by Jim Richards
The journey to Cayo gave me the first chance to look at some jungle. It didn’t appear too promising in terms of access for an aspiring prospector: thick secondary growth of impenetrable trees, vines and leaves. We passed the odd ramshackle dwelling in a clearing, where a family eked out a living growing bananas and other fruits. To my British eyes there was so much space and so few people.
As we got off the bus at Cayo, the Canadians remarked at how little luggage I carried. I felt a bit foolish until they discovered that their backpacks had been stolen from the roof of the bus. Belize City had done them after all. We retired to a bar for a couple of beers while she cried and he raged. They then forlornly headed off to the market to buy some more gear.
I wasn’t planning to cross the border till the following morning, so I took another bus to visit the nearby ancient Mayan city of Xunantunich.
The ruins lay in an overgrown stone city in the middle of the jungle. I climbed the main pyramid, El Castillo, some 40 metres tall, and until only recently the tallest building in Belize, which indicates the speed of development in the place.
The pyramid was a stepped structure built from a light-coloured stone, perfectly proportioned and pleasing to the eye. At the top were some small stone rooms where the high priests conducted their rituals. These reportedly included human sacrifice, in which a person had their arms and legs held down while the priest cut out their still-beating heart. Nice.
I looked at my map and saw Mayan ruins and ancient cities dotted all over the region and into Guatemala, Mexico and Honduras. The guide at the site told me most of these cities had never even been excavated; they were simply lost in the jungle. This piqued my interest.
I returned to Cayo, which proved to be a pleasant and friendly little town with a mix of English, Caribbean and Spanish cultures. I bought a second-hand copy of the Lonely Planet guide Central America on a Shoestring, which I should have had in the first place. I also bought a book on the Mayan people and spent the evening reading it in my tranquil guesthouse.
The following morning, I went to the nearby border post. British military personnel were not supposed to cross the border into Guatemala due to an unresolved dispute. A Belizean immigration officer demanded to know why my passport didn’t have an immigration stamp.
‘How come you have no stamp, are you with the British Army?’
As I had come in with the RAF, I had no stamp. To compound the problem I looked a dead ringer for a soldier.
‘No, no, no, the guy at the airport must have forgotten to stamp it,’ I purred. ‘I’ve been diving on the Cays, I’m just a tourist.’ I spread my arms out pleadingly, trying to appear suitably daft.
I must have looked more trouble than I was worth. The guy gave me a hard stare and stamped my passport.
I walked the 100 metres of no-man’s land that separated the two countries and entered the Guatemalan immigration office, by now quite concerned that they too might take me for a soldier. But I had my Guatemalan visa and after a cursory glance they stamped my passport.
‘Bienvenido a Guatemala, señor.’
At a nearby bus station, a street vendor was selling fried plantains that looked tasty. With rising anticipation, I decided to try out the Spanish I had learned in London.
‘Buenos dias, señor,’ said the elderly lady behind the stall.
‘Hello,’ I said weakly.
I could not say a damn word. Learning Spanish and speaking Spanish are apparently two very different things. Good job I was heading to Antigua. Those Spanish lessons were critical if I was to succeed.
It was my lucky day. I got on the bus to Flores, the next major town on my journey. The bus took off pretty much straight away, the doorman on the bus screaming out of the open door, ‘Flores, Flores, Flores,’ trying to drum up custom as we went.
We drove around the fair-sized town for about thirty minutes until we stopped once more at the exact same spot where I had got on the bus.
‘Flores, Flores, Flores,’ the doorman shouted.
The only change was that I now had motion sickness.
Nobody else on the bus seemed to mind. I was going to have to adjust from Para time (why isn’t it done yet?) to Central American time (a seemingly infinite commodity).
The road to Flores was poor. Hours later we arrived at a place where everyone got off. I took this to be Flores and got off too. It was in fact the much grottier Santa Elena where the bus depot was situated. When I realised my mistake, it occurred to me that I should read that guidebook before I arrived at a destination.
