Losing it in Latin America

It would seem that the local hippies have all trodden that well worn path across Asia and brought the joys of full moon parties to Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. The word around town is that they can’t hold it anywhere within walking distance as the towns’ mayor has said no, so instead they’re planning it on a beach somewhere else round the lake which will involve a boat ride to reach it.

After a night in the Freedom bar, drinking and dancing to a kick-ass band we head down to the dock for the much-anticipated boat to the party. There’s a lot of people waiting around and when a tiny boat arrives and is swamped by people it starts to look like it could be a very long wait. Meanwhile, while waiting, I meet a couple of greek guys, Nick and Sam, who seem rather pleased to meet someone who can speak english as they don’t speak a word of spanish. They turn out to be nice guys and we hit upon the great idea of walking to the beach where the party is., someone somewhere had told them it wasn’t too far, though it might take an hour or two. Looking at the queue for the boat this doesn’t seem like a bad idea so we head off.

Two or three hours later, after negotiating many hazardous paths through the woods, stopping to listen out for the music, we finally arrive at…a deserted beach still miles from the party having achieved nothing except still being alive. Oh what a familiar story from the free party scene. Still, we stopped on the beach and watched the sunrise, which was beautiful and one of the few I’ve seen since starting my trip. The journey back was a lot more pleasant, being able to see where you’re going helps, and arrived back into San Pedro early morning to be greeted by, yes of course, the pan ladies!

On my last day in San Pedro a group of us went up to Chichicastenango, a small market town in the Guatemalan highlands, reknowned for it’s market. As luck would have it they also had festival cellebrations going on with crazy colourful processions and fireworks assualting the senses. It was a really nice way to end my stay in Guatemala, for tomorrow I head off back into Mexico for xmas.

As our bus drew closer to Lake Atitlan you could catch glimpses of the lake from across the hills, but it doesn’t prepare you for the full beauty of the setting (neither can my photos) when you round the corner onto the road down to Panajachel, the largest and oldest of the towns around the lake. This is the place that the big hotels and the package tourists stay, so we took a boat across the lake to San Pedro, hippy central.

San Pedro is split into two halves, the main town being located up a steep hill, while all the lazy stoner backpackers are located around the waters edge, unable to make it up the hill until an ATM is needed. This small town is regarded as one of the best producers of coffee in the region, with harvested beans spread out all over the place drying in the sun. The other main cash crop seems to be weed, of which there seems to be no shortage. This might account for the slow chilled-out pace of life here, which is friendly and welcoming. It takes very little time to realise why so many backpackers have come here and never left.

One final commodity that is ubiquitous in this town, is the ever present ‘pan.’ Pan simply means bread, but here it seems to come in more of a cake form, usually mixed with anything from coconut and carrot to chocolate or pineapple, and they’re all good. I should know, I tried most of them over the course of the week. Whilst anyone who knows my weakness for cake may not be surprised by this, I blame it all on the strong-arm tactics of the women selling the pan. They know we’re all at their mercy after a hard days’ ‘recreation’ so what can you do when they corner you with a basket of warm fresh pan, I ask you! If I lived here for any length of time I know that I would become a rather fat pan-based man, stuffing my face daily, so I’d better not let it happen.

The lake itself is surrounded by hills and volcanoes, with settlements dotted all around the huge lake. Whilst the water looks beautiful and inviting to swim in, it’s only upon closer inspection, or in fact while I had my toes dipping in the water sitting on the edge of a dock, that you come to realise it’s not all that. I was enjoying the view, the late setting sun and a cold drink when I noticed Mr Hanky the xmas poo float past, only to be followed by the rest of the family. My toes came out of the water again pretty quickly and I made a resolution to not swim here, though this didn’t seem to bother the locals as they bathed and washed their clothes in it. There’s no proper sewage system out here so inevitably it all flows down to the lake, which is nice. I think you really need to find somewhere around the lake with no settlement nearby, or take a boat out to the middle to find anything like clean water to swim in.

