Tacos

Mexican food is a long time people's favourite in Australia and lofty standards had already been set by Montezuma's Mexican restaurant in Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast. Even with such unfair culinary expectations placed on it, Mexico largely delivered with only a few exceptions. A country where tacos, quesadillas, burritos and enchiladas are readily available at pretty much every hole-in-the-wall eatery can't go too wrong really can it? Certainly in this author's eyes, Mexican food joins German food smack bang at the top of the ladder when it comes to tranquilisingly good comfort food.

Fish and prawn/shrimp tacos reign supreme along the coastlines and any opportunity to devour a few should always be taken. Small road side taquerias serve them up at unbeatable prices and the aromas emanated usually lead to ordering more than you can realistically eat. Traditional Mexican tortillas are always served hot and soft, not hard, and in restaurants they come in a little basket beside the fillings, tucked away nicely in a little brightly coloured cloth bed. Normally you are given far more tortillas than you will ever need and a range of condiments are always supplied from devilishly hot sauces to fiendishly hot sauces and a mountain of guacamole or avocados.

Sometimes the tortillas are made a bit thicker and hollowed out like a Middle Eastern pita bread. These are called gorditas and they are little portable bundles of awesome, typically being filled with a wide variety of grilled meats, peppers, spring onions, refried beans, cheeses, sour cream, salsas and spices. They are slapped together in front of you and are best eaten hot, next to the stand where the cook can enjoy your facial expressions as you go to a happy place.

In the east they make mean ceviches, which normally include some fresh raw fish that is 'cooked' in cold lime juice, tomatoes and onion. The ingredients cure the fish and give it an amazing finish. If it is not fresh however it is possibly the fastest route to food poisoning.

In the north there is an admirable love affair with grilling steak mirroring south USA. Small BBQs are fired up alongside the road in every town where super thin steaks are grilled to perfection and then chopped or shredded for inclusion in a host of wonderful dishes. Sometimes the meat has been marinated in a wonderful Adobo, a special sauce for preserving meat that adds fantastic flavour to the dish. Chickens and whole pigs are often spit roasted en masse from early in the morning for lunch, with piles of onion, peppers and whole jalapenos sitting below to cook in the drippings.

In any sit down meal, there is a 50 50 chance that a huge plate of appetiser nachos are coming your way after you have ordered your meals, which makes judging appropriate meal sizes challenging most of the time. More often than not, the dips and salsas for the nachos come out of the kitchen at a significantly different time to the nachos to further confound you. Sometimes these nachos are amazing, sometimes they are utterly miserable. They are probably the singularly most hit-or-miss food stuff in Mexico with the honorable exception of tamales.

Tamales are small corn cakes traditionally cooked in a leaf although can equally come frozen in a box. They are a real mixed bag; sometimes sweet, sometimes savoury. Sometimes they are covered in sweet sauces, sometimes savoury, sometimes cheese. Sometimes they are accompanied with beans, sometimes fruit, sometimes *insert random foodstuff here*. The combinations of the above can make utterly no sense, it's as if you are potentially ordering a dessert crossed with a main, the result of which is usually a very acquired taste. Each local version of tamales has a ambiguous name that appears in no dictionary, making tamales a true gamble unless you have a local by your side or you speak excellent Spanish.

All in all, Mexico does amazing food.

Unless you're vegetarian, in which case I hope you really like beans and salsa.

Contrary to popular belief, tequila is not the favoured drink of choice by most; Mezcal is what it is all about. Agave based, Mezcal is a beautiful drink that promises lingering satisfaction or headaches with no in between outcome. The correct way to drink it is by 'kissing' the Mezcal while popping the odd pinch of a special salt in your mouth. The salt is mixed with the dessicated remains of the worms that eat the agave plants, as a form of revenge for daring to interfere with Mezcal production. Mezcal, when it is good, is phenomenally good and a universal panacea for all situations. As the proverb goes, "Contra todo mal, Mezcal. Contra todo bien, tambien" which translates as "Against all ills, Mezcal. Against all good fortune, the same".

For those who want something non-alcoholic, horchata is a delicious rice based beverage that is normally available everywhere. It is often cheaper than water so it pays to get used to it.

Most small eateries are a standard husband and wife operation; i.e. the husband (when he is there) says hello to customers, pushes chairs back in and turns the TV up and down whereas the wife does everything else, often whilst taking on the phone or holding an infant. Admittedly, the responsibility for the TV volume is a massive responsibility in a country utterly obsessed with the over-acted Mexican soap operas that seem to consume the majority of their TV channels. People will be glued to the screen watching these while eating.

Mexican people seem to be overly content with life in general. There are a lot of smiles and hearty hellos thrown around, children play everywhere and are always eagre to try some English on you, people work hard to earn their tacos and in a world that is increasingly clean shaven, Mexican men pull off incredible moustaches with aplomb. In addition, and as much as Texans would hate to hear it, they look better in cowboy hats too. How the hell most people are walking around in jeans and long sleeves in desert heat and/or tropical humidity though is beyond comprehension.

Mexico is a very religious Catholic country but with an extremely interesting mixture of much older traditions mixed in. Shamans and ritual healers are still seen as important roles in many communities and indigenous beliefs have influenced the Christian faith in ways the Pope probably doesn't want to understand. There is an eternal battle against witches, which are the leading cause of mysterious bites and blotches you might gain during sleep and other random maladies. The battle is made more difficult by the fact that witches can shape change and appear as animals, whirlwinds, glowing balls and in more recent times, buildings. Mexico even has a self-titled Grand Warlock who used his powers to guide the Mexican team at the football world cup in Brazil. He claimed Mexico's defeat was due to rival warlocks from other countries being too powerful 'on the day'. For all the sporting glamour, most of us were blissfully unaware of the Harry Potter style magical battle occurring behind the scenes of the world cup. One can only assume Australia performed so miserably due to a complete lack of warlocks which should really be our focus for 2018.

