Losing it in Latin America

The fun of sharing a dorm room wears thin at 3:30am when people are noisily getting up to take a bus to Tikal, Guatemalas most important and famous Mayan ruins. Everyone staying in Flores goes to Tikal, it´s just the done thing. So me being me had to go against the grain and NOT go to Tikal. I´m just not up for seeing any more ruins right now, and as for leaving at 3:30am to see the sun rise over the site? Well you can imagine my reaction to that idea. Still, off they go for this spiritual experience of a lifetime (!) only to find it´s so misty they can´t see the sun, and when you reach the top of the temple ready for dawn you find it already crowded with other people who´ve read the same thing in the Lonely Planet. From what I heard, the spiritual experience is somewhat lessened when you´re surrounded by hoards of jabbering tourists tucking into their picnics. I likened it to sitting at the top of the temple in Palenque, enjoying the view, only to have three septics arrive at the top and shout out “Holy crap dude, that´s awweeeesome!!”

So when I finally got up and had breakfast (respectable time of day of course), I packed up and joined Ivan, a guy I´d met the previous night, for the journey down to Rio Dulce. We took a tuk-tuk down to the bus station, bought our tickets and waited for it to leave. While watching the music TV channel in the bus station I had my first dose of xmas fever, with a dodgy posturing glam rock band that sat around having a huge feast draped in girls and wearing santa hats with their leathers, singing a rock version of jingle bells in spanish. It is 2005 isn´t it?!

We got on the bus to find the back seats taken by a group of suspect individuals with fixed expressions. Half an hour into the journey we stopped at a parrot sanctuary with an attached restaurant. The restaurant had a large tank with an even larger boa constrictor out front, presumably to discourage difficult customers. This is where the ticket guy from the bus gets up and forcibly removes the suspect guys from the back and takes them to the front of the restaurant next to the snake. I don´t know what fate awaited them or what they did to deserve it, but I think it might have something to do with them being made of brightly coloured paper with stick on faces. I´m not sure what they put in the coffee round here but it´s having quite an effect on my sanity…

The journey takes us through many small dustbowl villages of no significant note, until we stop at one for a while as the bus driver hops out to go to the bank. We are left looking across the road to where a large brute of a man trains his dog on a chain to fight the other dog chained to the post. He seemed rather pleased to have a bus load of people as an audience and continued to throw the dogs together to develop their killer instinct. Eventually he tires of this and gets in his pickup truck, reverses over the dogs food bowl and drives off. If he´d only hung around I would have invited him over for dinner. Bastard!

Back on the road the villages give way to open countryside, with hills cleared for cattle grazing, and just as the hypnotic motion of the bus and the rolling countryside sends me off to sleep, I wake with a start to find we´re in Rio Dulce. The town is just another dustbowl nowhere but crucially it´s sat beside the beautiful lake Izabel and the Rio Dulce river which feeds into it from the carribean sea. I leave Ivan at this point as he´s staying here and, avoiding the bus stop hawkers, make my way down to the dock by the river to catch the last boat (las trancha) up to Livingston.

The boat leaves just as the sun is setting and we set off at full speed up the mist-shrouded river surrounded by the silhouettes of the trees and mangroves on either side, reminds me of ´Nam! The ride takes an hour and as we progress it gets really dark and we take the canyon in pitch black – sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and hope you come out the other side. The occassional flash of lightning in the distance is the only light at times but eventually we come out the other side to arrive in Livingstone, set on the carribean coast. I found somewhere to stay and went out and met up with James and Corrine again.

After food we went to a reggae bar promising live music only to find it pretty empty. I buy a rum and coke and hand over a 100 Quetzales note. He pours me a dribble of rum with the coke and charges me Q25 – what a rip off! I ask for more rum and wait for the change (cambio). The barman motions for me to wait as they don´t have change for the Q100 note. I sit with James and Corrine and as the place fills up the ´band´ takes to the stage. The band is playing traditional Garifuna music like in Hopkins (Belize), but while they play one guy gets up to shut the toilet door to block out the light, another wanders off stage somewhere and the rest are left to bang their drums and a tourtise shell! Now don´t get me wrong, I may well have enjoyed the music if it wasn´t for the nagging feeling that my change was never going to arrive. I sat there seething at being ripped off while thinking “Where´s my fucking cambio you bastard” as only a pissed-off gringo with a poor grasp of spanish can. When the barman eventually comes over with the fucking cambio he gives me Q60 and a pat on the back that says to me, well done for taking this Q40 rip-off so well gringo – do come again.

Ah well, tomorrow´s another day.

It took me a day longer than expected to leave Belize. I sat drinking coffee friday morning in the beautiful spot I´d found near San Jose Succotz and thought ´bollocks to it´ one more day, uno dias mas. Five people turned up thursday night so friday we all went tubing down the Mopan river nearby. The river was beautiful, though fairly fast flowing due to heavy rain the previous weekend, but that made it more fun. However saturday I really should make a move.

Saturday came and I did finally pack up and head on. I took a taxi the few miles to the border, went through border control no problem and eventually negotiated a means of travel to Flores. This involved a minivan with as many seats as could be packed in, then more bums on seats than there were seats! Whilst being packed into the back of this bus with people standing, still we pulled over to pack another family in – where will they go? Oh, in front of me, behind me, on top of me! It was fun in a funny sort of way and at least I had a window seat so I could see the shadow of my backpack on the roof to assure me that we hadn´t bounced it off on the pot-holed road several miles back.

I found the hostel in Flores fairly easily (it´s only a small place) and was finally able to breathe out and relax. The hostel is really nice with a jungle feel back garden/bar/cafe, covered with hammocks, playing good music and with a menagerie of wildlife. The two house dogs have recently had puppies and two of these still remain at the hostel. Those, the cat and two wolf-whistling parrots all fight for attention.

Flores itself is a little town, an extension of St Elena just across the bridge. It sits as an island on this huge lake and has a view to die for. I spent sunset (and beyond) on the lakeside with James and Corrine, a couple from the UK I´d met at the hostel, and we ate, drank and smoked until dark. James and Corrine have headed off today for Livingston, where I should be heading tomorrow and will hopefully catch up with them again. They´ve been to spanish school in the last few weeks and it´s improved their spanish incredibly and is quite an inspiration for me to do the same when I get down towards Antigua, but in the meantime I´ll continue to progress my pigeon spanish to stumble on: “Me travel Livingston tomorrow, bus when do you know? Please, thankyou” Hmmm…

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