Many faces from Antigua and beyond have showed up in San Pedro, even one of the first people I met in Mexico City at the start of my trip, a girl from St Pauls in Bristol as it happens, working in a local bar – it really is one of those places that everyone turns up at sooner or later.

Tuesday morning and it’s back to school for me, but not much changes. I’m still the poor student who can’t manage to get to class on time, do my homework properly or dedicate myself to my studies. Instead I spend four days prioritising my social life over study. On many of these nights we seem to end up at a ‘ladies night’ somewhere in town. This involves the ladies paying next to nothing for their drinks while the men pay through the nose for them, just so they can letch over the women. Thankfully I have Maria and Haley topping up my rum and cokes under the table all night so I get the best of both worlds, free drink and letching. It’s no wonder school the next morning is always such a struggle and my spanish has improved very little, though even a little is an improvement.

On the last day of school I go to Guatemala City with my teacher Edy, where we wander around the main square taking in El Presidente’s big bastard palace and the central cathedral. It was nice to revisit this city and see a different side to it, one that’s not so shitty and scarey as the first time I was passing through it a week earlier. However, as with all the big catholic cathedrals I’ve seen over here, it seems to involve plastering the place with a vulgar display of wealth, while poor people with fuck all to their names faithfully worship at the altar. What’s wrong with this picture?!

After spending nine days in Antigua I decide it’s time to move on. Not through boredom of the place, it’s somewhere I could settle for much longer, but the pressure of time to get up to Mexico for xmas means I should push on to Lake Atitlan, supposed to be one of the most beautiful lakes in the world, three hours west of Antigua.

Sunday was my second night in Antigua and I went to watch films with Irish Liam, Kiwi Melissa, Italian Omar and Aussie Larissa – oh it´s a muticultural life on the road; I´ve met more nationalities in seven weeks than George Bush even knows exist! While watching the Big Lebowski who should walk into the bar but Maria, the Dane I´d met back in Belize. She was on her way home from Honduras and stopped in for a few days before catching her flight home; my world is ever-shrinking!

After lunch on tuesday in the Rainbow cafe (as hippy as it sounds but very nice), Maria and myself joined a tour to climb the nearby Volcán Pacaya. Antigua is surrounded by several volcanoes but Pacaya is the only active one, so with the prospect of potential death this seemed like the obvious choice. Now I´ve heard of friends climbing volcanoes before and it always sounds like a cool adventure, but they never tell you what a bastard it is to climb up!

After two hours of exhaustion at altitude, sweating like the proverbial pig, I made it to the top to find this crazy landscape from another planet. The vent at the top of the cone was breathing in and out with it´s toxic sulphurous breath and looking down into the lava made the hard climb all worth it, though the heat almost took my face off. I topped it off by taking a piss at the top of the volcano; mother would be so proud of what a classy boy I´ve turned out to be! The descent was much more of a pleasure, taking a third of the time and being akin to skiing down a mountain as we ran/slid down the volcanic ash covered cone. It´s hard to say whether I´ll go through all that again on another volcano as it was tough, but I guess there´s still other options to explore for disgracing myself at high altitude, so I never say never.

After a good evening out in a greek restaurant listening to the same song on the scratched CD ten times (better than it sounds) it was time to say goodbye to the Aussie/Kiwi/Italian/Irish contingent. It´s so hard saying goodbye all the time, but I may bump into Melissa again in South America sometime next year, and Omar and myself hatched a plot to take Brazil together in January leading up to Carnival – bring on the dancing girls!

On wednesday I took a tour from Livingston which involved following a couple of local boys around the town, through the graveyard, which was as unexciting as it sounds (I mean it was really dead), and out through the surrounding local area to soak up the local ´culture.´ The only high point of this was having a small child saying ´Hola gringos´ (I don´t think he realised it was an insult but I´m sure his parents would be proud) and then watching one of the young german girls on the tour slip over in the mud and ruin her pristine skirt – you have to take your laughs where you can get them!

