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Villa Rica, Mexico – Week One
Well, here we are starting a new project. I'm jotting these notes staring out of my hammock under palm trees on beach at Villa Rica, Mexico. It's nightfall, a fire on the beach: a pile of silver boxes and the tripod. The usual film crew baggage. It's a strange feeling being back on the road. It's two years after we finished filming Alexander the Great, after 16 countries and four wars.
We arrived in Mexico six days ago to begin a series about the Conquest of the Americas, the Aztecs and Incas, one of the most dramatic stories in all of history. The usual nervous tingle in the pit of the stomach starting a big project. Will it work? Will we find what we are looking for? For us all as a crew it takes a few days to get a rhythm – even if you have known each other for years as we have.
We spent our first night on the shores of the Yucatan in a hotel full of raucous U.S. high school kids on holiday. We soon found a different Mexico: magnificent scenery at Tulum, superb ruins at Chichen Itza, haunting in the dawn light: And surviving culture: for the Mayans, Incas and Aztecs are still here. In the Yucatan, the Mayan language is spoken everywhere. And so the story starts to take shape. Day Three in the depths of the bush we visit one of the villages who follow the strange cult of the Speaking Cross (the symbol of the great 19th century Mayan revolt) and we are run out of town by gunmen who threaten to break our cameras and ram our jeep. We left. After all, it's only a film. [more]
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