The Aztec transformation from humble nomadic warriors into one of Mesoamerica’s most complex civilisations is a story as fantastic as it is legendary. This comprehensive feature explores traces the rise of Mexico’s last great imperial force.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Mexico’s famous obsession with death is celebrated with gusto each year on 1-2 November, The Day of the Dead, when families gather to remember lost loved ones, honour ancestral ties, or otherwise throw a roaring good fiesta in the local cemetery.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Emerging onto the Paseo Reforma after a late breakfast, I walked into a spirited and rather unusual protest. A band of disgruntled farmers from Veracruz had taken to the streets in an on-going feud with the Mexican government – stark naked. This is direct action at its best.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
The life of a travel writer involves constant transit. Even after I have returned home after some weeks on the road, I often wake up in the night and wonder where I am. Travel writing, guidebook writing, involves constant change. Life takes on a rapidly shifting, scenic quality – always perceived from the outside. This is the essence of this piece.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
In the UK, the term ‘Trotskyite’ is usually a masked insult reserved for militant Trade Unionists, political dinosaurs, or a certain type of scruffy idealist, usually attired in a beret and German Army shirt (these are a dying breed, admittedly). But at a small museum in Mexico City, it’s considered a compliment of the highest order.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
The Zócalo is overrun with Death.
All around us skeletons are grinning and dancing and engaged in endless mocking diversions. A metro train is packed full of ghoulish spectres and the living are fighting to get on board. Death is making tortillas and her starving family are waiting to be fed. A band of farmers have [...]
Saturday, August 15, 2009
One morning, I take a trip out to the entertainment district – the Zona Rosa – the Pink Zone. There’s plenty of big name restaurants here with big, bright, boasting signs shouting loudly for all the plastic and neon they’re worth. But really it’s rather drab and commercial and hideously overpriced.
Still, the gringos [...]
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Everything clicking into place now. Patterns are forming… lists, pages, chapters. My mind is settling into the task, the routine. Mexico City – with all its wonderful and monstrous machinations – is taking over. This is the 24-hour aspect to the job. The constant working of ideas. Endless thinking, analysing, planning. I wake up and [...]
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Time to survey the hotels in the Centro Historico. This is Mexico City at its oldest and grandest, where Latin America’s largest Cathedral overlooks the world’s second largest public square, overflowing with Catholic exuberance.
Nearby, enormous pillared structures house the offices of power, reminiscent of some great European palace. Between these imposing edifices, endless colonial mansions [...]
Friday, August 14, 2009
Most people reckon the life of a guidebook writer is charmed, and in many ways it is. But let’s not overlook the work involved. On a typical day, the guidebook writer will visit 20-30 hotels and restaurants before retiring to his chosen lodgings for an evening of paperwork. These notes were penned during my time in Mexico City, after a day in the working class suburb of Tabacalera.
Interamericana is an intrepid new travel blog about the people and places surrounding the Carretera Interamericana - a 6000 kilometre stretch of highway that links Mexico and the seven nations of Central America. Created by guidebook writer and journalist Richard Arghiris, Interamericana combines photography, video and the best in alternative travel writing.
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Mr Edgar ‘Rasta’ Coulsen is a native of the Caribbean town of San of Juan del Norte – an end of the world settlement perched at the mouth of the Rio San Juan. In this short video interview, Interamericana talked to him about the changes that have taken place in the region since his childhood.
One day, me and my compadres took a trip up the Río Istiam – a tranquil waterway that meanders inland at the isthmus between Ometepe’s two volcanoes, Concepción and Maderas. The river is home to abundant bird life, caimans, turtles and herds of indolent livestock. Many thanks to Jennifer Kennedy and the three Matts – Barwick, Hicks and Ashford, who appear in this video clip.
Via Via is something of a León institution, attracting Nicas and foreigners alike with its buzzing multi-cultural atmosphere, dirt-cheap bottles of rum and rousing Friday night music sets. Amalgama, featured in this video, are an institution in themselves, playing everything from rock ballads to crowd-pleasing revolutionary classics. In this clip they are accompanied by itinerant musician Richard Crandell and his Zimbabwean imbira.
As a poor chele, or white boy, rhythm was never going to come naturally to me. Nonetheless, my militant salsa instructor, Angel, patiently tried to teach me to dance. And when he could be patient no longer, he simply ordered me to the nearest disco…
Granada’s international poetry festival kicked off yesterday, 14th February 2010, with a belting set from Katia Cardenal. Performing at the Plaza Independencia, Katia sang a mixture of rousing folk songs and revolutionary ballads, including a superb homage to the Miskito people of the Atlantic coast (2nd song featured, actually in the Miskito language). Turn up the volume, pour yourself a rum, kick back and enjoy…
The land is scorched and broken. Piles of dark volcanic rubble litter the scene, yet to be properly eroded by sun, wind and rain. Years from now, these rocks will be transformed into fine, fertile silt. But for today, dead, black lava fields cling to the slopes like some monstrous reptilian hide – coarse, inscrutable, alien…
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Wednesday, September 30, 2009
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