Then we all climbed into a hand-carved canoe for a paddle up the river. This might sound nice to you but I spent the whole time shitting it thinking we were going to roll over, and wondered where the hell we could climb out if it did as the river was lined with mangroves. Miraculously, despite how unstable we were, we made it safely, that was an experience I didn´t care to repeat. Thankfully we had a nice walk along the Caribbean beach to recover before getting to Siete Altares (seven alters) waterfalls, which was what I´d taken the tour for. However as we clapped eyes on it we soon realised it was not all it could be. There was a pool of water, but no water falling down it and I was pleased to find that Tim and Stu, two guys from England, were even more cynical about the whole experience than I was, which makes a nice change. Complimentary drinks afterwards involved sharing some bottles of barely brewed homebrew piss, so all in all it was pretty poor, but I went out in the evening with Tim and Stu and rounded the day off on a higher (!) note.

Thursday came and it was time to leave Livingston, so I sat chatting with a local rasta dude by the dock waiting for the boat. He was the soundest local I´d met in Livingston and he told me about the history of the area, the politics and the (alleged) drug smuggling yacht owners anchored out in the bay – quite an eye-opening hour of conversation that took in guns, drugs and corrupt politicians. The return journey down the Rio Dulce was quite different to the inbound journey as it was bright and sunny, and almost bumped me off the front of the boat when we hit the wake of another boat.

The following couple of days were pretty quiet, staying down in Rio Dulce struggling to get up in time to catch the bus in the morning. I finally made it at 6am on saturday and headed for Guatemala city. This city is frankly quite a polluted shithole and not somewhere to hang around. Thanks to a nice man named Omar and his brother-in-law they gave me a ride across town to find the bus to Antigua. If it wasn´t for them I think I´d still be lost in Guatemala City, or worse! Omar found me the right chicken bus so I bid farewell and headed to Antigua to a soundtrack of the drivers favourite mambolatinogabba tunes, which made the knee in my face rather more bearable.

I knew we´d hit Antigua as soon as we came round the corner, it´s such a beautiful spanish colonial town you can´t help but love it. I found the hostel, met some people and went out to have drinks watching the sunset over the volcanoes, followed by food and then beers in an Irish bar, as you do when in Guatemala. I think I´ll settle here for a while 🙂

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…

Well? I certainly am, thank you. I’ve just had a beautiful blissed-out four days in this little corner of paradise (San Jose Succotz, Cayo District of Belize). By day it’s been hot and sunny, the sounds of the birds and assorted wildlife filling the air, while by night the place buzzes, quite literally, with the sound of the bugs. I’ve seen butterflies, tarantulas (pets not wild ones), bats, trails of leafcutter ants, dragonflies, big dogs (Tai and Chi!) and of course mosquitoes, or little bastards as I like to call them.

It’s been pretty quiet around here in terms of people. Jim, the guy who told me about this place back in Hopkins was here for a day or two, as was Sarah, a photographer from the UK who won a fantastic competition prize of a round-the-world ticket taking photos for a charity and the Rough Guides. Sarah and myself spent Tuesday going up to the local Mayan ruins, followed by frisbee golf round the woods (like normal golf but with a frisbee and without the wankers).

Since then I’ve had the run of the place, as the last couple days have been quiet with only my hosts John, Judy, Flora etc. for company, but this has been good to give me time to recharge my batteries and prepare for heading into Guatemala. I realised today, whilst swinging lazily in a hammock, that since setting off almost six weeks ago I haven’t been alone at all – I’m not complaining as it’s been the most fun I’ve had in ages, but I have enjoyed having a couple of days to myself.

Now that I feel ready to move on, it’s time to jump back on the bus and head down to the border and face the music with my atrocious passport photo once again. My rough plan for Guatemala is to head to Flores first, an island town on lake Peten Itza, then head south to the Rio Dulce river before going west to Antigua, where I may go back to school to improve on my basic grasp of spanish.

