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.