Colombia's Zona Cafetera

Tuesday 06 October, 2009


It's ten in the morning and I am irate. I am in the midst of attempting to photocopy my entire passport in order to obtain a student visa. In Colombia, you can't photocopy your passport yourself. An officious old man takes my passport out of my hands and proceeds to copy my passport so that it is crammed up in the corner while 90% of the page remains blank. I ask him to adjust it and he gives me a withering look. He then gets confused and, holding my passport upside down, photocopies three pages twice while completely ignoring others. When I point this out, he implies that it's somehow my fault, before magnanimously saying that he will not charge me for the pages, but that rather they will be a "gift." How kind.

I have only been in Medellín for two days. I have just left my hostel, am meeting with my future boss and desperately trying to find somewhere to live for two months, and all the while I am being thwarted at every angle by bureaucrats and weirdos - the bossy photocopier, an incompetent Spanish coordinator at the university I hope to attend, a taxi driver who takes me across town, through a traffic jam that I have to pay for, before refusing to take me to the address I need. Why? I don't know, but he forces me out of the cab in the middle of roaring traffic. My bag falls into trash water and now it smells.

I call my boss and tell him I am on my way to his house, forty minutes late, with all my bags. "You're walking? Why didn't you get a cab?" he asks. Deep breaths. "Well you'll be okay... just look out for pickpockets."

The rest of the day goes better: I drop off my stuff, get shown an upstairs apartment in the same building I will be working in, that magically has a huge gorgeous room available, and for cheap. I tell them I'll take it and move in on Sunday, three days from now, repack a small bag in a frenzy and take off across the city to the bus terminal to get out of town for a few days and calm myself right down.

The station is quite a walk, and along a roaring highway, too. But it's okay, I reflect, as the semi-trailers thunder past - my life is in order, I have a doughnut and strawberries and a perfect sunny afternoon. Never underestimate the difference a blue sky can make, that's a lesson I've learned well. And I'm excited: on the road again! Another adventure awaits! I'm addicted to the feeling you get when you pack a bag and set off for the bus, not knowing who you'll meet or where you'll end up or what ridiculous series of events are bound to follow. In Latin America, that's always, and every day.

I get myself a bus ticket at at 4.30pm off we roar. The road out of Medellín is beautiful. The city is nestled in a valley and surrounded by hills, 1500m above sea level. To leave requires a winding drive up through the mountain roads, occasionally catching a glimpse of the beautiful reddish-brown city spread out behind us. The road climbs up and up and I settle back to watch a poorly-dubbed Fast and Furious. It is, if possible, even worse in Spanish than I imagine it to be in English.

A few hours later we are barreling down a mountain road past a military checkpoint complete with soldiers wielding rifles longer than their bodies, and a huge banner strung alongside the road that reads "your army is on the route." This is my first tangible sign that things in Colombia are rocky at best - in all the sunny blue skies and smiling faces of the city I somehow completely managed to forget that Colombia has been engaged in a bloody civil war for almost fifty years. The guerrillas aren't close to Medellín; Medellín is implicitly controlled by paramilitaries. No one really knows who they are or where they are, since they are a mercenary civilian force dedicated to battling the guerrillas, and have informally taken over judicial policing. If the police are too slow to capture someone or do something about it, the paramilitaries will take vigilante justice, which is often no justice at all. A large number of paramilitaries have officially "demobilised", but what that really means is that they have stopped fighting the FARC and instead are running the city's 300-plus gangs. But whatever the reason, it means that Medellín is at least safe from guerrilla attacks... if not from gang warfare.

The evening is descending, veiling everything in a soft blue light as the sun dips behind us. We pass a tree filled with hundreds of white birds that flutter up as we pass.

An hour or two later it is dark and I am treated to my first glimpse of a Love Hotel. These little numbers have flourished in Catholic-dominated Latin America, where people live with their families til marriage and beyond, and privacy is a fantasy. Most young people take to the streets to have a little sexytime, but those with money frequent the love hotels: where you pay by the hour, can choose your level of "service" and "accessories" and enjoy some discreet time alone. However, there's nothing discreet about this love hotel. It wants me to see it. In huge neon letters across the entire front of the building unfurls the script "EROS HOTEL" accompanied with a little cupid and a love heart.

After passing three bafflingly-named bars lined up along the highway ("Remembrances", "Memories", and "Voices of Memories"... wtf?) I finally arrive in Armenia at almost 11pm. Armenia is department capital of Colombia's prime coffee-producing area, the Zona Cafetera. However, don't let "department capital" fool you - it is a shithole. Not entirely the city's fault though; several earthquakes contributed to destroying it, and now what's left is not particularly attractive: squat, utilitarian buildings with zero charm and no sense of humour.

According to my Lonely Planet (a flawed companion at the best of times), the city centre is only 1.5km from the bus terminal. Deciding to be thrifty, I check out the taxis lined up out the front of the terminal and opt to walk. Forget that I have no idea where the city centre is; I just start walking down what looks like the main street, arbitrarily following a taxi headed in that direction and reasoning with myself that that must be where the centre is. My reasoning is flawed. I notice that there are no people around. No, wait - there are several drunk men tumbling in and out of two bars on the corner that resemble nothing so much as a wild west saloon. The music is loud and they are completely wasted. The buildings are shack-like lean-tos. I slow down.

"Neda," I think to myself, "Let's review for a second, shall we? You're female, foreign, and alone. You're walking down a random poorly-lit street late at night in a small town in Colombia, a country not known for being safe at the best of times. Plus, didn't you see the army earlier? Now tell me... do you think you're being smart?"

Answer: Not so much.

So I abruptly about-face, to the confusion of the drunks, and get a taxi from the terminal. Although he has a meter, the taxista and I agree on 3000 pesos for the trip. We set off in the complete opposite direction that I was walking down and I give a mental sigh of relief that my back-up brain is smarter than I am.

We drive down what seems like it should be the main street, but is entirely devoid of life. We are looking for the Hotel Casa Real. My driver confidently says that he knows where it is. We pull up in front of Cafe Real. "This is a cafe," I tell him. Not a hotel. He seems confused. Onwards we go, to my consternation passing Casa Real and stopping at Hotel Cafe Parque. Not only is it not my hotel, the name isn't even remotely similar. I point 20 metres back across the street. "It's over there," I say in resignation, "I'm just going to walk." The driver slams my door shut. "No no, señorita, it's not safe," he says, throwing the car into reverse and zooming the 20 metres back to my hotel, pulling up to a screeching halt. Christ. For some reason he has left the meter on, perhaps so I can see that although we agreed on 3000 the actual metered price would have been only 2000 pesos. Great. At this point, I am so relieved to be here that I don't even scream when a man with a shot gun yanks open my door and welcomes my frozen face to Hotel Casa Real.

* * * * *

The next morning after scouting out the city (hideous, boring) I jumped onto a local bus to a village an hour away. I am dropped off in Salento at a side street on the outskirts of the town where the paved footpath abruptly stops. I pick my way across the gravel towards a spectacular view of the coffee hills and arrive at a finca, or farmhouse, wreathed in orange flowers. 

I head off for lunch and find a restaurant that looks like a construction site. There is no one there but the owner and his family, whom I have interrupted mid-lunch. However, they sit me down and whip out a feast of grilled trout, salad, and homemade iced tea. I am the only diner and I feel a bit awkward. Not as awkward as I feel when I try to pay: a man leading a horse shows up at the same time and negotiates with the waiter for a while, before leaving it with him. I think he just bought a horse.

I head back to the finca and sign myself up for a tour of the plantation. Me, some fellow tourists, Andrés the guide, two collies and a mutt called Bon Scott set off down a rocky clay road covered in horse shit, with an amazing view of the hills. At the plantation we learn all about the growing, picking and drying process. I have taken my first three photos of the trip when my camera battery dies. Of course. In my rush to leave Medellin I have not brought any chargers for my electronic gear. Oh, the woes of being a traveller in the modern age. This is not good.

I spend the afternoon sitting in the gutter on one side of the town's main square drinking beers with two hilarious English kids and watching the sun slowly pass across the face of Salento's church before dipping behind it, leaving us basking in the gloaming as old women eating ice creams and friendly stray dogs parade past. We make friends with a happy Colombian man who invites us back to his finca to play music and stargaze. We intend to go, but one thing leads to another and we find ourselves tipsily wandering the aisles of the one minimart looking for dinner ingredients. I am charmed by three kittens frolicking in the back of the mart, ducking in between cans taller than they are.

Back at home we eat and wander across the property, spotting the greenish glow of fireflies and watching purple bolts of lightning flicker soundlessly over the ridge.

* * * * *

Today we have woken up (relatively) early, ready for the highlight of everyone's visit to Salento - a hike through the Valle de Corcora, famous as the home of Colombia's national tree, the wax palm. The valley hike has come wildly recommended so we wander up the hill to the main square. There we are squeezed into jeeps that can really only hold six people comfortably... not that that has ever stopped any Latin American from cramming more people than safe. This jeep is no exception. We crawl into the open back with two narrow metal benches. Four people squeeze onto each bench, and then four men climb onto the back of the jeep and hold onto the roof. The groin of one, festively wrapped in bright blue spandex the better to enhance what nature gave him, is centimetres away from a German girl's face. She is appalled. We are amused, and hope for some sudden braking.

