B

What do we think of when we hear the word Mexico? Not sombreros or chillies or even tortillas. No, we think of bumps in the road. They call them ‘topes’ in Mexican Spanish and are in every town that we visited in northeastern Mexico. They are designed to do exactly what they do, which is to slow down through traffic. You can avoid them of course by taking the toll highways on most routes. But not only does that cost you a lot of money, it also means that you miss the joy of driving some of the two-lane roads that twist and turn, go up and down, and give you a true sense of the Mexican landscape.

Since we went to northeastern Mexico in spring, for us the word also evokes mulberries. Every town, big and small, had mulberry trees and no-one but us seemed to notice. We even found a prized white mulberry tree in Casas Grandes (the old town) that had fruit as sweet as sweet can be without the purple tongue-, teeth-, and finger-staining juice. We have loved mulberries ever since we were introduced to them in Iran where they are called ‘toots’.