You Can’t Eat That Foreign Muck

I already mentioned that the food in Guatemala wasn’t great. One evening, I decided I didn’t really fancy the “obese chicken”. And frankly the last smoothie on this list terrifies me:

Ricky’s Final Thoughts

I write this at 30,000 feet over the Caribbean ‘enjoying’ the unique hospitality of Thomsonfly. At least they honoured our booking for extra legroom this time, though they don’t believe Apple when they say “Airplane Mode” so I just got told to turn my iPhone off. Thick stewardesses know best.

Though amusingly they just asked for support for their travel charity promoting sustainable tourism. On a transatlantic Boeing 767. From Cancun.

We’ve had a fantastic trip, but it’s been quite strange in parts. Firstly, we haven’t held a conversation with anyone else. Not because we didn’t want to, but simply because there was no-one to talk to. It seems there were no other people on holiday in either Mexico or Guatemala.

Our hotel in Cancun was virtually empty. We wandered it’s echoing corridors in search of the restaurants. When we found them, they were deserted. There were two other tables occupied at breakfast and the beach was empty too. The poolside was comparatively rammed: maybe four or five groups of people.

Some of our Guatemalan hotels claimed to be full, but we didn’t see the evidence. In others it was clear only a couple of rooms were taken.

Evenings were very quiet. Most of the time we’d had fairly packed days and early starts, so were happy to have dinner and go to bed. Besides which, most Guatemalan restaurants close at 9pm. However, some nights we were looking for a bit of life and a couple of drinks somewhere. It became a running joke that every bar and restaurant would be empty. In Panajachel, we walked to 5 or 6 bars. All were deserted, except one which had two elderly gentlemen sipping drinks at the bar (separately).

The only people we came across were Dutch travellers and American and French guided tour groups. Bizarre.

Food has been a mixed bag, with some bad, some good and some just dull. We’ve eaten a lot of grilled meat and vegetables. Mexican food is much better at home while Guatemalan food is fairly dull. Both, however, came heavily salted.

Guatemala does have some fantastic cakes. A little shop in Panajachel did delicious chocolate cream cake and a superb national specialty called 3 Leches (3 milk). In Antigua we visited a little cake shop where I had a banana-choco cake to die for. Antiguan hot chocolate is extremely good too.

We had a particularly entertaining night out in Antigua. Having decided to splash out for a little more than the standard places we’d been using most nights, we chose a restaurant in a beautiful colonial building which had been recommended in the guide book. Inside the door, we were led through a gorgeous candle-lit courtyard, complete with well-tended greenery and a babbling fountain, into a stunning period dining room with carved ceiling, titled floor and lots of dark wood. For once, it was busy. Two tour groups took up long tables on two sides and a few single tables were dotted about. We had high hopes.

No sooner were we seated when the ‘entertainment’ began. About 10 men began to play a huge xylophone type thing, with another chap on double bass. To be fair, they were very good. Some of them held two or three sticks in each hand, playing multiple parts each, and the traditional song was nice. Then the dancing started: 8 waiters in full Mayan ceremonial dress, with wooden masks of a bull, a conquistador, a jaguar and others. They danced with maraccas quite energetically (and again not really without talent) before grabbing people from tables to join them. It was like the dying hours of someone’s 40th wedding anniversary disco. Rhythmically-challenged Americans threw themselves into it with relish. And the same song kept going for about 15 minutes. The food was relatively good dull grilled meat, though.

In Guatemala City, we tried going for a nice meal in Zone 10. The Lonely Planet recommended a Spanish tapas place. Except when we got in and sat down we realised it wasn’t tapas at all but dull grilled meats for twice the price of dull grilled meats elsewhere. Brilliant.

The Lonely Planet was crap. Clearly written by a bit of a tit, parts were very cursory, other parts plain wrong. He dislikes Guat City, so despite it being the capital and having the huge Zone 10 commercial quarter it mentions only three top-end places to eat (see above). And thanks to them listing the airport departure tax as $30 and not the $3 it really is, we have over £50 in Quetzals we can’t change back. Thanks Lonely Planet.

The least said about Cancun, the better. If you like bland hotels and cheesy bars with drinking games, with no clue which country you might be in, you’d love it. The population of the airport (and by extension our flights) were amusingly low rent. If I had an airline, I’d advertise Cancun but circle France for a bit before landing in Benidorm, just to see if anyone noticed.

