Tropic of Cancer- episode 1

Tropic of Cancer is a documentary where the presenter, Simon Reeve travels along the different countries along the Tropic of Cancer and gets help from guides along the way.

In the first episode the Presenter travels from Mexico to the Bahamas. He starts at a resort on the pacific coast of Mexico called Baja California and while he is there the locals touch there hearts when they see him as a warm greeting. In the first episode the film crew usually follow him around where ever he goes and when they go to a new location they used an establishing shot to show you what it is like.

Simon Reeve then travels to mainland Mexico and explores the ongoing Drug war between the police and drug traffickers. With his guide he is able to interact with local people in the Culican area of Mexico. Also in the area of Culican he interacts with an elite unit who are assigned to help stop the Drug traffickers. He follows the unit around and ends up going on a drug raid with the unit as well. When I was watching the part of the show when he was in Mexico I was amazed that when he visited a cememtery he found out that 90% of people dead in this cemetery were related to Drug Trafficking and around their graves were huge monuments about 2 stories high it was amazing.

Also in Mexico Simon Reeve interacts with a Mexican Cowboy at a abandoned film set where one of John wayne's films were filmed and asks questions such as, how long he has been living at the set and also where he lives. The Cowboy lived in an abandoned train on the set and said that he would never leave it.

There is a moment in the show where there is a bit of an arguement between the a mexican taxi driver and the guide and the prsenter because the taxi driver cut across the film crews car and it was the taxi drivers fault but the taxi driver wanted the crew to pay for the damage to his car which find rather astonishing.

Also Simon Reeve visited a gold mine that was based right next to a village. There had conflicts between workers of the mine and local residents of the village and one of the people that Simon talks too was attacked by a worker of the mine and he didn't want to go any closer because he was too scared.

Overall I actually like this program because of all the places the presenter visits and what other societies are really like to live such as the Culican area of Mexico it makes you think what it must be like living on a place where you are afraid for your life.It does really make you think.