Colour supplement.

I´ve got a bit of a backlog of pictures, so here are a few in no particular order. First of all here´s Marion and Katherine, the half-German half-Scottish sisters. Their German half was delighted to find beer being sold by the litre in Leon, and their Scottish half exhaulted in the fact that it was so cheap. I agreed on both points. This is the cathedral in Leon, which took a hundred years to build, from 1747, and is the largest in Central America. Local legend has it that the city fathers feared the Spanish authorities would refuse such a big project, so they submitted bogus plans showing a much smaller building. When this was approved they went ahead with their grandiose plans. Leon has quite a radical edge to it - it´s very much the heartland of Nicaragua´s socialist traditions. Murals of Che Guevara are all over the place along with monuments to fallen comrades. Below is the Gallery of Heroes and Martyrs, which contains photos of some of the people killed by the Contras - a guerilla army funded for years by the CIA using drug money and cash from illegal arms sales to Iran. Whereas we remember him as a bit of a bumbling old fool, Ronald Reagan is a real bogeyman here. This is Sarah and Lydia at a beach party we hitched to and gatecrashed with Alex and Jeremy, the lads from Canada. Dancing on sand is great fun, but quite difficult. You tend to bore down as you shimmy and become trapped up to the ankles, so the slightest nudge from another dancer sends you toppling over. There was quite a surreal interlude during the evening when the music stopped and two burly blokes ran onto the stage brandishing dildos. They then started putting condoms on their heads and rolling them up their arms - presumably as some sort of AIDS education programme. They didn´t notice when Alex sneaked up onto the stage behind them and started accompanying their bizarre display on the drums. He did a good job too.This is the cathedral in Grenada. Whereas Leon is the spiritual home of the Nicaraguan left, this town has always been much more Conservative. At the moment there are builders everywhere improving roads, refurbishing houses and generally tidying the place up. I could imagine that within a few years this will become a playground for the very rich - it´s already beautiful and it threatens to become blindingly gorgeous.

The Great Sultan

Fate is like a man who works in a kebab shop. As soon as he has stuffed the pitta to bursting point with meat, he leans over the counter and says: "chillie sauce, salad?" At least that´s how it struck me when after having a huge portion of fun I received my chopped cabbage and onion in the shape of two deaths in the family.

On Friday both Grandad Arthur (my last surviving grandparent) and Minnie Minx (a family dog) passed away.

My grandad had been suffering from dementia for some time and had already given up on life when grandma Winnie died several years ago. Losing his mind was always his greatest fear and he often used to say that he wouldn´t want to live like that. I never went to see him after he had slipped into an entirely helpless state, because I´m sure he´d like to be remembered how he was.

He was a wonderful grandfather, with an endless supply of magic tricks, poems and things to do on rainy days. He used to write us stories, often about a little fish called Willy Chubb, who had all sorts of adventures in a river near you. As he told the stories he would slip effortlessly between the different voices for Percy Pike, Eddy Eel, Terence Trout and all the others.

He was also a fantastic link to the past with tales of life in London in the early part of the last century. He told us about the cinemas, which were only silent on the screen. Huge gangs of excited children, him amongst them, would run riot in the stalls cheering and hooting at the adventures of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and all the others. He also remembered the first time he saw a car, and he painted a vivid picture of the sort of grinding poverty he worked so hard to escape - both for himself and his family.

His tale of how he met his wife, grandma, was also vivid - although the details tended to change slightly from time to time. The version I liked best culminated with him walking for miles through a midnight blitz, ignoring the shouts of the air-raid wardens and careless of the buildings exploding to his left and right. Above him searchlights skittered across the black sky, reflecting on the silver barrage balloons that bobbed about in the heavens, while death rained down on every side. When he arrived at his then girlfriend´s house he had to push past her garrulous mother, who never approved of their relationship, and ignore her insults as he fell down on one knee and proposed. All too often life was all too short then, so they married as soon as they could. They chose Christmas Day for their wedding, both to take advantage of the seasonal bombing truce and also to pool their extra rations for a decent buffet of spam fritters, marmite sandwiches and cakes made with powdered eggs and lemon curd.

He had a brilliant mind, and rose to lofty heights as a Freemason, largely due to his incredible ability to memorise endless tracts of the arcane rituals. I think he was often frustrated that he never had the opportunity to make better use of his brain at work. After his father died as a result of injuries picked up in the First World War he was forced to go out to work at the age of 14 to support his mother and brothers. During the Second World War he worked as an aircraft fitter and when peace came he entered the building trade, and played his part in reconstructing a battered nation.

Minnie, on the other hand, spent most of her life sitting on sofas and chasing rats. I think in dog years she was even older than grandad.

Anyway, back to the kebab meat that is the fantastic time I had in Leon. I spent a couple of days in the company of the Scottish-German sisters and their friend Emmanuel. We had a lot of laughs, and I particularly enjoyed a story Katherine, the younger sister, told about her childhood as a tomboy. She had a friend who also wanted to be a boy, so they would cycle around the neighbourhood pretending to be Benjamin and Stephan. But because Katherine´s parents had thoughtlessly bought her a pink bike, they had to rehearse a little scene to fool passers-by. Whenever they saw anybody the friend would call out: "Hey, Benny, why are you riding that pink bike today?" To which Katherine would reply: "Ach! Mine is at home and is broken, so I have had to borrow my little sister´s bike, which I don´t like because I am a boy and it is pink."

They moved on after a couple of days and I changed to a different hostel where I bumped into the two German girls (the actress and film producer, Lydia and Sarah) who I had met with the Belgian in Belize. There were also a couple of guys from Canada, one who was originally from Boston, USA, and the other whose family hailed from the Yorkshire Dales. Somehow, between the five of us, we remained in constant fits of laughter for the best part of three days.

Yesterday the party disbanded as Lydia, Sarah and I headed down to here - The Great Sultan, Granada. This town (yes, an even nicer colonial town on the shore of Lago de Nicaragua, central America´s biggest lake and the only place in world with freshwater sharks) owes its nickname to its Moorish namesake in Spain. It´s an absolutely lovely place. For further details the interested reader should refer to my descriptions of other colonial towns, adding adjectives such as very, incredibly, fantastically and overwhelmingly where appropriate.