The range of cheap tattoos and sunburn in the departure gate gave us a hour of laughs. We even saw a pale pink young couple standing in the lounge, gently peeling sunburt skin from each other. Now THAT is love.

Airport Rules, Guatemala Style

Penny had half a small tube of toothpaste, some hand sanitiser and a bottle of perfume in her hand luggage. Going through security at Guatemala Airport, the man picked on her to search her bag.

He took out those items, and insisted they must be in a zip-lock plastic bag. Of course we’d have been happy to ditch the toothpaste and sanitiser, but not the perfume. We were not allowed to simply carry this in our hand.

Now, I always thought the plastic bag rule was simply to help the security staff but putting all your explosive lipsticks together for easy cursory glances.

But apparently not: it seems the zip-lock bag is a super-strong barrier which will contain any explosion from deadly hair wax.

The security man insisted we leave the items behind and go through to the departure lounge where we could purchase a zip-lock bag to put them in.

We went back with our bag, put the items in it, then put the plastic bag straight back into Penny’s hand luggage. Safe in the knowledge that should her toothpaste ignite, zip-lock will save us all.

On Our Last Leg

My first impressions of Guatemala City were very bad. We passed through for one night last week on our way to Antigua and my feelings as we arrived for longer were much the same: it was noisy, filthy, grim and crumbling, with dodgy characters on every corner.

After spending a full day here, though, while not fully won over I can see its charms.

We arrived late afternoon and found a hotel in the central Zone 1. It was billed as a basic, comfortable motel style place. And it was clean and comfy enough. But what the guide left out was the noise: despite our room being off the main road, we could still hear the blaring horns and revving diesel engines of the chaotic traffic. People were talking loudly outside and we were on the take-off route for the airport just outside the city. This went on until late and started up again in the early hours. The first thing we did in the morning was move hotel, out to the quieter, more commercial Zone 10 a few minutes taxi from the centre.

Zone 1 is the old part of town. It centres in the main plaza, a huge area housing the elegant colonial style ex-government building, in fact a fine late-1930s pastiché built by a dictator with style. The cathedral is large, plain by Latin standards but very handsome. Outside, the pillars which form the gates and fence are inscribed with thousands of names of those ‘disappeared’ during the civil war. A poigniant reminder of this country’s violent recent past. The elegance is framed by concrete beauties the Soviets would’ve been proud of.

We wandered the square enjoying the quiet weekend atmosphere. A man was preaching. Children chased pigeons. Ice-cream vendors tinkled bells while a woman tried to sell us hats.

Avenida 6a is Zone 1’s main artery. When I’d seen it at night it felt grimy and depressing. But with the weekend bustle of people shopping at the shops and stalls lining the pavement, it felt more like all the city’s life was here. You can buy anything, though mostly dodgy DVDs and CDs.

A few blocks north of the square is a properly bonkers attraction: a relief map of the entire country rendered in glorious painted concrete, built in 1905. The vertical scale is different to the horizontal, giving the mountains a stark vertical rise they don’t really have, and Belize is still shown as part of Guatemala. But it’s impressively huge and amusing, if pointless. It also underlined how little we’ve really seen of this beautiful country.

In the afternoon, we walked back along Avenida 6a to a small park and watched people strumming guitars, young couples out for the day. And another man preaching.

Pollo Campero is Guatemala’s ubiquitous fried chicken fast food chain. We’d so far avoided anything like that, but since it was our last day felt it was time to experience this side of Guatemalan life. The restaurant was like any fast food chain, except with plates and waitress service. I have to admit, the food was pretty good. Less greasy than KFC, though the opposite would’ve been a he’ll of feat.

I felt strange about it: one the one hand it’s a shame that a region with such a different cultural background should find joy in exactly the same junk food experience as America and Europe. But on the other hand, why the hell shouldn’t they? It was better than a lot of the meals we’ve eaten in ‘proper’ restaurants! But the wooly anti-globalisation bit of me died a little when I realised this is the future the world over.

