One Way Train to Tombstone

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I caught a chicken bus from Leon to Managua with the intention of grabbing a cab to another bus station across the city to travel on to Granada. Most cities in Latin America have many bus stations catering for the plethora of bus companies serving various destinations. It can be a pain especially when you're loaded up. But as I was alighting my chicken bus a rather large gentleman bellowed into my ear "Granada?" Within a thrice after being bundled into a minibus shuttle with my backpack and rucksack taking up the last available seat I was heading for Granada. The reason I didn't spend time in the capital was that apparently there is nothing of aesthetic value to attract a stop-over. After the devastating earthquake of 1972 there has been very little restoration. This was on top of the carnage caused by another huge earthquake in the thirties. It seems there's another due any minute, you do the maths. Seriously though the reason the old city is inundated with gutted buildings and rubble is that it's regarded as pointless to rebuilt to its former glory because the chances of further earthquakes are so great. Another reason to hightail it out of town.

I was also really looking forward to Granada. Lonely Planet waxes lyrical about "The Goose that laid Nicaragua's tourism's golden egg" and "the high point of many travellers' trip to Central America" also being a "trip maker" in its own right. It didn't do it for me. I can understand the eulogising as the place is pristine because the colonial buildings seem brand new and they must give them a lick of paint every other week. It wasn't just me as somebody else described the place as a large wedding cake. The place has perfect symmetry. As in medieval European cities colonial communities have their splendour caught up with history. I've visited so many interesting places that have be described with the well coined phrase "fading colonial grandeur" but with Granada the buildings are relatively young and they're not allowing them to fade. I blame William Walker. Two names seem to dominate the history of certain countries in Central America, Captain Henry Morgan (who is said to originate from Llanrumney) and Mr. Walker. What amazing characters they were and what devastation they caused. I won't go off on a tangent about them, it would take too long and wouldn't scratch the surface. Just look them up and be amazed. Anyway the adventurer and filibuster (plus doctor and lawyer) William Walker was hired by the great and the good of Leon to attack Granada. Not one for half measures our William burned the place to the ground in 1856. Hence the lack of faded colonial charm. Granada is also on the massive Lake Nicaragua but despite this I experience the most oppressive and debilitating heat and humidity ever. I spent four days shuffling and flopping. I lay on my bed with a fan in my face as the sweat bubbled out of every pore. Even my legs were streaming with sweat. Coincidentally I received an e.mail from Donna while I was there who had just caught up with my blog. She has taught in many weird and wonderful places including Colombia, Vietnam, and Mexico. She also taught in Granada where she said it was the hottest place she's ever experienced. I doubt if it is above 30c but it has that x-factor that drains every ounce of energy.

There was one main highlight though and that was bumping into Robert again. I first met Robert in Lazybones in Leon, and our paths crossed a few times after that. Each time he was either dozing in a hammock sleeping it off, slouched on a sofa with a beer, or with his feet upon a table holding court outside a bar. I've yet to see him walk. There's a chance he'll be in Panama City the same time as me. If we meet again I will walk into a bar and he will be slouched in corner chatting with whoever: I just know the roles won't be reversed. I saw George Melly live on several occasions and he would be brought on stage on a chaise-long, a cocktail in one hand and a cigarette holder in the other: I sort of imagine Robert wheeled to a bar in similar fashion. He's forty and has been travelling South and Central America for three years. We had a few beers one afternoon in Lazybones and apart from seeming a bit of a louche he was definitely a bit of a lech as he would stop mid-syllable and over my shoulder give the new female backpacker arrivals the once over. He is slim and gaunt and he reminded me of what Peter O'Toole may have been like at forty. He was great company and often I found myself involved in a battle of wits as serious subjects were broached and he was interested in pushing the boundaries of arguments and debates we found ourselves in. He also had a great sense of humour was extremely bright and informed.

In Granada I was wandering up the street heading for a restaurant when I heard a shout. Robert sat at a roadside table feet up with a cocktail in hand and very stunning female companion. She was an American named Anne and apart from being gorgeous was extremely bright. The first thing she did was translate my T-shirt. They were drinking black rum on the rocks from a bottle they had just bought. I stuck with beer as I was leaving for San Jose at 5.00am the following morning. Again I enjoyed the funny and provocative banter while the pair of them got slowly rat-arsed. He's also a footie fan and got quite excited about the 1978 World Cup which we discussed and argued about at length. As a ten year old It was his first "conscious" tournament grabbing his imagination and leaving such a lasting impression that the highlight of his trip so far, covering three years, was going to the River Plate stadium the scene of the 1978 final where Mario Kempes got Argentina's extra-time winners against perennial runners-up, Holland. This extra info also added lustre to my experience of watching River Plate there two and a half years ago. Remember the flag?

Most of the travellers I've spoken too share my opinion of Costa Rica which is the place you have travel through to get to Panama or Nicaragua. The irony of course is that it has the most developed tourist industry in CA. Hence it's full of tourists and has a touch of Miami or Jamaica about it. So vulgar! I stayed in its capital San Jose for three days and planned to go to a volcano. This one I didn't have to climb as the bus takes you to a visitors centre and a path even I could manage which takes you to a place that overlooks the crater. Apparently it's spectacular. Unfortunately it hardly stopped pissing down all the time I was in San Jose, so my plans were washed out. I fully expected San Jose to be quite modern and trendy compared to the other capitals but it was quite a drab place with little to recommend it.

I'm now back in Panama City staying in the Casco Viejo area until my flight on Friday. Again my plan for what seemed an attractive excursion has been stymied. There's a "luxury" train journey which is glass topped and follows the Panama Canal from the Pacific to the Caribbean through dense jungle crossing the canal several times. The end of the line being on the Caribbean side of the country would've been a nice touch as I've more or less hugged the Pacific for the past six weeks. The fly in the ointment was that the destination was Colon. This place is aptly named as it's the closest you'll get to a shit hole. Here are some of Lonely Planet's descriptions of Colon. "Simply put, Panama's most notorious city is a sprawling slum with desperate human existence." It goes on "Colon is a dangerous slum" and "crime is a serious problem even during daylight" Now I thought of diving into a taxi and heading for a place of interest such as a botanical garden or museum. Lonely Planet always has a "Places of interest" for each place it describes, except for Colon. There aren't any. The train arrives in Colon at 9.00am and leaves at 5.30pm, what one is supposed to do in the meantime they offer no suggestions. I had visions of being curled up in a ball in the corner of the platform hoping nobody would notice me for eight hours.

