Mexico:Adventures in Paradise

by Glen Strachan

I am often asked by fellow-Europeans - "Why do you choose to live in southern Mexico?"

The answer is simple. Flora and I visited the mountain city of Oaxaca, planning a three week holiday which formed part of a longer visit to the USA. After four days of that holiday, we moved into our present home in this beautiful city and here we still live, four years later. Holidays of course are quite a different proposition. The twelve hour flight from Europe makes for a very taxing vacation start and finish. Much of Mexico is high above sea level and the thin air can also be a fatigue factor for the first week of your stay. In simple terms, Mexico is a great destination for Europeans with a few weeks to spare but it makes little sense to travel all that distance for a few days.

Mexican road hazard

Mexico is a good jumping-off point for a Central American or South American trip but, if you do wish to include Mexico on a round-the-world ticket, you must fly up to Los Angeles before continuing to New Zealand or Australia. Cancun is a popular destination for US tourists - mostly because a visit there carries exotic kudos that, say, Florida resorts do not offer.

Otherwise Cancun and the popular US coastal destinations offer like accommodation and services at a similar cost. One advantage for Cancun is the prospect of visiting some Mayan ruins which lie within a four hour road journey from the coastal resort. Rural areas are generally more fun than Mexico City which, like many other large cities, can be dangerous for the unwary. The city has many interesting galleries and a wonderful natural history museum but do avoid hailing taxis in the streets - you could be heading for trouble.

Usually the further south you travel in Mexico, the less that area will be influenced by our large northern neighbour. If you want to add a Mexican trip to a visit to the USA, I strongly recommend that you try to arrange your flight to Mexico City from San Antonio, Texas. It is a short flight, quite inexpensive and will also give you a little taste of the Tex-Mex flavour of the wonderfully cosmopolitan city of San Antonio. David Gourley wrote about ethical tourism and in the case of Mexico; there are reasons not to visit, but I believe there are many more reasons to come here.

So why my title ? Why adventures? One way to describe the mood of Mexico is to compare daily life in this country with its most durable musical form, Mariachi. Just as the notes of the Mariachi are tantalisingly off-key and yet fit the songs perfectly, so it is with almost everything else 'South of the Border'. Life in Mexico is always far from predictable.

Much of the flavour of Mexican cities is best gathered in the Zocalo or main square and in Oaxaca, every week brings a fascinating range of parades, processions, religious events, trade union or politically-sponsored marches etc etc.

Many of our festivals are of Pagan origin but have been co-opted by the Catholic church over the centuries. A fine instance of this is The Days of the Dead. This celebration of the contribution of ones' ancestors invokes inviting their spirits to return (temporarily) to our earthly world where they will be treated with reverence. In pre-Hispanic times, Mexican cultures believed that the cold north winds brought the spirits of the dead back to visit. Festivals were then arranged to honour these spirits.

The conquering Catholic church realised that erasing such local customs would be impossible and, selecting the Days of the Dead as an important pan-Mexican festival, the Spaniards fused it with All Saints Day and All Souls Day. Such synthesis has for generations defined Mexican Culture.

'Days of the Dead Altars' are built in homes, decoration varying according to the traditions of each region. In Oaxaca the altar is usually installed on a table with a white cloth and tissue paper cut-outs. Stalks of sugar cane or bamboo are used to fashion a triumphal arch. This is where the spirit will enter and be welcomed. The altar is decorated with marigolds (the flower of the dead), oil lamps, scented candles, photographs or portraits of the deceased, incense, special sweet bread (pan de Muerto), black mole (a local delicacy), sugared figures, candied pumpkin, hot chocolate and seasonal fruits like the little Tejocote apples together with 'individual items' such as a favourite beer or a particular food.

When the altar is completed on the morning of October 31st, nothing is touched. The departed soul then returns to our world, takes in the aromas of the altar and seeks out the bereaved. The day ends with a lively family dinner and the deceased depart for another year.

But what of my reference to Paradise? Paradise would require the perfect climate of almost constant sunshine and low humidity and clean mountain air, beautiful scenery and smiling, friendly people who deserve such surroundings. Mexico presents this and, for somebody who has had the good fortune to have lived on every continent, I am prepared to label Oaxaca as my Paradise.

First published in VISA issue 39 (winter 2000).

