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In the mid-1940s, Sybille Bedford set off from Grand Central Station for Mexico, accompanied by her friend E., a hamper of food and drink (Virginia ham, cherries, watercress, a flute of bread, Portuguese rosé), books, a writing board, and paper. Her resulting travelogue captures the violent beauty of the country she visited. Bedford doesn't so much describe Mexico as take the reader there--in second-class motor buses over thousands of miles, through arid noons and frigid nights, successions of comida corrida, botched excursions to the coast, conversations recorded verbatim, hilarious observations, and fascinating digressions into murky histories. At the heart of the book is the Don Otavio of the title, the travelers' gracious host, his garrulous family and friends, and his Edenic hacienda at Lake Chapala. Published in 1953, A Visit to Don Otavio was an immediate success, "a travel book written by a novelist," as Bedford described it, establishing her reputation as a nonpareil writer.… (more)
User reviews
A few chapters deal with the major sights they saw, but more time is spent describing tortuous journeys to places which turn out to be not quite worth it. Bedford portrays herself as
There are happier elements to the visit too, from the beauties of some of the countryside to the titular visit to Don Otavio, a young and otherworldly Mexican from an aristocratic family who lives in a mansion by a lake.
Although I don't think this book told me much about Mexico, I still found Bedford an engaging companion. She gets as much humour from the foibles of the expats that she meets from the vagaries of transport and accommodation difficulties, and she appreciates the good sides of what she sees.
Sample: The posadas are most jolly. The ground floor is always a large, unkempt parlour opening into the patio without much transition, full of overgrown plants, wicker-chairs, objects without visible use, birds free and caged, and a number of sleeping dogs. Here the innkeepers jot their accounts, sort the linen, drive bargains with the poultry woman and the egg child, arraign the servants, play the gramophone, drink chocolate, chat and doze; and here the guests sit, smoke cigars, have their hair cut, shout for servants, play the gramophone, drink rum and chocolate, chat and doze. Everybody has their own bottle, sent out for by the mozo. The innkeeper would think you mad to pay him bar prices; every time you draw cork he will supply you - compliments of the house - with glasses, lime, salt (without which spirits are considered to be unswallowable), pistachio nuts, fried anchovies, toasted tortillas strewn with crumbs of cheese and lettuce, stuffed cold maize dumplings and pickled chilli peppers.