Like last year I am limping home. If you remember last year I convinced myself that I was a victim of a snake bite in Burma. It turned out that it was a reaction of the heat with my varicose veins which was a bit of a let down. I was willing to lose my leg from the knee down just for the exotic kudos. I don't think that my Achilles heel is any worse or better but I have a calf pull or strain in my left leg. I don't think it's due to climbing volcanoes rather trying to negotiate steep pavements. You need crampons to scale some.

Oh well back to school on Monday.

A Little Bit of Politics There Ladies and Gentlemen

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Quoting St. Francis of Assisi Margaret Thatcher heralded her landslide election victory with the words "Where there is discord let us bring harmony, where there is despair let us bring hope". She then entered upon a preplanned, premeditated attack on the most vulnerable members of society using legislation, the judiciary such as the anti-union Lord Denning, the police, powerful media moguls, sinister national and international right wing organisations and most of all her own intractable iron will to destroy the rights and ultimately the will of the working class. The country was polarised into the go-getting haves of the city and big business to the growing politically created unemployed have nots. She created a north-south divide by destroying industrialised areas in the Midlands and the North. Within a short space of time Toxteth in Liverpool was in flames, and other inner-city areas were rioting.

I was involved with her first serious attack on the unions although with her trusted hit-man Norman "Count Dracula" Tebbit also described as an untrained pole cat by Dennis Healey had prepared for battle by creating draconian anti-union legislation. In 1983 they set out to smash the print unions. Yours truly was involved in the battle of Wapping, and volunteered as flying picket receiving secret calls in the early hours to be collected at secret destination then driven at breakneck speed to some place in Somerset or Gloucester to prevent trucks with newsprint exiting or entering premises. There were many demos in London and Cheltenham GCHQ where unions had been banned by Thatcher. Of course the following year was the historic twelve month miner´s strike orchestrated by Thatcher and which still divides communities and families to this day.

Political opposition was in disarray and union leaders for the most part were running scared. But there was a little oasis in this desert of despair,.. Saturday Night Live. Harry Enfield exposed the shallowness of Thatcher's go-getting society with his Loadsofmoney character but it was the besequined Ben Elton's weekly and brilliantly funny rants against all things "Thatch" that helped us unleash our pent-up frustrations by hooting and roaring him on. After a long, loud, word perfect delivery of wonderful comic timing he always finished with "A little bit of politics there, Ladies and Gentlemen". Then we would wake up Monday morning ready for a good right wing kicking. However the reason I regularly found myself incandescent with rage, pounding my fists on tables and screaming abuse at the TV had little to with the events taking place in Britain rather the abuses of power and the scandalous injustices taking place here in Nicaragua.

The Somoza family much like the Duvalier's in Haiti had for decades and generations used their military dictatorship to terrorise the population into poverty and subjugation to bleed the country dry. The response to opposition was torture, imprisonment, and death. Such military dictatorships were either ignored by the West for Cold War expediency or supported financially and militarily by the USA in particular. In 1972 there was a massive earthquake in the capital Managua leaving 5,000 dead 20,000 injured and 250,000 homeless. 80% of the buildings were damaged. A huge amount of international financial aid was sent. Somoza diverted most of it into his own coffers causing further deaths and suffering. This galvanised a lot of support for the burgeoning Sandinista guerrilla movement. By 1979 after a series of military victories against the US backed Somoza's National Guard the Sandinistas were marching on the capital Managua when Somoza fled to Paraguay.

The new revolutionary government despite the fact that Somoza had left the economy and infrastructure in tatters set about the most radical programme of social and economic reform. Not only did the leader Daniel Ortega receive financial aid from the USSR but Jimmy Carter sent $US75 million to help this ambitious program. Within a short space of time the infant mortality rate was reduced dramatically, and an education programme which saw teachers sent into the countryside to reach and educated all members of society resulted in the literacy rate increased many fold in an effort to achieve the aim of a fully educated population. Wealth and land distribution was also embarked upon. Gender equality on a scale still being sought in the West was also attained. Although based on a socialist ideology the constitution stated a policy of non alignment. Nicaragua was and still is a strongly independent Catholic country. It would seem that the promised land had been reached and all of the sacrifices and the deaths of so many young Sandinistas were worth the pain and suffering.

However following Thatcher's election she was joined by right wing bible punching simpleton Ronald Reagan having his strings pulled by far more sinister characters behind the scenes. A popular effective egalitarian socialist government could be a template for other Latin American countries wishing to rid themselves of US backed military dictatorships, so it had to be nipped in the bud. Using the members of Somoza's hated National Guard and with heavy CIA involvement the Reagan administration financed a counter-revolutionary force (The Contras) to overthrow the new popular Sandinista government. The US even attempted to sabotage Nicaraguan ships in their own docks and was severely reprimanded by The International Court of Justice. Apart from financing a potential Invasion force of Contras from inside Honduras the USA set up a blockaded in an effort to bankrupt the country. All this was enthusiastically supported by the Thatcher government. In 1985 the US government refused Reagan further aid to the Contras. The Sandinistas had been democratically re-elected again a year earlier. However Reagan ignored his own government and organised by Oliver North another evangelical bigot syphoned funds illegally from arms sold to Iran. Known as the Iran-Contra affair it should have meant Reagan going the same way as Nixon and North doing time in a penitentiary. Of course neither happened.

The Catholic Church played a significant role in these dramatic events. On the ground Nicaraguan Catholic priests not only supported the Sandinistas but in some cases held government positions. However the hierarchy and the establishment were highly critical of the involvement priests in politics. Pope John Paul II made an infamous visit to Nicaragua during the height of the Contra onslaught in 1983. At the airport in Managua he was presented to a long row of priests who knelt and kissed his ring in turn. When he came to Fr. Ernesto Cardenal a Sandinista minister he publicly berated and humiliated him in front of the watching world. The irony and barefaced hypocrisy was that the Pope at the time was commuting to Poland about three times a week to effect regime change there and secretly funding Lech Walesa Solidarity.