Leon, Nicaragua

I´m writing this in the town of Leon, in Nicaragua, where I arrived yesterday. I know I´ve waxed lyrical about quite a few old colonial towns (with cobbled streets, shaded squares and fine architecture), but this place is head and shoulders above the rest. The ambience is so relaxed and the people are so charming, that you can´t help but smile like an idiot most of the time.
Getting here from La Esperanza, on the other hand, was unpleasant and gruelling. The first stop was the capital of Honduras, the impossible-to-pronounce Tegucigalpa - fortunately referred to by most people as Tee-goos. I only discovered this abbreviation after baffling about ten bus drivers with my stuttering attempts at saying the whole thing. When I asked "are you going to tee-goo-ca-goo-gah-picca-ga-alpa?" they just scratched their bellies and raised their eyebrows at each other with looks of sympathy.
Tee-goos is just as nasty as it is hard to say. It´s a mess and a shambles and very dangerous. I arrived late and had to stay over, so I caught a taxi to a hostel run by an American bloke. He had two sets of iron gates at his front door and thick bars stretched all the way over the top of his internal courtyard. To get in you had to ring a bell and wait on the street. He would peek round the corner and look you up and down before scurrying out to unlock the padlocks on the gates and hurrying you in. It was while sitting among all this security, a cross between Wormwood Scrubs and Fort Knox, that he said: "People have the wrong idea about this city. It´s real safe, no problem at all. It´s a great town." He had a local wife who always seemed to be coming and going with shopping bags, and I got the impression he hadn´t stepped out of his front door for years.
I didn´t leave the hostel either, it had a sociable bar so I had a few beers with some Americans and a Honduran bloke called Lenin and turned in early. In the morning I was straight out of there and on my way to here.
At the bus station I bumped into the Scots-German girls, Katherine and Marion, and their friend Emmanuel, who were also heading to Leon. The journey to the border was quite swift and uneventful, we had to catch a bus to some god-forsaken little crossroads town and then transfer to a mini bus. This dropped us off just a few yards from the customs house. Then the fun began.
Borders are always frantic and stressful places, but this one was like an open-air lunatic asylum. As the bus pulled up a phalanx of tricyclists under multi-coloured umbrellas raced towards us and crashed their rickety rickshaws into the side of the bus and started grabbing at us through the windows. As we fought our way off we found ourselves the unwilling subjects of a multi-dimensional tug o´war with hands grabbing our arms, clothes and bags, pulling us this way and that, while demented faces pressed in all around shouting: "come with me, border five kilometers, good bike, where you from, come on, I like Beatles." There were a pair of intrepid grandmothers on our bus, one from Norway and the other from Serbia, who completely disappeared under the mass of spittle-spraying scumbags. Of course, there were also the money changers, and they added to the fun by poking their filthy wads into everybody´s faces. We had been told on the bus by well-meaning locals that the tricycles were necessary, but that you had to drive a hard bargain. We did our best and agreed a price, but when we got to the other end there was the inevitable: "No, no, forty each. Each. Eighty. Give me eighty." He got forty, as agreed.
Despite the best that the customs officials could do, we got through in perfect time to catch the direct bus to Leon. Like nearly all the other buses here it was an old American school bus, but this was the most decrepit yet. All the windows were held closed with twigs and some of the seats were so frayed they looked like cobwebs. It was driven by a man who was obviously tired of life. I could see him in the rear view mirror looking really bored as he swerved off the road to avoid trucks or speeded up to attempt jumps over potholes. To the left of me were a local mother and son who throughout these incredible manouveurs managed to scoff their way through paper plates filled with chicken and rice and slopped with gravy. They didn´t spill a single grain or drop.
As I arrived at Leon I instantly felt relieved and relaxed. When the bus pulled up a few taxis were lined up nearby, with the drivers chatting among themselves and waiting for us to go to them. The four of us got a cab to the centre of town and even though we walked around for about an hour with our rucksacks comparing hostels nobody hassled us or tried to drag us anywhere. Actually, there was one - a funny little man who spoke perfect German and English and, he said, five other languages. But he was just offering a laundry service.

Esperanza

I´m writing this in a little town called La Esperanza, which is Spanish for ´hope´. It isn´t really very hopeful, it´s a grubby run-down little place that´s certainly seen better days. Ironically, I´m not even sure if I´m in the right place, I only hope this is Hope. I tried asking people where I was, but for some reason they found this funny. I think their answers were along the lines of: "What, are you in Hope? Is that what you hope? Eh? Eh?" Esparanza also means waiting (I think) and I can imagine I´ll be doing a fair bit of that before I get away tomorrow.

I´m still really enjoying Honduras, even though it is an exhausting place. Most of the roads are unpaved, so bumping around in ancient old buses takes it out of you and it´s impossible to get a good night´s sleep here. It all started in Copan Ruinas, where my room was right next to the bus stop. The early-morning services would arrive and let out volleys of air horns from about four o´clock. Before this relatively civilised hour there would be the dogs, who would gather in the street outside and howl in unison for hours on end. Even sleeping late wasn´t an option due to the hotel owner´s determined efforts to mend the sliding door on his van. He spent three hours every morning slamming it again and again and again. I had to admire his patience.

My first stop on leaving Copan Ruinas on Saturday was Santa Rosa de Copan, a charming little town high up in the mountains. Like all these colonial places it´s a grid of colourful one-storey buildings, many of them hundreds of years old and often decorated with heraldic plasterwork designs. Lions and crowns, and that sort of thing. As always there was a shaded square in the middle, with a church on one side and government buildings on the others. The streets, as always, are paved with ancient cobbles, which keep even the most determined taxi driver down to a walking pace. The climate in the town was like England in April. Not overly cold, but overcast and always raining, just finished raining or about to rain. It was a very pleasant place, or it least it would have been if it wasn´t for the sadistic bellringers on Sunday morning. They started at four o´clock and carried on at ten minute intervals throughout the day. I know that I´ve previously complained about bells, but these were something else entirely - they were clanging them as hard and fast as possible with the sole aim of making as much noise as they could. It was a dreadful racket - the first few times I thought it was a fire alarm or some warning of plague or invasion. I can only assume they did it every time they had a mass going on. But if I had a choice between that and Norwegian satanistic death metal, I know what I´d choose.