The road is thirty minutes of spine-bumping fun along a cliff-hugging unpaved road. At one point we are forced to stop due to the sedate wandering of a herd of cows. Two Colombian park rangers take this as an opportunity to hit on me. "Are all the girls in Australia so beautiful?" A tired line but I smile obligingly. "Come and rumba with us tonight! Every night is a fiesta here! Yeah!" They start salsa-ing their hips on the tiny bench. The other tourists do not approve.
We start to hike along the valley floor. The hills rise up high around us and we continually hop streams, from side to side as they zigzag across the path. There are fenced in fields on either side of us. In one, a vaquero corrals a not-particularly-intelligent-looking bunch of cows and herds them further up the valley. A cow looks at me as if to say, hey what can you do? A small beagle trots in front of us cheerily, leading us on up the trail. "He's not supposed to be here," says a passing villager. "No dogs allowed." We all watch the beagle, who bolts up the path. The villager shrugs - he's done his duty - and walks on.

The path winds up into the cloud forest, and we tread rickety metal bridges and hop streams via precariously-balanced rocks. The path gets steeper and steeper, and at about 2800m we finally - thankfully - reach the Acaime Natural Reserve. It is not so much a reserve as a private farm charging entry, we find.

We walked up a flower-lined path towards the farmhouse and who should greet us but the beagle puppy. This is somewhat embarrassing. He has beaten us to the top by quite a margin. Humph. We are greeted by a businesslike woman in her sixties who ushers us in and sits us down with steaming cups of coffee and bowls of hot chocolate. She has kindly offered me a slab of cheese to dip into my chocolate, a Colombian custom. I decline. My attention is drawn by the swarm of hummingbirds whirring around the feeders. Their little wings vibrate as they swoop and dive like miniature divebombers, zooming past us almost too fast to see.

This trek is totally longer than we thought. Partially revived, we head towards the peak. It is steep. I mean, steep. We stagger up, cursing ourselves, and I glimpse the almost hallucinatory sight of one señor Lange Lee riding a horse up an almost-vertical mountain, in a pink poncho, shouting, "the horse won't go down, only up!" He disappears over the ridge. We arrive at the top and congratulate ourselves by falling prone onto a wooden bench and watching the clouds rise up out of the valley against the mountains in front of us. Not a bad reward.

But the real reward is yet to come: the rest of the hike is downhill. And it just gets better and better as every turn reveals more and more breathtaking views of the palms. These spindly trees are unusual - palm trees don't usually grow in cloud forest above 1500m. They can reach up to sixty metres tall and sway with the wind, which can be an alarming sight to behold. We pass through a couple of cow gates and trot down the valley back to our overcrowded jeeps, tired but happy. Even better: back at the hostel is a real, true, hot shower. For the last three months I have been able to count the number of hot showers I have had one one hand so this is a treat and a half.

I take the gang to my favourite construction site restaurant (the only place I had eaten at and favourite by default) for some scrumptious trout. The sixteen year old waiter is fascinated by us and the evening ends with my promising to set him up with my sixteen year old sister, who I promise him is learning Spanish and would like him very much. I suggest that marriage might not be out of order, and a visa to Australia. I give him her real email address. I sincerely hope he gets in touch. This is what is known as "revenge." Revenge for a certain little sister pilfering much-loved items from my wardrobe in my absence.

The night is spent back on the square with the drunks and the strays. I squeeze into the phonebooth-sized bottle shop next to a very drunk old man who regally orders a shot of aguardiente, Colombia's fearsome aniseed spirit, and for a touch of class requests a chopped lime so he can squeeze it in. "Buenas noches y bienvenidos," he toasts me. That's how they roll in Salento.

Fun and Games with Colombia's Bureaucratic System

Saturday 05 September, 2009


Forget the guerrilla, narcotraficantes and paramilitarios - what's really going to kill me is Colombia's insiduous bureaucratic nightmare.

Even though I know that rants about foreign bureaucracy are only really interesting to oneself and other people who have experienced something similar (and usually, not even them - who wants to relive the horror?), I am going to inflict my tale of woe upon anyone foolish enough to read on.

8.20am: Arrive at university campus. My university is private, huge, shiny, and new. It shits all over UTS. It also has some tight security: there are checkpoints at every entrance and you need a swipe card to get in. I do not have a swipe card. Instead, I have to hand the security guard my passport so that he can verify my identity. I watch him rifle through the pages. He stops at my Russian visa. Which, as well as being a visa, has no photograph. He points at the visa number. "Is this your número de identificación?" I snatch the passport back and open it to the information page. In the front. I have to go through this all the time. No one seems to know that personal details are on the first page of a passport. Once a security official tried to write down the number of my French entry stamp as my ID number.

8.25am: The security guard uses two fingers to laboriously type out my name. He then takes five photographs of me with his webcam. The sun is directly behind my head for all of them. I am the faceless woman. On second thoughts, if I decide to hold up the uni, they won't know what I look like...

8.45am: Manage to extricate myself from security and arrive with some relief at the Language Centre. Am here to pick up some simple forms. Very simple - the coordinator, Fucking Juan Fernando as I call him (though sadly not to his face), told me they would take two minutes to prepare. Fucking Juan Fernando is a liar. Last week I came to the office only to be told that some other mysterious person who was conveniently not on campus would have to sign my forms. They would be ready tomorrow.

"Fucking Juan Fernando," I said to him, "I'm leaving town today. My full time job starts on Monday. This is my only chance to sort this out and you promised me it would only take a minute." He says it will be ready by 5pm. Seeing as the office I need to lodge the forms at closes at 5pm, I find this to be a very cruel compromise indeed.

I do what any sane person would do in the face of this crap - I take off to spend 4 days at a coffee plantation and leave the forms to Fucking Juan Fernando. I refuse to miss out on my country weekend getaway just because he is incompetent.

8.45am: FJF's secretary tells me he is not in until 9am. "He told me he starts at eight," I tell her. She shrugs and examines her nails.

8.46pm: Sit down outside to wait. As I sit a huge hole rips in the knee of my old faithful jeans. These jeans have been good companions on this trip. They've ridden horses, has salsa spilled on them, been shat on by monkeys, and soiled in all manner of sordid ways. Their untimely demise is a little sad.

9.15am: STILL no sign of FJF.

9.20am: Wonder if the hole in my jeans is god's way of commanding me to make a pilgrimage to Zara.

9.21am: Decide that it is. Hey, this selective religion thing is great!

9.25am: A bumbling English girl who is clearly in her first week of Spanish shyly approaches and asks if she can interview me for her homework. I am delighted to help. She asks questions such as, 'what is your name', 'where are you from', and my personal favourite, 'how are you... physically?'

9.35am: Fucking Juan Fernando finally shows up at work. He has the nerve to smile and make small talk. I oblige so that I can get my forms and get out of here. Did I mention that I have to start work in half an hour?

9.40am: FJF does not have my forms ready. Despite promising me that they would be ready by Friday (Today is the following Thursday). Despite my emailing to ask him to let me know if they won't be ready. My blood begins to boil.

9.45am: Fucking Juan Fernando spends far too long typing my name. He asks my address despite the fact that I emailed it to him as per his request last week. Then he tells me that the same mystery person needs to sign my forms and is nowhere to be found - will I be around this afternoon?

"NO!!" I explode. "I HAVE A JOB TO GO TO! THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE LAST WEEK! WHAT THE FUCK IS THE MATTER WITH YOU? DO YOU JUST LIKE WASTING MY TIME, IS THAT IT, HUH? HUH, FUCKING JUAN FERNANDO??"

What I actually say is, "I would really appreciate it if you could work this out this morning. I have a job."

Pussy.

9.55am: FJF asks me to wait "five little minutes" while the gets the signature. He is clearly expecting a pat on the back.

10.30am: In Colombia, "five little minutes" means, "however long it takes but we won't tell you the real estimate because we don't want you to go off somewhere to enjoy yourself."

FJF comes out beaming and hands me my forms. I snatch them out of his hands and thank him with a huge fake smile. At this point, I am thanking him for not making me wait any longer.

10.35am: Scurry off to the agency. Arrive. Adorable Veronica is there, ready to process my documents. Adorable Veronica looks like a Latina doll. Her Colombian accent is totally charming as well - here they speak in a musical lilt, occasionally dropping their s's. I like it but sometimes I find it hard to follow. In such cases I use my fallback policy: agree, smile, nod, hope they don't ask my opinion.

10.50am: Things get ugly. Veronica tells me I need to fill in forms, then go to a notary to notarize my letter authorizing her to broker my visa. Oh yeah, and I have to pay an astronomical amount of money for this process - 383,000 pesos. That's fine, I say smoothly, I have my credit card. "Oh no," says Adorable Veronica, "you have to pay in cash."

"Veronica," I say, as her adorable factor rapidly diminishes, "You told me that I could pay with credit. If I withdraw cash it will cost me $20. That's 40,000 pesos, Veronica."

