Motorbike Excitement

Our friend Fredy has two motorbikes, and in an act of generosity that surprised me even by the incredibly high standards that Lou and I had experienced in Vilcabamba thus far, lent me the keys to his 4 month old Honda so that we could ride up the valley to Vilcabamba Real to see the sights, based on my obviously insubstantial comments that it had been "about 3 years since I last rode a bike"; try 7 years (and that was for 2 days...)

After a bit of mangling the clutch to get going and a few stalls, we wound our way up the mountain, Lou wisely riding pillion behind Fredy instead of me. My face, according to Lou, set in a grim mask of concentration, I wove the bike around muddy switchbacks occasionally cutting out the engine with my ineptitude, Fredy waiting patiently for me at sporadic points up the hill, seemingly unconcerned with the damage I must have been doing to his engine.

It was all worth it though; the motorbike buzz soon overcame the fear, and I got better at the gear changes. Before long we were zooming along tracks in the back end of nowhere, crossing river fords swollen with rain and dodging languid dogs in little towns as we navigated the rutted and winding streets. Eventually we ended up at a the top of a waterfall at some incredible altitude overlooking a lush mountain pasture being grazed by cows, whose owners were hiding from the driving rain under ponchos, balefully staring at the manifestation of a pending task and chewing coca leaves to delay the inevitable.

Vilcabamba, Peru
20th December 2009

The Monthly Shopping Trip

Mule train; if you stand in one spot in Vilcabamba for acoupleof hours, a ton of these will go past,entering the village unladen and leaving as you see, with tarp-wrapped bundles containing sugar, flour and rice (and,occasionally according to our friend Fredy, a few kilos of coca paste intended for dishonourable uses),staplesthat do not existin the far flung corners of the mountain region, and that the incoming drivers trade in exchange for the potatoes that they carry from their fields; cash features in no part of this process.

Stopping one of the drivers, I asked where he was going. "Choquequirau", came the answer. "But that's eight days away!", I responded. "We can do it in three", he replied, before turning and trudging away up the path to the hills (crossing the Inca bridge out of town), beginning his three day walk, the midway point of a six day shopping trip.

Try to remember that next time you throw a strop in Waitrose when you can't get the balsamic vinegar that you were after...

Vilcabamba, Peru
19th December 2009

Ancient Civilization 1, Peruvian Government 0

This is one of the two bridges leading from Huancacaya to the Rosaspata ruins. It's Inca design, stone support pillars holding up a structure of heavy wooden beams and wooden cross struts. It's been outside the community for hundreds of years.

The photo is taken from a big concrete bridge, built in the last 10 years, painted in the blue and white colours that feature on all municipally funded projects. No-one uses the big, expensive concrete bridge. The spanning section is made of sheet metal, supported by thin, springy metal rods,that make it bounce when you walk over it. This means that mule trains, which constitute the majority of passing traffic and form the purpose for such a bridge, can't use it. They use the Inca one next to it.

Vilcabamba, Peru
19th December 2009

Up, Down and Around in The Sacred Valley

With the parents gone, Lou and I have joined forces once again, heading out for the archeological site of Pisac. Passing fairly rapidly through the Sunday market that purveys a range of near identical handicrafts at each stall, we wheezed up the selection of terraces that consistute the bottom of the site, expecting to reach the top...about five or six times.

The site was huge, winding its way around the hillsides that look down into the sacred valley, of which the settlement was once the capital city. Dizzying drops looked down from impossibly constructed buildings, clinging to sheer rockfaces. The site was spectacular and endless, a truely pleasant surprise, even if my legs needed a couple of days afterwards to ride out the beating they took.

Pisac, Peru
30th November 2009

All For Naught

Wandering around the broken-tooth fortifications of Saqsaywaman outisde Cuzco with Dad and reading about how the Spaniards had torn down the impossibly engineered stone walls to build their own houses, Dad mentioned a poem that sprang to mind about the inevitable ravaging of time on empires and the men who founded them, no matter how mighty they once were. After a short bit of internet digging the poem was found, and by crikey it's a good one.

"Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Cuzco, Peru
20th November 2009

Getting High in Trains

Rocking gently out of Lima, the classic train route to Huancayo crawls steadily up stunning mountain scenery along a narrow gauge overlooking precipitous drops.

Options are for the "classic" (re: cramped and uncomfortable) or "tourist" (reclining seats, glass carriage roofs, bar inhabited by girating Peruvian college tourism students etc.) cars, guess which one I ended up in. Almost worth the saving of three or four quid...but not quite.

