Travel - Playa Del Carmen

Sybille Bedford , A Visit to Don Otavio (Eland/Picador). An extremely enjoyable, often hilarious, occasionally lyrical and surprisingly relevant account of Ms Bedford's travels through Mexico in the early 1950s.

Frances Calderon de la Barca , Life in Mexico (University of California). The diary of a Scotswoman who married the Spanish ambassador to Mexico and spent two years observing life there in the early nineteenth century.

Tom Owen Edmunds , Mexico: Feast and Ferment (Hamish Hamilton/Viking Penguin, o/p). A coffee-table book of photographs, and a particularly good one, full of marvellous and unexpected images.

Charles Macomb Flandrau , Viva Mexico! (Eland, o/p). First published in 1908, Flandrau's account of life on his brother's farm is something of a cult classic. Though attitudes are inevitably dated in places, it's extremely funny in others.

Thomas Gage , Thomas Gage's Travels in the New World (University of Oklahoma Press, o/p). Unusual account by an English cleric who became a Dominican friar as he travelled through Mexico and Central America between 1635 and 1637, including fascinating insights into colonial life and some great attacks on the greed and pomposity of the Catholic Church abroad.

Graham Greene , The Lawless Roads (Bodley Head/Viking). In the late 1930s Greene was sent to Mexico to investigate the effects of the persecution of the Catholic Church. The result was this classic account of his travels in a very bizarre era of modern Mexican history.

Katie Hickman , A Trip to the Light Fantastic: Travels with a Mexican Circus (Flamingo, UK). Enchanting, funny and uplifting account of a year spent travelling (and performing) with a fading Mexican circus troupe.

Aldous Huxley , Beyond the Mexique Bay (Academy Chicago, o/p). Only a small part of the book is devoted to Mexico, but the descriptions of the archeological sites around Oaxaca, particularly, are still worth reading.

D.H. Lawrence , Mornings in Mexico (Penguin/Peregrine Smith, o/p). A very slim volume, half of which is devoted to the Hopi Indians of New Mexico, this is an uncharacteristically cheerful account of Lawrence's stay in southern Mexico, and beautifully written.

John Lincoln , One Man's Mexico (Century, o/p). Lincoln's travels in the late 1960s are an entertaining and offbeat read - travelling alone, often into the jungle, always away from tourists.

Patrick Marnham , So far from God & (Penguin, o/p). A rather jaundiced view, but nevertheless a humorous and insightful one, as Marnham travelled from the US to Panama in 1984. About half the book is occupied with his journey through Mexico.

James O'Reilly and Larry Habegger (eds), Travelers'Tales Mexico (Travelers' Tales, US). An anthology of Mexican travel writing. Disappointing considering the riches that are available: many here are reprinted magazine articles. Nonetheless there's something for everyone somewhere.

Nigel Pride , A Butterfly Sings to Pacaya (Constable, UK, o/p). The author, accompanied by his wife and four-year-old son, travels south from the US border in a Jeep, heading through Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. Though the travels took place 25 years ago the pleasures and privations they experience rarely appear dated.

John Lloyd Stephens , Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatán (Dover). Stephens was a classic nineteenth-century traveller. Acting as American ambassador to Central America, he indulged his own enthusiasm for archeology. His journals, told with superb Victorian pomposity punctuated with sudden waves of enthusiasm, make great reading. There have been many editions of the work: many include fantastic illustrations by Catherwood of the ruins overgrown with tropical rainforest; the Smithsonian edition combines some of these with modern photographs.

Paul Theroux , The Old Patagonian Express (Houghton Mifflin/Penguin). The epic journey from Boston to Patagonia by train spends just three rather bad-tempered chapters in Mexico, so don't expect to find out too much about the country. A good read nonetheless.

John Kenneth Turner , Barbarous Mexico (University of Texas, o/p). Turner was a journalist, and this account of his travels through nineteenth-century Mexico exposing the conditions of workers in the plantations of the Yucatán, serialized in US newspapers, did much to discredit the regime of Porfirio Díaz.

Ronald Wright , Time Among the Maya (Abacus/Grove). A vivid and sympathetic account of travels from Belize through Guatemala, Chiapas and Yucatán, meeting the Maya of today and exploring their obsession with time. The book's twin points of interest are the ancient Maya and the recent violence.