Strange, Wonderful

by Glen Strachan

So there I was in the airport at Newark, New Jersey, changing flights to head over to Houston, Texas and then back down, south of the border to our home in Mexico. Our flight, out of Glasgow, had been delayed "for unspecified security reasons" and that left me with fingers crossed hoping to avoid the nine hour delay that would result from missing my Houston connection.

As always seems to be the case in the USA, my fellow passengers, who were standing in line waiting to be cleared by that airport's immigration guys, were friendly, chatty and several were in no hurry to catch onward flights and they were quite happy to wave me ahead of them up the queue.

Oaxaca Cathedral

I was grateful and the Houston flight looked well within range when I reached the box, smiled and handed my passport to a rather dour looking little man behind the desk. I have been doing this for a lot of years although not much since 9/11, I must admit - but I was shocked by the attitude of this man which seemed too close to hostility as he "interviewed" me for about fifteen minutes when he basically had nothing that he needed to find out, but when I told him that I was on my way back from a family celebration in Scotland to our home in the beautiful mountains of Southern Mexico, he asked a question that really did stop me in my tracks.

"Why do you live there?" he growled.

I smiled and told him that my city of Oaxaca was the most beautiful place on earth and that the weather there was such a contrast to that of the West of Scotland where I spent the first half of my life, especially as the rain mostly had the good grace to fall on our city in either late afternoon or evening.

That seemed a better response than telling him that my reasons for living in Mexico were none of his damned business. Such a response in these times might lead one to an overnight stay in one of The Department of Homeland Security’s jail houses or indeed much worse! What a change in the USA that I have loved for so long. On the previous trip back to Scotland our luggage was "inspected" by American customs and a number of items were stolen. Thank you Department of Homeland Security!

I start this piece about Mexico outside the country to underline the point that while Mexico has for many years been bad-mouthed often by Americans as a home of corruption and theft, lo and behold their own once free land has turned out to be a near copy of the repressive USSR of the late Sixties and Seventies.

Just like the Muscovites of that time, the American people are still the generous souls that I have always found them to be but this nervous, unelected Government seems intent on killing the constitution that made the US the envy of much of the world not so long ago and its reputation has sadly tumbled through the floor.

But worry not, dear reader, it is quite possible to reach Mexico without making that detour through the USA and that is what I would recommend to anybody considering visiting here.

My answer to that question about why I lived down here put a smile on my face as I ran like a madman through the airport in Newark and after two tannoy calls just managed to take my seat on the plane bound for Houston. I even managed to get my luggage on-board, thanks to some sterling efforts by a young Hispanic lad who took the time and trouble to ferry my cases straight out to the runway.

Why do I live in Mexico when we could live more or less anywhere that we want to?

There are a lot of answers to that, but mostly it is just the feel of the place - the mood that so contrasts to the scared, anal-retentive USA - our big northern neighbour.

It is not as though there is no crime in Mexico - far from it - but in general Mexico is probably safer than most of Europe and north of us, only rural Canada can compare in that direction.

I appreciate that few of our SIG members will currently be planning an extended stay in Mexico and perhaps a few comments are due on the suitability of this country as a holiday destination. Firstly, the distance from the UK suggests that a three-week break is more practical than anything shorter and the fact that much of this country is at altitude confirms just what a smart idea that is.

Obviously the altitude factor does not enter into the calculations of those looking for a beach holiday but, if that is all you are after, there are more suitable destinations around the Mediterranean, where you can lie on sand and tan without incurring the cost and upheaval of long-haul flight.

Unless you are a car fanatic who cannot abide any other forms of transport, it makes sense to catch a plane for some of the longer journeys within Mexico or, if you have the time and the inclination to see a bit more of the undoubtedly fascinating terrain, there are excellent bus services available throughout most of the country.

Even the more isolated or indeed exotic destinations that you might want to see are catered for by smaller private local services and, within the great cities of the country, cabs are a reliable method of transport.

That recommendation has the caveat that, within Mexico City, it is advisable to have your hotel call you a cab from an established firm and take care if you are looking to flag down a cab in the evening, as these are something of a lottery in security terms.

Mexico City, just like London and many other major visitor destinations, has a regular sightseeing bus service that takes you around some of the best-known tourist destinations in this vast city and, for most of the year, the weather makes travelling on the upper open deck of these big red buses a pleasant experience. This is a good way to see the city and you can leave and later rejoin the service at various landmarks around town and, if some of these particularly catch your eye and seem to demand a longer visit, then a cab trip on another day makes sense.

