I left you last week in Guatemala on my way north. Already in Gringo country – more and more influenced by American tourists and commerce, and I became unreasonably upset that the word “American” now only means the USA. After all I’ve been in America for almost a year. And yet I’m beginning to long for the comforts that I imagine waiting for me when I get there.
To Mexico
May 24:
Rode on towards frontier, where weather improved marvelously. Now very enjoyable. Saw large, cleared space round a pylon and camped in a corner of it. Boy gave me wood for fire – pine saplings – I collected kindling. Cooked onion and tomato and grilled chorizos. Very good. Then rain began. Moved into tent. Boy said many Gringos camped here.
Next day girl came to visit. Would I sell her my (newly purchased) plastic? No. Then later gave her a rather tattered piece.
Mexican girls in 1975
Rode to frontier through a narrow mountain pass, very steep defile, impressive, and expressive of history. Know nothing of its history but can sense the drama of the pass.
Weather now beautiful.
Frontier crossing fairly straightforward but for the Mexican agricultural inspector who confiscated my onions and made me eat my orange (lousy!)
His assistant was burning a heap of vegetables with a flame thrower. I asked him if he knew how to cook. He let out a single burst if mirth, then closed up again. They also sprayed my bike, but not my boots though I offered them.
Had I known the geography I would have stayed near there but rode on into the mountains to find it getting very cold and wet. San Cristobal de las Casas, which would have been a natural place to stop, was wet and inhospitable.
I rode past, reluctantly, but soon was forced to stop by a terrible downpour.
Took shelter in a small café where some boys were waiting to play football. There were two jukeboxes and a travelling repair man with a wonderful switch to his hips. His type also drives buses. (I cannot think what I meant by that!).
The market at Tuxtla Gutiérrez
At last rain stopped and I drove on to Tuxtla to find a hotel. Hotel Jardin, a rabbit warren round a courtyard in disrepair. 30 pesos.
Old German man in his wooden, screened reception box. Walked round town. Seemed quite prosperous. Ate surprisingly well at Los Arcos.. Best shrimp since Rio and good fish. But prices are beginning their inexorable climb up.
From Tuxtla there is still much mountainous country. I still have the option of turning off to Vera Cruz and consider doing so but it seems to me that if there is rain it will be heaviest on the Caribbean side.
The road fortunately circumnavigates most of the storms (what memories from Africa that revives).
And then, suddenly, I’m at the top of an escarpment looking down on perfectly flat land far below. I can see the road straight as an arrow pushing on to Tehuantepec.
Here it is very hot and sunny. I stop to drink and buy food in the market, determined to sleep out again. The Indians here (according to the South American Handbook)) are a matriarchal society and look it. In the market they are very shrewd and catch-peso. An egg here is 1.20 and over there 0.75.
On I go, running out of petrol and coasting to the petrol station. The tank only takes 12 litres.
A little way along, up the hill a path leads off among bushes to place for a tent. All is very peaceful and pleasant. The stars are out, but for some reason I am nervous about people. I hear a strange “Pssst” sound from my bed and struggle into trousers to see who’s lurking. The sound continues but moves too quickly to be of human origin. Must be an insect – the Psst bug. Back to bed, still unsure, and now buses and lorries are making a terrific din. Distant flashes of lightning and then, quite suddenly, enveloped by a powerful storm, wind threatens to blow the tent away and I cling to the tent poles for dear life as lightning crashes down round me. Then just as suddenly all is peace and quiet again. Fall asleep at last.
Next day is fine. It’s not far to Oaxaca and I arrive at lunchtime.
And I found the picture with the goggles, but I’m not wearing them, for good reason probably.
The last time I regaled you with extracts from my notebooks I had crossed Honduras to Copán, on the border with Guatemala on my way up through Central America to the USA. Sadly, I was beginning to long for those first world comforts.
And, so it goes on:
Left Copán at 9-ish. Emigration is in the town. Transit is at the border. The two older girls left at 5 for San Pedro Sula where they fly home. The younger ones were on a micro bus going to the border. Transit took another dollar off me. I pushed them into giving me a useless receipt. On the Guatemala side, the army was represented at a roadside desk by a small, fat man with a bristle (how commonly that’s so). He was in a class of his own though.
“How do you say in English” he said in English “when you have too much in the night?”
“Hangover” I said.
“Hamburger?” he said.
“No, hangover!” and I wrote it out for him.
I HAVE A HANGOVER
“I have a hamburger,” he read. He was entertaining us both.
When he asked for his dollar, and I asked for a receipt he laughed happily.
“Oh no,” he said, “this is for me so that tonight I can make another hamburger.”
For once I didn’t mind losing my dollar. That’s how I like my corruption – honest.
