I got through 49 hours in Quito without being robbed. It couldn’t last. I am now without my Hanoi spectacles, which I need despite my fancy-pants Park Avenue laser eye surgery three years ago. So it’s back to wearing prescription sunglasses at the movies.

At least I’m not alone. The noticeboards at the hostels are full of stories of new Quito robbery techniques, the most straightforward of which involve requests strengthened by knives. More complicated manoevers involve spraying mustard on the victim and then helpfully cleaning up the ‘birdshit’ while liberating wallets. At the laundry, the girl ahead of me arranges to meet her friend after she picks up her police report. Polite notices on the lampposts offer rewards to the ‘Senor Ladrón’ who made off with a Range Rover containing fabric samples valuable only to the owner.

Bastards. I live in fear that they will swipe my notebook.

Francisco, my seatmate on the 20-hour bus ride from Campeche to Mexico City, has detailed views on my people, though I’m the first Irish person he’s actually met.
   ‘I think of the Irish as being tall, big, strong, and brutish,’ he says. Altos, grandes, fuertes y brutos. ‘Also they have blue eyes. And Greek profiles. They look like Vikings, but with dark hair.’

Greek profiles. I glance at him, but he isn’t joking.
   ‘I formed this impression when the Irish football team played Mexico. But you are skinny. So maybe this is just the men.’

Last time I followed Irish football, twelve years ago, the team was full of squat little Scottish fellows like Ray Houghton. I wonder if they’ve all been pensioned off and replaced by Pierce Brosnan lookalikes, which might renew my interest.

Francisco, a squat little fellow himself, is from the Yucatán peninsula. He is sports mad. For years, he went to a special baseball training school, and was scouted by the Texas Rangers for third base, which amusingly turns out to be a position in baseball as well as a life goal for the Dungeons and Dragons set. I glance at him again and realize that what I took for chubbiness is mostly brawn. He still has a ballplayer’s shoulders, but a few years ago he fractured one in a training session. That was the end of the professional hopes. Now he is a primary school teacher, and trains a baseball team of seven-year-olds.

He works in Campeche state, which is an eight-hour bus ride from his home outside Mérida. For the last two years, he has trained other teachers in new methods. He travels to Campeche city once a week to take classes, then organizes training courses in his own district.

    ‘It used to be that the teachers did all the talking here. We try to get them to engage the kids more through activities and play. When the kid is having fun, he’s learning. It’s hard getting the new ideas across, and I miss being in the classroom myself, but it’s a great opportunity.’

Class size varies from district to district, he says, but it’s usually 20-25 kids per class. My mother has taught classes of up to 38 five-year-olds in Ireland, with no teaching assistants, so a class of twenty sounds like money for jam by comparison.

I ask him if he misses home.
   ‘Ah, !Yucatán es lo máximo!’ he says, proudly. But the government has a policy of dispersing teachers widely, partly, he says, to encourage cultural homogeneity. Senior teachers can request placement in their hometown or state, but younger ones rarely get it. It’s a problem, he says, especially because housing and food expenses cut into a small salary for young teachers, who would otherwise live with their families.

   ‘But you’re Maya. You speak some Maya. Surely the kids in the Yucatán would be better off learning from you than from some white-bread Ladino from Mexico City or Tiajuana?’
   ‘That’s not the way the government sees it.’

In Zapatista-controlled areas outside Chiapas, villagers have refused to accept any more Spanish-speaking monoglot teachers from central headquarters. They want teachers who respect their customs and speak Tzotzil and Chol. But there aren’t any—after years of neglect and poor treatment, the literacy rate in rural Chiapas is a shameful 8%. So instead, they take international volunteers, who teach as best they can, and train local teachers as best they can. Since parliament voted against their list of requests in 2001, the Zapatistas have rejected central government’s help or interference.
   ‘It’s very sad,’ says Francisco when I ask him about this. ‘I understand why they feel so strongly. Even though I think they hurt themseleves with it.’

