Hey Mike, How was Mexico? – Matt Tortoise. ¿Ay Mexico? – Mick. Now that the hurricane has safely passed, the story can be told. So here, by popular demand, is my Mexican adventure...
Baja California
Ensenada has mountains on one side and the ocean on the other, with palm trees in-between and the sun overhead.
We flew into San Diego and David, our driver, picked us up and drove us to our hotel. Not only is it necessary to have a car to cover the sprawling distances in the New World, it's necessary to have a car to get around the campus of the Universidad Autonóma de Baja California and the research centre CICESE, as I subsequently discovered.
It's in California – or Baja California on the Mexican side. Our imaginations have been nurtured all our lives by that landscape without our realising. I thought of Vertigo - there are lots of mission towers just like the one where Madeleine plunged to her death - and Chinatown: near the hotel was a dried creek-bed within metres of the ocean. A job for Jake Gittes?
By coincidence, the Arts Centre opposite the hotel screened Vertigo the second night we were there, but if the chap who introduced it noticed the resemblance, I don't know, because naturally he spoke in Spanish.
Zapata and Mike on La Primera
Within walking distance of the hotel – apart from the Arts Centre – was the main street, La Primera, which is clubland and the US tourist zone, with lots of viagra pharmacies and shops selling Cuban cigars (well, I spotted one). Oh, and the brothels seemed rather slick and soulless in comparison to the ones I remember from Sam Peckinpah, although I only walked past. All the above – viagra, Cuban cigars, and brothels – are banned in the USA, which explains their popularity in Mexico. Things haven't changed that much since The Last Picture Show.
No hint of drugs (apart from viagra). The drug barons were nowhere to be seen, and everyone was gracious. Even the music pounding out of the clubs on La Primera was preferable to the UK equivalent, being Mexican.
Dancing at Parque Revolución
Better yet was Saturday afternoon at Parque Revolución where old-timers whipped the crowd into a frenzy with a selection of rancheras to taped accompaniment. Eva translated one of them for me and it made my flesh creep. I thought of Al Parry, my good friend, by coincidence at that very moment in New Orleans enjoying the Ponderosa Stomp, and, not to be too competitive, I thought that my old-timers must be out-doing his, at least in quantity.
Cervecería Aguamala, with an ocean view
After a Monday mooching around on my own, I caught up with Eva's conference. Lovely people. A mixed bunch of professors, scientists and students took me to a micro-brewery with an ocean-view. The beer was at least the equal of the Marble Brewery, my favourite micro in Manchester, and they were gracious enough, half the time, to speak in English for my benefit. The other half I was keeping up as best I could, and skipping over the ocean like a stone.
This tells you something about Mexican graciousness: perturbed by the fact that the nearest second-hand record shop appeared to be in San Francisco, I asked where do you buy vinyl discos in this town? And Miguel, a professor I'd been introduced to moments before, rescheduled his Thursday morning to take me to something he called "hard-core Ensenada", which turned out to be a flea market, and as cheap and cheerful as all flea markets but with parrots and a deal of Mexican exotica. I came away with LPs featuring Chavela Vargas and Songs of the Revolution.
Eva-mania I
Eva-mania II
And Eva's contributions to the conference were triumphant. A party of Mexican schoolchildren queued for her autograph and to have their pictures taken with her. No other speaker received this treatment. The like had not been seen since Beatle-mania: except this was Eva-mania.
The 2 hour wait to get back across the border was memorable too, but here the similarity to Hollywood ends. People were waving churros at me, not guns.
Well you did ask.
Vineyards in the Valle de Guadalupe
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