A Jolly Nice Outing

Jolly Nice Outing Has Moved!

2010-01-16T13:21:00.000-08:00

I've shipped the blog over to Wordpress, having become a bit tired of Blogger's occasional random selection of font sizes, typefaces, paragraph formatting and general clunkyness.

You can find the new blog at jollyniceouting.wordpress.com. There should be a few new entries there already for you to enjoy, which aren't up here. I hope you like the new format!

The Management
16th January 2010

Meanwhile, On The Rest of The Web...

2009-12-21T15:42:00.000-08:00

Here's a couple of the best bits from the various blogs that I keep an eye on from the last month...

The first is a jaw dropping video sequence that I found on The Adventure Blog which was made for the Hayden Planetarium in New York City that puts into scale just how large the Universe is. The video begins in the Himalaya and slowly begins to pan out, past the moon, the solar system, and so on. It does a fantastic job of making you feel very, very small.

Also recieved a great post from Made In England about the latest movie from the very cool Woodshed Productions; 180° South. It's a film about surfing, sailing and climbing, but generally it’s a remake of a legendary trip and film from 1968. There's an interesting slide show of the trip here too, simple but well put together.

Apart from all the slick modern production stuff, the really exciting thing was the original trip; Yvon Chouinard (founder of Patagonia & Black Diamond) and Doug Tompkins (founder of The North Face), plus three other chums set off in an old camper van to surf, ski and climb their way through South America, on their way to be the 3rd team to climb Mt. Fritzroy (Cerro Fitz Roy) in Patagonia (it’s that iconic granite slab used on the Patagonia logo).

Unfortunately the only evidence of the original film (Mountain of Storms) online is this short clip (voice over is hilarious). Feeling like I'm so close to all that Patagonia has to offer, the temptation to jump into a van and scoot down south is overwhelming...but I suppose I'll have plenty of time to do it.

Cusco, Peru
21st December 2009

Motorbike Excitement

2009-12-20T12:30:00.000-08:00

Our friend Fredy has two motorbikes, and in an act of generosity that surprised me even by the incredibly high standards that Lou and I had experienced in Vilcabamba thus far, lent me the keys to his 4 month old Honda so that we could ride up the valley to Vilcabamba Real to see the sights, based on my obviously insubstantial comments that it had been "about 3 years since I last rode a bike"; try 7 years (and that was for 2 days...)

After a bit of mangling the clutch to get going and a few stalls, we wound our way up the mountain, Lou wisely riding pillion behind Fredy instead of me. My face, according to Lou, set in a grim mask of concentration, I wove the bike around muddy switchbacks occasionally cutting out the engine with my ineptitude, Fredy waiting patiently for me at sporadic points up the hill, seemingly unconcerned with the damage I must have been doing to his engine.

It was all worth it though; the motorbike buzz soon overcame the fear, and I got better at the gear changes. Before long we were zooming along tracks in the back end of nowhere, crossing river fords swollen with rain and dodging languid dogs in little towns as we navigated the rutted and winding streets. Eventually we ended up at a the top of a waterfall at some incredible altitude overlooking a lush mountain pasture being grazed by cows, whose owners were hiding from the driving rain under ponchos, balefully staring at the manifestation of a pending task and chewing coca leaves to delay the inevitable.

Vilcabamba, Peru
20th December 2009

Fun With Plantlife

2009-12-19T12:33:00.000-08:00

Ingredients:
Old Man's Beard x1
Camera x1

Vilcabamba, Peru
19th December 2009

The Monthly Shopping Trip

2009-12-19T12:31:00.000-08:00

Mule train; if you stand in one spot in Vilcabamba for acoupleof hours, a ton of these will go past,entering the village unladen and leaving as you see, with tarp-wrapped bundles containing sugar, flour and rice (and,occasionally according to our friend Fredy, a few kilos of coca paste intended for dishonourable uses),staplesthat do not existin the far flung corners of the mountain region, and that the incoming drivers trade in exchange for the potatoes that they carry from their fields; cash features in no part of this process.

Stopping one of the drivers, I asked where he was going. "Choquequirau", came the answer. "But that's eight days away!", I responded. "We can do it in three", he replied, before turning and trudging away up the path to the hills (crossing the Inca bridge out of town), beginning his three day walk, the midway point of a six day shopping trip.

Try to remember that next time you throw a strop in Waitrose when you can't get the balsamic vinegar that you were after...

Vilcabamba, Peru
19th December 2009

Ancient Civilization 1, Peruvian Government 0

2009-12-19T12:25:00.000-08:00

This is one of the two bridges leading from Huancacaya to the Rosaspata ruins. It's Inca design, stone support pillars holding up a structure of heavy wooden beams and wooden cross struts. It's been outside the community for hundreds of years.

The photo is taken from a big concrete bridge, built in the last 10 years, painted in the blue and white colours that feature on all municipally funded projects. No-one uses the big, expensive concrete bridge. The spanning section is made of sheet metal, supported by thin, springy metal rods,that make it bounce when you walk over it. This means that mule trains, which constitute the majority of passing traffic and form the purpose for such a bridge, can't use it. They use the Inca one next to it.

Vilcabamba, Peru
19th December 2009

A Visit to The Campo; Death To Furry Small Animals

2009-12-16T12:11:00.000-08:00

I popped out to the countryside this week to visit a couple of the farmers who are partners in the COCLA cooperative with whom Lou and I are writing a business plan at the moment to try and learn a bit more about the organisation from the producer end of things. Tagging along with a routine trip by two of the techical assistants who work for COCLA training farmers on recent agricultural practice and performing internal organic and fairtrade accreditation inspections, it was an interesting experience to say the least.

I got a chance to look around the farms and see the variety of cash crops grown along their subsistence counterparts, learning in the process about the renovations that were happening to the coffee bushes, some of which were over 40 years old and long due for replacement; a worrying exercise when you consider that a newly planted coffee bush can take anything up to 3 years to get to cherry bearing status, expensive in time and money from plant purchase and loss of income from the replaced plants in the short term. It was interesting to hear about how all the neighbouring farms chipped in to help each other with maintenance and harvesting and the strong sense of solidarity in the campo, and also good to hear that after decades of the farmers having to support themselves solely through self organised cooperatives, the municipality was finally helping out by providing some of the new coffee plants that were due to be used in the renovations. Better late than never...

One fairly interesting sight that I stumbled across was the farm guinea pig collection. These small furry creature seen scuttling around the floor of the farm kitchen are normally exclusively used as family pets to be sacrificed to over zelous children in the UK; not so in Peru. These little blighters are reared for droppings (used in natural fertilizer) and consumption. Yup, they get skinned, split open and roasted instead of cuddled in rural Peru. It's hardly compensation to know that there 'aint much meat on a cuye.

Quillabamba, Peru
16th December 2009

Political Mudslides and Wilderness Walks

2009-12-12T12:07:00.000-08:00

On a weekend break from the 'rigours' of working on the business plan, Lou and I headed off to Santa Teresa, the commonly acknowledged 'back door to Machu Picchu', by which punters can walk sections of the Inca Trail and avoid the unpleasent stinging sensation of paying for a train ticket to Aguas Calientes from Cusco. It became clear after hammering around a couple of hairpin bends in a combi why the average mild-mannered tourist would prefer a train ride instead of a front seat view over sheer drops; you'd think after repeated road trips over the Southern highlands Iwould have become accustomed; sadly, no.

Having made it safely to Santa Teresa, we hada quick poke around the town, which apparently was completely destroyed by a huge mudslide in the late 90's, and subsequently rebuilt further up the hill. Overlooking the old site in the base of the valley, we got chatting to a local chap, who filled us in with the details; mercifully only two people died when the whole town was wiped out, but a more serious consequence of the slide was the destruction of the railwayline, which previously had run all the way to Quillabamba. The final stop of significance for the train was now Aguas Calientes, and the various commercial interests held there were preventing the line from being reconstructed to its original destination, thus pooling the vast majority of tourists in Aguas Calientes and leaving the rest of the communities only servicable by road of the kind on which I had just braved my life. Most of these roads are impassable in the wet season (lasting about 3 or 4 months), which can make life in Santa Teresa difficult at times. This is, it turns out, the tip of the iceberg in terms of conflicting political and commercial interests with the needs of the isolated populations of the region...

Political grumbling aside, Lou and I turned our interests to walking to Santa Maria, about 4 hours away and the wrong way down the Inca Trail in terms of reaching Machu Picchu. This suited us just fine for a day trip, and meant that the only people that we had to share the trail with (about 10 people spread over 3 groups) were all headed the other way, leaving us to stomp the base of impressive canyons, swinging brigdes, teetering drops and tiny pathways through picturesque villages without even getting a taste of josting in the crowds that are reputed to flood the trail in peak season.

Santa Teresa, Peru
12th december 2009

My Worst Haircut Ever, For 70p

2009-12-05T12:27:00.000-08:00

Having freshly arrived in Quillabamba, I decided that my shaggy hair was suitably unprofessional and decided to dive into a hairdressers across from the local market to sharpen up my act. Pleasently surprised by the price of 3.50 nuevo soles (about 70p) I decided to commit. I sat in the chair and, without warning, my hairdresser launched at my head.

Unperturbed, I decided not to issue any instructions, to see of what the hairdresser was capable. In brief, this consisted of taking random secions of my dry hair off the side of my head, shaving random patches around the back and sides of my head and neck with a cutthroat razor weilded with enthusiasm,before finally drenching my head in water and combing my hair into a style that was decidedly 1950´s, a bit like his.

Lou watched the whole thing from the sidelines, smirking as the masterpiece took shape, before snapping the photo below; a catalogue moment, I'm sure you'll agree. In all fairness the hairdresser and his family (as well as a temporarily assembled audience) were all very sweet, and there's no one by whom I would have rather had my hair mangled.

