One man and his blog

Over recent weeks I´ve shared beers with some of the most hillarious characters ever, including a few of the bravest adventurers I´ve ever met and the tellers of some of the biggest and most blatantly outrageous lies imaginable.

Amongst my favourites has to be a hugely entertaining and genuinely nice guy called Jon, a slightly mad Canadian now close to half way through riding his BMW the length of the PanAmerican highway from Alaska in the north all the way down to Patagonia at the bottom of Chile through North, Central and South America.

It was clear that Jon got a kick out of sharing his big story of getting interrupted mid way through a squatting “nature break” by the side of the road soon after setting out in Canada, and coming as close to face-to-face with a bear as your ever likely to want to get – whilst managing to make a comedy retreat with your pants around ankles and later tell about it.

Maybe if i hadn´t laughed so hard I wouldn´t have heard the story so many times in one night.

Funnier still had to be the fact that Jon was originally only meant to be riding for 2 weeks but found new vigour in life on the open road after his run in with the grizzly and had a complete rush of blood to the head about returning home to work so phoned his boss, who was also his Dad, and quit! The crazy man THEN called his wife and negotiated a 4 month extension to his ride after promising to be home for Christmas and make up for it the New Year by buying her a new car and take her to Vegas to see Tom Jones next time he was in town!

Its going to take some derranged fool to beat Jon in the loony stakes. Christmas is bound to be entertaining in Vancouver when and if he eventually gets home.

The easy walking cobbled streets of colonial Antigua were conviently laid in a grid but with very few signs or distinguishing landmarks for guidance, using the volcano to the south of the city as my reference point was the only way I could stop one identical street of pastel shaded houses from looking like any of the others and avoid from getting frustratingly lost all the time.

The draw of trekking up an active volcano was my reason for staying more than a day in Antigua, and not to study Spanish with the gringo masses like so many others. This was the first town in Latin America I had visited on this trip where English was as likely to be spoken as Spanish and you could find a Burger King and a Subway if rice, beans and tortillas no longer set your world alight. My next Spanish school would be a little over a week away and a few more border crossings down the road in Nicaragua.

My dusk trek up Volcan Pacaya was a moderately demanding 2hr ascent, after so longer of walking on the flat I found it harder than it should have been. It was made entirely worthwhile soon after reaching the summit as the sun was starting to set bright orange behing the volcano, it highlighted the glowing laver through the gaps and cracks only a few feet below where we were standing. Its quite terrifying walking across an active laver flow and feeling the immense heat but nothing like as scary as standing close enough to toast marshmallows as a few in my group did.

After a few minutes scrambling around in the dark there was a noticeable smell of melting rubber, it was the soles of shoes mixed in with sulfuric gas clouds. Health and safety isn´t the greatest consideration in the emerging world, theres absoultely no way anyone would have got this close if the volcano had been in Europe or the US. Later I was told there had been 3 deaths in recent yrs on the volcano, as luck would have it they were all crazy tour guides leading from the front and not people like me hanging back. The torch lit retreat back down the volcano was less enjoyable as was my minor tumble in the darkness, the handfulls of small cuts I collected reminded me of the gravel grazes you get as a kid falling off a bike.

4am the next morning I was packed again, ready and waiting for my next bus and an exit from Antigua, and Guatemala for now. Next destination, Honduras and the town of Copan to explore the most southerly of the Mayan ruins close to the borders with both Guatemala and El Salvadore. My fun but brief stay in Copan was followed by an even shorter stay in the capital city, Tegucigalpa.

Tegucigalpa was only ever intended as a 14hr sleep over neccessary to connect with the following mornings solitary bus to Nicaragua and its capital, Managua. The 11 gun shots I heard a little too close for comfort to my hotel within hrs of arriving in town convinced me I had made the right decision to keep moving.

There have been few larger towns or cities in South or Central America that have ever impressed me enough to want to stay beyond a day or 2, Tegucigalpa wasn´t going to change that, nor did my fleeting first liason with Managua the next day.

