Off to Mexico City. My LATAM manager has moved on to another role within the company, so I had no one to send to the regional HR meeting. It was a great opportunity to meet the LATAM HR Team so off I went.

Arrived at Heathrow and checked in at the Club desk using my silver card. The clerk was very upset as her system told her that now I should have a gold card and therefore as far as she was concerned I was using an illegal card. I pointed out that I had not received a new card and did not feel that this was a criminal offence on my part (it arrived 3 days after I left).

Anyway security was mercifully brief and I was soon ensconced in the lounge (this time I was excused by the card police) and spent the time making calls.

I was quite pleasantly surprised when the flight was called early, but depressed on arrival at the gate. It was I think “spring break” in the Americas and the line was full of hundreds of excited 11 year old Mexican schoolgirls returning from a trip to London.

I was envisioning the delight of 10 hours with an overexcited Spanish-speaking school party on a plane, but fortunately when I arrived at the gate they told me that my seat had been changed, and I was actually upstairs in beautiful silence.

The final seat upstairs was taken by someone who was obviously a BA employee as all the crew recognised her. Not sure what her role was but I was intrigued that she changed her clothes 4 times on the flight. Two I can explain- change from formal to relaxing clothes to fly, and back to smart before you land- but the other two??

Flight took off an hour late (too many bags to load). I read my book- a biography of Mao. (“Mao- the Untold Story”). Formed the impression that the authors didn’t like him much as it’s a complete character assassination.

Finally the pilot told us we were ready to go, starting his announcement with the phrase “Arriba, arriba”- no stereotypes there then.

Flight otherwise uneventful, did some email and slept, and landed about an hour late. Long hot wait in the line for immigration- a bit like the US where they heavily favour nationals, leaving the foreigners to wait- though eventually when all the natives had gone through they opened all the desks for immigrants.

Through in about 50 minutes and through to baggage claim. Finally got my case- and was surprised when a guy stopped me. They are obviously paranoid about lost baggage, so there is a member of staff who checks your bag against your baggage check to be sure you have taken the right one, and then insists that you surrender your receipt for the checked bag. Guess it makes sense, but I have never seen it before.

Even stranger going through customs. I was wandering through when I was hauled back by a customs officer. I don’t know why but for some reason you have to press a green button as you go through “nothing to declare” – the notice does not say why- and I of course had not seen or complied with this.

Anyway at her request I pressed the button- with no obvious result- and she was pacified. Still not sure what the button did.

Hugely relieved to see a driver with my name showing- too tired to have to cope with getting to the hotel.

An interesting 45 minute drive to the hotel. An odd mix of modern buildings on the main streets and very scruffy shacks on the side streets. Very struck by the large numbers of people out waiting by the roadsides with no apparent purpose.

Arrived at the hotel- a very nice, but very sanitized hotel which could have been anywhere in the world. The hotel is in Santa Fe, a very modern suburb of Mexico City apparently built on a former rubbish tip.

Thought about something to eat so I called at the bar to be served by the World’s Most Demotivated Barman. Decided to stick at my beer as I didn’t fancy any more time with him.

Disturbed night doing a 3am conference call with Singapore, and down for breakfast in the morning. Embarrassing moment in the lift. I pressed the wrong button and had to apologise to a lady getting into the lift. “That’s fine Gary” she said, and I realized I had not noticed it was Toni the LATAM HR Director.

Breakfast an interesting mix of the international and the very Mexican. I learned that I really cannot face the idea of refried beans for breakfast.

Bus to the MS office. Toni really likes to fill her days with business, and we had 9 hours of presentation. It was fascinating to learn about the differences between the LATAM regions, there is no natural stereotype. Interesting that lunch was brought in and we had a choice of Pizza, Chinese or Thai. Very Mexican.

Finished at 7 and then a drive to a restaurant in Santa Fe, some very good food and a long chat with Toni, who is a great fan of her iPod, and she was talking about how there was no point in buying CDs any longer. Very persuasive but I am a dinosaur in such matters.

Next day some really good sessions, including one with Lisa , our VP, who was on a listening tour. Lisa was as ever amazingly frank and honest. It really builds my belief to see such integrity. Funnily Lisa did a listening session at 5pm with a hundred or so staff from the Mexican subsidiary. Big learning- Mexicans don’t seem to like asking tough questions- everything she was asked was very bland, and you could sense her disappointment at the lack of real challenge.