Despite enjoying my day exploring a little, I still can’t say I love Zone 1. Architecturally, it’s a mix of 30s art deco, brutalist concrete, utilatarian throw-up and the odd colonial gem. Many are in disrepair. Places like Havana get away with it, life there seems to go on despite the decay. The decay is due to lack of money but not lack of love. Zone 1 feels unloved. The decay is hand in hand with poverty and the dubious characters that do lurk and give the city a bad name. People leave Zone 1 to go elsewhere at night if they can – I guess like a lot of British cities before the era of regeneration.

Zone 10 is completely different. It houses the best hotels, shiny office buildings, restaurants and bars. It’s a sprawling place, huge blocks split into plots and each plot housing something unique and unconnected to those around it whether it is a neo-classical hotel, shopping mall or high-concept bar and lounge, or even a villa (complete with razor wire and cameras). Clearly there’s a lot of money here, but frankly it could be anywhere. It looks identical to Quito’s new town and probably most of America.

What makes this city, indeed this country, is the people. Unwaveringly polite and helpful. There’s no aggression, no hassle. Walking around, travelling on buses, getting taxis is all easy and enjoyable and the atmosphere is never unpleasant. I doubt there are many Latin cities you can sit in the main square and not be hassled constantly by hawkers and shoe-shine boys (all here, but with no hassle) or where you don’t feel on edge looking for pick-pockets.

So, whether I ‘love’ Guatemala City itself or not I don’t know. But I do like it. And I like it because it feels like it has a good heart.

Chi Chi, Chicken Buses and Tripe

Chichicastenango (and that’s the only time I’m going to type that today) is a small highland town deep in Mayan land. We could instantly tell we were higher up by the fact it was bloody freezing. The altitude of just over 2000 metres ensures the air just doesn’t seem to hold the heat: when the sun goes down, so does the temperature. It was cold by early evening and we slept under four blankets.

The town itself is pretty ordinary and very small. Out hotel was four blocks from the main square on the map, but in reality only 2 minutes walk. From our balcony, we could see the furthest edge of town a few blocks south.

The main square has the usual collection of crumbling civic buildings and restaurants and two plain but pretty churches. The difference up here is that while it’s Christianity on the surface, it’s more Mayan than anything else. The locals merely renamed their own gods and blended Jesus into their rituals to keep the Spanish conquistadors happy. The Pope has little influence when you wander so far from Rome.

So, on the church steps there’s a near constant smoke of burning incense. The entrance and church floor is covered in pine needles to represent rebirth. A path leads out of town to a Mayan icon that may be thousands of years old (though we couldn’t find the way). The people still make offerings, perform rites and make occasional sacrifices of chickens up there. We were woken early each morning by the particularly Latin American sound of a band heavy on drums and rhythm with slightly atonal flutes and horns playing a meandering melody.

It was good to be somewhere so culturally different and though still very much on the beaten track, somewhere which hasn’t really been changed by tourism and would be going ahead pretty much the same with or without us.

The reason Chi Chi is on the tourist trail is that on Thursday and Sunday it hosts Central America’s largest market.

We arrived late on Wenesday afternoon to see the regular daily market filling the square. But by Thursday morning stalls were crammed into every spare space of the square and some bits that didn’t look spare in the first place. They spilled down the side streets while hawkers wandered and pushed through the crowds selling anything from biscuits to Christmas decorations. Meanwhile the population of the town had exploded overnight.

The church steps were rammed with flower sellers and the smell of incense flowed through the alleys created by the stalls.

This is still very much a locals market: the centre of the square was crammed with benches and tables while all kinds of foods were cooked in makeshift frying pans and cookers. Locals were here to buy and sell on stalls selling anything from dried fish to nylon rope, toilet paper to toys. Dozens of stalls sold the colourful skirts and tunics worn by local women. There were piles of chicken next to piles of chickens feet, a bucket of unidentified brown meaty things and one woman with a massive bowl of tripe. Yummy.

Around this were the stalls geared to tourists. While not selling the range of things we’d expected, there were beautiful textiles, silver and jade jewellery and the unique ceremonial masks used in Mayan rituals. One of which will be gracing our flat next week.

Although bustling, the atmosphere was pleasant and friendly with none of the aggressive selling or edge markets can get. We spent hours exploring, browsing and haggling for bargains but sadly didn’t find everything for our Christmas shopping. Which means many people will unfortunately have to go without presents this year. Sorry.