Francisco is cool. He is 28, but he reminds me of my parents late Sixties generation in Ireland, the first to have had wide access to education. They were grateful for the privilege too, and proud to become teachers. With luck, the Mexico City bureaucrats will screw up and assign a few Franciscos to Chiapas, where they are so badly needed.

Noting my arrival in Quito, Ecuador:

My hosts are charming Argentinians at the Casona de Mario, just outside the tourist area. They say ‘ciao’ a lot. Darío also warned me repeatedly to take taxis after dark, though it turned out he needn’t have bothered. I took a stroll at three o’clock yesterday (Sunday) and could hardly find a business open. The streets were deserted except in the gringo district, which is full of very young people discussing the anti-globalization movement over shawarma and pad thai. Under the briefest inspection, Quito reveals itself to be Not Mexico City and I couldn’t find a reason to stay out.

Back at the Casona de Mario, I discovered Joan and Melissa giving Oscars red carpet commentary on E!, and a brand-new British Vogue. I experienced fleeting moments of perfect joy until the Argentinians got sick of my rival monologue on the dresses—which I courteously delivered in Spanish in order to encourge them—and decided to switch to Ricos, Casados, y Infiel, a translated title that sums up everything about Warren Beatty’s appalling movie, Town and Country. Ungrateful philistines.

Sometimes it is difficult being an intrepid traveler forced into contact with other cultures.

It was the best of days and the worst of days to visit the famous pyramids of Teotihuacán. Yesterday was Benito Juárez’s birthday, a national holiday. It was also the spring equinox, when the sun lines up perfectly with the western wall of the great Pyramid of the Sun. Entry was free, and the site was thronged and festive. I read later that between 800,000 and 1.2 million visitors had shown up. As usual, my timing was accidental.

I arrived late in the afternoon and wasn’t challenged for a ticket, though technically non-nationals are supposed to pay. It’s not that I blend in; I hear a throaty ‘Hhhhello!’ or ‘Hhhhey jou!’ every few steps, which still annoys. There were very few tourists. We get swallowed up in the sprawl of Mexico City.

On the Avenue of the Dead most people were dressed head-to-toe in white, a million vestal virgins out to worship the sun. By wearing white and hailing the first rays of the spring equinox, they hope to be filled with good vibrations and energy for the rest of the year. I knew nothing of this custom and was wearing all black, as usual. As a concession, I bought a white baseball cap, which at least deflected the blinding sunlight.

The air was thick with copal incense. On each of the smaller pyramids, men with red headbands blew into conch shells. At each mournful cry, the crowds stood and raised both hands towards the sun in the southwest. A Mexican wave, I realized. Compact soldiers were posted on every corner. From high on a sacrificial altar, one aimed a souvenir bow-and-arrow at me, then clapped his own heart and laughed.

There were knots of dancers with bells strapped to their feet and huge feathered headdresses. There were army jeeps, Red Cross ambulances, and water trucks handing out sponsored bagfuls too precious in this heat to use as water bombs, though it was tempting. The entire site was littered with discarded water bags and the pyramid steps popped and squirted as they burst.

The crowds were too thick to get near the Pyramid of the Sun. From half a mile away, it looked like an elaborate cake topped with hundreds and thousands. From a quarter of a mile, I could see the little sprinkles moving slowly on the steep steps. The line going up crawled. No one wanted to come down, so I climbed the Pyramid of the Moon instead. The pyramid steps are a mystery to me: I’m a good foot taller than an 8th century Aztec, and long-legged to boot, but I have to bend a full 90 degrees to climb these stairs. Palenque was the same. Why so steep? How did they manage?

It was incredibly hot at 3.30, and the white clothes were now covered in brown dust from the swirls that kept whipping us. Still people were cheerful. Next to me, a group of bare-chested boys beat hand-drums and sang ‘King goff thee bongo’, a Manu Chao song.