Quillabamba, Peru
5th December 2009

Quillabamba

2009-12-04T10:19:00.000-08:00

After four months (ish) of dossing around through Central Amercia and Peru, it was time to hunt for some work to get involved with, thus following the 'living and working in Latin America' mission statement.

Over the course of the last couple of months or so, it became clear through Lou's contact network that opportunities were available with a big coffee cooperative, COCLA, in the region of La Convencion, an 8 hour bus ride outside of Cusco. Following a couple of very promising meetings with one of the coop directors it was decided that we would assist with the writing of a business plan with the aim of developing the national market for the cooperative's coffee (more about this in later entries) and in the process of writing the plan, factor some continued involvement and payment for ourselves into the scheme of things, assisting the coop with the various skills and experiences that Lou and I had picked up during our time in the UK.

We got straight down to it, meeting the sales manager for Cusco, Sonia, and getting a tour around the various current sales outlets for the coffee, as well as visiting a couple of unversities where COCLA was intent on establishing concessions.

All the meetings and orientation allowed us to stitch together a basic proposal for COCLA for the steps of business planning and beyond, and with this emailed in advance of our journey, we headed for Quillabamba, the headquarters of COCLA, situated in the jungle region of Peru, to commence the first stage of work.

The road was incredible to say the least, climbing to pass at 4,300 m and descending through 3 different climate zones. By the time we rounded the corner in the road that wound along the side of the valley and got our first glimpse of the 'City of Eternal Summer', cold, rainy Cusco seemed like a lifetime away.

Quillabamba, Peru
4th December 2009

Up, Down and Around in The Sacred Valley

2009-11-30T09:37:00.000-08:00

With the parents gone, Lou and I have joined forces once again, heading out for the archeological site of Pisac. Passing fairly rapidly through the Sunday market that purveys a range of near identical handicrafts at each stall, we wheezed up the selection of terraces that consistute the bottom of the site, expecting to reach the top...about five or six times.

The site was huge, winding its way around the hillsides that look down into the sacred valley, of which the settlement was once the capital city. Dizzying drops looked down from impossibly constructed buildings, clinging to sheer rockfaces. The site was spectacular and endless, a truely pleasant surprise, even if my legs needed a couple of days afterwards to ride out the beating they took.

Pisac, Peru
30th November 2009

Family Presence Drops by 66% in Peru

2009-11-26T09:27:00.000-08:00

Sadly had to say goodbye to the folks today as they headed in a taxi off to Cusco airport. We've had a lovely month together bumbling around various bits of Peru, giving me a great opportunity to get to know a selection of the wide variety of the regions of desert, mountains and jungle that make up the country.

Cusco, Peru
26th November 2009

Top Notch Riding

2009-11-24T09:54:00.000-08:00

Pa and I, deciding that the exhaust fumes and constant touted offers of massages, photos with llamas, cheap jewellery and expensive knitware were not really our bag, decided to escape to the countryside on a mountin biking excursion; this turned out to be a fantastic decision.

Renting a couple of squeaky but funcional front suspension bikes, we muddled around the centre until we found the bus terminal from which transport to the widely acknowledged 'mountain biking bit' of the region departed. Cheerfully tossing our bikes on the top of the next departing combi we eventually left the bus at a crossroads in the middle of nowhere by the reccommendation of the bus ayudante and pointed our wheels in the direction of the most rural looking exit.

Thus followed a four hour epic that passed mirror calm lakes supporting reed boat fishermen, tiny adobe villages, sweaty breathless climbs to bitterly cold ridges, fast downhill curves and long traverses across the bases of huge natural bowls in which we seemed to be the only forms of life amidst the vastness of nature.
Eventually sporadic directions from locals led us down a gravelly, sheer switchback to the salt pans of Salineras, hidden in the crook of a valley. After marvelling in a slightly exhausted way we proceeded through a gate down a narrow dirt track that clung to the side of the hills overlooking a dizzying drop and decended into a technical section of rocky path that spat us out at the bottom of the valley, a languid cycle along the river and onto the paved highway to Urubamba, where the bus to drag us back up the valley to Cusco awaited.

In our own way, we'd bumped into the local mountain biking scene, seeing for the first time in hours a selection of mud-dusted bikers, all who had obviously enjoyed picking their own lines down the valley.

Great fun, and I'll be sure to investigate more options in the Sacred Valley if I end up spending more time in Cusco.

Cusco, Peru
24th November 2009

MISSING: Have Seen This Person?

2009-11-22T14:58:00.000-08:00

Height: Approx. 6ft
Weight: Approx. 75kg
Age: 36
Description: Shoulder length hair, beard, brilliant incandescence surrounding head
Clothing: Long blue, red and gold robes
Occupation: Saviour of Humanity
Last Known Location: Huancayo Central Plaza

We would greatly appreciate any information on recent sightings of The Messiah (excluding those of his form in bread/rock walls/clouds etc.), who disappeared in the middle of a crowded Plaza de Armas a couple of weeks ago during the town parades. His mother is very worried because even though she acknowledges he is a very naughty boy he would never wander off for this long.

Any information can be emailed to i_once_was_lost@hotmail.co.uk. Bless you for your kindness.

Cuzco, Peru
22nd November 2009

Elementary Level Civil Unrest

2009-11-20T18:31:00.000-08:00

Its national children's day in Peru, and what better way to celebrate than to get the little tykes out parading the streets and waving placards with numerous messages about respecting children's rights and such. Heartening indeed that a spirit of voicing political opinion in a very public way is fostered in Peruvians from a young age, much better than the training to sit in a corner and grumble quietly that we Brits seem to have cultivated.

Cuzco, Peru
20th November 2009

All For Naught

2009-11-20T18:26:00.000-08:00

Wandering around the broken-tooth fortifications of Saqsaywaman outisde Cuzco with Dad and reading about how the Spaniards had torn down the impossibly engineered stone walls to build their own houses, Dad mentioned a poem that sprang to mind about the inevitable ravaging of time on empires and the men who founded them, no matter how mighty they once were. After a short bit of internet digging the poem was found, and by crikey it's a good one.

"Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Cuzco, Peru
20th November 2009

Machu Picchu, Almost In Glorius Technicolour

2009-11-17T18:46:00.000-08:00

After a groggy bus ride at six o'clock in the morning up the winding switchbacks leading to the entrance gate which I pass with little delay, I round the corner along the paved entrance to the breathtaking wonder of the world that is the Lost City of The Incas, Machu Picchu.

Confronted by astounding stone terraces 2000 metres above the river Urubamba that froths and churns and backed by the iconic image of the imposing mountain of Wayna Picchu, I take out my camera to capture the moment. Flicking the lens cover open, I position the jaw dropping landscape in the viewfinder and press the shutter.

Beeeeeeep. Battery empty.

Below is the last image that was taken on the dying battery, unaware of it's impending end; a worthwhile shot in the central plaza of the pathologically ugly Aguas Calientes, posing with a tacky Inca statue. A fine alternative, I'm sure you'll agree, to world class ancient mountaintop monuments.

Aguas Calientes, Peru
17th November 2009

A Temporary Agreement With Death

2009-11-10T12:39:00.001-08:00

The woman in the seat next to me jerks awake as all four wheels of the bus skid to a halt over the dusty earth road, coming to a stop inches away from the radiator grille of a large blue truck that has performed the same procedure in the opposite direction around the blind bend that hugs the cliff face. Glancing out of the window, the tyres of our vehicle have drifted within inches of the crumbling outside edge of the road that drops away vertically 150 metres to the tumbling river at the bottom of the valley.

An elderly lady lets fly with a screeching tirade of obscenity at the driver, opening the partition between the passengers and the cab, making sure that she will be heard. I can't say I blame her; for the last hour the bus has been flung with incresing optimism around such corners, seeming from my window seat vantage point on the side of the unprotected drop that we are launcing out into space, destination riverbed.

Over the course of the bus ride between Huancayo and Ayacucho I have been, without doubt, about as terrified as possible at the prospect of imminent death on the high, twisting single track dirt road, punctuated by passing places which allow vehicles to knock wing-mirrors as they pass, the outside vehicle teetering on the edge. Prior to leaving Huancayo all conversation pertaining to the route with locals was met with sobering admissions that the journey was very dangerous and buses were frequently lost, but as it was at least an hour quicker than the higher, safer alternative path it was accepted as the choice of the local bus company.

Staring like a shell shocked war veteren into the distance in the safety of a bus stop in a town beyond the mountain pass, a delay was attributed to the large pile of rocks that the ayudantes unloaded from the rear luggage locker below the passenger compartment, presumably to stop the back wheels skidding out over the precipice on the corners; a retrospectively almost reassuring measure.

Ayacucho, Peru

10th November 2009

Who's A Pretty Boy Then?

2009-11-08T18:39:00.000-08:00

Huancayo, Peru
8th November 2009

Getting High in Trains

2009-11-07T12:38:00.000-08:00

Rocking gently out of Lima, the classic train route to Huancayo crawls steadily up stunning mountain scenery along a narrow gauge overlooking precipitous drops.

Options are for the "classic" (re: cramped and uncomfortable) or "tourist" (reclining seats, glass carriage roofs, bar inhabited by girating Peruvian college tourism students etc.) cars, guess which one I ended up in. Almost worth the saving of three or four quid...but not quite.

Topping out at over 15,000 feet above sea level, the brief exit from the train permitted by the staff in order to take photos of the second highest railway station in the world (damn those ambitious Chinese) is a slightly light-headed affair, feeling throughly slapped around by the altitude.

Huancayo, Peru

7th November 2009

Fair Trade; Fairly Obvious?

2009-11-05T14:02:00.000-08:00

If you every actually try to sit down and work out who is trying to do what in the area of ethical trading, you'll be due a headache. The increasing number of branded non-profit organisations and NGOs is making consumers who buy ethically sourced products very confused indeed.