A few days later there was a huge open-air mass in the main plaza in Managua. There was a massive congregation. Now we're all aware of the Pope's annual Easter message from Rome. He always makes a meaningless, ineffectual, generalised message for peace. He must say "Peace with you" a hundred times a day. On this particular day all the congregation of devout Catholics wanted was him to mention the word "Peace" and he refused. In this instance as the only violent aggressors were the Contras it would have meant something and would sent a powerful message to the US government. The crowd became restless and began chanting "Peace", "Peace". Also the previous day seventeen teenagers ambushed by the Contras were buried and the funeral service was on the exact spot as the Mass. The mothers were given a prominent position and cries could be heard for the Pope to acknowledge their loss and say a prayer for them. Again he refused. Sensing the disquiet in the crowd and in the increase in volume of the chanting the Pope lost his rag and angrily told them to "Shut up!" and "Be quiet!", but the opposition to his position continued. The mass ended in a shambolic manner before communion was completed. By refusing to mention the word peace the Pope endorsed the murderous Contra attackers and gave support to Reagan to violently overthrow a democratically elected government and replace it with a military dictatorship.

Of course we shouldn't be surprised as The Vatican has always defended military dictatorships including Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco. Pope John Paul II admired General Pinochet and defended his position after he was arrested (and subsequently found guilty) of torture, imprisonment, and mass murder of his own people, plus murdering Allende, Chile's democratically elected leader. When you consider the disinformation the Vatican spread about AIDES and the use of condoms Pope John Paul II has a lot of blood on his hands. He also allowed the continued rape of young boys and girls by paedophile priests and then re-assigned them to continue their heinous crimes when exposed. The Vatican policy is to protect the Church no matter who suffers and how many victims. How this has got any relation to the teachings of a poor carpenter beats me. They are are currently searching for two miracles of Pope John Paul II for his canonisation. I suggest that if that tenet of the Catholic faith of everlasting damnation is true he must be sharing the fires of hell with his fellow tyrants....... A little bit of religion there ladies and gentlemen.

Now I´ve always opposed the death penalty however I´ll make an exception for members of the family Somoza. The Sandinistas were so named after Augusto C Sandino a cult figure in Nicaraguan history. During the 20's and 30´s he led a guerrilla war against the occupying US forces and although often outnumbered and outgunned he proved to be an elusive fighter and was never caught. Eventually the Americans left mainly due to financial considerations after the Wall Street crash. The head of what was unfortunately to become a Somoza dynasty Eduardo then a general invited Sandino for peace talks and to plan for the post American era. However he bushwhacked Sandino having him assassinated as he left the meeting. It took a long time but the act of treachery was avenged two decades later in 1956. A Nicaraguan poet Rigoberto Lopez Perez prophesied Somoza´s demise in one his poems before surreptitiously obtaining employment as waiter at function attended by Somoza. At an opportune moment he produced a pistol and shot Somoza dead signing his own death warrant in the process as died in a hail Somoza's henchmen's bullets. He was just twenty six. This happened across the road from where I was staying in Leon. I was aware of Somoza´s son the exiled Anastasio Somoza was avenged about a year after fled to Paraguay in 1979. I always thought that he was shot at traffic lights in the capital Asuncion. I was corrected by Lucian a young American graduate who has been volunteering for the Peace Corps in the area. Apparently Somoza was driving a bullet-proof Mercedes so what actual happened that Sandinista assassination squad appeared in front of his limo and blew the car up with a Bazooka.....even better.

Right that's the intro sorted.

As a group of us clambered off the Managua bus on the outskirts of Leon I think we all felt a good vibe as we headed towards our chosen abodes. I stayed at a lovely relaxed place aptly called Lazybones. It had a large courtyard with hammocks amongst the lush flora and comfy lounge areas. At the back was a pool and a small bar which was also used for breakfast. Leon has a beautiful main plaza with the biggest church in Central America. The church was great fun as apart from being an imposing and magnificent sight you are allowed not only to wander around at will and take photos but clamber around on the roof and in the bell towers with great vistas of the town and also the surrounding volcanoes. Leon is a strong Sandinista town and it wasn´t long before I was in the Sandinista museum. It was run by wounded ex-freedom fighters who are now middle-aged. The museum was mainly old newspaper cuttings and pictures of the fallen. I was greeted warmly by the man at reception who rose from his seat and limped as he guided me towards the entrance. I have regretted my piss-poor Spanish often but not as badly as this day. I think I managed to convey my solidarity with the men I met some of whom showed me there war wounds. There are also murals in the plaza depicting the events of 1979 and beyond. I visited the building (just across the road from Lazybones) where the young poet Perez assassinated the paternal Somoza.

I left Leon for a few days to visit Esteli three hours away over a very bad road. If you remember this is the place where that bloke Dave, who I got chatting to in a bar in Antigua, suggested I visit as it played a major role in the revolution and the defence of it. During those crucial days many internationalist support gathered in Estali and along with the fact it was close to the Honduran border was carpet bombed by Somoza's US backed National Guard and later the Contras. Here I visited the Galeria de Heroes y Martires which shows photos, little shrines and clothes of the young men and women to fought and died liberating their country. The Galaeria is run by the mothers of the martyrs and is a very emotive place, as it´s the mothers who are left who suffer the most. I also visited a Sandinista bar. It was a large place with a stage and speakers. Unfortunately there were only a handful of drinkers there as it was midweek. I was informed that live music was planned for the Saturday. The place is bedecked with Sandinista paraphernalia and much anti-American sentiments. However the group of young blokes from the USA were treated with great hospitality amongst the insults that hung from the walls. In the foyer there was a collection of weaponry just for good measure.

While checking some facts on different websites I read that Thatcher tried ban the word Sandinsta. Well this was news to me although I wouldn´t put it passed her. Another fact I was unaware of was that there was more opposition in those days than I realised. For example the The Clash brought out a triple album called Sandinidta! in their honour. Good ol' Joe Strummer who I´m sure is resting in more peace the afor-mentioned right wing zealots

What´s in a name? - Everything!!