The capital hosts many different cuisines, rather like the costal holiday resorts which are very similar in design and in cost to the Florida hotel complexes, so food should not be a problem in any of the major centres in Mexico. Flora and I have been largely fish-eating vegetarians since our years in India and just as was our reasoning in dropping meat when we lived in India, any little niggles that ail you after Mexican dining will often have their origins in the wide variety of meats available.

Maybe the thing that most Mexicans find most difficult to understand about my native Scotland is the idea that, in summer, there is a very short period of darkness for each 24 hours as Mexico, almost all year, has almost equal division of light and darkness.

We travelled down through Mexico for the first time over eleven years ago and when we reached this beautiful colonial city of Oaxaca (pronounced Wa-Ha-Ka), we rented a house for two weeks while we took a few Spanish lessons. That fortnight turned into an eight year stay in the same house followed by three years in our present home as we simply fell in love with the charms of this beautiful place.

The first and maybe most obvious attraction is the climate which, during most of the year, has very little or even no rain falling here - very tough on our garden but for former residents in the chilly, wet west of Scotland most welcome otherwise. Even when the wet season comes along (June - late September) the rain has the good grace to stay away during the hot, sunny days and only begins to fall in very late afternoon and into the evening.

The people are another major attraction in this part of the world and, in living a life that has never been based on 'ex-pat living', we have made many firm friends in this region to a point that we are almost as Mexican in our outlook as we are European.

Food is another plus and, while the casual traveller through this country will be delighted with the quality and variation in restaurants along the way, we buy and prepare most of our food. More than half of our weekly food stock is bought from the organic market which appears every Friday and Saturday in town and many of our regular suppliers there have become good friends over the years. While much of that food is sourced from local people, our pasta and Italian bread is made on the day before we buy by our Italian friend Sandro and his Korean wife Gia, but our goat's cheese and yoghurt is brought into town by a young woman who has lived in the same village all of her life and who is part of a family that has kept goats for almost a century in that area. Our vegetables come from a range of local growers and it is quite a change from our times in the UK to buy these vegetables from the very person who has picked them out of his ground earlier in the day.

Obviously it is possible to go down to the supermarkets and, just as in other countries, buy imported fruit and vegetables long out of season. But for most of the last twenty years we have greatly enjoyed a return to traditional ways by eating according to the season. That (mainly) food market also has a couple of potters who provide the clay cisternas which decorate our roof terrace and gather water to feed to our plants when the rain does fall.

Just down the road is one of the two shops in town owned by a young man who studied in Belgium and Germany and who decided on his return to Oaxaca to open a bakery, managed by the very person who made the wonderful bread and croissants that he so enjoyed in Europe, so we can enjoy that too. Next door is one of a number of coffee shops dealing in locally grown coffee, to drink on the premises or take home for grinding and drinking later.

In recent years many aspects of the world at large have become part of our life here. But there is enough to remind one of the gentler times of the 1950s and 60s and generally the pace of life down here south of the border is closer to that of the Scotland of my childhood than to the big city rat race of today.

The internet has, of course, changed much in terms of communication and I can still pick up scores from the Gaelic Football of the wild west of Ireland where we also spent happy times. Test Match Special also rekindles memories of my years as a cricket commentator in India although there is no cricket played in Mexico and actual participation in the game is one of the few things that I do badly miss. In tandem with satellite television, which brings almost any sport we could wish to see, the internet and the instant contact it gives us with our children and grandchildren makes things much easier than before. In India, a letter to our son or daughter could take up to four weeks to be delivered with the reply taking a similar time for an eight week turnaround. Today, that communication delay is reduced to around ten seconds by internet.

This has been quite a difficult piece to write as other articles that I have written for VISA over the years have been about places that I have visited but, when you actually live in the place you are writing about, perspective becomes a little harder to manage. So what about Mexico for the visitor?

A massive country of great and widely varying beauty in its high regions, its tropical beaches, its deserts and all against a backdrop of great craftwork, super food and good conversation (even if your Spanish is limited, many Mexicans have spent time up north and returned to the "civilization" of their native land with more than a smattering of English).