I could see the whole way down the Avenue of the Dead, two miles or so, an elegant Broadway flanked by pyramids. It was good, I thought, not to be wandering Teotihuacán alone, communing with Mexica ghosts. Here were the descendents of the builders, thousands of them, scrambling over newly excavated sites, dropping litter everywhere, singing, and picnicking. The city was alive again. Down below I could make out self-styled shamans moving censers of healing copal incense over the bodies of the afflicted, or the merely discontented. I’d seen similar ceremonies in Maya churches in Chiapas; here they were a more light-hearted. Not a scrap of Christianity remained among these ad hoc sun-worshippers, at least for one day.

As evening drew in the sun focused like a spotlight on the western wall of the Pyramid of the Sun. The little white cake sprinkles saluted it energetically. Sadly, we were thrown out long before sunset, and our dusty caravan snaked back to the big city. Still, in these grim days, I was glad to celebrate spring at all, and it was a good end to a stint in Mexico.

Quito, Ecuador tomorrow.

Of the hundreds of people I’ve met on this trip, almost without exception my favorites have been New Yorkers, or at least New Yorkish. It shows how provincial I am, I suppose.

Kelly and Amy adopted me in San Cristóbal. You wouldn’t guess from Kelly’s studenty demeanor that she’s a senior public defender; three months in Guatemala has dissolved the stress of working with rapists and murderers every day back home. Amy, it turns out, is a Brooklyn Heights neighbor of mine. She advocates for immigrants and refugees, and we spent a happy evening complaining about John Ashcroft and the INS, and swapping notes on our favorite neighborhood spots.
   ‘You go to Ferdinando’s too? What about Frank’s Lounge?’

After San Cristóbal we headed to Palenque together. The heat was a shock after the chill of the mountains, and I felt submerged in the thick air. We caught a taxi out of town, where foliage cover promised more bearable temperatures.

El Panchan is one of those self-proclaimed jungle paradises that’s carefully nowhere. There were few indications that I was not back in southern Thailand. Rakshita’s, a vegetarian restaurant, offered fruit smoothie combinations with gringo names. Signs invited guests to hatha yoga and kabbala chanting, full body massage and ‘Maya’ tarot card readings. There was carrot cake for sale. As we looked around doubtfully, gray-bearded Keith bounded over with a history.

   ‘Don Moises, the founder here, he was a real visionary. Fifteen years ago this was just a field. The mature trees were here, but otherwise it had been cleared. So he bought the land and reforested it. And the birds came back—stuff grows so fast here—and the howler monkeys and spider monkeys showed up. He divided it into parcels of land for his kids, and they each built something a bit different in style. But it all hangs together. Rakshita’s is the vegetarian, spiritual resort. Then there’s the Italian restaurant over there by those cabañas…’

Certainly, it was beautiful. The restaurant deck was on the second floor, and the open sides looked out on vines, ginger, jacaranda, and palms. There was a small meditation temple down the path, and groves of wooden cabañas hidden by trees. Budget travelers swung in bright hammocks. Birds and butterflies fluttered.

The staff spoke English automatically. I hadn’t seen this anywhere else in Mexico. Some could barely speak Spanish; they had been recruited from the guests, who themselves were from the International Traveler Tribe. Keith was typical, an eager old hippie here to do some ‘inner work’.
   ‘It’s where I need to be right now,’ he said, mistily. ‘I don’t know how long I’m here for, but every day I give thanks for the healing energy of this place.’

My lawyer companions nodded politely and turned back to their smoothies.

There were dozens of young Germans and Dutch, and far too many blond dreadlocks and body piercings.
   ‘I feel old,’ said Amy. At the next table, a baby-faced boy with matted dreads held two young women in thrall with his manliness.
    ‘And when I woke up the second bottle was totally empty. Guess I musta just started slammin’ into it right after the guys left. So I woke up, and I’d puked under the hammock, and my dog was eating the stuff…’
   ‘Ewwwww,’ said the girls, and giggled.
   ‘Oh for Jesus’s sake,’ I said, twirling my gringo spaghetti.
   ‘Shush,’ said Amy, ‘the boy is courting.’

