HACIENDA TIJAX, RIO DULCE: FEBRUARY 8
I am in Kiddie's Paradise. I have been driving Eugenio's crawler this morning. The crawler is yellow, as are the butterflies and the blossoms and the breasts of the small birds flitting amongst the red hybiscus.
Saturday, February 09, 2008
KIDDIES PARADISE
HACIENDA TIJAX, RIO DULCE: FEBRUARY 8
I am in Kiddie's Paradise. I have been driving Eugenio's crawler this morning. The crawler is yellow, as are the butterflies and the blossoms and the breasts of the small birds flitting amongst the red hybiscus.
ADVICE FROM A STUPID OLD TOAD
volunteer guideCASA GUATEMALA, RIO DULCE, GUATEMALA:
FEBRUARY 7
My guide is eighteen. She is born to parents who do good (adopting children with difficulties). She wishes to do good. She has an excellent and active brain. What direction will she take?
Working in an orphanage offers immediate reward.
Working to make such charities unnecessary is seldom rewarding...And yet you may make a minute difference...Yes, after years of frustration and boredom, years of keeping your mouth shut while striving to reach a position where you can make that difference.
Decision is never easy.
My only advice is to seek a qualification that enables you go in different directions.
CASA GUATEMALA
up river to hacienda tijax
CASA GUATEMALA, RIO DULCE, GUATEMALA:
FEBRUARY 7
I will carp again: the orphanage lacks direction, lacks planning, lacks management discipline. Perhaps this is partly reliance on volunteers who stay a month or six months or leave after a week.
The orphanage clinic is the exception. For coolness, it is built on stilts over the river. Everything is freshly painted white. Two lavatories are being installed. The pharmacy is well stocked and spotless. So is the doctor's office.
The doctor is Spanish and a recent arrival.
He has spent the past year traveling through Hispanic America.
He is imbued with endless energy and mental discipline. He is a rock thrown into a pool. His influence will spread each day.
How long will he stay?
He has no idea.
Pray, children. Pray...
CASA GUATEMALA, RIO DULCE, GUATEMALA:
FEBRUARY 7
I will carp again: the orphanage lacks direction, lacks planning, lacks management discipline. Perhaps this is partly reliance on volunteers who stay a month or six months or leave after a week.
The orphanage clinic is the exception. For coolness, it is built on stilts over the river. Everything is freshly painted white. Two lavatories are being installed. The pharmacy is well stocked and spotless. So is the doctor's office.
The doctor is Spanish and a recent arrival.
He has spent the past year traveling through Hispanic America.
He is imbued with endless energy and mental discipline. He is a rock thrown into a pool. His influence will spread each day.
How long will he stay?
He has no idea.
Pray, children. Pray...
DON'T SMOKE IN SCHOOL
CASA GUATEMALA, RIO DULCE, GUATEMALA:
FEBRUARY 7
Volunteerrs at the orphanage contribute US$180. This is a one-off payment. They can stay as long as they wish and return as often as they wish. Their food is free and they occupy the volunteers' house. OK, shack.
Why has no volunteer bothered to build a little comfort into the place?
Work is over for the day. Two volunteers sit on the small terrace. A third lolls in a hammock. They shouldn't smoke.
They absolutely should not smoke where children see them.
They should be particularly careful as to what they smoke...
Yes, I know. I am carping again.
I chat briefly with an elderly worker on the farm. The land is poor. Rains leach all goodness out of the soil.
A couple of kids hoe beans. They should hoe natural fertiliser into the soil. Chicken shit, pig shit, kitchen compost.
A boy leans against a wall to ease the weight of fresh sheets from his shoulders. I carry the laundry for him to the boys' dormitory. The sheets are required upstairs. I barely manage the climb and am twice the size of the boy.
FEBRUARY 7
Volunteerrs at the orphanage contribute US$180. This is a one-off payment. They can stay as long as they wish and return as often as they wish. Their food is free and they occupy the volunteers' house. OK, shack.
