27 October 2008
Monday night, I’m lying in a double bed, in a hotel suite in the mountains of northern Mexico. The only light, other than the incongruous radiation from my laptop, is an oil lamp beside the bed and the glow of a log fire in the corner of the room. It is the end of our first full day filming and I’m bushed.
We landed in Mexico City last Thursday around half ten in the morning, with a mountain of gear and no clear destination. Al, my producer/cameraman had decided we could manage to film the whole series with just the two of us, despite an upgrade to high definition which involved twice as many bags. To do this he’d taken everything out of the hermetically sealed flight cases and crammed it into several backpacks. Even so it was a lot of stuff; sixty thousand pounds worth in fact.
I was obliged to sit with two creaking trolleys while Al loped off to find somewhere to charge his phone (having been left on for the duration of the flight it was now flat) in order to call this guy called Oscar with an art gallery and spare flat in Polanco, a posh area of town. Getting there took nearly two hours by cab.
Until then I had no idea how big Mexico City is. Built on ruins of the Aztec civilisation it extends for over one hundred kilometres, filling the great Valley of Mexico which stretches from the feet of Volcan Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl. It’s probably a combination of poverty, marshy ground and the threat of earthquakes but aside from the odd skyscraper none of the buildings are very high. Instead the city spreads outwards like a great patch of lichen on the map, its tendrils wrapping around hills, salt basins and occasional parks making it one of the largest conurbations in the world. Like Lima, it’s a place of extremes – run down, crime ridden semi-derelict districts haunted by the city’s underclass sit a short drive from tinted penthouses, palm trees and uber exclusive designer stores.
Our base for the first few days was guarded by two sets of electric gates and boasted marble floors and art deco furniture. We knocked on the door of Oscar’s house to get the key and provoked a rhapsody of yaps from his poodle. It’s amazing how little dogs can make so much noise. After hushing his pooch, Oscar came out to greet us sporting black jeans with two inch high turnups, a black linen jacket, a colourful cravat and black beret to insulate his shaved scalp. He kindly volunteered to be our guide for our first feature the following Saturday – a tour of iconic artist Frida Kahlo’s residence and museum in Coyoacan. This was originally in “el campo” until urban sprawl relegated it to the suburbs. The curator opened early so we could shoot in peace before the busloads of visitors. I was nervous. For a start this was the first time Al had used the new camera kit so there was more than the usual room for error. Plus I’d spent most of the last year on the other side of the lens so my presenting skills were rusty. Thankfully all went smoothly and although hauling such a heavy camera and tripod around took a bit longer the footage looked amazing. For my part, Oscar was so flamboyant I just needed to steer him occasionally to avoid unlikely tangents and we got some useful chat about one of Mexico’s most famous painters. The one fly in the salsa was the management informing us midway through that we couldn’t film any of her actual paintings, which made the whole feature utterly pointless. In the end they compromised by allowing us to walk and talk through the gallery but not do any close ups. This resulted in a somewhat repetitious scene where Al made Oscar and I walk past the lens numerous times while its gaze lingered on, the camera pointing defiantly at the wall.
Later that day, when our work was done, our flamboyant landlord provided directions to a huge covered market which sold cowboy boots. We took a cab to Garibaldi district about half an hour’s drive downtown. As the houses around us grew lower and more dilapidated, our driver Carlos deployed the central locking and proceeded to weave between busses and clapped out VW beetles with the precision of a brain surgeon. He veered down a street composed entirely of interlocking stalls, choked with bodies, sweat, noise and no doubt pickpockets. To my horror Carlos swerved right into a wall of people. A tiny road magically opened up before us. Parting the heaving multitude we shouldered through acres of fabric and canvass. A minute later he jumped out and handed his keys to some guy wearing a tatty fluorescent waistcoat.
The market was a sensory overload, people shouting amigo, caballero, vying for that fleeting moment of your attention with which they will attempt to transmute base disinterest into shiny pesos. If you have ever been to the souk in Marrakesh, then it’s nothing compared to this. After trudging around the leather goods quarter for a while I found a shop which professed to sell genuine hand stitched footwear of exotic nature. While I’ve never aspired to dress like George W Bush on Thanksgiving it has been a mission for a number of years to own a preposterous pair of cowboy boots. After bittersweet procrastination I returned triumphant with what was once part of an ostrich. Back at the flat, Al laughed contentedly as I pulled on my big bird boots, only to discover the right foot, the one I hadn’t tried on, contained a jutting nail protruding from the inside of the heel, rendering it un-wearable.
That night we met a glamorous friend of Oscar’s called Maria Fernanda, a journalist and news anchor who took us out on the town and showed us some of Mexico City’s chic and bohemian watering holes including the Black Horse, a loud, English run bar where we were joined by another Maria Fernanda, this one ex-assistant to the president and everyone proceeded to drink too many margaritas. The evening ended around three in the morning but as the next day was a designated travelling day I didn’t have to appear unduly fresh faced for the camera – which was fortunate. Sunday evening we arrived at Chihuahua in Northern Mexico after a three hour flight to be met by a our guide and half native Indian called Sonya who had the biggest smile I have seen since I last watched Sian Lloyd doing the weather.