I went to yoga that evening, as an exercise in community bonding, and also to exorcise the phantom limb of my backpack. This was kabbala yoga, whatever that was. I arrived late and missed the introduction, and so assumed it was little more than a gentle beginner’s class with not much attention to form. But then, after final relaxation, when we lay floppy and spreadeagled on the floor, the teacher announced it was time for chanting.
   ‘If you have any kind of Judaeo-Christian background this chant will be fermiliar to you. I’m going to chant “For Thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory” in Hebrew. If you’re already fermiliar with it in that context, you need to understand that here it goes beyond that. For Thee is Thine, and Thine is Thou! The light of God shines in you! Imagine it as a ball of light gathering through your body and exploding out your third eye as I chant!’ she said, smiling at each one of us lying in corpse pose.

Flake, I thought, and wished Graham Greene could hear this bollocks.

Then she began to chant as if possessed, a woman wailing for her demon-lover. When she finished, she asked us to join her in a five-minute round of loud, free-form ‘Amens’. The secular Teutons on the ground responded with embarrassed mumbles. Her face shone as she dedicated our beautiful practice to her favorite angel, Azrael. When I got up, my phantom backpack was still strapped on tight.

We left our new age Eden early the following morning and walked the four kilometers to the ruins before it got too hot. We were stopped three times by local who shook little ziplock bags furtively.
   ‘Mushrooms, señoritas?’

But the Palenque ruins made up for the sideshow, and when I saw them rise from the jungle I forgot the philistinism I’d brought to Angkor Wat. Where the Angkor temples are domineering religious monuments, at Palenque you can hear the echoes of a busy, industrious people going about life in a beautiful capital 1400 years ago. It appeals to my urban instincts. The palace, the burial pyramids, the ball park, the temples, the aquaduct, the apartment buildings—they are all set like jewels against dark jungle-covered hills. The vision is great, but the scale is human. I am jealous of Ronald Wright, who writes of his first visit as a student in 1968, when he was advised to camp in the Pyramid of Inscriptions for safety and was kept awake by a violent thunderstorm flashing over the pyramids.

We were forbidden to follow the jungle path beyond the Temple of Jaguars. ‘Bandits,’ says the guard sternly. I hear that whenever I try to stray in Chiapas. Latin America, so far, does not feel as safe as Southeast Asia. Instead, we followed a back road to the museum, past the Cascadas de la Reina, a series of perfect scalloped jungle pools filled by small limestone falls. Ronald Wright describes meeting a group of stoners staring into those pools twenty years ago. They are still there, presumably watching a procession of Maya kings emerge from the water like Ursula Andress in Dr. No.

When we catch a rickety VW bus back to town, one of the them is on it, glazed, matted, and tattoed. He is slumped across the seat and smiles a slurred greeting. There is no room for Amy.
    ‘Close-eh yourrr legs!’ says the Mexican opposite, with disapproval. The stoner snaps them shut, and she squeezes in. Mushrooms, señor?

Our stoner encounters don’t end there. Back at El Panchan, I refuse to get off the bed until it stops being so damn hot, but Amy and Kelly venture out.
   ‘We met the weirdest person,’ Amy says when they return. ‘I’m not sure if it was male or female. We were walking past the cabañas down the path, and someone called “Excuuuuuse me. Are you afraid of moffs?”
   ‘A really odd accent,’ Kelly confirms.
   ‘I didn’t even know what she was saying. We had to go into her room—it was a woman, I think—and set free this butterfly she’d caught.’
   ‘A moff,’ said Kelly.