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A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Well that satisfies one of the senses but how about sound? If roses were called sticklebacks or reptilians wouldn´t some of the effect be lost? Would´ve Ford sold as many Mustangs if they were called the Ford Insipid? I don´t think so. I´m sorry as much a fan as I am of our Bill he hasn´t fully grasped the point. Johnny Cash emphasises this point by suggesting that having a name like Steve is more preferential than Sue if your a bloke. Names, especially place names have a resonance with the human imagination and played an important and almost inspirational role in my early life. Like most kids in the fifties I was cowboy mad which is hardly surprising considering the amount of westerns that were on TV and in the movies. The Range Rider, Bronco Lane, Cheyenne Bodie, Sugarfoot, Waggon Train etc...My favourite film was "The fastest gun alive" with Glenn Ford and Broderick Crawford as the bad guy, plus the likes of Audie Murphy, Gary Cooper, and Richard Wydmark also mesmerised from the silver screen. Happy days

It was the beginning of my and probably a lot of others' love affair with all things American. Places like Wyoming, El Paso, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Montana, The Rio Grande and the place I would have exchanged eternal happiness in heaven for (and this from a devout Catholic boy) - Arizona. I may have grown out the cowboy faze but at the same time I watched the black and white movies of thirties and forties especially the exciting scary roaring twenties gangster movies involving still great favourites of mine, James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, George Raft and of course Bogie. In my early teens I along with a couple of my peers used to ridicule Britain's grey conservative austerity compared with the exciting colourful flamboyance of the US. They had Elvis we had Cliff¨: they had JFK and we had Macmillan and the Montgomery Burns look-alike Alec Douglas Hume. And of course the names. Chuck Berry sang about Memphis Tennessee, Sinatra found Chicago and New York his kind of towns, Tony Bennett lost his heart Frisco. What did we have,.... Bud Flanagan singing "Maybe it's because I´m I Londoner", pathetic. Where were the British names that could inspire songwriters? 24 hours from Cleethorpes?, I left my heart in Bognor Regis? Even the Beatles had to sing about Kansas City and probably hadn't clue where it was at the time.

One of the areas that we studied in Geography at school in the early sixties was South America. The images were of the driest deserts, the highest volcanoes, amazing lakes, shifting glaciers, and the densest jungles along with huge spiders, boa constrictors and alike. But did they had to have the names to match?: with a vengeance. Cotopaxi, Titicaca, The Amazon, La Paz, Quito, Rio, Montevideo, Buenos Airies, and Santiago to mention a few. The imagination ran rife. Because of all this I was very good at place names around the world and my knowledge of capitals was always pretty comprehensive even in primary school.

The reason I mention all this is that I have discovered a couple of anomalies in Central America. The physical and political nature of CA could not be be more exotic, volatile, tempestuous, forever verging on or involving natural and human violence that seems to be the raison d'etre of these banana republics. Belize has a Caribbean coastline so reggae, creole, and rasta influences add to its other CA attributes. It has a history of piracy and Captain Henry Morgan pillaged and ransacked the old capital, Belize City, but did not cause as much damage as Hurricane Hattie in the sixties which more or less wiped out the city so much so that a new capital was built further in land. I didn´t know the name of the capital, which was hardly surprising as it had been named.......BELMOPAN. What?!!. It sounds like a commode room-service for an hotel chain. The only thing I can think of is that Belize was British Honduras at the time before Independence in 1981 and today still has the Queen on their postage stamps so maybe a committee of bowler hatted Reginald Molehusbands from the Foreign Office came up with it.

The capital of Honduras has also always escaped me which again is not surprising as it's a five syllable tongue-twisting inappropriate monstrosity called Tegucigalpa (Teg-oo-see-galpa). I´ve spent an inordinate amount of time trying to master and remember it, but then someone out of the blue asks where's my next stop and I say umm..umm Tag.....umm ..umm,...the capital. Linguists have spent less time learning ancient Sanskrit fluently. I shall now refer to the capital of Honduras using the abbreviation on my printed bag label, TGA.

After Guatemala City I had spent several weeks in a beauty competition going from one safe picturesque village to another in Guatemala and Mexico, now heading to TGA it was nitty gritty time again. For the first half of my trip everything has gone very smoothly which is amazing considering my ability to self destruct and some of the dodgy places I´ve visited. I encountered the first hitches in attempting to travel from Copan Ruinas to TGA. I, along with others, arrived to catch the 9.00am bus and were told that it wouldn´t arrive until 2.00pm. The reason they gave, which turned out to be genuine, was that there was an ethnic demo on the Guatemalan side of the border and the buses had go to pick up stranded passengers. The bus actually arrived at 3.30pm. In the meantime I had several conversations including one with an Honduran chef who works in New York City. Lonely Planet states that the posh district of TGA called Colonia Palmira is generally safe, Downtown is OK in the day but dangerous at night and where the bus station is, Comayaguela, is just plain dangerous. Bus stations throughout Latin America always seem to be located in gangland areas. It´s a chicken and egg situation. Do the dastardly hombres find a habitat where there is a sufficient supply of prey to sustain them or do the bus companies seek out the cheapest real estate, and which came first? Well because of the lateness of the bus it meant that I would arrive at about 11.00 pm on a Saturday night without a hotel reservation. But that's OK I'll just get a taxi to the hotel area. However the New York chef said make sure you write down the taxi's number and ensure the driver sees you as some of them cannot be trusted. Someone else said that if you pay before getting your bags out of the car or boot they will drive off. No worries then. Most of the passengers were getting off at St. Pedro Sula about half way to TGA. I made an executive decision to transfer my ticket to 5.00am the following morning. This did not go without a hitch as two hours into the journey there was a hold up (traffic not guns) because a tanker had overturned and caught fire. There were rumours of a stoppage of between one and six hours but we were back on our way within two. We actually stopped near a roadside cafe so we got in first and had the breakfast we missed because of the early start and a nice chat amongst Italians, Spanish, and some Americans

The extra night in Copas Ruinas turned out to be a lively affair. I noticed during the day that scaffolding and platforms were being erected and streets had been cordoned off. I thought it was to be a night market, but it turned out to be a stage for rock bands and there was also a Harley Davidson rally with a stack of choppers and greasers in town and serious partying. All this seemed rather incongruous as this is a sleepy little village in the middle of nowhere. Getting up at 4.00 am the following morning wasn´t easy.