Why has no volunteer bothered to build a little comfort into the place?
Work is over for the day. Two volunteers sit on the small terrace. A third lolls in a hammock. They shouldn't smoke.
They absolutely should not smoke where children see them.
They should be particularly careful as to what they smoke...
Yes, I know. I am carping again.
I chat briefly with an elderly worker on the farm. The land is poor. Rains leach all goodness out of the soil.
A couple of kids hoe beans. They should hoe natural fertiliser into the soil. Chicken shit, pig shit, kitchen compost.
A boy leans against a wall to ease the weight of fresh sheets from his shoulders. I carry the laundry for him to the boys' dormitory. The sheets are required upstairs. I barely manage the climb and am twice the size of the boy.
FOOTBALL OR WITCHES
CASA GUATEMALA, RIO DULCE, GUATEMALA:
FEBRUARY 7
Break time, and I sit on a low stone wall. Boys play football. Girls gather in groups and giggle. Two girls lead each other to me by the hair - play pulling rather than painful pulling. Which of them is the most vicious. The smaller of the two. She is a witch. A real witch? Yes, yes, a real witch...the two colapse with laughter.
A smaller girl sits on my lap while I am interogated by the real witch and her friend. A small boy squats behind me and rests his chin on my shoulder.
A young woman with blond blond hair sits on the same wall and is happy for small girls to use her as a climbing frame.
Happiness appears abundant.
So does dedication.
Staff are volunteers. Of the teachers, ten are Guatemalan, four are Spanish.
Other volunteers build or work on the orphanage farm. Two are Israeli. The blond blond is Finish. An eighteen-year-old of Danish and Asian Indian parentage conducts me on a tour. The farm has excellent pigs. It has a non-functioning bio gas plant that requires cleanng and rows of non functioning hydroponics beds built recently by volunteers from the US. The farm has chickens in chicken houses, cows, grows vegetables and beans and fruit. Fish abound in the river.
Two hundred and fifty children are fed at the orphanage each day. This is an achievement. Well done, Dona Angie.
Many of the children are not true orphans. Their parents are unable to care for them. The orphanage clothes and educates them. Well done, Dona Angie.
A miniscule few from the orphanage go to University. One is studying medicine, another is an economist. A minuscule few is way better than none.
Well done, Dona Angie.
JACK, JILL AND ANNIE ARE UNSUITABLE
CASA GUATEMALA, RIO DULCE: FEBRUARY 7
Casa Guatemala is an orphanage. Dona Angie founded the orphanage. She owns the Backpackers Hotel on the river bank south of the road bridge. The hotel supports the orphanage. So do charitable donations. Local people complain that confusion or lack of clarity exists in the twin finances. Dona Angie is Honduran.
A launch delivers me from the hotel to the orphanage ($10).
I sit in a classroom built out over the river. The teacher is female, young, Spanish, charming, sincere, dedicated. Her students range from 12 to 15. They are remarkably well behaved. They are reading children's book translated from North American English. Characters in the books have Anglo names: Jack, Jill, Annie, Mollie, Robert.
Is this important?
Yes.
The message is clear:
Books are foreign.
Education is foreign.
Children with Maya names are unworthy of being characters in a book.
The teacher agrees. She shows me the library. Books in English fill the shelves.
The books are donations. The donors should consider what they give. Guatemala has its own writers. Guatemala has publishers and printers.
Donors, please. Guatemalan books for Guatemalan orphans...
Friday, February 08, 2008
A DUMP BY ANY NAME REMAINS A DUMP
HACIENDA TIJAX, RIO DULCE: FEBRUARY 7
Hacienda Tijax is 17 years in the making. I visited first from Cuba in 1992. What is now the town of Fronteras was tin shacks and a few buildings either side of a dirt track. Eugenio had completed a few thatched huts and was planting rubber, teak and mahogany. Now Fronteras is a tar main street stretching north one and a half kilometers towards El Peten. Latino machismo blocks the traffic. No Guatemalan gives way. Klaxons and curses are weapons of first recourse. Between the trucks whizz lunatic young un-helmitted on motor scooters. All five of Guatemala's major banks have branches. Hotels, restaurants, farmacies - all are new. Only the whore house remains the same – and that Fronteras is a dump with few redeeming features. Why do I feel such affection for a dump?