My initial mission to "Come out to Latin America to work in Fair Trade" is an admission in this confusion itself; Fair Trade is but one brand amongst a range that are out there representing ethical trading and sourcing, admittedly with more profile than others. Recently it has enjoyed a rise in awareness and publicity with the partnering of various large companies such as Cadbury, Starbucks and Sarah Lee all sourcing Fair Trade commodities. However, many people feel that Fair Trade has diverged from its original purpose with these developments and it was very interesting to read an interview with one of the founders, Frans Van Der Hoff, regarding the evolution of Fair Trade on the Equal Exchange blog. To quote:

"The interview couldn’t have come at a better time. Consumer confusion about the goals and impact of Fair Trade vs. other brands and certifications is at an all-time high. And that should come as no surprise. The certifying agencies (FLO International and Transfair USA) have watered down the purpose and integrity of the movement, aiming for dollars over mission, breadth over depth, as they lower standards to increase the number of products available on the shelves...

...somewhere along the line, the certifiers began marketing Fair Trade as a poverty alleviation strategy, rather than an economic transformation model as it was originally intended. Alleviation means, “to lessen (pain, for example); to make more bearable.” Fair Trade was actually created to provide producers with a basic level of security, a social net to raise people out of abject conditions so that they would have the ability to approach their situations with more complex strategies, not to alleviate, but to change their economic conditions.

The original founders of Fair Trade knew that economic conditions don’t change by extending charity. They understood the far more impactful goal of supporting farmer organizations so that together, the farmers can tackle the myriad issues which will enable them to create better conditions for themselves. Organized farmers build economic and political power, create social programs, lobby governments, enlist the collaboration of others by building solidarity networks. This is the true power (and potential) of Fair Trade."

It is interesting to see how an organisation that is seen to have achieved so much is to some extent becoming a victim of its own success, and how the directors will seek to capitalise on their successes without comprimising the basis of the brand. One key difference for me is the divergence of seeking to support farmer organisations and the social stability and benefits that they bring, over increasing awareness of a brand, much as any other corporation with less ethical designs on sourcing would.

Lima, Peru
5th Novermber 2009

A Spot Of Culture

2009-11-04T09:57:00.000-08:00

Museums. The domain of childhood boredom and monotony. Not so the National Museum in Lima; battles, alliances, empires, sacrifices, far flung trading routes and the fabric and intracacies of society all pass before you as you wander the halls. I suppose I've grown into the concept of impressive displayed artefacts woven into a story that defines our best guess at a long gone civilization.

Especially when the civilization makes ceramics depicting what Bill Clinton could only describe as "lewd acts"; it's great to know that as long ago as 2500 years they were getting busy with the kind of things that you wouldn't chat to your parents about over dinner. Or, in fact, ever.

Lima, Peru
4th November 2009

K2, The Taliban and Tea

2009-11-02T12:38:00.000-08:00

I've just finished "Three Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin, and it was well worth the effort. It's a biography written by a journalist who has followed climber-turned-humanitarian Greg Mortensen for the last two years. Greg is the founder of the Central Aisa Institute (CAI), whose primary aim is to provide a balanced education for children, primarily in Pakistan and Afghanistan, a need that was recognised when he stumbled, lost and exhausted, across a rural village in Pakistan after a failed climbing attempt on K2.

The book chronicles his personal journey from making an ill-advised promise to build a school to a village elder to rushing around Central Asia maintaining fifty-five schools and expanding the program. Particularly interesting is the effect of the events of September 11th on his quest, and the struggles and alliances created with the Muslim influence in the region; if anything, it's a great example of open-mindedness and tolerence, qualities sadly lacking in the media for the last decade.

There's a website (the institute is still trying to raise money, after all) and if you get the chance, buy the book through it as a proportion of the sale goes to fund the CAI's projects. Inspiring stuff, I'd reccommend it to everyone.

Lima, Peru

2nd November 2009

Parents and Plans

2009-10-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

The long anticipated arrival of the parents has finally happened; after numerous twists, turns and changes of plan we've all managed to land in the same city with the intention of spending the next month together bumbling around Peru while a job opportunity that I'm chasing up near Cuzco simmers with typical Latin American time frames.

Relaxation is the watchword; we'll be spending a couple of days around Lima before heading to the impressive coastal town of Paracas to lounge around for a bit, followed by a jaunt up the railway to Huancayo before somehow getting to Cuzco to help Ma realise her dream of visiting Machu Picchu. There will doubtless be other bigs and bobs; as plans go it's a simple one, but that's how we like it.

It's great to see The Olds again after a 10 month dry spell, and with so much happening for us all since I took my leave of Blighty in January there's a lot of catching up to do, as well as consuming the copious quantity of home-made flapjacks smuggled through customs.

Lima, Peru
27th October 2009

Ze Germans

2009-10-20T18:29:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while you see something that pushes your comprehension of what is possible; such was my visit to German-run Nicaraguan coffee plantation/farm/tourism project Selva Negra.

Handed down from generations of German immigrants, the coffe farm eventually arrived in the hands of the current owners, Eddy and Mausi Kühl. In an attempt to realise more value from the land that they owned they built cabins for sale on plots but nobody wanted to buy, only rent; thus the tourism project was born.

In recent decades they've focussed on trying to make operations as sustainable as possible and, with typical German efficiency, absolutely knocked the ball out of the park.Suffice to say this posting could not begin to scratch the surface of the systems that have been put in place at Selva Negra; only the 100 page visitors guide book can do that. However, to try and give you an example or two; all whey from the cheese processing plant on the farm is fed to the free range pigs, as it contains the right nutrients for a good diet; worker housing is provided along with schooling facilities, a medical clinic, personal kitchens supplied with gas stoves (fuelled by methane, the product of biodigested coffee bean parchment waste) and festivals in order to keep employee retention high and maintain commitment; plastic bottles are reused to house an organic pesticide to prevent coffee cherry mites reducing quality of their crop...the list just goes on and on.

If you've thought of something that could be done to improve sustainability, chances are that these guys have already done it. If they haven't, they're working on it. And they're STILL coming up with new solutions for reducing waste, making sure that a use is found for everything. They've got staff (locals, of course) working in an on-site lab finding organic resources available from the diverse range of operations on the farm so that they could be used to try and improve coffee yields, or the diet of the animals.The result? From a farm of over 400 livestock, a coffee plantation with 200 employees and a tourist resort that accommodates up to 150 guests (and freqently does), the amount of waste generated in a week is equivalent to a 55 gallon drum.

One interesting side of the coin with Selva Negra is that they are not affiliated in any way with Fair Trade, even though their coffee is Rainforest Alliance certified and conforms to organic standards. It has the obviously incompatible status of being a private plantation, small scale producer cooperatives being the primary recipient of FT benefits, but it is heart-warming to see people taking independent initiative outside mainstream schemes to provide a good quality of life for their workforce. It also brings into focus a tough question that should be consistently asked of accredited Fair Trade businesses; how much social benefit is the elevated and stabilised 'fair' sales price (that everyone talks so much about) directly having on the farmers that it aims to help?

Leon, Nicaragua

20th October 2009

The Joy of Maize

2009-10-18T18:29:00.000-07:00

Lou's been off in the countryside for the last week, getting educated by the community project Hijos Del Maiz (Children Of Maize) Language School, provider of homestays and Spanish lessons in the tiny settlement of Lagartillo away from the luxuries of hot water (and running water for that matter), electricity, internet, mobile phones and all that jazz. Below is the main drag in all its glory.

I went to see how she was doing at the weekend and was surprised at what I found.The village is a community in a true sense, with people wandering in and out of each others houses, something the language students are encouraged to do as often as possible. Everyone is jolly friendly and will natter on at you about anything if you give them half a chance.

Two things that really struck me were how a direct relationship with their surroundings through food growing and production can help them maintain an impressive physical state and how much waste is produced.

When you're living off the land, you know exactly what you're putting into your body; after all, you're the one growing and harvesting crops and preparing the food from them. Food in Lagartillo is very simple (re: tortilla, rice and beans for every meal), but you can taste the simple purity of what you are eating; the effects of its quality are also well represented by the people within the community who have been eating the diet for years.

Erminia (above) is Lou's homestay mother; she's 70 years old and works solidly from 6 in the morning until 8 at night, doing everything from domestic chores to herding cows around a field. Bowling along with a spring in her step, she reduces piles of maize like the recent delivery below (more, we were told, would shortly be arriving) to sacks of corn, putting the medication supported geriatric population of the uk to shame.

Nothing gets wasted in the countryside; the myriad of packaging that has to get stripped off supermarket goods before they can be consumed just doesn't exist on food that was pulled out of the ground, or on the meat of the animal that was grunting or clucking around the house the day before. All paper (toilet and otherwise) and corn husks are burnt in the house's stone oven (below) and the ashes dropped in with the contents lurking in the base of the compost toilet out at the back of the property. Food leftovers go to the animals, and rainwater is used sparingly in place of running water. It is all so straightforward that you can barely believe that the huge quantities of junk that get turned out on to the street from the average UK house every week can't be avoided.

It certainly gives you pause for thought when you see somewhere like Lagartillo, and unavoidably begs the question; at what point did we isolate ourselves within dense populations (when was the last time you hung out with your neighbours?), checking the nutritional information on the side of food packaging to make sure we weren't poisoning our bodies before tossing it into a bottomless bin destined eventually for a landfill site out of sight and mind, before chewing down suppliments to keep ourselves "healthy" and make up for the shortcomings of the aforementioned food? What's missing from this picture?

