by Levison Wood
‘What do you make of it?’ I asked Alberto.
‘The clock? It’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it,’ he said, admiring the awesome handiwork of those old Africans.
‘No, I meant the Spanish legacy.’ It had occurred to me that I should probably get my guide’s insight into the single most unifying culture in the Americas.
We sat outside in the main square, looking back up at the cathedral with its ancient secret hidden inside, and Alberto replied.
‘Well, maybe I’m biased. Look at me, I’m white. I’m basically Spanish. Maybe there’s some Mayan in there somewhere, but we don’t really think like that in Mexico, and probably not across Central America. I’m Mexican and that’s all that matters. It just so happens that most of the brown people – the Mayans and the indigenous – are poor. Look, the Spanish came and invaded at a time when everyone was ignorant. There was no technology, and people until then thought the world was flat. They didn’t care about Indians in the jungle, they wanted gold and power and, well, they found it here. If they didn’t come, somebody else would have. And of course, when you throw religion in there, there’s bound to be bloodshed.’
He went on, ‘I think the Spanish conquest was inevitable, and to be honest, it wasn’t all bad. Look at the beautiful cathedral and that amazing clock. If the conquistadors hadn’t found this place, we’d still be living in the jungle and throwing innocent people down into cenotes. I mean, I’m not saying that everything they did was good. Of course not, there was slaughter and entire civilisations were destroyed, but I think that’s part of life. Things come and go, places change.’
There was an eruption of music just as darkness fell. The plaza came alive with youngsters and old people alike. Some began to dance under the street lights, others sat and drank coffee in the cafés. A band marched through the streets dressed in red; it was the Honduran national anthem.
‘I’d forgotten,’ said Alberto, ‘it’s Independence Day here. When Honduras and other countries became free of Spain.’
It was indeed. Behind the band was a procession of children in all kinds of uniforms and fancy dress and the noise of the brass trumpets was calamitous.
Suddenly there was an ear-cracking explosion right outside the cathedral. Instinctively I ducked for cover. ‘What the—’ I kept my head low as more bone-shaking explosions erupted around the square. Hundreds of car alarms were going off simultaneously and I could hear the screams of children, but as I emerged from underneath the bench where we’d been sitting, expecting to see carnage, instead I found Alberto doubled over with laughter.
‘It’s just firecrackers, Lev, don’t worry!’
I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘That was the biggest bloody firework I’ve ever heard,’ I said, as the ringing continued in my ears.
‘You’ve spent too much time in war zones,’ said Alberto, still chuckling.
Two more days brought us to the capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa. For the most part we walked along the highway, but took shortcuts where we could, on one occasion finding ourselves stuck with a huge dam barring our way. Alberto charmed the security guard, who let us climb over the fence and trespass a while, but we were used to that now, and Alberto was beginning to take it all in his stride. Since my remonstration, he’d stopped complaining about his blisters and we just got on with the task in hand.
We passed a large American airbase, testament to the ongoing influence of the United States across the region, but especially wherever there was a ‘fight against drugs’; as well as the state prison, testament to those who were on the receiving end of that fight. We left the pine forests behind and descended into the valley of the city itself, as the smoke from the shanties rose above the afternoon mist. Along the roadside, in the gutter of the pavement, we spotted a handful of empty 9mm pistol cartridges.
‘I don’t see any target practice around here,’ I said to Alberto, as he held them in his hand, letting them clink between his fingers. A drive-by shooting was the likely explanation.