BRIDGE OF DELIGHTS
HACIENDA TIJAX, GUATEMALA: FEBRUARY 7
Eugenio leads me on a hike this morning. 2.5 Ks of graveled paths and cable bridges thread the jungle. One bridge is 75 meters in length. It spans a ravine. Look down though tree tops to ferns and water and spits of reflected sunlight.
Stay at the resort and walk the trails in the company of knowledgeable local guides.
A woman from the US complained on Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree forum that Eugenio charges for access to the jungle and mangrove. Perhaps she believes that paths and cable bridges and stone towers are created and maintained by God. Or is she one of those backpackers from the First World who consider the Third World their playground and resent having to contribute more than a minimum per diem? The kind of tourist who proudly boasts of having beaten down the price of a piece of woven cloth without caring that hunger in the weaver's family is the tourist's bludgeon? Why am I so cross this morning...?
I am writing at a table on the front terrace. Forest protects us from the town and the resort. Cows and the resort horses graze the paddocks. Cloud softens the distant mountains. Two yellow butterfly chase each other through the shrubs. A small yellow-breasted bird darts between the hibiscus. Yesterday we saw blue morpheus in the jungle, listened to
birds, admired wild orchids, sniffed crushed leaves from the allspice tree, hunted for vanilla pods. Perhaps I am envious of Eugenio's achievements.
GIANT PRAWNS AND SNOOK
pool, tijax
HACIENDA TIJAX, GUATEMALA: FEBRUARY 6
I ate shrimp last night down at the resort. The shrimp were mammoth. Monica and Eugenio chose river fish freshly caught. The restaurant was full. We ate at a table in the marina-side bar. Lights reflected in the river between wooden docks, Sailboats stirred in the wake of a passing taxi launch. As an arrival, near to perfect...
QUITE CLOSE TO HEAVEN
tijax tower
no, not za golf fairway - tijax horse paddock
HACIENDA TIJAX, GUATEMALA: FEBRUARY 5
The lands of Hacienda Tijax swoop up from the Rio Dulce. The resort lies on the river bank. A walkway leads inland through mangrove to horse and dairy paddocks. Rubber, teak and mahogany plantations share the highland with primary and secondary jungle. A stone meditation tower stands on the crest. I burnt my leg last time I visited. I was wearing shorts and tried ridding to the tower. The first rut in the track did for me – and selfdelusion: that I was back in my twenties in Ibiza and riding a 350 Bultaco trailbike, Brrmmm Brrmmm. The exhaust tube did the burnng. Ah, well...
This evening Eugenio drives me to the tower in the pick-up. Below lies the river and Lago Izabal. Turn and we gaze out over tree canopy, In the distance stand mauve mountains. The mountains encircle us. Layers of gold float behind the western peaks.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
RESURECTION
casa tijax
TO RIO DULCE, GUATEMALA: FEBRUARY 5
Into Guatemala I ride through hills on a fine twisting highway. Trees are in pink beside the road and on the lower slopes. Bouganvilla tumble over a cottage. Pale blue flowers trail amongst the tree tops, scarlet berries, splashes of fierce yellow. I catch the sour sweet scent of mollasses, pungent odour of a pig sty, coffee beans raked to dry on concrete, pine tar. A rock peak pierces the pine forest. The river below flashes shards of sun reflection. Green is brilliant in the irrigated fields along the river banks. Beyond the valley rise dry, pleated hills, summits pillowed in white cumulus.
