We arrived in the late morning, after a cold night in SeaTac airport, sleeping under bright lights to the accompaniment of automatic doors swishing open and shut, letting in gasps of snowy, frozen air.

Ten hours later, we were in another world, stepping off an Alaska Airlines plane into a wall of moist, hot, heavy air. Mexico.

We headed for the Hotel Vialta, picked at random from the Lonely Planet book.

We were students at the same college in Western Canada - friends, but not close. We knew each other well enough to plan an expedition together South of the border, down Mexico way, over the Christmas vacation - but not well enough to know what it would be like travelling together when we got there.

Today, rooting through a box of things I’ve been meaning to sort out for years, I found this photo of the ceiling fan in our room at the crumbling Hotel Vialta, in the old town of Mazatlan, where we stayed three nights for a couple of dollars each.

We’d been swimming in the calm pacific earlier in the day, and the air was so humid that our swimsuits refused to dry in the moist air. Geckos ran across the ceiling and down the walls. A family of cockroaches lurked in the dark bathroom. I hung my cozzie and sarong on the rickety fan to dry as it churned the thick air, slowly.

I also found the travel diary we kept throughout the trip. Re-reading it, I realise how many risks we took, how accepting and carefree - and stupid - we were. At eighteen, it didn’t even occur to me to worry.

I’ve written some of what happened here. More photos of Meg’s month in Mexico.