Topping out at over 15,000 feet above sea level, the brief exit from the train permitted by the staff in order to take photos of the second highest railway station in the world (damn those ambitious Chinese) is a slightly light-headed affair, feeling throughly slapped around by the altitude.

Huancayo, Peru

7th November 2009

Ze Germans

Every once in a while you see something that pushes your comprehension of what is possible; such was my visit to German-run Nicaraguan coffee plantation/farm/tourism project Selva Negra.

Handed down from generations of German immigrants, the coffe farm eventually arrived in the hands of the current owners, Eddy and Mausi Kühl. In an attempt to realise more value from the land that they owned they built cabins for sale on plots but nobody wanted to buy, only rent; thus the tourism project was born.

In recent decades they've focussed on trying to make operations as sustainable as possible and, with typical German efficiency, absolutely knocked the ball out of the park.Suffice to say this posting could not begin to scratch the surface of the systems that have been put in place at Selva Negra; only the 100 page visitors guide book can do that. However, to try and give you an example or two; all whey from the cheese processing plant on the farm is fed to the free range pigs, as it contains the right nutrients for a good diet; worker housing is provided along with schooling facilities, a medical clinic, personal kitchens supplied with gas stoves (fuelled by methane, the product of biodigested coffee bean parchment waste) and festivals in order to keep employee retention high and maintain commitment; plastic bottles are reused to house an organic pesticide to prevent coffee cherry mites reducing quality of their crop...the list just goes on and on.

If you've thought of something that could be done to improve sustainability, chances are that these guys have already done it. If they haven't, they're working on it. And they're STILL coming up with new solutions for reducing waste, making sure that a use is found for everything. They've got staff (locals, of course) working in an on-site lab finding organic resources available from the diverse range of operations on the farm so that they could be used to try and improve coffee yields, or the diet of the animals.The result? From a farm of over 400 livestock, a coffee plantation with 200 employees and a tourist resort that accommodates up to 150 guests (and freqently does), the amount of waste generated in a week is equivalent to a 55 gallon drum.

One interesting side of the coin with Selva Negra is that they are not affiliated in any way with Fair Trade, even though their coffee is Rainforest Alliance certified and conforms to organic standards. It has the obviously incompatible status of being a private plantation, small scale producer cooperatives being the primary recipient of FT benefits, but it is heart-warming to see people taking independent initiative outside mainstream schemes to provide a good quality of life for their workforce. It also brings into focus a tough question that should be consistently asked of accredited Fair Trade businesses; how much social benefit is the elevated and stabilised 'fair' sales price (that everyone talks so much about) directly having on the farmers that it aims to help?

Leon, Nicaragua

20th October 2009

Coffee Bean Connoisseurs

Selecting only the finest beans for the harvest with Marlon in the coffee finca, Sontule.

Marlon lives and works with his family in Sontule in the Miraflor region, a couple of hours outside Esteli in the North West of Nicaragua, where buses only occasionally venture along the bumpy, suspension destroying road. Most inhabitants get there and back by horseback, or foot. A selection of children, dogs (one of which is confusingly called Chicken), chickens, the house pig (called, you've guessed it, Dog) and family members wander in and out over the dirt floors of his home over the course of the day.

Marlon (on the right) is a lovely chap with a great big smile and one of the key members of the local coffee cooperative and tourism project, which in their respective ways aim to bring a sustainable income to the community.

Lou and I visited for a couple of days on the tourism program after the reccommendations of friends Simon and Rachel, as Simon is teaching English in the community school a couple of days a week. Pottering around the stunning landscape of rural Nicaragua, empty out of season coffee beneficios (processing plants) and the various houses of relatives with Marlon, we were absolutely delighted with the friendliness of the people and tried as best we could to adjust to simple country living in our homestay, campesino-style for the weekend.

Sontule, Miraflor, Nicaragua
3rd October 2009

A Holiday From The Beach

The swell fled the pacific coastline, and with it left the surfing population of El Tunco, scattering to Honduras, Nicaragua and Guaremala. Far from keen to sit in the heat and insect clouds to savour the delights of a flat spell, I decided that a break from beach living was in order. A couple of sweaty bus connections inland from la libertad, the small town of Sushitoto resides beside lake X, a quaint colonial bubble seemingly unscarred by the groping claws of tourism. Languid mornings at breakfast in the central town square give no indication of foreign traffic, circumstances mirrored by wanderings around the town.