During the past 7 days I´d spent about 30hrs on buses of one shape or another, taking me from the middle of Guatemala to Managua, Nicaragua. My enforced poor dietery choices, too many nights of too little or no sleep at all, and the plunging temperatures of some freezing air conditioned long distance buses had left me feeling exhausted and generally unwell.

I was elated the US$1 shuttle bus from Managua to Granada was no more than an hrs journey. My initially impressions of Granada were good, it was looking like the town I had hoped it would be and needed to be in right now.

I´d honestly forgotten just how much fun, (and stress), is involved with getting your clothes washed in Latin America.

If memory serves me correctly at least in Peru your relatively likely to get your clothes back, not always cleaner, but you do get them back with colour thread switched to every garment for identification purposes as there´s a better than 50/50 chance that your kit gets washed in a co-operative sluce.

Guatemala´s different, I think it works on a lucky dip basis provided you collect a bag with the same wheight of clothes in it that you dropped off. Your charged by the kg regardless of the content or amount of items, no change there. On the last two wash days I´ve managed to trade up with my clothes. Lately I´ve had an old pair of shorts morph into a very nice towel and an OK t-shirt get swapped for another t-shirt slightly more OK than my original and a better fit. Eventually I lost.

After only 4 wks on the road and I´m down to 4 pairs of boxer shorts now, I do however have 3 matching bra and pantie sets to swap if I ever meet a similar laundry loser of the opposite sex.

In normal circumstances I would have attempted an exchange but there isn´t a great deal of normality around me right now and I left town this morning on a bus for Antigua before taking a full underwear inventory.

Oh well, life goes on.

My first base in Guatemala, Panajachel, is widely know locally as Gringotenango on account of the mass influx of European and North American hippies that have been arriving here since the 60´s and keep forgetting to leave. Pana is sat in the south of the country, less than 4 hrs from the closest Mexican border and a almost a mid way point between the two largest cities, Xela and Guatemala City.

Pana should be, or rather once must have been a beautiful unspoilt village on the shore of Lago Atitlan, (It´s not the tourism thats spoilt the town but the panpipe recordings of Celine Dions Titannic song that I hear everyday).

Situated across whats reported to be “the most beautiful lake in the world” are three or four spectacular volcanoes clearly visible for most of the day. The lake is a national treasure on account of it being reveared as the birth place of creation in Mayan society, I innocently caused great offence and put both size 11´s in it answerring a question with a bit too much honesty, I told a local that as much as I enjoyed Lago Atitlan I still prefer the southern reaches of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. Probably the worst thing I could have said and not to be repeated.

It felt like winning a mini Guatemalan lottery for 7 consecutive nights, not only have I stayed in a newish hotel with a comfortable brand new bed and private bathroom complete with toilet seat, but for the first time in over two weeks I´ve had copious amounts of hot water to shower and shave in. I quickly blanked out the couple of nights I spent in two alternative lodgings with different but equally challenging living conditions before upgrading my budget to US$10 a night and landing myself in backpacker luxury.

One of the reasons staying for over a week in Panajachel turned out to be so attractive was the daily interaction with a cross section of Mayan people and occassionally getting to hear what guide books can never can tell you, what real life is about for them.

Guatemala is a country of 12 million people, 55% of the population is indigenous Mayan, of which there are roughly 28 different tribes each speaking their own language, plus maybe Spanish.

I´ve been told more sad than happy stories since arriving in Pana. Only 2 yrs back there were extreme rains that caused the level of the vast lake to rise buy 2 meters displacing those living closest to the lake, at the same time the worst land slide recorded in this area occurred, an entire village was burried killing about 3,000 people. I don´t remeber hearing about this, just another piece of insignificant news outside of Guatemala?

The best friend of my Spanish teacher had just returned to town after 5 yrs in the USA working as an illegal. Back then he paid a smuggler US$4,500 to get him across the borders packed in the lining of a truck. Even today the annual average wage in Guatemala is no where near that amount so borrowing the price of passage from the smugglers is the only option and something taken up by many Guatemaltecos. It can take them yrs of staged inflated interest payments to clear their debt before being able to earn the extra money to send home and justify being there in the first instance. Apparently a large number of men with children give up on their families back in Guatemala after a couple of yrs and settle in North America leaving a chronic number of fatherless families and creating a vicious cycle of social problems that will be felt in one of the poorest countires in Central America for years to come.