A hotel was next to the bus station; its only virtue its cheapness. I secured a room and went out to find a meal. After dark, the locals emerged: vaqueros (cowboys) in broad-brimmed hats, Amerindians in colourful traditional garb, child vendors selling drinks, dashing among the bustle. I spied a lonely looking backpacker in a café, and joined him for a delicious meal of beans and tortillas.
Eran was an Israeli traveller who had just finished his two years’ compulsory military service. We swapped war stories, and his won out. He had been on the front line fighting the Intifada uprising in the Palestinian Jabaliya refugee camp on the Gaza strip. We cracked a couple of beers while he explained the local travelling scene.
‘There are lots of Israeli travellers here,’ he said. ‘South America has two attractions for us: it’s cheap and we can get a visa, which we can’t for much of the rest of the developing world.’ He shooed away a child vendor with a verbal flourish.
‘Your Spanish is pretty good. Where did you learn?’
‘That was Hebrew.’ We laughed; I had a long way to go.
‘What have you done here?’ I asked.
‘Myself and two French guys took a guided trip to El Tintal, one of the lost Mayan cities in the north.’
‘What was it like?’ I asked, intrigued that you could lose a city.
‘It was a two-day trek to get there and it was worth it, the place was amazing. Literally a lost city in the jungle, complete with overgrown pyramids and buildings. All the structures were laid out around a central piazza. The site had a symmetry which was striking, even as a ruin.’
Eran slapped a mosquito on his arm, leaving a bloodied mess.
‘The catch was that we had gone there to visit the City of the Dead, but the guides ended up raising the dead – digging up old Mayan graves and looting them.’
‘What did they find?’
Eran described a couple of figurines and some broken jade pieces. From one site they had found an intact vase, about 10 centimetres tall, with intricate bird images and Mayan text around the outside.
Given that Eran’s group had paid for the trip, food and transport, he felt the ladrones viejos (grave robbers) had probably done alright out of it. ‘I can put you in touch with the guys if you want to go out. It was an amazing trip.’
I was not really comfortable with grave looting, although I could hardly hold the moral high ground. After all, I had come here to rip some gold out of the place. But I could see circumstances unravelling and this gringo ending up in some Guatemalan jail.
‘It’s tempting, mate, but no thanks,’ I replied.
If I was going to get side-tracked by every hare-brained adventure that came my way, I would never achieve my aim. I didn’t have much on my side, but concentrating on the task at hand was something I could sustain.
But by the end of the night, Eran had convinced me to join him the next day on a more conventional trip.
The ruins of Tikal didn’t look like much to me: solid jungle covering flat terrain with the odd hillock. As we worked our way through the paths we came to the edge of a large hill, overgrown with vines and foliage, and I felt goosebumps rise on my arms at the sight of the ruined pyramid.
A weathered sign declared it ‘Piramide 5’. They were not overdoing the touristy bit back then. We scrambled up the overgrown side of the pyramid and eventually broke out above the treeline. A few metres higher and we were at the top. Pristine jungle spread out as far a
s the eye could see, and dotted around in that dark green sea were the pale tops of several other pyramids, poking out above the tree canopy. What extraordinary things the ancient Mayans had achieved in this inspiring place. As I marvelled at the surrounding beauty from my eyrie, I wondered what I too might achieve – what might lie before me.
Suddenly I felt a very long way from Brize Norton.
In Tikal’s old civic centre with its imposing buildings, Eran and I tagged on to a tour; a scholarly looking guide was leading a dozen or so Americans. These were not the kind of unsophisticated American tourists you can sometimes spot in London, these were serious culture vultures, dressed in khaki and eagerly soaking up the lesson.
‘The great Mayan civilisations spanned Central America from 2000 BC to the arrival of the Spanish,’ said the guide. ‘They had a written language and were advanced in art, architecture and astronomy. The Mayans may have met their demise through a combination of war and deforestation leading to an environmental collapse.’
Could be a lesson there, I thought.
