Sunny San Salvador...

‘Fly to El Salvador, I don’t know why and I don’t know what for’ flow the lyrics of the song by Athlete and arriving in San Salvador (by bus obviously) we were inclined to agree. Home to a notorious gang culture that leads to the highest murder rate in the world (58 deaths per 100,000…to put this in context in the UK it’s 2 deaths per 100,000*), a cruel wealth disparity between rich and poor, gated communities, a simmering civil war legacy and frequent earthquakes we felt it was the perfect place to kick-back and relax for a couple of days.

So it was with some degree of wary trepidation that we hopped on a bus into the centre of town, a definite ‘no-go’ zone for foreigners after dark. We left the secure, locked-down suburb of our hostel, where the heavy presence of uniformed guards toting pump-action shotguns was both reassuring and worrying at the same time, and entered the thrumming central market. We kept our eyes and wits about us and left all our valuables safely behind.

In fact the market felt no more or less edgy than any other we’ve visited. The fragrances of foetid flesh and fresh fruit and straining stalls of unappealing plastic tat were all too familiar. As were the lurid covers of pirated hard-core porn DVDs. Less recognisable were the many mobile merchants. Women with literally hundreds of bra’s slung on each arm, with more cup-sizes than a trophy shop, and traders wheeling barrows of neatly stacked potatoes and cucumbers all roared for your attention. At times it felt like the vendors outnumbered the shoppers.

The noise was also unlike any other place we’ve experienced. Everything could be bought for a dollar (El Salvador officially adopted the US dollar as it’s currency in 2004), so the cry of ‘dollar, dollar, dollar’ rung in our ears from all sides. Music blasted from CD vendors at levels more commonly associated with US Army interrogation techniques in Guantanamo Bay (aka ‘torture’), the stallholders managing to doze blearily amid the din. To top it all an evangelical preacher, dangerously armed with a microphone and amplifier was pontificating away on one corner, and whilst not technically speaking in tongues might as well have been given the incomprehensibility of his distorted, breathless, hyperbolic delivery.

Later we escaped town and took a bus up to ‘El Puerta del Diablo’ (The Devil’s Door), where we got some fresh air and some moody, misty views down over the volcano pocked landscape and down to the hazy Pacific coastline below. We ended the day in an internet café where each computer was housed in a discrete wooden booth allowing ‘user privacy’. Unfortunately there was a window cut into the partition between my booth and the next so I was treated to the sight of the bloke next-door unself-consciously perusing pornography. Whilst Skyping my Mum. Which was nice.

*Wikipedia - List of countries by homicide rate

Bedbugs & Volcanoes...

The countdown continues...only 11 days to go till ´B' day when we hop aboard our banana boat in Costa Rica. We're currently in Granada on the shores of the vast inland sea that is Lago Nicaragua, though we're heading south to the world's biggest lake island - Omotepe today to stay on a co-operative finca for a few days as the journey draws to a close. Another bonus has been an additional ´Slow Traveller´column for the Observer which this week covers our seat-of-the-pants adventures on the crater of a live volcano and an unfortunate few nights wrestling with voracious bedbugs. No me gusta.

26th Observer column

One of the constant challenges of travelling is finding a place to stay. We've had to do this over 120 times during the last twelve months. The task is made harder by the fact that you are invariably tired, ratty and hypoglycaemic when you’re doing it. After passing through 31 countries we’ve learnt that ignoring the guidebook and going with a local tout is not always a bad idea. Often finding that a trustworthy face in reality is better than a second-hand opinion on the page.

So when we arrived in Antigua, the picturesque former capital of Guatemala – all cobbled streets and red-tiled colonial courtyard houses, we were happy to take a room in Estella’s Guesthouse. We try to support locally owned businesses whenever we can and our room was spick, span and even had cute family photos on the shelf. So we paid upfront and nested in for our four-night stay in town.

Antigua is dominated by the dark shadows of monstrous volcanoes that tower over the low-rise buildings. The scars of the earthquakes that accompanied previous eruptions are also evident in the numerous shells of shattered churches around the city. No visit is thus complete without scaling one of the volcanic peaks for a glimpse of the blood of the earth up close and personal.

In the village at the base of Mount Pacaya we were met by a mob of kids ‘selling’ walking sticks, a no doubt profitable racket for this charmingly persistent mini-mafia. The princely sum of one quetzal (about 7p) bought you the use of a stout pole with which to prop yourself up on the treacherous lava surface. They weren’t ours to keep however as became clear when descending in the darkness after sunset we were ambushed by the same tiny throng reclaiming their wooden bounty for the next day’s ‘sales’.