We stayed in Chihuahua town where there happened to be a “son et lumiere” underway – a culturally eclectic light show beamed onto the wall of the cathedral above a plaza mayor teeming with colourfully dressed locals - almost worth filming but logistically risky so we blended with the crowd instead, adding a much needed hint of drab to the proceedings. The following morning it was off for lunch at a remote colony of Mennonites, a break-away Christian sect founded in the 1600’s which migrated from Holland to Prussia, to Canada and eventually spread to Mexico. Situated on a great dry plain, an hour and a half from Chihuahua, the Mennonite settlement consists of miles of squat concrete bungalows, surrounded by smallholdings, no gardens, livestock and curtains that twitch as you drive past. Our GVs (general view) shots were uncharacteristic of the region which had just experienced the most sustained period of bad weather in over forty years. Al attempted to get some artistic visuals while black clouds massed behind us.
Over lunch I asked our hostess Mina why she left Canada. Off camera she told me that it was because they weren’t permitted to smack their children or live by proper Christian values. These evidently included plenty of bible reading, multiple daily prayers, conservative dress, hard work, humility and spanking.
Although shy they were extremely sweet and lunch was a delight, even if the food was Germanically ungarnished. Getting Mina and her sister Nina to relax and trust me enough to talk was tough at first but by the end of the meal we were laughing like relatives at a wake. Luckily I asked to be excused before leaving the table, because the end of the meal was commemorated with another round of prayers. As we left I got a kiss goodbye and a freshly baked loaf of bread in case we got hungry later on.
For the rest of the day we headed west. Our driver Oscar forged onwards into the mountains, I dozed in the front seat, Al scrutinised the latest footage and Sonya beamed benevolently out of the window. It was dark by the time we reached a small and rather exclusive lodge deep in Copper Canyon Country. It had no electricity, in order to maintain the vibe, and no doubt save a fair bit on running costs. Thus everything was lit by hurricane lamps and roaring fires. This was a problem until we managed to collar the cook’s husband, who had a shack about three hundred yards back from the hotel with a spare socket for us to charge camera batteries, laptops and mobile phones!
In the morning we did a cookery scene with some members of the local Raramuri tribe, the indigenous folk of this region who only recently swapped their caves for more modern domicility. We ground blue corn and made tortillas baked on an oven improvised from a sawn off gas drum. Our host Calisto’s adobe house, which accommodated his wife, his daughter and newly born twin boys consisted of one room, lots of flies, three beds, a chairs and two small tables. After this simple but delicious breakfast we visited a sacred site of surreal limestone obelisks called the Valley of the Monks. This was so named because the Jesuites, who were big around here four hundred years ago, refused to use a direct translation of its indigenous name – Valley of the Phalli. Apparently it was okay to clamber about on them but only if you were a blok.e Needless to say I was compelled to scamper up the side of a particularly big one and say something fitting at the top. 
Of course Al was experiencing a technical hitch with the remote mics at the time, or so he maintains, thus any pearls of wisdom were lost to the breeze. Probably just as well!
Later on we checked in at the Divisadero hotel in Copper Canyon. Not my kind of place, and possibly not yours either. There were hoards of vintage, semi-deaf and thus very loud Americans bellowing at each other in the sunset lounge which despite the magnificent view, held all the attraction of the Suri worms I ate in Peru. The only redeeming bit, was a post watershed jamming session with the in-house musician who knew almost every Beatles song and most of the Eagles.
We quickly relocated the next day, and left the beaten bus route in search of Urique Canyon - the deepest in North America; far bigger and even more impressive than the Copper Canyon and out in the Styx near a small settlement called Creel. I won’t reveal too much about it here because I don’t want to spoil it for you. All I will say is that Urique is one of the most impossibly beautiful landscapes I’ve ever had the good fortune to drink beer in. A lunchtime barbecue was prepared for us half way down its vertiginous sides. It was just one of those days. The light was freshly minted, there were people on hand to help us carry the camera kit and the afternoon turned into a chapter straight from Carlos Castaneda. Most notable was an unplanned encounter with a Raramuri Shaman, who was, to coin a well oiled cliché, as old as the hills surrounding us and smiled in wreathes. He was decent enough to exorcise my evil spirits and share a dog-end of home grown green tobacco, which now means that I should find it easier to sense when people bear me ill will, a depressing skill, but one which might prove useful as we head up into the far north towards the American border. Will keep you posted….
Discover more about Charlie Ottley's "Flavours of" series on Travel Channel
Charlie Ottley's "Flavours of" series on DVD