Something I´d completely forgotten about back in the UK, the pockets on long shorts are perfectly placed for Central American pickpockets averaging 5ft in height. For a few weeks I´d been concious of customising my clothes to foil light fingerred latinos. It wasn´t as easy as I thought it might be but I tracked down a back street tailor in Panajachel and struck a deal on making my combat shorts Fort Knox like with industrial strength velcro. Anything that leaves my person now has to well earned, whoever lifted my chewing gum got lucky and caught me under prepared.

Another small event in the grand scheme but a mini disaster in my magnified life, the cover of my chunky Lonely planet guide to Central America came unstuck and detatched. I´m blaming Amazon.co.uk for selling me a substandard discounted book, I can´t believe it´s happened so early in my travels. Considering how long it´s taken me to track down velcro I´ve got two hopes of finding Super Glue.

Stupidly I shared my “disaster news” with another traveller only to be told harshly “you get what you pay for”, the last person who said those words to me was a smug private language school Director in Mexico – he was right though, by not studying with him and leaving Mexico for now I saved myself US$210 a week for identical schooling here in Guatemala. Maybe one day I´ll get round to sending him a thank you email.

Now I´ve seen a couple of the larger towns across the lake on day trips, drank a respectable amount of award winning cafe negro and completed phase 1 of my Spanish lessons it´s time to move on, next stop Antigua.

As I packed up to leave Mexico for Guatemala I realised maybe this trip was going to be a bit more comfortable than I´d been kidding myself. Amongst my “luxury” items packed included a squeezable plastic thing of Marmite, a couple of now squashed tubes of Colemans English mustard, better medical supplies than I´ve ever travelled with in the past and the final few “luxury” items, a fully loaded 80gb ipod and speaker.

Who was I fooling, I´m conceeding now that maybe, just maybe I´m not quite the bare bones traveller I´d imagined but atleast I still travel cheap – for the past couple of nights I stayed at Posada Jovel in San Cristobal, the name fit my window less room perfectly, the pronounciation in Spanish is Posada Hovel!

The crossing from San Cristobal de Las Casas to Guatemala should have been an easy 8-10hrs travelling between towns either side of the border with a few simple visa formalities sandwiched in between. An unseasonably heavy week of rain across the whole region had taken its toll, causing numerous land slides leaving rocks wheighing several tons lying on the roads available, and in worse cases unsealed roads had been completely washed away.

I knew in advance this was going to be a tough trip to make so bought a ticket the previous day on a visa run collectivo, the kind of camper van that shows gringos to visa clearance then waves you on to walk across geographical no mans land to a waiting collectivo in the neighbouring country. This is normally a torid battery hen like operation, costing a few dollars more, laid on solely for backpackers. My collectivo to the border was empty, only 3 of us including me, the other 2 were returning Guatemalans including my friend and occassional translator for the day, Francisco.

With the land slides causing many accidents, some unfortunately very serious as I later saw evidence of, there were major delays to traffic in both directions. I found myself stuck in no mans land on the border with Francisco, stamped out of Mexico but not quite in Guatemala, for almost 4hrs in the rain.

Welcome to Guatemala

I think there´s an expectation by many that when you cross borders your greeted with a welcoming street party of flag waving locals decked in national costume offering you a banquet of traditional foods. The reality is that border towns are never a fair reflection of the country or people and more often than not represent the worst on offer. Mexico-Guatemal was no different, two ugly towns with blatant poverty, an edgy atmosphere and signs of something worse round the corner if you were stupid enough to go looking for it. Young guys entertained themselves riding thrashed out mopeds close to the border in Guatemala openly displaying side arms strapped to their belts. Whilst I waited for my collectivo the border sheriff´s pick up truck with cage welded on the back pulled up with 3 captured Guatemalan border jumpers in it. Lifes got to be tough to put yourself through that kind of ordeal.

