23.11.09 Palenque, Mexico.

If you spent the late 1980's in Britain drinking newly-imported, skinny-necked 355ml bottles of Corona at 2 quid a pop, you were, quite transparently, a twat. A worthless, pink-shirted bozo, suckling at Lord Fashion's distended purple teat with all the grace and imagination of a speed bump.

Forgive yourself - everybody else has - and pull up a chaise-longue while I tell you about the 940ml bottles of Sol that are available in Roadside Bar Mexico, in this, the Year Of Our Lord 2009, for one pound and twenty-five pence. Try drinking one of these babies outta the bottle! They look, do they not, like particularly beautiful pregnant women. Stout with hope and promise!

To clarify - if you were a Corona or Sol bottle-sipper in Britain in the 1980's, you were a social and intellectual homunculus. If you continued into the 1990's, you were, and remain, a whey-faced boob, no doubt hectored nightly by your disillusioned, running-to-fat bride.
---

36 hours in Mexico's Chiapas region have passed, and I'm doolally with excitement about the place. After the skinny little isthmus of Central America, Chiapas seems huge, with endless directional options compared to the "keep going west-north-west" feel of the preceding six countries.

My first-impression-meter of a country has been tweaked by now to respond to these four stimuli:
1. What's the border like?
2. How much is the lager?
3. Wozzit look like?
4. Good or bad cops?
So here we go. The Guat/Mex border at Las Mesillas is the quickest and easiest I've been through anywhere. I recommend Sunday lunchtime. There's a sliding scale of deposits you "have to" pay on entering Mexico, based on the age of your vehicle, to deter you from selling it. 1998 = $300!

The customs guy tells me this is payable only in cash. I feign poverty, employing the "pockets-out" gesture. He nods and we continue with the paperwork.
"All done!" he smiles, after 10 minutes.
"Er - what about the $300?" I remind him, keen as beans to be legal (I've bought Mexican insurance off of the internob - if I'm stopped at the lights in Mexico without insurance and a juggernaut smashes into the back of me, whatever is left of me goes to prison, hilariously).
"Ah, sod it. Happy trails!" he responds in Mexican. What a country!

Onto point 2; I think 75p a pint is, in 2009, almost too small an amount.

Point 3; It looks bloody amazing. Bloody. Amazing!

And finally; I've been stopped once today (at one of four roadblocks), and they were charming, friendly and by-the-book; just wanted to see my passport.

4 out of 4. MEXICO IS AWESOME.
---