The Corn Islands

On Saturday morning, with Hurricane Isaac a mere twinkle in the eye of Zeus and Aeolus, we walked down to the dock at Bluefields and boarded the "Rio Escondido" to take us to Big Corn Island.
We were fortunate to have a passage at all, this boat was only running because Monday would see the island's annual celebration of the end of slavery in the Caribbean and had this not been taking place we would either have had to fly or wait until Monday for a boat.

We boarded at 0915 for the 1000 departure but in keeping with this part of the world we would wait 1 hour and 45 minutes before we finally set sail. Our delay was caused by our waiting the arrival of two pangas from El Rama, a mild irony given that we had spent three hours at El Rama waiting for a panga to Bluefields!

We used this time to buy some lunch, prepared by one of the friendliest and most helpful people you could wish to serve you. Unfortunately, what she offered in affability she sadly lacked in the sandwich making department. The listless and inedible fayre we unwrapped mid-voyage was soon fish food and I made do with half a dozen dry biscuits I'd been carrying around for weeks instead.

At 1100 we set off, not noticing a sudden influx of El Ramans, nor even the arrival of two pangas at the dock. Perhaps the delay was simply that nothing can happen to schedule here. I don't know how the railway industry delay attribution team would cope out here - they'd probably have a breakdown.

Our boat had a capacity of 140 and chugged out of the harbour at something of a snails pace. It was pleasant enough to begin with but the hard wooden seat in direct sunlight meant that the novelty of being on-board wore off rather quickly.

The first half an hour saw us passing through a rather turgid channel flanked by little mangrove islands. We saw some wildlife including pelicans, egrets and herons and, with the channel marked by poles on which sat decaying palm leaves, what looked like a succession of Rod Hull's emu.
Having sailed for 30 minutes we were very disappointed to realise that the town we were looking at was...........Bluefields; our route thus far seeing us travel in a big arc to a little island called El Bluff, only a couple of miles offshore. I have no idea why we stopped here, no one boarded or departed, but it was midday before we set sail again.

This time we finally got going properly and within minutes had crossed a definitive line, leaving behind the brown, soupy, coastal waters and becoming enveloped in the crystal clear and deeply azure Caribbean sea.
It was still a plod but there was at last the sensation that we were heading in the right direction.

The sea was incredibly calm and the only things of note that occurred on the voyage were that we briefly saw a pod of dolphins and on two or three occasions we saw some flying fish darting about. Other than that it was a buttock protection exercise, helped by our being handed a life jacket as we boarded which we used as padding. The other benefit of this mode of transport is that you can at least get up and stretch your legs and it's unlikely that you'll find someone sitting on your lap with a 40 gallon vat of soup under their arm.

The Corn Islands consist of the rather unimaginatively named Big Corn Island and Little Corn Island. Big is obviously the main one and is home to about 7000 people, Little is only about an hours walk all the way round it and home to just 1000 people and no cars.
In the 17th century the islands were a waypoint for pirates and was technically English territory until ceded to Nicaragua in the 1890s. English is therefore the primary language spoken although in recent years a lot of people have moved here from the mainland meaning Spanish is more and more prevalent.
As for your average islander, there isn't one. There are black Caribs - sometimes with dreadlocks, whites, half Spanish and Indian (Mestizo) and very dark people with Caucasian features.

We took a taxi to an hotel supposedly on the best beach on the island, asking how much, as always, before we set off. The drivers reply of "15 each" was a bit confusing. $15 each was mighty steep, probably 50% of the cars worth, whereas 15 Cordobas each would only amount to a total fare of 75p. Seeking clarification I was delighted to learn that not only was it 15 Cordobas for this ride but every journey by taxi on the island was too. They will stop and pick anyone up at any time so you must be prepared to share but what a great system. None of that watching the meter tick over at traffic lights or setting a price in your head that you think can't possibly be reached, only for it to end up being annihilated by your drivers perceived prevaricating.

Our room had air-con and a restaurant and that's all we needed, which was just as well because palm trees, tepid sea and golden sands aside there was nothing else at all.
It was one of six rooms on the beach and as soon as we had checked in we were out in that sea with our air beds. Relaxation time was here again.

That evening's meal was a glorious seafood feast of lobster and prawns, eaten beneath the hotel restaurant's amazing thatched roof a few feet from the sea. It was warm (boiling and sweaty actually but I'm trying to create a mood for you), quiet, calm and the stars were shining brightly above the sea. This was a wonderful place and I felt right at home here.
The only downside was the indifference of our hosts towards us this and every other time we ate here. We weren't necessarily looking for high fives or nightly bear hugs as though we were returning long-lost relatives but a nod of acknowledgement and a "hello" might not have gone amiss.

Sunday was spent in exactly the same way as Saturday afternoon. Blistering sun, air bed, sea, relax.
It was Monday before we ventured away from our slice of Eden, taking a taxi to "Crab Soup", the 171st festival celebrating the end of slavery, so called because one of the features of it is to eat that very thing.
It seems there's no escaping crabs on this trip and the behemoth that one chap was brandishing about in his bucket was just the ugliest sucker you've ever seen.

You can imagine our anticipation before the festival. A genuine Caribbean affair; colour, music, dance, the local brew flowing, barbecued meats, oh yes, this was going to be a day to remember.
Unfortunately though, what little bit we saw of it was reminiscent of those God-awful school fetes you're forced to endure as a parent, only more sweaty.

The first thing we witnessed was a pretty young girl giving some sort of public address though a combination of her nerves and her island patois meant that we couldn't understand what she was saying.
This preceded four men carrying a cardboard model of a church around, the explanation of which we must have failed to grasp for it was completely unintelligible to us.
Needing a drink to douse the inferno of the day we left the stage area and sought sustenance and enjoyed looking at some of the carnival floats: jalopies covered in palm leaves mainly but fun nonetheless.

Some dancing came next and this took me right back to 1970s Northamptonshire and my enforced participation in country dancing and Morris Men routines at Little Harrowden school Mayday celebrations. (It was certainly m'aidez as far as I was concerned). The poor kids seemed to have no concept of what they were doing or why they were there and troupe followed troupe with contradictory and dispassionate moves.

We adjourned to some shade to eat something from the barbecue but the fact there wasn't anywhere to sit and that I'd chosen to stand on a red ants nest were further reasons to give this up as a bad job and get back to what we do best.

With hindsight, perhaps if we'd have given it more of a chance or tried to get more in the swing of things then it would have been more enjoyable. There were plenty of other gringos there who seemed to be lapping it up so it does seem as though the failing was partly ours. Perhaps we should have gone on the lash to facilitate it.
Hey ho!

The afternoon was blissful until Kerry squealed a girly squeal and shouted "jellyfish". I wasn't unduly worried, one jellyfish is easily avoided, but then I looked and saw not one but about a million. They were minute, transparent and all around us. You had to look very closely to see them even when you knew they were there so they had probably been there all day.
Then, as the day drew to a close, an utter disaster was to befall me. Quite how I would overcome this setback was unclear but being a resolute soul I would try my utmost.
My air bed burst.

We got out straight away and went and showered to get ready for dinner, during which itchy welts appeared on our arms which at least, I suppose, were a change from mosquito bites.

We hired bikes on Tuesday and cycled all the way around the island, stopping every now and then to photograph the latest jaw-dropping vista or to get in the sea for a quick snorkel.
I can honestly say that I've never been anywhere as beautiful as this place, no matter where we looked as we skirted the coast it was a case of "oh my god, look at that".
It was like having been parachuted into Microsoft's screensaver and desktop wallpaper archive and words are an inadequate way of describing what we saw.

Our bikes, whilst undoubtedly the best we've ridden since leaving Blighty, what with having the twin luxuries of gears and brakes, were a little uncomfortable. Although newish they were the sort of bike you'd pay about £80 for in the UK so were heavy as lead. I'm afraid I've become a bit of a bike snob over the past couple of years and unless I'm sitting astride something at least part carbon and a bit whizz-bang, preferably matching my favourite lycra, then I'm not interested.
I suppose it's the equivalent of anyone who owns a nice car back home hiring a 1983 Lada for a jolly jaunt over largely unpaved roads - it's unlikely to enthuse you.

Kerry had hoped to dive here but our visit to the local dive outfit didn't fill her with the confidence she needs to descend into the deep so she gave it a miss. I actually thought the dive master looked like a bit of a dude with his luxuriant pony tail down his back and his bloated midriff suggesting a life of excess and indulgence but her ladyship did not so that was that.

That meant that we were free for our final full day on the island and we decided to take the ferry across to Little Corn to explore over there.
The ferry would leave at 1000 so at 0930 we began walking towards the dock and flagged down the first taxi we encountered. Our driver was Spanish speaking but it was plain that he was more than a bit loco, a fact not helped by his swigging beer whilst he drove.
He told us he had to pick someone else up first so we sat in the car and waited while he fetched them from their hotel. Five minutes later we went to see what he was doing and found him sat at the bar having another beer.
We chivvied him along but he then brought three other people with him, asking for Kerry to sit on my lap so he could fit us all in.
Having previously commended the taxi situation out here this was its flip side. Sat in the back of a rusting heap with a seething Kerry on my lap, wedged up against two strapping fellows and being driven along rough roads by a drunken lunatic was not much fun, though, as with anything that doesn't maim or kill, has at least provided an amusing anecdote.

We pulled up at the dock at 0954 with a distinct lack of boat in view. Perplexed, we asked a guy what the score was to be told that it had left 5 minutes ago, when full.
Had we not happened on our imbecilic and grog-sodden halfwit of a driver we would probably have made it but as it was we had to accept that we were confined to paradise for the day.

It wasn't particularly nice weather, we think we were getting the tail end of Hurricane Isaac, so there wasn't a great deal to do. We felt we'd seen everything the island had to offer and as the beach wasn't really an option today we ended up just sitting in our room twiddling our thumbs.
We had booked a flight to Managua for tomorrow morning a few days ago but how we wished we'd shaved a day off our stay here then.

It brightened up a little in the afternoon so we amused ourselves by having a swim and messing around in the sand before heading out to a swish hotel that we'd happened across on our bike ride for dinner.
The Casa Canada was a beautifully appointed place with its restaurant extending out over the sea on decking. We arrived early and sank a few aperitifs before dining on exquisite fayre as the light faded.
It was a wonderful end to what, overall, was a blissful few days and the perfect antidote to the three days we had spent getting here.

Managua and the journey to Bluefields

Just once it would be nice if a bus could keep to its schedule. We do appreciate that we're in a developing part of the world but surely sooner or later something has got to keep to time?
It didn't happen on Tuesday though as we travelled from Tegucigalpa to Managua, capital of Nicaragua.

We needed a cab across town in Te-goose and stood outside our hotel for a few minutes, seemingly the only place in town without a succession of white MOT failures passing by, waiting for one.
Finally one pulled up and I asked how much to Tica Bus. "150 Lempiras" came the reply, approximately 3-4 times what a local would pay and about double what I was willing to shell out.
"No señor", says I in my most authoritative way. "80 Lempiras is what I will pay. Si o no?"
He didn't reply, just spent 5 seconds crunching into first and then took off down the road in a cloud of smoke so I took that as his unwillingness to negotiate.

