Walking the Americas

by Levison Wood

  Meanwhile, 5,200 miles away, on a boiling hot beach in Central America, Scotland was having a far less pleasant time. For many years, the Scottish economy had been in turmoil, burdened by a series of disastrous civil wars and a declining shipbuilding industry. There had been crop failures, famine, and restrictions on fishing in the North Sea. The Scots were jealous of England’s growing fortunes and all around, European countries like France, Spain and Holland were developing as world trading nations. The Scots had decided they’d had enough; it was time to build their own empire.

  In the summer of 1698, soon after Sir Christopher stomped out of Hampton Court after being told he was too expensive by King William, a fleet of five ships led by the Caledonia set sail from the port of Leith on the east coast of Scotland. Stood on the wooden decks, waving the lochs goodbye for the last time were 1,200 bold adventurers bound for the New World. They had their sights set on a remote patch of jungle called the Darién – 60 by 100 miles wide – in Panama, of all places. The expedition leaders, who had spent years collecting donations from wealthy Scots and the general public alike, determined that if Scotland could create a ‘New Caledonia’ on the little isthmus, away from the main pirate route, then they could potentially have a stake in transatlantic trade, and maybe, just maybe, find a way to become the gatekeepers of the Pacific. It was a visionary, ambitious project that anticipated the building of the Panama Canal some two hundred years later.

  Many of the 1,200 volunteers were former soldiers and sailors, with plenty of fighting experience; others were peasants seeking a better life in a foreign country. When the gang of colonists arrived on the shores of the Caribbean in November that year, they immediately set about building a wooden fort called St Andrews. It was accompanied by a village called New Edinburgh, to accommodate families, and the surrounding land was planted with fields of maize and corn. The expedition went well for a while, but soon the newcomers realised that there was no reliable source of fresh water. Things went rapidly downhill from there. Disease set in and life was hampered by the unwillingness of the native Indians to trade with the Scots, because all they had to barter with were a few trinkets and nothing of value.

  Things went from bad to worse when they discovered that the spot they had chosen for the New Scotland was a completely useless harbour; trading ships refused to come in for fear of being battered by the waves. Malaria, or the fever, as it was known, became rife and soon the settlers were dying at the rate of ten a day, until fewer than three hundred remained alive.

  The whole expedition had been a massive disaster, but that didn’t stop Scotland sending a resupply ship a year later, and another ship called the Rising Sun, with another 1,000 hopeful colonists a year after that. What they discovered, though, must have horrified them. Deserted huts, a rotting fort, and hundreds of overgrown graves already being reclaimed by the jungle. Still, the stout-hearted Scotsmen did not give up. They tried to rebuild New Edinburgh, until the inevitable happened.

  The Spanish empire had ruled over Central and South America for more than 150 years at this point, and the Spaniards had no desire to see an irritable little Scottish colony take over a potentially important trade route in Panama – even if their efforts did seem futile. They attacked in January 1700, besieging the Scots for over a month. Hundreds died – mainly of fever and starvation, rather than battle – until at last they surrendered. Out of the original 2,500 settlers, only a handful of survivors made it back to Scotland alive.

  Of course, Scotland blamed the lack of English support for the scheme, and there is a fair probability that if England had financed and helped to defend the colony, then perhaps the story might have had another ending. But hindsight is, of course, a wonderful thing. Scotland was now virtually bankrupt; the aristocracy broke, the public angry. There seemed no alternative other than to throw in their lot with England, which by now had the awesome combined strength of an alliance with Holland and Austria. By the time King William fell off his horse in 1702 and was succeeded by the ruthless and clever Queen Anne, the moment had come to accept a joint future. On the first of May 1707, Scotland signed a treaty enabling an act of union. The United Kingdom was born.

  I walked along the riverbank, enjoying a moment of peace and quiet away from the house. Tracey was probably right, it would all come good in the end. The sun was shining, and I heard the squawking of geese. A little ferry in the style of an old steamer navigated its way under Hampton Court bridge, and the tourists stood smiling at the picturesque scene of little England all around them.