Arriving in TGA in daylight wasn´t plain sailing as I was taken by a young macho taxi driver on the scenic route to a hotel downtown that I had selected. I lodged my objections and pointed him in the right direction. He was ripping me off. I knew he was ripping me off. And he knew that I knew he was ripping me off. I paid him the $10 which turned out to be over twice the correct amount. However 10 minutes later I was ensconced in a very comfortable room with cable TV, free interent and coffee, and a fab shower for $16.00 per night. Backpacking, especially in Latin America, has done wonders for by patience in recent years. Even when told about the five hour bus delay in Copas Ruinas unlike some younger travellers who became quite irate and demanded compensation, I along with most others just shrugged our shoulders and I took the opportunity to finish off Graham Greene´s "Our man in Havana" The Hotel Granada was "manned" by two large, formidable middle aged black women: The early shift and the late shift. At first they were unsmiling and uncompromising. The early shift woman was from the Caribbean side of the country, spoke English in a Jamaican accent and reminded me of Lenny Henry´s impression of his mother, strict and maternal. I found the formula though, which was to tickle their fancy, make them laugh and after that they were putty in my hands and couldn´t do enough for me.

TGA is a polluted gridlocked mess which can describe many cities and capitals in Latin America. But the chaos is part of its charm especially if like me you don´t have to get anywhere quickly. Because of urbanisation new shanty barrios are spreading up the sides of the mountains and volcanoes that surround TGA. Apparently the barrios are a fine example of enterprise, and social mobility. The new arrivals from the countryside build homes from scrap metal cardboard and alike. After earning some cash in the capital they upgrade to wood, then stone and masonry. All very admirable. I spent an extra day in TGA because of the comforts of the hotel, to chill, and get my clothes laundered. Next stop Leon in Guatemala.

There aint no mountain I can't climb.......oh yea?

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A few days ago with an early start in a shuttle mini-bus I made the twelve hour trip from San Cristobal in Mexico to the well lauded Antigua back in Guatemala. The trip was broken up by breaks and a chaotic border crossing. The cramped conditions in the mini-bus were more than compensated by the company of my fellow travellers and the spectacular scenery. I got chatting to Onka and Jennifer two Dutch girls in their twenties. Jennifer has a Mexican mother and although brought up in Holland has been studying in Guadalajara, Mexico's second city. The girls are old school friends and have got together to travel Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. We shared a couple meals together with some good banter. When we arrived In Antigua late at night they asked me to walk them to their hotel. During our conversations I often had to quell their fears about the perceived dangers of the area. I think they saw me as wise and mature and felt safe in my company. Talk about the blind leading the blind!

At the third and last leg of our trip we stopped off at Panajachel to drop off some and pick up others. One of the new passengers was a weird and such a startling character that it was difficult not to stare. He was a white man of over six feet tall aged sixty and American (which we discovered subsequently) with a good stock of white hair in dreadlocks. He wore what can only be described as a shaggy pelt loin cloth, carried a staff and was barefoot. He looked like a cross between Mahatma Gandhi and Ben Gunn. He was covered with hippy regalia and object d'art dangled from various parts of his body. His state of undress and lack of baggage was worrying because it can quite chilly and stormy some nights in this neck of the woods. He sat at the back of the bus with us so I did my best to engaged him in conversation. His skin was cracked and parched and his voice was shot to hell. He sounded like Dylan singing Ave Maria. He is a disciple of Dr. Timothy Leary the self proclaimed leader of the sixties counter-culture movement who has been immortalised through his anthemtic proclamation "Turn on, Tune in, and Drop out" and who advocated mind altering drugs like LSD. Our aged hippy friend attended many of Dr. Leary's lectures and seminars in the sixties. We also discovered that until recently he had been living in India and had spent time in Kathmandu. I was hoping to bump into him around town and have few beers with him, but it didn't happen. Another new passenger was a 30 year old Dutch woman who had been living in Guatemala City for five years. She worked in some kind of development capacity and was employed by the Dutch government. I asked about the threat to a single blonde woman living in one of the most dangerous cities in the world. She explained as part of her job she works in the most dangerous parts of the city, and as the people know her and what she and others are attempting to do they leave her alone. She lays the blame on the violence squarely with the Guatemalan government, police, and military who she claims are totally corrupt.

Panajachel sits on the Lago de Atitilan and as we drove away up the steep winding road we became all agog at the scene leaving us over our shoulders. The village sits on the edge of the lake and two volcanoes bestride it like the wings of a perched giant bird of prey. To add to the dramatic panorama it was dusk which gave an overall grey sepia affect and thin grey swirling clouds were wrapping themselves around the volcanoes like delicate chiffon scarfs. Mother nature had provided some wonderful scenes over the last weeks but this was her coup de gras.

Antigua is like St. Cristobal de las Casas but with with bells on. It has even more ambiance and the streets are cuter, even more cobbled and it has a towering volcano as a backdrop with two others at the other end to balance things up. Wandering these cobbled streets on the first glorious morning I bumped into Onka and Jennifer. We chatted about our immediate plans. They were intending to go to a coffee farm and I had just booked a trip to climb an active volcano. Again they were weary of the dangers. Lonely Planet had described incidents of robbery and rape in the area. Also it had stated that some foolhardy climbers had their shoes burned away and suffered serious injuries and that some had actually been killed during the sporadic eruptions that take place. I convinced them to change their mind with my final gambit being " What do you want to tell your kids, you went a coffee farm or you climbed an active volcano?