Off to a very up market Mexican restaurant in the downtown area. The locals ordered the appetizers. There was one strange looking dish looking like small pale grains of rice. My colleague Enrique (hiring Manager for Mexico- used to be a tour guide in Quebec and speaks excellent French), was very keen that I try it, and I could sense from the way he was encouraging me that this would be a case of eating something that would be repulsive if someone told you in a advance what you were eating. I tried some of this “Mexican caviar”, and it was ok, though hard to taste with the spicy flavours of the salsa and tortilla.

After consumption I was told that the dish was called locally “escamoles”, and that the caviar was actually ants’ eggs.

The team had bought interesting presents for Lisa, in that each had bought a CD of music that was special to their country, so she went away with a pile of CDs of Latin American music. If I had known I could have brought a Rolling Stones CD to represent the UK.

I had a nightcap with Humberto, one of the HR Directors for LATAM. He is a very dangerous man, with his gentle “you can manage one more tequila?”.
Another packed day of meetings- Toni really packs her team meetings with agenda items, and then a drive to the hotel. The BA flight doesn’t leave every day so I was stuck until Friday evening unless I paid a fortune. That evening we had dinner in the hotel in the imaginatively titled and obviously very Mexican “Brick House” bar and restaurant.

Friday morning and a several hours in my room doing emails. The flight didn’t leave until 11pm so I had decided to wander into the local district, so after 5 hours or so of email I walked into Santa Fe. Walking in it was pretty indistinguishable from walking into any US city. Walked past a very Mexican place called “Big Yellow Bar”. Even from 20 metres outside the music was deafening- goodness knows what it was like inside- I can only assume the customers use sign language or just send SMS texts to communicate.

Looking for somewhere to have lunch I was disappointed to pass a series of places like McDonalds etc., and the restaurant where we had eaten on night one- and it was too fussy for lunch for one. I stopped at the entrance to a small park.

I think in one of Bill Bryson’s books he refers to a place he visits and makes a comment something like “it seemed like I had arrived during the town’s litter festival where litter had been spread with gay abandon”. That was certainly my reaction. As I have said I was told that Santa Fe had been built on the site of a former rubbish dump. It seemed to me that there were obviously a group of determined activists set on returning it to its original state. The Santa Fe garbage warriors are back in town.

Finally I found a likely place. There it was in all its glory – a supposed “Irish bar”. I just had to go in. It was surreal. The place was filled with supposed Irish road signs and other paraphernalia. The staff, exclusively Spanish speaking, were forced to wear green and white football shirts, rather like the Glasgow Celtic football strip from about 15 years ago. The combination of the very Mexican faces and the Celtic strip was wonderfully incongruous, and I had some excellent fajitas ( I am sure the recipe really originates from county Cork). I love authentic tourism.

Spent some more time looking at the shops and began my walk back to the hotel. Took some photo graphs of some of the buildings, and found a security guard talking to me in rapid Spanish, and I couldn’t follow him. “Lo siento , pero no hablo muy bien Espanol” I said. “No Photographs” he replied in English immediately. I wasn’t sure what his credentials were for telling me whether I could take photos on the public street, but I had all the photos I wanted.

Rotten drive to the airport. Friday night is gridlock night. The driver predicted two hours and he was dead right, though it was nice that he drove via the main thoroughfare – a bit like the Champs Elysees in Paris or Av Diagonal in Barcelona. Arrived at a sweaty airport, and checked in. BA don’t have a lounge in the airport but use another airline lounge. Made my way there to the blessed air conditioning. Handed over my invitation and was issued with two drinks vouchers – obviously hospitality is rationed. This turned out to be a false hope on the part of the local management. The barman clearly had a scam to increase his earnings. He had a large bowl for tips on the counter. I watched a guy collect a gin and tonic and put a dollar in the bowl, on which the barman returned the voucher for reuse. The same gentleman had at least 5 drinks while I was there. Flight back uneventful, not even an “arriba” from the pilot.

One final tale (as we have a Spanish theme), and I hope he’ll forgive me. I heard a great story from my colleague Kevin C…….. recently. He related that whilst at college he helped his finances with a job at Burger King, where his job was wrapping the burgers. He was due to go back to college for his year in Spain, but before he finished was sat down by the store manager, who tried to persuade him to give up college, as he felt he had real talent for the burger industry.

Every time I meet him now I reflect that I am in the presence of burger wrapping greatness………