I arrived in the company of Sandra and Nico, Swiss and Argentinian and we checked into the tiny hostel Vista de Lago, that justified its name with stunning views over the lake from the comfort of hammocks, where I proceeded to spend long hours dangling and lazily shifting my gaze between my book and the landscape, occasionally distracted by the friendly hostel dog, El Oso, as he requested affection. Days were spent pottering to various waterfalls and streams to swim and cool off, the most impressive being El Cubo, a secluded range of falls and pools tucked inside sheer cliffs with a resident population of bats thankfully keeping the local mosquito population down. Everywhere we followed water, the streams, rivers and lakes bore thepresensce of litter, a sobering reminder of the price of progress (ie consuming more non decomposing products) without the stability of infrastructure to prevent fly tipping all over the incredible natural landscape around us.

Electricity in the evenings disappeared for hours at a time during fierce storms that rattled the town, the locals cheerfully going about business as usual in complete darkness with water pooling underfoot. Regular evenings at the local pupuseria (purveyor of the national staple food, pupusas) were conducted frequently by torch and candlelight as we shovelled red hot steaming pupusas into our hungry mouths. On each of these suppertime trips we were accompanied and guarded without prompting by El Oso, who sat faithfully outside during mealtimes and charged snarling towards any locals who he deemed a threat to us, namely everyone.

Sushitoto, El Salvador
1st September 2009

Living In The Shade

My current base of operations from which I point myself towards various beaches can best be defined as the "cheap and cheerful" end of the spectrum. Run by a pair of very amiable San Salvadorian brothers, Jose and Mauricio, La Sombra tends to attract the slightly more laid back crowd, leaving the partying to the other end of the collection of hostels that is spread along the beachfront from the main road up to the rivermouth. Home to a trillion mosquitos, funky odours from the septic tank, sporadic and untimely noise from the construction site of a more upmarket hostel in progress and the most damp smelling couches in the history of mankind sheltered under a leaking palapa in the tv area, the place is still held in fond regard by its owners, guests and various passers through, myself included.

El Tunco, El Salvador
25th August 2009

Morning Time In El Tunco

My alarm cheerfully sounds its irritating reminder at 5:30 in the morning; rising groggily from my slumber I haphazardly rub a fresh layer of wax on my board and slip out of the front gate of my hostel, La Sombra, sleepwalking down to the beachfront and tread heavily along the black sand, heading for the local point, Sunzal. The water is warm as I wade in and climb onto my board for the paddle out, creaking shoulders grumbling at the injustice of it all. As I get further out, the dark walls of water rising out of the distance change shade, glassy and orange as I pull myself through the smooth, liquid surface.

I reach the takeoff, where the waves rear up and begin their final rumbling phase of their long journey and pull myself up to sitting on my board, my shoulders aching. Looking out to sea, dark clouds frame the horizon, forked lightning jumping down to strike the distant liquid line at the edge of the world, thunder rumbling across the miles. I turn and look towards the shore to see the sunrise seeping around the clouds, a thick golden blend of colour that sarurates everything it touches, bathing the landscape, the water and the two solitary surfers who have dragged themselves up at an equally unsociable hour in an incredible light. I turn back to sea and wait, watching as a bulge in the water thickens and rears up in front of me as I turn and coax a few more paddling strokes out of my shoulders, feeling the wave take me as I rise to my feet and drop smoothly down its glassy face, heading back the way I came, into the sunrise.

El Tunco, El Salvador
19th August 2009

Paddling Out

"I guess we to in here?" one of my Australian companions suggests, lacking the certainty that I'd hope for. Thirty feet of rounded boulders covered in scratchy marine plantlife stand between us and the thundering point break of Punta Roca just outside the main beach of La Libertad, which periodically disappear from view as the whitewater from the waves powerfully surges over the rocks. With boards underarm, we skip from rock to rock and brace ourselves every time a wave comes crashing across our path, like a game of statues but with serious consequences as the black specks of surfers already in the line up observe us with interest. I survive 3 waves until my feet are swept out from under me and I am dragged across ten feet of cheese grating stone, almost totalling one of my fellow rock hoppers, frantically cradling my board against possible injury while sections of my skin are removed. Gently bleeding into the water, I brace myself against rocks and heave back into a standing position, preparing to attempt the same distance for the second time.

"There's someone getting in over there" someone says, and suddenly everyone freezes, 3 pairs of eyes swivelling to follow the progress of a lone figure hopping across a section further down the same unrelenting rocky point. As we watch, he totters to shin depth and waits, crouching, asa wave breaks and the white water hammers towards him. As it arrives within feet, he leaps over the jumbled heap of foam and paddles furiously out to sea, sucked sideways by the after tow until, finally released, he slogs his way out of the churned up inside section and duck dives through the advancing waves that follow. Within minutes we are, with varying degrees of success, following his example, bouncing between rocks and off the shallow bottom in a frantic flap out to sea, which eventually rewards us with the welcome experience of waves that don't break on our heads as we sit in the lineup.