With hindsight, we should probably have spent only one night up there. After we’d finished in the market things got pretty dull and we killed time until the following morning. We also discovered there were no tourist shuttle buses out to Guatemala City on Friday, meaning we’d have to catch a camioneta.

We stood on the street until the right bus came along, hauled our bags up to the guy on the roof and jumped on, in the 30 seconds the driver is willing to stop for. Then we realised the bus was already rammed with people, three each on sears designed for two children. We forced our way to the absurdly-packed back half, rather than the impossibly-packed front, and wedged ourselves in. Despite the gentleman in the aisle virtually sitting on both our laps, we were relatively comfortable and settled for the three hour trip. That was until the bus stopped amid a flurry of confusion. There was some sort of problem and everyone got off.

Buses were passing every couple of minutes, so our stuff was hauled over to another bus and we crammed ourselves on. The second one wasn’t so much a bus, more a game of Tetris. The man in charge shifted and sorted people around to fill every air space with a body part.

And yes, there was a live chicken in a box up in the luggage rack.

Up At The Lake

Panajachel is a major tourist town. It’s small main street is lined with tour operators, hotels, restaurants and bars of varying quality. Even more variable is the quality on offer from the dozens of ‘handicraft’ stalls and hawkers, which ranges from tourist tat to jade jewellery and genuinely unique art and handicrafts (direct from the factory). Some of which the hawkers will kindly offer to sell you at your table during breakfast, or even when you’re fully loaded with rucksack and bag and heading to the bus stop.

Panajachel is also famous for it’s glass bead jewellery: pretty, intricate, vivid colours and designs of tiny glass beads woven together into necklaces, bracelets, anklets and myriad other accessories.

But let’s just say that no-one comes to Panajachel for the architecture and ambience. What they do come for is Lake Atitlan, and believe me when I say you wouldn’t bother otherwise.

The lake is breathtaking. An expanse of deep blue, 300 metres deep in the middle and completely surrounded by sheer, green mountains. On the shore opposite Panajachel, three cone-shaped volcanoes rise up to 3000 metres, while dotted around the shores are villages ranging from a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand inhabitants. All nestle between the shore and the rock, some are only accessible by boat or walking from another village (inadvisable to tourists; this is bandit country too).

Panajachel is perfectly situated to give stunning, serene views and particularly good sunsets from the shore (or bar). We rented the world’s oldest servicable pedallo, an early example of fibreglass, for a creaky and badly steered hour on the lake, taking in the views.

Most of the local inhabitants are pure Maya and the villages have lineage and archaeology dating back 2000 years. Each village has it’s own intricately patterned fabric worn by women, imposed by the Spanish conquistadors 500 years ago to identify the inhabitants of each place. The fact this is now the traditional dress is either an indication of pride in the history and culture unique to these ancient hills, or like German Jews still wearing a star. I’m not sure which.

A small museum in Panajachel (a sop to culture) has a fascinating collection of pots and ceramics, with faces or animals moulded in, or patterns still visible. All were retrieved from the bottom of the lake, but why they were thrown there no-one knows.

We arrived on a shuttle bus late afternoon. Our original choice of hotel was fully booked, so we made a reservation for the following night and another later in the week and moved down the road. The hotel we ended up in was a clean, comfortable, newish squat block with a courtyard, down a quiet lane. It had proper hot water and not a ‘death shower’ with live wires leading straight into the shower head as we’ve had elsewhere. It was pretty hard to fault. The owner was a kind, cheerful man and we felt guilty the following morning when we left for the competition, telling him we were leaving for a village across the lake.

Our other hotel, though, was beautiful. At the other end of the same lane, it was a collection of wood and brick bungalows set in and around a lush garden.

It also had a traditional wood fired Mayan sauna, which gives a moist heat more like a steam room. We spent a relaxing and sweltering hour in the dimly lit, low brick hut. The only problem was the heavy curtain door, which gave a draught and cold area around your feet. This was a bit of a blessing when we threw a little too much water on the rocks and had to sit on the floor to avoid passing out in the heat.

San Pedro La Laguna is on the opposite shore, a short boat ride away from Panajachel. It’s also very touristy, but has a much more laid-back atmosphere. The village is split into two: the Mayan locals village up the hill and the gringo bit a street and maze of paths running close to the shore. We didn’t venture to the dull looking concrete housing of the locals, not least because the main street there from the dock is being paved so virtually impassable.