We met at 6.00am the following morning. Volcan Pacaya was an hour away by bus. In fact the bus gets you to the a sort of base camp where you hike up the last leg. The hike takes about an hour and half and you're led up by a guide. They also have horses for the aged, infirm or the generally unfit. I had concerns about my heel and I thought my back would give me some gip however I had great confidence in my legs and lungs that I considered were as strong as a man half my age. I mentioned this to the girls when they suggest I go up on horseback supporting my case by regaling them of my recent exploits playing seven-a-side. There were a gathering of locals with their horses to hire and for some reason they began to head in my direction so bending my elbows to flex my muscles I sent them away with a fleas in their respective ears. So we began the acsent and it was very steep at first over rough terrain and then the slope became more gentle then increased again before we had our fist breather. Well my heel was OK and my back was holding up however my legs were like jelly and I was breathing so heavily that my cheeks were like Dizzie Gillespie hitting a high note. I persevered hoping to get my second wind. Along the way we passed the locals with their horses looking to provide some profitable assistance to those in distress. When they saw me appear around a corner the were stirred from their stupor and began jockeying (like the pun?) for position. But was I a quitter?..No!! well not until the next bend when I saw a prolonged steep incline.

I tottered and stumbled upwards until I could totter and stumble no more. At that moment I felt a certain affinity with Richard III and with great Shakespearian eloquence I mummbled under my breath "A horse a horse will some bastard get me a horse. As I turned the next bend through the sweat that had dripped into my eyes I could see a shimmering Galadreil holding the reins of the mighty Shadowfax. When I wiped away the sweat it was in fact a local woman pulling an old nag with piece of string. She didn't have to ask. Now I've ridden a few elephants and camels in my time but can't remember ever going near a horse. Having seen the aging and overweight John Wayne slipping effortlessly into the saddle in True Grit I assumed it was a piece of cake. My short Celtic legs didn't help. Getting my left foot into the stirrup was difficult enough, but my casual, languid, and rather dignified effort to swing my leg over resulted in me kicking the horse up the arse. Obviously more commitment, energy and umph were required. So with a much more determined effort I swung my leg over which created a certain amount of inertia that meant I came very close to going straight over the other side, a feat managed by every slapstick comedian since the silent movies. For a full ten seconds I was at the two o'clock position holding on with my ever whitening knuckles then I managed to right myself. It was touch and go. Humiliation heaped upon humiliation. The one good thing was that this took place between groups of climbers who were concealed behind bends at the front and back of me. I was then led around the bend where my group was waiting for me to catch up. I was then paraded through them. There were some including Onka and Jennifer with benign "it's for the best luv" smiles, looks of relief as some were concern about my wellbeing and others that they may have had to give me this kiss of life if I hadn't capitulated, and a few I told you sos. Most were young but there were a few older ones including a few flushed middle aged out-of-shape women who were hacking it. This was the moment when I shook hands with my own mortality.

There was temporary release from my feeling of failure when we reached the top as the spectacular panoramic view revealed itself. People were clambering over the waves of solidified lava and the backdrop was amazing with Guatemala City off in the distance. Then looking up through the ever changing cloud patterns which added to overall effect we could see the billowing smoke from peak of the volcano. When making our way across the lava we could feel the heat being emitted below us so much so that at a certain point we toasted marshmallows. I managed to get back down using Shank's pony.

In the evening I wandered into a lively bar/restaurant which seemed quite Anglicised. They also sold bottles of Guinness, and then I realized it was called O'Reilly's Bar. I'm sure that if I landed at the Sea of Tranquility there would be an Irish theme pub there to offer their hospitality. I can't complain though as I had "craicing" Irish stew.

I then wandered into another bar. There were a few people dotted around and a couple playing pool. There was long bar with about a dozen vacant barstools and I slid onto one of the central ones and slipped into my Humphrey Bogart "Gimme a beer Mack" mode. After a while leaving my beer on the bar and jacket on the stool I went to the bog. When I returned a bloke had sat right next to my stool. I thought of all the stools in all the gin-joints he had to sit next to mine. I sat down after shifting my stool away a bit so that weren't actually touching. We both sat in silence although he spoke to the barman in Spanish occasionally. From my sly glances and reflections in the bar mirror his demeanor convinced me he was obviously gay. He was shortish, looked seedy, crumpled, and reminded me of Roman Polanski. Then he turned to me and started chatting. In a perverse or some would say perverted way I thought at least I'm still an object of desire for someone. I rather unsubtly put him in the picture by mentioning my three ex-wives, four children, and career in the construction business. I needn't have been concerned because for the next hour and half and several drinks me and Dave hit off big-time. He is an American and now lives in the beautiful Panajachel I mentioned earlier. He is well traveled and has a great sense of history to go along with his geographical experiences. Our politics, outlook, and sense of humour were so similar. He also gave me some interesting information that has made me alter my itinerary slightly. He mentioned Esteli in Northern Nicaragua which was a Sandinista stronghold in the 80's and that it was well worth a visit. It was carpet bombed by Somosa's army and attacked by the Contras financed by Reagan's illegal funding organized by Oliver North. Dave also identified the seat in a hotel in Honduras where North plotted Arms for Irangate scandal. We bade our farewells with a another firm handshake to add to the list. I think pecks of the cheeks of Onka and Jennifer count too.

I've travelled to Copas Ruinas which is just across the border in Honduras and is almost totally concealed in the beautiful mountain forests. I took a picture from a vantage point overlooking the diablo and I could just make out the top of the church in the main (only) plaza and a few red tiled rooftops amongst the foliage.

I may have lost the faith but I've discovered a new one

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St. Cristobal de las Casas does just as it says on the tin or rather in the book: Lonely Planet to be precise. It says that "It´s Spanish colonial wonder" At just under 7,000´ it has a beautiful warm springlike climate which has been a blessed relief after the heat and the humidity I´ve experienced so far.They wear cardies and jackets at night when it gets a bit chilly. St. Cristobal nestles in the Jovel valley in the south west district of Chiapas and is surrounded by mountainous cloud forests. It´s very pretty with adobe hacienda type buildings, narrow cobbled streets and atmospheric plazas. Chiapas is one of the poorest areas of Mexico and is dominated by Mayan culture. St. Cristobal hit the world headline back in 1994 when a left wing peasant group, the Zapatistas, (for the uninitiated named after the revered revolutionary Emile Zapata of the early twentieth century) by storming and occupying St. Cristobal to fight for the rights of the poor indigenous people of the area. They wore handmade uniforms and all wore masks. The US gave the Mexican Government a huge amount of financial aid to put down the uprising. The leader of the Zapatistas is a pipe smoking character called Marcos. He apologised to the tourists for the inconvenience but stated "This is a revolution" Some advised the "elimination" of this revolutionary group. However when it was apparent that they didn´t seek the overthrow of the government but just sought reforms for the local indigenous people negotiations took place and a land reform act was passed in 1996. When offered to speak to the Mexican Congress the eccentric and charismatic Marcos allowed a woman called Comandanta Ester the place on the podium. Marcos went on to write children's books and novels. The Zapatistas still exist today but they have enjoyed their fifteen minutes of fame. Oliver Stone toyed with the idea of making a movies of the events.

