Ten Reasons Why

Here are ten reasons why I love living and working in Mexico.

1. Colima is a slice of tropical paradise. It teems with plant, animal and insect life and trees are heavy with mango, papaya, ciruela, limón, platano, melon, sandía, piña, coco, naranja and guyaba. I wear shorts and sandals to work every day and commute by bike. I have nearly forgotten the meaning of the word cold and I haven't been rained on for a month of Sundays.
   
   
   
2. The town itself is reknowned within Mexico for being safe and ‘tranquilo’. It sits in an isolated corner of western Mexico with mountains on three sides and is apparently untouched by the kidnappings and petty violence of Mexico city, nor the battles between drug-lords and the army like those in neighbouring Michoacan. It has always been this way; while Mayan pottery depicts warriors and sacrifices, Colimense artefacts are more likely to feature couples happily bringing in the harvest or overweight domesticated dogs. The pace of life here is definitely chilled.
   
   
   
3. I have a good wage by Mexican standards and with this we can live in a cool flat in the town centre, go out where and when we want, travel where and when we want, all without worrying about cash. At lunch I can get unlimited quantities of fruit juices alongside delicious meat and refried beans and infinite tortillas, all for about £1.50. In my time here I have probably eaten over 2000 tortillas. I love them, especially because they mean that you get to eat with your fingers.
   
   
   
4. Our house has a roof with a view across the city to the mountains. For the past two weeks Gemma and I have been sleeping there with the stars for a ceiling and waking with the sun. Three mornings a week can sit there and eat fresh fruit for breakfast. We even ate our Christmas dinner up there.
   
   

5. The Mexicans are great lads (and lasses). They love music and singing and banter and are generous and friendly and excited that we have come to their country from so far away. On hearing that I have come from Scotland, 90% of taxi drivers will ask about Corazon Valiente and if the men really wear skirts. Mexicans will party given the slightest excuse. Many of the most interesting fiestas, such as the Dance of the Old Folks combine both indigenous and pre-hispanic customs.
   
   
   

6. Learning Spanish is fun; it’s like trying to crack a secret code and much better than language lessons at school. Just by absorbing a few thousand Spanish words from my surroundings I now have a bigger total vocabulary than Anthonie Wain.

7. There are a thousand little details that are just a bit rough around the edges and really contribute to the local colour: juice is sold in plastic bags like a prize goldfish at the fair; bus drivers pimp their wagons with speakers from their household stereos; barbecues are made from old car wheels. Tool shops have really cool one-handed-operation, lockable penknives, and machetes cost less than £2. Health and safety rules don’t seem to apply here and it feels free. People ride round in the back of pickups and you can buy petrol from the butcher. Fireworks displays are especially exciting. (.mov video file - right click and Save Target As...)
   
   
   

8. The volcano is like my own private mountain. I have never seen anyone else up there. Local people are either scared, uninterested, or don’t know the way. We can explore where we want, stop where we want and camp when we want, all in near-pristine forest shared only with the wild boar, hawks, and pumas. And it explodes every day.
   

9. Outdoor cooking is done over the campfire. The evenings are warm and dry and it is easy in the field or at the beach to get a fire going and be sociable and make food. There is no need to have a stove or fuel. You can cook quesadillas on the blade of a shovel. Furthermore, the tinder is dry enough that you can reignite the fire in the morning for your porridge just by blowing on the embers.
   
   
   

10. The Pacific coast. Enough said.
    
    
    

Nevertheless, here are some reasons why I will be coming home at the end of the summer.

A) Mexico is a long way from home and I really miss it. The worst part is the time difference which means that during the hours that both Mexico and Britain are awake someone is at work, so potential for phoning is limited. While being here I have missed: 3 weddings, 1 birth, 5 engagements (2 to people that I have never met), an Antarctica send-off, the launching of a reality TV superstar and the triumphant comeback of Take That.

B) My current contract ends in July and my visa runs out in August. I feel like I have done most of what I came here to do and the learning curve has levelled-off a lot from the steep beginning. The equipment that I came to install is nearly all installed and hopefully I can finish it before I go.

C) If I want an academic job, then I need to publish some of my research. Currently, I am spending all my time teaching the stream of volunteer students that flow through the office and so I have no time to myself to write. This was not such a problem to begin with, but the longer that I stay, the more important it will become to publish.

D) I’m not actually accumulating any money. Despite my wages being good locally, in home terms they correspond to £800 per month. Plus travelling and sight-seeing are relatively expensive in Mexican terms. At this rate, we will be able to cover our flights home but I have no more money in the bank now than when I graduated and my most expensive material possession remains my tent.

E) There isn’t much accessible climbing. The volcanic rocks are loose and weak, the local limestone is shattered by tectonic motions and the granite rots in the tropical climate. Without transport it is really hard to get to what good rock exists and so I have only got out about 10 times in the last 15 months.

So far, there are no plans for when we get back. Before anyone asks, despite item D above I plan to avoid London and the finance / consulting sector as it is unlikely to offer anything close to 2, 8 or 9, it also suffers from E, and if everyone is at work during the week then it doesn’t actually help that much with respect to A. And a £3.50 southern pint tastes no better than a £2.50 northern one.

First of all, it would be good to go back to Bonerbo for a bit and work with Peewee. Gemm also fancies some time at home. From there I can write up some of my data and decide on the next move.

Hasta septiembre.

Google Earth geeks

Google Earth is free software that lets you fly about the surface of the planet looking at 3D satellite images of the terrain. It is very powerful and it is becoming very common to see Google Earth images in academic presentations. It is also represents the state-of-the-art in internet-based mincing.

If you already have the software, I have created a file that will take you on a tour of Colima and let you see where I have been living for the past 16 months. If you click here it should open. Double clicking on each location will fly to it and show you the view.

If you don't have the software, then you can still see where I live in your browser by clicking here. Clicking on 'Satellite' shows the images and you can then scroll and zoom around as you please. When they took these images the volcano was exploding and you can see the ash cloud coming from the crater.