‘After the arrival of the Spanish, gold was reported in the Petén region by the Conquistador Córdoba. But when Cortes and others followed up, the area did not live up to its initial promise.’
I took that as my cue to move on from the Petén. Eran and I parted company in Flores and I caught the bus to Guatemala City: a sixteen-hour pain in the arse – literally. The road was bad, the army roadblocks were worse. Since 1960 the country had been in a vicious civil war with rural communist guerrillas fighting the Guatemalan army. The bus route ran right through the main conflict area.
A couple of times en route, the army stopped the bus and ordered everyone out. We were forced to line up and were mauled and questioned by gun-toting, semi-drunk soldiers, a far cry from the disciplined British forces I was used to.
They were looking for guerrillas, weapons and smuggled artefacts – the cocaine only went in the other direction. One poor native farmer was hauled off somewhere to be brutalised, or worse. As a foreigner they left me alone, but it was nasty stuff. I kept my money and documents firmly concealed in my nether regions.
We stopped at the track to La Ruidosa, a well-known travellers’ retreat south of Flores, run by an American and his Guatemalan wife. A couple of backpackers got on and they told me about their relaxing stay and welcoming hosts. I made a mental note to stop there for a break one day.
That was not to be. The following year, a government-sponsored death squad turned up one night at La Ruidosa and murdered the American and his wife.
As we journeyed on, I thought about Eran’s ladrones viejos. Who did actually own the artefacts? These archaeological treasures must surely be the property of the Guatemalan people; their looting seemed a horrible waste. And what about the gold I was seeking: who owned that? If I found a nugget, I didn’t think I would feel quite so sniffy. It was finders-keepers in California in 1849, and presumably still was everywhere else.
I got in to Guatemala City at ten the next morning, stepping off the bus into one massive hot throbbing traffic jam. I relieved myself in the steaming toilets of the central bus station, had some appetising quesadillas for breakfast and jumped straight onto another bus bound for Antigua.
I was determined not to leave that city until I could passably speak Spanish.
CHAPTER 6
THE MOSQUITO COAST
The city of Antigua in Guatemala is the world’s premier centre for gringos learning Spanish. Every washed-up drifter, divorcee seeking reinvention, and rebel without a cause had descended upon the place. Many were in pursuit of enlightenment and used the learning of Spanish as their excuse.
I fell out of the bus pretty sore and was pleasantly surprised. The city, with its large indigenous population, was colourful and seemed able to absorb visitors without being spoiled. Antigua was founded by the Spanish in 1543 and soon became the administrative, religious and cultural capital of the region. It lost its capital status in 1773 after being heavily damaged in an earthquake. At 1,500 metres altitude, the climate was ideal, and there was no malaria.
I soon found a Spanish language school to my liking, the Arcoiris Escuela (Rainbow School). Here I was welcomed like royalty. For $100 per week I got four hours’ daily one-on-one tuition and half board with a local family. It looked like a great deal, so I moved in with my Guatemalan host family and became a student again.
I had thrown myself out of aircraft in the army and faced the IRA in Crossmaglen, yet the one fear I had never managed to conquer was of learning another language.
My French master at school in Brecon had despaired, and my father had winced as he tried to teach me his native Welsh. This time I was going to learn Spanish the Parachute Regiment way: throw absolutely everything at it, non-stop, day and night, until I could sodding well speak it.
The family I stayed with were friendly and middle-class, which in Guatemala meant poor. My hosts, like almost every local, spoke no English, so dinnertime conversation was a struggle. The food was delicious though, and my favourite meal was breakfast: eggs, fried plantain, frijoles (pasted beans), tortillas and coffee.
My teacher at Arcoiris was the lovely Helena. Like many of the teachers, she was an indigenous descendant of the Maya and she had a seemingly infinite supply of patience.
Initially I became frustrated as Helena spoke no English. I wanted the Spanish lessons to be taught in English, so the grammar and usage could be explained to me and I could learn the rules, as I had done easily enough with science. But that was not how it was done at Arcoiris.
‘Solo español,’ I was told.