Then there was a police post. An even grosser man, but in uniform, was officiating. He wouldn’t let the girls in because they had no visa, and he couldn’t – or wouldn’t – issue tourist cards. They had to go back on a hundred-mile loop to arrive at the next frontier post at Santa Rosa de Copan – Agua Caliente. I felt for them but there was nothing to be done.
Riding in Guatemala I expected a bad road, but it was quite as good as the Honduras side, but for a couple of easy water splashes.
By now I was in a mood to shorten the journey. At the junction with the asphalt, I should have gone left to Esquipulas but the smooth road to Guatemala City beckoned and I succumbed. It was the beginning of a general crumbling away of intentions, All the planning I did at the Fowlers’ house came to nothing.
At the Capital I nearly came unstuck Took ages to find the Williams’ number (had it in my book all the time, on a card) and then found he was packing up house to move to Paraguay. Kept getting cut off on the phone. But he found a spot for me with Bob Webb of the consulate, and that turned out well.
A new cast of characters now.
Bob Webb, Pat and Greta McCormick, John Rutton (the CARE man) and his nice wife with beak nose, both of German origin. We shot an air rifle, played darts and badminton, went to dinner with an oil man and his family where we sang badly to three guitars and played ping pong. Webb has a maid, country girl with big round eyes, full of superstitions. On my last night there when we had been out and she had gone to spend her day off at Atitlan, Bob locked her out by accident. She had to go to her aunt’s house – a good way off and come back next morning. It upset her a lot, especially having to be out alone at night. I think she said earthquakes are made by the devil.
Visited the market. Very close packed – full of stuff. If only I could see it with fresh eyes. But the profusion of still-unknown vegetables and fruits, the endless variations on woven and embroidered material, left me dazed. If I had a kitchen, if I could ship a ton of stuff home – but this endless looking at things means nothing anymore.
A shopper in Guatemala City
The church also had an imposing interior _ a long narrow aisle, thick square pillars on either side, with oil paintings on each one. The seventy-year-old relief map of Guatemala was a curiosity – fun to look at – and parties of schoolchildren were there to visit. A small group of amusements for children were installed, all made of old car parts, axles, gears, differentials, to turn the roundabouts. Very appealing, human, brightly painted – but all disconnected for some reason.
From Guatemala City I rode on to Lake Aititlan, which was a bowl of mist and rain. Stopped at a Mirador and filled the small hut with my things hung out to dry. Ate sandwiches. (My ”kitchen” is newly re-arranged with shiny new plastic from a very smart supermarket in the city.)
Four Americans stopped to talk. Couple worked for AID. Younger man gave address in Oakland (Berkeley). Suggested a ride from Nepal to Afghanistan. Went on into lakeside town, but all Gringos. Rain threatening. Saw concrete wall with “Las Buenas Nueves” – The Good News – painted on it. Warned there was much hepatitis about. Nothing to keep me there. Rode on towards frontier.
And here my journey very nearly ended, together with my life. I was wearing glass goggles with my open-face helmet. The fog on the lakeside road was almost impenetrable. I was attempting to clean one of the lenses with my fingers and failed to see a big truck charging down on me. We missed each other by inches and the blast of wind almost blew me away.
Somewhere on my computer is a picture of me wearing those goggles and I’ve spent a day looking for it, but no luck.
You’ll just have to imagine it.
Next week, Mexico.
Dear Friends,
It was heart-warming to read of all the kind people – from Orkney to Australia – who toasted my Jupiter anniversary. I myself celebrated by riding my MP3 down the coast towards Spain and, in true Jupiter fashion, got lost and found myself negotiating a goat track in that very rugged country we call garigue. I made up for that though with a wonderful meal at a restaurant that was new to me in a nearby village called Nefiés. The place is called Very’table and you should go there.
I have pictures from all over, but here are just a few. The first is from the Blue Lion in Gray’s Inn Road, where my journey began. You can see the old Sunday Times building through the window behind them.
It was Michael Hetherington, on the left, who pulled them all together.
The second picture is from Germany where they did the thing in true Teutonic style.
I know them all, but I can’t remember names, so I’d better not try.
Then my academic friend, Robert O’Toole summoned a group to the Coventry museum, and sent me this:
And finally, transplanted from Meriden to Hinckley, from the Triumph factory canteen and organised by Faye Howe, comes a still life entitled, The Coffee Drinkers.
My gratitude and condolences to all the solitary celebrants who hoisted a glass with only my book to accompany them.
Anyway, it was truly wonderful to be remembered by so many people in so many places. Now we can all get on with the more important business of saving the planet.
Hasta Luego. Auf Wiedersehen. Arrivederci, Au Revoir, See Ya’
Cheers,
Ted