I went on a excursion with a group to visit Mayan villages nearby. The tour was led by Carlos a lively, likeable bloke in his fifties I would guess. He was twitchy, talkative (in Spanish and reasonable English) and had this habit of pulling out his comb every ten minutes and attending to his barnet in a lavish manner. The expansive follical attention of Kookie Burns and The Fonze had nothing on Carlos. Skrynsey came close though. Peter Skrynes played rugby for Ladymary Sec. Mod under 15 B in the sixties. He had a wonderful shock of blond hair which he fashioned into an Elvis quiff and DA (ducks arse) which he kept regularly coiffured so much so that when he broke from his second row position in the scrum looking dishevelled he would procure a comb from his shorts' pocket making sure every hair was in place before moving to the next breakdown. If it wasn't for this grooming obsession not only would have he made the first fifteen he probably would've got a Welsh Cap. Often in assembly Sharkey (headmaster) would badger the kids into rapt attention by comments like "Dunleavey pay attention, Coughlin stop picking your nose, Skrynes how many times have I got to tell you put your comb away!!" However there's something unique about Carlos' hair; he doesn't have any. He joins famous comb-over brigade such as, Gregor Fisher's The Baldy Man, and footballers Bobby Charlton and Ralph Coates who also attempted to make a little go far.

I often find guides irritating as often they try too hard to impress by overwhelming their group with too much information, but Carlos was invaluable. We first stopped off at the Mayan village of San Lorenzo Zinacantan. Here we experience the usual fayre of witnessing local weavers and sharing food with a local family which was enjoyable. Carlos then began explaining certain aspects of local culture. Their religion is a mixture of Catholicism and paganism. He explained that the locals pray that their souls will be cleansed then take a swig from a bottle of alcohol usually crappa, then take a swig from a bottle of coke and with its gaseous elements provoke a burp. In doing this they belch out their sins. It's a form of confession. No telling the priest your inner most secrets while he's getting off on it in the box next door, then followed by 10 Hail Marys, 5 Our Fathers, and 3 Glory Bes, just a swig of hooch, all is forgiven and your soul is made immaculate. Well we've all heard of the plea that we are not responsible for the sins of our fathers, well pity the poor chicken in Mayan culture. As part of their faith the Mayans can offload their sins to a sacrificial chicken. They pray to God to transfer all their sins to the chicken which is then slaughtered and eaten for dinner. All this must take place in church.

With this little local knowledge we travelled to another pueblo called San Juan Chamula. This village is very unique in that it's very independent and suffers outside visitors rather than welcome them. The don't allow you to photograph them because they believe it removes at least part of their soul and people have been known to be attacked for doing so. I've met people who have avoided the place because of this perceived hostility. Well they missed an unique experience. The people weren't hostile especially when you bought something in the market in front of the church. It was a case of mutual respect. We visited a churchyard and prompted by Carlos we stood at a respectful distance and resisted taking photos of an interment that was takeing place. In the distance there was an open casket with the dead body into which favourite objects of the deceased were being placed. Not just objects apparently. Carlos explained that like many indigenous peoples around the globe the Mayan people have a big drink problem leading to premature deaths due to sclerosis of the liver. He said that often they would get so drunk that their pet dog would have to guide them home at night. Such was their reliability on the dog it was shot dead and placed into the casket so that it could guide its master to the pearly gates.

After wending our way through the market throng in the plaza we entered the church. It had a unique wow factor. If Spielberg was making an occult movie I could imagine a scene like this, only he could never create its authenticity. The senses of sight, smell, and hearing were ignited. The stone/marble floor was covered by scented pine needles and there were thousands of lit candles of various shapes, colours, and sizes. The different colours depicted the various deadly sins and commandments that the perpetrator had broken and for which they seeking forgiveness. There were no pews and the plethora of candles were not just down the sides but across the floor as well. The church was full of small knots of people and families squatting and standing in and around the candles. Around the sides of the church were thousands of fresh flowers surrounding large ornate statues of saints. To add to the aroma of smoke and flowers was the wafting of exotic incense by two women shuffling slowly around the church. Through the smoke, incense, and worshippers we could make out an ornate altar from which chanting music was being emitted. We carefully made our way to the altar. The altar was similar to mainstream catholic churches with one major fundamental difference. There were three huge statues, one taking preeminence in the middle flanked by two others. The crucified Christ with its typical gruesome catholic violence was on the right, Mary Magdalene was on the left, but numero uno and taking centre stage this Mayan culture was reserved for John the Baptist who because he baptised Jesus has the highest status. In front of the altar the source of the repetitive mesmeric music were three blokes who were playing a drum, guitar and an accordion respectedly Amongst the group in front of the altar was a small Indian woman wrinkled and gnarled from the sun, a hard life and maybe drink chanting trance-like with her three teenage children. She was holding a very passive hen. Carlos explained that the hen would have its neck rung shortly when the mother was confident that the sins of her children had passed this innocent farm yard accessory. Talk about passing the buck!!

To avoid witnessing the squawking and the flying of feathers we made our way towards the exit. As we slowly made our way through the packed church I noticed several women on their knees rapidly heating the bottoms of candles lighting them and sticking them in symmetrical lines across floor of the church. When outside Carlos explained that there aren't any clergy and there are no services and that you can within reason do what you like in the church. Groups meet and chat which we witnessed but they also can take a nap and have a drink if they so wished. Carlos mentioned on several occasions that this Mayan culture is 25% Catholic and 75% pagan. I think if the Pope witnessed it he would recalculate to 0% Catholic and 100% heresy. A unique experience.