I felt hunted.
   ‘Did she have a brown Ziggy Stardust shag? And a very strong London accent?’
    ‘How did you know?’
    ‘That’s Ziggy. The one I told you about from the youth hostel in Oaxaca. So she still came to Chiapas despite all my propaganda about Zapatista rebels machine-gunning tourists in the streets.’

It is time for me to get off the International Traveler Tribe circuit.

My friend Ramón, who grew up in the Dominican Republic, writes in response to last week’s post about Graham Greene:

On a whim I decided to get my hair colored bright red. As Cece mixed smelly chemicals of a tint not found in nature, I asked if she was from the town. She snorted, and I looked again. She was tall, lithe, and stunningly pretty. Her sort had never been immortalized in nearby Palenque.
    ‘I’m Honduran. I’ve been here for nine years.’

Did she like Mexico?
   ‘Depends. There are some good people, some very bad people here, you know? Hondurans are more open, more fun-loving. I miss home.’

   ‘Things were pretty tough in Honduras nine years ago,’ I said, as delicately as I could.
   ‘They were terrible. So many people died in that war. My family lost everything. Our house, everything, was taken from us. We had to leave. Like all the rest.’
   ´So they’re here now, your family?’
   ‘My parents moved back to Honduras a few years ago. They couldn’t cope with Mexico. We never meant to come here, we were going to the States. We found this guy, a coyote, to get us over the border. But he disappeared with most of the money we had left, and we were stuck here. I’ve been very unlucky in my life. There are bad people everywhere—you really have to watch out.’

How did Hondurans feel about Americans these days?
   ‘I’ve met some very good Americans. And many that scare me. They don’t know, they don’t understand a thing about war, and now they’re going to take us to war again in two weeks. That government is crazy, bloodthirsty, and the people don’t know enough.’
   ‘Well, they know a tiny bit of war. Not like yours, but September 11th was frightening on a different scale.’
   ‘And September 11th was just like my country, because it was the civilians who got killed. So many innocent people—they’re the ones who get hurt in war. They’re the ones who suffered in Honduras. It scares me, because I don’t think you can understand how terrible it is until you’ve seen it. And the Americans haven’t really seen it yet. They look away, always.’

She painted my scalp the color of blood.

‘You’re better off here than in New York. And maybe you can go home to your family after your vacation. That’s what I’d like to do.`
   ‘Back to Honduras?’
   ‘Yes. The problem is I’m married here. To a very good man—we’ve been together three years—but his family hates me.`
   ‘Why? They’re not pleased he has a beautiful wife?’
   ‘They hate me because I’m not Mexican. They try to make him jealous, they tell him I go out with other men. Honestly, I don’t want to have children, because they told me straight out that if I have children I’m never taking them back to Honduras. They’ll belong to him and to them. And he’s a good guy, but he’s very influenced by his family. They tell him he should have married someone better looking, a Mexican. I wouldn’t mind, but he’s no looker. He’s ugly. But he has a good heart.’
   ‘Maybe you should move to another town. Neutral, no parents.’
   ‘I would, but he won’t go. We already separated over his parents once. I’m afraid that next time it will be for good. And it’s crazy, we don’t have to be here. I could open a business anywhere. Here I have to work for someone, and I make $20 a week. But I don’t have Mexican papers.’
    ‘It should be easy to get papers, no? You’re married.’
    ‘You need cash for bribes. It’s easy for you Europeans, I think. But Mexicans are really hard on Central Americans. They always want to be cosy with the US and distant from us, like we’re the dirty cousins. It’s just the same as with my in-laws.’
    ´Can you set up your own business unofficially?’
    ‘Yes, I’m planning to. All the jobs in San Cristóbal pay really badly, so it’s the only way to make money. In Cancún I made a bit more money, because foreigners tip. But Mexicans never do. They’re tight-fisted. Not like Hondurans.’

