Arty party

I had intended to head off to Campeche today, but I was in no fit state to do anything this morning.

Last night the hotel (pictured) was heaving with the glitterati of Merida who had come to the launch party of an art exhibition. Hearing that the event included free wine, I disguised myself as an arty type. First I de-creased my tweed jacket by hanging it in my tiny bathroom with a hot shower running. It worked a treat, but being wool it smelt like wet dog for a while. I´d just got my laundry done, so with a clean white shirt and sandals (with red socks to hide any blood from my blisters) I was ready to go undercover. All I was lacking was a beret.

The art was rubbish; the sort of stuff you can see hanging on the walls of any school. It was mainly photographs of things like twigs or roadsigns blown up onto canvas and tinted in unusual colours. The names, so far as I could translate them, were along the lines of "The end of Innocence" (a traffic cone) or "Pedro Saw His Shadow" (a crisp packet stuck to a dog turd). I´m sure you know the sort of thing.

But I wasn´t there for the art, so I stuck close to the buffet table that was heaving with wine. I think the hotel staff knew exactly what I was up to, and they obviously approved because my glass was enthusiastically refilled throughout the evening.

Something I found odd about the guests was the lack of Mayan faces. Those present were obviously your yoghurt-eating, organic fairtrade fibre-wearing types who probably write letters to left-wing newspapers about the plight of indigenous people. But their concern for the natives doesn´t seem to extend to inviting them to parties. The only Mayans there were about half a dozen astonishingly attractive girls who looked like the Disney version of Pocahontas.

The event was presided over by a coven of about ten women ´of a certain age´, with that constantly surprised look that comes of having too many facelifts. They sat in the centre of the throng smoking slimline cigarettes and allowing people to kiss the air near their faces.

The owner of the gallery, Manola Rivera (apparently a very famous artists in these parts), is a rum old cove. He´s one of those enormously fat blokes who manages to be dainty despite his bulk. His massive body tapers down to tiny feet and when he walks it´s as though he only needs to tickle the ground with his toes to float along like the Goodyear Blimp. He also has the biggest double chin I have ever seen and a mouth the size and shape of a letterbox. I can´t look at him without thinking of the wide-mouthed frog story (oooh, yooo don´t see many of thoose around, dooo yooo?).

At the start of the evening I had been the first person to sign the visitors´ book at the gallery entrance. In the comment section I wrote "It was brown, so I assumed it was coffee," in keeping with the surrealist nature of the event. Later in the evening I noticed that all the other guests (those who wrote in English at least) had followed my lead. Comments included "It was dark, but I liked it" and "I couldn´t see the bottom, but I enjoyed the reflection". I guess they assumed the owner had written the first entry so, toadyingly, had followed suit.

After finishing the last of the wine I tottered off into town in search of further amusement. I have a vague memory of being in a nightclub with a roadwork theme; all the staff were dressed in flourescent jackets with orange hard hats. I found myself with a group of Americans having tequilla poured down my throat by a Mayan bloke who bore an uncanny resemblance to Bob the Builder.

Earlier I´d spent much of the day walking round exploring the town. I´d had to go barefoot because of my blisters, but that led to some good fortune. As I was walking down the Paseo de Montejo (an elegant boulevard modelled on the Champs Elysees) I noticed a glimmer of gold in the gutter. Picking it up I found it was a plastic packet containing a tiny golden statue of a saint and two silver medallions. It´s not of any value, just moulded plastic I think, but still a nice souvenir. I was later told that the statue is St Martin, and looking closely at the medallions they are, strangely, stamped on both sides with our queen´s head (the version before last on coins, the one when you still got a tantalising glimpse of the royal bosom).

Another thing I noticed due to my barefooted state was that many of the cobble bricks in the street are stamped with European makers´marks. I´ve since found out that all the street surfaces here were imported from Britain and France, which sounds extravagant but made sense at the time because they were used as ballast on trans-Atlantic liners.

A further random observation is that when Mayan people sit down on buses or on comfortable chairs one hand automatically flies up above their head to grasp at thin air. This puzzled me until I recalled my own experience with a hammock - it´s a natural reaction to brace your head when you get into one. Perhaps this Mayan test will come in useful, like when the old lady rumbled that Huckleberry Finn dressed as girl by watching how he caught a piece of lead on his lap (he closed his knees to grasp it, rather than opening them to catch it in the material of his dress).

A final note is that the streets are incredibly clean here, and in all of Mexico so far. Even though there aren´t many bins people simply don´t drop litter. It makes me feel quite ashamed to recall the chip wrappers and kebab trays that blight the streets at home.