Tegucigalpa

The airport at Tegucigalpa was described to me by the Travel Editor at the Independent – a man whose experience of such places is surely unparalleled – as the most dangerous in the world. Not because there are hordes of balaclava-sporting, gun-toting bandits running about, waiting to make off with innocent backpackers’ maestro debit cards, but because the city is ringed by a series of mountain ridges which make the descent into the central airport somewhat treacherous.

Like many sprawling Latin American cities, the poorer districts cling to these steep mountain-sides. On calm nights, the bright lights of the pueblos create a beautiful, shimmering topographic picture. On stormy nights, lightning surrounds the city, striking the peaks and creating flashes of light so bright it seems as though some huge photographically-inclined God is taking his holiday snaps. On the worst nights, however, things become tense. When it rains, it pours; and when it pours, the city begins to fall apart. Sinkholes appear in the roads as the poorly-consolidated earth begins to give way. In the worst cases, whole areas of the city collapse as the ground liquefies and gushes downslope. Exactly this happened in 1998 when Hurricane Mitch roared its way inland from the Caribbean, killing hundreds as one of the more marginal sections of society was washed from the mountainside.

As is the case in many Latin American cities, and across the developing world, the contrast between the rich and the poor is stark. As the beggars and the windscreen-washers sweat the evening out in their corrugated hillside shacks, the affluent turn up the AC as they watch Major League Soccer on ESPN in their gated, razor-wire protected apartments. Needless to say, my accommodation – with a middle-class family in a fairly safe suburb – is at the more comfortable end of the scale. Each morning I eat breakfast in a small courtyard garden adorned with orchids and populated (staggeringly, in a place as polluted as this) by hummingbirds.

I have no real cause to go to the centre of town – I’ve been there twice, and once is enough. It’s not a pretty place, and the streets have none of the smells, sights and sounds that make Delhi or Bangkok intriguing places. Only a few of the cultural curiosities of Latin America remain. The rest, in Tegucigalpa at least, have been usurped and obscured by Subway, Burger King, Pizza Hut, KFC, and countless other US-imports. Indeed, Tegucigalpa’s glistening night-time terrain is now notable for the sheer numbers of the vast, glowing visages of Colonel Sanders that stare down the major boulevards.

Leave the city, and the landscape changes. The colour returns, as do the cobbled streets and the interesting cultural nuances that make travel rewarding. References to western culture become rare, but you come across them here and there. On one road out of the city and into the mountain villages, I was taken aback to come across what could only have been a public lynching. A group of about 15 kids holding sticks were gathered around a man wearing red and blue, who was hanging by the neck from a tree. The children were battering the body ferociously with their weapons. A group of middle-aged adults looked on, chuckling, as if happily guiding their offspring through a brutal rite of passage. I expressed concern to the mother of the family I am staying with. She broke out in a fit of hysterical laughter.

This rite of passage was one of the assailants’ birthday. The unfortunate lynchee was a dummy stuffed with sweets. Traditionally, the piñata is a pot or other container filled with jelly babies, or whatever Hondurans traditionally treat their kids with. The idea is to beat the hell out of it until it empties its load onto the street, to the delight of everyone concerned. These days the vessel takes whatever shape the child in question wants. This child, quite clearly (on reflection), was bashing the sweets out of Spiderman. I passed the mangled effigy on my way back to the city, a sorry looking red and blue heap abandoned by the side of the road. If it had been a lynching, Spiderman would have had no chance. There certainly weren’t any sweets left.

El Salvador, briefly

Chicken Buses are a ubiquitous combination of dangerous and uncomfortable, but colourful and fun. They are old US School buses, and the distance between the backs of the seats is significantly less than the length of the femur of the average 5ft 10in man. At any time of day, Guatemalans and tourists alike are packed in like sardines, such that up to four people share each two-man bench, with one person occupying the gap between benches (in a seated position, held in place by the squeeze placed on him or her from the sides). This makes for an agonizing three-hour journey. This is especially the case when somebody sits on the nozzle of your ‘platypus’ tube-attached drinking vessel, resulting in the partial flooding of the back rows. Angry looks all round.