"I know," she says, with a shrug.

I know what's happening here. This trap keeps getting laid for me, and I keep walking into it. Colombians are all very nice and friendly until you actually require them to do something, at which point they tear their smiley masks right off their own faces, M:i-2 style, and show you the true gaping horror that lies beneath.

11am: I'm sent off to get my letter notarized. I have never been to a notary before. Despite writing a series of articles about Colombian politicians being given notaries in exchange for their votes to reelect the president, I am still not entirely certain that I know what a notary is. Or what a notary's office even looks like; Veronica's instructions were a little vague (or maybe it was just the accent).

11.15am: I come across a building with NOTARIA written across it. Is this it? Inside is total chaos. Picture a Centrelink office at peak hour. Now, imagine it to be grubbier, make everyone a screeching Colombian and remove any and all sense of order. There are ten to fifteen people clustered around every desk, all bellowing. In fact, it's hard to know what's louder, their voices or their outfits. The girls working behind the desk all have huge hair, fake nails, diamante earrings and clashing spandex ensembles, all of which more than adequately fill in any gaps your imagination might leave regarding their expansive cleavage and fat rolls.

A sweet old man directs me to what is passing for the queue and I claim my position, elbowing in between two pushy older women who think that they can edge me out. Uh-uh. I know how to play this game.

11.20am: The notarizing process commences. My simple letter is stamped with three huge stamps, handwritten on by the notary with my ID details, and I am required to sign it twice. Then I have to fingerprint it. The office might be old-school but the technology certainly isn't - I have my index fingerprints scanned twice by a high-tech little gadget, I have to sign a plastic computerized square with a pretend pen no less than FIVE times, and am then photographed with their webcam. All just to get one measly piece of paper authenticated. The whole process is complete bullshit, of course.

An older señora next to me stares openly and suspiciously at my Australian passport. She is wearing more gold jewellery than I have seen all year. I smile brightly at her and she frowns at me, her powdery foundation caking into her wrinkles. Whatever... I'm done!

The hour and a half I set aside to complete paperwork that everyone assured me would be done in "two minutes" seems woefully inadequate. It took me three hours. Three hours, and all to avoid actually applying for my student visa myself at DAS, immigration office and bane of every traveller's existence. It took me three hours, and I cheated: I didn't even go to the immigration office myself. All this trouble was to enable an agent to apply for my visa on my behalf. I have been told that going to the immigration office is hell on earth and to just pay the agent and be done with it, I would be saving a lot of time, money, and my blood pressure.

Frankly, picturing it takes me to such a hideous black hole of bureaucratic horror that I'm scared if I think about it too much I might go completely isane.

Pigs in Mud in Colombia - Volcan el Lodo del Totumo

August 2009


Rolling around like a pig in mud may not be high on most peoples' lists of things to do in Colombia. A mud pit also might not sound like the ideal place to get pampered and indulge in a little facial... but the Totumo Mud Volcano is IT.

Located halfway between Cartagena and Barranquilla on Colombia's Caribbean coast, El Volcan del Totumo has the honour of being Colombia's tallest mud volcano, standing at a diminutive twenty metres. But don't be fooled by its size. This overgrown molehill was created by natural gases emitted by decaying organic matter underground. The mounting pressure of these gases pushes the mud upwards where it hardens above ground, creating a miniature volcano with a mud-filled crater - and this crater was our destination.

At the semi-respectable hour of 8.30am LL and I were collected by a shiny new minibus from the centre of Cartagena. Tourism is relatively new to Colombia but they are racing to catch up and doing it well, as our wheels would attest. Having bolted our breakfast in record time and scurried to the pick-up point through the city's soupy humid air (thickening already at this early hour), we were (for once) more than happy to be enveloped in the arctic blast of air conditioning inexplicably symptomatic of all South American buses.

We spent an hour getting an unintended "scenic" tour of the newer part of Cartagena and its expansive hotel zone, unattractive at best, collecting argumentative tourists with too many belongings. LL and I settled in to enjoy the spectacle of our guide, Nieves, trying to corral a resistant Venezuelan family and coax them onto the bus before they were ready. This was an exercise operatic in its scale but eventually mother, father, three daughters and a coltish little son were all settled in and we were ready to go.

An hour or so later our minibus, capably driven by Fernando (only veering into oncoming traffic twice!) pulled up at the volcano.

Okay, so it isn't much to look at - at first.

A crooked and rickety set of stairs clings to the side of the volcano, and with some apprehension I watched my fellow tourists clamber up in their swimmers, nose to tail. I opted to take my sarong. "Leave EVERYTHING here," said Nieves imperiously. I did not appreciate being commanded to get (more or less) nude with a bunch of strangers, and fought for my modesty. "I'm taking it," I told her firmly. She shrugged, but her expression clearly read, idiot. I'd show her!

We clambered up the stairs to the top, where we found a tiny arena dominated by a mud pit reinforced with logs, and full of people rolling around in some kind of piggy orgy. They were like creatures from the black lagoon, covered head to toe in gloopy viscous grey mud.

In we hopped. The mud was thick and buoyant. A Colombian masseur pushed me straight across the surface of the water and I glided along like a little boat. In fact, it is impossible to submerge yourself in this mud. We sat in it as though in a chair and it would fill in the gaps left by our bodies, pushing us up.

The pit was full, and I won't lie, things might have gotten a little sexy. What with the massages on offer by Colombians in the pit, and being squished in like sardines in a little mud can, strangers found themselves getting up close and personal, bumping into one another, accidentally grabbing things beneath the surface in an attempt not to fall on their faces in the mud (if you move too quickly you run the risk of the mud popping you right out, whereby you immediately lose any balance and go plunging towards the mud face-first). There was a hotspot that emitted loud sulfurous fart bubbles, which had everyone from small children to grandpas giggling and pointing fingers.

LL and I got down to business - styling our hair into the latest mud fashions and applying mud masks to every square inch of our bodies. Getting mud in the eyes and mouth was a real danger and frankly, impossible to avoid, and also to wipe off. Mmmm... mud.

 It began to rain, and the surface of the mud became pocked with raindrops, with the unfortunate side effect of splashing mud into everyone's eyes. Party over, we hopped out, only to find that the fun was just beginning. Coated in mud as we were, with absolutely nothing to wipe it onto, the rocky ground became a danger and the stairs a deathtrap. I almost fell over several times while standing still - how on earth to get down?

Like toddlers, we nervously began climbing down. This being Colombia, security measures were non-existent and visions of a broken back and paralysis swam before my eyes. I was hindered my my sarong, which, true to Nieves' prediction, was covered in rain and mud and utterly utterly useless. Once bemudded, modesty went out the window. What's to worry about? I got my mud suit on. Clinging with muddy slippery hands to the wooden railing we very slowly, one foot at a time, edged down.

At the bottom, we were directed to the Cienaga de Totumo, the lagoon next door, to wash off. Easier said than done - the hard ground was a danger at every step. I sloooooowly made my way step by step to the lagoon. I was halfway there when FWOMP! I fell flat on my butt. Hard. I sat there stunned for a minute wondering if my coccyx was broken. I decided not. A too-kind Colombian man edged over to me and allowed me to cover his arms in mud as I dragged myself up and tiptoed to the lagoon where I gratefully collapsed.

However, the thought of washing mud off my at my own leisure was shattered. A middle-aged Colombian woman waded over to me and unceremoniously tipped a bucket over my head. Oh, okay. She then proceeded to scrub the shit out of me - almost literally. I was dunked under water so many times I found it hard to breathe. This washing was frighteningly reminiscent of my Turkish Baths experience in Istanbul, complete with a fierce older lady giving me what-for.

"Take off your top!" she demanded. I liked to think of myself as a modern liberated woman who takes her top off when she wants to, not when ord-- oh, okay. There you go. She proceeded to wring my top out in front of me, while I took the opportunity to snatch a few breaths. "Now take off your pants!" She washed them too as I sat in the murky water like a chastised toddler, hoping no one would notice I was nakey - although on observation, they were all being scrubbed down too. Oh, except for LL. "You have no pants on!" he squealed, trying to hoist me out of the water. My washerwoman stood to the side and laughed. Thanks. Luckily he is a tiny man, and was unsuccessful.

Of course, none of these services were free. As Nieves pointed out, the people that live near the volcano live entirely off tourism and tips from visitors. They don't do too badly - my washerwoman made about five thousand pesos, or $2.50 off each victim. I mean, customer. Same went for the pit photographers and masseurs. Given that the daily minimum wage is 15,000 ($7.50, and definitely not enough to live off), and maybe a hundred people visit the volcano each day, then they're making decent money. For Colombia, anyway.

We squelched back onto the bus, newly exfoliated and mud-masked up the wazoo. I tuned out LL's ogling of the gorgeous Venezuelan daughters while trying not to be spotted by their burly father, watched the arid landscape whizz past, and shivered all the way back to Cartagena. Damned air conditioning.

