FRIDAY,JUNE 23
Is listening to other people´s opinions a natural medicine? The US is blamed for such different ills and evils - like blaming your parents - and is deeply unpopular in those countries I have so far visited. I write of every Latin American with whom I have spoken over the past weeks. The Latin American at Zamoran remarked that people in the US never listened to any opinion other than their own. Perhaps the not listening and the unpopularity are connected.
Today I spent more than an hour listening to a woman´s account of her life and of life in Danli. She was married at 17, bore her first child at 18. She had wanted an education. Her father owned a tiny store up in the mountains and was too poor. A nice man, he entered his daughter´s store while I was there. She was married for 15 years before getting a divorce. Her husband had gone to work in the US. "Men return changed," she told me. "They are rude and all they do is drink and go with women."
She believed that people in the US, white people, had contempt for Latins. "How can they not?" she asked. "They only meet those of us who have no education. Those are the only Latins who go north."
She spoke of Spain: Spaniards were even more racist than white people in the US. She knew this from her friends who went to work in Spain. Many women went to Spain. The men to the US. In Danli they were unable to support their families. Her son-in-law was a barber. Some days he was without a customer. Weekends he worked. He could take $20 over the weekend. Labourers earned $5 a day. Not enough to feed a family. So the parents left. Many of the fathers began a new life in the US. At first they would send money. The money ceased. And now there were the gangs - the sons of those who had gone to the US. They were sent back by the Americans. They were evil. They thought nothing of shooting people for a few dollars.
She was lucky, so she told me. She had been ill. She belonged to a church that sent medicines from the US for its members - otherwise she might have died. I didn´t ask whether the church members were white North Americans or if her natural medicines were inefective. Many customers entered the store while I was there. Her daughter served them. She was training her daughter to take over the store. Then she would go to Spain and work until she had enough money to buy a new pick-up and build a second house that she could rent out for her old age.
I report what I hear. I neither edit nor provoke.
Tomorrow I leave for Nicaragua.
Friday, June 23, 2006
DANLI
Morris in the forest
FRIDAY, JUNE 23
I paid for my visit to Zamorano with a drenching. I am staying at the Grand Hotel at th entrance to town. The hotel´s swimming pool is no longer in use and the hotel food is disasterous. However the room and bathroom are fine and the water is hot: $15 with fan and cable TV. Danli has a pleasant atmosphere. This is a personal opinion. It may be the centre for all sorts of viciousness. I took my shoes to be mended in the covered market and found a laundry - all my clothes were either wet or dirty. I discovered a really bad internet connection on the Church square which I abandoned and a great internet connection, TECHNOCHAT on a down street (down hill towards the hotel). And I talked for more than an hour with a woman, the owner of store selling stationary and natural medicines. An odd combination?
I have been writing much of the day.
ZAMORANO
What should a writer publish? Everything - or should he edit himself? I talked for an hour with the teacher of English at Zamorano. He had been teaching for over two years. He was homesick. He missed those small town family celebrations of Thanksgiving etc. Though married to a Honduran, he seemed to me to be a little lost.
Was he made nervous by my probing? Was he being defensive in his replies? Perhaps.
I enquired as to the feeling of the students towards the United States. He replied that he found some criticism from South Americans, that Central Americans in general held a positive view of the US. I mentioned his opinions to a Latin American member of staff who raised his eyebrows in despair. Of the visa situation, he said, "When will they learn?" The university was a fruitful project of great importance to Latin American agriculture. Yet one moment of stupid bullying, as with the visas, destroyed all the goodwill the university had earned for the US. He had lived in the US. Any attempt at discusiion of US policy was seen as criticism and received always the same retort: "You don´t like it, why don´t you leave?"
Later I was priviledged to meet one of Honduras´ most eminent cricketers. He is a New Zealander. For the past two years he has been on the winning team or the second team in the Hinduras Cricket Co0nference. True, there are only two teams. They play on the Brigade parade ground in the capital and they use a weighted tennis ball so donmt require pads. The medals are genuine and impressive.
ONWARDS TO DANLI
THURSDAY, JUNE 22
A minivan driver kindly led me from the centre of Tegucicalpa to the Danli road. The road seemed the same as the road in from the west. Ten Ks out of town, I stopped to check. Pine forest is pine forest, mountains are mountains, a tar road which sets ambushes is much the same as any other tar road that sets ambushes. The ambushes in Honduras are potholes that would swallow a Mack truck. They show in sunshine as dark pools of shadow. They are more difficult to spot on a gray day. It was gray today.
I came out of the mountains onto a flat valley, the road ran straight to the next set of mountains. A miracle appeared on the left: disciplined acres in the middle of the standard Central American chaos. I was travelling at 80 Ks. I glimpsed cropped lawns, neat single story buildings arranged with obvious logic, avenues of palm trees. I had to stop. Ahead lay storm clouds. This is the rainy season and there is always a storm in the late afternoon. I needed to get to Danli before the rains broke. But I am a writer. Two Ks further and I made a U turn. I had discovered ZAMORANO, the US funded agricultural University of the Americas.