After one night in Santa Rosa I headed on further south to a town called Gracias, originally called Gracias a Dios, Thanks to God. It was founded in 1526 and within twenty years had become the capital of all Central America, or at least the headquarters of the Audiencia de los Confines, the Spanish governing council. This was later moved to Antigua, in Guatemala. Today the town is in a state of gentle decay, but its setting more than makes up for its dusty dereliction. Looking over the town is the beautifully-preserved Castillo San Cristobal, and looming behind that is the Montaña de Celaque, the highest peak in Honduras at about 12,000ft. The mountain sits at the heart of a huge national park, which is mainly covered with cloud forest. The picture above gives and idea of what this is. Strangely, when you get close a lot of the forest is made up of pine trees, so that it often looks like Scotland around here. I spent the evening with two sisters, who are half German and half Scots, and they thought the same.

This morning I was again forced out of bed at a fearful hour (by somebody playing Abba at high volume of all things) and went off to catch a bus to here, Esperanza. I thought I could have my pick of departure times, but no, the only bus had already left at five. In a way I´m glad I missed it, because I was directed to a crossroads where you can hitch lifts with farmers in their pick-up trucks. It was great fun standing up at the back holding onto the cockpit with the beautiful countryside and cooling wind, but I forgot about sun and high altitudes, so I´m now as red as a red thing. But it was a sociable way to travel, people kept hopping on and off in the most unlikely of places and everyone wanted to chat. Also, I now know how many people it´s possible to fit in the back of a pick-up - the answer, of course, is two more.

Copan

I've got loads of other pictures I'd like to put on this entry, but the computer's just too slow. These are some parrots, or are they macaws? This is 'The Old man of Copan'. I thought he needed cheering up, so I whispered that dirty limeric about the Bishop of Buckingham into his ear.


I've just been to the ruins of Copan, the main Mayan site in Honduras. It's quite an amazing place, and very different to the others I've seen. The thing that marks it out as unique is the incredible quality of the sculptures that are scattered all over the site. They are carved in deep relief with the most incredible detail. Somehow they look quite oriental, if someone told me they were Chinese I wouldn't bat an eyelid. You can also see how the artistic style influenced Matt Groening (the creator of the Simpsons) - there are carved faces that look just like the Revd Lovejoy and Groundskeeper Willy, among others. Another great thing about the site is the amount of carved stones that are lying about here and there, seemingly unexamined. There's a real sense that the site's only been partly explored. Because of this, perhaps, I was lucky enough to find part of an obsidian knife, similar to ones I've seen in several museums. It's still razor sharp after so many hundreds of years - as I discovered when I put it into my back pocket and sat down on a tree stump.

(I've had a good run of finding things recently. On the last three borders I've crossed I've found lucky pennies. As well as getting the good fortune it also means I've been able to goad the ravenous money changers by picking the coins up very deliberately and saying "Ah, this'll do me, thanks gents, but I'm fine for cash.")

The village outside Copan (confusingly called Copan Ruinas) is one of the loveliest spots I've found so far. It's a quiet little place with colonial architecture and cobbled streets set on a small hill. The inhabitants (as they are in nearly all of Honduras apart from the Caribbean coast and a few other places) are mestizos, that is, a mixture of Mayan and European. Because of this they're a good looking bunch who seem to have the knack of lazing without loafing.

Although the village is very unspoilt, the facilities for visitors are really well developed. There are civilised little bars, clean and cheap hotels (I'm paying about three quid a night) and tuk-tuk taxi drivers who give an honest price at the first time of asking.

When I first arrived I made a base camp in one of the bars to choose a hotel over a beer. In my faltering Spanish I asked the barmaid if she could recommend a decent place to stay. She gave me a sideways look and said: "D'you really want to speak Spanish, dahlin'? I'm English n'all and the lingo ain't my strong point neither."

Later I returned to the same bar and got chatting to an Italian-American bloke who was the living image of Robert De Niro, except yellow - I guess he had kidney problems. He had a huge dog with him, which was obviously some sort of expensive pedigree. The barmaid said she wanted to steal it and take it home, and he replied that she shouldn't because it belonged to his boss, who, he implied, was some sort of Mafia godfather. I had no reason to doubt that. After a while a Mayan bloke with a baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes came and sat on the bar stool to the other side of me, and quietly started drinking a beer. Suddenly, for no obvious reason, the American bloke leapt out of his stool and started addressing this gentleman, loudly and repeatedly, by the Oedipal pronoun and threatened to visit a mischief upon his person. As silent and swift as an otter the Honduran slipped out of the bar and disappeared down the street, with the American prancing after him making chicken noises. When he returned the English barmaid rounded on him: "Danny, you utter prat, what the hell are you playing at? You know full well he's got a gun in his arse pocket." She later told me that the Mayan bloke is well-known locally as a hit man. It took some time for it to sink in that I'd been caught in the middle of a feud between a Mafia exile and a Honduran assassin.

Shortly after this I started chatting to an English couple from Hereford. They said they'd also been struck by how often the landscape looks like the view from the Malverns. The chap said he was related to a farming family in Elmley Castle, so it's quite likely that somehow, distantly, by marriage, he's also related to me. They were both full of enthusiasm about my trip: "Good for you, do it now, while you're young. Us, well, we're racing against time to get to all the places we want to see. When we're 75 we'll never get the insurance."

I thought of this when I saw all the groups of pensioners coming into the ruins just as I was leaving in the midday sun. They tour in groups of a score or more and pore over the passing of ancient glory, of kings who've had their day, forgotten stories and decay. With pastel shirts and floral skirts and stay-pressed pants (with elastic to keep out the ants), baseball caps and cricket hats and telescopic walking sticks each one picks their way along paths grown steeper, in the shadow of the reaper. I know that Shelley, who died when he was 30, was very young when he wrote Ozymandias. I wonder if he'd been older he may have ended it with: "You and me both, mate. The lone and level sands don't seem to stretch that far these days, do they?."

Honduras

I'm now in a little town called Omoa on the north coast of Honduras, where I arrived earlier today with the two Swiss girls. Tomorrow I'm continuing southwards, and they're going to stay here for a week, so we shall be parting company after a few pleasant days travelling together.

The sailing trip down the coast of Belize didn't happen because of the weather. I was quite relieved - it was only after I'd signed up that I realised it involved snorkling in shark-infested waters. Apparently a lot of people think that's the best bit(radical, I think they call it), but personally I'd rather be taped into a cardboard box full of wasps. The woman who organises the tours from her little hut on the beach was very apologetic about it all, in the way that only incredibly posh English people can be. "Ok, yah, the weather's looking beastly, and it's a frightful bore, but we just can't go - I know it must be terribly maddening for you, but there it is. Ok? Yah?" Earlier I'd heard her on the telephone: "No mummy, don't worry. What mummy? No, I've told you, I'm fine for funds, Ok? Yah? Ciao."