Esteli, Nicaragua

18th October 2009

Putting Walls to Good Use

2009-10-17T18:47:00.000-07:00

Leon has a fine selection of street art and wall murals about town; these fine specimens (including the father of the revolution, Augsto C. Sandino) were within a few feet of one another, just around the corner from one of my favourite hangouts, the ice cream parlour. Included in the wall art is the Granddaddy of the Nicaraguan Revolution, Agusto Cesar Sandino.

Leon, Nicaragua
17th October 2009

Hunger Strikes

2009-10-16T18:54:00.000-07:00

Largartillo, Nicaragua
16th October 2009

Full Flavour Behaviour

2009-10-16T11:10:00.000-07:00

The SolCafe beneficio stands beside the main road into Managua, a collection of dispersed concrete buildings and warehouses surrounding a large concrete patio and field that is completely covered with coffee beans drying in the sun; its here that the farmers of the CECOCAFEN cooperative bring their coffee beans from the surrounding region to be weighed and sold. Emerging through the front gate with Rachel, with whom I’ve been lucky enough to spend the last week understanding more about the world of ethical trading, we commence a tour of all the buildings to greet everyone on-site and search for Rachel’s partner Simon who, it turns out, is being shown large and complicated coffee processing machines in one of the warehouses by a proud figure of authority. We’re here to do a tasting, comparing the coffee that the owners of the cooperative are currently selling to the national market against a range of other coffees that Rachel has taken from the local supermarket shelves.

Assembled in the beneficio’s coffee lab and surrounded by the rich odour of toasted and ground beans, Rachel, Simon and I are joined by the resident tasters and a couple of guys who are responsible for the beneficio’s nationally distributed consumer coffee brand, Café Nica. Solemnly, cups are placed around a rotating table in groups of four for each of the six varieties that we will perform a blind taste test with, and ground coffee is distributed among the cups. We are duly handed marking sheets, and instructed how to engage in the process of evaluating a cup.

The first step is to describe the odour of the dry ground coffee. Following instructions, I place my hand over the top of the cup and sniff deeply through the small aperture between my thumb and finger. Owing to my enthusiasm for the exercise a notable amount of coffee goes up my nose and while I try I ignore the tickling in the back of my nasal cavity I focus on the list of adjectives in Spanish on my sheet, which include vocabulary such as ‘nutty’ and ‘floral’. The table spins in front of me and I realise that I have no time to ponder the poetics of my cup; there are another twenty three to go. I frantically sniff and write, extending my nose to the very limits of its abilities.

Next the granules are soaked, with boiled water poured over them, and a fresh round of sniffing commences. Each cup is ‘broken’ by stirring the layer of floating granules on the top of the water with a spoon, causing them to sink and release an aroma. I succeed in not inhaling any hot coffee through my wary nostrils.

It’s time for the tasting. Rachel shows us how it’s done with a cup of water for practise, sharply sucking in the liquid from a spoon with a slightly open mouth before swilling the liquid around the mouth and spitting it out into a big metal bin beside the revolving table. We try with varying degrees of success, and are firmly put in our place when one of the in house tasters demonstrates the technique, producing a sound when taking the liquid like a sheet of heavy material ripping. We are all suitably impressed.

Table revolutions begin anew, and this time I juggle the descriptions of the acidity, body and flavour of the coffee (earthy, buttery, full, bitter…) and I finish the tasting with a scruffy sheet marked seemingly randomly with descriptive words and give a rather faltering explanation to the group in Spanish as to my decisions on the best and worst coffees. I’ve fortunately managed to avoid insulting the beneficio’s coffee (it came up at number two of six), but sadly my Neanderthal palette fell foul of the cheapest and nastiest sample, which in a fit of confusion I decided was worth of the top spot.

It’s all a very interesting exercise and fascinating when you start to think about the almost infinite variations of flavours possible by tinkering with the different types of beans, blends and various stages of processing, but to be honest I’m a long way off being able to brandish lavish descriptions of something that I usually just use as a tool to pull me out of my early morning semi-comas.

Matagalpa, Nicaragua
16th October 2009

You've Been a Very Bad Berry

2009-10-06T08:37:00.000-07:00

I've just been introduced to the most vile fruit in existence. The nancite berry has absolutely no positive characteristics whatsoever; it has a mustardy yellow colour, chalky texture when eaten and bears an odour remarkably simular to vomit.

Rach and Simon, my able and willing guides in Nicaragua, warned me of the properties of this hell-berry, but persuaded me that it would be a suitably character building experience to try it. After a bit of nudging, I purchased a nice big glass of liquified nancite and proceeded to try and pack as much of it away as possible before the inevitable after-effects set in. Rach and Simon watched me from across the table with interest. I made it halfway down the glass before an aftertaste developed similar to that when one throws up in ones own mouth causing me to jettison the rest of the drink, making my excuses.

Surprisingly, the owner of the cafe told us that this was his most popular beverage; I suppose there's no accounting for taste...

Esteli, Nicaragua
6th October 2009

Transvestites, War Stories and Lovely Rooftop Views

2009-10-04T11:06:00.000-07:00

Arriving with a sore post-virus head in Leon, deposited at a petrol station on the outskirts, Lou and I wasted no time in installing ourselves in a central hostel and trundling around the centre of town, eager for new sights and sounds.

We were in luck, beset upon all sides by a long and riotous procession celebrating some saint or another, around which the townspeople flocked in great quantities. Town bells clanged in glorious dissonance and a string of midday drunks and, unexpectedly, transvestites, trailed behind the main procession as it wound its way about town, disappearing from sight and ear-splittingly reappearing again suddenly as soon as Lou and I decided to sit somewhere and engage in conversation.

Seeking quieter experiences, we committed ourselves to the Sandinista Revolution Museum, housed understandably rather proudly in a grand and steadily decaying building that formed the last stronghold of the National Guard in Leon before it was toppled in 1979. Of the grand rooms leading from the sweeping central atrium beyond the front door populated with latent Nicaraguan men, only one was in active use as the museum. The walls of the room were covered with a selection of newspaper cuttings, shoddy photo-copies, pages ripped from books and dog eared maps affixed by sellotape, forming the most haphazard historical display that I can recall within recent memory.

We were led around the selection by an ex-guerrilla, an amiable but serious fellow who gestured at everything with a trusty pointing stick, giving us a high speed tour of the modern history of Nicaragua from the assassination of General Sandino, who had waged relentless guerrilla war against US military forces since their occupation in 1912 and finally driven them out of Nicaragua in 1933, by the US military trained Nicaraguan National Guard to the relentless war waged against the Sandinista government post-revolution by the (yes, you’ve guessed it) US financed contra-revolutionaries in the years of the hard-line Regan administration. The whole bloody and brutal history lasted for about 60 years, and had much credit to give the foreign policy of our favourite international superpower. It was almost as if I was listening to an echo of El Salvadorian fortunes, the fortunes of an entire country retarded by the best part of a century for the gains of …what, exactly?

Our tour progressing beyond the high ceilings of the room containing grainy photo after grainy photo of young, serious faces that never saw an end to their conflict, and we climbed the stairs up to the roof. Clanking gingerly over a worryingly thin layer of corrugated tin riveted to beams beneath by our confidently striding guide, were led around a selection of fine views of Leon. We stared from the rooftop in the warmth of the late afternoon sun over towards the distant volcanoes that spiked out of the horizon like the cardiogram of a heart murmur patient. I asked our guide how he felt about giving the tours. After a brief pause he replied,

“It’s good for me to talk about it. It is hard, but it’s like a kind of therapy.”

The heavy beige sunlight picked the wrinkles and creases out on his face and I reflected, rather sadly from our grand perch overlooking the sprawling town, on how many people this man had lost. I though about how much had been torn away from him without him being able to do anything about it, and why he had been forced to experience such a hard existence. I tried to understand, but I couldn’t.

Leon, Nicaragua
4th October 2009

Coffee Bean Connoisseurs

2009-10-03T18:14:00.000-07:00

Selecting only the finest beans for the harvest with Marlon in the coffee finca, Sontule.

Marlon lives and works with his family in Sontule in the Miraflor region, a couple of hours outside Esteli in the North West of Nicaragua, where buses only occasionally venture along the bumpy, suspension destroying road. Most inhabitants get there and back by horseback, or foot. A selection of children, dogs (one of which is confusingly called Chicken), chickens, the house pig (called, you've guessed it, Dog) and family members wander in and out over the dirt floors of his home over the course of the day.

Marlon (on the right) is a lovely chap with a great big smile and one of the key members of the local coffee cooperative and tourism project, which in their respective ways aim to bring a sustainable income to the community.

Lou and I visited for a couple of days on the tourism program after the reccommendations of friends Simon and Rachel, as Simon is teaching English in the community school a couple of days a week. Pottering around the stunning landscape of rural Nicaragua, empty out of season coffee beneficios (processing plants) and the various houses of relatives with Marlon, we were absolutely delighted with the friendliness of the people and tried as best we could to adjust to simple country living in our homestay, campesino-style for the weekend.

Sontule, Miraflor, Nicaragua
3rd October 2009

Losing All the Best Bits...Of Your Country

2009-09-30T11:10:00.000-07:00

Soft spoken and rather unassuming, you wouldn’t really think much of Ron Brennenman. Until, that is, you find out one of the countless facts that seem to nonchalantly crop up, like when the FMLN guerrillas organised a major offensive on his kitchen table during the civil war. Ron (seen here modelling a very fashionable cowboy hat and the even more fashionable Whitaker Sisters) has seen El Salvador go to pieces during the 80s, and then try and pull itself back together again, with fairly lacklustre results.

This has, in a nutshell, prompted him to start Amun Shea, an educational project run out of Perquin up in the remote wooded hills of the North East. The project is an inspiring attempt to provide a heavily subsidised private education for the local children which is not subject to the fairly unsatisfactory rigours of the public school system. The short term aim, which is to generate significant academic success in comparison to national results and thus force education reform, is well underway. The much harder long term goal of building and retaining desperately needed community leaders to stop the incessant traffic of talented individuals out of the country (who mostly head to the US illegally looking for a better life) is proving much more elusive; results, if any, won’t be seen for years.