To be brief, Zomara was founded in 1942. The project was funded by the United Fruit Company. It was the brainchild of a retired director of United Fruit. Now it is funded by the US taxpayer and has an idependent board of trustees. Students come from all parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. The rest you can find on the University web site: www.zamorano.edu
Endless conversations between confused gate guards and equally confused administrators won me entrance to the English language department and an interview with a well meaning young teacher from small town, USA.
A minivan driver kindly led me from the centre of Tegucicalpa to the Danli road. The road seemed the same as the road in from the west. Ten Ks out of town, I stopped to check. Pine forest is pine forest, mountains are mountains, a tar road which sets ambushes is much the same as any other tar road that sets ambushes. The ambushes in Honduras are potholes that would swallow a Mack truck. They show in sunshine as dark pools of shadow. They are more difficult to spot on a gray day. It was gray today.
I came out of the mountains onto a flat valley, the road ran straight to the next set of mountains. A miracle appeared on the left: disciplined acres in the middle of the standard Central American chaos. I was travelling at 80 Ks. I glimpsed cropped lawns, neat single story buildings arranged with obvious logic, avenues of palm trees. I had to stop. Ahead lay storm clouds. This is the rainy season and there is always a storm in the late afternoon. I needed to get to Danli before the rains broke. But I am a writer. Two Ks further and I made a U turn. I had discovered ZAMORANO, the US funded agricultural University of the Americas.
To be brief, Zomara was founded in 1942. The project was funded by the United Fruit Company. It was the brainchild of a retired director of United Fruit. Now it is funded by the US taxpayer and has an idependent board of trustees. Students come from all parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. The rest you can find on the University web site: www.zamorano.edu
Endless conversations between confused gate guards and equally confused administrators won me entrance to the English language department and an interview with a well meaning young teacher from small town, USA.
PEOPLE WATCHING IN TEGUCIGALPA
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21
In Honduras, Chinese restaurants are good people-watching territory. In Macala, the electricity was off. The Chinese restaurant on the same block as Hotel Medina had candles. I faced a table of four - three men and a woman who kept her mouth shut. One of the men dominated the table. He was big, shorn scalp, gold necklace, gold bracelet. He posessed a big voice and he had taken charge of the controller for the TV - as I discovered when the lights went on. Was he a local gangster or a short order cook back on holiday from Nueve Yorke and determined to impress?
In Tegucigalpa I fell in with three Government medium level administrators in from the provinces for a conference. The conversation soon turned to the news of the week. The Honduran President had met with President Chavez of Venezuela - to discuss Honduras´ need for oil. The Honduran President is presumed to have been trying to make an advantagous deal - odd behaviour for a President. The US have reacted by cancelling all Honduran applications for visas. This is a serious threat to the country´s economy - Hondurans abroad remit in excess of one billion dollars a year.
The three administrators were enraged. "As if we are children to be punished," one complained. Another pointed out that the US imports oil from Venezuela.
Let me paraphrase the rest of the conversation:
For years the US used Honduras as a base for the wars it sponsered in the region: to unseat the Sadinista Government in Nicaragua, fight the left wing guerillas in El Salvador and in Guatemala. Successive US Administrations have been used to compliance. They have treated Honduras as a colony, influenced the choice of Government. Now they have no use for Honduras. Honduras can sink in the muck largely created by the US.
The US is responsible for the epidemic violence Honduras is suffering, one of the administrators insisted. The US gave so many arms to the Contras. The Contras sold them once the war was over. The price was $30 for an AK47 or M16. And the Immigration Department in the US expelled so many young men, Hondurans by parentage, but kids who had never been in Honduras, kids infected with the American gang culture - the Kripps, etc.
These three Hondurans were conservative rather than rabble rousers of an anti-American left. I merely relay their arguments, their anger, their bitterness.
In Honduras, Chinese restaurants are good people-watching territory. In Macala, the electricity was off. The Chinese restaurant on the same block as Hotel Medina had candles. I faced a table of four - three men and a woman who kept her mouth shut. One of the men dominated the table. He was big, shorn scalp, gold necklace, gold bracelet. He posessed a big voice and he had taken charge of the controller for the TV - as I discovered when the lights went on. Was he a local gangster or a short order cook back on holiday from Nueve Yorke and determined to impress?
In Tegucigalpa I fell in with three Government medium level administrators in from the provinces for a conference. The conversation soon turned to the news of the week. The Honduran President had met with President Chavez of Venezuela - to discuss Honduras´ need for oil. The Honduran President is presumed to have been trying to make an advantagous deal - odd behaviour for a President. The US have reacted by cancelling all Honduran applications for visas. This is a serious threat to the country´s economy - Hondurans abroad remit in excess of one billion dollars a year.
The three administrators were enraged. "As if we are children to be punished," one complained. Another pointed out that the US imports oil from Venezuela.