A couple of minutes later came the second bite of the cherry.
"How much to Tica Bus?"
"Where?"
"Tica Bus"
"I don't know it"
"You don't know Tica Bus? The main international bus station?"
"What is it called again?"
"Tica Bus. Ti-ca Bus"
"Ahhhhhh, Tica Bus, Si, Si, 120 Lempiras"

Give me strengt

Next!

Finally, and mercifully, the next fellow's opening gambit was 80 Lempiras which we gleefully accepted, much, I think, to his surprise.

Tica Bus operate throughout Central America and if one is of a masochistic persuasion it is possible to travel with them from Tapachula in southern Mexico to Panama City.
Our 8 hour 'hop' should be no such trial: 3 hours to the border, an hour's faffing about there whilst they stamp all of our passports and 3 hours into Managua. A cakewalk. With an 0930 departure we'd be there by 1630 and given that we'd earmarked a room about 150 yards away from the bus station we had about two hours of daylight contingency to play with. Nothing could surely go awry.

Though we met our first delay in departing Te-goose, 30 minutes, the first part of the journey was fine. Kerry enjoyed watching the film which was in English and I blogged. The TV screen was right by our seats and, in comical homage to the Dutch lady of the other day, I walked straight into it not once but twice.

At the Honduran side of the border we were invited to leave the coach for half an hour and seek sustenance from the roadside traders.
It was here that Kerry was stung in the leg by an unidentified flying insect whilst I went off in search of somewhere to spend a penny. I found a place, behind a lorry, though it was a little offputting to realise mid-flow that the driver was swinging in a hammock beneath his rig about 3 feet away from me.

A long, hot hour passed here with "She who goes mental if unable to find shade" close to a breakdown on account of the heat and the certainty that she was about to go into anaphylactic shock as a result of her sting. I rustled up as much compassion as I could muster and promised her that  if she did succumb then I wouldn't hesitate to suck the poison out.
It was unfortunate that she was stung near her groin but in extreme circumstances a man has to do what a man has to do.

We were back on the bus for about 30 seconds and then we all had to disembark again, this time with all of our luggage from the hold, to go through Nicaraguan immigration and for a full luggage search.
There was a real melee here, no organisation, as we've come to expect, and various kids and other unsavoury looking sorts all trying to make a few pence out of the bus load of people.

We queued for what seemed like an age waiting for our bags to be searched. It didn't help that we were all stood under a corrugated iron roof which conducted the heat of the day, cooking our wilting bodies.
Eventually it was our turn and the poor unfortunate soul who had to finger my stinking baggage certainly drew the short straw compared to his neighbour who opened Kerry's case to be greeted by a pair of pink knickers bearing the legend "Sexi Kiss".

This all took quite a while, two hours in all we spent at the border so we had seriously eaten into our contingency time.
Just after leaving Leon the coach pulled up at the side of the road and I watched the driver get out and have a chat with a local.
He gesticulated down the road and a couple of minutes later we were pulled over again and a grease monkey was whipping our punctured wheel off.
I say 'whipping' but nothing happens here very quickly and it was 45 minutes before we got going again.

And so we pulled into Managua at around 1900. Another new city, another late arrival, more darkness.
I knew where the Hotel Los Felipe was, just a 3 or 4 minute walk up that dingy and unlit road, yes, that one with the silhouettes of people lurking around, the one that the straggly haired and be-vested local was telling up he'd walk us up for no money, you know, just because he's a good egg and likes helping gringos who arrive in a strange place at night.

The taxi ride cost $2 and was pitifully short. In fact, I think the driver may have gone round the block in order to spare all our embarrassment. But, we were there and we were alive, both reasons to celebrate wildly.

Our bible is the "Lonely Planet - Central
America on a shoestring" and, as we are learning, is pitched at students and/or people who are looking to do what we're doing for as little expense as possible. Of course, we don't want to spend money willy nilly but being so-called "Senior Gappers" we're perhaps looking for a slightly greater degree of comfort than our book's primary audience.

The Hotel Los Felipe was a good case in point. Whilst described as the pick of managua's accommodations we felt it left an awful lot to be desired. For instance: room to swing a cat, a toilet one could sit on without having your knees wedged against the wall, a shower head so that washing wasn't akin to standing under a pouring tap, somewhere to put your case (the latter being Kerry's latest and greatest bugbear).

However, at £13 per night we figured it would do us for the two nights we wanted and then we'd be shipping out so we took it. 

After eating at a spectacularly good street meat-feast emporium we turned in, both waking independently in the night convinced that spiders were on us though not mentioning it to the other until the next day.

So, Managua, capital of Nicaragua, though only so since 1852 when a new government was elected and they moved it from Granada.
In those early days Managua was no more than a large village but has grown to now house about 1 million people.
It's really a collection of small settlements and is one of the most low-rise and leafy capitals I've ever seen.
Don't let that description fool you though: for low-rise read 'corrugated iron or wooden shacks' and while it is undoubtedly endowed with an awful lot of trees, the visible poverty, polluted lake and broken footpaths hold your attention far more.

In 1972 a tremendous earthquake struck Managua, killing 6000 people and rendering 200,000 more homeless. The epicentre of the quake was in the area around Lake Managua and is still largely in a state of disrepair due to lack of funds to rebuild. What international aid was sent to the then government from other countries was creamed off and didn't reach it's intended audience.

The highlight of this area is the old cathedral, a truly beautiful edifice all the more evocative for standing ruined and with its two bell towers still intact, though with massive cracks running up them. The clock tower still shows the time that the earthquake struck.
The old Grand Hotel is close by and at the time of the earthquake one Howard Hughes was living in the penthouse.

Our walk took in a couple of impressive squares, some monuments to politicians and leaders of yore, a tribute to pope Juan Pablo 11 and a mystifying passenger jet parked down by the malecon.
Ah, the malecon. What could and should be the jewel in a beautiful city's crown is in fact a dirty road lined with seedy bars all pumping out loud music, behind which is the toxic Lake Managua, itself skirted by tons of litter.
We're having to turn a blind eye to litter but it's not easy. I don't know what can be done but if we're not careful we'll all be thigh deep before long.

Our next stop was an area of town called Acahualinca, a place where workmen discovered 6000 year old footprints of men and deer in 1874. They were made in soft mud and then covered by volcanic ash and preserved.
There are five volcanoes surrounding the city with four of them now extinct.

We took a cab across the city and happened across a very westernised shopping mall. We had lunch here and marvelled at the apparent difference in status between the shoppers here and the barefooted people we'd just left in Acahualinca.

Behind the mall is a hill which overlooks the whole city so we walked up it to get that birds eye view.
There was a strong military presence here and as we rounded one corner a Toyota pick-up screeched towards us with half a dozen masked and rifle-toting men in the back, a tad alarming and not really what either of us expected to see.
The road up the hill was lined with signs depicting Nicaraguan history of the past 100 years or so and though it was all in Spanish the message was clear. Essentially, the people have been oppressed, kept in poverty and/or periodically massacred whilst a very few got incredibly rich. That's really oversimplifying it but that's a one sentence overview of the Nicaraguan century.
A change should have come in the late 70s with a newly elected government but Ronald Reagan favoured the old one so financed the Contra war which dragged on for nigh on a decade.

At the top of this hill is an old volcano crater, now filled with a lake about 200 feet below the crater rim.
A highly enterprising chap has constructed a 1.2km long zip wire around the crater and as it was only £9 per go we simply had to give it a whirl.
What a thrill that was, especially the last leg of three, low over the water in a "superman" position.

Our final port of call was to take a look at the new cathedral, built in 1993 to replace the earthquake victim.
This dreadful concrete block is a monstrosity and if Prince Charles were ever to clap eyes on it he would surely be reiterating to his begonias that modern architects don't know their arse from their elbow.
I know money is a factor here but it looks for all the world like a cement factory which was once a prison, not somewhere to celebrate the glory of God.

Our next taxi driver was an arse who tried to demand more money than we'd agreed but him aside we found everyone very friendly and a delight to deal with. In fact, we really liked Managua and had we chosen more salubrious accommodation we would probably have stayed an extra day and explored further.
As it was we embarked on a mission to reach the Carribean Corn Islands by land and sea rather than take the easy option and fly, and what a little adventure that turned out to be.

We decided to split the journey into three: bus to a place called El Rama - 6 hours; panga (water taxi) from there to Bluefields on the Caribbean coast - 2 hours; ferry out to the Corn Islands - 5 hours. This method of reaching paradise would afford us an opportunity to see a lot more of the country than the 1 hour 15 minute flight would and it would probably make us appreciate it all the more when we got there too. A sure fire win-win.

We cut it a little fine to get out to the market in the east of Managua from where our 0845 chicken bus would depart, a fact not lost on our taxi driver who relieved us of $15 for ensuring we made it.
To put that in perspective our two bus tickets all the way to El Rama, a journey of 300 kms, only cost £6.
The market was the usual assault on the senses with our conductor trying to drum up trade for our bus, music blaring, food being cooked, fat being chewed and a hundred other things going on around us.

Though we only arrived 10 minutes before departure we were some of the first people on-board and took our seats in anticipation of it getting wedged. As is usual in Central America hordes of people got frantic as the bus started to pull away bang on 0845, emerging from various places around the market to leap on.

We travelled approximately 50 yards before stopping to pick up more people. There are no official stops out here, you just stick your hand out and the bus will pull over for you. Compare this to England where if you are stood above one foot away from the designated stop then the driver will probably drive straight past you, gesticulating wildly at YOUR failure as he does so.

The road out of Managua was surprisingly good, two lanes for a good while and then once we'd cleared the city we were on a very smooth surface which was largely traffic free.
We made good speed, impromptu stops aside, passing various settlements made of corrugated iron, wood, even heavy duty black plastic sheeting at one point.

Before too long we had reached the town of Juigalpa and waiting for us were half a dozen people or more with various things to try to sell to those on-board.
The bus was now full and standing so it was difficult for these people to get up and down the aisle, particularly given that they were carrying anything from armfuls of watches to great big pots full of soup. Many of these women were not what could be described as svelte either so it was an hilarious and chaotic scene we witnessed, noisy too with each vendor rattling out what they had to sell.

This was repeated another couple of times and more and more people were getting on all the time so we were packed in like sardines by the time we reached El Rama at around 1530. It  was, therefore, quite a relief to get off that bus and set about finding somewhere to sleep for the night.

El Rama is not the most prepossessing of places. Even our 'shoestringer' targeted guide book described it as seedy so on the basis they thought our hotel in Managua was good what on earth would we find here?
Two gringos walking around with wheeled cases is a source of great interest and amusement to the locals so we feel it's a priority to get checked in and lose them quickly to prevent our being quite so conspicuous. What we wanted first though was to orient ourselves, to locate the dock so we could choose accommodation in its locale. 

But where's the dock?

I asked a fellow who looked like he probably knew but rather than give lots of unintelligible and animated directions  as a Brit would when asked the way, this chap got up, breathed liquor tinged halitosis in my direction and said he'd take us there.
The thing is, we didn't want him to. Every such kind offer is expected to be rewarded with a few shekels, a slightly awkward situation that we'd rather not be in. (Have you got change, do you give a pittance and offend, too much and grieve, assume he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart and give nothing. There's too many variables.)
Despite my protestations he wouldn't hear of it and our being led through the streets by this chap only served to garner us more unwanted attention.

As he skipped away with his US dollar I was engaged by a young Dutch girl, desperate to enlist us to help fill their panga to Bluefields. (They only go when full).
I apologised that we were intent on spending the night here and travelling onwards tomorrow, leaving her to continue touting.

