Our new pop up shop in beautiful Hay on We is now open. You can visit us Tuesday to Sunday at Hay Castle - if you get to the top of the hill you can't miss us, we're opposite the honesty bookshop. It's a bit of a toe in the water - and who knows where it will lead? - but do come and say hello if you want to see what we're up to!
Starting to get excited now. This time tomorrow we'll be in the air, winging our way towards Mexico City. We've made some great progress over the past couple of weeks, chatting to some of the very helpful people at UKTI Mexico and also doing some research and development here in Hay. We have a few leads to follow up in Oaxaca and Cuernavaca and we're hopeful we might stumble across some more great producers on our travels.
We'll be driving through some of the most amazing scenery in Mexico, visiting the ruins at Monte Alban, the hip sophistication of Oaxaca, and the cosmopolitan allure of downtown Cuernavaca. And we get to see Franz Ferdinand, the Vaccines and New Order!
We should be able to keep the blog updated on our travels, so look out for some photos and more news soon.
So here we go again. In two weeks time we'll be getting ready to check in online for our flights to Mexico City. We want to meet new producers who can help us expand our range of fairly traded goods from Mexico and Central America. We already have some great leads, but I think once we're on the ground we'll be able to track a few more down.
Currently our itinerary will take us from Mexico City to Xalapa, home of the Mexican leg of the Hay Festival. From there we'll drive down to Oaxaca for some mole sauce and sunshine. Then it's back to Mexico City before a week in Cuernavaca, the "city of eternal spring." We'll have our eye peeled for anything unusual with a great story about how trade is improving the lives of the artisans we meet.
More news soon. For now, we have to get our website licked into shape before we're ready for takeoff...