Sleaze and Filth: The Guatemala Roadtrip

Wednesday 15 July, 2009

DAY ONE

8.30am: Swiss Companion and I arrive at the Iguana hostel in Lívingston. Managed to get ourselves involved in a roadtrip cross-country back to Antigua in a van full of other travellers. We are setting off today. Said other travellers had an extremely drunken night the day before so 9am departure time seems optimistic. Still, can't hurt to show up early.

9.00am: The power cuts out. Everyone needs the ATM. "Sometimes they don't reset the machines until after 12pm," says the hostel manager, "It's just some automatic setting thing." It is entirely possible that we will not be leaving today. Swiss Companion has a flight out of Guatemala City tomorrow at 12pm so this poses something of a problem.

9.15am: Fellow roadtrippers are taking it all in their stride, drinking breakfast beers and serenading Swiss Companion and me with Enrique Iglesias and Ronan Keating. They sing marvellously.

9.18am: They are now regaling us with a filthy ad-libbed version of "Inside of You." For censorship concerns I can not include their lyrics here. Suffice it to say that they are inventively filthy, and rhyme impressively.

9.20am: The American has been here for three months and today is his final morning. The Englishman and Irishman decide to see how long they can play Hotel California before the American loses his shit. The American walks away out of the hostel and they go skipping after him like overgrown leprechauns clutching a guitar. What they lack in knowledge of song lyrics they make up for in extreme enthusiasm.

9.25am: Can still hear them faintly singing, "but you can't ever leeeeeeeave..."

11.00am: After much wrangling, we manage to depart the hostel on a private boat. Lívingston is only accessible by water and we need to get to the village in which the van is parked. Adventure! A Swiss girl, an American, an Irishman, two Australians, two Poms and two Norwegians. On a boat. Six of the nine are hideously hungover. Guess which six!

11.30am: Boat pulls up in the riverside town of Puerto Barrios. It is a shithole. All nine of us sit around while British Jack, the baby of the group and the only one besides me who speaks any kind of competent Spanish, negotiates with a minibus driver to take us directly to the van. This involves using the word "comico" repeatedly in the face of the man's demands for more money. The man tells us that our van is 30 to 40 minutes away. The American, whose van it is, says that it is only ten to fifteen minutes away. The driver finally agrees to our sum and points at his extremely bling gold watch with a finger adorned with a matching gold pimp ring. I don't think he really needs as much money as he claims. "You just watch the time," he says. "Half an hour."

11.40am: Stop for money. The American returns with a 2L bottle of rum and some coke. Did I mention that I am travelling with five alcoholics? That is in no way an exaggeration. Five half-naked booze hounds who drink from breakfast onwards. It is not that they get drunk so much as just a constant topping up of their state of inebriation. Plus they have the filthiest minds and mouths of anyone I have so far met on this trip. Oh, and three mild-mannered other girls... and me. This is going to be great.

12.20pm: Forty minutes after departing Puerto Barrios, we arrive at the van. The driver is pissed. We do not pay him more as per his demands.

The van is parked in the backyard of a roadside pinchazo, or tyre yard. It is maroon with North Carolina plates. One window has duct tape in lieu of glass. It is, as promised, a molester van. FREE CANDY was painted on the side in white and then sprayed over in black, but the letters are still legible. It is our chariot and it is glorious. However, it is a bit small. It is one van, two seats, nine people, and fifteen bags. Tight fit = understatement.

The American is getting squeezed for money. "I offered to talk money with this fucker three months ago and he wouldn't hear it. Now he wants me to pay another 300Q." Unsurprising. There is a penchant for last-minute money demands in this country.

1:00pm: We are on the road. Due to some crafty maneuvering (car sickness - a blessing in disguise), I am riding shotgun. I was nobly offered it by the American: "Well, I guess you can have the front seat... you fucking bitch." "Fucking bitch" is an endearment.

English Jack is driving. The American has refused, despite it being his van, and no one else has their license with them. Jack is nineteen and the baby of a group whose age range is 19-30. Last night Jack was gyrating in the rafters in a WWF onesie liberally padded with socks. Today, he holds our lives in his hands.

1.02pm: Went the wrong way. U-turn.

1.05pm: Guy at the pinchazo did not put air in our tyres as promised. We are a little wobbly on the road. Go back and have it done.

1.20pm: A car overtakes us, gesturing. "Fuck, we have a flat," says Jack.

1.21pm: We pull over. The tyre is well and truly flat. Couldn't be flatter. Despite just having been pumped up at the pinchazo. "I don't have a spare," says the American. We debate whether to turn back or go forward to the next pinchazo. Onwards and upwards - we decide to go on, and crawl along for the next ten kilometres, trying not to damage the tyre further.

1.30pm: We pull into another pinchazo. An old guy running the small store next to it tells us that it has been closed for years, but can take someone to another place up the road to buy a tyre and bring it back. He refuses payment. Jack goes off with him to take care of it and the rest of us buy beer and sit by the side of the road to smacktalk each other.

The American occasionally plays chicken. This involves holding lit cigarettes to his own skin. A circle of five burns on his inner forearm are inflamed and pus-y. "Fuck no, I'm not going to a doctor," he says. The med student Irishman and I try to convince him to go. We appeal to the other Australian to convince him by sharing his story of hospitalisation in Guatemala. "It cost me two thousand Australian dollars," he says, and goes off to buy more beer. The American will not budge. Instead, he pours rum onto the burns. DIY medicine.

1.45pm: Jack returns with a tyre and a guy who will put it on for us for about $5. "That fucking old guy refused payment and then he saw the hundred I had in my pocket and tried to get 50Q out of me for driving one k up the road," Jack reports. Unsurprising.

2:00pm: We are on the road again. We celebrate by hooning to obnoxiously loud music. In the back everyone is half drunk already. "The brakes are barely working," Jack tells me, and demonstrates. "I have to push it all the way down and we don't even stop." Slightly alarming. The drunkards and ladies in the back don't hear this. Well... hopefully it will all be fine.

3.00pm: "Is that burning smell us?" wonders the Irishman. It is. We pull over. The brakes are smoking. "What the fuck," says the American. "I just had them replaced a month ago." The van has supposedly been sitting idly in that Guatemalan's backyard for three months. I suspect the Guatemalan of indulging in more than a few joyrides over that time.

3.05pm: The boys pop the hood of the car and a mouse dashes out and into the bushes by the side of the road. It has made a nest of banana leaves and twigs in the engine and has clearly been right at home for a while in there. Impressed that it survived two hours of driving.

3.10pm: We sit by the side of the road waiting for the brakes to cool. The Australian brings out his box of Cuban cigars. Now is as good a time as any!

3.30pm: The brakes are as good as useless. We creep along with highway half in the gutter with our hazards on. We pass four or five towns with no mechanic. "Fuck," says Jack, "I didn't realise we were in Zacapa." Why, what's wrong with Zacapa? "Let's just say that is it a dodgy fucking place to get caught in a van full of tourists with packs on the roof." Jack has been living in Guatemala for a while but refuses to elaborate on stories about Zacapa. "Let's just get the fuck out of here," he says. It just looks like a pretty green stretch of highway to me. I picture machete-wielding madmen lurking in the bushes, waiting to spring on us and relieve us of our valuables, and perhaps violate and/or murder us too.

3.40pm: Realise that between 9 people we only have about $100. Some people couldn't get money out due to the contrariness of Guatemalan ATMs, and the rest was spent on cigarettes and alcohol. We can't afford to eat at Tito's Restaurant, next door to the mechanic's, because Tito doesn't take Visa, and we don't know how much repairs will cost. We're hungry. Four of the boys are smashed anyway so they don't mind too much. The Norwegians are hungover. Swiss Companion and I are highly entertained by them all.

4.30pm: The Australian offered to pay the mechanics with women. The mechanics thought he was joking. I don't speak car but apparently there is something wrong with our brake pads, which a) don't fit correctly, b) are locking and gripping the tyre, and c) are just plain shit. We are assured that everything is fine now.

4.35pm: We are on the road again. "It feels much better," Jack exults, and we speed on down the road, Jimi Hendrix spurring us on. The road is beautiful. Green and lush as we leave the lowlands volcanoes begin rising on the horizon. We pass village after village and they all look the same - a short main street with a higgledy-piggledy collection of wooden and corrugated-iron shacks and low concrete buildings, rusted car husks on the side of the road and the inevitable roosters scratching idly in the dirt.

7.00pm: An ATM and fast food joints loom and we pull up. We are starved. In a choice between Pollo Campero or Pizzer Burger Diner, we all unanimously vote for the latter. Who wouldn't? It lives up to its promise, being a diner, complete with booths, serving pizza AND burgers. We are thrilled. Can't make use of the diner, though, since we realise that due to the broken windows and bags on the roof there is no way we can leave the van unattended. We sit out in the gutter with takeaway and eat there all together.

7.15pm: The owner of the restaurant looks concerned. "It is already dark," he says, "and I would strongly recommend that you do not drive through Guatemala City. You are a big group of foreigners and, señorita, forgive my saying so, but you will be a target. It is not safe. Even we wouldn't do it. You are much better off sleeping in a hotel and continuing in the morning. Or you can call for a police escort which can take you from Guatemala City to Antigua gratis." I thank him and go back to the group. Hmmm.