Let me paraphrase the rest of the conversation:
For years the US used Honduras as a base for the wars it sponsered in the region: to unseat the Sadinista Government in Nicaragua, fight the left wing guerillas in El Salvador and in Guatemala. Successive US Administrations have been used to compliance. They have treated Honduras as a colony, influenced the choice of Government. Now they have no use for Honduras. Honduras can sink in the muck largely created by the US.
The US is responsible for the epidemic violence Honduras is suffering, one of the administrators insisted. The US gave so many arms to the Contras. The Contras sold them once the war was over. The price was $30 for an AK47 or M16. And the Immigration Department in the US expelled so many young men, Hondurans by parentage, but kids who had never been in Honduras, kids infected with the American gang culture - the Kripps, etc.
These three Hondurans were conservative rather than rabble rousers of an anti-American left. I merely relay their arguments, their anger, their bitterness.
TEGUCIGALPA
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21
I enjoy typing TEGUCIGALPA. It has a ring to it. I am dislectic (or is it dyslectic?). Getting the name right is satisfying. As to the mistakes I make in spelling these blogs, none of the programs here have spell check. If they did, it would be for Spanish.
I enjoy typing TEGUCIGALPA. It has a ring to it. I am dislectic (or is it dyslectic?). Getting the name right is satisfying. As to the mistakes I make in spelling these blogs, none of the programs here have spell check. If they did, it would be for Spanish.
CAPITAL CITY
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21
The capital city of Honduras, Tegucigalpa, faces a decion: will it fall down today or wait a little. Tegucigalpa does NOT sit on a geologicaL fault, nor has it been bombed. The uninformed traveler might believe that it has suffered both disasters continuously over the past hundred years.
I did find the best hotel room of my journey so far for $15 at Hotel Boston. The room is fifteen feet by fifteen, high ceiling with old fashioned ceiling fan, tiled floor, large bathroom with hot water, window and doors onto a balcony. So the street is noisy in the early morning. I got up and enjoyed watching the city wake.
These are understandable directions for the mature traveller (a traveller confused by guidebook code).
Finding the cathedral square is easy. You ask.
Face the cathedral. Turn left and go one block beyond the square. Turn left. You are on Avenida Maximo Jerez. Don´t be fooled by the Avenida. It is a narrow one-way street. Keep going and you come to a tunnel. Go thru the tunnel. The Hotel Boston is on the left on the next block. The owners are shy (I presume) as they have HB on a sign rather than HOTEL BOSTON. The sign is a shield sticking out over the sidewalk.
You will find a good internet connection next door. Turn right off Maximo Jerez at the end of the same block; there is an excellent Chinese restaurant on your left. Upstairs is good for people watching. I ordered a chop suey for $5. The waiter didn´t tell me that dishes on the main menu were for four people. A mountain arrived!
MASSACRE TOURISM
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21
Three travelers over the past weeks have impressed on me the pleasures of Perquin in northen El Salvador. "Hey, it´s really great. It´s a must. You´ll love it."
Except...
Do I want to visit the sights of massacres?
Do I want to admire the photography?
Am I gripped by smashed US helicopters as sculptural art?
Is slaughter my THING?
Not really.
I´ve seen it up close. I´ve ridden thru country where every village had been bombed, where 70% of the population had fled over the borders to vile camps. I´ve lain behind a rock beneath a pile of Afghans while a Russian gunship popped at us.
I´ve driven thru country suffering total droubt where the nomadic villages were abandoning their old folk and their infants to insure that the breeding stock of the tribe survived.
Worse, I have described the most horrendous massacre that I could imagine (AFTERMATH)only to read in the Peace Commision´s report of a similar massacre taking place in the same place.
So, no, I think I´ll give Perquin a miss.
Paz sounds a better destination - then on to the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa.
Three travelers over the past weeks have impressed on me the pleasures of Perquin in northen El Salvador. "Hey, it´s really great. It´s a must. You´ll love it."
Except...
Do I want to visit the sights of massacres?
Do I want to admire the photography?
Am I gripped by smashed US helicopters as sculptural art?
Is slaughter my THING?
Not really.
I´ve seen it up close. I´ve ridden thru country where every village had been bombed, where 70% of the population had fled over the borders to vile camps. I´ve lain behind a rock beneath a pile of Afghans while a Russian gunship popped at us.
I´ve driven thru country suffering total droubt where the nomadic villages were abandoning their old folk and their infants to insure that the breeding stock of the tribe survived.
Worse, I have described the most horrendous massacre that I could imagine (AFTERMATH)only to read in the Peace Commision´s report of a similar massacre taking place in the same place.
So, no, I think I´ll give Perquin a miss.
Paz sounds a better destination - then on to the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
HEY, I´M SORRY: I HAD A GREAT DAY
TUESDAY, JUNE 20
I read travel/trouble books. Breakdowns, fevers, bandits, ghastly food, horrid people. Good days are boring.
This is a blog for people of my age. Mature citizens, we have had our share of difficulties. Now is the time to have our feet up (metaphorically) and enjoy ourselves. So, yes, I had a great day.