We chose the nearest hotel to the dock and the chap took me up to see the room which would cost us a handsome £5 if we took it.
It was an eight foot square, white painted box in which were two single beds.
I sat on the first one and as I felt a spring from the paper thin mattress twang beneath me I joked to our prospective host that this would be the bed for the 'wife'.
Sitting on the other one and having the sensation in my buns that they were sat on a large bag of stones I shifted that decree and told him she could have this one instead.

There was no way we could stay here in this room but luckily he had another, much better appointed offering for £9 so we took that.
The bed was comfortable enough though the broken mosquito netting, prison-like interior, open plan toilet facilities, lack of shower head and siting of the toilet paper dispenser about 6 feet away from the pan let it down somewhat.
The last feature did engender an entertaining game of "guess how much bog roll you'll need before you take a dump" for both of us.
In case you're interested, Kerry required an extra half dozen sheets whereas I nailed it first time.

We had a couple of hours to have a wander around El Rama and my goodness, what a place! A more filthy and ramshackle place you could hardly wish to see; corrugated iron abounded, mouldy fruit for sale, litter everywhere. We were still being stared at but there were some smiles and the odd "hola" so it felt ok.

There was very little to choose from in the way of food. It was either something unidentifiable and deep-fried from a roadside cauldron or, incongruously, a pizza restaurant.
We had to wait a full hour for our pizza to be cooked, during which the whole town suffered a 10 minute power cut. We sat in the restaurant in pitch darkness before it came back on.
Back at the room at about 2100 we had another one, much more worrying because it lasted for half an hour and of course knocked our fan out of action. We lay there in sticky discomfort getting hotter and hotter and more claustrophobic with each passing minute until it came back on.

After a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs and beans and rice (where the hostess inexplicably asked if we wanted bacon then said she didn't have any in the same breath) we made for the dock and put our names down for the next panga to Bluefields.
Unfortunately we were passengers five and six and they need 20 before setting off so we thought we might be in for a little wait.
That 'little wait' turned into three hours.

Somehow we ended up being last onto the panga meaning we had to sit on the one row of seats facing backwards. This wouldn't have been too much of a problem if we both didn't have such flowing locks. We spent the next two hours trying to stop our retinas being whipped by split ends and the only relief we had was on the six or seven occasions that the heavens opened and we all hid beneath some black plastic sheeting.

It was nice to be on the river rather than on a bus and fascinating to see some of the dwellings out here in almost total isolation.
Two thirds of the way into the journey we slowed to a stop alongside a hollowed out canoe in which were two men and a woman. There was an exchange between our pilot and the occupants, the gist of which was that the woman was ill and needed a hospital and could she come on our boat. I don't know what was wrong with her, it looked to me that she was holding her arm as if it was broken, but in an act of inhumanitarianism our pilot denied the request and we sped off.

And so to Bluefields, a former haven of Dutch pirate Abraham Blauvelt whose anglicised name the town now bears.
Whilst it's a sizeable town, certainly for this part of Nicaragua, it was really just another El Rama. The main difference was the people, there is a large population of Black Caribs here so you have the strong feeling that you're in the West Indies rather than in Central America.

The docks here were a real seedy dive; drunks, prostitutes and hustlers were in evidence and we said thanks but no thanks to a couple of different guys who offered to help us find an hotel.
We selected the best hotel in our guidebook but at only £13 per night we knew not to expect too much.
What we didn't expect was to almost set the place on fire and to electrocute ourselves in the process.

We had a walk around the town and bought a few bits before retiring to the balcony of the hotel to have a beer and watch the locals go about their business. People watching is a fascinating pastime, particularly from the sanctuary of a first floor balcony.
We watched a funeral procession pass beneath us, after which Kerry went to shower whilst I had another drink.
When I got to the room she complained that her shower was cold so I investigated and found that the shower unit could be plugged in to the mains, thereby creating hot water.

Smugly luxuriating in my toasty water I lathered my hair up with shampoo, the prerequisite state for a shower based disaster, before hearing Kerry shriek at length and seeing what looked like a Jean-Michel Jarre concert taking place the other side of the translucent shower curtain.
The plug I had oh-so-cleverly inserted into the wall had shorted out sending sparks shooting out and then flames licking up the wall.

Despite the near-death experience, the hours on a crammed bus, anal pounding on a hard wooden seat of a speeding panga and spending time in towns that are unnerving at best and downright dangerous at worst, we absolutely had a ball this past couple of days.
Hardships and dirge are just as memorable as wonders such as the Grand Canyon or the cliff divers at Acapulco and we are loving the fact that this trip is giving us healthy doses of each end of the spectrum.

Long may that continue!

Tee-goose

Although we were on a first class bus the journey from La Cieba to the capital of Honduras, Tegucigalpa (Tee-goose-ee-galpa, Tee-goose for short) wasn't exactly a barrel of laughs. To be honest we're both getting a little jaded with the physical act of travelling, a problem exacerbated by the apparent damage chicken buses have wreaked on our weary bodies. Though we had to change buses at the halfway point of San Pedro Sula I was already feeling discomfort seeping into me via my glutei maximi. By Tee-goose it felt as though someone had inserted a telegraph pole up my jacksy.

The journey took us down the main artery of Honduras, the equivalent of the M1 I suppose as we travelled between the country's first and second cities, though I don't suppose many of our motorways would ever be single track and unpaved for mile long stretches at a time. We climbed some massive hills which the bus laboured to reach the top of and the dramatic scenery meant that there was plenty of buttock-clenching cornering to contend with too.

As we passed through the outskirts of numerous towns we saw a large amount of political graffiti and there were several roadside shrines which presumably afford the uber-religious driver the opportunity to praise the almighty for the opportunity to live in near 100% humidity in a mosquito infested thatched shack, should the fancy take him.

Religion is so important here and throughout Central America. There's no "Pedro y Maria" sun strips in the windscreens of their clapped out cars, it's all "Jesus Christ is love" and "Jehovah is my salvation". Religious services are heavily subscribed and people often cross themselves when simply walking past a church. Catholicism is, as you would expect, the major player but we saw a graphic on tv the other day stating that evangelism now counts 44% of the Honduran population among its followers. I don't want to court any controversy on here so I'll just leave it by saying 'each to his own'.

With the regulation 1 hour delay in departure from San Pedro Sula and further delay en route due to our driving through a storm of biblical proportions we pitched up in Tee-goose just after 1900 on Saturday, 90 minutes later than scheduled and apparently not in the Hedman Alas bus station but in a car park in an unidentified area of the city.
Before we could attempt to purloin a taxi to take us to our hotel we needed to retrieve our baggage from the hold of the bus. A simple task you would think but one, due to breathtakingly inept bureaucratic tosh, was anything but.
Picture the scene: a packed bus arrives 90 minutes late and all passengers disembark and crowd round the hold to retrieve their baggage and get on with what little remains of their day. A representative of Hedman Alas stands in front of the baying mob, refusing to sift through the baggage or to pull it all out and place it on the ground, waiting instead for the holder of the corresponding ticket to the case which sits nearest him to stake their claim. It's a sensible policy in some respects but because it wasn't explained clearly and therefore not everyone is aware that this is the drill it is doomed to failure. People began to get agitated and the prospect of fisticuffs hung in the air until, at last, ticket holder number 1 was identified. Ok, we're off and running. Now, ticket holder number 2, number 2................number 2................

And repeat approximately 50 times, the number of cases in the hold.

It probably took 20 minutes for us to get our cases by which time it was all I could do to stop Kerry clambering into the hold to get ours herself.
This is one of those situations where you have to chant the travellers mantra: retain your sense of humour.
We do try, but sometimes we get overwhelmed and laughing it off is not an option. High decibel swearing or strangulation of officialdom are the only actions that will quell our ire.

Our taxi drove us the couple of miles or so through the mean streets of Tee-goose; narrow, bumpy and littered. It was reminiscent of Guatemala City and the trepidation we felt was just as palpable as it was then.
The hotel was a haven from the unnerving squalor outside and though we hadn't eaten we were in no mood to wander about out there looking for somewhere to dine so went to bed after eating a slice of cake each, left over from lunch.

As ever, daylight changed the complexion of the place and though it's not likely to be described as a great or fair city any time soon it did have a certain grimy allure. Anyway, how can you not be enthused by being somewhere new?
We ate breakfast and then set out on a walk about, taking in the main square, the cathedral and, er, well, that was about it really. There isn't a great deal else of note.

We walked in an easterly direction, one eye on our surroundings in the vain hope of seeing something of interest and the other on the floor to ensure we didn't fall into one of the many uncovered drains. Some of these were absolute death traps. If you didn't break your neck falling down the hole in the first place then the foul effluent within would surely do for you.
We tried to think why there would be so many missing drain covers, eventually surmising that they're probably a valuable commodity for those with nowt, and there's plenty of them in the city!

Seeing a large and impressive monument atop a hill we began walking in that general direction but no matter how hard we tried we couldn't seem to reach it. It was seemingly a case of no roads lead to Rome. We found ourselves on a remote side road at one point with nothing and noone around except for a young couple of about 18 years of age at the side of the road. As we neared we saw that she was not only wearing only a bra but was fishing water out of a drain and drinking it while her chap looked on. The look in her eyes was one of pure madness and we considered briefly if we could help them before Kerry convinced me that if I got my wallet out they would probably kill me for its contents. In an ideal world I would love to have taken them to get cleaned up, bought them some clothes and a meal but would it have worked out like that? I'm part sorry and part glad we never found out.

The next part of our walk took us past the national football stadium, a crumbling concrete edifice surrounded by lanes of speeding traffic. As we circled it looking to see if there was a way in to have a look at the pitch we saw a chap setting up a stall selling football shirts. Why would he be doing this unless there was a game on we wondered and sure enough, after a quick chat with him, we learned that the Honduran Classico, Motagua v Olimpia, was being played that very day at 1600. Tickets were available all over town, just look for people selling them.
With not an awful lot else on we thought we'd have a bash at this so found a guy selling tickets and asked him how much. 300 Lempiras, £10.
Hmmmmm, "got any cheaper ones?"
"Si, 150 Lempiras"
"Ummm, ok, we'll think about it".

An hour later, sitting in the main square watching people come and go and after brushing all the mysterious powder out of our hair and off our clothes which the hordes of football fans had covered everybody with via a fire extinguisher, we saw a lady selling tickets.
At 65 Lempiras it was not only a bargain but a fifth of the initial price quoted by the first bloke. I don't mind paying a bit more than the locals but that's just taking the Miguel.

With a couple of hours to kill before the match we went to a local market, ate a slap up lunch and then made our way to the Estadio Nacional.
On the way we saw the police chase down a couple of lads, slamming one of their heads down into the road as a consequence of two burly chaps leaping on him and outside the ground found ourself amidst a jostling and chanting maelstrom of humanity, bedecked in the white of Olimpico or dark blue of Motagua.
It felt quite intimidating and I internally questioned if we should go through with this but then we found ourselves in the ground and sat at the halfway line surrounded by a slightly more genteel lot and it was fine.

Behind each goal were the Ultras of each team, the drum beating, bouncing and perennially singing section of fans. As is often the case with football, the crowd was more interesting than the match and though the game ended 2-2 and there was a mass brawl on the pitch I think I enjoyed the drumming and the 90 minute singing to the tune of 'Karma Chameleon' more.