Belize has been a breeze in terms of language because it’s largely english speaking, which is nice but doesn’t help improve my spanish, so it’s time to switch my brain back to learning mode. Belize is also relatively expensive compared to Mexico and Guatemala. It has very little manufacturing industry of its’ own, so most commodities are imported, that and the ever-expanding gringo population (and us tourists) keep pushing the prices up.

The only ‘made in Belize’ products of note are the beer (Belikin), the rum (Travellers’ 1Barrel being my favourite) and the ubiquitous Marie Sharp’s pepper sauce (every dinner table has it). As much as I like Tabasco, the habanero pepper sauces here are amazing, and hot! If they’re not exported already I suggest someone gets on the case before I get home, as I can’t carry anymore stuff. They come in many varieties and strengths, one of the hottest is called ‘No Wimps Allowed’ and it comes with the warning:
“Keep out of reach of children
Avoid contact with eyes or skin
Do not play triks[sic] on the weak or elderly whit[sic] this sauce”
Hmmm, now that just gives the mischievous amongst us ideas!

Right, enough rambling, I’d better go and pack my bag and head for a new land, with new beer and new currency. The Belizean dollars have the Queen’s head on them despite gaining independance in ’81; oh the grand old days of the British Empire. Thankfully Prince Philip hasn’t come over here recently and made one of his hilariously bigotted remarks about the locals, or I’d really be in the shit!

In order to get my news fix last night I was subjected to CNN, where I learnt that the Pope wears Prada! The insight into this revelation was provided by an ‘expert’ who said that while the Pope may well wear Prada, he probably doesn’t realise it. Well fuck me sideways, I’m glad I tuned in.

I shouldn’t take the piss really as at least it must mean that all the war, famine and general injustice in the world has ended, and there’s nothing left to show on the news except what the head of the Roman Catholic church wears on his feet.

OK, rant over, I got up early today (well early for me – might explain the rant) and went up to the local Mayan temple ruins, Xunantunich. After a river crossing on a hand-cranked ferry, followed by the kind offer of a lift up the hill by the local army (!) we reached the site before any other tourists. I’ve being feeling ruined-out after Mexico but today was a beautiful day, the site was quiet and without having to follow a tour guide round in a big group of people I found it quite enjoyable.

Sunrise over Xunantunich main temple

On return to the ranch I had a wander around the butterfly enclosure here, just had my first proper cup of tea since leaving Blighty and am now off to discover the joys of frisbee golf, whatever that is.

Ciproeta Stelenes, apparently

The Pope wears Prada, I wear flip-flops; who gives a flying monkey spunk!

Just added some images to the previous entries so scroll back down to check them out.

After the celebration day in Hopkins, myself and travel companion for the last week Laurie, went to the bus stop with conflicting info on whether their was a bus out of town or not. We didn’t get up in time for the 8am bus (guess who’s fault that was!) so we went down to sit and wait on the edge of town. We had very little money (I only had the bus fair) so we had no choice but to get to a place with a cashpoint. Eventually we realized there were no more buses running (it’s a Sunday thing) so we hitched a lift in the back of a pickup which took us straight to Dangriga, what a result!

Dangriga had little to offer other than a place to stay and an ATM, but that was fine.

The next day we parted company as Laurie was headed to Belize City and the nearby baboon sanctuary. I couldn’t face watching those red-arsed monkeys picking each others swollen behinds so I’ve headed to a place 6 miles west of San Ignacio near the Guatemalan border. It’s a butterfly farm/nature centre with a lodging place called Trek Stop, set in the jungle with wooden cabins, free internet, great food, a video library and excellent hospitality – it’s amazing what you find in the jungle.

Sunset from Trek Stop

Tomorrow’s another day and I’m going to go for a trek up to the local Mayan ruins to see if I’m over the ruin overload, or not.

I’ll try to post more photos in the next day or two. Let me know if you like them or whether they’re just taking too long to load and becoming a pain in the monkeys arse.