LOCUSTS WOULD BE PREFERABLE

antigua guatemala, first university in central america



ANTIGUA GUATEMALA: FEBRUARY 11
Spanish Conquistadors founded Antigua. It is a small compact town. Much of the architecture is 16th and 17th Century. Streets are cobbled. Bougainvillea spills over ochre and terracotta walls. Climate is ideal, permanent Spring. Three volcanoes surround the town. Though spectacular, volcanoes make uncomfortable bedfellows. They erupt. Added to which, Antigua has been devastated by earthquakes. Though rebuilt and lovely, the town now suffers a fresh plague. It is the number one tourist destination in Central America. In such quantity, locusts would be preferable.

SUICIDE RUN

plaza, antigua



HIGHWAY TO ANTIGUA GUATEMALA: FEBRUARY 11
All Guatemala's trade to the Atlantic passes through the port of Barios. I recall the road up through the hills to Guatemala City as a suicide run. The road has been widened and Guatemala City is bisected by a six-lane highway. I am a survivor of Venezuela. Guatemala is easy. I left Rio Dulce at shortly before midday, stopped midway for coffee and a bun, and am in Antigua soon after 5 PM.
My host in Antigua is a family connection. His house lies outside of town in a condo. He meets me in the plaza and leads me home in his Landrover.

MULATO LATINOS - WHAT DO THEY KNOW?

TO ANTIGUA GUATEMALA: FEBRUARY 11
Today begins with incompetence: I leave my passport at Hacienda Tijax. I realise my error as I pass the police post at the south end of the bridge over the Rio Dulce. Back I go to the house, set off again and race a rain squall to a road-side shelter. A dozen men sit on wooden benches beneath a thatch roof. Two have bikes, one owns a scooter. The remainder wait for a bus.
Sun strikes the rain curtain as it speeds towards us. Dry tar is grey. Wet tar is black. Trees bend and leaves point down beneath the rain. The shelter shudders as the squall hits.
“Five minutes,” comments a young man in jeans, red T shirt and white trainers.
A man wearing a white plastic Stetson asks whether I am from the US or am I German?
“Britanico,” I reply. “More or less from the US. We have been sold by our Government to President Bush.”
“Bush is an ignorant man,” says the Stetson. “He has no education.”
“With much arogance,” says an older man. “Much arogance.”
The others nod and murmur agreement. What do they know? They are country folk. Mulato Latinos...

ENDLESS SEPARATIONS

view from tijax tower
HACIENDA TIJAX, RIO DULCE, GUATEMALA: FEBRUARY 10
A 75th birthday is a biggy. I leave tomorrow for Antigua, first capital of Guatemala. Monica and Eugenio have offered a haven towards which I rode. Tonight we dine at the resort en famille. Eugenio's daughter has baked a birthday cake. Rather than a celebration, I suffer the sadness of one more parting. Such is this journey, seemingly endless separations, because of my age, probably final.
In the TIJAX BLOG, Eugenio claims that I have been an inspiration.
If so, I am humbled.
Eugenio is my inspiration.
Tijax demanded vision and is an ongoing achievement.

MAN AT WORK

HACIENDA TIJAX, RIO DULCE, GUATEMALA:
FEBRUARY 10
I am almost up to date with my writing. The bar at Hacienda Tijax is a good studio.

WHITE GUESTS ONLY

HACIENDA TIJAX, RIO DULCE, GUATEMALA:
FEBRUARY 10
I can't connect to the internet on this machine up at the house. I am writing at the resort bar. Odd guests turn up looking for a room - or a nest.

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...

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.

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...

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...

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.

SILLY DECREPIT OLD DODDERER

This is both an expression of thanks and an apology to all those who messaged me support. I didn't realise that people had been leaving comments on this Blog. My age is to blame. I have become a silly decrepit old dodderer who shouldn't be allowed out of the house on his own.
I leave on the return journey from Ushuaia at the end of May. Unable to find my way around my own Blog, how do I expect to find my way north the length of the Americas? By the same method used on the southerly leg - luck and chance.
However, I am better prepared for the second leg. I have the leather bomber jacket I bought in Peru. And I have taken to swimming to build up stamina.
I catch the bus into Ledbury, our local market town. Bus travel is free for pensioners and I receive an old person's deduction on the swim.
I swim twenty lengths of the Ledbury pool on my back.
A large white hairy baloon follows me.
As to the ride, my ex considers that I am irresponsible, at my age, to risk my life to the road.
My present wife, a sensible woman, encourages my departure.
My ex and I have been separated for 27 years - a fine example of absence making the heart grow fonder!