Feetnote. I'm just about coping with my Achilles heel, and my boil has subsided and going through the itchy stage.

Not de ja vu again!!

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In 2001 I took Ben to the huge music festival, Rock in Rio. It was a snap decision so there was a lot of last minute acquisition of gear and a crash diet on my part to look cool posing on the Copacabana. Just before we left I was visited by an affliction due to my lifetime`s habit of folding my right leg under my left while sitting on a sofa. It resulted in periodic shots of pain like an electric current running up my right leg which led to me leaping in pain, with a simultaneous outburst of expletives. So taking this affliction to Rio was bad enough but within a few days of arriving I developed a boil the size of a golf ball on the bottom of my left foot which meant I had to limp on tip-toe along side the odd leap in the air which I coloured blue. Instead of a cool swagger down the beach in my shades I walked like Ratso from Midnight Cowboy. Well I was bringing my Achilles heal ailment with me this time, again the right leg. The fallout from this is that it has been painful for a few minutes after inactivity then eases for an hour or so of activity then becomes painful again after a decent walk. So I`ve been limping quiet a bit. What has exacerbated the situation is that the pulsating, aggressively sensitive boil has returned, the same size and in exactly the same spot. So the past few days I´ve been limping with each foot vying for favour. However there have been occasions when I have turned my afflictions to my advantage but more about that later.

On the bus from Guatemala City to Coban I met a science teacher, Dave, from Portland, Oregon. He was about fortyish with a wide eyed childlike enthusiasm for all that he was doing. He had been to CA before and had done a lot of diving and oceanography was his pet subject. He owned a sort of backpacker´s sat. nav., so when he arrived at a new place or was disorientated he´d pull out his sat. nav. and as he explained to me used the seven satelites at his disposal (the other seven are on the other side of the world apparently), and Bob´s your uncle. We stayed in the same hostel in Coban where we were shacked up with Ben who was also from Portland Oregon. They in fact lived around the corner from each other but their paths had never crossed until here in central Guatemala. They were like chalk and cheese. I heard Ben before I saw him. I thought what´s a loudmouth like him doing with this group of girls. I assumed he was with them because he I could hear him generating the decibels from their room along the corridor. He was in fact travelling alone like Dave and I. Ben was like a smaller version Jack Black and had that nerdy lisp that certain Americans have, wore a bandanna, and boy was he loud. Coban is full of steep hills and when Ben began enticing us to check out the scene Dave actually did something unenthusiastically and went along while I pointed at my feet and declined. They fell in at two thirty. Dave explained later that Ben bought a cheap bottle of Guatemalan whiskey in a canteena slammed it on the table roaring Jack Black style "Lets live Man!! Dave was up at 6.30am to go caving, swim and tube in underground rivers which are part of the local attractions around Coban. Ben crashed all day on the top bunk, only Dave was doing the living that day. I explained to Dave that I would have loved to have joined him but my afflictions prevented me. The real reason was my aversion to caves because of my later day claustrophobia. Later in the day Ben dragged Dave out again to have burgers in place he´d discovered that sold beer "at only 10 quetzales a bottle man." Again my ailments saved me. Poor old Dave has got the neighbour from hell if not for life certainly in the foreseeable future. Actually Ben was OK and meant well but he just doesn´t realise that some people may be a tad different to him and his high octane outlook

The next day I bussed it to Flores about six hours further north east. Flores is a beautiful small island 600m x 400m in a huge lake served by a causeway. It is full of cobbled streets small hotels, eateries, bars, and restaurants all serving the visitors who are there to visit Tikal the most famous Mayan site an hour away. Coban was at some altitude so the heat was relatively comfortable, but Flores and the surrounding area was steaming hot with high humidity levels. I was dreading long bus rides as these days I have to go on the hour every hour but despite consuming copious amounts of liquid I very rarely feel nature call. I struggled around the Tikal site arriving back at the entrance after just over three hours reappearing from the jungle tottering and stumbling constantly going over the sides of my feet, bathed in sweat. The Mayan ruins are at the centre of a world heritage site and the jungle plays host to many exotic creatures including jaguars and pumas along with parrots and toucans. The most common sights are of howler monkeys. On the way into the jungle I got chatting to a Guatemalan couple returning for a holiday as they now live in LA. He was a big boxing fan and as we were chatting about various boxers and fights we heard growling and mighty roars in the distance. We assumed it was a large cat of some kind and moved swiftly on. I discovered later it was the sound of howler monkeys who seem to roar more than howl.

As some may know my fear of confined spaces pales onto insignificance compared with my vertigo. These days I get a nosebleed standing on a thick pile carpet. A few years ago I climbed the steps of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. I was with Cindi and did not want to lose face plus to explore this magnificent ruin you have to climb or miss out on an unique experience, so I would have done it anyway. Going up is not so bad as you climb it like a ladder it´s so sheer, but when I got to the top I quaked with fear of attempting to get back down. It wasn´t just the vertigo it was just plain dangerous and I could see others felt the same way. The eroded stone steps were the width of less than a foot wide with no handrail. When I first looked down I had a mental regress into childhood, I felt like crying out MAMEEE I CAN´T GET DOWNNnn. Fortunately we discovered another descent at the side with a shaky handrail and I was still crapping myself. So when it came to climbing these Mayan wonders I had to resisted the temptation because of my disabilities. If fact it´s not just blind fear on my part as the tallest of the ruins here has stopped ascents because climbers have actually fallen to their deaths. I saw howler monkeys and some strange looking insects but not any other creatures but I know they were out there because the jungle sounds were as amazing as they were diverse and very loud and piercing. You can arrive at 4.00am if you choose to witness the sunrise also the jungle creatures are more visible at that time.

Yesterday I travelled from Flores to Palenque in Mexico. Usually crossing borders are a pain in the butt, however after exiting Guatemala instead of crossing a few hundred yards of no-man´s land to a Mexican border control we had to negotiate the Rio San Pedro. It wasn´t just a straight river crossing either but a 15 minute up jungle river blast in a nifty motorised contraption which was very novel and cooling into the breeze.

Palenque looks like a lively little Mexican town.