Yesterday I was with people. Let me have my grump: US students. They appear to be unaware of the existence of other people. I was writing up my blog last night; a party charged into the internet cafe conversing at the top of their voices, taking over the place; oblivious of outsiders. They were probably pleasent kids. The Hondurans in the cafe were more judgemental.
A second incident at the ruins: one of the same group was unaware that he had dropped his camera on the grass. A Guatemalan of the missionery party called to him. He turned back, picked up the camera, walked on. The Guatemalan´s spirituality took a knock. She turned to me: "Nice of him to say thank you."
I dined last night with an English teacher working in El Salvador and her father. Toady I was on my own. I rode out of Copan Ruinas early and stopped at Santa Rosa for an excellent breakfast: slices of skirt with eggs, beans and cheese, a huge glass of papaya juice and GOOD coffee:$2.50. For fellow travelers, follow the church square round to the chain where you are forced to drive straight on. The Rincon Tipico is on the left on the next block.
I have been riding thru green ranch land. The poverty is less obvious than in Guatemala, fewer mud hovels. On the main highway I passed notices warning of banditry and that silence was the bandits´ friend. The gas station had guards, one armed with an automatic rifle, a second carrying a .45 revolver, bullets massive in his belt. "Yes," he told me, "there were many robbers."
I reached Gracias at noon and turned off the main highway to Esperanza. The road cut thru mountain country. The tar ended. I hoped this was only for a few Ks. Wrong. It was rough dirt all the way to Esperanza, big pot holes, ravines cut by the rains. Sore bum!
I stopped in Esperanza for the England v Sweden match at an air conditioned Chinese restaurant on the high street. Why do the English relax and become over confident the moment they score? I had to order something. I drank a beer and ate Chinese barbecued beef (delicious - $2.75). Enraged at draw, I rode on into a massive thunder storm. The rain cooled my mood! I sheltered an hour in the inadequate shelter of the pines. Riding on, I dried slowly as the sun broke thru. Glorious mountains cloaked in pine forest.
The dirt road was tricky, not only because of the wet; in places it was solid rock , in others not much better than a river bed. I kept much of the way in second and, even, first gear. Views made up for the discomfort. Few signs of poverty. I learnt later that the river valleys in this area supply much of the country´s vegetables. Houses are square with peaked pantiled roofs. The centre section is open front and back to channel the breeze, sometimes with chairs, more often housing that most important member of a Central American family: THE TWIN CAB PICK-UP.
You see horsemen everywhere and horses grazing small patches of greenery amongst the trees. My brother and my adotive daughter are horse mad and my thoughts were with them most of the day. I have ridden across chunks of Afghamistan both before the Russian occupation and during it - see my web site. In those days I dreamt of riding with my brother north thru the tribal areas of Pakistan. Such a ride was possible. We would have met kindness and hospitality. No longer. That world is closed to us.
At Macal, I booked into the Medina Hotel, good room with shower etc. for $10 - a reduction of $2 when I copmplained that I was a pensionmer! I looked forward to hot water. An electric storm hit and the electricity was off! I was holed up in a pool saloon for an hour. Drunken Honduran pool players were slightly unerving. However I talked with a sheltering school teacher whose niece worked in Spain. She had been to Frankfurt for a week´s holiday. Was that near Barcelona?
"Not very," I said.
Meanwhile thunder smashed down at us and lightning flashed down streets transformed into rivers in spate.
Drunken Hondurans shouted at each other across the pool tables.
Will this do as a proper adventure?
Or is OK to have had a great day?
I read travel/trouble books. Breakdowns, fevers, bandits, ghastly food, horrid people. Good days are boring.
This is a blog for people of my age. Mature citizens, we have had our share of difficulties. Now is the time to have our feet up (metaphorically) and enjoy ourselves. So, yes, I had a great day.
Yesterday I was with people. Let me have my grump: US students. They appear to be unaware of the existence of other people. I was writing up my blog last night; a party charged into the internet cafe conversing at the top of their voices, taking over the place; oblivious of outsiders. They were probably pleasent kids. The Hondurans in the cafe were more judgemental.
A second incident at the ruins: one of the same group was unaware that he had dropped his camera on the grass. A Guatemalan of the missionery party called to him. He turned back, picked up the camera, walked on. The Guatemalan´s spirituality took a knock. She turned to me: "Nice of him to say thank you."
I dined last night with an English teacher working in El Salvador and her father. Toady I was on my own. I rode out of Copan Ruinas early and stopped at Santa Rosa for an excellent breakfast: slices of skirt with eggs, beans and cheese, a huge glass of papaya juice and GOOD coffee:$2.50. For fellow travelers, follow the church square round to the chain where you are forced to drive straight on. The Rincon Tipico is on the left on the next block.
I have been riding thru green ranch land. The poverty is less obvious than in Guatemala, fewer mud hovels. On the main highway I passed notices warning of banditry and that silence was the bandits´ friend. The gas station had guards, one armed with an automatic rifle, a second carrying a .45 revolver, bullets massive in his belt. "Yes," he told me, "there were many robbers."
