Tequila Oil

Hugh Thomson, the noted South American explorer takes on Mexico

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An account of Hugh Thomson's first wild adventure in Mexico, which ignited his love for Latin America, and of his subsequent exploration of the country, its people and its history. Tequila Oil reveals a much more dangerous side of Mexico than that seen by the package holiday-makers, taking the reader from the badlands of Chihuahua to the forests of the Yucatan; the book ends deep in the Mexican jungle, face to face with one the most enigmatic and least understood cultures on the planet, the Maya, with a sense of humility at how little we still know about the pre-Columbian past. Just as in The Motorcycle Diaries, by throwing himself on the kindness, hospitality and mercy of the Mexicans he met (or crashed into), Hugh was given an unusual and peculiarly vulnerable insight into Mexico. He returns many years later with a deeper understanding and the ability to explore the deep roots of pre-Columbian culture within Mexican life and to see how much archaeologists have revealed about the Maya and the Aztecs in just the last few years.