So, it was a water taxi into Belize city, and then buses down to Placencia, which seemed to be a good stop-off point to break up the journey. It's a lovely little place, all things considered, but it has been colonised by a certain type of retired American. It was quite surreal, it was still the Caribbean, with a local population of Rastafarians, but the only music to be heard was Country & Western. And, chillingly, Christian Rock.

The hotel I stayed in was run by a right bunch of God Botherers, but I didn't realise this when I signed in late on Saturday night. In the morning I found myself standing under a shower with a toothbrush in my mouth wondering where the water was. So I went to their little restaurant to see what was going on. All over the walls were Christian messages, inspirational pictures of Jesus and buttock-clenchingly awful poems about god. The owners were sat round a table doing some early Sunday morning bible study. As I still had my toothbrush in my mouth and was starting to dribble froth down my neck I was unable to insult them. But I just wanted to remind them that Jesus was a carpenter, not a plumber, and besides which he, nor the saints or angels, would be likely to intercede on such a trivial domestic matter and that they would have to break their sabbath and sort out the water themselves. The owner (flecked with toothpaste by this time) understood and reluctantly went to get it running. I noticed that he'd been reading Leviticus - and this a man whose menu was entirely composed of pork and shellfish, specifically banned for the righteous in that very book. I wonder if he'd just realised, and that was why he was so miserable. Perhaps he was planning to add incest and bestiality to his sweet trolley and go for the clean sweep. Who knows?

We left Placencia quite early and caught the fantastically-named Okie Pokie water taxi to exotically-named Mango Creek, where the buses depart for Punta Gorda, which is the embarkation point for boats back to Guatemala.

This part of the journey went through some fantastic scenery, with orange and banana groves on the level plains and pristine jungle covering the hills that filled every horizon. At one point we stopped in the middle of nowhere to pick up a group of mothers, who all had quite profoundly disabled children with them. Cow skulls and feathers were hanging in trees by the side of the road, and I realised that they must have been to see a traditional healer. It was quite sad to see the children carried back onto the bus. They were obviously no better, despite being rubbed with eggs and having incense wafted at them. I just wonder how much their mothers had spent on it. Happily there was an American nurse on the bus who gave them the address of a nearby medical charity - I think some of them just needed a bit of physiotherapy, rather than 'soul cleansing'.

It was Sunday evening when we arrived at PG (so known by the locals on account of their famous laziness) and the place was desserted. We found a hotel and I got chatting to a pair of German girls, who had managed to hitchhike down from Belize in just one day. No sooner had they stuck their thumbs out than a Belgian powerstation worker had picked them up and, having nothing better to do, driven them all the way to their destination. I think he got his money's worth though, they were great company. One is an actress who does experimental theatre (that involves talking in gobbledegook) and the other has just finished working behind the scenes on a film by that bloke who directed Showgirls and Total Recall. The Dutch one. We got through quite a few beers and the Belgian paid, which has given me a whole new perspective on his funny little nation.

The next morning it was off to the customs house (a tiny shed on a pier) to get stamped out of Belize before setting off for Guatemala. We arrived there about two hours later in the place that Guatemalans will happily admit is el culo del mondo - the arsehole of the world. It used to be a major shipping port, but all the trade vanished years ago. But the brothels and brawling bars stayed open and speeded the descent of the place to the very bottom of the gutter. As we arrived at the quay six or seven of the fattest taxi drivers I have ever seen were crowding round the edge noisily vying for our custom. To get out of the boat we had to squeeze ourselves between their massive bellies. An unpleasant welcome to an unpleasant place.

Everybody on the boat decided to club together for a minibus to get the bus station and out of town as quickly as possible. Even though he'd done really well out of the deal the driver couldn't help trying to pull a fast one and started driving us to the Honduran border, telling us that his little van was the official public bus. He immediately recieved a volley of abuse in at least five different languages. At the bus station the German girls headed south and the rest of us continued into Honduras. It was only a couple of hours, but I had quite a macabre experience. A bloke came and sat next to me and started chatting. He told me he'd just been to the hospital and then showed me his hand. With a lurch I realised that his thumb had been cut clean off and was covered with a bloody flithy-looking bandage. He told me he'd had an accident with a machete at work. The really odd thing was how relaxed he was about it all - he was laughing about it, even though the wound was obviously still fresh. When he got off the bus he said goodbye with a big grin and a 'thumbs-up' sign, which was spooky.

The border crossing into Honduras was the usual trial of desperate moneychangers and bored officials, but we were soon here. Although this is still the Caribbean, we are now back in Mayan country - I've not seen any Africans or Europeans at all so far. I got quite cross looking for a hotel, because I had to plead with people to take my custom; they just cannot be bothered. The only one who made an effort was a strange Dutch lady who rents a couple of rooms. In a torrent of half-German and half-English she explained how all the other places were disgusting and dirty, and how her main competitor had burned down her backpackers' hostel a few weeks ago. I found her scarey, so I went to one of the lazy Mayan hoteliers. It's a strange little place, and I shall be glad to leave tomorrow; inland, to the mountains.

Belize it or not

I hadn't intended to come on line today, because I'm not doing much, and it's so expensive. But I find this sort of place (with coconut palms hanging over pristine white beaches and turquoise seas, and so on) so dull that it's a choice between this or turning to drink before six o'clock. I would honestly rather be in Pinvin - at least there I could spend a happy couple of hours skimming stones on Piddle Brook or examining the fine Medieval frescoes in the parish church. Well, I exagerate, but tropical paradises just aren't for me.

The local people here are lovely, particularly my landlady. She's a very dignified woman of about 60 who, I guess, is mainly African by descent but with European blue eyes and facial features that must be Mayan. When I first arrived, soaking wet and probably looking quite wretched, she sucked her teeth and said: "Here's the key, go and get warm, don't worry, pay tomorrow." So yesterday I went to settle up with her. When she realised I was British she wanted to talk about the Queen, almost as though she was an old friend. She told me how she had seen her on the last royal visit to Belize about 15 years ago: "I was in the city shopping and her car came down the sidestreet and it was only me there - so I got a wave, all for myself, all for myself." She had a wistful, faraway look as she stroked the royal face on the money I had handed her.