The gringo bit is famously hippyfied, the sort of place people spend a few months learning Spanish (or as a bloke Penny administered first aid to, when he passed out and hit his head, put it ‘getting away from the west’). It’s basically a community of funky bars, hotels and garden cafés. You can tell the type of place by the “No drugs”
signs in the bars and the offer of free Internet with your breakfast. It is, however, beautiful: a stunning volcano-side location and lake views. The locals are friendlier than the hippies, saying good morning as they pass, and there’s an odd mix of local and gringo: maize fields and drying coffee beans vie for space among the tofu parlours.

San Pedro also has it’s own dialect, unique to the area, spoken in a kind of drawl. I picked up a couple of phrases on our short stay:

Hello – Hey, ’sup man?
Yes, that sounds delightful – Awesome, dude

Our hotel room was just up from the shore and had a spectacular picture window looking out across the lake. Sadly, the patio hammock collapsed when I first got in and I pulled muscles in my neck and shoulder. The hammock was fixed later for a very pleasant hour swinging and reading. My injury was only partly fixed by a kind Texan massage lady in Panajachel.

In the morning, we rented horses for three hours trekking across town, out through forest and along a ridge to a look-out point on the headland. It was a lot of fun, and the missing bit of my Indiana Jones fantasy. I imagine I cut quite a dash, man and beast in perfect harmony. But the saddle sores aren’t the best accompaniment to my already sore shoulders.

When we got back to town, we slipped into a solar-heated thermal bath: a concrete hot tub with lake views and a cold plunge tub to add a refreshing edge.

The return to Panajachel by boat took twice the time as the outward journey, heading into a strong wind, with each wave, each time the boat left the water and each soaking splash back down undoing a little of the good our thermal bath had done us.

We finally left Lake Atitlan after four nights in the area. It would’ve been nice to stay a night longer in San Pedro, and explore some of the less touristy and more traditional villages, but time is lacking.

Our bus journey (2 fast changes) in the ubiquitous US school busses took us further up into the highlands to the wonderfully named Chichicastenango.

Our last bus was the most fun*: I don’t think I’ve properly hurtled before, through villages, up and down mountains and round hairpin bends. When we got off, the driver decided 5 seconds was more than enough and started to go, the back door still open and our rucksacks still on the roof while the poor assistant clung to the ladder on the back trying to pass them down.

* fun/nerve-wracking/agonisingly bumpy

Defying The Angry Mountain God

Our last long bus journey of 8 hours got us across the country to Guatamala City for a quick overnight stay, then a short bus ride to Antigua. These are colourful local buses, generally an antique American school bus, converted to hold an astonishing number of Guatemalans on seats designed for children.

Antigua is a postcard-pretty town of pleasantly crumbling terracotta and yellow buildings and completely crumbled churches. It’s ringed by mountains, with the skyline dominated by a large cone-shaped volcano, like volcanoes should be (but often aren’t).

Antigua used to be the capital, until the Spanish got scared of eruptions and legged it east to found Guatemala City. The main square is an attractive, shady space with colonial buildings and a pretty church, where you can relax and observe local life and spot the Australian backpacker in it’s natural habitat.

Essentially, Antigua is now a tourist town thronged with internet cafés, hotels and some excellent tat shops. There’s also a lot of jewellery, particularly jade unique to the area.

But it’s the volcanoes most people come for, including us. Yet another early start then, with the 6am pickup for Volcano Pacaya.

The climb began through light forest on a foothill, giving us stunning views of two volcanoes across the valley – one of which was belching smoke. Pacaya was angered by our presence too, a low, loud rumble indicating his displeasure.

We continued on for a relatively steep and taxing climb through the trees for about 90 minutes. Eventually we broke out of the tree line, and Pacaya presented himself: a great hulk of black lava rock to the front and towering above us.

We rested for a while to catch our breath and allow more space between us and the group in front, then set off onto the volcano itself.

We descended into dark, gravelly ash, past a huge hulk of lava rock from the last eruption 8 months ago. Then we began to ascend again, picking and scrabbling our way slowly across a black lunar landscape of ash, gravel and loose lava rocks. By this time, the sun was breaking through the clouds hugging the crater. I thought to myself that the heat of the sun was uncomfortable for hiking, unaware that it wasn’t the sun I could feel.