On the other hand, there is often the opportunity of sharing the journey with a flock of chickens, as the name of the service suggests. But they’re rarely loose and flying around. No Borat-on-the-subway mayhem here. Two or three birds are placed in a plastic washing-up bowl, which is then covered by a tea-cloth or some sort of netting. These squawking packages are then neatly tucked under the seats to be kicked repeatedly throughout the journey as anyone over 5ft 10in attempts to restore circulation to their lower legs. More glares from the three traditionally-dressed, plump Mayan women sharing my bench. In these situations, you can generally rely on their attention being deflected by the driver’s attempts to manoeuvre the vehicle around crumbling switchback mountain corners at 60kmph.

Tourism is becoming more and more developed in Guatemala. Some towns, especially the World Heritage Site of the former capital, Antigua, are packed full of gringos taking their Spanish courses and glugging locally-sourced mochas in the minimalist-decorated avant-garde cafes. We could have been in Madrid. But one side of the business they haven’t quite caught up with is health and safety. This makes, without exception, for a richer and more intense touristic experience. Forget about insurance, security, or whether or not you have had any heart problems recently. If you have the cash, you’ve got your place on the tour of Central America’s most active volcano.

Halfway up the basalt cone of Volcan Pacaya, the guide crouched down at a vent. He threw a few cocktail stick-sized twigs into the crack. They ignited. We stepped over them and carried on up the razor-sharp rock until we reached a point within four feet of a tumbling flow of lava, about 40ft from the top of the mountain. The searingly hot pocket of air surrounding us was filled with a sound like breaking glass as the newly solidified bits of red-hot brittle rock fell from the edges of the flow. Someone produced a packet of marshmallows and some long twigs. The journey down was slightly more difficult than the climb for some, because the soles of their shoes had begun to melt like the marshmallows they’d cremated over the molten rock.

El Salvador, in contrast, hasn’t quite got the gist of tourism just yet. It still suffers from its reputation as a dangerous country, only recently emerged from Civil War. In fact, the war finished almost 15 years ago, but the backpackers still stay away. As a result, it’s harder to make yourself understood speaking pidgin Spanish. One or two things, however, need no translation. Such as the ‘no handgun’ signs situated at the entrances to public places in every town, or the bullet-riddled windscreens of the rusting wrecks that populate El Salvador’s vehicle graveyards. These little peculiarities do nothing to set the mind of the Lonely Planet-clutching new arrival at ease. We didn’t stay long – a matter of days. In some respects I regret not giving the country more of a chance, but once we’d climbed another volcano (the 'Lighthouse of the Pacific' until it stopped erupting 50 years ago) and wandered around the deserted streets of Santa Ana, the second city, we decided to press on back to the crystal-clear comfort of the Caribbean.

Cloud Forests, Lakes and Volcanoes

Cloud forests are just that. Well named. Jungles in the sky, with all the richness of the tropics, but none of the warmth. To begin with, it was silently ethereal; walking through the wet, cotton wool-like mist, along the slippery mud-path of a mountain ridge. You have to look where you’re going too. The visibility reached as little as four metres – if you looked at the floor, chances were your head would come into painful contact with a previously unnoticed low-hanging branch or creeper. All but one of the trekkers in our group had, sensibly, decided to take a heavy poncho. With their hoods and their cape-like folds draped over their backpacks and shoulders, they appeared from the fog and disappeared again like something out of Harry Potter (I don’t know the name of those ghost-things, and I don’t really care).

Yes, to begin with, it was ethereal. Then the thunder started; massive claps that sounded like we were sitting amidst the scattering pins at the end of some giant bowling alley. With the thunder came the rain. A small stream formed in a gully in the creases of my hood, pouring down in front of my face. My waterproof shoes quickly filled up, so that my feet were immersed, squelching with each step. I have to wear these socks tomorrow. The hostel best have a radiator.