I reached Gracias at noon and turned off the main highway to Esperanza. The road cut thru mountain country. The tar ended. I hoped this was only for a few Ks. Wrong. It was rough dirt all the way to Esperanza, big pot holes, ravines cut by the rains. Sore bum!
I stopped in Esperanza for the England v Sweden match at an air conditioned Chinese restaurant on the high street. Why do the English relax and become over confident the moment they score? I had to order something. I drank a beer and ate Chinese barbecued beef (delicious - $2.75). Enraged at draw, I rode on into a massive thunder storm. The rain cooled my mood! I sheltered an hour in the inadequate shelter of the pines. Riding on, I dried slowly as the sun broke thru. Glorious mountains cloaked in pine forest.
The dirt road was tricky, not only because of the wet; in places it was solid rock , in others not much better than a river bed. I kept much of the way in second and, even, first gear. Views made up for the discomfort. Few signs of poverty. I learnt later that the river valleys in this area supply much of the country´s vegetables. Houses are square with peaked pantiled roofs. The centre section is open front and back to channel the breeze, sometimes with chairs, more often housing that most important member of a Central American family: THE TWIN CAB PICK-UP.
You see horsemen everywhere and horses grazing small patches of greenery amongst the trees. My brother and my adotive daughter are horse mad and my thoughts were with them most of the day. I have ridden across chunks of Afghamistan both before the Russian occupation and during it - see my web site. In those days I dreamt of riding with my brother north thru the tribal areas of Pakistan. Such a ride was possible. We would have met kindness and hospitality. No longer. That world is closed to us.
At Macal, I booked into the Medina Hotel, good room with shower etc. for $10 - a reduction of $2 when I copmplained that I was a pensionmer! I looked forward to hot water. An electric storm hit and the electricity was off! I was holed up in a pool saloon for an hour. Drunken Honduran pool players were slightly unerving. However I talked with a sheltering school teacher whose niece worked in Spain. She had been to Frankfurt for a week´s holiday. Was that near Barcelona?
"Not very," I said.
Meanwhile thunder smashed down at us and lightning flashed down streets transformed into rivers in spate.
Drunken Hondurans shouted at each other across the pool tables.
Will this do as a proper adventure?
Or is OK to have had a great day?
Monday, June 19, 2006
MY BROTHER, ANTONY
Macala High Street
TUESDAY, JUNE 20
I have one brother, Antony. He is very dear to me. Tomorrow is his seventy-fifth birthday. He doesn't do email. However Bernadette tells me that he has been following my blog on his wife's lap-top. So I use this blog for something truly useful: to affirm my love and to congratulate my brother on such a milestone.
Tomorrow I will be off early. Maybe I will find a TV somewhere along the road on which to watch the England-Sweden match. I could, of course, return to the Honduran customs post...
MAYA RUINS
MONDAY, JUNE 18
I ride my bike the mile to the Maya ruins. Guatemala, cops remain expressionless as they stare at you. Here a cop armed with a rifle waves at me from the roadside. The entrance fee to the ruins and the museum is aproximately US$15. I prefer sightseeing at my own pace and buy a guide book rather than join a guided troop. Big parrots greet me. I take their photograph. They seem pleased, nodding and squarking.
The ruins are great as ruins go. The setting is magnificent this time of year, the surrounding mountains green as are the huge trees and cropped grass between the pyramids and ball courts and acropolys.
I sit in the shade on the lower steps of a pyramid. I face the sloping side wall of a pyramid some thirty meters high. A pale young blond woman slips on the decent behind me and twists her ankle. She is a missionary, wouldn't you know? From Minesota. She and an older male of the species are in company with a Guatemalan doctor, female, and two others who translate for the missionaries the word of God. The doctor requests a bandage to wrap the ankle. God is off-duty. I remove the bandage I wear when biking (it stops the leather gaiter rubbing the burn).
The incident has destroyed my ability to concentrate on or be impressed by the Maya Gods. I think instead of the work in cutting those stones that form the pyramids, the thosands of cut or crushed fingers. I read in my book that Maya kings destroyed much of what their predecesers had built and rebuilt on the same sight - taller, of course, more impressive.
They, the kings, built: it says so in the book. The book lies. The people built. I know the system well from our years in Cuba: The following will volunteer...The army is the same.
I walk a little, sit a little, admire the gray of the stone so well presented against the brilliant green of the rainy season. I talk with an English woman and her father: she is teaching at an English private school in El Salvador. Later I notice what I think are leaf insects beside a path. I look closer and discover a column of ants carrying freshly cut leafs on their backs. Leafs are lighter than stones and easier to carve.
I fall in with a Puertoricano and his girlfriend. She is small and the steps up the pyramids are not only steep but also high. We decide the height of the steps was designed to so exhaust the sacrifical victims that they would find relief in having their hearts gouged out with an obsidian knife.
