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...