There was a constant stream of hawkers selling drinks, beers, crisps, flags and shirts, some of them only young boys of 6 or 7. As the game neared its conclusion even younger boys of about 4 were picking up the empty cans.
On one hand you feel sorry for them but on the other it gives them an early sense of purpose and responsibility and you have to question whether our mollycoddling policy is any better.

On Monday we visited a quaint little town about 15 miles away in the pine forests to the east of the city but before doing so we went to buy our tickets for the following day's escape to Nicaragua.
Checking the map we reckoned the Tica Bus office was about a mile and a half away, a nice pleasant morning stroll and a chance to see a bit more of the city.
It turned out to be a bit further and it was a hot day with no shade on offer so we were glad to get there and get out of the sun.
"2 tickets to Managua for tomorrow please"
"your passport please"

When we will learn to consider everything that we need before setting out on such missions is unknown but we must if we are to minimise our frustrations.
This little episode followed 2 hours over breakfast trying to deal with the quite ridiculous Australian authorities (how DO you complete a form which you cannot gain access to, with information that you do not have to hand?) so my mood was not as buoyant as it might have been when we pitched up at Valle de Angeles, a sleepy little town unchanged since the 18th century.

It didn't take us long to appreciate all Valle had to offer (not a lot) and the only thing Kerry wanted to do, visit the art gallery, wasn't possible with it being closed on a Monday.
We had lunch in a restaurant overlooking the main square, a nice meal only tarnished by the number of flies buzzing around us as we ate and that it gave us both diarrhoea later in the day. The sign outside said "American's welcome" and though it didn't specify which American, they were friendly enough to us even though we were British and there were quite plainly two of us.

Back in Tee-goose we needed to go back to Tica Bus with our passports and buy those tickets. We could leave it until the morning but with only one bus per day to Managua we didn't fancy the prospect of not getting on it and having to stay here another day.
We took a taxi this time and negotiated a deal for it to take us there, wait and bring us back for about £4, money well spent in light of this morning's hike.
It was a tortuous journey there through throngs of traffic and a street market. The city streets are woefully inadequate for the amount of traffic on the roads. As recently as 1980 there were only 200,000 inhabitants in Tee-goose and now there's 1.2 million. On top of that the city was originally laid out without the car in mind at all.
Drivers get round this inconvenience by jamming their horns on as if this will somehow clear a passage for them through the chaos.

Well, we had our first piece of luck of the day on arrival back at Tica Bus. The clerk was just locking the door as we got there and had we been perhaps just 1 minute later we would have had another wasted trip. I don't think my fragile state would have coped very well with that so its a very good thing we made it in time.

Aside from settling our hotel bill where the slimy little scrote on reception tried to diddle us out of a tenner that pretty much wrapped things up in Honduras. It's a country that we feel we've done justice to by seeing 3 or 4 different towns, been out to an island, an ancient ruin, a national park for river rafting and also travelled the length and breadth of its main populated areas.
It's an incredibly beautiful place with friendly people and though it feels more 'on the up' than El Salvador and slightly more so than Guatemala it still has a long way to go before it's as developed as Mexico.

Next stop Nicaragua then and, according to a few people we've met, the best country to visit in Central America. I guess we'll soon find out if we agree.

Northern Honduras and Roatan

We took the easy option from El Salvador to Honduras with the minibus picking us up outside our crab infested domicile at 0630, complete with pidgin English speaking guide to help us through the border. Several other people had made the same choice and crammed into our Toyota were 6 young Aussies, a Chinese Canadian and a mute and portly Spanish speaking lady of indeterminate origins.

It was so much better than our journey from Guatemala into El Salvador, what with the direct service, the chance to chat with people and the breeze through customs that I'm sure we'll take advantage of similar services if they're available to us as we progress.

Due to the road network between El Salvador and Honduras being a little rudimentary we actually crossed back into Guatemala before reaching our destination of Copan Ruinas, a little town in the very north of the country and one of the southernmost points of the Maya. This meant we had to negotiate two separate border crossings making us even more glad we'd come the easy way.

On arrival in Copan we soon found a room, a right result at just £12 per night, then went out to buy a few cosmetics to keep our Limey bodies as close to hygiene as perennial sweating will allow. There is a dearth of shower gel on offer in Central America, it's tiny little bars of soap all the way, no good for the fair and sensitive skin of 'er who used to be indoors. Nevertheless, after visiting several farmacias we finally found one selling some, though at the mighty price of about £5 for the bottle. We baulked at this and asked the assistant if she had any more, cheaper bottles.
"No", was her stern reply so we umm-ed and ah-ed about the pros and cons of parting with a Lady Godiva and of Kerry's skin seizing up to resemble a suit of armour. With one vote apiece and no sign of an end to the stalemate the assistant then interjected with "What about this one?", pointing to a bottle approximately the size of a yard of ale for half the price of the first.
Needless to say, we bought it and that it now forms part of my luggage on account of all the other creams that Kerry has stashed in every compartment of her (fully functioning) case.

I had to get some deodorant, my 5th since we left Blighty giving some indication of the way the humidity is affecting me and we also bought some more "Off", mosquito repellent, without which the occasional bite we are suffering would see us covered from head to toe in itchy welts. We've seen a few travellers who are absolutely gnawed and quite how they contend with the irritation I don't know.
It's a curious thing but only gringos seem to get bitten. The locals get the odd bite but nothing compared to tourists.

After a lazy morning recuperating from yesterday's travels, punctuated only by visiting every single shop in town to look for flip flops for Kerry to replace ones that gave up the ghost in El Salvador, we walked the 1km along the road to the reason why we and a million other tourists were here.

Copan was the most southerly of the great Mayan cities and was home to around 25000 people in its heyday. It was founded around 1200BC and flourished until about 800 when it and all the other Mayan cities were abandoned. Why this was is still unclear to archaeologists but the latest theory is that a significant drought and subsequent crop fail could be to blame.

Copan was home to the greatest sculptors in the Americas and artisans created quite stunning pieces of work on grand scales. Whilst our ancestors were wallowing in pigswill and fighting over mouldy potatoes, stonemasons here were carving intricate monuments and creating a hall of records of their culture out of stone. Only the great plaza has been excavated but it's still awe-inspiring stuff. The carvings steal the show but there's a couple of pyramids to clamber up and an area where royalty used to reside. Inside one of these pyramids is a magnificent tomb, discovered in 1989. The tomb was a massive edifice in its own right and painted bright red and green before being built over by a later generation and hidden beneath the pyramid.

We were pleased it wasn't too busy at the ruins, nothing detracts from your experience more than thousands of camera toting tourists shouting "oh gee!" and swatting mozzies on their necks in unison. We were deep in the jungle though, it wasn't long after midday so we were hot. There's just no getting used to this heat. As northern Europeans we're simply not cut out for it and our bodies don't know what to do to try to combat it. Kerry has the occasional light - headed moment whereas I simply ooze out of pores I didn't even know previously existed.
The only relief from this is when we're in water.

As we left the ruins the heavens opened so we took a tuk-tuk back to town, crossing a little stream en route to the bus station to buy tickets for tomorrow's departure to La Cieba on the north (Caribbean) coast. We couldn't buy them without our passports so we carried on home to sit out the rain and then come back later to complete the transaction.

It rained pretty hard for a couple of hours but finally eased off so we walked back to the bus station and parted with our Lempiras for the 1030 departure tomorrow. We could have chanced our arm and bought them on the day but at least this way we knew we were on that bus. As we approached the bus station we saw a commotion and investigated to see that the little ford we'd driven over 2 hours earlier in our tuk-tuk was now a raging, thigh-deep torrent of muddy water. It was impassable surely but then the first of a line of lorries revved its engine and inched towards the crossing before successfully reaching the other side, kink in the middle of the crossing and 6ft high drop one side and all. A great cheer went up from the assembled masses and then the next lorry fired up, a big brown articulated vehicle which looked for all the world like it was going to disappear over the side at one point, though made it safely across.
We watched half a dozen or more such crossings before leaving the locals to their afternoon's free entertainment and went and bought our bus tickets.

With Saturday came the chance to see some of the countryside of Honduras by virtue of the 9 hour bus journey to La Cieba. We had decided whilst in Copan that what we needed was a break, it had been a full-on month since we were at the Isla Mujeres and we had identified the island of Roatan as being likely to give us what we needed. It was impossible to make it in a day so we'd stop over in La Cieba and continue on Sunday.

We arrived early for the bus, our hour long wait enough for the muscle memory in our backsides to start griping. The ticket clerk told us that it was a good job we'd bought our tickets yesterday as they'd had a large group since who had bought all the remaining seats so that was definitely a victory for organisation. With around 15 minutes to go before departure a fleet of taxis pulled up and deposited a party of the hugest Germans I have ever seen in my life, along with approximately 15 tons of their gear.
Their apparent leader was a guy in his late 30s who was built like the proverbial Shisenhausen. He must have been 6'9" or 6'10" and he was accompanied by five or six other fellas ranging from 6'2" to 6'6" and two perfect female incarnations of Adolf Hitler's pure aryan vision with their athletic frames and white blonde hair.
The one exception to this Teutonic display of physical magnificence was a guy who was a mere weed at only about 5'10" and whose sweat glands could even put mine to shame. One of his friends really ought to have pointed out though that given his arse seemingly emits gallons of perspiration it may not be the wisest sartorial decision to sport light grey shorts.

On-board the rather splendid Headman Alas coach a couple of Dutch women, one of whom had been stowing her money belt in her very fetching grey knickers in the waiting room with her skirts up about her neck, were settling themselves and their two children for the journey ahead. The TV screen was protruding from the roof just above her and the poor woman managed to turn straight into it and crack her face on it with such a thud. Noticing the German leviathan across the aisle was either practising yoga or that the confines of his seat were resulting in his knees being up by his ears there followed an exchange between them that was straight out of 'Allo 'Allo.
The Dutch children were in the front seats near the steps and as such had masses of legroom.
Dutch lady - Vood you like to swap wiz zem? Zey have much room.
Humungous German - Jah. Zat is very kind. Sank you.
All that was missing was a picture of the fallen Madonna concealed in a sausage and Vikki Michelle saying "oooh Rene".

Aside from jocularly xenophobic observations the journey was simply one of air-conditioned comfort through a green and hilly paradise. This really is one of the most beautiful parts of the world and the profusion of palm trees gives it that lush, tropical bent.
We had to change buses roughly half-way, at a place called San Pedro Sula, waiting in transit with a few others from our bus including the German group.
It was here that I found time to investigate the irritating tackiness that I had noticed on my feet these past couple of days. The black residue on my feet at the end of the day was, I assumed, some tar or something off the pavement that had worked its way into my foot and into the sole of my flip flop. Close inspection showed though that it was in fact that my flip flops appear to be being slowly digested by my feet, the covering layer melting away to reveal a black glue.
Shoes have been the absolute bane of this trip as far as I'm concerned.
I brought 3 pairs but have hardly worn my trainers or my shoes because it's been so hot. The flip flops I brought were on their last legs so I bought some for a dollar in Memphis to back them up but only wore them twice before their cheap manufacture contrived to trip me up and almost put me under a passing car.
Seeing some Reefs in Acapulco for only £12 I bit the bullet and bought them, binning my original Reefs, and these are what are rotting on my feet as I type. Add to this litany a very fetching pair of sandals bought in Tijuana, never worn and given to a homeless guy in Belize, that we both had to buy some water shoes as we left these out of our check-list and that on the odd occasions I have worn the shoes I did bring they rub me to the point of blisters then you begin to see what I mean.
I should have listened to Stuart at work who, before we came, said I should only pack flip flops and walking boots.

