Belize: pink gins or coco locos?

Standing by a dusty jungle road in the blue pre-dawn gloom, fending off hungry mosquitoes and cursing the crowing cockerels, we waited for a bus which was more than a little behind schedule.

Once more I found myself questioning what I was doing. What was it that made me willing to crawl out of my comfortable cocoon at such an offensively early hour?


I was still struggling for an answer several hours later as we bumped along a pitted road as the sun climbed lazily into the sky.

It was only when the road ended abruptly in a small collection of ramshackle huts that it came back to me. It was a border crossing and we were leaving Guatemala and crossing over into Belize.

Belize. Suddenly my grumpiness melted to be quickly replaced by eager anticipation. The Caribbean! Sunshine! Big smiles! Paradise beaches!

Even better than all this we’re entering a country which finally speaks in a language I can understand, for here in Belize, unlike anywhere else in central America, English is the main spoken language.

Strange. Thousands of miles from home and six weeks into Latin America and suddenly I find myself speaking my own dear mother tongue. Shakespeare! Wordsworth! Morrissey!
How could this be?

Well it’s a story equally as colourful as the country itself, with vague and twisted versions abounded but, in brief, it seems to have happened thus:

Thanks to the exploits of a few honest pirates, some plucky adventurers and frankly insane logcutting ‘baymen’ this tiny piece of central America came to be coloured in pink on the map, another odd part of the global jigsaw which once was the British Empire.

Like many wax-moustached imperial romps it seems to have occurred more by accident than design. The various aforementioned ner do’wells dwelt in the swamps and lagoons of this piece of what was, at least nominally Spanish territory, much to the purported rightful owners ire.

Despite Spain’s best attempts to claw back their territory these doughty fellows held out, stubbornly withstanding the might of Spain rather like the indomitable Gauls of Asterix’s village defied the Romans legions.

Though tacit at first, the British government soon found itself lending support to these buccaneers and rascals, quickly embroiling itself in rather an embarrassing situation, repelling the furious advances of Spain’s embassies at home and navies in Belize.

Eventually, following a bit of a skirmish on the cayes the British found themselves, almost reluctantly, in possession of a new little bit of real estate bordering the sun-kissed shores of the Carribean.

They soon set out their task of bossing people about whilst wearing knee-length socks and pith helmets and generally anglicising their new little tropical garden, calling it British Honduras in case anyone forgot who it belonged to. Oh and they made sure that everyone spoke English, for the future benefit of homesick travellers.

Fast forward to the present and although Belize has a different name and has been a fully independent nation for nearly thirty years I wondered, as we crossed the border, does the colonial hangover still linger?

There were certainly still some symptoms: besides the language there was the Queen on the currency and, as our bus set off into the Belizean interior (along the Western highway, one of only two roads connecting Belize to the outside world) we spotted red fire engines, village associations and post offices.

It was threatening to morph into some weird, sun-baked version of 1950s Britain, mutated by the Caribbean sun.

I half expected to bump into a retired colonel, resplendent in double-breasted blazer, cufflinks and panama, pink gin at the ready. “Are the papers ironed yet, Jeeves?” Surely at least, I’d be in with a shout of a decent cuppa (certainly the greatest deprivation I‘ve had to endure on this whole trip).

But this was Belize not Britain, and soon the country proved to be something quite, quite different. And very beautiful to boot.

We trundled through a gently rolling landscape of lush green hills, thick forest, coconut palms and banana plants. The villages were small and straggly, full of white clapboard bungalows, some on them on stilts, all with corrugated iron roofs painted red or green.

Signs advertised crocodile parks and attorney-at-laws. They pointed to places with new-and exotic-sounding names: ‘Spanish Creek‘, ‘Duck Run’, Iguana Creek’, ‘Roaring Creek’.

There wasn’t much on the road and what there was seemed mainly to head in the other way. It mostly seemed to be composed of a curious mix of either lycra-clad cycle touring groups, out for a Sunday speed, or British army convoys headed for jungle adventures.

What little else traffic there was our driver appeared to know personally, greeting approaching cars with a casual wave of the arm or a brief shouted exchange of greetings.

It was peaceful and relaxed, no-one moved fast in the blazing sun. A woman hung out washing on a rickety wooden front porch; vultures scavenged at a dump; Land Rovers stood for sale at a grassy car lot; a huge trailer rattled by, stuffed to the brim with oranges.

Somehow I could feel the Carribean ahead of us, just over the horizon, tempting us on with promises of white sands and tropical waters.

It didn’t take long in coming: we whizzed past Belmopan, the smallest capital city in the world (population 5,000), past mangrove swamps and ‘Gentle Ben’ boats, small skiffs with large fans on the back to power them across the shallow waters, and into the raffish port of Belize City, set on the edge of the twinkling, turquoise waters of the Caribbean.

It was more seedy than seductive. Large blokes in grubby vests lounged around munching on chicken and rice, chomping through thick slices of watermelon.

We took a stroll up towards the seafront, the heady whiff of marijuana drifted across the swampy air as we tripped over rusting cannons and admired fading old white clapboard houses, the peeling paint on their white picket fences dating from the days when Belize City was the capital.