It is incredible to hear Ron describe what is happening in El Salvador, and to see quite clearly how the country is a shell, hollowed out by war, leaving the resulting wasteland of possibility for the population. With the option of living hand to mouth indefinitely in a country that stalls its progress of international development or leaving for faraway lands of golden opportunity, which would you choose?

Perquin, El Salvador
30th September 2009

Perquin

2009-09-29T09:40:00.000-07:00

Tucked away in the North East of El Salvador, Perkin is a small town with a big past. The centre of operations of the guerrillas during the civil war, it was deserted for almost fifteen years and saw fierce fighting. The war museum, a fairly breathless climb up from the town centre, gives a fairly harrowing perspective from the guerrilla Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) side of the conflict, with countless photos of the casualties of the conflict placed alongside heavy artillery weapons that were either captured from the US sponsored National Guard. Our guide Carlos, an ex-major who served for the duration of the war on the side of the FMLN, tells us that the turning point in the war was when US manufactured mobile surface to air missile launchers arrived from Nicaragua, a keepsake of the contra-revolutionary conflict, allowing retaliation against the constant air bombardments that were levelling civilian villages, assumed to be enemy targets; in short, US funded weapons against US funded weapons.

The surrounding villages also bear the scars of the conflict, one of the most recognised being in El Mozote, about a half hour drive from Perquin. In 1981 on December 11, Salvadorian armed forces trained by the US military killed at least 1000 civilians in an anti-guerrilla campaign. Outside the village church is a memorial garden in which the local guide tells us they discovered the bodies of 147 children below the age of 12 buried in a mass grave.

It is amost impossible to comprehend acts of barbarity of this scale, no matter how impactful the monuments erected to remind us of events. It is also equally difficult to understand the motivations of the Regan administration during the 80s, and the far reaching effects of its foriegn policy that resulted in escalating death tolls of civilian populations in numerous central American countries, and the practical removal of their civil liberties, something the US tirelessly contradicts itself with via its constitution.

Perquin, El Salvador
29th September 2009

Sick and Alone

2009-09-28T12:27:00.000-07:00

If there is one thing the independent traveller should beware when in a state of ill health, it is the unscrupulous hotelier.

Swaying down the road a half hour of so before dusk in the one horse town of El Cuco with the intention of surfing the local wave for the weekend, head spinning and knees trembling from an unknown ailment that was enthusiastically assaulting my immune system, I encountered a squat creature that, on closer inspection, turned out to be human swinging in a hammock next to a sign proclaiming rooms for rent.

Mustering what little was left of my Spanish as my vision cart wheeled, I asked to see a single room. The results were disappointing. A bare, windowless concrete block cell was demonstrated, containing only a hammock and a bed frame with an uncovered paper thin mattress. No fan to ward off the awaiting armies of mosquitos or dispel the blistering heat or, after questioning, sheets or a pillow. For this luxury, $7 a night.

I turned on my heel and, striking out once again with a sinking feeling, tottered quarter of a mile down the road to the nearest accommodation. It cost $30 a night, and I, in a fit of preparedness, had brought $20. There were no cash machines in El Cuco; I was going to have to sleep in the cell. Back down the road with my tail between my legs I explained that, yes, I would like the room, just managing to catch the grunted comment from the Creature with Rooms for Rent that it always happened like this, they went away and came back again. Paying in advance for the two nights that I intended to stay for, I crashed through the door, and depositing my bags in the corner of the room, propped myself up against the doorframe as the Creature dispatched one of his offspring to bring the change for my $20 note.

I lay where I fell on my mattress, sweating and turning over the options in my head for the terrible state of health that had suddenly struck me down. What was it? Heat stroke? Malaria? I drifted in and out of sleep as dogs went berserk outside the ‘room’, children cried and the drone of mosquitos sounded overhead like a Second World War bomber squadron approaching London.

Morning duly arrived with no improvement in my condition and I decided after brief deliberation that it was best to retreat to the city, within range of medical attention, and find out exactly what was wrong with me. Tracking down the Creature, I smiled as weakly as I possibly could and explained that I was not well and neeed to visit a hospital, thus requiring a refund of the money for the following evening.

“That is not possible.” he almost inevitably replied.

“May I ask why?” I proffered through clenched teeth.

“You have paid for one night, and one day.” he explained.

“You’re telling me that your price of $7 was for the night, but I have to pay the same thing again for the day, just to leave my stuff in the room?” I questioned, disbelief edging into my voice.

“Yes.” he replied, as if he was humouring a process of me explaining circumstances to myself.

“I have never heard of this arrangement in my entire life.” I said, my voice starting to lose its level calmness.

He said nothing, staring at me. Undeterred and unwilling to lose an essentially ridiculous argument, I held his stare. Silence endured for about 30 seconds.

“Look,” I said eventually, glancing at my watch, “It’s only 10 am in the morning anyway; I shouldn’t even have to pay for a day yet.”

His eyes briefly flickered; I had just played checkmate. There was no way he could withhold money from me for something that had not yet occurred. All that was left for him was the last gasp effort of taking advantage of my weakened state and bloody minded unreasonableness.

“I’ll give you $5 back.” he responded, within a heartbeat.

The staring match began anew. After another 30 seconds had passed, he slowly reached for his pocket without taking his eyes off me like a driving offender reaching for the car glove box and retrived a selection of crumpled notes. They totalled $7.

“Muchas gracias” I said in a sickly sweet voice that I hope was successful in conveying my burning desire to see his whole operation and family washed into the Pacific by a tidal wave. Shouldering my bags and shuffling as haughtily as I could manage towards the bus stop, I began the long, hot journey that would inevitably result in an injection in one of my buttocks in a medical treatment centre somewhere in San Salvador.

El Cuco, El Salvador
28th September 2009

Consumerabilization

2009-09-28T08:55:00.000-07:00

This is the Galerias mall in San Salvador, but if it wasn't for the Spanish written on the signs, it could be anywhere in the world; the same sanitary shopping enironment, global brands, special offers, fast food chains in the food court. The whole building is a pulsing force driving everyone inside it to buy as much as they possibly can, if they can afford it or not (credit schemes are, of course, available).

Is this the grand goal of a developing contry? Did El Salvador drag itself out of civil war seventeen years ago so that it could develop a nice plump middle class that focus their aspirations on earning enough to buy exactly what the 'developed' world wants? Can we all hope at some point that we will slot nicely with the rest of the planet into a neat pattern of earning and spending on commodities that we really don't need? Is this progress, or just a distraction?

San Salvador, El Salvador
28th September 2009

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

2009-09-27T08:20:00.000-07:00

El Salvador is a country somewhat obsessed with security. Around every corner you're likely to see one of these cheerful chaps scowling at you, cradling their loaded shotgun. I've seen them standing outside every imaginable building; banks, clothing stores, fast food restaurants, and even a creaky beach access door from a hostel in El Tunco. Footprint guide tells me that there are around 60,000 firearms currently in public circulation, and a very reasonable percentage of them are illegal, but do you fancy telling this guy to give his gun back?

San Salvador, El Salvador
27th September 2009

Why You Should Really, Really Pay Attention To Honduras

2009-09-25T16:27:00.000-07:00

Being in El Salvador right now, it would take a level of nearly blind ignorance not to be aware of what is going on in Honduras;

I recently recieved this from a friend, who knows someone working for an Human Rights organisation in the capital of Honduras where, right now, the democratically elected president who was deposed by a military coup on July 28th is holed up in the Brazilian embassy. You can get a very good, easily digestable summary of the background to the conflict here. The article below is absolutely mind blowing, and with the history of the military knocking lumps out of the populus via a military coup which thus degrades into civil war as seen in El Salvador twenty years ago, everyone has fingers crossed that events in Honduras will not go the same way.

International Accompaniment and Observation Delegation
Quixote Center
19-26 September 2009

September 23, 2009
Patty Adams

POLITICAL PERSECUTIONS AND DETENTION * EXCESSIVE USE OF FORCE BY POLICE AND MILITARY * STATE OF EMERGENCY: PEOPLE LACKING FOOD AND WATER AFTER 42 HOUR CURFEW * POLICE STATE

Democratically-elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, deposed by a military coup on June 28, returned clandestinely to Tegucigalpa, appearing at the Brazilian Embassy around mid-day on Monday, September 21. As word of his arrival spread, thousands of Hondurans who’ve been calling for his return began to assemble outside the Embassy to celebrate, catch a glimpse, and show their support.

Our delegation was there for a few hours in the early afternoon and saw the enormous excitement, relief, pride, and possibility in the faces of the thousands of people both young and old, campesinos and school teachers, students and mothers, indigenous people and workers, all full of hope. The return of Zelaya means the possibility for free and fair elections, a constituent assembly for the creation of a more inclusive constitution, and an end to the repressive practices of the de facto regime. Such practices have left dozens dead, thousands detained illegally, hundreds wounded, and several “disappeared” in the wake of persistent and violent persecution of the peaceful resistance movement which has taken to the streets daily since the coup.

By mid-afternoon on Monday, the de facto government had called an obligatory, nationwide curfew from 4pm until 7am. Our delegation made the quick and difficult decision to return to our guesthouse, even as hundreds of people continued arriving to the area around the Brazilian Embassy, just a short block from the US Embassy and the United Nations building.