I cannot really be very objective about Mexico, other than to suggest that voting with our feet and living here is still the greatest compliment that we can pay to any country on the entire planet.

If you have a few weeks to spare, you could take far worse decisions than to spend that time here in old Mexico and, while the bigger cities of this country have their own ample charms, my bias would always direct you to our beautiful city of Oaxaca up in the mountains of the southern part of this land.
We have a small airport in town and, by luxury coach, the journey from Mexico City has these days been trimmed to under six hours. If living away from the sea is not really to your taste, a short flight to the south of here is Puerto Escondido and its beaches, which are considered by surfers to be amongst the world's best for such activities.

Mexico... a strange and wonderful land!

First published in VISA 80A (Aug 2008)

La Ruta Maya

by David Gourley 

Our travels in 1999 took us along the "Mayan Route", taking in four countries: Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras. We had visited Mexico right at the start of the nineties, when we toured Mexico City, Acapulco and some of the "Colonial Cities" in between. Technically, in fact, this was our third visit to that country, for, in the late eighties, we had, during a tour of the Southwest USA, crossed over the border to spend a few hours in Tijuana (not, in my view, the way to get a good first impression of Mexico!) This was, on the other hand, our first foray into Central America. La Ruta Maya is an initiative launched by the countries in that region to promote tourism with a Mayan theme and we visited, in all, ten of the main sites.

Antigua, Guatemala

We flew to Cancun where we had an overnight stay before starting our two-week journey. We travelled down the Yucatan coast to the first of our Mayan sites, Tulum. The sites are of course all unique in their own way; what makes Tulum special is its superb location on a clifftop, alongside the blue Caribbean. We had had high expectations and it is good to report that, here as elsewhere on this trip, they were fully met! At lunch in a nearby restaurant I was introduced to a local speciality, sopa de lima or lime soup - a lot better than it sounds for the main ingredient is chicken. Pok chuc, or pork marinated in bitter oranges, is another recommended Yucateno dish.

We stayed overnight in the border city of Chetumal, once rather sleepy but, with the development of La Ruta Maya, starting to figure more on travellers' itineraries. It is a pleasant town, in a ramshackle sort of way. The main attraction is the superb new Maya Museum, whose exhibits include models of how various sites used to look in their heyday. It set the scene very well for the remainder of our tour.

In Chetumal, we ran into elections, not for the first time on this trip. Here the ruling party in Mexico, the curiously named Party of Institutionalized Revolution (PRI), was holding elections to decide who its presidential candidate will be in year 2000. The PRI, having been continuously in power for a world-beating 70 years, is trying to make itself more democratic, hence the institution of US-style primary elections. We found ourselves amidst a rally for the candidate who went on to win, a Signor Labastida. A good name, maybe, for a politician!

Next day saw us over the border in Belize. This is a small country, little bigger than Wales with a population of around a quarter of a million. Yet it has a varied and fascinating landscape, with a fast-growing eco-tourism industry. Embedded in Latin America, it is an English-speaking enclave, having once of course been the colony of British Honduras. There is not in fact a land border with Honduras. But its immediate Central American neighbour, Guatemala, laid claim to its territory for many years, and British troops were stationed out there. But now the two countries have made peace and ambassadors are exchanged.

The map in the customs house on the Guatemalan side of their mutual border still depicts Belize as if it were the twenty-third Guatemalan department. It holds to its Anglophile traditions: the Queen is still Head of State (with no referendum planned on becoming a republic, as far as I know) and road distances are given in miles, not kilometres. But they did have to give up on driving on the left - virtually all road vehicles are imported from the States and are left-hand drive.

We stopped at the town of Orange Walk for an exciting trip by motor launch up the New River, where we saw a variety of wildlife, to the Mayan site at Lamanai. As we approached there was an ominous roaring sound which made us fear that something very fierce must be lurking in the vicinity. Did they still have dinosaurs in Belize, we wondered. Then we saw the beast - a tiny howler monkey! From the top of the ruin, fine views were to be had over acres of dense jungle.

We stayed overnight in Belize City, and had a city tour the following morning. Not one of the world's loveliest cities but kind of attractive in its own way. Our journey now took us inland to the town of San Ignacio for a two-night stay. En route we paused at Belize Zoo, located near the pleasingly named town of La Democracia. Neither of us had looked forward to this for we are both opposed to caging wild animals.