Eyeing up the lovely Lara, ‘taxi’ drivers rumbled slowly past in creaking old pimpmobiles, offering to ‘drive you to airport mon, cheeep. Airport? What’s one of those?

It was scruffy but intriguing, and none more so than the people. As a result of its colourful past and vibrant present the various cultures which have adopted Belize as their home present a list of ingredients which together add up a heady cocktail which is uniquely Belizean.

First, to make your base, take a liberal helping of the indigenous Mayan tribal people, the original inhabitants of the region.

Next mix in a generous drop of Creoles and a jot of Garifuna, most of them descendents of slaves brought over from other Caribbean colonies.

Add to this a good splash of Ladino (itself a good mix distilled over 500 years of breeding between the descendents of the Spanish conquistadors and original Mayan inhabitants) and let it settle.

Then, to give the cocktail a European twist add a few English pirates and logging prospectors, before chucking in a handful of East Indians and other (former) colonials.

Finally bring your cocktail bang up to date with Westerners gone to seed and a new good dash of Chinese and Robert’s your Mother‘s brother.

Some of these groups have become gradually familiar to us as we have headed along our route, others have appeared suddenly and visibly.

Take the Creoles for instance, who suddenly appeared as we crossed over the border. They’re much larger than the Maya over the border, and speak an entirely different language.

Though based on English it sounds rather different than standard home counties, spoken in a wonderfully rich, lilting accent, seemingly unchained by rules.

I’ve always made an effort to communicate in the local lingo (invariably to little effect) and so took the trouble, when reaching this country to consult the appropriate section of my guidebook.

What I’ve found is a whole different ball park. I can’t even attempt this - surely I’ll sound like I’m taking the mick.

Try saying this for instance:

Eksyooz mi, weh di poas aafis deh?

Apparently this means: Excuse me, where is the post office?

Or this one:

Ah gat sohn doti kloaz fu wash

(I have some dirty laundry for washing)

Could you keep a straight face?

It sounds even more bizarre when spoken with a Chinese accent.

Chinese? Yes there’s Chinese people here. Lots of them.

Indeed the first thing we saw in Belize was a clutch of Chinese restaurants and ‘lucky‘ stores, straggling along the road into the country.

And the first thing we saw at our destination, the idyllic island of Caye Caulker was a bunch of Chinese shops.

What are they doing here? The locals furrow their brows and mutter about them ‘buying up the country’. I hope they make a better job of it than back in Yangzhou.

For now any approaching sino-apocalypse seems a long way off, particularly as I kick off my boots, feel the sand beneath my feet and take in the scenes around me.

The sun beats down on the shallow blue and green waters of the Caribbean, surf breaks on the coral reefs offshore and pelicans, frigate birds and ospreys fill the blue skies.

Reggae booms out from the bars by the shore and barefooted tourists stroll slowly down the car-free streets; dreadlocked locals greet us with big toothy grins and invite us to try their coco locos. We pass by a sign with the island’s motto displayed on it: ‘Go Slow’ (surely this is the spiritual home of World in Slow Motion) and I wonder: is this paradise?

A beach towel hangs from a nearby shop nearby; the slogan emblazoned across it reads: ‘Ya better Belize it!’

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How to…get in to, around and out of Guatemala

Getting in
Guatemalan immigration is so relaxed that we had to ask for an entry stamp at the Cuauhtemoc/La Mesilla border crossing from Mexico. There was no fee and we just strolled right through. Most tourists don’t need a visa to enter Guatemala and will be given a ninety day tourist stamp on arrival.

We were on a shuttle bus from San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, that dropped us off at the border and transferred us to another bus on the other side where we continued to Panajachel, Lake Atitlan.

Getting around
Shuttle buses are the tourist speciality in Guatemala. The travel agencies know the places that tourists want to go and provide direct buses between them. All the towns we went to (Panajachel, San Pedro del Atitlan, Antigua, Coban, El Remate) had plenty of tourist agencies where you hand over your quetzals and get collected and delivered door to door. The service isn’t quite as efficient as the price would suggest; we found that adding two extra hours onto the quoted journey time was nearer the truth - mañana is a popular word and attitude in Guatemala. The tourist shuttles are easy, but are nowhere near as cheap nor as atmospheric as Guatemala’s famous chicken buses.

Chicken buses are brightly repainted American school buses - old, rickety and polluting - but cheap as chips. Good for short distances, but notoriously painful over long distances - bucket seats, no suspension and black fumes belching in through the windows. They are also considered unsafe by some (including the British Foreign Office who don’t allow their staff to travel on them) as robberies and murders are a possibility. Indeed, the tabloid papers are full of daily reports of bus drivers shot dead in Guatemala City - often because they drove through the wrong zone or didn’t pay their dues to the gang lords. You can take your chances and many people we met had travelled across the whole country on chicken buses without incidence. Anyway, isn’t a tourist bus richer pickings?

Chicken buses are being phased out and already in some parts of the country the only option is between a public minibus or a tourist minibus. Most travel agencies will fix you up with a shuttle bus (minibus) or you can go to the local bus terminal and talk to the drivers until you find the right minibus to your destination - the timetables seem to change regularly.