A steep 90minute climb to the crater followed during which another group of small boys on disproportionately large horses called out ‘Taxi? Tuk-tuk?’, hoping to extract a fare from the more breathless members of the group as the going got tougher. Before long they had a couple of takers and shortly afterwards we came over the rim and peered down through the passing clouds into a scene of devastation below.

The basin was a twisted mass of menacing black rock, riven by canals of bright orange lava pushing up through the splintered surface. Descending onto old lava tubes on the (relatively) cool side of the flow, the rock sounded spookily and unnervingly hollow and we were glad of our sticks as the jagged edges were lethally sharp. In the refreshing, but also mildly concerning, absence of any safety briefing whatsoever, we marched merrily towards the red-hot action. As we approached the temperature rose and blasts of superheated, dry air swept up from the cracks beneath our feet, like the breath of Hades.

‘How thick is the rock here?’ I asked Arturo our blissfully blasé guide. ‘About 5m’ he replied. I wasn’t convinced having seen and felt the orange glow between the rocks not two feet below us. It was like traversing the skin of a lethally hot rice pudding - consumed by the fear that the brittle crust could crumble away at any second, dumping us to a hideous fiery demise in the liquid hell bubbling away beneath.

As we gathered beside a lethargic tongue of oozing molten rock the lava began to bulge threateningly. The ballooning magma then dislodged a cascade of half melted rocks in our direction sending us scurrying backwards over the serrated surface. It was an intense and humbling experience to be so close to such powerful and dangerous forces, and a relief of similar magnitude to get a safe distance away from them again. It can only be a matter of time however before some unfortunate tourist becomes marshmallow.

The next morning we awoke covered in itching red bites. I had around 45 wheals across my shoulders and we feared the worst. Bed bugs. I showed my impressive display to Estella and raised our concerns. ‘You went to the volcano yesterday?’ she shot back, blaming our bites on the horses, dogs and forest insects we’d encountered on the mountain. Somewhat mollified and not entirely convinced we let the matter drop.

The following day we’d been bitten again and stripping the bed, plucked several blood-fattened beasties from the mattress to prove our point. I even, rather dramatically, squished one between my fingers to show Estella the scarlet contents of it’s bloated belly. To allow fumigation we moved rooms, awakening on our final morning to find we’d been eaten a third time. ‘Everyone says they get bitten here’ she repeated, clearly in denial. Funny that.

Fowl transport...

Well with less than two and half weeks to go our slow travel odyssey is almost coming to an end...but we still have two weeks at sea and the small body of salty water known as 'The Atlantic' to cross before we hit Blighty and the White Cliffs of Dover on March 20th (if there ain't bluebirds above I am going to be severly disappointed). We've just arrived in Granada, Nicaragua after some adventures that I'll share shortly in transit through the somewhat less than salubrious cities of San Salvador and Managua. Suffice to say we are relieved to have them behind us. Anyway, latest Observer missive was published yesterday, about the joys of Guatemalan chicken buses, and as usual the unexpurgated version is pasted below, or for those of a shorter attention span or more sensitive demeanour the formal edit is on the Guardian website here.

25th Observer column

Slow travel in Guatemala is all about ‘chicken’ buses. Whether this name comes from the typical driver’s proclivity for playing ‘dare’ with oncoming traffic, their coop-like nature or the practice of simultaneously carrying both livestock and locals is unclear. Etymological ruminations aside we certainly experienced kamikaze driving behaviours and the rickety roost spaces within firsthand, though fowl had so far been conspicuous by their absence.

Our buoyantly bouncing bus to the shores of Lago de Izabal, Guatemala’s biggest lake was more ‘fish’ than ‘chicken’. A huge tub of frozen fish and crabs was defrosting behind us and a cool slick of fragrant melt-water lapped gently at our feet. The same triumvirate of rigid seat, corrugated road and venerable suspension that was giving our bums a deep tissue pummelling, was also shaking the catch out of it’s tightly netted vat. When the owner disembarked he lacked a bag for the slippery escapees so resourcefully removed his shirt and wrapped them in that. We left him half naked at the roadside with his thawing haul.

As we trundled through lakeside banana plantations the mood was lifted by a woman in proud possession of what was possibly the most monumental bosom in all of Central America. Her laugh was almost as captivating and the infectious whooping and shrieking of her and her cronies was impossible to resist as it accompanied us all the way to El Estor. An easier place to arrive than to leave we enjoyed an extended game of ‘What time does the bus go?’ with a broad cross-section of locals. Each supplied us with a range of contradictory or equally unattractive answers. So at 2.35am we awaited a ‘collectivo’ in the dark, eerie quiet of a town that if slumbering by day was so lifeless by night it was laying itself open to premature burial. Even the half-dozing street dogs were giving us pitying looks when the mini-van finally arrived and we piled in.