At 5am on Tuesday the 22nd, tanks and military personnel on foot passed the police barricades around the Brazilian Embassy and began firing tear gas and live ammunition into the crowd of about 500 people who had stayed all night holding peaceful vigil outside. Many people didn’t have enough time to gather their belongings and left behind shoes and purses as they fled; many family members were split up in the process of trying to escape the blows of military clubs and tear gas. Some people were offered shelter in nearby homes. When they had finished rounding up, detaining, or dispersing those assembled, the armed state actors then proceeded to break the windows and slash the tires of cars left behind by protestors before impounding them.

Despite the extension of the curfew from 7am to 6pm, members of our delegation were able to visit the hospital and interview some of those treated, many of whom were from outside Tegucigalpa and were still trying to track down all the members of the groups with which they had travelled to the city when they heard of Zelaya’s return. At least 18 people received attention at the Hospital Escuela, the main public hospital, including stitches in the head and treatment for fractured bones (see http://hondurasaccompaniment.wordpress.com/photos-video/).

Other delegation members visited the Chochi Sosa baseball stadium, which had been converted into a mass detention center for people who had violated the mandatory curfew as well as those who had been gathered outside the Brazilian Embassy. Some of those detained had been seriously wounded; some had sustained multiple traumas to the head. They all stood in the blazing mid-day sun in the stadium. The delegation accompanied the most seriously injured to a clinic, where treatment cost USD $80 -- a week’s salary, if you have a job.

That afternoon, people from all over Tegucigalpa called into one of the few non-coup television stations, Chanel 36 Cholusat Sur, which also transmits on the radio. They announced to the media that they were running out of food and water, and feeling desperate under the curfew. One woman said that her diabetic mother had not had insulin for three days.

Despite the desperation and lack of food and water, that night we heard residents in the neighborhood organizing in the streets, chanting and singing and occasionally shouting “alerta”—alert—the sign that the police or military have been spotted. The National Resistance Front had called upon people to take to the streets in their own small neighborhoods, and while the people did so all over the country, they were met with live ammunition, tear gas, and beatings by police. Though we smelled pepper gas through our guesthouse windows, for the remainder of the night we heard the mostly jubilant sounds and songs of the people’s resistance in the streets.

Once the curfew was provisionally lifted from 10am-4pm on Wednesday, people were able to move freely for a while, and some came to COFADEH, a well-respected non-governmental human rights organization, to formally denounce their treatment at the hands of the military in front of the Brazilian Embassy and in the neighborhoods the previous night. One woman had multiple deep bruises from being beaten over 20 times by the military, after she was found alone, vomiting and nearly unconscious from the effects of the tear gas. (See here: http://hondurasaccompaniment.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/repression-at-the-embassy/)

We also took the testimony of a 24-year old young man who was beaten up by police while in a street celebration, then beaten during his two hour period of detention. He was thrown down to the ground and forced to place his hands on a chair to be beaten with clubs. He heard the police talking about killing him, but because he happened to know one of the officers he was eventually released, along with a 19 year-old who was detained with him. He has serious injuries to his head, neck, hands, knees, and back including a serious wound on his left lower back. (See here: http://hondurasaccompaniment.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/one-story-of-last-nights-repression/).

We have heard reports that there is a high frequency sound blasting the area around the Brazilian Embassy, where Manuel Zelaya remains, along with members of his cabinet and some leaders of the anti-coup resistance. This is part of the military’s offensive on the Embassy, constituting a form of both physical and psychological torture, since it can cause permanent hearing damage as well as prohibit sleep and clear thinking.

We spoke with some of the over 500 lawyers nationwide who comprise the Lawyers Front against the Coup, who have been offering pro-bono legal support and defense work for those whose rights have been violated since the coup. They located the roots of this current struggle in colonization: there has never been real democracy in Honduras because the families who have always owned and controlled the resources in the country continue to enjoy political and economic power. The lawyers said that the economic elite, descended from these few families, have been able to orchestrate this coup in part thanks to their ownership of most of the media outlets in the country.

Despite all the repression, there was a march on Wednesday, as there has been a demonstration every day since the coup. Despite having many of their routes blocked off by police and military blockades, thousands of marchers cheering and chanting made it past the COFADEH office and to downtown. Upon arriving to the central square, they were met by military and police squads masked and armed, who began to pursue the demonstrators.

At this point, we’ve seen and heard reports on radio and TV of detentions but are no longer downtown so haven’t heard further confirmation.

The city is basically a police state. It is common to see a line of police and military blocking a street. There is always some important power base – like the presidential house -- behind that line, though sometimes it’s so far behind that line it’s hard to see.

Perquin, El Salvador
25th September 2009

Jon Clarke, The Face of Beer

2009-09-07T19:36:00.000-07:00

A couple of days previously, word got around the hostel that someone was looking for white faced extras for a beer commercial, salary tag $100. Naturally my ears pricked up and before too long I was standing infront of a camera in a fairly hilarious screen test being told by recruiter Dulce ("sweet" in Spanish, doubtless her birth name) to smile, look angry, excited and the fairly shallow range of emotions no doubt needed to persuade the commercial watching public that beer was the right choice.

Success beckoned me toward my second Latin American TV appearence (hopefully this time not requiring me to be dressed as a woman) and a couple of days later we were herded into a minibus and shot up to San Salvador with the promise of other, more lucrative jobs after this one ringing in our ears; finally, some money coming in.We were ejected, nine confused White faces in all, into the national football stadium and placed in the stands to await our filming slot where we were mixed with a range of other faces from sources other than the beach to create a splendid "racial rainbow". Somewhat accustomed to the extensive waiting due to some TV work in the UK, I accepted the fairly glacial pace at which the other scenes were being filmed in sequence, all rather strangely with green screen backing, this mitigating the need to be in a football stadium. Further distraction was provided by lunch surplus, a well proven measure to neutralize me in almost any situation, and a couple of our number being comically daubed with thick face paints by makeup.

Night fell and still no promise of filming, when the national football squad turned up for training for the upcoming international against Costa Rica. When all the excitement had died down, which included our resident Argentinian invading the pitch and persuading the national coach to cross him a ball so that he could score a goal, we were cast out of the stadium so as no to betray the tactics to any Costa Ricans, delaying any filming for another two hours. Luckily, dinner was provided, and temporary peace ensued.Let back into a pitch black stadium at 11 at night, the crew and a selection of the native cast disappeared to the parking lot to film scenes, once again infront of a green screen (begging two questions; firstly, why did they not cut costs and shoot the whole thing this way and, secondly, what prevented them from filming in the carpark while the training was going on?) as we sat in darkness, waiting unattended, doubts beginning to creep into collective minds as to the possibility of anything happening.

Surely enough, after two and a half hours in solitary stadium confinement, an underling arrived to deliver some bad news. "We can't film your sections tonight," she briskly explained, "you'll have to come back tomorrow and do it then. We'll pick you up at eight."A fairly predictable backlash erupted from the assembled extras, some of whom had been sporting now very itchy face paint for about seven hours and others who had life commitments for the following day. This augmented considerably when told, in addition, that we would not be paid anything extra for the subsequent day (of mystery duration) and they would not pay us anything until completion of the commercial until tomorrow. So evolved a mighty struggle between the underling, constantly on and off their mobile phones to higher powers, proposing a series of roundly rejected alternatives until finally, after an hour and a half of negotiation that included sitting on the bonnet of the underling's car so that she couldn't drive off and refusing to get in the minibus which subsequently and dramatically did a u-turn to leave and then stopped, an agreement was forged that we would be paid $50 for a full day's work the next day and would recieve our pay for the day before leaving on the condition that we promised to return. As this was the only way to recieve money and it was now three o' clock in the morning, all and sundry agreed, pocketing the cash and internally vowing never to work with El Salvadorian production again.

Dulce was dealt an unpleasant hand the next morning when everyone except Yuji, the resident Japanese of the hostel (who is, with all due respect, a complete law into himself), refused to return on the basis that we had been kept up until 4am, had been bullied into an agreement to do a full day's work for half price and had argued bitterly to get paid. As I watched my TV career drag itself into the distance (my face had not been committed to a single frame) along with any possibility of future work, I couldn't help feeling slightly guilty about my dishonesty, until subsequent research revealed that our El Salvadorian counterparts would not recieve payment for months (if at all), furthering justification that an outright lie of returning was adeqate measure given the circumstances.

El Tunco, El Salvador
7th Sept 2009

A Holiday From The Beach

2009-09-01T11:34:00.000-07:00

The swell fled the pacific coastline, and with it left the surfing population of El Tunco, scattering to Honduras, Nicaragua and Guaremala. Far from keen to sit in the heat and insect clouds to savour the delights of a flat spell, I decided that a break from beach living was in order. A couple of sweaty bus connections inland from la libertad, the small town of Sushitoto resides beside lake X, a quaint colonial bubble seemingly unscarred by the groping claws of tourism. Languid mornings at breakfast in the central town square give no indication of foreign traffic, circumstances mirrored by wanderings around the town.

I arrived in the company of Sandra and Nico, Swiss and Argentinian and we checked into the tiny hostel Vista de Lago, that justified its name with stunning views over the lake from the comfort of hammocks, where I proceeded to spend long hours dangling and lazily shifting my gaze between my book and the landscape, occasionally distracted by the friendly hostel dog, El Oso, as he requested affection. Days were spent pottering to various waterfalls and streams to swim and cool off, the most impressive being El Cubo, a secluded range of falls and pools tucked inside sheer cliffs with a resident population of bats thankfully keeping the local mosquito population down. Everywhere we followed water, the streams, rivers and lakes bore thepresensce of litter, a sobering reminder of the price of progress (ie consuming more non decomposing products) without the stability of infrastructure to prevent fly tipping all over the incredible natural landscape around us.