Large first class coaches plough selected routes. We travelled with Monja Blanca from Guatemala City to Coban on a bus resembling Dukes Travel in the eighties. Not the swish first class bus of Mexican standards but fit for travel. We were joined by a colourful bunch of Guatemalans, some in indigenous huipiles and stripy skirts, many in cowboy hats and one lady with some chickens and vegetables wrapped up in a bundle. Do chickens on a bus make it a chicken bus?

We were fortunate and travelled across Guatemala safely, as did all the other travellers we met.

Getting out
We took a shuttle bus from El Remate to Belize City passing through the Melchor de Menchos border crossing - the only land crossing between Guatemala and Belize. We were stamped out of Guatemala and asked to pay a twenty quetzals fee (£1.80). This is, apparently, a municipal fee to fix the muddy, potholed road that, apparently, “the tourist chew up”. When I challenged the charge, having been told that there should be no fee entering or leaving Guatemala, we were told that it was “nothing illegal” although, conveniently, the chap in charge of producing receipts was having a day off. The road really did need fixing though.

The entry to Belize was easy and efficient. British citizens get a one-month tourist stamp on arrival. We were then questioned by customs in indecipherable pidgin English as to whether we were carrying any fruit, vegetables or alcohol - negative - and suddenly queen Elizabeth II was looking up at us from the banknotes. Adios Guatemala!

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Tikal and Wantage: Lost civilisations

Tikal. The fabled Maya ruins of a lost city, buried deep in the jungle, just waiting to be explored.


Such a risky adventure out into the unknown required stolid, dependable companions and who better, as the locals keep reminding us, to accompany me than someone called Lara.

And for good measure we recruited a third, an idiosyncratic potter from North Wales called Rik, a former climatologist and devoted ‘raw fooder’.

I was anticipating great things. We’d visited jungles before on this trip, discovering their hidden splendours both natural (Khao Yai national park, Thailand) and manmade (the temples of Angkor, Cambodia.

Tikal however, offers both, combining to make it surely one of the most enticing destinations on the planet.

Once a huge Mayan city, Tikal was a highly complex society, rivalling and, in some cases, outstripping its European contemporaries, both in size and sophistication.

Its inhabitants made impressive advances in a whole range of fields, including science, mathematics and - perhaps most importantly to the Maya - astronomy.

In its own environs, Tikal was a was a regional superpower; more often than not gaining the upper hand in the many regional wars fought between cities vying for power, managing to dominate the Peten region for 500 years.

However, it still shared with them a common fate when, around 900 AD, like the rest of the entire Maya civilisation Tikal suddenly and mysteriously collapsed.

For reasons unknown its inhabitants abruptly upped and left. Gone. The whole city abandoned and left for the jungle to reclaim.

Soon the great temples and mighty plazas become overgrown, and the whole city began to disappear under a tide of the organic matter from which it had once sprang.

Today the ruins can be visited, spread over an enormous site where the visitor can turn Indiana Jones or Lara Croft, seeking out ruins where falling walls are covered in moss and crumpled masonry sprouts trees.

We had a go ourselves, attempting to decipher glyphs and stelae etched with fearsome-looking squat fellows decked out in feathered headresses, and scaling the great temples, mighty pyramids of limestone which rise up to poke their gnarled heads up through the forest canopy.

Ascending Temple V I discovered a new-found fear of heights, my knees a-knocking, my stomach churning.

As I gripped the rails of the near-vertical wooden staircase I tried not to think about the several tourists who have tumbled to their deaths over the years; as I inched along the narrow ledges at the top I marvelled at quite how the Maya could have climbed up the single, sheer flight of steps, which lay crumbling away below us.

Back down on the ground fear soon turned to wonder as we entered the Acropolis; an involuntary ’wow’ spilling from my lips as I gazed upon the Grand Plaza.

Ahead lay Temple I, resting place of the splendidly-titled King Moon Double Comb AKA Lord Chocolate.

It was the only temple to have been fully clawed back from the jungle, so much of this huge site remains to be discovered, with wonders both manmade and natural.

In the fragile balance between the two worlds, since the fall of the city the natural world has been back in the ascendancy and all around you cannot fail to be amazed.

The ruins themselves sit in the middle of a national park, an oasis of biodiversity, with hundreds of species of trees, plants, birds and animals.

The trees were extraordinary, coming in all shapes and sizes, from delicate little palms to massive soaring monsters.

Strange flossy-like fronds hung off slender trucks, whilst neighbouring titans stretched out their enormous buttress roots across the jungle floor like some kind of monstrous arboreal callisthenics.

Some of them, like the Ceiba tree, rivalled the very temples in both scale and splendour. This tree was revered by the ancient Maya as the ‘holy tree of life’; growing up to 70 metres in height, with a trunk up to two metres thick I could see how they considered it to be ‘the axle of the world’.

Monkeys danced through the treetops, hightailing it through the branches, Agile spider monkeys leapt from tree to tree, bellicose howler monkeys hollered testily at a group of pastel-suited French tourists below.