7.20pm: Team Meeting. We decide to push on and maybe call for a police escort if we feel we need one.

7.25pm: A small street rat girl comes up to us, angling for food. The Norwegians take pity on her and give her some pizza. Next thing we know, her little brother is there too, snatching it away from her and running off down a dark alley to where some adults are waiting. "Will you be my girlfriend?" The Australian asks her. "Can I sell your organs?" She smiles and nods.

7.27pm: The little girl has gotten bold and is now demanding food from all of us. She has no problem standing with a group of nine enormous extranjeros at a truckstop at night. I ask her how old she is. "Seven," she replies, mouth full of pizza.

7.30pm: We are on the road again.

8.00pm: It is raining. Pull over. Two boys get up on the roof to bring in the bags. Where are we going to put them? They are soaked. Somehow wedge them in. The van just got infinitely more cramped.

8.30pm: The rain is really coming down and lighting is flickering on the horizon. "Fuck!" Jack bellows. The van skids off the road in a puddle of water. We all squeal. Jack has lost control of the van and the brakes aren't working and we are headed directly at three Guatemalan men standing by a truck. I look straight in their eyes and they are terrified, frozen in place. One of them is holding what looks like a shotgun in his hands. We come screeching to a stop not one metre away from them. "What the fuck," they ask through the window, seeming calm despite their near brush with death at the hands of a free candy van. We explain what happened. Thankfully the first man was not holding a shotgun but a lead pipe. "I thought he was going to start shooting at us," The Irishman says. The Guatemalans look a little shaken but tell us to take care and wave us off.

8.35pm: We pull into a service station and each take a reviving slug of the vodka and OJ. The drunks in the back are right - this IS going to need some hard liquor to get through. Jack needs a minute. "I almost killed you all," he says. Our windscreen is smeared and impossible to see through. We use three shirts off the backs of the drunks to no avail. English Jack is struggling to see. Every time a car comes towards us we are blinded.

8.40pm: A truck drives past us hooting, tooting and hollering. Huh? "Oh, it's the people we nearly killed," says English Matt.

9.00pm: The Irishman and English Jack are singing acapella Irish folk songs. Help.

9.30pm: We pull over at a dark truckstop. Semitrailers are roaring past us in the dark. Both brakes are smoking again.

9.35pm: Team Meeting. "Okay, here's the situation," says Jack. "The brakes are useless. The windscreen is covered in shit and I can't see anything, and I have to use the handbrake every time I want to slow down. I would be okay with carrying on to the next place but on these winding roads up and down the mountains in the rain it's not going to happen. We have a couple of options: one; sleep here tonight, or two; drive two ks back up the road to a hotel and a mechanic's and get them to take a look in the morning." We all digest this. We've been on the road for almost ten hours already and Antigua is at least another 3-4 hours away. "I think we can all agree that staying here is out of the fucking question," says The Irishman. We do. No one wants to sleep in the van. It's cramped, smelly, uncomfortable, and the windows don't close.

9.45pm: Three Guatemalans from the truck stop come over. "My friend is a mechanic," says one. Oh really, he is? "Más o menos." Oh good. We let the more-or-less mechanic take a look. "Mi amigo es muy muy hueco [gay]," The Australian says. The Guatemalans laugh uproariously.

11.00pm: We finally, blissfully, arrive at Hotel Paso Texas and almost immediately conk out.

DAY TWO

6.30am: We wake up. Hideously early. Roadside hotel surprisingly nice and clean and provided a good night's sleep, perhaps because we weren't subjected to the stinking humidity or rapacious insects of the Caribbean coast.

7.30am: Breakfast of champions: 9 servings of huevos rancheros and beers all around. The van is getting checked out by mechanics for the third time.

7.40am: Jack is singing Irish folk songs again. "You know what I'm really going to miss?" says English Matt. "The fucking Irish songs. How will I ever do without those."

9.00am: Swiss Companion has a flight to catch at midday. We are at least 45 minutes from the city and have no idea how to get to the airport. But we're going to do it. She's gonna make it.

9.30am: We are on the road again. Hooning towards Guatemala City, Jack takes great delight in slamming on the brakes just because he can. The passengers in the back do not enjoy this as much as you might expect.

10.30am: We enter Guatemala City. It is busy. A man is walking down the footpath in the centre with six goats on a rope. Chicken buses are belching black clouds of exhaust that seriously minimise visibility. There are colossal billboards lining the avenidas, drive-thru ATMs, barbed wire on every available surface, and men with guns in front of any half-decent-looking store. It's chaotic but, after being told what a shithole it is, it looks fun. But we still don't know how to get to the airport, and we're on a mission.

10.35am: I lean out the window towards a man in a ute. "Excuse me señor but are we going the right way to the airport?" He takes in the Free Candy van and seems to decide against giving me directions. "Just follow my pick-up and I'll drive you there," he offers. Love Guatemalans.

10.40am: We are hot on the trail of the pick-up, doing our darndest not to lose it in traffic. Unfortunately, The Irishman has to pee. We can't stop. He REALLY needs to pee. No one else wants the van to stop because the Irishman's discomfort is hilarious.

10.45am: The Irishman pees in a bottle. English Jack takes this opportunity to hit every pothole he can, zigging and zagging down the street. "Oh, great, Jack, drive reaaaaally bumpy," The Irishman bellows. Despite this he manages not to spill. He fills the bottle right up - 600ml, and he STILL has to go. Everyone ducks as the bottle gets tossed out of the window, Guatemalan-style. It has no lid, and we're sure as hell not keeping it in the car.

10.50am: Five minutes after the emergency pee, we stop at a shopping mall so that everyone can go to the bathroom. "That's just fucking wonderful," says the Irishman. Swiss Companion makes a quick exit into a taxi to the airport. She neglects to thank the boys for trying to get her there instead of putting her in a taxi two hours ago. She takes her bags and tells the American, "next time I'm taking the bus." No one is impressed.

12.00pm: After an ice cream break we are back on the road, the final stretch to Antigua. No one can wait to get there. We are ten kilometres away when the brakes start steaming one last time and we find ourselves sitting on an emergency ramp by the highway, in muddy gravel, waiting for them to calm down.

12.30pm: We are on the road. Again. Coasting down the hill to Antigua with only the handbrake, the Free Candy van trailing the scent of burning rubber in the breeze.

POSTSCRIPT: THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF THE VAN [FB wall post from the Free Candy van's latest occupant to The Australian:]

"dude we got raped last night. We tried to go to Monterrico but made a wrong turn so decided to head to el sal. we arrived at Playa el tunco today and will probably fuck off tomorrow of the next day. If I had to guess we'll go to Nicaragua within the next few days. When I say raped I mean this: Our permit expired and they wouldnt let us pass. They held cory's passport until we paid them 286 dollars. After we did that we could leave on Monday without the van. We would then come back for the van in 15 days when the guatemalan license plates would arrive. Also we would have to pay 100 Q a day for 15 days to park it. They raped us. Yada yada yada we ended up selling the van for 200 dollars, got cory's passport back and slept in a shitty hotel on the border before coming here today.
Rape"

Navigating the Río Dulce to Lívingston

Wednesday 15 July, 2009


It's 6am and I am awake. I have been up before 7 every day this week. Not normal. Especially when you have nothing to get up for. I am lying in a loft bed in a tall thatch-roofed structure with a gauzy mosquito net covering me. I feel safe and cocooned away from all the bugs and critters that I know are waiting to jump on my face upon my emergence. The windows are open and look out onto the swamp, and the air is thick with whirrings and chirpings and bird warblings. Bats live up in the ceiling - I heard them scratching and chattering up there to themselves. Strangely, bats don't bother me in the slightest. In fact, I am comforted by them. They flew off at sunset and the room was quiet until early morning when they stumbled back in like late night party people, murmuring to themselves before passing out.

Yesterday I got a bus from Flores in jungly northern Guatemala down to Río Dulce in the east. My transportation was a step up from a chicken bus - a dilapidated coach that smelled, with musty curtains and a questionable stain on the seat, but still, with acres of legroom by Guatemalan standards and a headrest so I could lean back. Paradise. A small boy had to sit next to me and he sat so far away that he was barely on his seat, hanging out into the aisle. My bedbug bites are fading - am I really that hideous? (Yes I am.)

By some miracle of God we arrived in Río Dulce four hours later, right on time. I loved the town immediately. It is dirty and ugly, little more than one long dusty crowded street backing onto Lake Izabal, where oil tankers jostle for space with bicycles along the two-laned thoroughfare; tarp-covered stalls selling everything you can imagine (and a few things you can't) teeter on the edge of the road, seeming to rock back and forth in the slipstream of speeding chicken buses; and squat concrete buildings hold everything together while a tout with a megaphone crackles incomprehensibly and small children dart through any gap in the seething mass of people that they can find. Río Dulce has character.

This town still gets called Fronteras by locals, which harks back to the days when Río Dulce was the last outpost of civilisation before travellers crossed the river by ferry to make the long and difficult journey into the Petén, a vast jungle province that lacked paved roads (and residents) until a few decades ago. Lake Izabal is also widely held to be the safest haven for boats in the western Caribbean during hurricane season. As a result, it is full of yachts and sailors totter through town on sea legs, weaving in and out amongst the diminuitive Guatemalan landlubbers.