Electricity in the evenings disappeared for hours at a time during fierce storms that rattled the town, the locals cheerfully going about business as usual in complete darkness with water pooling underfoot. Regular evenings at the local pupuseria (purveyor of the national staple food, pupusas) were conducted frequently by torch and candlelight as we shovelled red hot steaming pupusas into our hungry mouths. On each of these suppertime trips we were accompanied and guarded without prompting by El Oso, who sat faithfully outside during mealtimes and charged snarling towards any locals who he deemed a threat to us, namely everyone.

Sushitoto, El Salvador
1st September 2009

Beach Living

2009-08-26T10:38:00.000-07:00

Life settles into a rhythm fairly rapidly when one is based in a surf spot with few other occupations. Days normally start at around 5.30 with an early morning stumble out to a wave to try and beat the crowds and the wind, enjoying a solitary hour or so before the hordes descend. Breakfast and coffee follow, normally reading or writing for a while before picking up the board and returning to the ocean for more time in the water.

Of late this has involved hopping on a crowded public bus and spluttering along the coastal road with nothing more than board, the clothes that will be surfed in and enough change in pocket for a return bus trip; normally about 70 pence. Discharged on the side of the road, a walk commences through small settlements to beach access and the surfing session and then a drip dry walk back to the road to await the bus or, with luck, a successful hitch hike afterwards. A late lunch follows before cowering in the shade from the blistering heat of the day reading, playing cribbage or watching one of the countless pirated DVDs floating around the hostel. As the day cools, Surf Number 3 commences with a return to the hostel in time to cook supper before the hordes of hungry insects arrive to devour every inch of uncovered flesh. One large beer and a game of cribbage later and self mummification in bedsheets to protect against mosquito death squads ensues shortly followed by sleep at around 10pm to prepare for the same thing the following day.

El Tunco, El Salvador
26th August 2009

Local Hospitality

2009-08-26T09:29:00.000-07:00

Written just in front of the Punta Roca surf break, just outside La Libertad. Despite stories of dire events, the attitude in the water has been fine, with no trouble from the locals and respect shown all round.

La Libertad, El Salvador
26th August 2009

Living In The Shade

2009-08-25T20:42:00.000-07:00

My current base of operations from which I point myself towards various beaches can best be defined as the "cheap and cheerful" end of the spectrum. Run by a pair of very amiable San Salvadorian brothers, Jose and Mauricio, La Sombra tends to attract the slightly more laid back crowd, leaving the partying to the other end of the collection of hostels that is spread along the beachfront from the main road up to the rivermouth. Home to a trillion mosquitos, funky odours from the septic tank, sporadic and untimely noise from the construction site of a more upmarket hostel in progress and the most damp smelling couches in the history of mankind sheltered under a leaking palapa in the tv area, the place is still held in fond regard by its owners, guests and various passers through, myself included.

El Tunco, El Salvador
25th August 2009

Aquafilth

2009-08-22T20:43:00.000-07:00

The last two nights have heralded ear splitting storms, tearing palms from trees, flooding roads with torrents and drenching all and sundy with near sideways rain. I, naturally, slept like a baby for both nights, waking in a slight confusion to stories of the others of hours of window shaking thunder and lightning.

At these times the rivers swell, pregnant with the weight of rainwater, and gush out into the majority of the surfing breaks, turning the water an opaque brown with the weight of silt and mud. It also brings other unwanted gifts to the surfing line up, as I discovered when paddling out the day after a big storm, dragging my arm through plastic bottles, crisp packets and packaging of all shapes and sizes; the glorious effluence of a growing consumer society eagerly stoked by plastic loving multinationals.

"The people in the villages up in the hills just throw everything into the river; there's no refuse collection services provided" explained my Argentinian roommate Nico, as we sat watching detritus turning over in the brown foam of one of the local waves, Bocano. "As soon as there's a big rain, it all gets dragged down here. I've heard of dead animals floating around out there, and a lot of surfers get really sick after surfing when there has been a storm. I've been up the hill to the river source," he added somewhat whistfully, "and the water is beautiful and clean there."

Water pollution is a huge problem in El Salvador, with the government taking no initiative to assist those who live on the coast by providing public services for dealing with refuse and educating the coastal populus on the issues of sustainability of the current approach. With the local residential and business communities placing online petitions to try and draw the attention of the government, steps are being made but progress still seems like a distant hope; in the meantime the water users of El Salvador keep their mouths shut when in the sea and hope that it keeps raining often enough to flush out the steadily building refuse piles up in the hills before they get too big.

El Tunco, El Salvador
22nd August 2009

Morning Time In El Tunco

2009-08-19T20:42:00.000-07:00

My alarm cheerfully sounds its irritating reminder at 5:30 in the morning; rising groggily from my slumber I haphazardly rub a fresh layer of wax on my board and slip out of the front gate of my hostel, La Sombra, sleepwalking down to the beachfront and tread heavily along the black sand, heading for the local point, Sunzal. The water is warm as I wade in and climb onto my board for the paddle out, creaking shoulders grumbling at the injustice of it all. As I get further out, the dark walls of water rising out of the distance change shade, glassy and orange as I pull myself through the smooth, liquid surface.

I reach the takeoff, where the waves rear up and begin their final rumbling phase of their long journey and pull myself up to sitting on my board, my shoulders aching. Looking out to sea, dark clouds frame the horizon, forked lightning jumping down to strike the distant liquid line at the edge of the world, thunder rumbling across the miles. I turn and look towards the shore to see the sunrise seeping around the clouds, a thick golden blend of colour that sarurates everything it touches, bathing the landscape, the water and the two solitary surfers who have dragged themselves up at an equally unsociable hour in an incredible light. I turn back to sea and wait, watching as a bulge in the water thickens and rears up in front of me as I turn and coax a few more paddling strokes out of my shoulders, feeling the wave take me as I rise to my feet and drop smoothly down its glassy face, heading back the way I came, into the sunrise.

El Tunco, El Salvador
19th August 2009

Paddling Out

2009-08-17T20:42:00.000-07:00

"I guess we to in here?" one of my Australian companions suggests, lacking the certainty that I'd hope for. Thirty feet of rounded boulders covered in scratchy marine plantlife stand between us and the thundering point break of Punta Roca just outside the main beach of La Libertad, which periodically disappear from view as the whitewater from the waves powerfully surges over the rocks. With boards underarm, we skip from rock to rock and brace ourselves every time a wave comes crashing across our path, like a game of statues but with serious consequences as the black specks of surfers already in the line up observe us with interest. I survive 3 waves until my feet are swept out from under me and I am dragged across ten feet of cheese grating stone, almost totalling one of my fellow rock hoppers, frantically cradling my board against possible injury while sections of my skin are removed. Gently bleeding into the water, I brace myself against rocks and heave back into a standing position, preparing to attempt the same distance for the second time.

"There's someone getting in over there" someone says, and suddenly everyone freezes, 3 pairs of eyes swivelling to follow the progress of a lone figure hopping across a section further down the same unrelenting rocky point. As we watch, he totters to shin depth and waits, crouching, asa wave breaks and the white water hammers towards him. As it arrives within feet, he leaps over the jumbled heap of foam and paddles furiously out to sea, sucked sideways by the after tow until, finally released, he slogs his way out of the churned up inside section and duck dives through the advancing waves that follow. Within minutes we are, with varying degrees of success, following his example, bouncing between rocks and off the shallow bottom in a frantic flap out to sea, which eventually rewards us with the welcome experience of waves that don't break on our heads as we sit in the lineup.

"We weren't supposed to get in at that spot, were we?", one of my group asks another surfer as we sit waiting for one of the grinding sets of waves to come through. "Nah man," comes the reply, "but we thought you must be Brazilians." After a brief pause, he adds, almost by way of explanation, "They alway end up getting into macho shit like that."

El Tunco, El Salvador
17th August 2009

Surfing and Nowt Else

2009-08-16T09:29:00.001-07:00

My bus snakes along the coastal road of the pacific, shrouded by jungle and dipping through tunnels carved into the hills when the calculations of the road engineers had presumably decreed that it was not worth going around. The almost incessent and, for the most part, incomprehensible chat of my driver, with whom I had "bonded" while having money extorted from me is occasionally distracted as the jungle surrounding the road opened up to reveal rumbling waves; point breaks, beach breaks, all clean and perfect, all completely empty of surfers.

El Tunco is a tiny collection of hostels and restaurants sitting just off the coastal highway, a 10 minute ride from the bright lights and conveniences of the two blocks of La Libertad, and with at least 10 other world class breaks within half an hours bus ride, three of which are right outside my hostel. Apart for two months of the year, there are always waves here, at around an average height of five feet; chances are that the local forecast update shown below will agree. In a nutshell, this is everything I could want for the next few weeks in which I plan to exercise a complete defecit of responsibility.

El Tunco
16th August 2006

Jolly Nice Corruption

2009-08-12T09:05:00.000-07:00

Another day, another country. Tearing myself away from the comforts of Xela to head for the long lusted after surfing breaks of El Salvador, I found myself being dragged from my bed at the ungodly hour of 4:45 in the morning to make a direct shuttle transfer bus to my starting point of choice for my wave hunt, El Tunco.

My head bounced up and down on the thick book that I was trying to use as a pillow as I slumped across three seats, trying to make up for lost sleep. Eventually giving up, I raised my head to see that my bus (of whom I was the only passenger) had reached the border. Groggily I dismounted and wandered towards the window indicated by the driver, passing my passport through the tiny window to the official with a scraggy moustache on the other side. He recieved it with the wearyness of seasoned officialdom and tapped at a couple of keys on his keyboard, frowning at his screen.

"There are problems with your passport," he explained in Spanish, "And I can clean them up for you for 25 dollars. Otherwise," he helpfully added, "I will not let you into El Salvador."

"I have 96 Quetzales," I flatly replied, almost expecting this kind of outcome, "Will that be sufficient?". "There is a cash machine one kilometre back up the road." came the merciless reply.