We gave the latter a wide berth, the lessons learned from an encounter with a troupe of howlers the day before. That group, infuriated at our encroachment into their territory, subjected to a dual assault of terrifying cacophony and aerial bombardment, defecating upon us and going - quite literally - ‘apeshit.’

Other creatures awaited us: coatimundi, strange long-nosed creatures with prehensile tails investigating the contents of rubbish bins; tubby coatis, patrolling the small clearings; and even the odd crocodile, poking its sharp snout out of a pond.

Away from the human visitors, well off the jungle paths, dwelt a rich range of other exotic creatures: jaguars, armadillos, tapirs and snakes.

In the dawn light the forest canopy vibrated to the song of a thousand bird calls, and as the day entered we spotted some of these mysterious menagerie.

High up hawks and eagles patrolled the blue sky and vultures wheeled around on the lookout for carrion. Below them keel-billed toucans called and parakeets screeched as they passed over the forest canopy.

Beneath the treetops lineated woodpeckers hammered out a steady drum while, lower down, tiny hummingbirds flitted incessantly from flower to flower.

Down on the jungle floor, a great currasow scurried out of the bushes behind us while up ahead a gaggle of oscillated turkeys strutted along, scurrying to the edges as we passed through them on the narrow path.

Great armies of leafcutter ants strode across the forest floor, highly-organised creatures who leave a clearly defined path in their wake, a miniature M40 corridor along which they transport freshly-cut leaves.

It was extraordinary to watch these dogged little insects, overcoming all manner of hazards and determinedly shouldering their load, many times their own size, all the way back to base.

Other insects proved less enamouring, tarantulas for example, to which I came rather too close to for comfort.

In the dim dawn light I left the john, sauntering across a stretch of ground, blithely whistling ‘Sheila take a bow’, completing oblivious to the enormous hairy arachnid which I’d come within an inch of stepping on.

The beast must have been at least the size of my hand and surely capable of devouring it.

With such creatures in abundance it hard to concentrate on the manmade wonders. That was of course, until we came across the Tower IV. Bland name, incredible place.

From 64 metres up, on top of this crumbling edifice we looked out across the forest canopy, stretching as far as the eye can see. A spellbinding sight.

It must have been hundreds of miles, our perch a mere pinprick in an ocean of green. The only sign of human existence was a few crumbling towers in the near distance, knocking on for 2000 years old.

The remains of a lost civilisation, mankind trumped by nature.

It was a moment when you realise the insignificance of man in the face of the unstoppable power of the natural world.

It was hard not to draw parallels between the lost world of the ancient Maya and our own. Population crisis, competition over scant resources, climate change.

Rik proved particularly knowledgeable on the latter. He pulled out another enormous carrot and, as he gnawed on it, he pointed out that all mankind was doing was merely speeding up the process, the planet all set, as before, for a major change in climate in a few thousand years.

Adroit scientists and astronomers the Maya believed the earth ‘lived’ in cycles of some 5,128 years. Theirs, and ours is the third ‘earth’, a world that is due to end in 2012 ( just in time for the London Olympics).

Baloney or not it set me thinking about the future. My mind turned to home and I imagined some future tourist seeking out the ruins of our lost civilisation, pulling the creepers back from the remains of the Weatherspoons down our road, stubbing their toe on the collapsed lintel of Finsbury Park tube station.

Wantage in a deep freeze (would it make any difference?); the dreaming spires of Oxford under water. The world come full circle.

2012's not long off: better get that stadium finished sharpish.

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Out of the clouds

Guatemala offers an astonishing diversity of spectacular landscapes. In two weeks we‘d visited high mountains and colonial cities, lush cloud forest and active volcanoes, deep lakes and limestone valleys.

Packed into a relatively small country the views change all the time, giving the impression that you are a member of a theatre audience enraptured by a fantastical play in which the range of possible scenery hanging in the wings is limited only the by creative power of the human imagination.

Now, amongst the coffee plantations of Coban, it was time to change the scenery again.

We headed north, down out of the cool mountain air of the Alta Verapaces onto the sticky plains of the Peten.

We left the highland Maya for their cousins in these lowlands, a vast area of thick tropical forests, stretching down from Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula into the most northerly department of Guatemala.

Our bus followed a lonely road, winding through wild lands where the scenery changed by the hour, from high mist-clad cloud forests into gently undulating hills before flattening out inside a landscape of swamp, savannah and, of course, jungle.

The change of climate was reflected in the local produce on display and growing all around us. Gone was the green palette of the coffee plant and avocado tree; usurped by tropical tones of yellow, the coconut palm and the banana plant.

The fresh air and clear skies of Coban gave way to brooding clouds followed by heavy rain; the air grew thick and humid, an uncomfortable gloop into which the gringos swam, visibly perspiring.

Even the locals have had to adapt, the local Maya woman here eschewing the heavy, intricately embroidered blouses and shawls of the highlands for lighter blouses in shades of yellow, blue and pink.

They worked under the blazing sun in scruffy little villages comprised of modest dwellings, many with roofs thatched with palms, all with rough wooden planks for walls.

Their kids ran around barefoot in the dirt, wrestling with each other in the road, apparently unconcerned about the odd vehicle which plied its way in their direction.