The 'hostel' was a collection of 8x8ft concrete cells, which we shared with a group of Guatemalan road workers. They stood on the roof in the pouring rain, happily watching the women peel off their wet clothes through the corrugated plastic skylights. The floor was hard. The workers bashed out classics, such as Celine Dion’s Titanic Theme and The Winds of Change by the Scorpions, from their antiquated cassette-playing equipment. There was no radiator.


Having analysed the societies of the ancient Maya – or at least their overgrown limestone cities – the lives of the ones still about are starkly different (I assume). We trudged through their highland villages between Guatemala's second city, Quetzaltenango, and Lake Atitlan. The lucky families had one-room breeze-block dwellings built by the Red Cross. Not quite the magnificent temples and plazas of old... Today’s Maya are the poor,
down-trodden highland farmers, whose political interests are not served by the government because they can’t reach the voting stations and, in any case, the vast majority can’t read. The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Mayan campaigner, Rigoberta Menchu, will try to change that. But the reality is that those who vote in Guatemala are more likely to elect the former General whose military activities were an integral part of the indigenous killings that characterized the Guatemalan ‘80s.

Despite the situation of many rural Mayans in Guatemala, they seem, on the whole, to be happy. Legions of smiling, shouting children appeared from the fields of 4ft high maize each time we walked past. “¡Buenos dias!” and “¿Como estas?” replaced the standard third world requests for sweets and pencils. I peered into a small garden as I walked past on the path above. On the line were the traditional, multicoloured, intricately woven costumes worn by the Mayan women, drying in the intermittent sun. On the floor, a small child wearing only a ragged t-shirt happily shared the dirt floor with a pair of piglets and a puppy.



Lago de Atitlan was once referred to by Aldous Huxley as the most beautiful lake in the world. Why his word should be taken as being more valid than anyone else’s, I’m not sure. But many visitors seem, justifiably, to echo his words. It is situated in a vast volcanic caldera, produced by the collapse of an ancient magma chamber. The seismic nature of the region wasn’t lost on us. Sitting in a comedor in San Pedro La Laguna, I was annoyed to find that I had been brought a bowl of vegetable soup rather than the fried chicken which I ordered. But at that moment, a 7.2 earthquake hit a region of Guatemala about 100miles away to the west, and the soup spilled out of the bowl as it rocked across the table. It’s ok, I didn’t have to pay.

San Pedro, and also the larger town of Panajachel across the lake, has been full of gringos for about 30 years. That is because it is heaven-on-earth for a hippy. A sizeable population of bohemian Americans, Israelis and Brits, all with long beards, dreadlocks, and friendship bracelets around their ankles, wander the cobbled streets in a weed-fuelled daze. The local women do a tidy business sitting outside hostels selling basket-loads of ‘pan de banano’ (banana bread) to the hypoglycemic stoners. Life is, predictably, slow-paced. But the setting for that life is beautiful.

Jungle Ruins

The Guatemalan jungle is packed full of biting insects. But, to be fair, I had no right to expect any peace. Two days into a five-day trek through the rainforest, I would be lucky to escape at least the following potentially deadly illnesses: Malaria, Yellow Fever, Tick Bite Typhus, West Nile Virus, AIDS… actually I was probably safe on the AIDS front. But they all crossed my mind as I delicately removed a large tick that was expanding on my left calf as it drank my blood. Also occupying my thoughts was the fact that if extricated incorrectly, the contents of its stomach would be flushed into my bloodstream through the hole where its head would have been ripped off.

Once the offender had been sliced in half with a penknife, ending its short reign of epidemiological terror, I scratched my newest mosquito bite, and considered for the first time the possible implications of contracting Dengue two days hard trekking from civilization.