‘Don’t travel at night as there’s a higher risk of robbery’ a girl working at a local orphanage advised, as the Central Highlands are (allegedly) bandit country. I recalled these wise words ironically as we lurched through the dark, remote landscape. Somehow I nodded off as the next I knew dawn was breaking over the mountains and the bus was full of people. So packed in fact the conductor was now hanging on the outside of the van in order to jam in a couple more fares. A huge grey spider then attempted to occupy the seat next to me, and I certainly wasn’t arguing, but was deftly palmed off by a boarding schoolboy. We heard it hit the floor.

After a nerve-settling night in cool, coffee growing Coban our bus odyssey continued west. An hour into the journey we hit a backlog of assorted vehicles awaiting the reopening of the next section of ‘highway’. It was closed due to road works, presumably following a major collapse, and only open to traffic for specific time-windows during the day. Building roads in the precipitously steep, narrow and winding valleys of Guatemala is an impressive engineering feat. Awe swiftly becomes dread however when you’re teetering above a yawning abyss on a rough single lane scar of dirt track.

When the road-opened engines roared, exhausts billowed black smoke and the waiting vehicles jostled precariously for position on the dusty sliver. A clenched-jaw, white-knuckle descent of the mountain followed, made worse at the mid-point when we met the held-up traffic coming the other way. We edged gingerly past a convoy of rock-laden trucks on the crumbling trail, and shortly after rediscovered with relief the relative transport decadence of two lanes, tarmac and traction.

From Uspantan another crammed collectivo took us to Quiché. I counted 35 people in (or on) the 20-seat mini-van, including two blokes clinging grim-faced to the roof rack. On arrival we checked into the ‘Hotel Las Vegas’ where, judging by the unsurprised reaction when I appeared in reception with the dirty bed linen from our room, they only changed the sheets when someone complained.

Next day on the market we were intrigued by a stall of large lumps of dark, sticky resin wrapped in leaves. A small boy popped up beside us. ‘Que es?’ (`What is it?`) we asked pointing at the bowl-shaped hunks. ‘Panela’ he replied looking at us like we were from another planet when clearly any fool knows what panela is. None the wiser we had a guess as to its provenance, ‘Es como azucar?’ ('Is it like sugar?'). ‘Si’ came the weary reply; the boy now convinced we weren’t aliens at all just really, really slow. And in a way, we are.

Mine´s a Tepuzcuintle (no ice)

Ok, been a week or so since I last posted and in the meantime I've loaded up some more photos from Mexico and Guatemala onto the archive which you can see here. We´re now in Antigua about to climb a live volcano (safe, allegedly) having just spent a week on gorgeous Lake Atitlan on an intensive Spanish course (muy bien, por supuesto!). This blog is about Flores however where we did a three day jungle trek into Tikal, the huge ancient city of Mayan skyscrapers jutting up through the rainforest canopy. Assembling an intrepid band of fellow explorers from the drinking partners we’d acquired crossing the border into Guatemala, a lively time was assured.

‘Botz’ was a British guy who’d been a chef in Amsterdam for 15 years and now ran a hostel (www.elrefugiohostel.com) in the mountains of southern Spain. A veritable treasure trove of gags and anecdotes, every story he told seemed to begin with a bottle of vodka and a handful of E’s and end in suitably lubricious fashion in a rubber fetish club. Then there were two bubbly, worldy-wise American blokes, Adam, a Doctor with tasteful tales of ‘rectal de-compaction’, and Stirling who was off to teach English in Colombia (a decision his parents were apparently less than thrilled with). Constantly chattering, when they weren’t dissecting US politics or practicing psychoanalysis on each other they were trading trivia questions. Thus creating a cumulative general knowledge of brain-bogglingly colossal proportions. So relentless and voluble was their banter that a couple of days into the trek Botz drily observed ‘I never knew the jungle would be so full of two Americans’. Finally there was Darcy, a lean, softly spoken Canadian scaffolder who was working on the tar sands in Alberta helping to extract filthy hydrocarbons. We needed to talk about climate change. Seriously.

In the village at the start of the trek we were met by our Mayan guide ‘Cristobal Dos’, and his cousin ‘Cristobal Uno’. Senor Numero Uno was a grinning, gold-toothed geezer in a vest and cowboy hat who spent several minutes briskly extolling the virtues of smoking weed, or ‘crema’ as he referred to it, to enhance the jungle experience. Consummate salesman that he was he bigged up the product then whipped out a package to sate our whetted appetites.