We crossed the a large river at Sayaxche, wobbling across on a rickety little pontoon as minibus drivers watched us from the shore, washing their charges in the muddy waters. Roads felt less permanent here, their existence dependent on the whims of nature.

Flores greeted us like a gated community for tourists, the small island on which it stands linked to the more raffish town of Santa Elena, where locals preyed on new arrivals with promises of jaguar safaris and sunrises over Maya temples.

A newer temple stood guard at the entrance to the Western enclave: Burger King, bright, plastic and shiny. RIP tortillas and salsa.

We left and fled to the village of El Remate, some thirty clicks out on the road to Tikal. A string of flimsy buildings lined the road, chickens pecked in the dirt, goats played chicken with the traffic.

No aggressive touts here - only gentle locals who merrily greeted us as they rode slowly past on old bicycles. They were all Mayan except for one storekeeper - the first Creole we’d met, a reminder that Belize was only a couple of hours further down the road.

We holed up at a rundown old guesthouse, its hippyfied glory days long past, garish murals fading, fantastical plasterwork cracking, boho furniture broken.

Geckos clucked away from the walls of our room as rats fought in the ceiling above.

We retreated to the old sun terrace and perched on a couple of cracked plastic chairs as the sun bid us a spectacular goodnight over the still waters of Lago de Peten Itza.

Geese called up to us from the shoreline, frogs sang out and somewhere - perhaps - the fabled crocodiles of the lake gulped down another unfortunate fish.

Bats swept down amongst us, silhouetted in the orange glow, and all around the forests hummed with insects and echoed to the calls of a thousand exotic birds.

The jungle.

On with the next Act…

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How to…volunteer in Guatemala

Let’s face it, travellers are masters of time; no alarm calls, no deadlines, no chores. When the biggest task of the day is deciding which restaurant to eat in perhaps it’s time to seek out something else to do instead.

After seven months of travelling I was feeling the urge to get off my bus-sore bum and do something useful; to get a deeper understanding of the country I was visiting and, hopefully, be of some help as part of the deal. Guatemala is full of opportunities to get involved with the local community, not in the ´pay three thousand pounds and you can help’ way, but where there are minimal, or no, admin overheads and you just have to give your time.

There are a number of websites that list some of these volunteer opportunities in Guatemala and most spanish language schools have links with local projects:
http://www.idealist.org/
http://www.voluneerpeten.com/
http://www.casa-guatemala.org/
http://www.arcasguatemala.com/
www.volunteerabroad.

I was fortunate to get hooked up with Los Patojos (http://www.lospatojos.org/) through my language school.

“This is my revolution," declared Juan Pablo Romero Fuentes, the Director of Los Patojos, as he proudly gazed over the brightly painted yard full of children running, laughing and generally creating havoc.

This young revolutionary has transformed his house in Jocotenango, on the outskirts of Antigua, into a school for los patojos (meaning ´the little ones´) from less privileged households.

Starting with just three pupils the school is now bursting at the seams with over one hundred children. Many of the pupils found their own way to this school, its reputation spreading through the children’s gossip. They come because they want to learn and because their parents lack the will or the money to send them to public school. Although school is free in Guatemala, many children don’t attend because their families cannot afford the books and pens or because their family needs them to work. The streets of Guatemala are full of children selling chewing gum, fruit and offering shoe shines. I even met an eight year old running an Internet cafe. To give children the opportunity to go to school as well as work, some of the public schools run in the afternoon. Los Patojos is also open for education in the afternoons only. The children stream in from 2pm and run around for half an hour before being served a nutritious lunch followed by a tooth brushing session. Lessons follow and when the work is done there is more play time.

There is as much, if not more, emphasis on social interaction and fun as there is on lessons. The school aims to build the self-esteem and abilities of the children, teaching them to believe in themselves and make the most of their lives. If there’s a lack of love in the home, it is given in double doses in the school. It’s a wonderful project. I am not qualified to teach but I could make the lives of the teachers easier. For a couple of afternoons I helped make musical instruments out of drinks cans and beans for the children to decorate, and prepared exercise books. Easy stuff, but it frees up the teacher’s time to concentrate on more important things. And everyone gets involved in the rough and tumble of playtime at the end of the day.

The Patojos website proclaims, "We are powerful because we are children,” and witnessing the energy in this school, I believe it. So if you ever find yourself in a dilemma unable to decide between going to a cafe to read or mooching around a museum and fancy doing something different, get in touch with Juan Pedro (Jpromerofuentes@gmail.com), or one of the many other volunteer organisations listed above, and go and help out.

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Back to school

“How did you get by without speaking the language?”. People frequently asked us this as we’ve travelled around the world.


It has certainly been challenge to navigate our way through many strange and often impenetrable languages; our eyes bewildered by strange square Cyrillic lettering, beautiful abstract kanji and psychedelic, swirly Thai, our ears twisted by harsh, gutteral Mandarin, soft, whispered Japanese and the long drawl of the American South West.

Yet somehow we managed. Though eating out in a Chinese restaurant often felt like Russian roulette, and coaxing answers in English out of a shy Japanese guesthouse owner, anxious not to loose face by ‘embarrassing themselves’ was like trying to avoid wearing slippers, we managed.