I listen to a guide joke of the sacrifices as he explains the ball game to a noisy troop of American students.
Odd, my guide book doesn't mention human sacrifice.
A group of Guatemalans gather at the entrance to a tunnel. One asks where I am from. While the others enter the tunnel, he and I talk of Tikal, which he hasn't visited. He and his companions are members of a small manufacuring co-operative in Zacapa. They are being put out of business by Chinese imports. They need to retool but nobody is willing to invest. It is fear of what will happen, of the violence...
We have been joined by the tunnel explorers. Yes, the violence, they agree. The violence in the capital is very bad.
One says that the violence is deliberately fostered by the government to destabalise democracy. The rich want another general.
They move on and I sit a while, flipping back thru my guide book. Why were each of these Maya sights abandoned? I think of the ants - and of bees swarming and moving on. And I think of the work entailed and that perhaps the Kings' demands were too great and they self-glorified their kingdoms out of existence.
Later I visited the sculpture museum. There I joyfully recognised an expression, a smile, a grimace, twisted fingers. As the sons of my Mexican and Central American friends share with my sons a love for the same music, so these few, the great Maya sculpters, shared with all those other great sculpters, modern or ancient, of what ever continent, a human understanding and sympathy with humanity that escaped the rule of priest and king.
COPAN TOWN
MONDAY, JUNE 19
The Maya ruins have made Copan Ruinas affluent. It is a small, pretty town of perhaps fifty blocks divided by cobbled streets and with low, typically Spanish colonial domestic architecture in good repair and freshly painted. I intend catching up on my blog and am up early, walking down two streets to the restaurant where I ate last night. 7.15 and I order orange juice and coffee with eggs. This is central America: the eggs come with refried beans, fried bananas, avocado. The coffee is good. Have I finally reached coffee heaven? Or is this glory particular to Copan Ruinas? I eat under a hard awning on a terrace that gives onto a jungly garden. Bernadette wouldn't aprove the yellow blossoms. The bill is US$2.60.
Repleat, I wait, sitting on the curb, for the internet cafe to open (8 a.m.). This is a town of hope, wonderful after Guatemala. Householders and shopkeepers are out sweeping the sidewalk and watering the cobbles to lay the dust. Passers-by greet me. A white Hyundai pick-up delivering the big five gallon water bottles is new as is the white Isuzo refuse truck. Even the three-wheeler scooter suicide cabs are polished.
The women of Copan celebrate their wealth. Plump/voluptious is the fashion. They wear their clothes tight - T-shirts stretched at bosom and belly. I greet a woman, mid-twenties, wearing a gold belt wide enough to serve as a cummerbund. A roll of silky brown tum breaks free of a short tight black top and spills over the edge of the belt. She strolls with swagger, proud of her girth. No place here for Cate Moss. The generous townsfolk would think her starving and chase her down the street with tortillas stuffed with cheese and cream and refried beans.
HOLD UP AT HONDURAN CUSTOMS
SUNDAY, JUNE 18
I have chosen (lucked into)the right months for travel. The road thru Zacapa to the Honduran frontier runs thru country that Paul Theroux writes of as dusty desert. Now the emerald hillside quivers as the breeze flutters the fresh growth on the trees. The river flows full between irrigated patches of field. The rain storms have torn boulders from the slopes and I ride with extra care on a road that twists thru narrow valleys.
I reach the border. Guatemalan and Honduran Immigration officials share a low, single-story building. They also share a sense of humour of which I, the Honda and my destination are briefly the butt. I negotiate the exchange rate up a few points with a money man in a white Stetson. He then photographs me with the woman Honduran and male Guatemalan Immigration officials.
Honduran Custom officials are more difficult. True, the paper work takes less than ten minutes. However the Customs chief has the world cup on TV in his office: France v Korea. A cold beer, coffee and the match hold me up the best part of an hour.
I ride into Copan Los Ruinas at 4 p.m. A truck pulls up alongside the bike. The driver hands me a card. He owns a hotel: room and bath with hot water for US$10 which is a little less than 200 Limperas (Honduran money). The room is fine. I find a good internet cafe in the care of an Isabelle who plies me with coffee while I work. Dinner is beer and a steak with the normal trimmings: tomatos, fried bananas, black beans, avocado, chili salad - less than four dollars.
TO HONDURAS
SUNDAY, JUNE 18
Breakfast was a real Sunday breakfast: fresh orange juice and fresh fruit for health: bacon, chorizo and French toast with real maple syrup from Canada for cholestrol: great coffee. I load the bike and Ash photographs Marcio and me beside the bike. Marcio has told me of a short cut to the tar road. I ride on good dirt for twenty Ks. I ride slowly and people register what I am. Smiles and Good mornings are almost universal - so different from the Alto Plano of my first two days in Guatemala. The first 50 Ks or so are mostly coffee farms or dairy. Occasionally there is a splash of colour where bourganvilla spills over a fence.