Mexican tribal healers are present in almost all communities and markets and they perform a bewildering variety of services including spitting on people to cleanse them and purveying difficult to acquire curios such as enemas with psychoactive drugs, special 'guidance' mushrooms and soaps with powerful effects like 'attracting wealth', 'warding unwanted devils' and 'dominating men'. Chocolate is used extensively in medicine which is something I think we can all personally believe in regardless of scepticism in the other rituals.

An interesting aspect of Mexican belief is the more light-hearted and quirky view of death and what it means. There are death themed skeleton toys, masks and art everywhere and a particularly interesting yearly event is the Day of the Dead where a small tribute is set up in the house with offerings to the deceased in the family. These offerings are normally the favourite things those family members enjoyed in life; if the individual loved beer than a freshly popped brew would be placed at the tribute to welcome and appease the spirit.

Young Mexican men possibly spend more money on their car audio systems than any country in the world. Although the cars themselves are often in dire need of mechanical repair, with panels and bumper bars held on by duct tape, the sound systems are considered mission critical and maintained above all else. The music that comes from these cars is a largely indiscernible mix of brass instruments and overwhelming bass. Normally the vehicle inhabitants are clapping and dancing with their torsos as much as possible within the confines of their seat.

Mexican music is famous, and rightfully so. Street bands are often nothing short of concert worthy; the cornet, guitar, maracas and drums come together to make absolutely amazing melodies that capture the real spirit of Mexico. As a white tourist, flocks of mariachi bands and singers will be drawn to you whether you like it or not. They will sometimes line up to play at your table as if you are an ATM with ears. They are very keen to swap their music and smiles for your pesos and it can be very difficult to tell them to stop, especially after they do stop and then sneakily start smiling and playing again.

Occasionally you will see a violinist in mariachi bands, but from what I could tell they are always horribly out of tune to the rest of the band. Oddly, everyone seems to like this and accept it.

Another important and highly venerated instrument in Mexico is the marimba. You will often find these set up near nicer restaurants playing tunes that have a stark similarity to old arcade video games. I mean, tell me these guys are not playing a song from the original Mario Kart?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=qMWH4_T55CM

Mexico has no shortage of amazing sights to behold and I could bore you senseless detailing all that was experienced but if there was to be one highlight that stands above all others it would be visiting the ruins of the ancient Mayan civilisation. A silent testimony to a sprawling empire that existed for millenia and then imploded spectacularly in on itself. The collapse of the Mayan empire and abandonment of their amazing cities has been a favourite mystery of many since their rediscovery in the last century.

The place that everyone flocks to see is Chitchen Itza. It is big, has been restored with modern stonework and is easily accessible from Cancun where 99% of tourists go in Mexico. But a real glimpse at ancient Maya takes significantly more work and effort. It will most certainly consume days and days of valuable beach time, but the rewards, as you will read below, are so very worth the effort.

The best of Maya still lies buried deep within the remote and nigh impenetrable jungle, surrounded by wild animals and not so official airstrips for special Colombian flights. For hundreds of kilometres the Vegemite Ambassador mobile travelled, no less that sixty of them on a winding, one lane dirt track laden with pot holes, to reach the lost city of Calakmul. Here lies the still beating archaeological heart of the Maya.

Calakmul, or Kaan as it was once known (KAAAAAAN! to Star Trek fans), is a sprawling stone megalopolis that only until very recently lie lost and forgotten in a carpet of green. It once housed over 50,000 people and had rulers with such cool names as "Sky Witness", "Scroll Serpent" and "Ruler Y". After the Mayans fled the city, the jungle almost immediately began reclaiming the remains; smothering them in vines and protecting them from erosion. As seedlings grew the very same forest that once offered protection instead began to wreak slow and unstoppable destruction as the twisting mess of roots and trunks started to tear the city slowly apart - stone by stone.

Now the city and forest have become one, amongst the cries of howler monkeys and bird song; the resulting scene is inexplicably, hauntingly beautiful.

The remaining jungle ruins of city indicate how massive it once was at its peak, rivalling Tikal across the border in Guatemala, with whom Calakmul was locked in a perpetual state of war to decide who was the most splendid of Mayan cities. Several of the major structures that remain here reach up to almost 50 metres high and can still be freely climbed by massive stairs on a vertigo inducing 60 degree incline. Summiting each of them is physically exhausting, it will cause litres of sweat to be taken as a toll by the steamy morass around you, but the view from the top is unrivalled. The forest extends forth to the horizon in every direction, uninterrupted by anything except the other spires of Calakmul. Only there, in the middle of this arboreal ocean, can you appreciate why the Mayan cities lay hidden from the rest of the world for so many centuries. The best part is Calakmul is only the tip of the iceberg; even now, in this modern age of Google maps, more sites are only just being discovered.

I really hope that if you come to Mexico, you make the effort to see this place. THIS is a wonder of the world that is not on any big lists because it will never be able to sustain the attention that would bring. It's unrestored, wild and forgotten and one of the most incredible scenes on the planet.

It's one of many things to love about this country.

Mexico offers so much, it brims with enthusiasm, it's a giant cultural clash with deep history, it has fantastic grub and it's certainly revisitable even after a month spent there. Sure, it's a bit rough around the edges, but as the famous Mexican poet and diplomat Amadeo Nervo once said, "Who loves a lot, forgives a lot.” and it's easy to love Mexico.

Especially the tacos.