  2

  Mornings in Mexico

  The first time I visited Central America was as a young soldier on leave; I was green and reckless and the memories are hazy. I have visions of spit-and-sawdust bars, pristine beaches and endless tequila. I was only there for a week, but it was a week that changed my life. I met a Mexican girl called Ceci and promised her that I’d come back.

  I did go back, a few times. Whenever I had leave, I would fly across the Atlantic like a hopeless romantic chasing a distant dream. Once, I even managed a free trip courtesy of Her Majesty. In 2007, my company of Paratroopers had been attached to a Scottish Regiment to do some jungle training in the rainforests of Belize. It was some way up the coast of the Caribbean from where the early settlers of the Darién scheme had landed, but I was sure that some of our own experiences must have matched theirs.

  As a unit on exercise, we spent six weeks chopping our way through the thick vines, making shelters out of leaves, shooting pop-up targets and sneaking down sodden rivulets in search of an elusive enemy. We always won in our play-fights with the soldiers of the Belize Defence Force, mainly because they were usually asleep. All in all, it was excellent training, and jolly good fun. I’m still not sure how six weeks in Belize was considered the best training for the deserts of Afghanistan where we deployed to a few months later, but who was I to argue?

  The best bit of that particular trip, though, was that because my Paras were only on attachment to the jocks, we were given free rein. When the exercise had finished, the whole Officers’ Mess hired a mini bus and sped off for some R&R. And where else to go but Cancún, Mexico?

  It was a messy affair. The soldiers quickly caught on to where we had disappeared and they were allowed to follow. Before we knew it, the entire Regiment followed suit, so that almost four hundred men, fresh from six weeks living in hammocks, descended like the Spartans onto the resort. Needless to say, not all who entered, returned in one piece.

  I remember one chap, a young corporal, who went missing for three whole days. They ended up having to call out the Royal Military Police, who spent the time searching high and low throughout the brothels in the district. It was only when everyone had assumed he’d either been washed out to sea, or knifed in a back alley, that he was discovered somewhere near the border, alive, but minus his shirt and passport. He had lost all his money on a prostitute with whom he’d fallen in love. It turned out to be unrequited.

  But I will save the tales of hedonism and debauchery for another time. After four days, I escaped. We were all pretty much done-for anyway, so I saw it as my chance to explore the region some more. I travelled to Mérida to meet up with Ceci, who showed me the wonders of the Yucatán, and it was her that convinced me, some years later, when I finally left the army, to go and live there and try my hand at photography. So I did. In the spring of 2010, I turned up in the Yucatecan city of Mérida with nothing but my notepad, a camera, and a newfound sense of freedom.

  What struck me the most in those halcyon days was the rain. Much of the three months I lived in that ancient town was spent holed up in Casa Zocalo. It was a little townhouse near to the cathedral. The casa was basic and barely furnished. In my room, there was a simple bed, a dusty wardrobe and a full-length mirror. But the ceiling was high so that it was cool enough to breathe. The electricity came and went, and the fan, which belonged in a bygone era, clattered into life at will. There was a courtyard directly outside my room, beyond a small ma
rble terrace, on which there was a hammock, where I could lie and watch the rain come down, pummelling the garden and the tropical plants that sprouted from every corner. It usually began with a tentative warning; a few fat globules and then, before you even had time to run indoors, the heavens would open and sheets of warm water fell from the blackness above. The noise of the water was an inescapable beating, like a primordial drum. Even the sound of the outside world was temporarily dumb, as the high walls of the house acted like an inverted speaker and kept out the car horns and market chatter beyond. That little courtyard seemed suddenly as if the world itself belonged only there.

  A tiny bathing-pool was dug in its centre. Its inviting shallows were disturbed by the watery onslaught that appeared in the form of a million cannon balls. When it rained, the pool overflowed and the surrounding grass grew at a ferocious rate. Around the edges of the high walls were tropical plants and flowers. They were rejoicing after months of drought. Reds and greens and purples danced around with the pouring rain. Only when the rain stopped, would the animals come out. Steam would lift like a cloud from the garden and almost immediately it was filled with chattering parakeets and shifty little lizards.