A man with a semi-automatic unlocks a tiny ATM booth for me. You know you've been in Latin America for a while when tiny men with enormous guns no longer faze you. I found a guy on a bicycle with a flier for the hostel I wanted to go to and he led me down the street and down a garden path, taking me to a bar on stilts that was perched on the edge of the lake. He radioed the hostel, which is only accessible by boat, and they sent a lancha to pick me up from the dock.

When the lancha arrived, the driver said, "Dos minutos," and promptly disappeared. My pack and I sat in the boat, bobbing gently on the lake, watching the sun reflect off the expensive yachts anchored further out and listening to the strangely appropriate flute piping of Titanic, just ending on a TV screen in the bar.

Ten minutes later the driver reappeared with another guy, carrying a washing machine between them. It was colossal. I watched in disbelief as they maneuvered it onto the raised platform at the front of the boat, and we dipped a little under its weight. The driver got in and off we went, just him, me and the washing machine, out for a ride on the lake. The machine looked ridiculous but still proud and seafaring, plunked there on the boat.

We shot out across the lake for a couple of minutes and then pulled into a swampy alley of water, slowing right down to negotiate tree roots. It was dark and muted, full of the buzz of insects. We drifted up to the hostel, which sat on the edge of the swamp, raised up on a series of interconnected wooden boardwalks. Two girls were quietly kayaking and three young Guatemalans on our dock were fishing. The air was hushed but for the sounds of wildlife. And they were making a racket.

But that was last night. Now I am awake in my swampy hideout, I have already had to negotiate with an enormous and malevolent-looking spider in the toilet, and it's not even 7am. I have a big breakfast out on the deck and then hop into a canoe. I go paddling out on the swamp. It is quiet as I pass other stilted buildings, and then the waterway opens out onto the lake. I sit on a pontoon, basking in the early morning sun. I want to go swimming but all I can think about is alligators lurking under the platform, just waiting... My overactive imagination and I get back into the boat and I try to steer it back to the hostel but the canoe is not cooperating. It keeps listing to the left and no amount of paddling can get it going straight. I have to submit several times to crashing into tree roots and trying to use that as momentum to try to turn myself around. It's like being in a bumper car. I bounce from one side of the canal to the other, at one point getting firmly wedged under a mangrove that is bowed over the water and seems to take great delight in scratching my face and hooking branches into the prow of the canoe, dragging me back in.

I finally extricate myself and somehow get back to the hostel. Have you ever reverse-parked a canoe? I am proud of myself when I finally stagger out, but I need to take a breather on the deck.

At 1.30pm, only half an hour late, a covered boat comes to the hostel to pick up me and five others. We are crossing the lake and following the Río Dulce all the way to the Caribbean town of Lívingston on the coast, which is accessible only by boat. The ride is beautiful - we speed across the lake for an hour or so, the water becoming clearer and more aquamarine the further out we go. We pass an old stone castillo, float down a tranquil alleyway of lilypads, and arrive at the Lívingston docks about two hours later.

Guatemala has twenty-three ethnic groups: twenty-one are Maya, one is ladino, or of European descent, and the last is Garífuna. The Garífuna are descended from Africans brought to the Americas as slaves in the 1600s. Lívingston has a unique flavour, being part African, part Carib Indian, part Maya, part English and part mestizo European. Their language and culture are very distinct. The town feels more Caribbean and laid-back from the moment we pull up at the dock. In fact, this is one of the greatest things about Guatemala - no two towns feel the same, and Lívingston feels like nowhere else I've ever been. It is a surprise to see black kids running around when the last town I was in was full of indigenous women in traditional dress, and it can be hard to reconcile the two.

I convince a Swiss girl to forget her plans of visiting Guatemala City and we book ourselves into a tour for the next day, visiting a series of seven waterfalls and a beach accessible only by boat. The convincing was too easy. So of course, when we wake bright and early the next morning, we find an oppressive flat grey sky raining steadily on us and not stopping any time soon. So much for the beach.

We head over to the hostel down the road for breakfast and the manager greets us. "You're staying at the Maya Hotel, right?" he says. "Is your stuff okay?" What do you mean? We ask. "They were robbed last night. You didn't hear? A few of the rooms were broken into while people were sleeping and they had money and passports and credit cards stolen." Swiss Companion and I look at each other. Nice to know our accommodation is so secure... how did we miss this?


I join a group of guys on the deck watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I am enjoying the film until I hear a rustling noise behind me and turn to find an enormous raccoon trying to destroy my umbrella. WHOA! "What the fuck is that?!" I'm sitting next to an Australian guy. "Oh yeah," he says casually, "That's the wanking raccoon." The raccoon is huge, bigger than a cocker spaniel. I thought they were supposed to be small and adorable. He has intelligent bright eyes and would be cute if he wasn't clinging to the chicken wire taking swipes at me with his sharp little paws. "Fuck off," I tell him, and turn back to the movie.

A little while later the raccoon ambles back over. He makes himself comfortable. "Oooh, get ready, he's going to wank," says the Australian, and the other boys all turn to get a good look. No he's not, I protest. "Oh he is, we've seen this routine a thousand times. Are you ready?" A thousand times no. But also, yes, a little bit. Is that wrong? The raccoon finds a good spot right near me on the other side of the wire, lays back, spits on his paws, and goes to work. At first he masturbates with an animal fury that would thrill David Attenborough but then he catches my eye and slows right down, giving himself the slow and sensual treatment while staring at me. It is unbelieveably creepy and almost impossible to look away. "He better not spoof on me, is all I'm saying." The boys claim never to have seen the money shot. I return to the film and the next time I look at the raccoon he has sated himself and fallen asleep.

Swiss Companion and I head out to wander around town. As the rain has abated the residents have emerged, sitting on the front porches of their colourful dilapidated weatherboard houses, shooting the breeze. We find a cafe and order, listening to the African drumming troupe outside and watching Lívingston life pass by. A Garífuna guy sitting outside catches my eye and grins widely at me, so I smile back. A minute later he comes over to us, effusively kissing us hello and shaking our hands. He has gold-edged teeth and arms full of tattoos. "Hola chicas, welcome to Lívingston, I have some wonderful ganja if you would perhaps be interested in purchasing?" He says all this so quickly in a kind of patois that for a minute I don't follow but I politely thank him and decline. He shrugs easily and smiles. "Eres muy pretty," he says in hilarious Spanglish before loping off.

I have ordered tapado, which is a local stew made from coconut milk and seafood. It is served in a huge bowl and contains one whole fish, skin intact, several poorly beheaded prawns with their shells intact, some shellfish that are all shell and no meat, and an entire crab. The soup itself is tasty but the seafood is hard to eat. All I have been given is a spoon. Needless to say, I make a colossal mess of myself. How does one eat a crab, anyway? I ask the waitress for some kind of implement and she gives me a butter knife. The crab is abandoned.

Shortly after this I develop an upset stomach and spend the next several hours making mad dashes to the bathroom. It's the Lívingston welcome.

That night we go to the Iguana hostel. It is pouring with rain and a ginormous thunderstorm has rolled across the sea to us. The lightning strikes are more violent and louder than I have heard in a very long time, far too close to us for comfort. Every now and then the electricity flickers off. Because I hate thunderstorms I am a bit of a whimpery mess. Fortunately, I am distracted by the hostel's guests who are all dressed in drag and clambering into the rafters, gyrating upon one another and doing nudie runs out into the rain. I am encouraged to take a medicinal Sambuca shot and what do you know - it works!

Savaged at Semuc Champey - Guatemala

Thursday 09 July, 2009


It's early morning in paradise. Birds are twittering, the mist is rising, and I am staring with great horror at my reflection in the mirror. "Honey, looks like you slept in a spider nest," drawls the Quaker Californian from behind me, examining my back and legs with curled lip.

My entire body is red, swollen, and itchy, including my face. My eyes are swelling shut and my arms, legs, and shoulders are a mass of painful red. I am hideous. Again.

I had come to the divinely-located El Retiro lodge in Lanquin village to get a little R and R in the Guatemalan countryside. Lanquin is two hours from the nearest big town, along winding unpaved roads that crisscross the rolling hills of the Alta Verapaz district. I had been instructed in no uncertain terms by many a friend that El Retiro was not to be missed - a riverside property just outside of the village, with stone paths cutting through the trees and wooden thatched-roofed palapas and hammocks scattered across the hill, sloping gently down to the water.

Sounds like paradise, right? Not that I'm in any position to enjoy it.

I spend breakfast avoiding the stares and whispers of the other guests. I am feeling sorry for myself. I am Quasimodo. And far too early in the morning I find myself picking my way down the rock-studded clay road to Lanquin's medical clinic.

The waiting room is already crowded with about forty village women and their various offspring. There is no sign of anyone in charge so I join a haphazard queue and wait. A woman tries unsubtly to push in front of me but I am not in the mood - I remove my cardigan and she lurches away from my bites in all their gory glory. Ha!