Tegucigalpa unfolded before us, and in every way it was a bigger, grittier, dirtier version of San Pedro Sula. For miles, favelas were stacked high on the hillsides and a glum aura of stricken poverty hung in the air. It was a depressing sight and neither of us wanted to hang around. So we stayed for only a couple of nights, to restock with food and supplies before pushing on, ascending towards the hills of Nicaragua. The last two days in Honduras were through some of the most beautiful scenery we had encountered yet. It is perhaps best described straight from my journal entry:
20/9/16 – Spot the looming mountain range ahead, twenty miles distant. Scenery is dramatic as we walk through a nature reserve of bush. Glad to leave the city behind and be back in the wild. It reminds me of a mix between Africa and Greece. There’s every kind of flora; palms and pines, oak and beech. Take a shortcut through the forest up hill. It’s hard going and Alberto blowing out, but he’s revived somewhat when we get to the town of Aluaca and a pretty local girl proposes to him. He says he’s not interested in marriage anymore, and tells her no thanks. He got the wrong end of the stick – she actually said massage, not marriage, but by then it was too late … Rolling hills, feels like the world is nothing but this; an endless expanse of green. A white stallion bolts down a lane; wildflowers and roses grow in the hedgerows and farmers are sat milking their cows; the people are friendly. I’d almost forgotten about home until now, but it reminds me of England on a summer’s day and it’s hard not to miss it. Tomorrow, Nicaragua.
14
Escape to Nicaragua
Unlike the entry into Honduras, with its ghost-like border, walking into Nicaragua was a very different matter. A line of trucks tailed back for a solid two miles along the highway and crowds of people clamoured to get their papers stamped. Armed border-police and soldiers patrolled the road, trying to manage the chaos. Getting out of Honduras was the easy bit, getting into Nicaragua was somewhat more of an ordeal.
‘Turn the camera off now,’ shouted an angry soldier, pointing straight at Alberto. ‘Who are you?’ he growled.
Before either of us could answer, three or four more turned up and surrounded us in the no man’s land before we had even attempted to show our passports. ‘Over there. Stand against the wall,’ said the boss of the soldiers, before he disappeared off with our passports. He was swarthy and weathered, and looked like he’d killed men with his bare hands. We stood and waited for what seemed like an eternity under the watchful gaze of the armed men.
After about two hours, the boss returned and said something to his soldiers. The men then picked up our bags and emptied them upside down all over the floor. Clothes, water bottles and spare batteries fell onto the concrete veranda outside the office. There was me thinking we’d left the danger zone, but by the attitude of these officials, it seemed nothing could be further from the truth.
‘What is this?’
The corporal picked up my satellite phone.
I explained that I had it in case of an emergency in the jungle.
‘Which jungle?’
I told him our route and our plans to walk to Colombia. He did not look impressed. They confiscated all our electrical gear, as well as our machetes, before marching us before an official wearing a suit.
‘You,’ he pointed to me. ‘Are you Americano?’
‘No, I’m from Great Britain.’
He didn’t seem to know much about Great Britain, and couldn’t care less.
‘You’re not CIA then?’ he barked, in a final effort of pitiful interrogation.
‘Nope, afraid not.’
He squinted at me and waved me away with a dismissive flick of a wrist.
‘They’re completely paranoid here,’ said Alberto, as we hauled our bags back on and trudged off up the road that led towards Ocotal.
I suppose it’s not all that surprising, given Nicaragua’s history. Ever since Nicaragua became independent from Spain in 1838, the Americans have been involved in one way or another. I
n the 1850s, a mercenary called William Walker invaded and conquered the entire country for his own glory, then in 1912 they sent the Marines in to keep an eye on things – and ended up occupying Nicaragua for over twenty years. The US carried on supporting one side or another throughout the twentieth century, as politics often descended into civil war. They installed and funded a dictator family called the Somozas, who ruled until 1979, when finally the locals had had enough and the revolutionary Sandinistas kicked them and the Americans out.
I knew that Nicaragua was known as the land of revolutions and rebellion, but I wasn’t aware of how deep a legacy it had clearly left.