The climb took just under an hour until I spotted a triangle of glowing red lava visible between the rocks, about 15 metres away. I assumed this was as close to the lava flow as we’d get but we kept going further round.

Suddenly the heat became quite intense, more so with each step. And there in front was the red hot lava flowing surprisingly quickly down the slope. I got within 4 metres of the flow, amazed and in awe of the intense heat shimmering around me. To get the requisite photo of ‘me and lava’, I stepped over a shallow crack a little closer. But although it was only half a metre or less, I couldn’t have stayed longer than a single pose. The heat was unbelievable. A cliché it may be, but sometimes they’re spot on; it was like being in an oven, painful on my exposed skin after a minute or two.

I was amazed at how close we could get to this incredible and unstoppable force. To prove a point, our guide ventured down the slope to within a metre of the lava. Shielding his face, his features grimmaced with the pain of the heat, he touched the lava with a wooden pole one of the group had used for walking. Instantly, it burst into flames.

With the heat, and the unpredictable nature of the mountain god’s wrath, we couldn’t stay long.

The descent was pretty easy, though mildly nerve-wracking, gravity and loose gravel working in unity to turn a hike into a slide.

Making The World Slightly Smaller

Monday was a rest day to just lounge around our hotel at Tikal. Having been out of bed at or shortly after sunrise most days it was a welcome break to lie in a hammock all day and read.

On Tuesday morning we were picked up at the hotel by Karina, from ActionAid, and a chap from local Mayan aid agency. I’ve been sponsoring a little boy called Hugo in Guatemala for about two years. When we decided on Guatemala for our honeymoon, we realised we’d have the unique opportunity to visit him in his village.

Hugo lives in the vast and sparsely populated region of El Peten in the north east of the country, where Tikal is situated. We drove for an hour from Tikal down to the nearest town, Flores. From there it was over an hour to the town of La Libertad and from there a further two hours to the turn off for the village.

The road was good, Tarmac all the way. But it’s quite literally a road to nowhere. After La Libertad there is no other town for hours – the next one being as far as you can go and nowhere anyone would want to. We barely saw any other traffic.

The turn off was a dusty, bumpy track through the stunning countryside. Crop fields shared space with trees and palms and fields of green grass. Steep, undulating hills formed a mini mountain range while dragonflies and butterflies chased the truck. The track took us around half an hour to drive along, picking up half a dozen women for a lift along the way. It would be an hour’s walk for the people living in the village, just to the road where they’d then need to hitch or wait for a sparodic collectivo public bus.

Finally, at about 1.30pm we approached a collection of houses: Chinatal, our destination. Immediately, the truck was surrounded by 20 or so children and several adults. They rarely get visitors (Karina had never been herself) and almost certainly never a white person.

Our guides began to tell us a little about the village and the work they do, while eager and inquisitive little faces gathered around us. Finally, Penny broke the ice by hiding and pulling faces with two little girls and they all began to giggle. We walked across to the school, as gradually some small hands got hold of ours, until both Penny and I had at least three children on each hand, all smiling and giggling and wanting to be friends with the strange newcomers.

The village is a collection of thatched, one-room wooden houses, with a small subsidised shop selling essentials and a few treats (lollipops and soft drinks etc). About 50 families live here. The schools is a long, concrete block painted baby pink: lessons are five days a week in term time, January to October. At the moment, it’s just for under 6 years olds. The school was built by the government, but it was with the help of the organisation we support that the community were able to ask for it.

They have electricity some days, provided by a generator shared with the next village. This allows them to pump water. There is no easy water source, the nearest river is 5km away but has dried up. The next village shares their water with Chinatal.

Our support had bought each family a sort of stand-alone stone sink, enabling the women to wash clothes and dishes easily without having to walk for hours to streams and ponds. It sounds simple, almost silly. But this is something the community asked for and is something that saves so much time and energy. Nothing is imposed on them, no agency tells them what they should or should not have. The community themselves make the decisions that they feel will improve their lives.

The majority speak Quechi, so the Mayan agency worker explained who we were and what we were doing there. The community leader, a man of around 40, told us that we welcome, thanking us for visiting them and for supporting their community.

