I woke up early, bright 'n' breezy, full of beans and vigour as I usually do after drinking too much the night before. Robert & Anne, not content with chaperoning me around the city the night before had agreed to escort me to the bus station. I think they were convinced by the cunning cloak of vulnerability that I don in these situations to attract assistance. So after breakfast of huevo ranchero (fried eggs and soggy tortilla smothered in chilli sauce - always good to challenge your stomach the morning after the night before), off we set.
The bus ride to Tio Jim's in Ajijic south of Guadalajara was an eye opening eight hours! This gave me plenty of time to stare out of the window, feeling queezy and regretting my spicy & greasy breakfast. Mexico is a big place and I think I may have underestimated its size. I mean Mexico City to Guadalajara looked like a short hop, barely over a thumb's length in the Collins Atlas of the World. Eight hours! Bloody hell.
Still, I made it OK and without peeing myself which was a bonus - there was a loo on the bus which I have to say was state of the art (mainly the bus, not so much the loo) complete with video screens showing a western. The gunfight scenes were particularly painful on my strangely sensitive ears and head.
So Tio Jim, who is he and what does he do? Strictly speaking he's my second cousin i.e. my mum's cousin. I don't know how old he is, maybe my mum's age, mid-60s. He left Britain after studying law at King's London and seemed to have a serious case of wanderlust. Jim had always wanted to be a farmer not a lawyer but that career is a little bit closed to someone coming from the suburbs of Liverpool and without the prerequisite land to farm. After a stunted attempt to be a Common Market lawyer in Paris courtesy of de Gaulle giving the UK the thumbs down on Euro entry, he traveled about the place, to start with working in law firms but later on just journeying. Part of this journey was undertaken in a Chrysler Apline from Vancouver, Canada down through the United States, Central and South America ending in Santiago, Chile. Apparently at one point Jim was sleeping in the car in the Zocalo of some fragile banana republic when a military coup happened all around him. Very considerate not to wake the slumbering Limey. The wee British sports car was then freighted back to the Chilean Embassy in Washington. I didn't get to the bottom of why that was, perhaps someone was wondering where it had got to.
From there Jim travelled to South Africa, up through Africa, over to India and through what is now Afghanistan and Iran, ending in Jordan. All this was undertaken using boat, train, bus, camel train and hitched ride in a Rolls Royce Phantom. Through a university contact Jim found himself back in Mexico in the early seventies doing something with sugar cane. I presume processing it and exporting sugar rather than twisting it into animal shapes. From this point it was only a short hop to starting up his own strawberry processing and export business and like a lot of organic things, it grew.
So Jim's not really a strawberry farmer as much as a buyer, processor and seller of frozen strawberries, blackberries, concentrated lime juice and more recently fresh mango. You could call him Jim 'Man From Del Monte' Rigby.
Jim's the one on the left by the way
Jim & wife Bettina. Jim is caught in rare moment of banana worship. He would be ruined if word got out.
Jim at the centre of strawberry operations - Strawberry Towers (or should that be Fields?)
This is where Jim del Monte relaxes, as did I.
One for the dog lovers to go 'Aaaaah' over - Negro (as in Spanish for black!?), the massive black Canadian Labrador.
Bettina's life giving blend of fruit and vegetable juices - the secret to Tio Jim's uncanny vitality and super human strength.
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