With our connection being an hour late it was a dark and therefore stressful arrival into La Cieba on Saturday evening. The poor Dutch woman in front smacked her face into the TV again as we pulled up with such force that there was a collective "oooooohh" from all of us that witnessed it and she must currently be sporting a face worthy of the president of the Club for Battered Wives (grey knicker wearing branch).
We hopped in a taxi and made for the 'Banana Republic Guest House', a youth hostel recommended by the Lonely Planet but not so by our taxi driver who told us it was rat infested.

We've met a few ignorant and insouciant gits since we set off but I think the guy at Banana Republic took the biscuit.
It was apparent that our arrival was a supreme irritation to him but his flawless demonstration of disinterested disdain was a marvel to behold. We were shown to our stinking hovel of a room, a fetid, airless pit with less charm than a Belsen gas chamber and when we came to use the loo across the hall to freshen up a bit we found it to have no water.
I went downstairs to report this but I needn't have bothered - he already knew. Kerry ended up having to walk through the men's dorm, stepping over a prostrate and semi-clad individual who was out sparko in order to ablute in the gents, the only working toilet in the place. The door didn't lock so a kind soul offered to hold it shut for her while she peed. Nice!

Sourcing food in a strange town at night which has a bad reputation is never easy and the fact that it started to pour as we began our search made it even less enjoyable. However, we stumbled across a great little find, a place rustling up tasty meats for around £2.50 per meal with as much fried banana thrown in as you can eat (Which as it turns out is quite a lot. Not sure why I didn't go to the lav for 3 days afterwards but there you go).
Back at the Guest House we tiptoed past indifference personified so as not to disturb his web surfing and retired to our room. Remembering our taxi drivers words, and now believing he was talking literally rather than trying to persuade us to patronise an hotel where he would receive payment for taking us, we slung the trusty mozzie net up and prayed for morning and escape.

Within minutes of waking we were up, out and in a taxi to the docks to catch the boat to Roatan.
English speaking, golden sands, warm waters and an opportunity to reinflate our airbeds were all good reasons to make for this island paradise and we both thought it was a lovely and smooth 90 minute crossing though several people were bowking into polythene bags. Our friends the Germans were aboard, as was another couple we'd seen on our bus yesterday. There's a definite tourist trail and we are firmly on it.

Once on the island it's every man for himself as you seek to procure a taxi to one of the two main places and then, in turn, a room. We were lagging behind somewhat off the boat but ultimately played a blinder in beating our driver down from $20 US to $10 and then taking his recommendation to stay with friends of his in West Bay. He also made for an interesting half hour in his own right as we talked about such diverse subjects as the Kennedy assassination, the rise of Evangelism in the Americas and whether Prince 'Carlos' will ever be king of England.

Though pricey we figured we would be doing nothing except eating and laying on the beach so could justify the outlay on our beach front cabin. After the squalor of the night before it was a joy to have air-con, fridge, flushing
toilet and we emptied our packs in readiness for a few days here and promptly hit the beach.
It was Sunday so there were quite a few locals around making for a cosmopolitan patronage on our mile or so stretch of sand. West Bay is apparently the best beach in central America and its hard to argue. It's your classic picture postcard vista of crystalline water, palms, golden sand and clear blue sky. A real Bobby Dazzler after 4 weeks of pretty hard travelling.

Though technically belonging to Honduras, Roatan is far removed from the mainland. It's history is a turbulent one, mainly piratical with the territory being used as a bargaining tool between Spaniards, the English and the Americans of yore, as well as being a favoured bolt hole for romanticised cutthroats such as Calico Jack, Henry Morgan and John Coxen, the latter having the islands principal town, Coxen Hole, named after him. The name of the other sizeable settlement, Port Royal, was used in the recent Pirates of the Caribbean films.

The Yankee dollar is very much the currency on Roatan, as it is in much of the Americas. Establishments will accept Honduran Lempiras but the likelihood is that your change will be given in US currency. It's as we'll that you get 20 Lempiras to 1 dollar and not 137.2 or something equally difficult to work out.

It was heaven to stretch out on our airbeds and bob up and down on the gentle waves lapping at the shore. That's all we did that first afternoon and then as the sun set we dined on red snapper in a beach front restaurant which was to become our second home for the 4 days we were here.
Outside the restaurant, on the beach, we met Lindy, a friendly local (hello friends and welcome to my island, paradise on earth) whose life evolves around a particular few square metres of sand on the beach and Manhattan where his children live. Whenever we walked past he'd be there with a cheery greeting and an offer to buy some of the jewellery he peddles.

Inside were some rather tedious Americans who'd been on the sauce all day and were talking rather loudly. A strapping, nay Amazonian, blonde was the main protagonist talking in that horrible way: "I'm not being funny but she needs to seriously fix her teeth and I mean that in a nice way".

Personally I think uttering "I'm not being funny but" should be made illegal. It always precedes something derogatory, negative or catty and implies that he using it somehow has some higher moral or social ground from which to verbalise what is in actual fact often their own inadequacies.
Well, that's my opinion anyway. If you don't like that I'm not being funny but you can go and read another blog.

In accordance with the gospel according to Andy and Kerry rest & relaxation should somehow encompass  extreme activity of one description or another. Aching muscles are desired, near exhaustion mandatory and a failure to kick the arse out of any given day is heresy. On the first day proper of our rest on the island of Roatan then we eschewed the $3 water taxi fare to West End, 3 miles away, opting to walk along the beach instead.
It was a very hot day and by the time we reached the village we were both pooped, Kerry so much so that we had to stop and refuel with pineapple juice at a cafe on the outskirts. Whilst sitting here we both eyed the pool and considered jumping in until we saw about a dozen huge crabs scuttling along the bottom.

West End was nothing to write home about. In fact it was a bit of a dump and we were very glad we weren't staying here. After a quick look round and after buying some provisions to keep in our fridge we made our way back to the sanctity of our end of the island, via water taxi this time.
On the boat we saw the couple from our bus the other day so talked to them learning that he was a German teaching Law at the university of Guatemala and she his sister making her annual visit from Munich to see him. He was another who could have entered the world perspiration championships and his cotton shirt was pretty wet and clinging to his body. As we gathered speed I reacted quickly enough to save my baseball cap from blowing into the sea but rather histrionically flung the last inch of my pineapple juice all over my new friend in the process.
As a rule I love Germans, they're some of the nicest people you could wish to meet and this fellow lived up to that estimation by apologising to me for wearing my drink.

Later that afternoon we walked the mile down to the reef at the end of our beach and snorkelled for a couple of hours. I was having a bit of bother maintaining a seal what with my Brian Blessed-esque facial fungus but 15 gallons of salt water up my nose aside it was great.

Kerry dived on Tuesday morning in what turned out to be refresher and then 1:1 dive with the instructor, a young Italian lady who came out here for a season, fell in love with it and a local guy and now is here for the foreseeable. After 18 months or so without a dive she was a tad nervous but soon got back into the swing of it and now plans to dive again as soon as the opportunity is there. It sounds like it was a great dive, fantastic visibility, warm water and enough different fish and things to see to keep anyone happy. She loves it under the water does our Kerry.
I was so tired after yesterday's exertions that I fell back to sleep when she went out that morning and only woke up at 1100, 14 hours after falling asleep last night!

After hours and hours of floating around on the sea, a dozen new mozzie bites and an hour on a sea bound set of apparatus akin to the 'Wipeout' TV show we felt it was time to move on again so we got up early on Thursday and caught the 0700 ferry back to La Cieba with the aim of going white water rafting on the Rio Cangrejal.
There are three companies offering this service and being the safety conscious and mature pair that we are we opted to go with the most expensive and best reviewed, figuring that if it's German run and by an ex International kayaker at that it ought to be well managed.

First we had to get there though and could choose from $10 taxi fare or 60p bus fare. Of course, we took the clapped out local bus from the market, quite enjoying the chaotic visit to the gas station with 20 cars and buses all at different angles visiting 6 pumps. The second half of the 16km journey, on a dreadfully bumpy unpaved track was less fun though the fact that we couldn't travel faster than 10 mph from then on did conceal that our buses gear box was knackered and would not change up from 2nd. We had crawled out of town with scores of horns tooting at us. That poor driver must have that every day of his working life.

We were greeted at Omega Tours by Sylvia, partner of Mr Kayak and shown around. As we were going rafting that afternoon, fortunate as we had only turned up on spec, we could choose from a free dorm, a free private hut straddling a river or pay $40 and have a 2-storey self-contained tree house deep in the jungle. Once we'd seen the tree house there was no contest. It was so beautifully appointed, no expense spared and everything linking into nature to make you feel like you wanted to don a leathery loin cloth and practise your 'aaaaaaaaeeeeerrrrrrrggggggghhhsss'.
The coat hooks were varnished sticks, windows were simply mozzie netting so that you were at one with the jungle, the shower curtain ran along a stick, the shower cubicle was stone and gave the impression you were in a rock pool, everywhere you looked was beautiful wood and there was even a free bees nest, thankfully on the outside of the mozzie netting.

We barely had time to digest these fabulous surroundings before we were off to lunch and to meet our guides for the afternoon, Christy, a 22 year old who was originally from Suffolk but whose family moved to New Zealand when he was 6 and Alan, a 30 ish white water nut from Northern Ireland who'd been working at Omega for 3 years.

I hadn't considered the dangers of what we were about to undertake before we got to the water and Christy began to go through our 20 minutes prep.
We were taught how to paddle forwards and backwards, how to use our weight to lean the raft to one side, how to assume safe positions in which to travel down rapids or over drops and what to do when the boat capsizes.
Despite all this I found the most alarming thing to be his little patter about the river itself.
"Do you know what the river is called?" he asked.
"Yes, the Rio Cangrejal"
"And do you know why it's called that?"
"No, do tell"
"Well, Cangrejal means 'crab' and when the water is very low you can see millions of crabs in here"

After my experience in El Zonte that wasn't really what I wanted to hear.

But of course, once we were on the way and being flung around on grade 3 water we didn't have much time to consider the fauna below us. It was fantastically exhilarating stuff with healthy doses of abject terror thrown in to keep you on your toes.
We did a spot of leaping off 20 ft high boulders and some river swimming too where you leave the raft and get hurtled downstream by the raging torrent. Wonderful stuff, enhanced by the presence of Christy and Alan, the former undoubtedly going places in this world and surely to realise his dream one day of being a guide on the Colorado through the Grand Canyon.

With adrenaline still coursing through our veins and German beefsteak lining out stomachs we turned in for the night in the pitch blackness of our jungle home. It felt weird to be lying there listening to the racket of the jungle and we found we couldn't relax for fear of something hideous penetrating the netting and getting in to our room. Having seen a long legged spider by the side of the river today my mind was on arachnids whereas Kerry had the slightly less rational notion that a horde of baboons was about to tear down the netting and attack us. We put the mozzie net up to deter any non-Simian perpetrators and drifted off to an uneasy sleep. I mainly dreamt of spiders and when I awoke for my nighttime pee I cursed the fact that I hadn't brought a bottle in to bed with me - far better that than get out in the pitch black and probably end up with a tarantula on me.

