LITMIR.BIZ

      I have travelled much of my life. A day or two in any one place and I begin to nest, even in a third-rate room in a third-rate hotel. I set photographs of my family on the bedside table, arrange books and papers beside the laptop, buy flowers. Walking the streets, I imagine how my life would be, which part of town would I prefer, what house or apartment building. Un-nesting is a wrench, particularly today. Veracruz has become familiar. I have my routine: fruit salad for breakfast at the restaurant across from the hotel, late luncheon above the fish market, evening beer in the Plaza de Armas, last coffee at the chess club café. Such habits are comforting. I feel safe. Meanwhile Mexicans have competed with my Dallas friends in warnings of the dangers ahead, of precipices and bandits and insane drivers. My own fears and doubts concern my physical capacity.

      I make a bed of rolled chinos and long underwear in the base of the rack box to cushion the laptop. Next comes the leather folder of family photographs and waterproof plastic envelope containing bike documents, health insurance certificate and medication prescriptions – heart, cholesterol, blood pressure, water tablets. My green-cord long-sleeved shirt and a short-sleeved jumper go on top. Map, guidebook, small towel, washbag and rain slicker go in the backpack. Further books and clothes fill the satchels. I present the hotel staff with two small wheelie suitcases, tartan flannel pyjama trousers and the bulky Clancy Brothers jumper.

      As a departure gift, I treat myself to an early breakfast at the swish air-con café on the Plaza de Armas frequented by the business elite. A tall man enters: early fifties, perfectly groomed and beaming an all-encompassing smile of good will to all men. He is a pleasure to watch as he circles the tables, a soft squeeze of the shoulders for those he knows, a word here, a word there, each greeting gilded with such absolute sincerity. I have seen Tony Blair perform in exactly this way – although Blair has never managed to appear elegant. Blair’s suits are never quite right and his walk spoils his performance. You know – the Australian dive master’s walk, elbows spread as if by a massively muscled chest: Hey, I’m a real man’s man. George W. Bush has the same walk. Watch them stroll together across the White House lawn or at Camp David.

      I imagine, as I watch this gentleman in the café, that his sincerity is too slippery to remain in place; a moment’s inattention and it will slide down his perfectly creased trousers to form a little puddle round his immaculately polished shoes.

      Mexican elections are on 2 June. A truck with a speaker system brakes alongside me at a traffic light on the way out of town. The speakers blare a chant of ‘Vote for … Vote for … Vote for …’ to a sell-soap-powder jingle. The side of the truck displays a poster of the candidate: the gentleman in the café. Delightful to have judged correctly.

      I am escaping from Veracruz in rush hour. Drivers of short-haul buses are either paid by the kilometre or are holidaying race drivers. Most of them trained on fairground bumper cars. I ride timidly. I stall a couple of times at traffic lights and suffer the screamed insults and klaxons of those behind.

      The road runs along the coast. A chill blustery wind blows off the sea – riding a light bike is interesting. The engine has settled or I am more confident; we cruise at eighty kilometres an hour on the flat. My grip is relaxed, no cramps in my hands. My only suffering is a numb bum. At first the road crosses flat ranch land. Cowboys herd cattle into a corral. Further south the road swoops and climbs over what were once the dividing dunes between sea and a vast lagoon. The dunes are cloaked now with tall tufts of dry wispy grass. I follow a truck up a blind hill marked with double yellow lines. A speeding white Chevy Suburban overtakes.

      Federales wave to slow us on the next down-slope. Tipped by the wind, a lorry piled high with sugarcane lies on its side and almost blocks the road. The driver of the Chevy Suburban must have wet his pants.

      Occasional tyre tracks lead down to the beach and a parked jeep or pickup. I take a break and munch an apple. The sea is grey beneath low cloud. I watch two fishermen bundled in parkas struggle to cast bait against the wind.

      Early afternoon and the road dips down towards a river. Armed with rifles, soldiers or police officers guard each end of the bridge. I stop at a restaurant (tin roof, twenty tables on a dirt floor) to the right of the road and order black-bean soup and bottled water. Three six-seater 4x4s pull in, election posters on the doors: a local senator and his entourage. The senator wears a pale grey safari suit, silk socks, lizard-skin loafers, fat gold wedding band and a slim gold watch on a gold wristband. Why do I notice the socks?

      The senator’s local representative takes the lead, ordering beer, glad-handing the restaurant’s owner. The owner, a plump, dark-skinned woman, mid-forties, is unimpressed. The local rep invites me to join them in a beer. I am a real live tourist, proof of something or other that could be beneficial to the senator. The rep wants a threesome photograph: senator, restaurateur, elderly Brit. The restaurateur retorts that she has no interest in photographs – better they pay for the beers.

      The senator and his party leave. The woman brings coffee and sits at my table. ‘It’s the only time we ever see them,’ she says of the politicos, ‘when there’s an election.’ She is an incomer. Her husband is local and well respected: hence the senator’s desire for a photograph for the local newspaper. She and her husband have two children. ‘They’ve been promising to build a new school for the past ten years.’

      Infrastructure alone won’t cure the ills of the system. I tell her of our local high school in Ledbury, Herefordshire: the new sixth-form wing, the splendid new sports hall and all-weather football pitches. Unfortunately some of the teachers are abysmal.

      Yes, teachers are often incompetent, agrees the woman – incompetent or uninterested.

      If only parents and students had the authority to grade those who teach. However, that is a different obsession.

      The road climbs beyond the river into hill country that guidebooks refer to as the ‘Switzerland of Mexico’. The hills are steep and green; fat dairy cattle graze paddocks studded with huge shade trees. Two hundred kilometres is far enough for my first day and I ride into San Andres de Los Tuxtlas in mid-afternoon.

      San Andres is mostly modern and pleasant enough, although not worth a detour. I find a hotel that could be charming with a minimum of thought and effort. I park the bike in the courtyard and a young man shows me a room on the first floor with a view over tiled roofs. A kinder person would

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