Journalist and travel writer Marcel Bayer
Marcel Bayer (1955) is a highly experienced traveller and expert on Central and South America and the Caribbean. He made his first trip to Mexico in 1976. After spending five weeks travelling around the country, he was hooked.
“ I was studying social geography at the time, and for some reason Latin America appealed to me more than Africa and Asia ”
Marcel: ‘What a riot of colours and scents, what extraordinary cultures. Every part of the country has its own distinct traditions and customs. And then there’s the history … in terms of significance, I find it comparable to what we learn at school about ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, but we hear virtually nothing about Mexico in our education.’
He returned there dozens of times, for work and holidays. Among other things, he wrote the travel book *Mexico* in the Dominicus series, and penned various journalistic articles about the country, its history and culture when, in the early 1990s, the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of this so-called New World was commemorated. Since then, as a lecturer in journalism at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, he has led, amongst other things, five trips to Mexico with journalism students.
As a journalist and travel writer, Marcel has travelled throughout virtually every country in Central and South America over the past forty years. He has written around twenty books on the subject, including *De Stad in het Slop* (Oxfam, Novib) and *Het Colombia van Gabriel García Márquez* (Gottmer).
In the autumn of 2025 and the spring of 2026, Marcel will be leading group tours to Mexico and Chile through Sapa Pana Travel.