Once we left Asia behind and reached the shores of the Americas I thought it would get easier. It didn’t.

Indeed, for me at least, it was when we reached the new linguistic realm of Latin America that the language barrier, and the associated frustrations of not speaking or understanding the local language, has been at its greatest.

It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the language more than anywhere else that we’d been, rather it was that, for the first time, I was far behind, in linguistic terms, my fair travelling companion.

With a year in Ecuador under her belt, Lara speaks good Spanish, or rather Latin American. She can hold a conversation, decipher a bus timetable, read a menu.

I, on the other hand cannot. Rather I mumble away in dreadful Spanglish, gleaned from films, television and a fortnight’s glance at my little Spanish phrasebook during our trip across the Pacific.

I couldn’t stand it. I was reduced to the role of a mute bystander on the edge of every conversation, grinning sheepishly in this most machismo of worlds as Lara would happily rabbit on with waiters and bus drivers, hostel owners and even friends.

I’m sure she didn’t appreciate it either, having to shoulder the burden of full-time spokesperson, constantly having to translate for me.

After a month of this, verbally stumbling across Mexico I’d had enough. I decided was time to take things into my own hands. I had to take the plunge into a pool of new vocab, pronouns and verbs.


It was time to go back to school.

Antigua, the grand old former capital of colonial-era Guatemala, is the perfect place to learn Spanish.

It’s a beautiful location, where old cobbled streets are lined with low houses painted sky blue, peach and mustard yellow, their hues faded by the scorching sunshine.

There’s a grand old square bordered by a ruined old Cathedral (a victim of the many earthquakes that have struck the city), decaying old monasteries, and crumbling old churches dedicated to a whole host of saints.

Above the city loomed three massive volcanoes, brooding and very much active, which we could walk up, padding through paths of volcanic dust and gingerly stepping across the sharp fields of recently solidified lava.

Volcanoes and ruins aside the town also offers a huge range of language schools where, for a rock bottom price, gringos can cram in a week or two’s intensive Spanish lessons.

Many choose to do this before pressing further south, heading for other Latin American countries where they can put their newly-learned lingo to use, from San Salvador to Santiago.

We’re both studying at one of these language schools. Lara is ‘just brushing up on’ the pretorect and other difficult and impressive-sounding advanced things; I’m just hoping I can order a bus ticket by the end of the week.

I reckon I stand a fighting chance. After all, we couldn’t be studying in an environment more conducive to learning.

Our school is set in a pleasant courtyard, around which pupils and teachers sit in the open air.

It’s fresh and invigorating, albeit at this this altitude we face the stark choice of either shivering in the shade or sweltering in the sun.

Lessons are one-on-one teaching, four hours a day, which makes for intensive but highly productive learning.

Despite this the atmosphere remains highly relaxed and the courtyard echoes to peals of laughter amongst the strangled words.

Learning a new language can be very rewarding and it’s made all the more enjoyable when you get to mix with so many people, old and young, from across the world, all here to learn themselves and somehow, in the process find out about other countries and cultures.

And alongside the international pleasantries there’s some serious business to be done. I rolled up my sleeves and got stuck in, taking a nosedive straight into a new language.

My teacher is a lovely chap called Raphael, a charming retired farmer with a gentle manner and an infectious laugh. He’s no Mr Bronson, Grange Hill’s tyrannical French teacher, that's for sure. Rather he’s an immensely laid-back fellow, encouraging and - most crucially for me - patient.

On the first day we sat down to work and he spread out his teaching materials, tattered old books, held together with yellowing sellotape.

Straight away he was off, gabbling away in Spanish and scribbling indecipherable words on scraps of paper.

I was bemused at first and, as an absolute beginner, terribly lost, clumsy and awkward like a baby bird.

It was a shock to be back at school. After ten years lying somewhat dormant my part of the brain which is meant to absorb and learn things like new languages is rather dusty and unused. It took quite some effort to shake it back to life and coax it into absorbing a rather daunting-looking foreign language.

It was also intense; and after four hours of hard study I’m left reeling, my brain frying, my memory overloaded with verbs and definite articles.

I’m confused by conjugations and assaulted with adjectives, irked by infinitives and perplexed by pronouns.

Then there’s the pronounciation - all that seems to come out of my cakehole is a bizarre form of mangled Spanglish.

I have to relearn how to speak. I’m trying desperately to reprogramme my Anglo-Saxon genes so that I can replace my long English vowels and sharp BBC pronunciation with the ability to speak in one long, fast rolling sentences and to roll my ‘r’s like a rattling motorbike exhaust.

Raphael gave me a couple of tonguetwisters to get this process going - fiendishly difficult ones that reduced me to slathering, jibbering fool.

Try this one for instance:

Rapido corren los carros cargados de ferrocarril

See?

At first it seemed hopeless. How on earth, I thought, I am going to pick this up in five days? Is it really worth putting myself through this linguistic pain?

Lara can speak the lingo, and besides is it really worth it in a country where a sizeable proportion of people don’t even speak Spanish (the various indigenous peoples, descendents of the Maya, speaking 28 different languages and dialects of their own)? Surely I should be delving into the mysteries of K’iche, Kaqchikel or Mam.