The clinic is pretty basic; Chalkboards list the warning signs of swine flu, and there is a simple graphic poster informing women of symptoms of problematic pregnancies and when to seek medical assistance. In these communities in Guatemala home births are still the most common, and many women die every day due to a lack of basic medical care.

I am submitting to the open stares of the sala de recepción and listening to the screams of a baby in the emergency room. I know it's the emergency room because a high-tech chalkboard sign reading "emergencia" is suspended above the open door. The people in the waiting room are craning to get a look at the baby. Privacy is clearly a foreign concept.

A woman emerges and beckons me out of the line, so I follow her in. The whimpering baby is lying on a metal table and no one seems to be paying it much attention. The door has been left open and the entire waiting room is watching with great interest as I display my bites to three fairly disinterested Mayan women. I don't even know if any of them is a medical professional. A doctor comes in and tells them to give me a shot. The hygiene of this clinic os not quite the standard to which I am accustomed but by this point I don't care if we work in a mud pit - my allergic reaction is severe and if they don't do something soon, my eyes are going to swell completely shut. Again.

Seated on a stool considerately located in full view of the waiting room audience, I am subjected to a painful shot, pow! right in the muscle. My audience is enthralled and gets even more excited when I stand and immediately stumble, sweating and seeing black spots dancing in front of my eyes. I am about to pass out - that shot was really something. Yay, Guatemalan medicine. I try to stand again and the Mayan "nurse" puts one enormously powerful hand on my shoulder and forces me to sit until it passes. These women are strong - I've seen them carry up to twenty litres of water on their heads in ceramic jugs, no hands. They are not to be trifled with, so I sit.

When I ask where to pay they inform me that treatment is free. It's amazing that they have the funding. Without clinics like this many campesino Guatemalans can't afford to seek medical help and often die or are horribly maimed by preventable afflictions as a result. I wave goodbye to the waiting room and walk back to El Retiro, passing a few roosters pecking at the road, a small balck piglet, and several machete-wielding men. A typical rural scene. The machetes don't even freak me out much any more.

I get back to the hostel and join 17 other guests for our tour to Semuc Champey and pile into the back of a van, crowded in like a pack of Guatemalans. It is a 10 kilometre ride that takes forty minutes due to the windiness of the road. Holding on is an exercise in itself. We are brought to the Cuevas Las Marias and strip down for our cave tour. Our guide, "Elvis," walks around tying our thongs to our feet with yellow string. It's very fashion, very now.

I am terribly self-conscious having my horrible bites on display. "Oh my god, you're the girl who got bitten," says a Canadian. Somewhat stating the obvious there, sister. I have to tell the story for the umpteenth time. But everyone is very sympathetic... these bites are a great conversation starter. Everyone knows who I am. "That girl." Hooray.

We troop off into the caves, which extend for eleven long, dark, cold kilometres. The water rushing out of the cave mouth joins the Río Chacobón, which runs through El Retiro's grounds. At least this freezing ice water is soothing my bites. We are armed with candles and we wade into the icy water and along in the dark, feeling along the rocky bottom with our seriously inadequate footwear. If there's beasties in here, we are at their mercy. The bottom suddenly drops off and we find ourselves paddling like puppies thrown into water for the first time, candles held with one hand above the water to light our way. The light flickers off the cave walls and casts shadows across the stalactites that drop down towards us. Swimming in thongs tied to your feet with string is extremely hard. "They just sort of flap around uselessly, don't they?" observes an English guy struggling to keep his candle out of the water.

"Give me your candle," Elvis shouts over the flow of the water, and swims ahead, leaving four of us in the near-total dark. By the time I catch up I can't hear myself think, due to the thundering waterfall inside the cave. One by one, the people ahead of me swim up and disappear under the cascade. When it's my turn, I see a rope and take hold of it and cling to the rock wall for dear life. The water beats down on me with unbelieveable force as I inch along, and I can't see or breathe. Indiana Jones, eat your heart out. Elvis pulls me out gasping, and I am directed towards a ladder to climb, which passes over the top of the waterfall through a very narrow tunnel that we have to crawl through on our bellies, trying not to get cut or scraped. 

We emerge into another chamber with a deep but compact pool in the centre, into which people can jump should they so choose. I do not choose, visions of a broken back being more than enough of a deterrent. There is not a huge amount of procedure in place in terms of safety - if someone was injured, I don't know how they could possibly get them out through the tunnels and ladders and waterfalls. The caverns are dark and the water is cold - we are inside for almost two hours but cover only 400 metres. The guides need to get us out before we get hypothermic.

We emerge into the sunlight and are immediately set up with inner tubes. Everyone else manages to get flowing down the river with no problems. Because I am me, I fall out of my tube and can't get back in. Then my tube refuses to float with the current. With some undignified flapping I finally get it moving but for some reason I am moving very slowly. The current carries the rest of the group around the bend and out of sight.

But it's so beautiful. Weeping willows bend over the water and flower petals float along next to me. I pass frantically waving children and women washing clothes in the river, naked toddlers frolicking beside them. My tube carries me directly into two rocks and then backwards against the current. Surely an impossible feat. We all jump out about half an hour down river and walk back to the bridge. The heat seeps up from the rocky path. Butterflies flitter around all over the place, birds are tweeting, and it is ridiculously picturesque. We arrive back at the bridge, at which point we are cordially invited to jump off. It is 10 metres high above a rushing river - oh HELL no.

After most of the group risks their necks plunging into the river, we finally arrive at Semuc Champey park, the whole reason for me being in Lanquin and getting so brutally chomped in the first place. "Semuc Champey" is Q'ich'e for "place where the river passes underground", and consists of a 300 metre-long natural limestone bridge, across the top of which is a series of stepped limestone pools. The water in the pools ranges from a rich deep green to a pale pale blue. It is ridiculously clear and beautiful and perfect for swimming. The forested valley walls rise steeply above it and the humidity is so thick you can almost see it, solidifying the air.

Three of us go for a difficult vertical hike up several hundred stairs to a lookout. You try hiking in wet thongs. It's like strapping two live wriggling fish to your feet. After working up a sufficient sweat in the steamy heat we decide that that is quite enough exertion for one day, and trot back down again for a swim. We run into California Joe, a guy who would be quite at home if he had to eke out an existence in the wilderness for the rest of his life, whittling poison darts and building thatched-roofed shelters. "Check it out," Joe says, "Under this overhang you can actually see where the river passes under the bridge." It is pretty impressive.

I try to get around the wooden railing to have a photo taken. "Sorry señorita, but you can't go there," says a young park ranger with an enormous roll of rope slung over his shoulder. "It's very dangerous." I give him my best smile. "Please? Not even just here? Just for one little photo?" He shakes his head. "No, really, you can't." I move forward. "But really it will be fine, I promise, just one little photo here, I won't fa--" BAM! My thongs lose their grip on the wet limestone and I fall over hard, cutting up my right arm and smashing my camera. It won't turn on. And don't I feel like an idiot. Why, God? How long are you going to keep punishing me? Weren't the bedbug bites enough?

The ranger takes a look at my bloody arm. "Shit," he says sympathetically in English, presumably for greater emphasis. "Shit, shit." Yes, I agree. All I can do is take a healing dip in the limestone pool. It is raining lightly, rippling the surface of the water, and it is blissfully cool. There are hundreds of tiny fish that, if you stay very still, swim up and nibble your feet and legs, feeding off dead skin cells. Isn't this a beauty treatment in Asia? It tickles terribly.

Joe wants to use his goggles in the pool to do some underwater filming, but for some reason the ranger won't let him. "Will you ask him why not?" Joe asks me. I do. "It is prohibited," the ranger says imperiously. But why? "We don't allow anything unnatural in the park. No smoking, no goggles." Oooookay... Joe is such an American. Just barging into Guatemala and expecting to dirty the water with his poison-dipped goggles. Shame on him. The DEET content of my bug spray would be more harmful to the water than goggles, but what do I know? I'm not a Guatemalan park ranger.

After an hour or so we all straggle back to the truck and rumble slowly up the road to El Retiro. The compound is renowned for its huge buffet dinners -all you can eat will set you back about $6 and the food is scrumptious and bountiful. Everyone eats at three long tables like school camp for adults. The afternoon thunderstorm has lashed the area ferociously and the power is out, so we eat by candlelight.

After dinner I spray my entire body with toxic chemicals and clamber into a hammock - I have moved into a large wall-less palapa where seven of us hang suspended in hammocks, cocooned away from the bugs. Life is pretty good, I have to admit, despite my relentless attacks of bad karma and misadventure. My hammock-mates and I swing gently in the breeze, listening to the rush of the river and the symphony of cicadas as the lighting flashes silently on the horizon.

Guatemala: Bums, Satanists, and Maximón at the Lago de Atitlán

Friday 14 June, 2009

Today I woke up to an eerie quiet. For the first time since arriving in San Pedro de Atitlán three days ago, I do not hear the San Pedro high school marching band enthusiastically rehearsing. They had their big show last night for the school fundraiser and now my morning feels all off. I overslept, in fact, because I didn't have them to trumpet me into consciousness. Fortunately, I have the song committed to memory, given that they played it over and over and over again, so if I get nostalgic I can just hum it to myself until I go mad.