We set off with our pair of mules led by Cristobal Dos’s nephew Ramiro (it was of course all a very family affair) and the usual entourage of yipping mutts. The canine escort included one frail Chihuahua so meek and pathetic in appearance you didn’t really fancy it’s longterm prospects in the, often literally, ‘dog eat dog’ world of Guatemalan villages.

As we trotted along a dirt track towards the biotope reserve we passed the mangled remains of a, thankfully very dead, large black and orange tarantula that hordes of industrious ants were busily dismantling for dinner. Cristobal Dos was merrily pointing out ‘plantas medicinalis’ to us, demonstrating a handy ‘baby sedative’ (well it made babies stop crying and go to sleep anyway), a useful Immodium substitute that caused constipation quaintly called ‘tapaculo’ (literally ‘plugarse’) and a quinine plant which we all nibbled leaves from and began hankering vainly for cool gin and tonics.

At dusk Cristobal Dos led us, like Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred, to the Bat Cave at El Zotz (El Zotz means ‘Bat’ in Q’echi Maya). Just before dark tens of thousands of leather-winged beasts stream out of a crevice in the craggy white limestone cliff. There was an astringent aroma of ammonia from the bat shit on the ground as we watched hungry birds of prey gather on the rock-face ready to snack on the bats as they emerged. Cristobal Dos informed us three bat species co-habited in the cave, nectar-drinkers, fruit-eaters and vampires. I immediately started mentally gauging the thickness and protective qualities of my mosquito net.



After a cold, awkward night’s sleep bent like bananas in our hammocks Cristobal showed us the highly venomous and strangely cute baby snake that was curled up next to the toilet. ‘Muy peligroso!’ (very dangerous!) he exclaimed in his loud, clear Spanish which even linguistically compromised dullards like us could understand. In fact, ‘muy peligroso’ was the way Cristobal described most of the stuff we saw in the jungle from viciously spiked vines and creepers, to hand-sized spiders and stinging ants. Obviously he was seeking to reassure us but the constant reminders of how nasty and brutish everything was tended to have precisely the opposite effect.

We popped into the ruins of El Zotz, a satellite city of the main centre at Tikal, a sort of ‘commuter belt’ ruin. It was wild, wonderfully unrestored and almost entirely over-run by the jungle. We clambered up the steep temples on ladder-like tree roots that gnarled over the rough stones. Looking over a lawn of leafy canopy throbbing with life we could faintly see our final destination of Tikal. Temple IV was poking up above the trees a long, hot sweaty 30km of hiking through insect-infested, jaguar-prowled, monkeyed-up jungle away.

As we trekked the howler monkeys growled out their territory, like the sound of tormented souls echoing through a long drain-pipe. Spider monkeys on the other hand were more direct and lobbed sticks at us, shook the branches overhead and, rather unnecessarily I thought – we’d got the message by this point, twanged their genitals at us.

That night in our deep jungle campsite Cristobal told us some appropriate ‘Historias de la Celba’ (Stories of the jungle) of ‘mal espiritos’ (bad spirits) and man-eating jaguars. The slightly spine-tingling tales of lone forest workers attacked and devoured by big cats were balanced by the bizarre nature of the supernatural stories. These seemed to involve the threat of being seduced by gorgeous ghosts and becoming lost to a world of phantom love. There was a method of protecting yourself from these solicitous spectres however. You had to tie a cross of red cloth over your groin if a woman, or over the end of your penis if a man – which Cristobal ably demonstrated using a handy torch. The Red Cross - a symbol of impartial humanitarian assistance around the world. Or a way to protect your bits from saucy spirits in the jungles of Guatemala.

Ramiro then tried to describe another jungle beast to us, which we attempted to visualise via our broken Spanish. The elusive ‘Tepuzcuintle’ took mental shape as we established it was ‘sin cola’ (tail-less), ‘como café’ (coffee-coloured with white spots), was delicious to eat and rather surprisingly ‘tasted like fish’. We also discovered it was around a foot long as Ramiro demonstrated with his hands apart in ‘one-that-got-away’ fisherman-style. ‘It’s about this big’ Botz, who’d been partially translating Ramiro’s description through a haze of rum and crema, offered rather superfluously.

The following night safely back in Flores we each drew our own interpretation of what we imagined a Tepuzcuintle looked like. The quality of artwork was, to put it politely, highly variable (as you can see below). Later at dinner we asked the Taco restaurant owner if she had Tepuzcuintle on the menu. ‘No!’ she exclaimed ‘Es muy caro!’ (It’s very expensive). We asked her to judge our drawings and once she and her impressively moustachioed husband had wiped the tears of laughter from their eyes she was only too happy to oblige.