  Usually a fat iguana would make his way slowly out of the bushes, emerging to bask in the triumphant sunlight – once upon a time, the god of these lands. The lizard’s eyes were partially closed, but he was ever alert. He’d wait for a juicy spider to scamper across the lawn, before darting to gobble it up. In the surrounding palm trees, the parrots would sing, thanking the heavens for a chance to bask in the rays and dry their sodden feathers. Cats would stretch off and stalk from the terrace, treading carefully over the grass, so as not to get too wet in search of their prey. Only the dog remained still. He was too idle to move in the searing heat, instead rolling lazily wherever there was shade.

  I was the only guest in the casa. The owner of the house was an old woman called Gracialla. Her father had recently passed away and I was given his room. She sometimes joked that his ghost still lived there, but I didn’t have any unpleasant encounters. The bed was a fairly new addition. Until recently, most Yucatecans slept exclusively in hammocks, but Gracialla had decided to move with the times, succumbing to modernity. Gracialla wanted a simple life, but needed her own money to survive, as she didn’t have any children to support her. She usually woke early and wandered off to buy fresh tortillas from the market, dressed in an huipil, the characteristic white dress of the Yucatecan Mayans. When she returned, she would not stand for me to be still asleep and would sing at the top of her voice, ‘Desayuno!’, the Spanish word for breakfast. It was served on a wooden trestle-table in the courtyard, and as the only guest, I would help myself to the delicious burritos and refried beans.

  I thought it would have been a conducive atmosphere to photography, but, after two weeks I realised that I was simply getting lazy. The humid air, the ferocious sun, the diet of pure carbohydrates and the plentiful tequila meant that entire days would often disappear in a haze of food and sleep and rain. After five years in the army, I was quite happy to have a break and do nothing. Some evenings I’d explore the downtown area and marvel at the old square and its sixteenth-century Spanish architecture.

  Other times I would visit Ceci at her parents’ house and immerse myself in local culture, trying my hand at Spanish. ‘Si, Dona Leonor, muy bien,’ I’d say to her mother, as she rattled off breathless prose in my general direction. I actually took up Spanish classes, but the two hours of classroom time were exhausting in the heat of the rains, and I don’t think I took much on board.

  ‘Why don’t you get out and about more?’ said Ceci one day. ‘Go and explore, otherwise when you run out of money, you won’t even have any pictures to sell.’ It was a good point, I supposed.

  ‘You’ve spent all that money on a new camera and you have barely used it.’ It was true. I’d blown a good deal of my savings from the army on a brand-new, top-of-the-range Nikon, with the intention of making a little sideline business in travel photography. I dreamt of selling pictures to guide books and magazines, and maybe one day even having an exhibition of my own.

  ‘You go to such wonderful places and take pictures, but you never take any here,’ she nagged.

  ‘That’s not true,’ I protested. ‘I got a great shot of that iguana last week.’

  ‘One iguana, that’s it?’

  ‘And the cathedral.’

  ‘Ridiculous. How much did that thing cost you?’

  I wasn’t about to tell her that, but she had a point, I had not exactly got my money’s worth yet.

  ‘Such a shame,’ she carried on. ‘We have such a colourful country and Mérida has mucho charm. Why don’t you take pictures of all the little casas and saloons? And the birds and the tolocs? Or you could go to Chichen Itza and see the ruins again? Or even go to Palenque and the jungle? There’s a beautiful place in the mountains called San Cristóbal de las Casas, there’s heaps of the indigenous culture remaining up there – all the women wear an huipil.’

  ‘Why don’t you wear an huipil?’ I asked her. ‘Then I could take pictures of you.’

  She laughed. ‘I’m not some Mayan curiosity. Go and explore, I have work to do.’

  I took her advice and went on a photography spree.