I'm staying in a town that teeters on the volcanic edge of the spectacular Lago de Atitlán, in the southern central highlands of Guatemala. The lake is the deepest in Central America, formed by a caldera and ringed by volcanoes. The water is perfectly blue, the villages are farming towns of traditional-dress-wearing Maya, and the vibe is chilled in the extreme. I have already made friends with a local drunk, Alfredo, who hangs out on the main street and insists on gripping hugging and kissing me every time I pass. "Hola preciosa, where have you been all my life, when will you have a drink with me?" He's really very sweet, despite the smell of liquor that assails me from a metre away whenever we meet.

Of course, he's never seen my eye.

Last night I woke up at about 3am by water dripping onto my mattress and realised that the exposed pipes over my head could not handle the seasonally torrential rain. They were dripping insistently. And loudly. A quarter of my double bed was soaked. Further investigation revealed a huge spreading damp patch across one wall. My room smelt of mould. Delicious. There was nothing I could do other than put a towel under the drip, go top to toe and try to sleep. I was not successful.

In the morning, I packed my bag, looked up "leak", "pipes" and "wet" in my dictionary (my Spanish vocabulary not extending yet to housing crises and poor plumbing) and went to reception to ask to change rooms. Success!

Even greater success: my bung eye, which was swollen completely shut yesterday, is slowly unswelling. I can actually see out of it a bit today, but I don't lose my head in all the excitement and deal with reception with my sunnies firmly on.

An old man with no voicebox with a machete casually slung over one shoulder directs me to the docks and I hop on a boat across the lake to the largest lakeside community, Santiago de Atitlán. My flat-bottomed boat thumps its way across the water, ruffled by wind. It hurts. Next to me two Mayan women with baskets full of produce yammer away in the beautifully arrhythmic Tz'utujil dialect. Clouds collect around the craters of the lakeside volcanos and as we draw closer to the town I can see children playing by the docks and shirtless old men pensively smoking cigars, untangling fishing nets.

Upon arrival I am immediately surrounded by an alarming horde of kids asking if I want to go see Maximón (pronounced Ma-shee-mon), a local deity. Of course I do, but I can't let my guard down for a second because these kids are sharks who will unhesitatingly fleece me if I let them.

"How much?" I ask one boy, as the others peel off.

"Ah, no problem, we can work it out afterwards," he says nonchalantly.

"Uh uh," I tell him. "Let's work it out now."

He's cagey and reluctant to name a price. Finally, he asks me how much I think his guide services are worth.

"10Q," I tell him.

He gasps theatrically. "No! 40Q!" he demands... and we're off. After some fierce haggling while walking up the hill, my little friend extolling the value of the tour he's about to give me ("Maximón AND church AND markets! And I'll explain to you the history of them all!") We settle on 15Q.

Andrés is ten years old and looks about eight. He is extremely smart. I ask him what the deal is with this Maximón character. "He's just our saint," he shrugs.

We arrive at an anonymous house and enter, greeting the occupants. Maximón is set up in the tiled garage with a room to himself. He's a creepy-looking wooden midget, wearing black patent leather shoes, a muumuu made of dozens of silk scarves, a porkpie hat, and has a cigar propped into his mouth.

Anthropologists think he is some combination of the Mayan god Mam, Judas, and Pedro de Alvarado (the Spanish conqueror of Guatemala). Despite this pedigree (or perhaps because of it) Maximón has distinctly human vices - the cigar for one, along with a fondness for liquor, a hole in his mouth enabling his followers to pour spirits in - and his devotees believe that prayers for revenge or success at the expense of others, are more likely to be granted by Maximón than any other saint. He understands his followers' lower instincts, and he sympathises... or maybe it's that he gets a kick out of the mayhem that ensues. He moves house once a year in a procession during Holy Week, which is a protective measure put in place to stop any one local family amassing too much power. Being Maximón's caretaker is a great honour, and that responsibility is taken very seriously.

Andrés and I chill out with Maximón for a while, and then I give him some money. One can not come to visit empty-handed, and donations buy him his favourite Payaso smokes. It's silly but I could swear his little carved eyes follow me. Maybe he's wondering what happened to my eye.

Andrés and I mosey on over to the cathedral. It was founded in 1547 and we practice saying this in Spanish, French and English. Andrés' first language is Tz'utujil. He also speaks Spanish and some 'Israel': "Shalom! Shalom!"

The cathedral is very simple, with whitewashed walls and wooden pews. The walls are lined with wooden carved saints in the style of Maximón, wearing muumuu-type scarves as dresses, and piratical bandannas. There are quite a few midget saints. Needless to say, I am digging Guatemala's take on religion.

Next up is a visit to the market, where Andrés knows everyone and is clearly in cahoots with them all, motormouthing in Tz'utujil because they don't want me to understand that they were discussing how much money they could possibly extract from me. This is one persuasive kid but today I will not be swayed.

We sit on a kerb outside a weavings store and my little guide asks me to write a list of useful Spanish/English phrases for his older sister. We have a long list, which includes such goodies as "Hola/Hello", "Cuánto cuesta/how much", and "Would you like to go and see Maximón?" The man running the store is a Guatemalan in his forties, and he stands by us quietly repeating the English phrases to himself. "Hello. Hello. How much?" I'm proud of my students' progress.

Andrés practices his favourite sentence all the way back down to the docks: "Would you like to go and see Maximón?" He keeps asking me to repeat it for him and I remind him that he doesn't have to worry, he has the list in his pocket.

"I don't know how to read," he finally admits. He is one smart and enterprising kid, and I'm even more amazed at his ability to learn the snippets of English that he already has down pat. When I had asked him earlier about school he dodged my questions. "I'm going later in the afternoon," he said vaguely. But I realised that he wasn't attending school at all, or at least not often. He was making good money for his family working as a guide and in all likelihood would never be in a position to receive a proper education and create more options for himself. I pay him extra and even buy a little beaded doodad that he's selling. He takes my extra cash coolly as though it is his due.

He sits on the boat with me and a couple of other kids and we pass around my Skittles and watch an Israeli guy in pyjama pants tie a bandanna around his tangle of hair. He's wearing an assortment of tacky hippy necklaces and is burnt so brown from too many years in the sun that his skin has taken on a leathery charred quality. He has a pair of binoculars and hands them around to all the children to peer through.

"Yeah man, my mother is American-Israeli and my father is from Israel too. I grew up here in Guatemala and I have three passports. This is my home. See that island over there? Here, use my binoculars. That island is mine, man. See my swimming pool? You can come over and swim any time you want. Why do I need a pool when I have the lake? Well, it's tiled. I go fishing on the rocks with my buddies - see those rocks, there? Those ones. How old do you think I am? twenty-seven, twenty-eight, huh? I turned thirty-six two days ago. Fuck yeah, it was my birthday. I was in the army for a long long time. I worked for Mossad and the CIA. See this tattoo? It's from Mossad. I have two coffee fincas as well, here on the lake. Fuck yeah, man. I love Guatemala. I have a boat as big as this ferry but I like to take the ferry, I like to be with other people. When I stay in San Pedro I sleep on the boat. Fuck yeah, man, it's cool. My brother and I, we fly our helicopter here from Guatemala City. It's not far, like two hours maybe, and we land it right on the lake, fuck yeah, man!"

I am beginning to suspect that this guy Joshua might perhaps be a little bit loopy. "San Marcos, fuck yeah, man! It's my favourite town. Naked girls on the beach... I want to live there! Come visit with me!"

I manage to extricate myself and spend the rest of the boat ride playing with a little Mayan girl and taking her picture. I am apprehensive about getting to close to any of the local kids here. There have been some unfortunate misunderstandings between tourists and the local Maya population in recent years in Guatemala. In 2000, in a village not far from the lake, A Japanese tourist who comforted a crying child was killed along with his driver. Crowds were agitated by rumours of satanists operating in the area. Further north near Cobán, a woman photographing children was lucky to escape alive when a hysterical crowd apparently became convinced that she wanted children's organs for transplant operations.

I keep glancing at the mother to make sure that she's not planning to hack me to pieces when we dock but she seems quite happy for me to distract her baby.

When the boat docks I wander up the hill to a cafe that serves the most amazing smoothies, and have a chat with the two guys who work there, whom I've befriended. I am drinking a Mono Loco - chocolate ice cream, banana, and peanut butter all blended together. It's the size of my head and totally delicious and costs about $3. I tell Phil about Joshua the Israeli.

"Oh that guy, he's full of shit," Phil says, wiping down the counter. "He's a lunatic. He has a different story every day. Last night he got drunk and got into a fight with the police and they dragged him off. He was throwing beer bottles all over the street, pissing everyone off. It never sticks, though. He always comes back."

I look out the window. I see Joshua walking up the hill with his garbage bag of possessions, his binoculars slung around his neck. At that moment, the clouds that have been threatening all day finally unleash a downpour upon us, and Joshua dances through the rain, face upturned, splashing all the way down the road and around the corner until I can no longer see him.