, etc. It's quite remarkable to see.

We've been in Oaxaca and San Christobal for the Easter celebrations and I'd forgotten just how much fun these tend to be in the Spanish speaking world. The last few days have been one long fiesta of fireworks, processions and musical performances in the plazas. I've seen my first ever street performance on massed xylophones and witnessed dozens of couples ballroom-dancing latino style under the stars to the accompaniment of roving bands. Mexico is superb. I haven´t yet bought myself a sombrero, but it can only be a matter of time...

Mexico City

It might be the most populated and one of the most polluted cities in the World, but Mexico City is smart and cool with it. After the privations of West Africa it seems remarkably sophisticated, with sparkling shops, a superb public transport system and the dinkiest green and white VW Beetle taxis buzzing around everywhere. It also has more museums than I´ve seen in virtually the whole of the rest of the trip put together. Throw in a few margharita cocktails and guacamole filled tortillas and you have the makings of a real good times kind of a town. I´m loving it.

Mexico City was the capital of the Aztec Empire long before Hernan Cortes arrived with his army on conquistadores in 1521 to consign the Aztecs to history. Although the heart of the old city is remarkably Spanish and reminiscent of Madrid in terms of its architecture, it overlays the old Aztec sites. In fact there are Aztec traces wherever you look, not only in the faces of the people, but also in the cuisine, the names of Metro stations and some of the traditions of the street. Visiting the impressive Anthropological Museum you are really struck by the sophistication of pre-colombian societies in Central America, whether in terms of their mastery of astronomy and mathematics, or their ability to produce highly intricate and beautiful objects without the use of metal tools. You also get an insight into the cruelty of these cultures which organised themselves to fight war on a semi-permanent basis and which practiced widespread human sacrifice as an aspect of their religious beliefs. Tomorrow we head away from the museums to explore the ancient cities themselves, starting with Teotihuacan, whose Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon rival those on Ancient Egypt in scale.

Mexico City was also one of the great centres of Art Deco in the 1920s and 30s, and is home to a fabulous array of stylish buildings and interiors that would make it a perfect setting for an Agatha Cristie movie. Much of this movement was associated with the political left, with a school of muralists coming to prominence in the city who decorated the interiors of many public and government buildings with images associated with Zapata and the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The foremost of these artists, Diego Rivera, has really appealed to my imagination somehow, and I´ve been trailing around the city searching out his murals and paintings. As Chairman of the Mexican Communist Party he also arranged political asylum for Trotsky in the city in the late 1930s. You can still visit Trotsky´s house and see the study in which he has hacked to death with an icepick by an agent of Stalin´s in 1939. They´re a bloodthirsty lot these Mexicans.