The tar road drops in smooth 70K curves to El Rancho, a distance of 150Ks. I find the road's rythm and am reminded, as I lean into the bends, of skiing Spring snow. This is glorious biking. I sweep thru pine forest and inhale the scent of pine tar. I am dropping from mountain cool into the coastal heat. At El Rancho I gass up beside two massive BMWs and their riders. The BMWs are fitted with all the kit, so are the riders (shades of Dallas, those these two are Guatemaltecos). The fitted luggage costs more than my Honda. We laugh together and shake hands and ride off in different directions - they back to their offices in the capital, me to turn south at Rio Honda...
Sunday, June 18, 2006
LAST NIGHT IN COBAN
SUNDAY, JUNE 18
I doubt that I will revisit Guatemala. Last night a sadness overwhelmed me as I lay in bed. I thought of those I will lose. Eugenio is a brother to me: a younger brother when we first met; now, as I enter my second childhood, an elder brother. Perhaps he will bring Monica and Andresito to visit. And of course there is Santiago, fierce hunter of pigs, and my present hosts, Marcio and Ash - and there is Eric up in Antigua and Lucia.
Waking thru the night, I read Paul Theroux' PATAGONIAN EXPRESS. I have reached page 150, Theroux is in Costa Rica and hasn't yet met anyone he likes. Not has he met anyone to whom he can't condescend. This is a mallady of travel writers. I read a dozen travel books on Latin America before departing on this journey. However charming and amusing and well written the books, in none of them did the writer encounter anyone of greater education or social or financial standing. Apparently it is possible to travel thru Patagonia without being aware of a city of a million inhabitants, of factories and schools and a uiniversity, of office building and apartment blocks equipped with elevators. No wonder those students I talked with back in England pictured Mexicans as sweaty fat men wearing sombreros and speaking with funny accents.
I doubt that I will revisit Guatemala. Last night a sadness overwhelmed me as I lay in bed. I thought of those I will lose. Eugenio is a brother to me: a younger brother when we first met; now, as I enter my second childhood, an elder brother. Perhaps he will bring Monica and Andresito to visit. And of course there is Santiago, fierce hunter of pigs, and my present hosts, Marcio and Ash - and there is Eric up in Antigua and Lucia.
Waking thru the night, I read Paul Theroux' PATAGONIAN EXPRESS. I have reached page 150, Theroux is in Costa Rica and hasn't yet met anyone he likes. Not has he met anyone to whom he can't condescend. This is a mallady of travel writers. I read a dozen travel books on Latin America before departing on this journey. However charming and amusing and well written the books, in none of them did the writer encounter anyone of greater education or social or financial standing. Apparently it is possible to travel thru Patagonia without being aware of a city of a million inhabitants, of factories and schools and a uiniversity, of office building and apartment blocks equipped with elevators. No wonder those students I talked with back in England pictured Mexicans as sweaty fat men wearing sombreros and speaking with funny accents.
FATHERS' DAY
SATURDAY, JUNE 17
Over these past few days I have been cherished by my hosts, Ashley and Marcio: hot baths, breakfast, being driven into town where I spend the day at an internet cafe run by a couple of beautiful sisters. The sisters permitted me to set up my computer at a vacant desk where it has stayed throughout my visit to Coban. They remained patient when I missed the down step into their lavatory, slammed the handbasin off the wall and ended with my head in the lavatory bowl.
More important than the cherishing, has been the conversation. Way back, Marcio's family were Spanish. They have been Guatemalan far far longer than the vast majority of US families have been established in the US. By training, Marcio is plant pathologist and he has a fine collection of orchids out at the farm. However, as with many men brought up in what people call The Third World, he is a man of many accomplishment.
Forced to leave Guatemala during the clandestine war, he earned a good living as a carpenter while attending night classes in business administration. Now he grows macademia trees, several thousand, and he and Ash run a hotel in Coban, Casa d'Acuna.
The hotel is a resurected colonial town house. The resurection has been done with as much attention to detail as has their own home. I made notes on my first visit: china door knobs, spotless bathrooms with real hot water, fresh flowers on the tables, orchids in the patio and syrup feeders for the hummingbirds. The hotel is set up as a partnership with staff and the staff's pride in what they do is obvious.
The rooms are cheap at Q55 a person and travellers find it a good base. I talked with a young German couple journeying thru Central America. Strange that it possible in so short a time to discover a foundation for friendship. What comes next is the hard part: keeping in contact, writing more than a How Are You? I'm fine.
The Germans told Marcio they intended keeping in touch.
Tonight Ash was privileged in inviting to dinner two of the finest beards in Guatemala. Marcio and I sat either side of her, two dads who have done their best - though best never feels near enough.
The food was excellent, however the dinner was a little solemn, a little sad. Travelling is a series of goodbyes and I leave tomorrow...
Over these past few days I have been cherished by my hosts, Ashley and Marcio: hot baths, breakfast, being driven into town where I spend the day at an internet cafe run by a couple of beautiful sisters. The sisters permitted me to set up my computer at a vacant desk where it has stayed throughout my visit to Coban. They remained patient when I missed the down step into their lavatory, slammed the handbasin off the wall and ended with my head in the lavatory bowl.