The past month travel has been distance to cross. No fun in it. A chore to be undertaken, drudgery. Today I rediscover the joy of earlier months. Why? Because I will reach Hacienda Tijax this afternoon, sit with Monica and Eugenio on the terrace in the evening, absorb the view? Or because Tijax is one of the final waystations on this journey? The end is in sight. Or was the friendliness of the frontier officials a catalyst?
Or did yesterday in Copan Ruinas reawaken my enthusiasms? That sign at the base of the pyramid? Professor Cruz? Nikki? The owner of the hotel? The gardener raking leaves? Somewhere in there I recaptured a sense of being more than a passer-by, of being in contact, of caring.
FRIENDLY FRONTIER
HONDURAS INTO GUATEMALA: FRBRUARY 5
This is the friendliest of all borders. Honduran and Guatemalan immigration share the same low building. Officials ask about my journey. Which country was most beautiful? The kindest people? What difficulties did I overcome? Is it true that food is scarce in Venezuela? What do I think of Chavez? And the almost obligatory condemnation of US President Bush. Bush is ignorant, ill educated, arogant.
Headng south, I drank beer and watched Mexico play France on TV in the office of the head of Honduran customs. The Guatemalan Customs officer is in his late twenties. He rides a 200 cc Honda. He leaves tomorrow to holiday in Nicaragua. He will sleep a night at San Pedro Sula. Can he reach Granada the following day?
This is the friendliest of all borders. Honduran and Guatemalan immigration share the same low building. Officials ask about my journey. Which country was most beautiful? The kindest people? What difficulties did I overcome? Is it true that food is scarce in Venezuela? What do I think of Chavez? And the almost obligatory condemnation of US President Bush. Bush is ignorant, ill educated, arogant.
Headng south, I drank beer and watched Mexico play France on TV in the office of the head of Honduran customs. The Guatemalan Customs officer is in his late twenties. He rides a 200 cc Honda. He leaves tomorrow to holiday in Nicaragua. He will sleep a night at San Pedro Sula. Can he reach Granada the following day?
TRINITY, DUBLIN
COPAN RUINUS, HONDURAS: FEBRUARY 4
English sports coaches urge players to Put your heart into it.
English sports coaches urge players to Put your heart into it.
Maya sportsman did put their heart in.
The photograph shows the ball court at Copan.
I spend the afternoon and evening with a young Irish woman, Nikki. She is the product of Trinity, Dublin, Trinity should be proud. They have aided the development of an enquiring mind.
HITLER, McARTHY, HILARY CLINTON
COPAN RUINUS, HONDURAS: FEBRUARY 3
Sculpture in the museum raises a fresh chain of thought. PreColombian artists worked within a box. Break out of the box and you risked being next up the pyramid for a little knife work. Yet scuplters did break out. The humanity of the artist escapes in the minor works and in tiny details: the hint of a smile on a stone face, the line of arm and belly, humour in the portrayal of a plump frog.
If sculpture is universal and timeless, why not the simplest strictures of good and evil?
In Christendom, the doctrine of Universal Human Rights was expounded first by a Franciscan mendicant in Hispanic America. Others must have had the same belief. To express such beliefs was dangerous. To express anything outside the box is dangerous – or, at least, uncomfortable. Heretics are burnt or marched up the pyramid for heart surgery.
Silence is safe - thus acceptance of Hitler or McArthyism, parts of the Patriot Act. People recognise the evil. They are frightened to speak. Fear is the constant. People are always frightened.
Hilary Clinton voted for the Iraq War. Why? She was frightened of endangering her political career.
Her surrender to fear condemns her. She is unfit to be President
Sculpture in the museum raises a fresh chain of thought. PreColombian artists worked within a box. Break out of the box and you risked being next up the pyramid for a little knife work. Yet scuplters did break out. The humanity of the artist escapes in the minor works and in tiny details: the hint of a smile on a stone face, the line of arm and belly, humour in the portrayal of a plump frog.
If sculpture is universal and timeless, why not the simplest strictures of good and evil?