Well, civilization is a generous term. I wasn’t likely to get any treatment more reliable than a splash of iodine in the village of Carmelita, deep in the Petén forests. I shook out my boots once I’d swung from my hammock. Tarantulas hide in boots, and if I stood on one, Dengue was the least of my worries. My guide sheathed his machete and slapped a horse-fly that had had the poor foresight to land on his shoulder, removing one of its wings in brutal but satisfying retribution. It struggled on the dirt floor of our cabaña.

The purpose of this journey was to see a much older – and more developed – civilization than Carmelita; a city which, at its peak, would have had the populous edge on almost anything in modern-day Guatemala barring the capital itself and a couple of major cities. Known to many archaeologists as the cradle of the Pre-Classic Maya, El Mirador had its zenith around 100BC. It may have been home to 100,000 people. But these days it’s tough to get to. It’s not even easy to see, having accumulated 1100 years of tropical flora.

These guys built some seriously impressive buildings, but La Danta (The Tapir) is the biggest (that archaeologists and temple-robbers have yet discovered), climbing 77m from the forest floor. Only 20m or so is visible, the rest all but obscured by a thick layer of foliage. I scrambled up the jungle-clad, crumbling steps, feeling that with every step I was eroding the fragile remnants of an important archaeological record. Even at the top there was no rest from the insects, but the view was incredible. Far across the perfectly flat canopy, perhaps 30km away, the ruins of an outpost, Nakbé, rose from the vegetation. 20km to the south, a dark storm cloud shadowed the ruins of El Tintal. The rain was visible, blurring the horizon. To the east it was clear, and to the north another pocket of rain was watering another vast part of the Peten garden.

Looking up from my hammock, later on, I met the gaze of a howler monkey. It roared, as is their wont. Doubtless its thoughts ran along the lines of: ‘this idiot isn’t going to last five minutes in this insect-infested place. His mate over there isn't even doing him the courtesy of picking the bastards from his fur and eating them’. But I was lost in thought, oblivious to the plentiful fauna whose noise filled the tranquil quiet of the jungle. If it rained tonight, our makeshift shelter wasn’t really going to stand up to it. We’d have to find something sturdier. But then, the only real man-made cover for miles was El Templo de la Muerta, excavated by archaeologists some years previously. I didn’t fancy it. It was dark, claustrophobic, and to top it off, la Muerta refers to the remains of the dead woman they found when they dug the tunnel.

Tikal, 80km south of El Mirador and much more easily accessible from the island-town of Flores, is somewhat different. The majority of the larger temples have been cleared, revealing an impressive complex of ancient limestone structures. I watched the sun rise from the top of Structure IV. The surrounding forest was bathed in a dense mist, which occasionally thinned enough to glimpse the outlines of the other gargantuan temples that protruded above the canopy. Toucans, mot-mots, howler monkeys, and various other locals provided the soundtrack.

It was easier to picture Mayan society here than around the jungle-choked mounds of El Mirador. The rocky, 60m-high stairs down which captured enemies were thrown, their legs tied to their arms behind their backs, were there for all to climb. The engraved altar, at which the Gods were honoured with the sacrifice of the most beautiful virgins, stood exposed at the foot of the tallest temple. These elements of everyday Mayan life probably exist at El Mirador. But they're buried under a millennium’s worth of soil and vegetation.

In common with Tikal, the Honduran site of Copán, which boasts the most detailed glyphic record in the ancient Mesoamerican world, is a fully excavated, tourist-friendly journey into Mayan culture. Tame Scarlet Macaw parrots patrol the wire fences which form the city’s circumference. An on-site museum houses the original carved stelae, the limestone totems on which rulers such as ‘Smoke Monkey’ and ’18 Rabbit’ commissioned the description of the city’s history. But the hordes of small Latino school-trip attendees clambering around the Mayan ball-court detracted somewhat from my attempts to mentally re-create the ancient sport, the winners of whose matches were rewarded with the honour of being sacrificed. Even with the incentive of becoming a God myself upon my ritual death, I can’t imagine I would have been the most committed of players.