This photo is from the rather dusty archives, but I remember exactly where and when it was taken. Mexico, Progresso to be precise, November 1994.
It was my first trip to Mexico, and after a few hectic days in Mexico City we had flown to Merida, where we hired a car with the intention of driving across the Yucatan peninsular, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Caribbean. This was the first day of having the car, and we took a day trip north out of Merida, to the coast at Progresso. It still bore some of the scars of hurricane damage from a couple of years before, but there were wide sandy beaches and the ocean, and the first lunch, of grilled fish, we had really enjoyed since arriving in the country.
This was the moment I really felt like I was on holiday, that I had escaped from normal life for a while. It helped that the sun was shining, and that we had, with no planning whatsoever, hired the perfect little red car; a car so distinctive, and so unlike the usual anodyne hire car, that just seeing it in a photo reminds me of a whole holiday. And look, it was still shiny. By the time we had completed our trip, it was covered in dust, but had been the envy of many of the people, we had encountered along the way, especially tourists on group coach trips denied our ability to escape from the crowds.
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