We made it through the night unscathed and, having bade our farewells to the lovely people at Omega, made for La Cieba and the 1000 bus to Tegucigalpa, capital of Honduras and our last stop before moving into Nicaragua.

By a strange twist the waiting room was awash with gargantuan Germans, the party from before heading back to Guatemala City and their flight back to the Fatherland. We bought our tickets and sat and waited. And waited. Eventually someone came out to explain that the bus was caught up in some demonstrations in the town and couldn't move. Typical! Just when you don't want a mass demonstration by the disaffected people of a banana republic you get one! They had no idea how long it would take so we all just sat there, the Germans much more agitated than anyone else given that they had to cross a border and make that plane home.

By 1300 and with no sign of anything happening we had our tickets changed to travel the following day, a luxury that such a flexible itinerary affords.
This gave us the afternoon to explore La Cieba, a more grimy and down-at-heel place you would struggle to find. Our hotel was the one saving grace with its pool and wi-fi and I made use of the unexpected free time by shaving off my beard, much to Kerry's delight.

Next day, 24 hours later than planned, we were finally on our way to Tegucigalpa, capital of Honduras.

El Salvador

The boorish Canadian from the bar we were in last night was also heading into El Salvador today and told us of a direct service from Antigua to Playa El Zonte. Though it was only $20 US the fact that it departed at 0800 and that he would be aboard meant that we opted for what we hoped would be a much more satisfying way of doing things. A kind soul who goes by the name of Mr Zedd had posted on a travel forum blow by blow instructions of how to get from Antigua to El Zonte by chicken bus so I convinced Kerry we ought to give it a bash. Like the intrepid and hardy traveller she is, she didn't take much cajoling.

Having checked out of the lovely hotel we'd enjoyed for the past 3 nights we began the walk to the bus station, a slight misnomer because it's just a huge dirt expanse with around 100 chicken buses sat on it. There was no need to check the map for directions, I knew the way, turn left outside our door and keep walking until you hit it. No problem.
Well, just one problem, wheeling my case over cobbles again whilst bent ever so slightly. I noticed a new aggravation as we walked which was that my flip flops kept catching my pack somehow. It seems such minutiae to you I'm sure but is annoying in the extreme to me. 

We walked and walked. And we walked. We walked further than I remembered it being to the bus station, then we came to the edge of town. With Kerry visibly questioning why she places her faith in me so blindly I sheepishly took our map out and saw that rather than walk one block left and two blocks down as we should have done, our walking 10 blocks left saw us about 1km away from where we wanted to be, having already walked 1km too far.

Quite how I erred so spectacularly is still something of a mystery though the mitigating circumstances are that it's easy to get lost in a grid system and I am apparently blessed with the navigational acumen of Mark Thatcher. (younger readers may have to google that one)
With self-admonishment airing itself more with every stride and Kerry's patience with me, scant to begin with, totally evaporated we stomped in seething silence toward our goal. We came to yet another crossroads and while I looked in all directions in the vain hope of seeing a bus-orientated clue I took my eye off where I was walking, fatal around here. The pain shot through my toe, up my leg, into my brain and out of my mouth in half a nanosecond. An inexplicable protrusion of rusty iron was in my path and I had walked straight into it, stubbing my left big toe and opening it up in a flappy and fleshy manner. As my mother would say, this put the tin hat on proceedings and I cursed my failure to refer to the map in the first place as blood oozed into my flip flop. A flicker of sympathy crossed Kerry's face but then she remembered she temporarily hated me and it was soon replaced by contempt once more.

After opening the First Aid kit for the first time (we were both pleased in a way, wouldn't want to bring it all this way and not use it) we found the bus we were looking for and took our seats. We would depart at 1030 for Esquintla, probably a full hour later than had we come straight here, but no matter, Mr Zedd said it was 6 hours all in so we'd still be there by 1830.
A young chap got on a few minutes into the journey and squeezed his way up the aisle handing out slips of paper which read something like "My brothers and me are starving and I'm going to sing you a song which I would be so grateful if you could spare 1 Quetzale for". He had a can of coke with some rice in it as percussion and proceeded to sing so hilariously atrociously that it was pure comedy gold and well worth the few Quetzales we had as change.

Escuintla was a boiling hot hell-hole of a place which, judging by the attention we garnered, doesn't see many travellers. As it was now about midday we thought we'd get some food before embarking on the next leg of the journey from here to the border, 2 1/4 hours according to Mr Zedd. We came out of the bus station and walked left up the main drag looking and feeling more than a little conspicuous. The paths were chock a block with either people, food stalls, potholes or missing drain covers so we walked up the road into a stream of honking traffic. Eating establishments were thin on the ground but then we saw a place over the road. Before we could cross a guy spoke English to me and said we oughtn't go in there as it's full of the mafia. I thanked him for his concern but told him we were hungry and had no choice so in we walked. The looks on the faces of the clientele as an overheating lady and her beardy accomplice entered their domain wheeling suitcases was memorable to say the least. Some nervously laughed, eyebrows approached hairlines on others and some looked for the 'Candid Camera' team. (Younger readers may have to google that one too).
Once we were advised that they didn't sell food, only some form of brain liquidizing grog, we were out of there quicker than you can say "Two weeks in Skegness next year dear?".

Back into the noisy streets of Esquintla, getting more and more frustrated that finding food here is seemingly a quest on a par with locating the holy grail, we found ourselves tossing up over the merits of a fried chicken that looked like a first class ticket to Botulism Central (change at Vomit Street) or some chips being cooked by a filthy tramp-like individual on a mobile wooden cart in oil dirtier than I've seen leaking out of the back of my camper van. We opted for the VW chips and sat in something of a daze by the side of the road eating them, fending off ants and wondering why the young lad who needed a pee felt it necessary to answer his call of nature quite so close to us.

Replenished, or at least so internally soaked in grease that it appeared so, we hopped on our next bus, changing onto another bound for the border in a non-descript place whose name escapes me. We were dropped at customs and we joined the small queue  seeking entry into El Salvador. Ahead of us were a couple of agitated guys eating dragon fruit and spitting the pips out into a nearby bin with unerring accuracy and a party of 4 nuns driving a minibus. There was a long delay of about 15 minutes while the nuns were processed, 15 long hot minutes standing up in direct sunlight with my travelling companion huffing and puffing. What was the delay for God's sake? (Touché). Did the officials suspect there was a shed load of coke in the headlining of their Toyota or perhaps those big comfy pants that (one suspects) they were wearing were concealing a cache of illegal firearms. I must say, the mother superior looked a but shifty and the nervous disposition of the young orderly suggested she might be packing heat. Finally it was our turn and after a few minutes deliberation, most of it spent looking at an error message on the computer when the official swiped Kerry's passport, we were officially out of Guatemala and into no-mans land, a one mile stretch leading to El Salvadorean immigration. We took a bicycle taxi across this for a dollar but were asked to get out halfway and transfer to another and pay another dollar. "Que?" says I. "This El Salvador, I not go here" says he. A cunning racket if ever there was one but $2 well spent against wheeling my infernal case for a mile.

There was a bit of confusion at immigration, as there usually is it seems, but we were soon approved without money changing hands and being cycled to the bus 'station', another muddy car park type affair. A guy in a pick-up offered to drive us directly to Playa El Zonte for $60, a kind offer which I nonetheless found easy to turn down, deciding to take the bus to Sonsonate for 40 cents each. Buses in El Salvador are incredibly cheap. 

This journey was about an hour and a half and was our fourth chicken bus of the day. Seats in these buses are very thin so it doesn't take long to develop an ache in ones coccyx, arse ache to be blunt, so as we sped through the verdant wonder of our fifth country our awe was tempered by our suffering posteriors. Nevertheless, how exciting to be here. Just a few short years ago a civil war was raging, apparently prolonged for a whole decade following intervention by Uncle Sam. All I knew about the place was that there had been this civil war and that by dint of a small miracle the country had qualified for the 1982 world cup in Spain, suffering the heaviest ever finals defeat at the hands of an average Hungary, 10-1. Further reading would reveal an atrocious 20th century with thousands of people shot for sympathising with opposition parties, human rights violations on a grand scale and ethnic cleansing of, I quote "anyone looking indigenous". Understandable then that perceptions are negative but the country is turning the corner and it's been on travellers radars for a decade and more now.

By the time we got to Sonsonate we had just about had it so we decided we'd stay the night here and continue on tomorrow. We took a taxi to the best hotel in town and tried to forget the trials of the day via the pool and a slap up dinner, remarking that if we ever met Mr Zedd we would likely offer him violence unless he removes his jaunty "it's easy to get from Antigua to El Salvador by chicken bus" posting from the interweb.
Next morning, refreshed from a night in one of the better rooms we've had the pleasure of patronising, we went out for a quick walk to get some cash and have some breakfast. The locals were very interested in us, many saying hello and an awful lot more just staring at us. We needed some cash so used a drive through cash point, immediately feeling even more conspicuous for having a few hundred dollars each stuffed down our kex. El Salvador adopted the US dollar as their currency in 2001, a result for us as we'd nearly used all ours up so this afforded us the chance to restock and stash them about ourselves and our packs, a policy which should minimise the chance of losing them all should we get mugged at any point.

With all chores accomplished we took a cab back to the bus station, a shock-absorber free Nissan that wouldn't have looked out of place in a scrapyard, before seeking a bus down the coast to El Zonte. All eyes were on the gringos as we tried to find the right bus, our task not aided by an aggravating little scrote of about 10 dancing in front of us asking for a dollar. We had great trouble understanding the dialect of the couple of people we asked for help so jumped on a bus bound for Mizata, a beach about 15 miles this side of El Zonte, reckoning on changing there for one onwards to our Mecca. 

45 minutes later we were invited to alight from the bus when the conductor threw our cases into the road and gestured wildly at us. As we stood in the road watching the bus disappear in a cloud of black smoke we looked at each other with open mouths before the  expletives poured out. "I say, what the devil are we doing here?" enquired Kerry. "What and where IS here?" I asked rhetorically.
A rusty sign hanging on one hinge bore the moniker "Playa Mizata" and pointed down a stony lane so we started to walk down it, not really knowing what else to do. 
The lane was longer than we hoped, a good 10 minute saunter made insufferably difficult by trying to wheel cases over such an uneven surface. Once we'd made it past the rabid looking mutt and then the herd of cows we arrived at something called 'Playa Mizata Resort'. At least there was something here, I had feared we'd have to walk back up the lane having wasted half an hour and expended an unnecessary amount of energy on a fools errand though when we found someone and asked how much a room was the $65 asking price made it look that way anyway.
Then the young girl who was addressing us changed the whole complexion of the situation, the day, the country - "I'll get my step-dad, he's North American".

George was a be-shorted and bare chested chap with a wire brush like tash and a bucket load of helpful information for the two exasperated specimen on his porch. It was a bank holiday in El Salvador and there'd be no buses onwards along the coast today. Yes his rooms were $65 but if we wanted something cheaper his neighbour Bob might be able to help us out as he has a couple of Eco-pods in his garden. George's step-daughter took us and introduced us to Bob, a dead ringer for Woody Allen and an ex New York lawyer who has found himself in El Salvador as he prepares to write a book. A deal was struck for one of his pods which we set about defiling immediately, Kerry's half hundredweight of lotions and potions to the fore.