Jungle sex, froggy-style...

Latest Observer column published today, seems I have managed to smarten up my act a little so there was little editing of this effort compared to the immasculation of my previous missive. All they did was crop my gag about amphibious carnal activity (no great loss to literature it has to be said). As always you can read the 'offical' version on the Guardian website here. The original text is cut and pasted below along with some relevant pics and a nice little video clip of thousands of Monacrch butterflies taking to the air. Sweet.

24th Observer column

We were sat in the bus station at Zihuatanejo on Mexico’s Pacific coast when a guy selling tiny handmade artificial roses approached us. ‘Hello honeymooners!’ he grinned as we groaned. ‘You know how I know?’ he continued unabashed ‘because she looks happy and you look tired!’. It was not the first time we’d heard this line in the touristy town. I smiled agonizingly, Fi just looked weary.

A series of buses of ever diminishing size and roadworthiness took us up into the Michoacán mountains and the linear little village of Angangueo, strung out along the side of a high valley. We’d come to see the over-wintering grounds of the Monarch butterfly, where millions of ‘mariposas’ gather in the cool, mist shrouded pine forests after a monumental migration from as far north as Canada. An impressive travelling feat in itself the journey is made even more astounding when you find out the butterflies that return from one season to the next are the great, great grandchildren of those that left the previous year.

After a wheezy climb through the thin high altitude atmosphere we were treated to one of nature’s great spectacles. The branches of the pines bent heavily with the sheer weight of butterflies, encrusting the trees like incongruous dead brown leaves amongst the green needles. As the sun warmed up the slumbering insects took to the air in a whirling cloud of fluttering bright orange Lepidoptera. The sound of a billion tiny wing beats surrounded us, butterflies flitting past our ears with a breathy, half-heard whisper. It was a truly magical, meditative experience.



Below the reserve souvenir sellers hawked all manner of mariposa memorabilia from jigsaws to lapel badges. Many stalls also sold toy wooden logging trucks. Ironic in that the biggest threat to the butterflies is the ongoing deforestation of the unique arboreal habitat they have been returning to for countless millennia.

From Angangueo another multiple-bus journey took us to Oaxaca where a heady mix of Mexico’s indigenous peoples live, nearly a third of the country’s ethnic groups, and the cultural melting pot leads to a riot of colour and cultural diversity. The highlight for us, amongst the cobbled streets and haughty colonial architecture was the commercial chaos of the Mercado de Abastos. Probably our favourite market in the world from the many we have visited on four continents over the last eleven months.

Fiery shafts of sunlight poured through the haphazard corrugated zinc roof of the vast bazaar and into the hot, shady, aromatic space below. Fist-sized spring onions, black, sticky tubs of mole, fly-blown meat stalls, sugary sweet-sour tamarind balls and curious unctions for local traditional beliefs seized our attention – including one potent potion cryptically called ‘The lucky hunchback’. For back pain perhaps? I even tried ‘chapulines’ the region’s popular fried grasshopper delicacy – crispy bugs with an oddly blood-like flavour. Not entirely unpleasant but unlikely to feature on my list of top global bar snacks.

Scurrying through the dark passages between tables literally groaning with fresh produce we stumbled on a Mexican one-man band amongst the fruit and vegetables. Playing an unlikely instrumental combination of drum kit and saxophone the grizzled old dude was bashing out a rhythm beatnik style on his bass and tom-toms. This he interspersed with funky saxophone noodling and bursts of hoarse song. We were mesmerised. As were the wee market kids. His rendition being complicated by having to use one hand to fend off unwanted percussive additions to the performance by the gaggle of giggling children darting in to beat his drum. Free-form market jazz. You don’t get that in Wal-Mart.

From the mountains of Oaxaca and San Cristobal de las Casas we travelled to our final Mexican destination, the hippy haven of El Panchan near the Mayan ruins of Palenque, where the clientele sported more dreadlocks than a Rastafarian convention. The rainforest lived up to its name as we enjoyed a persistent 28-hour deluge, watching nervously as the small stream next to our jungle cabana crept steadily higher up its banks towards us.

The unfamiliar noises of the setting took some getting used to. Chirruping insects, hooting birds and the guttural rumbling roar of howler monkeys, more dinosaur than primate and how you’d imagine the cry of souls in purgatory might sound, were distinctly un-nerving. Awakening one morning to the weird burble of some wooing amphibian Fi mistook it for people in the next cabana having sex. Froggy-style, obviously.