As of February 10th I’ll be doing this:
For a month. (Travelling around the countries that is, not badly drawing on maps). Hopefully I don’t get eaten by killer chickens, or sucked into the internets and converted into some sort of virus. The plan is to wander around, posing as tourists, and taking photos (perhaps of high-tech military installations). No climbing due to the injured finger.
Mexico has brightly coloured houses
Brightly coloured butterflies
And gum trees!
So this is Las Pozas de James, just outside of Xilitla, in Mexico. It’s a crazy jungle world of concrete structures covered in creeping vines, waterfalls, and faded paint in vibrant colours, half-finished projects that spiral up into nothing.
Edward James, builder of the masterpiece, was a British millionare. He mixed with artists, and writers, and smoked lots of drugs, and was growing orchids in Mexico, when his entire collection was wiped out in a cold snap. Naturally, he decided to start building enormous (long-lasting) concrete orchids. And then lots of other things too.
We were there on a Sunday, so the place was thronged with Mexican tourists, all with camcorder in hand. A lot of them, however, weren’t to keen on going on this thing – no safety railings, and a considerable dropoff. Apparently at least one person has died after falling off (but he was a gringo).
On the back of a turtle.
Staircases like this led everywhere, disappearing to who knows where – it was easy to get lost wandering around.
Finding random drawings etched in the concrete
A series of sculpted waterfalls fall
And so, while in Mexico, I started to notice that a lot of the trees were painted white for the bottom metre or so. In fact, as I paid more attention, I realised pretty nearly all of them were painted white at the bottom. I questioned this rather odd practice. Apparently, the white is lime, and it’s there to stop the ants eating the trees. Because in Mexico the ants are starving, fed up with their constant diet of tacos, cheese, and lots of meat, they hang around at the bottom of the trees waiting for leaves to fall so they can have some greenery. Presumably if the trees weren’t painted white, all of the trees would be completely stripped bare.
Of course, when you have a full time tree painting industry, you need to get the lime from somewhere. Hence, this lime factory, in San Antonio.
I did manage to find a sunflower, apparently unscathed by the ravenous ants, despite being unpainted.
Well, I’m back in the land of new cars, safety signs, and functioning keyboards. Russell the Moose received a full body search at the hands of a nice Mexican lady wearing rubber gloves, on our way out of Mexico city. And we only made it to the airport an hour before my plane was due to leave, as the bus that was supposed to take three hours to get there took four and a half instead. We toured around inland, and I was the only redhead I saw the whole time I was there – as such, I was stared at rather a lot, which was a little disconcerting. Also, I discovered that real Mexicans do not wear sombreros, they wear cowboy hats – somewhat of a revelation.