The British influence here is quite pervasive, but elusive. You can certainly see it in the cemeteries. In Mexico, as I think I've mentioned, they are like miniature versions of the towns; brightly coloured, laid out in grids and plastered all over with exuberant signage. In Guatemala they are more distinctly Mayan; ramshackle and covered in colourful ribbons that flutter in the wind. Here they are very low-church Anglican; understated, modest clusters of white marble, with the occassional statue of an angel mourning with a stiff upper lip.

Would it be going too far to call this blending of cultures Afro-Saxon? After all Rastafarianism more-or-less began while Haile Selassie was enjoying his exile in a nice little Georgian villa in Bath.

This place is also a magnet for retired American blokes, who grow big white beards, buy Hawaiian shirts and go off for a Hemingway adventure. They're all over the place, somebody should start a look-alike competition. There's one I particularly like - he's about thirty stone and gets about the place on an electric golf buggy. Earlier I saw him parked up outside a bakery shouting through the mosquito net: "Hey buddy, how many doughnuts you got left?" Moments later I saw him again - trundling along with a big bag wedged between his gut and the steering wheel looking very pleased with his catch.

More distressingly are the bongo players, who have haunted my steps throughout this journey and are congregating in particular numbers here. Like a plague. In my life I have met two or three people with mastery of this instrument, and they are capable of making a reasonably pleasant noise. But as for the rest of you, may I take this opportunity to ask, please, stop it. In particular, when you see a pink plump English bloke sitting on a quiet corner of a beach, or under a peaceful shaded terrace, do be sure that he in no way wants to hear you pat a stretched animal skin, rhythically or otherwise. If it continues I will dig out my aluminium kazoo and respond in kind by tooting out a medley of Black Sabbath's greatest hits when you're trying to do your yoga. And while I'm at it: French people. If your business at the cash machine is really so much more important than mine, then, please, be my guest, push in. But don't then spend half an hour arguing with your wife about which card to use. And Israeli hippies - please let the ghost of Bob Marley rest in peace. These anthems of the oppressed and occupied really don't work with your accent - "nuh vooman nuh krai" - just isn't right. And 'massage therapists' from Nebraska: please, for the love of all that's holy, shut up. Sorry, but sooner or later the dam had to burst. I feel much better for that.

The map at the top of this entry show my route so far. On Saturday, or perhaps tomorrow, I will be taking a three-day yacht tour down the coast of Belize to Palencia (not as expensive as it sounds).

My friend Steve from New York has already been kind enough to put map links onto recent entries, these can be viewed in the comments section. He's also started inserting some links in the text (the underlined blue words).

The other pictures show a local farmer who looked like Wurzel Gummidge pedalling his vegetables around the town, and a pleasingly ramshackle house.

Caye Caulker, Belize

I'm writing this on the Caribbean Island of Caye Caulker, off the coast of Belize, where I arrived yesterday. It seems so long since I last wrote an entry that I'm not sure where to start, so I think I'll go for the beginning . . .

I did bump into that tedious Swiss bloke again, at an archeaologically-themed restaurant run by a German with a Jeremy Beadle beard and disconcertingly high-waisted trousers. While I was eating my meal a bus-load of German tourists turned up for a slide show about the local Mayan ruins. I sat through it, and found that despite the language barrier I could more or less follow what was going on by looking at the pictures. The only problem was the Swiss bloke constantly interrupting the talk to tell me how much better the ruins were when he visited them thirty years ago. After the talk he had some questions for the owner, who obviously knew how boring he was and didn't want to talk to him. There was a strange farce for about an hour with the restauranteur darting around making excuses while being stalked by this old hippy in his filthy Snoopy vest. Later in the evening I got so annoyed with the bloke I had a go at him about his nation's complicity in the second world war. I admit my arguments were flimsy, but it was satisfying to accuse him of being a money-grabbing coward, at least by proxy.

It was another early start in the morning for the bus over the border. This was an ancient school bus, of the sort that you see on old black-and-white American movies. The driver was obviously hoping his boss would buy him a new one if it broke, so he drove it like a thing possessed, ignoring potholes, speedbumps and anything else that stood in his way. We were soon at the border. As soon as we arrived the low-life money changers started reaching through the windows with their big bunches of filthy old banknotes. It was quite an unsettling experience - because of the strong competition between them they all wore looks of desperation on their faces as they furiously waved their tattered cash at us. By this time it was raining quite heavily, and the no-man's land between the Guatemalan exit and the Belizean customs house was a 400-yard dash across a carpark running with water. Below is a photo of me having just got through the two-hour process of crossing the border, enjoying the fabulous Caribbean climate.It was a shame that the windows of the bus were filthy and running with rainwater, because I found my first glimpse of Belize absolutely fascinating. Really, it's no different from the the parts of Mexico and Guatemala I've seen, but it is somehow, slightly, subtly British. For example the tiny huts that villagers live in are much the same, but here they are more often fenced and with neater gardens. They may still be shacks the size of the average garage, but they are, nonetheless, somebody's castle. Other differences: the signage (in English) is a lot less garish. The horses, which seem to be in every field, are much better fed and groomed. (I saw quite a few in harness being driven two in hand, a difficult skill - elsewhere I've been there's only ever been one horse per cart.) Also, like in Britain, fly-tipping is a national pastime - every hundred yards or so there would be a an old cooker or fridge rusting by the side of the road. Perhaps the most surprising thing for me was the huge Chinese influence. Every single supermarket is called something like Chang's or Wing's or Happy Joy Luck Dragon or something. I also saw some German Mennonites, a Dutch-German sect, much like the Amish in America. About 3,000 of them moved here in 1959 to practice their peaceful agricultural ways and avoid paying tax (because, they say, if they pay up it might mean accidently supporting war or some other un-godly things). The two men were wearing matching costumes of blue shirt, red braces and black trousers, topped off with a crisp, clean Panama hat. The women were both wearing blue dresses and headscarfs. Both squinted through thick glasses and had babies tucked under their arms. They were in a crazy old pick up truck, cobbled together from rusty panels of different colours. The majority of the population here are the descendants of early Spanish settlers, British (particularly Scottish) pirates, Mayans and Africans - all mixed up in various combinations. They seem a jolly bunch, apparently untroubled by the usual racial heirarchies you often get in this neck of the woods.