Gradually things improved. A surprising amount of the words were familiar (thanks to everything from the Roman conquest of Britain to the films of Quentin Tarantino) and besides this was conversational Spanish I was after, not Don Quixote.

Now we jibber jabber along quite happily. It helped that, like many Guatemalans, Raphael speaks far slower and clearer then a Spaniard.

He’s a great one for gossip and greatly enjoys the tales I have to tale him of our homestay in a crumbling old casa in one of the nearby streets. It’s owned by an old lady with small darting eyes which nervously follow you round the room.

Raphael grinned when he recognised her name, and laughed out loud when I recounted to him our experiences of her food, or rather the extra ingredients she unwittingly added to each meal.

We seemed to take it in turns to be served a bug of some sort: spiders in our orange juice, flies on our pasta, even a couple of maggots in a chicken fillet (or was it fish?), our hostess provided them all.

Lara and I bravely ploughed on through the courses, determined to stay the course. Our fellow housemate, a game young Aussie fellow, did his best but, after numerous occasions it got too much - our hostess simply couldn’t understand why he eschewed her sena and started to eat out.

Back at school, as we sit under the avocado tree, learning verb endings, a large boom rolled out across the town.

Everyone looked up to see smoke rising from one of the 3000m beasties. A common occurrence, apparently, and one that doesn't seem to concern the locals at all.

It was enough to distract me though and my mind started wandering away from verb stems and pondering the fate of Pompeii.

Maybe I needed Mr Bronson after all.

You boy! Fewins! Pay attention in class!



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Dazed and confused in Chichicastenango

Why do I love markets? It must be the combination of energy and soul. The meeting of basic needs and the basic meeting of people. The energy from people rubbing up against each other and interacting over brightly-coloured fruit and vegetables. Dressing up in their finest, even if the high heeled sandals that are en vogue in San Cristobal are totally inappropriate for tramping through mud and food scraps on cobbled streets.

People come to see people and be seen. To be part of something bigger than life at home. To make the connection between the labour of their hands and the stomachs of strangers. To gossip. To eat. To feed on the presence of others. I delight in watching couples shopping together - small weathered men and walnut-faced women together choosing which fat papaya they want to salve their salivary juices. Markets are the food of life. Full of life and there to fill you with food.

This energy just can’t be generated in the refrigerated aisles and neatly stacked shelves of a supermarket. There is no market research-derived layout to a market, you are not psychologically tricked into buying what you don’t need. Instead you have to search and seek out the best product, and the reward is often sweeter as a result. People are not automatons pushing trolleys for support, but take support from the energy around, the air filled with scents of fruit, herbs and blood, the noise of music, sellers shouting out their wares and the rhubarb of the crowd.

I could go on. Markets excite me. Especially the Sunday market in Chichicastenango, Guatemala, which even Tom, fed up of being dragged around markets, had reason to enjoy.

On arrival in Chichicastenango our finely-tuned fiesta firecracker ears rushed us down a street lined with florescent stripy material, bags and hippy trousers smack bang into Saint Sebastian. On a regular Sunday Chichicastenango’s market would be an assault on the senses, but on a fiesta day it positively takes it out of you.

Effigies of San Sebastian were being carried passed us on pedestals at shoulder height, engulfed in clouds of incense and firecracker smoke. In front and behind the people of Chichicastenango dressed in brightly- coloured, flower-embroidered tunics with stripy scarves wrapped around their heads and shoulders, accompanied the saints holding candles, silver amulets and drums. The procession stopped to launch an eardrum-bursting rocket in front of us and disappeared into the layers of rainbow scarves and hammocks hanging from the stalls, leaving us deafened and dazed.

The motion of the crowd moved us on vacantly until we escaped up the nearest flight of stairs to gather our bearings and draw breath. The sight we beheld only served to bewilder us further. Below lay a sea of green, red, yellow and orange - a mesmerising blur of colours and faces. We had stumbled upon Chichi’s famous fruit and vegetable market. Here, amongst piles of tomatoes, carrots, radishes, potatoes, bananas and onions sat vendors in cowboy hats and patterned skirts. They chatted and bargained as women stuffed cucumbers and cauliflowers into florescent blankets, tied them up and put them on their heads to leave. Looking down from above we caught strong wafts of plum tomatoes and fresh green onions. It was as enchanting as watching a whirling dervish and as reminiscent as an English harvest festival.

Down on the ground we were bumped and pushed along in a multicoloured throng of five-foot women, baby bundles and vegetables wrapped in bright, stripy cloths. Amidst the crush kids put their heads down and squeezed through, bashing our knees. We were ejected into the central plaza where our ears were soothed by the gentle patting of tortillas as young girl flattened balls of dough in their palms and our nostrils comforted by their earthy, maize smell as they cooked on the hot plate. Next to them men sold freshly quarried rocks of limestone that is used to make the tortilla dough and gives the tortillas their cave-like scent and slightly gritty texture. On the steps of the church women beamed with gold rimmed teeth over bundles of fresh flowers. The whole town was aglow and abuzz.