"We weren't supposed to get in at that spot, were we?", one of my group asks another surfer as we sit waiting for one of the grinding sets of waves to come through. "Nah man," comes the reply, "but we thought you must be Brazilians." After a brief pause, he adds, almost by way of explanation, "They alway end up getting into macho shit like that."

El Tunco, El Salvador
17th August 2009

Gwan Snarklin

The Belizian Cayes, and in particular Caye Caulker, did everything that they could to cultivate and sustain the Caribbean stereotype. Life never raised above a saunter, everything was haphazardly contructed of misaligned wood and one of the girls in our party was duly informed by local pedestrians that she was "wahkin like a champion".

Inadvertantly pursuing the textbook experience further, we booked onto a snorkelling trip towards the outer reef provided by Ragamuffin Tours. The twenty or so tourists that gathered at the alloted departure time, ranging in skin palette from light brown to pink were split into two groups, each of which were dispatched to a 40ft wooden sailing boat. Our bright red vessel for the day, the Ragga Queen, was helmed by Captain Raf who gave the sort of safety briefing that would start convusions in UK health and safety exectives and shortly afterwards we motored away from the jetty.

Within minutes the Captain turned on the stereo, surprisingly to reveal that the music of choice was...reggae. "Does anybody nut like de reggae?" he asked the assembled passengers. No response was elicited. "Well den," he continued, "if nuhbody like it, tell meh and I turn it up."

The whole experience turned out to be absolutely fantastic. Over the course of the day we were dropped into three different uncrowded spots, allowing us to glide among shoals of fish that seemed completely indifferent to our existence, nurse sharks that snaked over the shallow bottom hunting out unfortunate fish and scrapping unashamedly with one another for the remains some feet away from us, manta rays, a solitary manatee (much to the delight of our female contingent, and the disgust of Tim, who was looking the other way at the time) that mournfully flapped off into the distant underwater twilight, and a colourful and strange array of coral.

The abundence and variety of marine life was astounding, especially for a place where the through traffic of unskilled snorkellers must have been enormous, and the potential for destruction and exploitation of the natural resources huge. Without ever seeming uptight, the staff on the tour gently sheparded us between and around locations without relenting to the measures that seem to be repeatedly resorted to in order to sate tourist greed; there was no evidence of infrastructre around the reef, or of littering. It also never seemed that we were being herded along a well trodden route, recipients of a fairly sanitized and templated tour, the presence of our fellow boat passengers never being felt as overbearing and the quantities of dive boats at sites never exceeding a couple.

Somewhat sun fried and giggly from the strong rum punch that we'd been supplied with and steadily drowning in after the last dive, we arrived under sail to the jetty from whence we came. All drunken promises to exact a rampage upon the town in the evening rapidly disintegrated as the effects of a full day in tropical sun and the booze set in, sending us to our beds in our small, lopsided wooden shacks at a disgracefully early hour.

Caye Caulker, Belize
18th July 2009

Trouble for Big Blue

With the reflections of human impact on ocean environment still prevalent in my mind, a couple of pertenant things landed in my inbox, which did very little to improve my mood; the first an article from one of my favourite subscriptions, the National Geographic writer John Bowermaster about the recent effects of rampant "eco" tourism on an increasingly fragile Galapagos Islands, and the second about the latest sensationalist film about the destructive power of humans on natual resource, this time covering the effects of overfishing.

Always slightly grumpy about the haphazard and fairly diffuse of the "eco" label by tourism outfits, this latest dispatch serves to distance me yet again from seeing intelligent, sustainable and considered tourism as a possiblity. Check out the trailer.

Hailed as "The Inconvenient Truth About the Oceans" by the Economist (a debatably good association), the film "End of the Line" was released on June 12th and seems to be garnering a fair amount of interest. Based on the book by Charles Clover, the film looks at the effects of the commerical fishing industry and, draws some fairly sobering conclusions.



Despite best efforts and a nice relaxing break in Bacalar next to the impressive Languna de Siete Colores (Lake of 7 colours), morale is low and we remain keen to cross the border and escape to Belize, where necessary but gloomy revalations about the capacity of humans to systematically ruin things can be shelved for a while.

Chetumal
15th July 2009

Killing Time

So, after an excruciating day of trailing around Palenque town performing administative duties required to eventually get a new passport from the British Embassy in Cancun, Lou and I wearily put ourselves on the next bus to the captial of Quintana Roo, Chetumal. This dusty and soul-less town sits on the border with Belize, and would form our base for time unspecified as the dynamic forces of the Embassy processed Lou's passport application. After a single night, we realised that we would probably end up killing and eating someone if forced to spend a full week waiting in the same place, thus hiring a car and driving with enthusiasm towards the Carribean coast.