I squirmed my way, one-on-one, through a series of cards, games and puzzles, all designed to force me to speak the language.
It was mentally exhausting, yet I soon realised that this was indeed the way to learn. I was being forced to use the language, not just learn vocabulary and grammar by rote, which had always failed me in the past.
The other students were a mixed bag: an earnest American woman in her thirties who wanted to do human rights work in El Salvador; a German policeman with a limitless supply of dirty jokes; a Dutch couple who were infuriating because they both spoke good English but refused to do so even during the breaks lest it get in the way of their Spanish ‘immersion’.
The funniest guy there was an Australian called Dave, whom I liked partly because he was the only one whose Spanish was worse than mine. The teachers would actually rotate through Dave, as even their considerable patience expired. His reaction to not being understood was to shout the incorrect answer more loudly at his poor teacher.
‘Dave,’ I asked him, ‘why are you putting yourself through these lessons, mate? You said you’re going home next week and never coming back, so why bother?’
‘It’s on the circuit, mate, it’s just what you do, isn’t it?’ he said, with the fatalism of some backpackers. It made my gold-rush strategy seem positively masterful.
My fellow students were intrigued by my mining plans, but struggled to comprehend what I was trying to do. This was understandable because I could not describe how I was going to go about it, other than to turn up and see what happened.
One guy suggested drug smuggling was a better idea and tried to recruit me. One kilogram of cocaine was selling for $1,000 in Guatemala and retailing for $30,000 in Florida, so you could see the business model – and the trap. There were quite a few narco-tourists in Antigua, doing the Gringo Trail as it was called. I took considerable care to avoid these nightmarish and boring people.
In the afternoons, there was no tuition. I would sit in the park or a café drinking one of the delicious local fruit juices and studying my Spanish books, with their healthy diet of vocabulary/grammar/vocabulary/grammar/vocabulary …
There were a couple of private ‘libraries’ (glorified secondhand bookshops), where my local research paid off, pointing me towards an area that could be a good starting point for a reconnaissance mission: gold workings on the Mosquito Coast of Honduras, the
country next door.
In the evenings, after dinner with my host family, I would go out to a bar and repeat the learning process. I kept this routine up all day, every day, day after day. By the end of week two, my brain was a scrambled mess of verbs, nouns and adjectives. I felt I had made real progress, but I still couldn’t actually speak the language. Sod it, I thought, forget the vocab, let’s get blitzed.
I went to a local tavern and hammered down some beers. I was sitting at the bar watching a domestic soccer game on TV, quite pissed. The people around me were getting animated with the game and the guy next to me was not happy.
‘Eso no es una falta, el arbitro esta jugando para ellos,’ he shouted at the match referee. (That’s not a foul, the referee is on their side.)
‘Es verdad, que el arbitro es ciego,’ I heard myself reply. (You’re right, the referee’s blind.)
‘Te gusta el futbol? De donde eres?’ he asked. (You like football? Where are you from?)
And I was off, talking Spanish like a veteran. Shit, it was as easy as that. I just hadn’t drunk enough alcohol at school to crack French.
Next morning, nursing a killer headache that had made me clam up at breakfast, I sloped into a shop to try and test out my new-found skill. I was concerned the night before might have been a fluke. Sure enough, out it came. It wasn’t great, but I could talk. My teacher was most impressed and I spent a few more days improving my conversational Spanish.
Antigua was a compact and friendly place and it was easy to strike up acquaintances, especially with my now functional Spanish. Towards the end of my third week, Eran turned up. After hanging around the Petén for a while, he was ready for a change.
That weekend Eran and I took a trip to the nearby active volcano of Pacaya. A local bus dropped us off and after an hour scrambling uphill over jagged black basalt, we got right up to the crater. Red-hot lava was oozing out of a central fissure, cracking as it cooled, turning into the same black rock we were standing upon. Lava bombs were being ejected high into the air and landing with a splat as close as 100 metres ahead of us. If a bigger eruption came along we could be easily wiped out. Way to go for a geologist, I thought.