Mexican Days - latest good read

I recently finished reading beautifully written Mexican Days: Journeys into the Heart of Mexico by travel author Tony Cohan. More like a novel than a travel book, Mexican Days chronicles Cohan's travel assignment just months after 9/11.


"I wrote about the high mountain idyll of the Sierra Gorda- its lazy rivers and tropical valleys, Franciscan missions and surreal jungle gardens; Mexico City's intensity and cultural turmoil; efflorescent Oaxaca and the guiding figure of Francisco Toledo; Guanajuato's twisting, tunneled dreamscapes, its phantoms and ghosts. I wrote of Veracruz State: Xalapa, with its coffee and orchids and mists; sweet Tlacotalpan's wide river and pastel buildings and son jarocho pulse. I wrote of the Mayan regions I'd visited: languid Mérida, the jungle retreat of Katanchel, Palenque's singing ruins, the weaving women of Chiapas."


... The more I looked, the more Mexico appeared fathomless. Yet as Francisco Toledo was showing us in Oaxaca, it was impossible, maybe meaningless, to separate Mexico today from Mexico yesterday: it was upon the stones of Monte Albán, not the shopping mall and the parking structure, that a meaningful Mexican present would be found, a future built."


Most enjoyable and available through Amazon.com - hard copy or Kindle.