In Christendom, the doctrine of Universal Human Rights was expounded first by a Franciscan mendicant in Hispanic America. Others must have had the same belief. To express such beliefs was dangerous. To express anything outside the box is dangerous – or, at least, uncomfortable. Heretics are burnt or marched up the pyramid for heart surgery.
Silence is safe - thus acceptance of Hitler or McArthyism, parts of the Patriot Act. People recognise the evil. They are frightened to speak. Fear is the constant. People are always frightened.
Hilary Clinton voted for the Iraq War. Why? She was frightened of endangering her political career.
Her surrender to fear condemns her. She is unfit to be President
RACIAL PREDJUDICE?
mini pyramidCOPAN RUINUS, HONDURAS: FEBRUARY 3
I remark to an middleaged Englishman from Leeds on how many flies there would have been on the pyramid in the days of human sacrifice. He replies that I am wrong to judge the Maya according to modern standards. Why are the Spanish conquistadors condemened according to modern standards?
I remark to an middleaged Englishman from Leeds on how many flies there would have been on the pyramid in the days of human sacrifice. He replies that I am wrong to judge the Maya according to modern standards. Why are the Spanish conquistadors condemened according to modern standards?
TRESPASSING
COPAN RUINAS, HONDURAS: FEBRUARY 3
The Copan archaeological park contains magnificent Maya ceremonial buildings. I ride out to the ruins this morning. I require permission to photograph inside the museum and reproduce photographs in the second volume of the travel trilogy. Oscar Cruz is the Professor of archaeology at the ruins. Certainly I can photograph. “Please mention the source in your book.”
The Copan archaeological park contains magnificent Maya ceremonial buildings. I ride out to the ruins this morning. I require permission to photograph inside the museum and reproduce photographs in the second volume of the travel trilogy. Oscar Cruz is the Professor of archaeology at the ruins. Certainly I can photograph. “Please mention the source in your book.”
So easy...I imagine attempting to obtain a similar permission in the British Museum.
I meet with a Honduran family home visiting from the USThe grandmother hugs me. The little girl adds her own hug. She reaches my knees. She then holds my hand for a group photograph.
Later I photograph a bilingual notice at the foot of a pyramid. The Spanish version is an apology for prohibiting tourists from mounting the pyramid. The English version is typically stark: NO TRESPASSING.
Entrance to the park is US$20.
Lawn-short grass surrounds the ruins
A Maya gardener rakes fallen leaves. He has four children of school age. He earns US$5 a day.
I ask can he live on $5. Barely.
His children have no interest in education.
Entrance to the park is US$20.
Lawn-short grass surrounds the ruins
A Maya gardener rakes fallen leaves. He has four children of school age. He earns US$5 a day.
I ask can he live on $5. Barely.
His children have no interest in education.
MAYA MAGIC
COPAN RUINAS, HONDURAS: FEBRUARY 2
Copan is a tourist town. Every other building is a hostal, hotel, restaurant or shop selling tourist tat. Architecture is Humble Hispanic Colonial. Mini boulders pave the streets, though my guidebook refers to cobblestones – the writer should ride a small Honda. Hotel Patti is on the first block. Rooms surround a courtyard on three sides. My bike is safely parked. Water is hot day and night, cable TV. I shower, change into clean clothes and sit with the owner by the gates, chat and people watch. What more could a traveller desire?
Copan is a tourist town. Every other building is a hostal, hotel, restaurant or shop selling tourist tat. Architecture is Humble Hispanic Colonial. Mini boulders pave the streets, though my guidebook refers to cobblestones – the writer should ride a small Honda. Hotel Patti is on the first block. Rooms surround a courtyard on three sides. My bike is safely parked. Water is hot day and night, cable TV. I shower, change into clean clothes and sit with the owner by the gates, chat and people watch. What more could a traveller desire?
Sunday, February 03, 2008
NO BANDITS BUT DON'T STOP
TO COPAN RUINAS: FEBRUARY 2
I must catch up with my writing. I have Emailed Eugenio at Hacienda Tijax on the Rio Dulce that I will arrive on the 5th. I head direct to Copan where I can work for two days. I stop for lunch at a restaurant on Lake Yojoa.