The market was both energising and exhausting. We were full. Filled with aromas, images, colours, whistles and whispers we quickly fell into a deep sleep on the onward bus to Antigua. All our energy had rubbed off on those brightly coloured clothes, left behind to whirl around the tomatoes until the next person picks it up and puts it in a shopping bag.

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Guatemala: casa de Del Boy

6.45am. Church bells and firecrackers to wake the faithful, cockerels to stir the heathens.

Bundled up against the cold we boarded a van to our next country, Guatemala.


The only other traffic seemed to be the gas van, dragging heavy chains to behind it to make a loud clanking sound on the tarmac and advertise its presence into the neighbourhood.

The Carretera Interamericana - the Pan-America Highway which runs all the way from Alaska to the far south of Argentina and Chile.

Though a grand name, this was no sweeping expressway, instead another small single road, winding through lonely pine-clad mountains and tinder-dry fields of tall, thin maize, past kennel-sized roadside shrines and bright bougainvilleas.

Our little van plunged through endless chicanes, our progress slowed by crawling lorries, many of them heaving Coke, Pepsi and other American-derived sugary pop - an endless conveyor belt of sugared water to slate the thirst of the masses, enslave their taste buds and expand their waistlines.

More soldiers and check points, ‘military zones’ to encircle the Zapatistas and guard Mexico’s borders against her unpredictable neighbours to the south.

Beyond Comitan, the Guatemalan flag appeared alongside the Mexican tricolore, a resplendent Quetzal jammed between two slices of light blue. A nation which puts a bird on its flag - I was beginning to get a good feeling about what lay ahead.

Huge purple mountains loomed up head, their peaks in the clouds. In front of them turkey vultures circled, airborne dustmen. Others congregated in roadside trees and chewed at the roadkill.

Further up the road, we checked out of Mexico, a gaggle of gringo vans crowded round a small office, where a miserable little bloke processed Israeli hippies and a sensibly-clad older German couple, a party of young blonde Americans in Converse and leggings and a Spanish motorbiker all equipped for the drive to Cape Horn.

The van soon entered a small settlement, clinging onto the side of a steep mountain. and parked up on a muddy slope, the driver wedging it between overloaded vans and gaggles of equally overburdened men, stooping under the weight of the sacks they were heaving uphill.

Quickly decanted, the gringos were shepherded after them.

Scruffy souvenir stalls closed in our us either side as we puffed up the hill; from the shadows I could feel many pairs of beady little eyes sizing us up.

We pushed on, squeezing between muddy vans and scrawny men wheeling teetering sack trucks, and crossed under a rusting hoarding - the border itself.

The Guatemalan flag hung limply outside a small office. We entered, ready for the notorious officials with their fondness for charging an ‘entrance fee’. On the other side of the counter a young lad in an old t-shirt ignored us, his head buried in the paper.

An older man lounged behind him at a desk, methodically chomping through a bag of sweets. No-one seemed in the slightest hurry to process the long queue at their doorway; no-one seemed in the slightest bit official.

Finally a small woman in a dirty old coat shuffled up and took my passport, wandering into a back room where, through a crack in the door, I saw an equally sanguine fellow lazily stamp it.

He hardly need bother with this stamp of official entry; it lay half-imprinted on the page of my passport, its words unintelligible. I made better stamps with rubbers and inkpots as a ten-year old.

While the officials didn’t seem interested in who was entering their country, the unofficials certainly did.

Latino Arthur Daleys cruised amongst the hubbub, seeking out the tourist dollar - the money changers.

These fine fellows stood around fingering large wads like Guatemalan Frank Butchers, lovingly flicking three inches of Quetzales and Pesos between their fingers, stroking their dollars and their other day’s takings.

They struck relaxed, rather louche poses, reclined against pillars in the shade, drawing on cigarettes which dangled from loose lips buried deep beneath bushy moustaches.

Their tight shirts bulged over their jeans, the shirt buttons undone to allow forests of chest hair to spill out like cress on a paper towel, the thick dark hairs intertwined with innumerable gold chains.

Other Terry Tibbs took a more proactive approach, sauntering in cowboy boots amongst the backpacks, touting for business from under cream plastic cowboy hats or hawking fake gold watches hanging from a board like notices in a school staff room.

As we stood in the sun, waiting for our ride, our senses were assaulted by the tumult of the border, where music blasted out from rickety shacks and skinny kids hawked fruit and sweets, a straggly tide of humanity constantly drifted past and trucks and cars, carts and tuk tuks vied for space on the pitted tarmac.


Tuk tuks in Guatemala; they seemed out of place at first, but soon blended in to the scene, coated in Jesus bling and American football stickers.

An hour and a half of confused chaos later and our transport finally arrived, another gleaming modern minibus to transport the tourist from A to B, safely cosseted against the vagaries of independent travel in a developing nation and the hazards of mixing with locals.

The chicken buses - old US school buses which have been plucked from the scrap yard and repainted in the most incredibly gaudy livery - will have to wait for another day.

Echoes of tourist soap again.

Incessant noise and frenzy, Del Boys and the entrepreneurial spirit, tuk tuks and tourist buses. It was like being back in Vietnam again…


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