Our point of escape, with no particular form of planning, turned out to be Mahahual. Arriving on a blustery and overcast day, we were greeted to the sight of a deserted town bordered by acres of dead mangroves on one side and a classic carribean sea on the other. Two days was about all we could handle in our slightly fragile state, frustrated by our forced improsonment in Mexico by circumstances; the strangeness of the town was, in our particular state of mind, a bit too much.

Mahahual grew fast from a small fishing village into an overflow point for the more famous beaches to the north of Playa Del Carmen and Tulum, also developing a healthy passing trade in backpacking tourists. Things were going nicely until Hurricane Dean hit in 2007, flattening the entire town and tearing the life out of the mangrove forest that consequently delivered a crushing blow to localised marinelife and ecosystems. Since then life slowly recovered and Mahauhual regained some form of income as a cruise ship stopover, with up to 5000 people simultaneously flooding the tiny town at sporadic moments to come ashore, engage in drunken debauchary along the seafront and return back to their cabins after some hours. This, no doubt, was instrumental in breeding a very predeatory feeling to the place; one could not escape the sense that the locals watched you like hawks as you passed; not through curiosity, but sizing you up to see how they could get what they needed from you before you left.

Speaking with Evan, a young Texan expat with verbal diahorrea who was the proud proprietor of a new local bar/restaurant/cabaña setup, another sobering revalation came to pass. At the point of our initial arrival we drove up the coast in a bursting desire for exploration, and noticed a fine skin of rubbish littering the ungroomed aspects of the shoreline outside the main seafront in town.

"I've picked up some of the rubbish to check the labels when I've been wandering around the beach sometimes," explained Evan, "And it always says that it was made in a different country; China, Cuba, Europe, the United States. It never says 'Made in Mexico'".

It was saddening to realise the global impact of negligence in such wide scope, and got me thinking about the footprint of human activity at a time that was already more gloomy. Turning the car around and heading back inland, we once again began the search for a place to put our feet up for a few days, recuperate from our traumas and wait.

Chetumal
11th July 2009

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

Ruined

Reflecting on the swift dash from the oven temperature depths of Chiapas to the Belizian redezvous with friends, it seemed somewhat daft to ignore the archelogical heavyweight of Palenque that I would be bussing straight past. Thus after a late night drop off in the tourist friendly spot of El Panchan, tucked neatly into the edge of the jungle in the amaiably run "Jungle Palace" collection of cabañas, I found myself lulled to sleep by the noisy chorus eminating from the foliage, hinting fears of the army of mosquitos that were no doubt poised to breach the cube of mosquito netting in which I was installed and drain me dry.

Fortunately the night passed without failure of my defense measures, and Lou and I found ourselves shuttled rapidly over the well greased path to the ruins by colectivo that hundreds of thousands of tourists had worn down over the years. Despite fears that we would be two heads in a vast seething crowd of tours, the site was really quiet. The ease of access and slick measures at the ticket booths for entry hinting at a much higher expected level of traffic and, coherent with experience elsewhere, showed the fairly devastating effect that negative public relations of swine flu and drug wars has exacted upon national tourism.

I wasn't complaining; wandering without aim around the site having given the brush off to countless offers of paid guidance was an impressive experience. They estimate that only 5% of the already vast site has been discovered and excavated to some degree, and that much was evident from the range of buildings on display. From the groomed and towering edifice of the palace, covered with workers chiselling stone, brushing dust and trimming grass, bringing it to as close a state as they dared to demonstrate it's former glory to the tucked away and overgrown residential housing blocks partially swallowed by jungle, the site (intentionally or not) gave a sense of discovery as you moved betwen buildings. The majority of the tourists going no further than the impressive entrance buildings in the main plaza left a sense of isolation, leaving us to duck in and out of the jungle that formed some of the most impressive views of the site as the sprawling ruins of a once powerful civilization did battle with the vegitation that was reclaiming them.

After dispiriting examples of a country's effort to showcase its natural drawcards, Palenque was a site in which I sensed a respect for the area in the way the tourist infrastructure was developed and the place was groomed and maintained. It is encouraging to see that despite some unfortunate reported behaviour of visitors (building guards describing examples of tourists taking stones from structures as keepsakes and using inner chambers as toilets), the keepers of the site have had the capacity to act with a perspective of sustainability, taste and intelligence.

Palenque

8th July 2009