More important than the cherishing, has been the conversation. Way back, Marcio's family were Spanish. They have been Guatemalan far far longer than the vast majority of US families have been established in the US. By training, Marcio is plant pathologist and he has a fine collection of orchids out at the farm. However, as with many men brought up in what people call The Third World, he is a man of many accomplishment.
Forced to leave Guatemala during the clandestine war, he earned a good living as a carpenter while attending night classes in business administration. Now he grows macademia trees, several thousand, and he and Ash run a hotel in Coban, Casa d'Acuna.
The hotel is a resurected colonial town house. The resurection has been done with as much attention to detail as has their own home. I made notes on my first visit: china door knobs, spotless bathrooms with real hot water, fresh flowers on the tables, orchids in the patio and syrup feeders for the hummingbirds. The hotel is set up as a partnership with staff and the staff's pride in what they do is obvious.
The rooms are cheap at Q55 a person and travellers find it a good base. I talked with a young German couple journeying thru Central America. Strange that it possible in so short a time to discover a foundation for friendship. What comes next is the hard part: keeping in contact, writing more than a How Are You? I'm fine.
The Germans told Marcio they intended keeping in touch.
Tonight Ash was privileged in inviting to dinner two of the finest beards in Guatemala. Marcio and I sat either side of her, two dads who have done their best - though best never feels near enough.
The food was excellent, however the dinner was a little solemn, a little sad. Travelling is a series of goodbyes and I leave tomorrow...
PESKY PRIESTS
FRIDAY, JUNE 16
Guatemala is innundated with missionaries, mostly from the US. My favorite is THE CHURCH OF GOD. Other churches are the church of whom? The Devil? Or, perhaps, the Federal Reserve? We have Baptists and Annabaptists, Evangelicals, Seventh Day Adventists...and then, of course, those pale faced Mormon lads in their tasteless ties.
Today the feast of San Juan was celebrated in the village above which my hosts have their farm. Neither Marcio nor Ashley was sure of which San Juan. Not that it mattered. There was a big parade, men and women dressed in their best - men mostly in white shirts and dark pants, women on their long woven skirts and white blouses. There was a ferris wheel and all sorts of food. We ate at a garden stall in aid of damaged local kids. The food was the traditional feast food of the area, rich turkey broth with a turkey leg or thigh sticking up and a chunk of smoked beef.
The Mormons snuck by.
Mormons are always white and they are always pale. Are they scared of the sun? Or scared of being mistaken for the people they have come to save? And why always two of them? One is more than enough. Are they scared? Or do they need to watch each other so neither sneaks off with the collection box?
I watched as they aproached the elderly lady collecting the dinner money. They sidle. Maybe that comes with unlimited rejections. The lady sent them packing. They snuck back, sneak thiefs on the prowl for a victim. Table to table. None of these people, indiginous or near indiginous, were wealthy. They were bringing their spare cash for their own sick. They didn't need these pink rats nibbling...
However, Guatemalans are polite.
Back home Native Americans, those whose great-grandparents survived slaughter by these Mormons' great-grandaddies, might shoot an arrow up their butts.
And the inner city slums of the US are too dangerous for sweet white kids in ties...
Guatemala is innundated with missionaries, mostly from the US. My favorite is THE CHURCH OF GOD. Other churches are the church of whom? The Devil? Or, perhaps, the Federal Reserve? We have Baptists and Annabaptists, Evangelicals, Seventh Day Adventists...and then, of course, those pale faced Mormon lads in their tasteless ties.
Today the feast of San Juan was celebrated in the village above which my hosts have their farm. Neither Marcio nor Ashley was sure of which San Juan. Not that it mattered. There was a big parade, men and women dressed in their best - men mostly in white shirts and dark pants, women on their long woven skirts and white blouses. There was a ferris wheel and all sorts of food. We ate at a garden stall in aid of damaged local kids. The food was the traditional feast food of the area, rich turkey broth with a turkey leg or thigh sticking up and a chunk of smoked beef.
The Mormons snuck by.
Mormons are always white and they are always pale. Are they scared of the sun? Or scared of being mistaken for the people they have come to save? And why always two of them? One is more than enough. Are they scared? Or do they need to watch each other so neither sneaks off with the collection box?
I watched as they aproached the elderly lady collecting the dinner money. They sidle. Maybe that comes with unlimited rejections. The lady sent them packing. They snuck back, sneak thiefs on the prowl for a victim. Table to table. None of these people, indiginous or near indiginous, were wealthy. They were bringing their spare cash for their own sick. They didn't need these pink rats nibbling...
However, Guatemalans are polite.
Back home Native Americans, those whose great-grandparents survived slaughter by these Mormons' great-grandaddies, might shoot an arrow up their butts.
And the inner city slums of the US are too dangerous for sweet white kids in ties...
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