6 Jan 2010 Tuxtla Gutierrez, Mexico

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However sated you are with Mexican crooners, can I suggest you don't snap, get up from your table, find the one Doors CD among the 2000 Los Amigos Borrachos recordings, and put on nine songs in a row including fully 10 minutes of "The End"? Sure, life ain't a popularity contest, but being alone in a Mexican dive bar surrounded by increasingly disgruntled locals ain't all that either.
*prays for last chord of "Soul Kitchen"*

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"Dust In The Wind" by Kansas is great, isn't it, and their hair "styles" in the video are beyond criticism if you've ever even looked at a drug cigarette; but the question that needs to be asked is this: when they finally split, and the singer released his first solo album, did he call it "I'm Not In Kansas Anymore"? Ha! Ha!

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Otter fight!
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This afternoon's fitting of back tyre #3 - a Pirelli MT90 - onto Her Maj marks the emotional high-water mark of our visit to Tuxtla. We can leave tomorrow! And yet - what's the hurry, Fast Boy? It's really not an amazing town, but there's a half-decent bar, a very special eaterie (lamb-centred), an excellent internet place and a damn good zoo. Hotel San Carlos is all about value at $17, and on top of all that, everyone north of the 28th parallel appears to be freezing to death: here, I sometimes feel like putting my jumper on after sundown.

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12.1.10 Cordoba

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Holy Jesus, forgive me my sins. It has been 35 years since my last confession, and even then I lied about most of it in a failed attempt to make it a worthwhile 4 minutes. I did not, in fact, set fire to Mrs Colmar's shed, or indeed say the word "vagina" in front of my Auntie Beryl. I have, however, dawdled like a reefer-stunted dormouse in southern Mexico to such an extent that I must now miss out Acapulco and hammer the toll-roads to Mexico City and the north, in order to be only a month behind schedule for the US border. Will five Hail Marys do? Whaddya mean, ten? Split the diff?

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Mexico is, it turns out, bloody gigantic, and to see all the highlights in three months would be impossible. Her Maj is gagging for a new chain, and Mexico City is, I'm told, our best bet. Once I've swallowed the notion that I'll have to skip dozens of good bits, and come back to Mexico in some hazy future (because it is an unbelievably fantastic country), it all falls into place. Today we wham up the toll road to Cordoba like a naked, Vaselined Cyril Smith on the Cresta Run. The tolls are - literally - a bitch. It'll cost you the same to take a Honda C90 as a Hummer.
Once again, Lonely Planet (or Made-Up Cack Written By Cold-Sore-Ridden Vegetarian Cock-Punchers Planet, as it's known by anyone who's ever tried to find a bar in any Latin American town on the basis of an LP recommendation) proves off-target, but I find one anyway.

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