MAGAN'S WORLD:Manchán Magan's tales of a travel addict
I’M PROBABLY not the only man to have hidden from Christmas in Tequila but possibly the only one to have done so on the instigation of a six-year-old girl, and to have remained largely sober throughout.
The girl’s name was Llael and she had spent the first fortnight of Advent begging me and her father to take her to Tequila, to see the blue agave fields that stretch across the land as far as the eye can see. Llael was a cactus aficionado and had more than a dozen different types growing on her bedroom window. The notion that a place existed where cacti-like plants were as common as corn in Alberta or pines in British Columbia, where she was from, captivated her.
Since, we were driving south to Mexico anyway, and due to meet her aunt in Guadalajara for New Year; it wouldn’t be much of a detour to swing, swig or slam over to Tequila on the way. Llael’s father, Hugo, had been making this trip for years; escaping the tawdriness of Christmas and the travails of a Canadian winter by heading south to some Aztec ruin in Mexico, or else continuing as far as the Mayan pyramids in Guatemala, and from there to the coast to catch fish and surf.
He knew his way along the coast road blindfolded and over the years had built up friends along the route: in Eugene, Berkeley, Big Sur and Santa Barbra. They let us sleep in their yards and gave us showers and breakfast. Some of them were distant relatives who had never come to terms with Hugo’s counter-cultural ways and it was clear they were often alarmed to see this motley group of bearded drop-outs on their doorsteps. They found it hard to explain us to their corn-fed wives and Nickelodeon-reared brats.
Llael, who had been protected from the worst excess of Christmas by her commune-dwelling parents, was frightened by the illuminated Santas and snowmen bolted to their roofs.
Our vehicle was an old Canadian state school bus, a wasp-coloured beast designed for sub-Arctic winters that belted out as much heat as the Mexican sun belted in. While this was pleasant as we wound our way through the snow-clad Rockies, once we reached Oregon and were heading south along Highway 101 and the I-5 towards California, the bus was like a blast furnace.
I tried to interest Llael in the sites along the way – the apocalyptic wastes of Mount Saint Helen, the soaring pines of northern California, the Eden of oranges, almonds and olives further south, but all she could think of were the cactus fields of Tequila. The spiky rows of blue agave.
Once we passed Mazatlan and turned inwards towards Jalisco, her excitement became frenetic. We were on course to reach Tequila early on Christmas Eve, but a detour for a swim on the coast delayed us and it was approaching evening when we finally made our way down through the valley leading into Tequila town. Llael’s delight as the blue agave came closer and closer to the roadside was like what other children feel approaching the top of a Santa queue.
The agave were like razor-sharp aloe veras coloured a bluey-grey shade of green. The syrupy, sweet smell of boiled agave pinas filled the air as raven-haired men ran up to our windows from roadside stalls that lined the route offering us tiny tequila tasters.
On the main square a mariachi band was playing, while stalls were preparing fried tacos, mole, and enchiladas. A woman approached with a tray of aged tequila in brandy snifters with shot glasses of fresh tomato juice on the side and a plate of sliced carrots, cucumbers and something turnip-like. I took a glass from her and turned to Llael to thank her for leading us here.