Guns, Knives and Short People

On the next brief stop-off from the high speed journey from San Cristobal to Belize, Lou and I booked onto a tour to pay a lightning visit to Agua Azul, a collection of Very Blue Waterfalls that had been reccommended by numerous people. Shooting past campesinos heavily laden with wood who trudged along the side of the paved roads in our air conditioned tour bus with tinted windows I felt the vestiges of a sinking feeling. The feeling grew to a nagging discomfort as we arrived at Agua Azul to find a series of well paved walkways between different "viewing galleries", crowded with tourists merrily elbowing each other out of the way to get their perfect photographs.

Persevering despite growing negativity, we continued up the hill alongside the sections of the falls with the hope that the vast majority of photo-goons would not see the value in trying to break crowd mentality. Hope became smugness as the paths became empty the further away from the carpark we got and we soon found ourselves trotting along beside electric blue water bordered by jungle and lush green banks.

Within five minutes our blissful wanderings brought us to a chap lounging by the side of the path wearing a "rural tourist police" t-shirt with a radio strapped to his belt, in the process of informing a Dutch couple that they couldn't go any further up the track. Fortunately for all concerned, my 6 months of spanish practise allowed me to talk with him and ascertain that it would be fine to go up the track, provided that he remained with us as an escort. With smiles all round and the smugness building, we continued to the end of the track where a large, foreboding sign proclamed that we we premitted to go no further, UNDER ANY CIRUMSTANCES. Merrily casting aside all possesions on the tiny fine sand riverside beach to be warily watched by our police friend, we tumbled into the water and spent the next half hour splashing around, basking on the large stones that sustained the small section of waterfall and throwing ourselves into the rapids to be spat out spluttering in the calmer waters.

Eventually following the example of the Dutch couple we retreated to the beach to towel off when, in a rather surreal moment, I looked up to see four figures heading out of the jungle in a running crouch; from the fact that they were all wearing either balaclavas or hankerchiefs over their faces and carrying rifles and machetes, I quickly ascertained that it was unlikely that we'd just recieved participants for a picnic. In a moment of uncharacteristic lucidity I threw Lou's waterproof camera behind me into the shallows with the knowledge that we were, at the very least, about to lose all our possesions. Meanwhile one of the group had taken up position next to our guard (whose radio proved to be a somewhat ineffective measure against a firearm) and had the barrel of a rife tucked against his skull. Our attentions were immediately directed elsewhere, however, as a remarkably short assailant with a knife that would have made even Crocodile Dundee think twice arrived within chopping distance and informed us in as many words that we would do very well to give him a lot of money.

With visably trembling fingers the Dutch couple handed over 1500 pesos and were relieved of their camera, pleading for the memory card and trying to enlist my help to get our diminutive new best friend to take the time to locate the card slot, perform the complicated operation of extraction (which would require self-disarmament to facilitate the use of both hands) and allow them the gift of the 300 photos that were stored. My Spanish capabilites, already somewhat under stress from the situation, ground to a halt as I briefly considered and then discarded my capacity as bi-lingual negotiator. Aside from dynamics of practicality with their issue, I was also distracted by the worsening problems of Lou and I; having run our financial resources slowly down in anticipation of leaving the country and transferring currency we only had 120 pesos, not deemed a sufficient enough haul for the risk undergone through armed robbery. Drawing himself up to his full height of almost my nose level, our masked aquantence took Lou's day bag from the ground, rifling though it and growing incresingly frustrated as he encountering items of value such as personal journals, mobile phone chargers and ladies personal effects. With a noise of frustration somewhere between a grunt and a squeak, he scuttled off cradling Lou's bag, the camera and money to retreat to the safety of distance where the rest of his companions were waiting, presumably with the mentality that somewhere in the bag, eventually, he would encounter untold riches and ignoring my jumbled requests to return something of little value but great importance, during which I'm pretty sure I accidently referred to him as a "señora".

Sadly for us, the bag contained Lou's passport. Without the benefit of time to reorganize her stuff, this cruicial jigsaw piece of our Belizian picture was disappearing into the undergrowth in the hands of a group who almost certainly had absolutely no use for it. And disappear it did, leaving our slightly shell shocked group standing on the small crescent of sand criss crossed with the footprints of the past couple of minutes. Our wide eyed guard leapt from the log on which he'd been sitting and let fly with a tumbling stream of terrified language, disavowing all responsibility, blaming our actions, cursing all and sundry for the ill luck and the looming possiblity of their imminent return.

With eyes cast fearfully towards the opening in the foliage we collected the scattered remenants of our belongings; mercifully our wallets had been left, containing our identification and bank cards to finance the impending lengthly administrative process of insurance claims and obtaining a new passport that sat like a black cloud in the back of our minds; the Dutch couple through a blessed twist of fate had managed to retain their bag which contained both their passports and wallets; I retrieved the camera from the shallows of the river, a minor triumph that would prove to be short lived when it would, at some point, slip from the bundle that I was carrying and fall to the trail never to be found again; and began the walk back down the hill past groups running the other way driven by radio alerts that had come too late, to a new and painful phase to our freshly begun travels.

Palenque

9th July 2009