It must have been 8pm, 14 hrs after leaving San Cristobal de Las Casas that I rolled into Panajachel in pitch darkness, tired, wet and hungry. I had no cause for complaint at any point during a wretched day, I was just pleased to have concluded the journey safely albeit I was a bit shaken by a few of the almost certain fatal accidents we´d driven past only hours earlier.

All I had energy for now was a few quick beers and bed.

Oaxaca got me good, it was harder to leave than it should have been. Finally I was toughing it on the road, my first few weeks in Mexico had been a bit of a soft landing in reality, a mountaneous night bus ride south should roughen up a few edges.

11hrs drags when the journey is made up of sweeping left and right turns in quick succession throughout the night, punctuate this with a rowdy stop and search police patrol rampaging through the bus with flashlights and dogs on the lookout for guns and coccaine and your unlikely to close your eyes for long there after.

How is it that the Mayans, Incas and Aztecs thousands of years earlier managed to build the most incredible cities and temples by hand in the mountains yet modern day engineering can´t produce a straight and pot hole free road in Latin America?

The bus arrived on time, 6:50am, it must have been 5 minutes after stopping that I picked up my first injury this time out on the road. I´ve knackerred my left foot.

Self diagnosis is going to hold off calling it a broken metertarsal or something similar for now but dropping a 20kg rucksak on my flip-flopped foot in the near darkness as I collected my luggage off the bus, (whilst the wrong side of half asleep), hasn´t done me any favours. At best it´s very badly bruised.

I arrived in San Cristobal de Las Casa, in Chiapas state, at the tail end of their rainy season. This mean´t full on mid afternoon monsoon with the capability to go on into the night, and it did for two days running. If there was a saving grace I had to rest up anyway as walking any distance wasn´t an option for 48hrs.

A couple of days on – the foots close to fine now, just damn sore.

With physical limitations on me I´m delaying the planned trekking around the villages of Tzotzil and Tzeltal in the Chiapas highlands, instead I´m heading towards Guatemala sooner rather than later with plans to return to San Cristobal again further down the line.

The day before attempting the border crossing I went to La Centro de la Medicina Maya, a modern day living museum of Mayan medicine still practiced in Chiapas.

Oh my god! Expecting to hear about shamen, indigenous plant and herbal remedies, yes – but to watch a graphic 12 minute video of a Mayan home birth, no. The women spend the entire labour kneeling in front of their husbands, or anyone else available, (resting against their seated legs), before dropping the infant onto the mud floor in the home. A nice touch I thought was the hole dug where the baby landed and the placeneta burried there a few minutes after the delivery – lucky for me the video coverred this also.

An Italian girl watching near me nearly fainted at this point, she brightened up soon after when it was my turn to go pale. Other than a badly directed kick I´m not sure I want to know how you collect this “illness” but swollen testicals are treated with black widows fangs!

No thank you, I´m not sticking around to get kicked in the Chiapas!

Within a few hours of arriving in Oaxaca I was settled in the pool of a great family run guesthouse in the hills over looking the beautiful colonial city. The family were unbelievably welcoming, largely due to the owners two sons Chay and Javier being my age and their fathers love of The Beatles and all things English. I was adopted and now have a surrogate Mexican family.

I should have known better but agreed to a night out “Mexican style” with Chay, Javier and a few of their friends. After an evening at the wrestling, (don´t ask), followed by obligitory street tacos at 1am we went off bar hopping. Around 2:30am the brothers left me with Arturo, their best pal and lawyer – 6am I finally got home too wasted to open my door so had to sleep next to the pool till first light when I could focus on turning a key in the lock and getting to bed.

After a couple of days of venturing no further than downtown Oaxaca and exploring the cobbled streets I went off to the nearby Mayan ruins at Monte Alban. A few other day trips from Oaxaca included Hierva el Agua in the far outlying mountains, it means “boiling water” but its actually a stunning petrified waterfall encrusted in mineral deposits. A visit to the Mezcal / Tequilla distillery was all I needed to swear me off the stuff for life, 30+ tastings in the mid day Mexican sun was never going to be smartest idea thinking about it.

