Sheer Will Power

“Well as long as you’re not going to Mexico . . . that’s just suicide!” Am not sure if that’s exactly what he said, but when the person that got kidnapped for a year in Somalia advises against visiting the country that causes Trump so much angst, the warning is very much heard right in the underpants.

​The saying goes that you fear what you don’t know, which is generally true. But you can also fear lots of stuff you do know, like flying and getting shot in the face in Mexico. In my recent jaunts to Peru I reacquainted myself with absolute fear, or at least fear for me. As part of the Nazca Lines, a must is seeing these staggering 2000-year-old geoglyphs from the air. Unfortunately it involves a tiny plane, 45 degree angles and multiple points where I thought I’d cry, throw-up or cry whilst throwing-up. I managed to avoid both, and take some pictures, but remain a little air-sick. Still, it’s only been two days since the flight. Mother humper. It did help immensely that a friend of mine, someone that is learning to fly in a similar Cessna that we were in that day, said that it was one of the roughest flights he’s ever taken, so at least I was scared for a manly reason! As a top tip, the plus’ of a very small plane and being about 5 feet from a loud engine, is that you can scream ‘cu** mother fu**er!” very loudly and no one can hear a word. Excellent for Tourette’s sufferers I’d have thunk. 

Murders in Mexico

As for Mexico, the recent story of two cyclists meeting a grizzly end right where I am about to travel hasn’t filled me with confidence. The two chaps, individual travellers from Germany and Poland that clearly have plenty of experience given they’ve respectively been travelling for two and three years, were going through an area called San Cristobel in Mexico’s south. Despite initial reports from the police confirming that they had met a simple cycling accident, it has become apparent in the last few days that one of the cyclists may have been shot in the head and the other decapitated, and his foot taken clean off. This is worrying. It’s also very much a shame as I have heard wonderful things from other travellers that have insisted that Mexico was their favourite country.
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Years ago whilst on my first Antipodean Adventure I made my first ever will before entering Iran. This time however I’m travelling on my own, so there’s an added shit-your-pants-scary feel to it.  I haven’t made a will yet, but I’ll probably write another. The fear over the next few weeks will probably keep me on my toes though. The warning (which I can’t really do much about as I can’t exactly go around Mexico on my way north) came from a photojournalist, Nigel Brennan, that was hired by my company for an hour to do a talk in Melbourne. It was a confronting recounting of his and his female friend’s ordeal, and took many in the room a good while to digest. Many afterwards felt it was too much to recount to an office audience. You can read more about him here. As for me, there’s nothing more sobering than writing a will.