Before too long we were dropped off in Belize, next to its (apparently) famous swing bridge (the only working example in the world, which was built in Liverpool in the 1920s). The first thing I did (along with two very sweet Swiss girls whom I'd met on the bus) was find a cashpoint to get some cash. A note on the money: because Belize is in the Commonwealth, and the Queen is still head of state, she is on all the coins and notes. The strange thing is that since the country was granted independence in 1981 they haven't changed her portrait; so it's a much younger and quite foxy-looking Ma'am you see when you pay for anything.

Then, it was to the water taxi pier to get to Caye Caulker, which I hadn't intended to go to, but was told by everyone on the bus that it was worth at least a day before I did anything else. It was raining even more heavily by this time, so after all the passengers had crowded onto the boat the captain spread tarpaulin over them all to protect them from the rain and spray (the sea was very choppy). Unfortunately I had been all very polite about getting on and so there was no room for me under the tarp. So among this brightly coloured mosaic of plastic sheeting and cagoules there was one Englishman sitting behind the captain (who was in a yellow all-in-one waterproof) wearing his warmest clothes - a tweed jacket, a blue woolley hat (with an embroidered penguin on it) and a chequered scarf. A group of French people (I think you can see some of them waving in the picture below) found this highly amusing.
The trip took about an hour, and I did get absolutely soaked - but I loved it, even though I now know what the Viking saga writers meant when they wrote about 'stinging salt spray'. We weaved through lots of little Cayes, which are tiny islands, usually covered in mangrove forests rising straight out of the azure sea. In places individual trees stood out of the shallow water, which I found a strangely unsettling (they reminded me of an awful nightmare I once had about an evil dwarf with a blowpipe). I suppose one day, when these isolated trees have put down enough roots and dropped enough leaves, they will create new islands. Caye Caulker is already relatively large, with a white sandy beach along the shore and a very nice ramshackle little town, pictured below.Even though the island is only the size of a couple of cricket pitches, I managed to get hopelessly lost when I went for a walk today. Looking back, I was heading south into the mangrove swamps instead of north to the main beach, where, I'm told, a cafe sells lashings of the most wizard ginger beer. The winding path I was following got thinner and thinner until it disappeared totally, so I faced the choice of either doubling back on myself or pushing my way to the shoreline through the dense thicket. I chose the latter. The last stretch I had to take at a run, in order to hop from dry spot to dry spot. And I so it was I found myself bursting out onto something that looked like a motorway. A moment later I realised what the humming noise I had been hearing was: I was standing on a runway, with a light aircraft accelerating towards me. Fortunately I had my camera in my hand, so I was able to snap this picture of the plane as it banked to the left to avoid the strange pink creature that had just lurched out of the undergrowth.The Cayes run for most of the shoreline of Belize and are part of the worlds largest barrier reef, second only to Australia's. I think they must have been hit by hurricane Katrina, because all round the shore are piles of flotsam (or is it jetsam?) and ripped-up mangroves. The picture below is the sort of thing that retired teachers send into magazine photographic competitions - environmental ruin behind, poignant washed-up sign, and new life sprouting in the foreground. Positive meditation indeed. Caye Caulker defines itself as a Rasta town. I loved this painted-up truck below. Jah rule, indeed.

Anyway, I and I really has to stop writing now because internet connection here is horrendously expensive (about six quid an hour). I also need to get going to meet up with the two Swiss girls for dinner. I may be off-line for a couple of days, not so much because of the expense, but because I'm going to be relaxing for a while and probably won't have much of interest to say. On Saturday I'm planning to join a three-day sailing trip down the coast (camping on cartoon-style desert islands) back towards Guatemala.

Tikal

Like a fool I was up horribly early this morning for the five o´clock bus to Tikal, pictured, with the idea of seeing the sun rise from one of the temples there. I was told this was an unmissable experience and that the first bus suited my purpose. So, I was far from chuffed when we trundled into the site at six-thirty, a good half hour after the sun had risen, when all the birds and monkeys had gone to sleep for the day. But despite that early disappointment, the site was quite magical. If Chichen Itza was a city of death, Calakmul a city of inscriptions, Palenque a city of artistry, then Tikal was a city of the most remarkable monumental masonry. Where other Mayan cities draw a lot of their beauty from artistic flourishes and touches, Palenque celebrates the modest craftsmanship of the working man. The brickwork is phenomenal - and all done with stone tools. The site occupies a great swathe of pristine jungle and only one-fifth of it has been excavated so far. It first assumed its current shape at about the time of Christ, and by the mid sixth-century was home to an estimated 100,000 people. At about this time it was invaded by the city of Caracol, in present-day Belize, and so began a century and a half of decline. But all was not lost, because in about 700AD a new king, who rejoiced in the name of Lord Chocolate, reversed Tikal´s fortunes and it again became one of the most dazzling cities of the Mayan world. And it´s still quite dazzling today. It was nice to see how all the entry fees us tourists pay are being spent; all over the site people were beavering away clearing debris, disentangling trees from the structures and steadily excavating more and more of the city. This is being done with great care to protect the jungle, which is a national park and home to all sorts of creatures. Throughout the day I again heard the diabolical roars of the howler monkeys echoing all around. The only thing that cast a slight shadow on the visit was that I spent much of it in the company of an ageing Swiss hippy; perhaps the most tedious man I have ever met. I somehow ended up in his company last night, and he talked non-stop for five hours about his experiences with his his ex-wife´s family in the Philippines. I went into a sort of automatic response mode, where you can daydream while saying "ooh" or "really" or "goodness me" without listening. (You usually get caught out when you find the other person staring at you waiting for an answer to a question that you weren´t listening to, but this bloke had no intention of inviting dialogue.) All of his stories, of which there were many, ended along the lines of "so I said, now I have bought you four chickens you can have eggs every day, but they ate the chickens! Sacramento!" Or: "so I said, ok, I send you another thousand dollars, but this time you must spend it on medicine. Sacramento!" He´s not such a bad old stick really, but when the opportunity arose I did shake him off. I´m sure I´ll see him later, he´s staying at the same hotel, and no doubt there will be an epic tale of how he fended off a spider monkey with his Swiss army knife or something.