My week in Oaxaca proved to be highly educational, not only had my new friends Chay and Javier kindly decided to teach me not to be the last to go home on a party night when Mexicans are hosting but I also learned the hard way to listen and take advice if it´s given. “Always wash your hands before going to bathroom, not just afterwards if your mid way through a meal”. A typical Mexican meal is a chilli inferno and almost always involved eating with your fingers – just for the record the stinging passed after an hour or so but the memory will stick for a while.

I needed to pick up a bit of pace and keep moving or I was never going to get to Guatemala and my Spanish lessons. There was only one option, the night bus to San Cristobal del las Casas, the last major city in Mexico, a few hours from the border, situated higher up in the southern Mexican highlands. Before leaving I was made to promise I´d return to Oaxaca enroute to Mexico City for an important family birthday party in April next year, I really hope I make it.

It was only a matter of time of time before a truly unfogettable character emerged. The journey from PTO to Oaxaca city was via a steep twisty 6hr mini bus ride through the mountains, the driver was all the entertainment needed.

Tito the driver was an over friendly kind of a latino Charles Bronson looking dude, slicked back black hair, perfectly trimmed moustache – he must have bathed in Kouros aftershave that morning and dressed from the wardrobe of Saturday Night Fever, complete with medallion. The 150 peso fare had to be his appearance fee for belting out vocals along to a rat pack crooner classics tape in Spanish set to a marriachi backing group.

I was the only non Mexican passenger amongst 16 on the bus and took a while to warm to him if I´m honest but I´m never going to forget “Charlie Bronsons-boogie bus” or the questioning looks I was getting for not singing along to My Way with a few of the other joy riders sooner. Note to self, don´t sit near the driver next time.

Leaving for LHR on Monday 24th September I couldn´t have been more relieved. The news that morning was of tornadoes that hit across the UK the night before, predictions of yet more bloody rain and threats of further interest rate hikes. Timing was already on my side.

Things were going well from the off, the window seat I´d chosen online 24hrs earlier had unobstructed legroom in front and an empty seat to my left. Flying cattle class has never been this kind to me in the past.

My first taste of Mexico and the evening street life outside the airport was no more chaotic than I´d been expecting, but congratulations have to go to Mexico City and all its drivers, you managed to nudge Quito out of my top three crazy taxi rides and fit nicely in between Delhi and Cairo! “Welcome to Mexico gringo, es un loco ciudad si?, si es muy loco”.

After a few days in Mexico City enjoying the post celebrations to their independance day on the 17th, grabbing 3 peso tacos on the run, and discovering what exiled Mexicans fail to mention, that Sol and Corona is sold in litre bottles here costing about 75p, already I´m thinking whats not to love about Mexico?

Ducking out of a 16hr bus ride I took a cheeky 45 minute flight instead on a tiny Fokker 100 jet to Puerto Escondido, (PTO), on the pacific coast of Oaxaca. After travelling for only 3 days and I´ve already got my first unbelievable story to tell at a later date about a shuttle transfer from the terminal down the runway in the slip stream of a 747 on take-off!

PTO is the surfing meca of Mexico, a medium sized town, supposedly 2nd only to Hawaii for its world class break if Mexicans are to be believed. What PTO also had was a furnace like climate with temperatures far in excess of the comfortable 85 degrees I experienced in Mexico City, and with humidty to stop you in your tracks. Despite loving my hammock and ocean view, after less than a week I had to head inland to the mountains and the city of Oaxaca.

I think I already knew by the summer 2006 that this trip was going to happen, maybe even sooner than that, but certainly within months of returning from travelling RTW I was planning again.

Maybe this is going to turn out to be the final part of my submersive globe trotting, or as my dad affectionately once called it, “running away, (again)”, either way I´ve got some unfinished business with the Pan-American highway and a healthy fascination with Latin America and its people.

I´ve never forgotten something said to me in Vietnam by a local girl with many less options available to her in life and no experience of life outside of her own town, let alone country, “if you never never go, you never never know”. To anyone who´s ever had to listen to me talk with more enthusiasm and passion about my past travels than possibly anything else I´ve done before I´m sure it was inevitable that I did have to go, (again).