Hugo was brought out of the little group of children to meet us. He’s about 6 years old and a very quiet and shy boy. He doesn’t go to school because they said he was scared. He doesn’t easily make eye contact, generally looking down with his chin close to his chest. We suspected he perhaps has some learning difficulties, but he did shake our hands and say hello though tended to hide or have to be persuaded to pose for pictures.

We started to take some photos around the village and of the children. This was a great game as they loved seeing themselves on the camera screen. There were a couple of gorgeous cheeky little boys, spinning and jumping for the camera. Suddenly, Hugo appeared at my side and took my hand which just meant the world to me!

In no time, it was time to go again. We were only there about 40 minutes, which seems short for a 3 hour trip but it was a long way back and Karina had a flight at 7pm. But it was the most special and wonderful experience. We all often give money to projects, but rarely do you think of the people on the other side of the world: happy, friendly, welcoming, warm people with homes and communities they are proud of and beautiful, playful, cheeky, sweet children. People, in other words, who are exactly like us.

What a rare and unique opportunity for us to meet the very people we try to help, to turn the vague concept of ‘charity’ into a real experience of a village, into a images of smiling, happy children that will stay with us forever.

And what is travel, if not forging some sort of link with people on the other side of the world, finding friends and making the planet just a little bit smaller?

An Offering At Temple II

The journey to Guatemala was hellish. It began with the worst night’s sleep possible: we had bright lights outside or window that we couldn’t switch off and the curtains didn’t so much block them out, more turn them an intense, deathly blue-grey. Sleep was already difficult, when the karaoke bar opposite opened.

It wasn’t even the singing, though that was bad enough. No, the singing was welcome relief from the man. The man was some sort of host, drumming up trade or cajoling people into doing a song or whatever. And he didn’t stop. He was loud, backed by Latin beats and clouded by more reverb than Geri Halliwell’s bad takes.

I think we managed about 4 fitful hours of rest before waking fully refreshed for our bus journey across an entire country.

The bus (I say bus, I mean minibus that’d seen better days, sometime in 1980) left Chetumal at 5am for what we thought was an 8-9 hour journey through Belize, which is inconveniently in the way, direct to the Tikal national park in Guatemala. We stopped only for the Mexico-Belize then the Belize-Guatemala borders, plus a rest stop in Belize City where our stuff was moved and seats were taken by arrogant backpacker types while we stretched our legs.

After being told “Yeah? Well build a bridge and get over it!” by the world’s least funny Australian* when questioning why the bus was suddenly full and our things chucked in a corner, we squoze (yes, that is a word) into the back corner seats for the increasingly bumpy ride. Our driver did his best to avoid holes when he could be bothered, and we were only properly launched from our seats once.

A full 11 hours and one quick bus change after leaving Chetumal, we arrived at Tikal.

The Tikal park covers over 500 square km, with the entrance to the ruins and the cluster of hotels about 25km off the main road and into the rainforest. Our hotel was lovely, a collection of small comfortable bungalows with electricity only in the evenings and hot water a few hours a day. We slept that night in the pitch dark, listening to the chirp of crickets and tree frogs and the occasional chorus of howler monkeys.

At 6am we met our guide, Luis, for a tour of the forest and the ruins. Luis was astoundingly good, pointing out interesting plants and trees, teasing out a tarantula from its hole (Penny held it, I politely declined), spotting spider and howler monkeys, telling us something about the archeology and history, and at one point pointing 30 feet up a tree to show us two giant beetles. How he spotted them, I’ve no idea. But he was the sort of bloke who does the impossible and gives guided tours a good name.

The ruins themselves are breath-taking. Dating from over 2500 years ago, up until the city’s fall in about 900AD, there are over 13,000 structures identified but over 85% still lying beneath the jungle. The biggest of the temples poke up above the tree canopy; temples IV and V can both be climbed giving startling views of the forest in all directions with these few structures jutting out of a carpet of trees.

Again, photos will say more than I ever could, but this is a special place. Almost equal to Micchu Piccu in it’s majesty, this is a proper Indiana Jones world of mysterious and beautiful carvings and huge mystical temples. It’s rainforest location only adds to the sense of being somewhere secret and unique. You have to follow paths through dense trees and around corners, before the canopy opens up to reveal temple after temple, or ruins huddled in a clearing. Or you look up for a rare view of the top of a pyramid when trees happen to part. And all the while, monkeys swing and chatter above you, coaties cross in front forraging for ants and toucans call out from the branches.