It´s another early start for me tomorrow, with another border crossing, because I´m catching a bus to Belize City. Belize is a tiny corner of the Commonwealth, about the size of Wales, where they speak English. It used to belong to Spain, but British pirates nicked it. Ha-hah! I´m told it´s quite expensive, but at least the money I spend will have Brenda´s jolly old face on it.

Flores, Guatemala

I´m writing this in the town of Flores, which is a tiny island on a tropical lake in Guatemala. It´s joined to the mainland by a 500-yard causeway (with a triumphal arch in the middle) and, with its colonial architecture and cobbled streets, it should be one of the pleasantest spots in the world. But on first impressions it ain´t, and I can´t really put my finger on why. Perhaps it´s the furious competition between every hotel, restaurant and private home to offer tours to Tikal (another Mayan city hidden in the jungle). Or maybe it´s the elderly drunks on every street corner, who, it strikes me, haven´t been to the mainland for years.

I had a remarkably uneventful birthday yesterday. I arrived here at four in the afternoon, had a bite to eat and a walk round the island, then decided to have a short nap at about six. I woke up just a few hours ago. I didn´t even have any interesting dreams, so I´ll have to have an official birthday at a later date, like the queen. I didn´t feel much better for my 15-hour sleep, but I soon perked up when my shower gave me an electric shock. Why it should be plugged into the mains when there´s no hot water I´ll never know.

Yesterday started at six in the morning when I was picked up by a minibus to start the journey over the border. Actually, it started much earlier due to my correctional bed and the fan in my room that sounded like a winged Messerschmitt on a slow descent into the English Channel (that´s for Coventry, Fritz). I also spent quite some time with a torch trying to locate a pair of amorous frogs who were rivetting at each other all night. I thought if I could put them in a cardboard box together with a bit of light music and perhaps some wine they might get on with the job and stop their bloody racket.

The bus ride to the Usumacinta River went by quickly a semi-conscious state, but as the sun rose we were passing through some lovely scenery. All around this area are small hills, about the size of Glastonbury Tor. They are shaped exactly like pyramids, so it´s tempting to assume they all have temples hidden under their foliage. They don´t, the road cut through some of them and they were only rock, but they must have been the inspiration for the Mayan architects (unless it really was refugees from Atlantis or aliens).

Also, I got a closer look at the birds that keep the cows company here and they aren´t Indian runner ducks as I had thought, but, I think, some sort of egret.

After passing swiftly through customs on the Mexican side we went down to the river to get onto one of the long, narrow boats, called lanchas. In hindsight, if somebody had suggested that I cruise down one of the world´s most unpredictable rivers, which is full of crocodiles, in a leaking canoe, without a life-jacket and with a bored-looking eight-year-old at the helm navigating our passage through the many rocks and rapids, I may have hesitated.

But it passed without incident, and I didn´t even get to see any crocodiles (so I couldn´t test the advice that if menaced by one of these creatures you should fend them off by delivering a smart blow to their nose with a rolled-up newspaper. I did try a few practice swipes at the water, but found that the paper got soggy very quickly. I suppose you only get one chance).
After about an hour chugging along the river, which was about 400 yards across with thick jungle to the port and starboard (me hearties), we landed on the Guatemalan side and it was instantly apparent that we were in a different country. The photo below shows the passport control at the point of entry, a village called Bethel, which had more pigs than people it seemed to me.
We were then driven to the immigration desk, which was in a village a few miles away. Bizarrely this shared a building with a village football club. As we arrived a match was taking place, so we had to weave our way through the press of supporters and (for some reason) heavily-armed soldiers to the desk in a little concrete room. Suddenly, there was a huge volley of what sounded like machine-gun fire. Two Israeli girls who had pushed their way in front of me (who were probably straight out of national service and don´t queue for anybody) went into the crouch position and there was a fair bit of alarm among the other tourists. I was able to remain unflappably English (and smug) as I recognised the sound as Chinese crackers. When we got outside there were two fat middle-aged blokes with handlebar moustaches dancing about like little boys arguing over who was going to light the next strip.

After a brief stop here, which gave me the chance to try my first Gallo (the most popular Guatemalan beer, which is dark like British bitter but very refreshing on a hot day) we started off on the four-hour journey over unpaved roads to Flores, which is where I began this entry.

Tomorrow, I´m going to try to get to Tikal, and then I´m thinking of catching a bus to Belize city. From there, I´m told, I can get a boat down to Honduras. Alternatively, I might head down to the south of Guatemala and pick up the Pan-American highway and reach Honduras via El Salvador.

Palenque

The above picture shows the Temple of Inscriptions, on the left, and the Palace at Palenque. It´s in a wonderful setting, the Sierra de Don Juan, the northernmost limit of the forested hills of Chiapas that look out over the floodplains of the Usumacinta and Grijalva rivers, which wind their way up to the Gulf of Mexico.

We know from the wealth of inscriptions at the site that it was at the height of its powers between 615-782AD. Archaeologists estimate that it supported a population of about 8,000. But this would surprise me, I´m sure it would take a much larger body of people to build so much stuff.

Below is the Temple of the Count, where that nutty old aristocrat lived for two years.
One of the (more or less) unique things about Palenque is the use of painted stucco plaster. Below, if you´re interested, is U Pakal Kínich, who governed the city from 736-742AD.
This is a lovely view over the palace, taken from the Temple of the Cross. While I was sitting there eating a jam doughnut and dreaming of a nice cup of tea it struck me that the landscape in the background looks just like Herefordshire as seen from the Malvern Hills. I don´t know how clear it is in this picture though.
This is a reconstruction of the Palace in the site museum. If you´d never heard of the Mayan civilisation, it would be easy to describe it as ´modernist´. It looks to me like an inner-city technical college built in the 1970s by an "exciting" young architect.
All around the ruins are expanses of lush jungle. This little waterfall was particularly scenic.
What I haven´t mentioned about the Mayans yet, which is important, is that they were a stone-age civilisation that hadn´t invented the wheel and didn´t use pack animals. That means every stone had to be cut with tools made of harder stones (that presumably had been fashioned with even harder stones, and so ad infinitum) and then carried, by hand, from quarry to building site.
I´ve not got much more to say, as I´m not so much feeling sun-kissed than solar sexually assaulted after spending all day prancing about on temples without a hat or sunblock. I´ve also got to be up like a giant lark tomorrow to catch a boat over the border into Guatemala. Hopefully, it´s all arranged and I should be in Flores in less than a day. Unless the fact that I´ve lost my tourist card and am officially an illegial alien causes problems at the Frontera Corozal, in which case I may find myself stuck in a remote jungle outpost. We shall see.