The owner is a woman. We talk of this and that, my journey, her tiresome husband of whom she is delighted to be rid, our children, the cost of living. She treats me to my meal. I ride on happy to have made contact with someone from the country through which I am travelling. I am so happy that I become overconfident and head on through the hills to Copan with dusk already falling. I stop at a police post and ask whether there is a hotel before Copan.
"No, but the road is safe."
"No bandits?"
"No bandits, but don't stop."
"Right," I say and follow a slow moving truck with good lights.
I must catch up with my writing. I have Emailed Eugenio at Hacienda Tijax on the Rio Dulce that I will arrive on the 5th. I head direct to Copan where I can work for two days. I stop for lunch at a restaurant on Lake Yojoa.
The owner is a woman. We talk of this and that, my journey, her tiresome husband of whom she is delighted to be rid, our children, the cost of living. She treats me to my meal. I ride on happy to have made contact with someone from the country through which I am travelling. I am so happy that I become overconfident and head on through the hills to Copan with dusk already falling. I stop at a police post and ask whether there is a hotel before Copan.
"No, but the road is safe."
"No bandits?"
"No bandits, but don't stop."
"Right," I say and follow a slow moving truck with good lights.
THE KIKUYU
the kikuyuDANLI, HONDURAS: FEBRUARY 2
I save money by staying at the hotel beside the Esso station. My guidebook recomends it as clean, with TV and parking. The parking is true.
I find an internet cafe and am recomended to a Mexican restaurant. The food is OK.
The Kikuyu serviced my bike in 2006. My editor asked why I called him the Kikuyu. I know him by no other name. I rise early and ride to his shop. He embraces me, checks my bike, tightens the chain an unecessary milimetre.
Brave, I ask, "Why do people call you the Kikuyu?"
He shrugs: "It is a bad habit people have."
A pickup arrives towing a trailer loaded with trail bikes. The Kikuyu is their support.
He and I embrace again, wish each other good fortune and head our separate ways.
RICE PADDY AND LEATHER JACKET
TO DANLI, HONDURAS: FEBRUARY 1
North towards the Honduras border, the road between San Isidro and Estell crosses a flat valley of brilliant green rice paddy. The surounding hills are dry dust and rock. The road climbs again, twisting through mountains to the frontier. Clouds cover the sun. I stop and put on my leather jacket for the first time since leaving Patagonia.
The border is a few buildings and a few shacks. Leaving Nicaragua is quick.
Honduras takes a couple of hours.
None of the officials are difficult. They are simply understaffed to deal with the slough of regulations. Trucks take a day. They take a day passing from Costa Rica to Hondurous and a day into Panama. Central America must compete with China. The cost of these delays is critical to its economies. Damn fool Governments are to blame.
North towards the Honduras border, the road between San Isidro and Estell crosses a flat valley of brilliant green rice paddy. The surounding hills are dry dust and rock. The road climbs again, twisting through mountains to the frontier. Clouds cover the sun. I stop and put on my leather jacket for the first time since leaving Patagonia.
The border is a few buildings and a few shacks. Leaving Nicaragua is quick.
Honduras takes a couple of hours.
None of the officials are difficult. They are simply understaffed to deal with the slough of regulations. Trucks take a day. They take a day passing from Costa Rica to Hondurous and a day into Panama. Central America must compete with China. The cost of these delays is critical to its economies. Damn fool Governments are to blame.
EXHAUSTION IS IN COMMAND
TO DANLI, HONDURAS: FEBRUARY 1
A good road skirts the lakes and climbs through dry hills reminiscent of Africa. Shacks by the roadside give evidence of poverty - though the people are decently dressed. How on a minimum daily wage of under $2?
I am depressed by my ignorance.