But Belize Zoo is nothing like this and maybe shouldn't be called a zoo at all. It was founded by a remarkable lady, Sharon Matola, who, after the shooting of a wildlife film, found herself left with a number of animals, who were no longer capable of surviving in the wild. She therefore established a "zoo" for them. It contains only local wildlife ("so you won't see any elephants", our Belizean guide told us), all birds or mammals who need some kind of ongoing care. There is plenty of space for them to roam. Its residents include the only large indigenous mammals: the tapir and two types of jaguar.

We also passed through Belmopan, established in the early sixties as the new capital - a would-be mini-Brasilia - after Belize City had been devastated by Hurricane Hattie. This stuck me as an experiment that had not really worked. It seemed to have no character and we saw no impressive examples of architecture. The population, mainly civil servants, is still very small and Belize City remains very much the country's centre of gravity.

San Ignacio was our base for a number of further excursions in Belize: two more Mayan sites, Xunantanich and Cahal Pech; the beautiful Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve whose attractions include the Thousand Foot Falls and Rio Frio Cave, carved out by a river; and a trip by dugout along a river to the Rainforest Medicine Trail. The latter contains a wide variety of medicinal plants and was founded by a chap named Dr Eligio Panti. He lived to 103 so must have been onto something good!

Not all Mayan sites, by the way, are as romantically named as they sound. There is not the ability to decipher Mayan hieroglyphics - an equivalent of the Rosetta Stone has never been found - and some of the original names have been lost. Cahal Pech, for example is a name of recent origins and means - "place where ticks are found"!

Our first overnight stop in Guatemala was a hotel on scenic Lake Peten Itza. This was our base for visiting one of the most important Mayan sites, Tikal. Our trip had many highlights and I cannot pick out a single one as the very best. But Tikal certainly has to be one of the best. This site is all the more spectacular for being set amidst dense jungle. It covers a large area - and its pyramids offer some challenging climbs! From Tikal we were taken to the airport at Flores for our flight to our next overnight stop, Guatemala City. Internal ~lights can be a pain - on two previous holidays in Latin America, in Venezuela and in Peru, we had had some tiresome delays. Here too there was a lengthy delay. But for once this was good news. Our tour guide arranged for us to spend an hour in the nearby city of Flores, which we would not otherwise have seen. This small and attractive city is located on an island in the Lake, reached by a causeway.

We had two nights in the Guatemalan capital. On our first I had difficulty in getting to sleep. There were noises outside rather like gunfire. Was this a `first' for us - arriving in a country in the middle of a revolution? In fact it was the sound of firecrackers, let off by supporters of political parties. For a presidential election was taking place that very night (to the chagrin of some in our party, sale of alcohol is banned on election nights!). The posters of contending candidates were just about everywhere. The winner was a certain Signor Portillo - a rightwinger, naturally, but not, I think, related to our own Michael Denzil Xavier.

Guatemala is a beautiful country and its people are friendly yet the past few decades have been rather grim, with a succession of dictators plus a long-running guerrilla war thrown in for good measure. But a peace agreement was reached in 1996 - we saw a memorial to this in the capital's main square - and democracy has been enthusiastically embraced. The rebels have laid down their weapons and entered the democratic process, their presidential candidate garnering about an eighth of the total vote.

More generally in Central America, the future looks more promising than it perhaps has done for many years. For in El Salvador and Nicaragua too, also afflicted for many years by civil war and/or revolution, peace and democracy seem to be taking root. This is not of course to say that these countries don't still have serious problems, not least widespread poverty, which no visitor can avoid seeing, and an alarming rate of population growth.

Our day in Guatemala City was split between two tours. In the morning we had a city tour, which included visits to the Presidential Palace and Cathedral. We also saw a chunk of the Berlin Wall, a gift from the people of that city but not, somehow, something we'd expected to see in Guatemala! In the afternoon we visited the old capital, Antigua, about an hour's drive away. It has to be said that much of the downtown in the capital has a rather down-at-heel feel about it and seasoned travellers in this region are more likely these days to base themselves in Antigua. This is a beautiful colonial city, abandoned as capital after a devastating earthquake in 1773.