Palenque town

I´m writing this in the town of Palenque, just a few miles away from the famous ruins that I plan to visit tomorrow.

It´s a gaudy tourist-trap sort of place, one great mass of day-glow signage offering accommodation, food, tours, internet access and souvenirs. There´s nothing much to do here, and it´s very scruffy, but I´ve quite warmed to its jolly atmosphere.

The five-hour journey here from Campeche, which I was quite sad to leave, in a way, took me from the flat tree-filled plains of the Yucatan peninsula to the rolling pastures of Chiapas, Mexico´s southernmost state.

Much of the landscape I´ve seen so far seems to be fields full of cows with neat hedges, small stands of trees and streams meandering along tiny valleys. Just as I was thinking it reminded me of Wales we drove over a bridge, and there on the riverbank below was a large grey crocodile, curled up like a tractor tyre.

I also noticed that most of the grazing cows seem to be accompanied by two or three snow-white Indian runner ducks, who dart around their feet puddling in the mud. I guess that when the cows rip up the grass they reveal grubs and other tasty morsels.

As well as watching the changing landscape I started reading the Popul Vuh, a sacred Mayan book that describes the creation of the world and mankind.

It was written in about 1700 by unknown Mayan scribes in their own language, but using our Latin alphabet that had been taught to them by Jesuit priests. Whether this accounts for some of the startling similarities with the Bible is impossible to say.

So far I´ve read about God (Kúcumatz) speaking the word and so separating the sky from the earth, and the land from the sea. Women being tempted into naughtiness by strange fruit on centrally-located trees, oceans parting to aid the escape of the righteous, lost tribes, lamentations, manna from heaven and global floods sent to extinguish unworthy early attempts at creation.

Such uncanny links have always attracted colourful theorists to the Mayan civilisation, and these people have always gravitated towards Palenque.

It was first visited by a Spanish priest, Father Ordóñez y Aguilar, in 1773. He set the ball rolling by publishing a book that announced the city to be, along with ancient Egypt, an heir to Atlantis.

Later the eccentric Count Frédéric de Waldeck, an associate of emperors, admirals, pirates, queens and cut-purses, lived in one of the temples for two years until 1833. Over this time he compiled a fraudulent tome filled with fanciful drawings in a Mediterranean style, designed to bolster his belief that the Mayans were a sister race to the Greeks and Egyptians, again parted at the destruction of Altantis.

Later Von Daniken got very excited about the lid of Pacal´s tomb (the city´s greatest king who reigned for an incredible 68 years), which I have mentioned before (with photo, below). He said it clearly showed an astronaut preparing for take off.

Although these ideas have more or less been snuffed out by the recent decipherment of the Mayan heiroglyphs, there is still a lot of mystery there. One example is the Tomb of the Cross. Although we can now read that the cross depicted on a freize is the Whack Chan (the world tree that supported the 13 levels of heaven, the surface of the earth and the nine levels of Xibalbá, the underworld) it is still strikingly like a Christian cross. It is even topped by a bird, like the Holy Ghost, but this one has a more vicious beak.

Anyway, this tradition of nut-case visitors clambering over the ruins will continue tomorrow when I get there.

Lazy day

I´ve been remarkably slothful today, which has done me the power of good, I think. I had a long lie-in, despite the best that the hellish bells of the cathedral could do.

I´d like to say that I was recovering from delayed jet-lag or the exertions of my ten-hour drive to Calakmul, but truth be told I was up late last night drinking with the hostel staff. Everytime I got two-thirds of the way down my bottle of Corona a new one would appear, on the house, so it would´ve been rude to refuse.

Juan, the boss, is a funny little chap. He´s remarkably camp, in a giggly knee-slapping sort of way, but he tells me he´s married and that his ambition is to be a gigolo in London. "But I need this body," he said, tenderly running his hand over a magazine aftershave advert. He said he was a professional architect and he bought the hostel to escape the rat-race and improve his quality of life. Most of the time he just loafs about here chatting to the guests. I can´t imagine what his wife thinks of it all.

The staff are all very nice, in particular one girl who works in the afternoons and stuck around to join in the drinking last night. In a distinctly Mayan way she manages to combine the looks of Audrey Hepburn and Sade, but her most attractive feature is her dirty laugh, exactly like Barbara Windsor in her Carry On film prime.

After I´d struggled out of bed this morning I went for what I´ve always called a Mexican Breakfast - a fag, a fart and a cup of coffee. Before coming here I assumed that good, strong coffee would be available on every street corner in Mexico, but far from it. I´m yet to have a decent one. Everyone seems to use Nescafe, and then so sparingly that it barely stains the water. This is in a country that grows coffee and has Costa Rica and Columbia on its doorstep; a nation that is proud to the point of tedium of its culinary heritage, yet they drink absolutely awful coffee. The only reason I can think of is that Nescafe is advertised so aggresively - everywhere you look there are beautiful blond people flirting over their steaming mugs on billboards. Perhaps this propaganda campaign has been so successful that the locals associate fresh coffee with old-fashioned peasant life. Who knows? But it´s most disappointing. I don´t even want to know what unspeakable horrors they visit upon tea.

I spent a few hours wandering around town trying to shake off the feeling that I must do something exciting, interesting or adventurous every day. Then I nearly got run over by a fat lady in an enormous yellow truck, and felt much better.

I also spent a happy half hour watching the pelicans diving into the sea for fish. I was impressed by the way they did it in groups, perfectly simultaneously and with precise choreography. I suppose if one went in by itself it would startle the fish for all the others.

Dinner, as described on the menu, was ´Beff, Freemason Style´. Yes, it was a square meal, and quite delicious, but I can´t see what bits of beef with chilli and onion has to do with the ancient craft. I half expected the waiters to rush out with a blindfold and make me swear never to reveal the ingredients.

Tomorrow, I´m catching a bus to Palenque, one of the most picturesque Mayan cities in Mexico, I´m told. I´ve been dithering mightily over whether to catch a flight up to Cuba, but the more I read about it, the more expensive it sounds. I´ve read some travel websites saying it can be done for about fifty quid a day, but that includes such advice as drinking boiled tap water and licking lead paint to ward off hunger pangs.