Because we’d been detained for two hours crossing the border, it was late by the time we arrived in Ocotal. We spent the night in an old guesthouse on the main square. It was a dilapidated, peeling old place, centred around a courtyard, where an old lady sat in a rocking chair throwing things at the lizards that scuttled around. She barely acknowledged our presence as we walked in and asked for a room, simply lobbing a set of keys in our general direction. After the pleasantries of southern Honduras, with its smiling country folk, I felt like this was a return to the reception we’d got in Guatemala. It was an uneasy sleep we had that night.
After two days, we reached Estelí. It was a place I’d been a bit worried about. It was here that the 1979 revolution against the Somoza dictatorship had started, and by all accounts it had been a bloody war.
As we walked into the bustling market town, it was clear that the memory lingered. Murals of masked men with pistols and machetes covered many of the outside walls. Statues of heroic figures with rifles and bandoliers guarded roundabouts and children’s playgrounds. They were celebrating the Sandinistas’ struggle even now. The black-and-red flag of the FSLN party still fluttered above shops and government buildings. As the home of the revolution, this wasn’t a place where the past was laid to rest: it was here, living and breathing. Estelí’s main square still had its old church in the middle, but all the other buildings were new.
‘Everything was destroyed,’ said the voice of an old man sitting in his doorway. He’d been watching us take photographs of the bullet-scarred facades. ‘Everything was bombed by Somoza, the bastard.’
The man was in his seventies, with white hair and a purple shirt. His name was Pedro Pablo and he was eager to talk.
‘Come and see my house. I want to tell you about the struggle.’
We followed the old man away from the plaza to a quiet little street full of colourful, one-storey houses. I’d always found time to listen to veterans, no matter which country or side they were on. It was a matter of respect.
‘This is all new, too,’ he pointed at his home as we entered. ‘My house was on the same spot, but when the army came, all of this was smashed.’
‘Why?’ asked Alberto. ‘Because you were a communist?’
‘Because we were rebels,’ Pedro laughed. ‘We were fed up of Somoza and his dictatorship. He wanted to keep us poor while he lived like a playboy, paid for by the gringos. It wasn’t right, so I felt like I had to fight.’
He didn’t look much like a fighter now. He was podgy and frail, but in spite of that, there was no avoiding the glint in his eye.
‘I was twenty-six.’ He showed us a black-and-white photograph of a man holding a rifle outside in the street. The bearded, scruffy man in the picture looked like Che Guevara in a mid-action pose, as if he was either in the process of getting up or falling over whilst being shot at.
‘That was me,’ said Pedro, ‘in 1976. It was taken by a war reporter and I think they used it in a magazine.’ He was clearly proud to have served his cause.
‘I was a young man and did as I was told, but I reached the rank of captain before I was shot in the leg and had to demobilise.’ Pedro rolled up his trouser leg to show a neat bullet scar that looked like an inverted thumb in his thigh.
‘But I lost a lot in the struggle. My house, many of my friends who were killed. And my wife. She died in childbirth with my son when I was away fighting.’
‘What about the child?’ I asked.
He frowned. ‘The church came and took the child. They said he was an orphan and stole him away to take to the United States. It took me a very long time to find him, but he is alive and well. I last saw him eleven years ago.’
Pedro motioned for us to follow him and walk down the street towards a little stone war memorial that had been erected in memory of the Sandinistas who had fallen. ‘But if I hadn’t been shot, and had my wife not died, then I wouldn’t have met the nurse who saved me. I married her in the end, so it’s a happy story.’ He forced a smile. ‘I did my bit. I feel proud to have served and now there is peace and tranquillity, and places for the children to play and have fun.’
I found it hard to imagine that this street had once been the scene of so much killing. It was a theme that plagued Central America’s chequered past. But for now, at least, there was calm.
After two months of walking on the byroads and intermediary highways that criss-cross the forests and hills of Central America, we’d finally joined the longest road in the world, the Pan-American Highway.