I am aware that I have lost contact with Central America. I have become a tourist. The voyage to Panama marks the change. I was with fellow travellers, followed by Christmas and New Year in the States. Back in Panama I was with Nigel and then with HOOKEDONPANAMA. In Granada I have been with Gillian and Joe.
Now I am on the road again.
However entering into conversation with strangers demands too much effort. I have been travelling for so many months. Exhaustion is in command.
A good road skirts the lakes and climbs through dry hills reminiscent of Africa. Shacks by the roadside give evidence of poverty - though the people are decently dressed. How on a minimum daily wage of under $2?
I am depressed by my ignorance.
I am aware that I have lost contact with Central America. I have become a tourist. The voyage to Panama marks the change. I was with fellow travellers, followed by Christmas and New Year in the States. Back in Panama I was with Nigel and then with HOOKEDONPANAMA. In Granada I have been with Gillian and Joe.
Now I am on the road again.
However entering into conversation with strangers demands too much effort. I have been travelling for so many months. Exhaustion is in command.
MEXICANS ARE LESS RACIST THAN THEIR PARENTS
ADIEU GRANADA: FEBRUARY 1
On the bike again...My hosts had a dinner party last night. One of the couples founded and fund a school in Granada for mentally handicapped children. She is Dutch, he from the US. He and I have friends in common in Guatemala.
The other couple were also from the US. She collects houses and sculptures. I spent a day with students at a private school in Oaxa. She seemed anoyed that I found the students less racist than their parents. Or perhaps she thought me arogant in having an opinion. How could I know? I replied that I watched them group during break.
She remained disatisfied - or irritated.
I am a Brit, of course.
Mexico is a US preserve.
So states the Monroe Doctrine.
On the bike again...My hosts had a dinner party last night. One of the couples founded and fund a school in Granada for mentally handicapped children. She is Dutch, he from the US. He and I have friends in common in Guatemala.
The other couple were also from the US. She collects houses and sculptures. I spent a day with students at a private school in Oaxa. She seemed anoyed that I found the students less racist than their parents. Or perhaps she thought me arogant in having an opinion. How could I know? I replied that I watched them group during break.
She remained disatisfied - or irritated.
I am a Brit, of course.
Mexico is a US preserve.
So states the Monroe Doctrine.
MADMAN SEEKING ADVENTURE
view across cathedral squareGRANADA, NICARAGUA: JANUARY 31
Staying with Gillian and Joe for ever isn't an option. The bike waits. Joe would enjoy riding the bike. He rode a Vespa all round Europe and the Middle East. He would garage the Vespa for a few years where ever his journeying took him, return when the bug next struck.
Gillian met Joe in Kenya. He was flying tourists over the game reserve in a hot air baloon. He retired from professional balooning aged 65. A couple of years ago he canoed down the San Juan river. Now he needs a new adventure. He would make great company for Ming and I when we ride across China. And he is younger than me by six months.
PERFECT BEACH
GRANADA, NICARAGUA: JANUARY 30
Gillian and Joe take me today to the perfect Pacific beach. The beach is protected on each side by rock reefs and from the front by a small island. The sand is soft, the sea is clear. A fishing skiff floating to moarings would be to the beach as an olive is to a martini - delightful but not truly neccessary.
We swim and later drive to a small fishing village and eat freshly-caught snapper at a wooden table overlooking the sea.
Joe's father used to say that even a blind hog could occasionally find an acorn.
Joe drilled for oil on his ranch in Texas. He named his oil company, THE BLIND HOG OIL COMPANY. It was a one-acorn search.
PERFECT URBAN ARCHITECTURE
GRANADA, NICARAGUA: JANUARY 30
I am a very privledged guest in Gillian's and Joe's home in Granada. No need for corridors, no need for air conditioning. All rooms open to patios or the road. Through-drafts keep the air moving and cooled by water in the patios. A big room on the first floor between the two patios is open front and rear to stupendou views of the cathedral and volcano. That New World meld of Islamic and Hispanic architecture has never been equalled, let alone surpassed.
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