She asked how much a haircut cost in New York. Anywhere between $30 and $400, I told her, but easily a hundred. Just for a cut. She goggled. And an apartment? Two thousand a month for a smallish one-bedroom. These numbers made no sense to her. She told me of a friend of hers who had gone to Chicago to work as a pedicurist. She made $600 a week, easy money, on the tips. Cece thought she might still go to the States if her in-laws got too much. She’d leave Mexico behind, ditch the husband, and save save save for two years. Then she’d buy a restaurant in Honduras and go back where she belonged.

   ´Maybe then I could have kids. But I’m so unlucky, they’ll probably blow up Chicago the day I get there.’

Mexico City was too macho for me to hit the bars alone at night, and I’m scared of mariachis, so I caught up on the movies instead. For a few dollars I passed each evening as respectably as any spinster-governess, and got the fix I’d missed since July.

At Gangs of New York, I restrained myself from clocking the gentleman behind me, who spent three hours elaborating loudly on his explanation that in Ireland the Protestants and Catholics had always been at war over transubstantiation, and that Martin Scorcese felt deeply about this due to his Irish background. But the story was enough to carry me, and I was transported when the peasant women getting off the coffin ships in Chelsea muttered Hail Marys in Irish.

S&eacute do bheatha Mhuire
At&aacute a l&aacuten do ghr&aacutesta
T&aacute an Tiarna leat
Agus is beannaithe th&uacute idir mn&aacute

I hadn’t heard this prayer since primary school, and it was eerie to hear it my first night in Mexico, the first country I’ve been to more Catholic than my own.

At Chicago, I wanted to stand and cheer at the opening performance of All That Jazz. I would have watched it five times in a row, not least for Catherine Zeta-Jones’ stylish bob. And I would have watched it again in place of any of Ren&eacutee Zellwegger’s numbers, just because I was plagued by The Hamster Dance whenever she appeared.

I was interested in Two Weeks Notice because the production had closed downtown Brooklyn for a month last year. One night I spoke to a Teamster who was waiting in his truck for the big love scene by the bridge to finish. It was an okay job, he said. Sandra Bullock was pretty nice. In Mexico, I wanted to see her wander around Coney Island and Brooklyn Heights onscreen, and maybe glimpse Smith Street. As far as I could judge through a pounding headache, the film was a perfectly competent chick flick, with some chemistry between the stars and a script that someone had put through a few drafts. The romantic comedy algorithm functioned smoothly. Unfortunately, I had to leave halfway through due to sudden altitude sickness, which is what happens when you fly from sea-level to Mexico City. It wasn’t intended as a film critique, though I’m sure those who heard me barfing in the garbage can outside the cinema door wondered.
   ´Must be pregnant,’ whispered the ushers, while I heaved.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding made me wish I’d timed my altitude sickness better. This is the biggest-grossing romantic comedy of all time? Bigger than Pretty Woman? I am horrified. It was storyboarded on an Etch-a-Sketch, has a stick figure for a leading man, and almost every single scene was done better in some other movie (including in The Frickin’ Mirror Has Two Faces). People. Please. Don’t rent this bollocks. Get Monsoon Wedding instead. Or even Moonstruck, if you must have broad, hyphenated-American humor. This level of artistic achievement should be stuck on a fridge with an alphabet magnet. It should not turn into the highest-grossing romantic comedy of all time. I wish Rita Wilson had blown the production money on several Humvees and another Chanel suit.

Frida was cinematic redemption, by comparison. I saw it the day I visited the Frida Kahlo Museum and the studio she shared with Diego Rivera (actually, two studios joined by a footbridge, which is the best professional/romantic set up I’ve seen since Woody Allen and Mia Farrow bought apartments facing each other across Central Park). It was well-acted and beautiful to look at. Looking back, now that I’ve seen Mexican schoolgirls, even the school scenes were convincing, though at the time I laughed out loud at Salma Hayek’s overripeness.