It stretched out before us in a line that crested hills for as far as we could see to the south, like a giant anaconda surfing the waves of a jungle river. It was a mighty sight to behold, and an even mightier one to imagine. This road (although it isn’t, of course, a singular road, but rather many) reaches from the northernmost tip of Alaska, all the way through Canada, the United States and Mexico, then all through Central America to Panama. It begins again in Colombia and spans the whole of South America to the southernmost point in Patagonia. At almost thirty thousand miles long, it has to rank as one of man’s great masteries over nature. Almost. There was of course the Darién Gap, which, as we were soon to discover, has a very good reason for having the ultimate victory.
For now, though, we had no choice but to follow the road south along the spine of the country. I mentioned at the beginning that I wasn’t a huge fan of straight roads. They’re bad for morale if you can see too far ahead. It means you know how far there is left to walk, and sometimes ignorance is bliss.
We plodded on along the highway for an eternity. The flanking hills had a raw beauty in them, but also, something else, more sinister and malevolent perhaps. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, but there was something quite terrible to the jagged crags and jungle escarpments. The air was still and black clouds hung low above the horizon to the south. Every so often there would be the rumble of distant thunder heralding the coming of the rains.
Alberto walked in silence. His feet were clearly in pain, but he’d chosen to try and ignore it. There was no other choice. We were making twenty miles a day on average, but each day seemed to bring with it more niggles and pain.
I was lucky, I didn’t get any blisters, but sometimes merely the weariness of muscles aching was bad enough to make me reconsider my career options.
Both of us had to dig really deep into our reserves of energy and morale to carry on at times, and it wasn’t made any easier by the presence of so many roadside memorials. Every few hundred metres there were crosses; memorials to the hundreds killed in car crashes along this perilous road.
Alberto shook his head. ‘They drive too fast, or drunk, or just being stupid.’
Entire families had been claimed by this road and all that was left to show for them was a rotting cross and some plastic flowers. It brought back memories of a year ago, when my own car had sped off a cliff and into a jungle ravine in the Himalayas.
We reached the top of a hill, and for the first time for weeks we were able to look down across a flat expanse towards Lake Xolotlan and Managua, which lay some eighty miles distant. The nearby village was called San Isidro. I looked at my map.
‘This is it,’ I said, trying to muster up some excitement to take Alberto’s mind off his blisters.
‘What is?’
‘We’ve reached the halfway point. How d
oes that make you feel?’
‘Really? You didn’t tell me that.’
‘I wanted to surprise you. We’ve done nine hundred miles.’
He played the game and did his best to look chipper.
‘Only three more countries left to do. Not far at all.’
He nodded and forced a smile.
As the rain clouds gathered, we descended into the plain towards Puerto Viejo, towards the great lakes of Nicaragua.
That afternoon it rained like I’ve never witnessed before.
‘Run!’ shouted Alberto as we darted for cover under a tree at the side of the road. There was nobody else around, clearly they knew best and stayed inside on days like this. We should have taken heed of the clouds, but because we’d been focused so much on reaching the lake, now we were caught in a thunderstorm of epic proportions.
The sky suddenly went as black as night and cracks of lightning whipped across the darkness, exploding on some distant mountains, but they were getting closer to us. The rain slashed down, hacking into the puddles on the road with such a ferocity that it felt like we’d be torn apart by the onslaught if we were to leave the shelter of the tree. Rivers formed in the drainage channels and the gutters overflowed, so that within a minute we were ankle deep in brown water. ‘Chinga! This is fucking miserable,’ said Alberto, shivering in the wet.
We had no choice but to make a dash for it and endure the bullet-like raindrops, so on we plodded. If it had been clear, we would have seen what lay ahead, but with the darkness and the rain our only interest lay in getting to the town of Masaya, where we could find shelter for the night.
The next day it was clear and bright. It was almost as if the rain never came, such was the fickleness of the weather around these parts.
‘Look at that,’ pointed Alberto. In the distance, the cloudless sky revealed a plume of smoke bellowing from a volcano that rose from the plain some five miles away.