With the pod just a few yards from the beach, a kilometre long stretch of jet black sand flanked by dense palms, we were soon on our way there to enjoy the crashing surf and quite frightening undertow along with a hundred or so locals, most of them fascinated by any gesture or movement either of us two made.
We took a real pounding in those waves and an earful of sand rendered me Mutt and Jeff for two days and I'm still fishing particles out now.

The next day we thought we'd probably move on but after a lazy breakfast and a long chat with both Bob and Geoff about their past, present and futures we decided to hang around and see what transpired. Not a lot did but that was why it was so fabulous a few days. We sat on the veranda of our pod and played Scrabble and Sudoku, read a bit, sat around chewing the fat with the fellas, ate delicious shrimp kabobs, chatted to a French couple who have jacked their jobs in to cycle from Panama City to Cancun, watched the most incredible electrical storm and watched the two young kids who live in Bob's garden roll around in mud. Time stopped for a short time and it was great. If only some idiot hadn't decided that this trip needed to encompass the whole American continent we could have stayed longer.
It was a real wrench to leave when we did and we hoped someone would offer us a lift back up to the main road rather than have to wheel or carry our cases up that lane. Bob did offer but in keeping with his chaotic, rudimentary and sometimes incomprehensible situation his pick-up wouldn't start so we had to walk after all.

We stood by the side of the road and tried to flag a couple of buses down before a half-naked local on a bike told us to wait 5 more minutes and the El Zonte bus would be along. On-board we met Brad, another American from Mizata and another with an interesting tale. A guy in the USA reaches his 25th birthday which triggers a $30m inheritance. What to do with such wealth? Well, first off he bought a palatial pad on the beach at Mizata with rooms to let, then he lost interest somewhat due to a flirtation with Colombia's purest and also liquid gold. To keep things ticking over he needed an Estates Manager and Brad was the successful applicant. He spends one week in Chicago per month and 3 weeks in Mizata running the estate. It sounds like a complete doddle. Today for example he was taking a 2 day trip to San Salvador to see his girlfriend. Now that's the sort of job I'd like.

Several days later than planned we finally reached El Zonte and once again we were dumped on the road seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The road down to this place was paved so things were looking up. What seething metropolis would we find? Could this be a paradise to rival the Isla?
The answers to both questions were soon answered in a terribly disappointing way. Zonte is surfer dude drop-out city. If you're not hanging ten man then you're waxing your board, or sitting cross legged on the sand or lying in a hammock talking to your compadres. Everybody was 20-30 years of age, lithe and had been here for ages. We, with our advancing years, inability to surf and slightly plubby midriffs were not meant to be here. Plus, the place was a shit hole. 
We found a room and booked one night while we worked out what to do. We didn't know whether to try to join in and have a days surfing lesson, move on to San Salvador first thing or carry on down the coast to La Libertad in the hope that that was a better bet for us. Then we saw a poster in reception; shuttle to Copan Ruinas in Honduras for $35, air-con shuttle through Guatemala and into Honduras with English speaking guide to assist with the border control and, most importantly after the pain of our journey from Antigua, a direct service. We reckoned that was well worth the money so decided to book it for Friday. 

We were directed towards Alex to make the reservation, the owner of our hotel. You expect an hotel owner to look a certain way. Alex, about 30 years old with long ponytail, bare torso, board shorts and bare feet did not conform to a stereotype. He was a dead ringer for Antonio Banderas and once we'd made our booking he told us how he has such a great life, teaching surfing, owning the hotel, disappearing into the mountains for 3 day jaunts with his mates. I thought all this made him a git but Kerry seemed a little more impressed judging by how far out of her head her eyes were bulging.
There was a change to the advertised plan though. Rather than Friday the trip would be tomorrow, leaving at 0630. Holy cow! We were suddenly in an almighty rush, weren't prepared and our time in El Salvador was going to come to a premature and abrupt end.
We had to get our acts together, get to bed, be ready.

Our room was a triple, 2 bunks and a double bed, so we made use of all this room and spread out. I took the double near the door to the patio and next to the window and Kerry went in the top bunk on the other side of the room. Lights went off about 2200 and I soon, as is customary, fell into a deep sleep. My next recollection is of being aware of something. I just stirred and being only a quarter awake it could have been the sheet rubbing on me, a dream, anything. Then I felt something cold but was still so drowsy as to simply turn over and ignore it. Then I felt movement and shot out of bed thinking a moth or something was fluttering over my skin somehow. My accompanying primeval shriek woke Kerry who assumed I was having a nightmare but as I stood there in the darkness I could see a shadow on the curtain and I told her that something was on me and was now on the curtain. I was sure it was a spider but when we nervously turned the light on we saw that it was a crab.
A hideous, cold, bony horrible thing had crawled over me whilst I was asleep and woke me up. Ugh! I can't abide creepy crawlies, spiders or bees and I bloody hate crabs. It freaked me out and I had to put the mozzie net up to stand any chance of nodding off again.

Our 5 hour journey north to the Guatemalan border aside that was it for El Salvador. It was a flying visit yes, just a few days, though it was always the intention to just pass through on the way to frying bigger fish. As it turned out our unintentional sojourn to Mizata made it one of the most memorable aspects of the whole trip and if you like Devon you'd love it here as it's very reminiscent of it. It's just hotter and there's less opportunity to have a cream tea. Just remember to bring a mozzie net if you do ever come.

Guatemala City and the Highlands

We got up early on Monday morning in our sweaty wooden shack in Livingston to catch the 0730 boat to Puerto Barrios. The first job was to negotiate our way out of our mosquito net which we'd rigged up above our bed to combat the bugs here. We'd been bitten a few times since our arrival and had just read that coastal mozzies carry both malaria and dengue fever so we didn't want to take any chances. Also, we'd used the top of the toilet cistern yesterday to sit a mozzie coil in so that we didn't burn our shack down and Kerry happened to mention that that's a prime place to find a tarantula. With a distinct lack of arachnid activity thus far I've become a but complacent so it was a timely reminder and another reason to put the mozzie net up. I know of two tarantula based horror stories and I suddenly got the willies that our wooden room was the sort of place to add my own to this mini-litany. Given that I involuntarily break dance and suffer mild palpitations when near a wasp, I genuinely fear for my heart should I encounter a large spider at close quarters.

The boat along the coast was a great way to start a Monday. With thick jungle on one side and the Caribbean sea on the other it was about as far removed from a Monday morning back in the real world as one can imagine. It only took about 30 minutes and we were soon onto the dock at Puerto Barrios being besieged by taxi drivers, one of whom we paid a handsome sum to take us what turned out to be just a few yards to the bus station.

With little or no opportunity to forward plan we often turn up blind for legs of journeys. This was a case in point with the next bus to Guatemala City not being for nearly 2 hours. The upside to this was that we could have a leisurely breakfast while we waited and also that the service in question was a first class bus; reclining seats and all. It would at least be a comfortable 6 hour journey across the country.

The journey itself was largely uneventful. We passed some lovely scenery, noting how verdant it is here and we also climbed a few thousand feet too. Starting off at sea level we arrived in Guatemala City at about 1600 hours at 5000ft so It's not a route I therefore fancy cycling.

As we entered the city I think we were both a little apprehensive about what lay ahead. Our guide book suggested that it is a lawless hell where robberies and murders regularly occur and to step onto one of their local city buses is tantamount to signing your own death warrant. Several people we'd met of late had warned us about the place too so you can understand our trepidation as we disembarked from the bus and set about locating the Hotel Capri. (We had initially earmarked the Hotel Cortina Mk iv GL but that had been shut down for having sub-standard breaks).

The Capri was only a block and a half away but could we find it? You would think that the grid system would make it easy to navigate but in Guat City you have streets intersecting with avenues, all numbered 1-50 odd and most lacking their identification. What we needed to do was determine which street or avenue we were on to get our bearings but with this not possible we ended walking a complete loop, looking and feeling like sitting ducks for the locals to do with as they would.
Frustration and tension were running high: being lost in a city where you believe everybody wants to rob, kill or bugger you is not a pleasant experience but then a chap came to our aid and pointed us in the right direction.

Phew! We made it. We have arrived into Hell itself off our own bat, walked the streets with our cases and found an hotel. The hardest part was over. We feel so vulnerable and we stick out like sore thumbs when we're lost in that situation so it was a relief to get in the hotel foyer and ask if they had any vacancies.
"Si Si señor. 200 Quetzales per night" (about £16)
That'll do nicely we thought but if we've learnt anything these past few months it's to check the room before committing to a nights stay so Kerry went off to look on our behalf whilst I minded the bags.
Two minutes later she returned looking more than a little underwhelmed uttering words like "basic" and "unsure".
I went to take a look and assumed we'd taken a side door into a prison rather than were in an hotel room. I can do basic, I can even convince someone who is unsure that it'll do for a couple of nights sometimes but this was bloody horrible. I figured that if the city was half as bad as everyone was telling us we'd need some sort of sanctuary from it at the end of the day. A breeze block wall, tiny room and bed firmer than a park bench would simply not do.

Once more into the breach then and within 100 yards we encountered the Hotel Quetzali, a much more promising proposition. Whilst not going to win any design prizes and perhaps not somewhere you might take your lady love for a romantic tryst, the ground floor room was fine for our needs, if a little on the 'cosy' side. The important thing was that it afforded comfort and somewhere we wouldn't mind holing up if the city genuinely was as bad as had been reported.

Having washed and brushed up we needed to venture out to eat though we were conscious that the light would soon begin to fade. Golden rule #528 of Guatemala City: don't be out after dark or you will be robbed and beaten to within an inch of your sorry existence.
Careful not to walk a convoluted route so that we might have trouble finding our way back we went in search of food, noting that if we wanted to clog our arteries with fried chicken and chips we would have been in clover but fresh veg? Unlikely.
We decided on an open fronted joint where the clientele and staff looked least murderous but on perusing the menu saw that it was a Chinese run place, opening the door to luke warm food of a questionable nutritional value. We had little option though so ordered and were surprised and delighted to receive a massive plate of fresh veg along with some knuckley and bony chicken. Despite the unexpected gastronomic result we couldn't wait to get out of the place. Outside was a row of street stalls selling various products, one of which was selling CDs and was blaring music at full volume to advertise his wares. Inside the restaurant they were attempting to counter this by playing their own music at full volume. How everyone else had zoned out from the dreadful cacophony I have no idea. If I am ever interrogated then my captors need only play two separate songs at full volume through poor quality speakers and I would succumb within seconds.

Unfortunately noise would be a feature of our stay in Guat City. When we got back to our room and shut the door we realised we were in extreme close proximity to the hotel restaurant where a chap was crooning his way through some numbers. He wasn't a great singer and his choice of songs left a little to be desired so it was a relief when he wrapped his set up at 2100 when the restaurant closed.
We didn't sleep too badly but were woken up next morning at 0545 by the noise of the city as it began another day of chaotic life.
Public transport in the city is comprised of a fleet of ancient buses, ex North American school buses, in various states of disrepair. If there were any form of emissions testing here then every single bus would be deemed unroadworthy. The clag they belch out has to be seen to be believed and the noise they make is tremendous too. Add that the drivers are 'horn happy' and that the noise they make is similar to the Queen Mary and you get the picture.
In addition to all this there are people employed to drum up trade for bus services and their method of doing so is to shout the destination of their route about 10 times in 2 seconds flat. As departure time approaches the urge to get more bums on seats approaches hysteria for to depart with space on board just doesn't seem to be an option. It's hardly surprising then that we lay awake listening to this for a while before deciding we'd never drop off again.