Mexico is as movie-mad as it book-mad. In Puebla, I found an independent film caf&eacute, with a selection of titles for rent and sale that was extraordinary in a smallish town. In the evenings they showed art films for the price of a coffee. The owner was a middle-aged woman in a sun-dress, and her staff were true buffs. She had been running it for eighteen years.

   ‘I think it’s the only place like this in the country. It’s not a business, you know. It’s very difficult to get the tapes. The people support it as best they can, and Puebla has a good artistic community. Still, I know that every time I show a movie for free, that’s another one that won’t be rented. But what can I do? It’s a love affair, the cine del autor. ‘

She shrugged. The caf&eacute seats were director’s chairs, and they had hand-stencilled the names of the greats. I sat in Fellini’s chair and watched Train de Vie, a French movie with Spanish subtitles (a bad one, unfortunately, of that unsettling genre, Holocaust slapstick). At the end, when I was saying goodbye, the owner came over again.

   ‘When you go back to New York, say hello to Woody Allen for us. Maybe in Michael’s bar on Monday nights. They might hate him the United States, but in Puebla we still love him like Chaplin.’

Chiapas has me spooked just a little, so I booked a package tour to the Sumidero Canyon instead of my usual cheapskate local bus effort. As the minibus twisted down 3,000 meters over 40-odd kilometers, I distracted myself from carsickness by interpreting the swooshy, swervy Portuguese improvisations of my Brazilian seatmate and the sturdy Spanish of the Zurich woman on the other side. With my brogue in the mix, we made a good study of how global communication might have turned out had the conquistadors been better than plundering brutes.

We were to take a boat ride through the canyon. This river, symbol of Chiapas, wasn’t navigable until a hydroelectric dam was built in 1980. Now a huge Soviet realist monument to the 20,000 workers who built the plant over eight years stands at one end. Presumably, many have not been workers since.

At one point the river is 100 meters deep and the walls of the are 1,000 meters high. It is spectacular. It is beautiful. It is hard to appreciate sitting in the back of a bright yellow fiberglass launch powered by two loud Yamaha engines. There were two dozen of us in matching yellow life-jackets, and if I were one of the many vultures wheeling overhead, I would have dive-bombed the boat in aesthetic protest. For my next trick: jet-skiing in the Gal&aacutepagos.

The driver zoomed down the river loudly and efficiently, cutting the engine to show us spider monkeys and pelicans fleeing. We u-turned into caves that had oxidized into fabulous colors and did fancy snowboard stops to look at ancient rock formations that looked like a Christmas tree. There were too many vultures to be worth a stop, though our squeals at the first crocodile convinced the guide we’d tip more if he stopped at each ancient, basking hide. They looked happy enough, safe in a national park far from Herm&eacutes.

The cormorants reminded me of kayaking in New York’s East River and I wished I were paddling around the watchful crocs. Instead I felt as I always do on a guided tour, slack-jawed, passive, and preoccupied with the availability of ice-cream. Getting a view like this without hiking or paddling for it is like inheriting vast wealth: it makes you jaded and it’s bad for the soul.

What I really need, I decided, is a vast team of camouflauged porters and armed bodyguards who will trail me, hidden, through the untamed world. They will stash mountain bikes, maps, picnics, kayaks, tents, hammocks, horses, trail blazes, and clean socks and knickers along my route. They will also plant appropriately rustic local conveyances at strategic spots, renting chickens for authenticity if necessary. They will rearrange market days for my arrival, and organize DSL connectivity in every shack. They will coach old-timers to share fascinating stories, and ensure that all Internet caf&eacute owners are fabulously handsome.

Only then can my free spirit move in peace.

An admirable decision. Except I don’t know the English for empanada (‘embreaded’?). And each time local tarts (no, not empanadas, silly) address Theroux with a ‘Hey, Mister!’, I am jolted out of Mexico, and plonked in 1930s MGM Brooklyn.

So unless you can send me suggestions to replace taco, mariachi, ceviche, and tamale, you’ll have to put up with my hard-won Spanish on this site.