Now that Guatemala is at peace, its fortunes are in the ascendant and visitors now flock there, perhaps to stay at one of the most interesting hotels we have seen anywhere, the Casa Santo Domingo, located within a partially restored convent and beautifully and imaginatively illuminated at night by countless candles and lights. Alas we had to return to Guatemala City so didn't get to stay there but they seem happy to let people look round for free. Also seen in Antigua: a shop displaying the sign "broken English spoken perfectly".

The next day involved a long drive to Copan, a few miles over the border in Honduras, and location of another of the more important Mayan sites. This is magnificent, the fine hieroglyphic staircase being of particular interest. It differs from Tikal in being far more compact and lacking any really tall buildings; as our Honduran guide put it, "Tikal is the New York of the Mayan World, Copan its Paris". Our overnight base was in the attractive nearby town, Copan Ruinas, where we stayed at the Hotel Marina Copan. This is some fifty years old; luxurious but charmingly eccentric, it is a world away from the big chains. It could not, we felt, exist anywhere else but here!

In the seventies and eighties, Honduras was spared the war and strife that afflicted all three of its neighbours but its charming people do have an enemy, poverty: this is one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere. The return of peace in the other counties boosted Honduras's economic prospects as well but, in late 1998, Hurricane Mitch had a devastating impact.

It was interesting, however, to look at a book produced by the national tourist board. The Honduran Government is keen to attract tourists and the book urged visitors to forget about Mitch and enjoy the country's attractions, for the resultant damage was now, it assured us, scarcely noticeable. The message was along the lines that the country had picked itself up, dusted itself down and started all over again. In a somewhat unneighbourly swipe, visitors were urged to discover the charm of its capital: "why bother with pricey Antigua Guatemala when you can visit Tegucigalpa before it becomes trendy".

We returned to Guatemala City the next day, diverting via another Mayan site, Quirigua, which is noted for its striking stelae or free-standing columns. On the following day we flew back to Cancun. Taca Group, the Central American airline, kindly laid on a bit of fun for us: they cancelled our flight. A lengthy diversion via Mexico City was necessary. But we made it eventually to our stop for the next two nights, the splendid Hotel Mayaland, right by the gates of Chichen Itza, another of the main highlights of our tour. We had a full day of exploration here, with a sound and light show following in the evening. There is a great deal to see, including the massive Pyramid of Kukulkan, which provided another challenging climb. I'm glad to say I managed not once but twice but gather that, after 1999, climbing will no longer be allowed. This may be for conservation reasons but I've read somewhere that there are also worries about litigious Americans falling down the steps and suing the authorities. Comment had better be withheld!

The final two nights of this tour were spent in another fine hotel, the Lodge at Uxmal, again located right by the entrance of the site. En route from Chichen Itza, we broke our journey for a two-hour walking tour of Merida, recently proclaimed the cultural capital of the Americas. Uxmal is another fascinating site and here too there was a sound and light show in the evening. It is a bit smaller in its extent than Chichen Itza, allowing time for a quick trip to one of the smaller Mayan sites in this part of the Yucatan, Kabah.

Whenever we can, we like to finish our trips with a few days of relaxation on a beach and on this occasion had booked seven days on the Yucatan coast. Eschewing the brash modernity of Cancun, a resort founded as recently as the seventies, we opted for Playa del Carmen. A health warning is necessary: the Yucatan coast is now heavily developed and Playa del Carmen can no longer be described as a quiet fishing village. But it is a friendly place and still has a lot of charm; unlike in Cancun, one does actually feel one's in Mexico!

There are many restaurants and a lively nightlife: "a real cool town", as we heard an American exclaim. But it is not in any way tacky. The sand, white and stretching endlessly along the coast, is about the finest we have seen anywhere and, for some reason or other, does not get hot when the sun is shining, so there's no risk of burning ones feet.

Out of curiosity more than anything else, we did do a trip to Cancun, which has two main areas, the Downtown and Hotel (ie seaside) Zone. We were very glad we hadn't stayed in either. Call me Mr Old-fashioned but it seemed a place quite without charm or character utterly soulless in fact. Even the bit of beach we saw was unimpressive. Other trips from Playa del Carmen were a return visit to Tulum and a ferry trip to the nearby island of Cozumel. A good deal of time was spent simply relaxing after our hectic but thoroughly enjoyable fortnight on the move.

First published in VISA issue 36 (spring 2000).