The ruins close at 6pm, you can watch the sunset from the top of Temple IV and then you are told to leave by armed guard. Unless, of course, you’ve chatted up your guide.

We’d been enjoying Luis’s company on the tour and he’d guessed we were on honeymoon. At one point he was telling us about how wonderful it is by night, so we asked him if it was possible to arrange it. Sure enough, on our way back in at 4pm for sunset, the main guard on the gate stopped us to say it was ok. We should watch the sunset on Temple IV then speak to the man with the gun who was expecting us.

Sunset was beautiful, turning the tips of the temples rose gold. Then we slipped our armed friend a tip and he escorted us to the main plaza. We spent an incredible hour after the park closed, sipping cold beer on the top of Temple II. The sky was pitch black and the moon was high, shining bright silver. We sat in the moonlight, with Temple I in front of us, the acropolis to the left and palace to the right. Engulfing us was the thick silence of the jungle: that is, not silence at all, but the sounds of animals and insects and anything but people. It was unforgettable. A perfect, romantic honeymoon moment.

It was a real and rare privilege thanks to the kindness of Luis, and the friendliness of David and Domingo – the nicest fully tooled-up dudes you’ll ever meet.

* I know. This is the country that gave us Paul Hogan and “Kath and Kim” so I don’t say that lightly.

Indiana Jones and the Well-Worn Tourist Route

With Penny descending two cenotes of note (see www.apennyforthem.com) I had a whole day to myself on the proviso I didn’t get lost.

Chichen Itza is the most important Mayan site in Yucatan. We knew it was a couple of hours from Cancun, but only having one day in the Benidorm of Mexico thought we wouldn’t have chance to visit. A helpful roadsign in Tulum, however, revealed that it was within easy reach by bus from our second base.

I arrived at lunchtime, and was slightly concerned about the cruise ship coach parties I’d find looking for the gift shop and ignoring the ruins. There were about 12 chartered executive guided coaches outside.

I didn’t really need to worry. Although busy, the park was plenty big enough to allow me to explore and take in the sites without being too hemmed in by Americans comparing the size of the pyramid unfavourably with the best Vegas has to offer.

Walking up the track from the entrance, your breath is taken away as the central pyramid is revealed through the trees. Truly one of the missed wonders of the world.

I spent several hours wandering the site initially in a bit of daze, but as I relaxed and began to take it in I could see virtually every surface intricately carved with serpents and jaguars, noblemen and sacrifice. As soon as my eyes relaxed the full wonder of the place opened out, big-nosed gods and all. It’s a genuinely magnificent city, almost too perfectly proportioned and well laid out: I had to remind myself this was real and over 1000 years old in places, not Disney’s Mayaland (sadly no actors in Mayan dress performing the Ritual Sacrifice Musical at 11am, 2pm and 5pm daily, though there is a sound and light show every evening).

The central pyramid is rivalled only by the massive ball stadium. No-one quite knows the rules, it changed through the years from football to involving bats or using your hips. What is known is that it involved getting a ball through a stone hoop high in the wall. First goal wins and the losing team is sacrificed to the gods. I might start watching the FA Cup if they did that.

I left at 3pm, before realising I’d missed a whole section and heading straight back in. Although templed-out I was glad I did: some of the best preserved and most intricate and exciting carvings adorned the vast buildings I’d missed.

I can’t do it justice, so wait for the photos when I get back! A little taster is below.

I’m writing this in the city of Chetumal, a short hop to the Belize border and a long bus ride direct to Tikal in Guatemala at 5am tomorrow. Chetumal seems pleasant enough, but not hugely exciting. Like Milton Keynes. It’s the biggest city in the region, nice to live in, but you wouldn’t really plan to go there if you weren’t passin through. We’ve passed the time sorting a major banking crisis that could’ve left us without cash (but didn’t) and sitting in a nice bar/restaurant opposite the hotel drinking cheap beer and blogging via ludicrous roaming charges.

Roll on the Guatemalan jungle, the most exciting ruins since Maccu Picchu and a brand new country tomorrow. Thank god I’ve got my adventure hat.