  Fortunately, I had chosen a good week for it. The rain seemed to come only for a couple of hours a day and almost perfectly on time, at two o’clock in the afternoon. As long as I looked at my watch, I could plan around it and make sure I’d found shelter in a canteen or a saloon by that time. I would wake early and take photographs of anything that caught my eye. I enjoyed the freedom and the creativity involved in photography. There is something rather liberating in capturing a moment, an event, or merely the look in someone’s eye through a lens. People talk about photographers ‘having an eye’. I wasn’t sure about that, and I certainly don’t know if I had an eye or not. I had never taken a lesson in my life, but understood the basics from an artistic point of view. The rule of thirds in composition, the use of light and framing, and making the most of colour. But I was not technically adept.

  When I learned a new trick, like most novice photographers, I would play with it like a child and be very happy with myself. I loved experimenting with depth of field to create what is known in the industry as ‘bokeh’ – when the subject is in focus and the background is blurry. When you figure out how to get it right, then suddenly you feel as though you’ve just turned pro. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.

  I travelled around the Yucatán peninsula and as far afield as Campeche, San Cristóbal de las Casas and Palenque, in search of bokeh. I took pictures of the Cascadas de Agua Azul, the blue waterfall, one of the most remarkable things I’d seen, not to mention the Sumidero Canyon. I snapped away at the howler monkeys that swung between the pyramids of the ancient Mayan city at Palenque, high in the celestial cloud forest, and at the old men that sat on doorsteps in the old colonial plazas. In Chiapas there were the colourful Zapatistas, and all over the peninsula were grand cenotes, deep pools formed from sinkholes hidden away in the forests.

  One of the highlights of the road trip was visiting haciendas, the old factories and ranches of the Spanish era. Some of them were still working farms making henequen rope or mezcal. Many had since been converted into tourist lodges, or cattle ranches, but they were all reminiscent of another time and era, and as far as taking pictures was concerned, you couldn’t really go far wrong. Rancheros, cowboys, stallions, sombrero-wearing muchachos and beautiful farm girls in flowing white frocks.

  Soon my memory cards were full and I was happy that I had taken my passion to another level and learned lots of new skills. In the process, I think I learned one particularly useful thing about the process of photography – that while it’s important to understand the technical aspects, and to know your camera inside and out, it is far more important to be bold. You need to speak to people and get them to relax. You need to spend an hour or so chatting about the
ir life, their passions, their wants and needs, before you even get your camera out. They must trust you, and that cannot be forced. They must like you, and you can’t force that either. If they don’t open up, then you have not done your job well enough, and you must leave them alone.

  So, with new lessons learned and feeling pretty satisfied that the creative juices had been flowing – perhaps even a little too self-assured that I could even sell one or two of the images to a guidebook or a magazine – I boarded a long-distance bus. I hate long-distance bus rides, but since it was the only way to get back to Mérida, I treated myself to a VIP tourist coach, which involved fourteen hours in the relative luxury of a shiny bus that had only twenty-six seats instead of the usual fifty-six. They even gave you a packed lunch with sandwiches wrapped in cling film.

  Normally I can never sleep on buses, although I generally try and get the window seat, so I can at least have the vain hope of a few minutes shut-eye. The bus was not full and most people had two seats to themselves, so it was rather annoying when, shortly before we pulled out of the station, a man got on and chose to sit next to me. He didn’t look like the rest of the passengers. Since this was the VIP bus and it cost significantly more than the ‘local bus’, which stopped at all the local villages en route, most of the people were wealthy Mexicans – well-dressed and well-mannered. This man was swarthy, in a cheap tracksuit, and wore a baseball cap. He did not acknowledge me when he sat down, preferring to stare at a magazine instead.

  Nevertheless, I thought nothing more of him as we pulled off and began the long journey. The road weaved through small villages and towns, where peeling red churches towered above the adobe walls. Soon it was dusk and I had dozed off fitfully, as my head banged relentlessly against the smeared glass window. I must have been so exhausted from my recent travels that I slept like a baby for almost the whole journey back. It wasn’t until the coach jolted into the bus station that I woke up with a start and a terrible headache.