As always, seeing a place after a night's sleep put a new perspective on it and we felt quite relaxed out and about next morning. We were just about the only westerners we saw and we received a fair bit of attention and a few stares from the locals but none of it felt menacing.
Our first port of call was the railway museum where we learned that had we
made this trip in the mid 1990s we could have crossed the country by train but, as in much of the Americas it seems, the cost of maintaining a railway has been deemed too high and they've all bitten the dust. Shame because it would be so lovely to have the odd train journey to break up these mammoth bus rides we're enduring.
The fee to enter the museum was 16p and there was a machine gun toting guard at the door to ensure no renegade rail enthusiasts snuck in without paying, nor that an organised crime syndicate made off with the days takings of £9.12.
We then went on a self-guided walking tour of the old part of the city and whilst it was fascinating to just be here and to watch life here there wasn't an awful lot to see or do. The most notable place was the plaza which was flanked by a couple of beautiful old buildings including a cathedral and the governors palace, but also two 1970s square boxes. Over the years there have been devastating earthquakes here so these are presumably the result of one of those.

In the plaza we were approached by a group of teenage schoolchildren who found it utterly hilarious to try out their English on us. Every time any of them said anything in English they fell about laughing which of course made us laugh.
After that jollity we went into the central market, a place with a thousand stalls all selling essentially the same thing before completing our tour and winding back at the hotel in time to get ready for dinner.
The crooner was on again at the hotel so we were forced to listen to renditions of "Under the Boardwalk" and the like in Spanish before we turned in but our sleep was disrupted in the early hours by somebody in the hotel looking for his mate, Pablo.
"Pablo...........Pablo...........PABLO..........Pablito...............PABLO"
I don't know if he was drunk, we weren't going to open our door to find out, but it took a while to nod off again.
Then at 0545 the day started again with revving engines, honking horns and the maniacal exhortations of the bus boys.
Oh for the tranquility of the Isla Mujeres!

On Wednesday we headed for Chichicastenango, a highland town famed for its indigenous market and the fact that it's inhabitants are still largely pagan.
We took a taxi to what we expected would be a bus station but was in fact just a road from where all second class or "Chicken buses" leave from.
Chicken buses are ex American school buses, often given a glitzy paint job and a pumping sound system and are driven by young men with a death wish for themselves and their passengers. The name 'chicken bus' is on account of the high chance that chickens will be transported with you inside the bus.
We were pretty much first on our bus which was fortunate because a few minutes later it was so rammed that it was a claustrophobia sufferers worst nightmare. We set off and began to climb out of Guat City up a hill that would be worthy of inclusion in the Tour de France and it was during this ascent that we had our first exposure to the power our bus was packing and the insanity of the man whose hands our lives were in.

We positively roared up this hill, a twisting and steep ascent of around 5 miles in length, overtaking everything in sight and honking at them as we did so. If the ascent was slightly unnerving then the plateau was utterly terrifying. Free from the limitations imposed on his vehicle by travelling uphill, our driver floored it at the top and, according to an app on my phone, we hit 88mph. We rocketed through settlements and continued to overtake anything and everything in sight. There was no let up for corners either and the only reason we weren't all flung about inside was because we were packed in so tightly. On the rare occasions I dare open my eyes I saw the driver was often leaning his way into and out of corners as though he were Barry Sheene. I could only pray we wouldn't all end up with similarly pinned limbs as a result of his driving.

We thought things couldn't get any worse but we then hit a 'zona de tumulus', a couple of miles of road with speed humps. He did slow down to go over them but still was going far too fast and it was bone-jarring stuff. The final few miles into Chichicastenango saw us descend an incredibly steep and twisting road before climbing back up in a similar fashion. There were hairpin bends and, at a guess, 20% gradients to deal with and for all our drivers' madness up to this point he certainly knew how to get his tons of vehicle through this section. At the foot of the descent the conductor got out to throw water on the smoking brakes and then began the climb. It was a miracle we got up there to be honest, you wouldn't have thought it possible. It was also a miracle that our bags were still on the roof when we arrived at Chichi, I was sure they must have flung off at some point on our harrowing journey.

Chichi is a real throwback to a time before modernity took hold. The streets are cobbled, the inhabitants are mainly dressed in indigenous clothing and though the place is firmly on the tourist trail there is a definite feeling that you're actually way off the beaten track. Though ostensibly Christian, the locals retain many beliefs from the pre-conquest days and the two simple churches in the plaza face each other and sit atop steps in much the same way that the old Mayan temples at Tikal etc do.

The town is also the scene of the 3rd largest market in the whole of the Americas and this is why we were here. We spent Wednesday afternoon walking about the town and then sat and watched the traders arrive and begin to set up their stalls.
Traders often walk from miles around, carrying their produce or wares on their heads or on their backs, set their stalls up on a Wednesday and then sleep rough in the plaza ready for trading next day. We felt a little like gawking tourists (which is exactly what we were) sitting watching all this but it was fascinating. There's a big focus on show shining in Central America and here in Guatemala it's often little boys of 7-10 years of age who are touting for business. Having worn flip flops almost exclusively since day 1 I've been spared being asked much but today I was wearing shoes so was accosted every 2 minutes by someone. Two little brothers dressed in rags melted my resolve and I paid them for the shoe shine without them actually doing it. It's awful seeing little children so apparently poor and you half want to say to them "come on, I'll feed and clothe you and send you on your way" but how do you select Miguel over Hernan or Maria over Ana?
Then you just have to remind yourself that our perception of wealth (lots of clothes we never wear, white goods, Sky tv, 'stuff') means diddly squat here next to family and very few of them don't have that so they're probably 'richer' and happier than we are.

After another truly fabulous meal (we have eaten so well on this whole trip except for in the USA) we turned in but were woken at 0445 as the first traders began setting up. The market spreads out of the plaza and into the surrounding narrow streets, one of which our room was on, so we were right in the thick of things.
After brekkie and a quick chat with an Italian lady we'd seen in both Rio Dulce and Livingston last week we went and experienced the colour and vibrancy of the market up close.
There's a bit of a touristy side to it as the locals attempt to cream as much dinero from the visiting tour buses as possible but that doesn't detract from the overall experience. We did our bit for the Guatemalan economy by splashing out the equivalent of 80p on a wristband for Kerry (she's buying one in every country we visit) and the princely sum of about a 'Lady Godiva' for a lovely leather belt for me. I love a good bit of haggling in a market.

Once we'd done the rounds and resisted the temptation to buy a jade mask, a tablecloth and some chickens we feasted on fayre from one of the many food stalls and prepared to make for Antigua (no, not that one).

Antigua was the old colonial capital of Guatemala, founded in 1543 and the seat of power for 233 years until a succession of earthquakes left it largely ruined. It sits in the shadow of 3 volcanoes too so is one of those places where the next natural disaster is just waiting to happen.

Our journey here from Chichi was another horror, the same as the outward bus ride only all downhill this time allowing for even greater velocity. We had to change buses at Chimaltenango and on the way into Antigua we met a young Yank who had spent his summer recess from Uni teaching English in the town.

We had some bother finding a room but eventually happened across the Posada de San Vicente, a lovely little place with beautiful internal courtyard, a snip at £20 per night. With its cobbled streets and broken pavements Antigua doesn't afford much comfort for he with a broken case. My 'fix' sees my handle rammed down in such a way that enables me to still wheel it but it's now about 2 inches lower that is comfortable. Fathers will know this feeling from when your kids are on trikes or pushers of some description, they're always just too low and, unless I can come to terms with spending some hard-earned wonga on a new case, I'm stuck like this for months to come.

Antigua is so full of travellers, tourists and gringos that you can almost get by speaking English. It's the tourism showcase of the country and there's enough to keep even the most discerning visitor occupied for a few days.
We devised our own walking tour which took in all the notable buildings in the town including La Merced, a beautiful old church, the main plaza and several ruins of churches from the last great earthquake of 1773 which precipitated the move of the capital to Guatemala City 3 years later. It's fascinating to see these ruined churches and some of them look very unstable. The next hint of an earth tremor will surely bring some of them down.

As the day wound down we toyed with the idea of taking a tour to a nearby volcano, spending the night near the crater and returning next morning. What put us off was that the agent offering the tour only spoke Spanish so we were unable to determine the exact detail of such things as how much food and water to take, what nationality our fellow campers would be and also that it was quite expensive. Instead we paid to go next morning at the crack of dawn and return that lunchtime and so the alarm was set for 0530 when we went to bed that night.

At 0555 we were standing outside in the rain waiting for our 0600 pick-up. Kerry is sometimes a little pessimistic at times such as this, expecting the van not to turn up or for some disaster to befall us. My job at such times is of soother and reassurer but by 0615 I was beginning to have my own doubts. 0620 came and went, 0630 and then 0640 by which time we were cursing the agent that flogged us our tickets and were planning unspeakable retribution on her the minute she opened up.
We were just about to return to the room and accept we'd been forgotten when a smoke belching charabanc gingerly turned into our road and pulled up before us. It looked a bit like a cast off from a brethren of new-age travellers or something that a tramp may think twice about before accepting a lift in but in we got and selected the last two seats, the two that weren't being leaked on through the roof.
After picking up two more people we drove about 400 yards before our guide announced we would be stopping for coffee. When we emerged from the shop we were ushered towards a more modern vehicle, not the charabanc, which would have been better had it not been so cramped as to be panic inducing. We were wedged right at the back with our heads brushing the roof and there was a distinct lack of air back there. As we set off I noted that it was 0720, a full 1 hr 20 minutes later than I expected we'd be leaving town but we'd only gone about 2 miles when the new vehicle began to chug and slow down and then completely conk out on a steep hill. After some rattling down the phone we were invited to leave our close confinement and stand by the side of the road whilst the driver got to the bottom of the problem. This turned out to be that it's diesel engine had been filled up with petrol that morning!

Twenty minutes elapsed before the charabanc chugged around the corner and we all piled back in that and finally set off for the volcano, now nearly 2 hours late.
An hour later we were finally there and began a 3.5km walk up a rough and steep path towards the crater. I bought a couple of sticks off local kids who have them back off you to sell again tomorrow and they were a godsend. It was hard going but once we got a little higher and onto the scree from the last eruption in 2010 it became a moonscape and totally absorbing.

That afternoon back in town, after giving half our lunch to the little tackers flogging the sticks on the volcano, we had some spectacular rain after which we went out and painted the town red by way of saying adios to Guatemala. After another delicious meal and a mojito or two we ended up in a backpackers hostel chewing the fat with some other travellers, notably a young teacher from Birmingham who was spending her summer hols by travelling in a Guatemala/Mexico/Belize type circle and a moronic Canadian who thought we'd be impressed by his tales.  We weren't. What is undeniable is that most other people we encounter are a good 10-20 years younger than us so it's difficult to find true common ground, or sometimes for those hip young groovesters to want to even enter discourse with two crusty old farts such as us.
Ah well, c'est la vie, as they don't say around here. Maybe we'll happen across some other 'senior gappers' yet.