"Make sure that you tuck the money over the counter when you give it to him; they don't like it to be obvious" explained my driver, who had been smiling cheerfully next to me for the duration, as we returned armed with the full exit stamp ransom to the window. "You know," he continued as we drove across the border having completed the suitably subtle transaction, "You were very lucky. We came from Guatemala where the people charge you less than the other direction, and at one of the nicest checkpoints. One of my passengers last week, an American girl, had to pay 140 dollars to get a problem fixed."

So it was that I complied with a corruption payment larger than my disasterous Mexican border crossing with good grace, in the knowledge that I had recieved a discount.

El Tunco, El Salvador
12th August 2009

Slides and Freewheeling

2009-08-09T15:49:00.000-07:00

Some 1500 vertical metres below Xela lies the wonderous water park of Xocomil (sounds like "chocomilk"), a theme park on a Mayan theme, resplendent with bright concrete "temples" that contain fast food restaurants and effurgies of glowering natives about to throw spears into the defenceless waterslide riders.

Through the local knowledge of one of the people that I had come to know I ended up freewheeling the vast majority of the route to the park on a rented bicycle over the course of an incredible hour and a half of high speed, steep corners on a road that dove through tunnels, of foliage through green rainforest and stone through mountains as stunning vistas shot past of towering cloud forests, deep ravines cut by fast flowing rivers and the impressive mountainous terrain of Guatemala.

I would be pompously self rightous about the rough riding of commercial opportunism for a Mayan theme park over cultural heritage if or weren't for the fact that the park is so much fun that anyone who spends longer than 10 minutes in it is reduced to a squealing childlike state. Personal favourites include the Speed Slide (shown below) and El Regresón, which spits the screaming flume rider some 30 feet up a large quarter pipe before gravity has a chance to do its thing.

Xela, Guatemala
9th August 2009

Moving Backward to Go Forwards

2009-08-08T10:20:00.000-07:00

Swept up in the scholarly environment perpetuated by the multitude of language schools in Xela, I decided to enrol for a week to decide for myself if the one to one tuition method of Spanish classes was preferable to the group lessons that I had been recieving in Mexico. Slightly overwhelmed by the quantity of schools available I opted for Kie Balam, at which my directionally challenged taxi driver had stopped at to request advice following my arrival in town, and thanks to who I had subsequently found the elusive Yoga House.

After a written exam that determined that I was, for the most part,completely ignorant about prepositions I was introduced to a tiny and very giggly (characteristics that seemed to be consistant with most of the staff) teacher who proceeded to shephard me through the fairly tattered remains of my Spanish. It was certainly a more active process one to one, under the obvious circumstances that I had to be either listening or speaking at one point or another unlike the group lessons which had allowed me ample opportunity to switch off while my classmates took a more active role in the proceedings. However, I could see how it would become all too easy to get comfortable speaking only in situations with a private tutor and not carry conversational confidence into other scenarios, an acknowledged possiblity that accounted for the prevolence of homestays and structured activities by the majority of schools to provide a diversity of opportunities for students outside tuition contact time.

We waded through unfamiliar topics before a fresh assault on the other "modes" of speaking that I had begun to learn in Mexico. As briefly as possible; in Spanish there are different methods or conveying orders (the "imperative") and also for "unreal" things, such as opinions, desires, hypothetical situations and doubts (the subjunctive). These are things that a beginner speaker is oblivious to, happily using the "indicative" mode (for "real" things, such as events, descriptions etc.) for everything. The equally infuriating thing is that if you only use one mode to speak you will be understood by the vast majority of people perfectly well, and most Latinos that I have met have difficulty in diffentiating between modes anyway, due to them being drummed into them from an early age without any formal tuition. So, with this in mind, why bother with the other modes of speaking? Good question...

By the end of the week my head was bulging with concious thought process about how I should be correctly saying things, which chipped away steadily at my speaking fluidity and confidence. They say that the best approach is to launch yourself into conversation without too much active thought, but I struggle to see how I can improve in areas which are not fundamentally essential for language "survival" without taking a hit on my capacity to communicate in the short, or even medium, term. With this in mind I'm back to earlier days of careful communication and consequently tripping over things that previously came to me easily, hoping that a mindful approach will eventually plaster the differences in modes to the correct bits of my brain, thus earning me the heady title of "upper intermediate"; a worthy goal indeed.

Xela
8th August 2009

The Joy of Xela

2009-08-02T21:24:00.000-07:00

Akin to the island of the Lotus Eaters in Homer's Oddessy, Xela is a place that all too easily allows a person to pass time without realizing it. Through the connection of my friend, I found my way to Yoga House, a communal rental spot whose subtle front door sandwiched between buildings gave no indication of its labarinthine interior. Standing on the doorstep with my various belongings hanging from me, the door was flung open by someone of whom I had absolutely no recollection. "Hablas ingles?", I ventured, as I watched her face crack into a wide smile. "Big Jon!", she exclaimed, and ushered me inside. It turned out after short discussion that we had met on my previous trip to Lago Atitlan (in conjunction with my university friend, Little Jon), and proved to be an excellent welcoming step to what was to be a welcome respite from the pressures of relentless movement and uncertainty.

Xela sits in a bowl formed by mountainous terrain, a quirk of it's location being that it is some 2500 metres above sea level, thus providing a welcome break from the blistering heat of Belize. Unlike its neighbour, Antigua, it seems to have retained some of its spirit outside of the ultimate purpose of being a tourist serving town, despite the prevolence of language schools that have given it something of an international reputation as one of the best places to learn Spanish.

Aside from the aimiability of the people and the general atmosphere of the place, I was also really taken with Yoga House; the connections to people that it offered and the abundence of excercise and physical activity that became instantly accessible, making me realise both how much I had missed it and the company and influence of people for whom it was an important part of life. Within a few hours of arriving I was wheezing around a frisbee pitch, feeling so glad that for the first time in weeks, I felt absolutely awful.
With 3 yoga classes a day and 3 boxing classes a week included in the criminally cheap cost of taking a room in the house, I would have quite happily run myself into the ground if it wasn't for the fact that, shortly after some of the boys took me for a run up a very large hill outside town (shown above on the right) I succumbed to a killer cold and my head filled up with mucus, preventing normal breathing and hence further exhertion. I can only assume that weeks on the go coupled with various traumas finally caught up with me, but at least had the decency to do their worst in a place where I could quite happily extend my stay from a couple of days to a week and a half without a second thought.

Xela, Guatemala
2nd August 2009

Tour...and Relax

2009-07-29T20:00:00.000-07:00

So began a week of tourism at a blistering pace, covering a large proportion of Belize from the sheltered environment of the tinted windows of a rented 4WD, exiting occasionally to engage in activities and to eat and sleep. Boat rides to offshore tiny islands, rope swinging over rivers, swimming through caves by the light of headtorches, watching thunderstorms across the bay from the shelter of a top floor bar and general abuse of our vehicle on the long and winding dirt roads ensued.

By the time that Tim (whose photos I have stolen and am displaying above; thanks very much for that) flew from belize city airport to return to the world of work in the UK (a world that now felt more or less completely alien), I was feeling decidedly anti-social and in need of some alone time; it is mildly surprising to me that I have steadly become more averse to constant contact with others over the period of weeks, and certainly accentuates the point that I would find it very difficult to travel for any great length of time with the same group of people, finding great value in personal space and solitary time.

Thus I found myself crossing the border between Belize and Guatemala feeling strangely welcomed by the prevolence of Spanish, which had been steadily rotting in the back of my mind, and the general chaos and dirtyness of what seemed to be a slightly more genuine slice of Latin America. Parting company with the Whitaker sisters after a fairly gruelling overnight bus ride to Guatemala City, I bumped the hours away on a chicken bus to Quetzaltenango (fortunately also known as Xela) with no particular plan other than to drop a book off with a fellow ex-teacher before heading on to the Promised Land of El Salvador.

After a ride from a very amiable but completely inept taxi driver to the seeming unknown location of ex-teacher Abi (despite assuring me that he knew the spot right up to the point where we drove away from the curb) and meeting a very friendly and welcoming bunch upon arrival at said mystery location, it became abundantly clear to me that for the first time in a while, I really wanted to put my feet up and stew in one place for a while, and hence became the latest victim in the spider web that is Xela, where people come to stay for a couple of
days and wake up one day to find that months have passed.

Xela
29th July 2009

Gwan Snarklin

2009-07-18T11:21:00.000-07:00

The Belizian Cayes, and in particular Caye Caulker, did everything that they could to cultivate and sustain the Caribbean stereotype. Life never raised above a saunter, everything was haphazardly contructed of misaligned wood and one of the girls in our party was duly informed by local pedestrians that she was "wahkin like a champion".

Inadvertantly pursuing the textbook experience further, we booked onto a snorkelling trip towards the outer reef provided by Ragamuffin Tours. The twenty or so tourists that gathered at the alloted departure time, ranging in skin palette from light brown to pink were split into two groups, each of which were dispatched to a 40ft wooden sailing boat. Our bright red vessel for the day, the Ragga Queen, was helmed by Captain Raf who gave the sort of safety briefing that would start convusions in UK health and safety exectives and shortly afterwards we motored away from the jetty.

Within minutes the Captain turned on the stereo, surprisingly to reveal that the music of choice was...reggae. "Does anybody nut like de reggae?" he asked the assembled passengers. No response was elicited. "Well den," he continued, "if nuhbody like it, tell meh and I turn it up."

The whole experience turned out to be absolutely fantastic. Over the course of the day we were dropped into three different uncrowded spots, allowing us to glide among shoals of fish that seemed completely indifferent to our existence, nurse sharks that snaked over the shallow bottom hunting out unfortunate fish and scrapping unashamedly with one another for the remains some feet away from us, manta rays, a solitary manatee (much to the delight of our female contingent, and the disgust of Tim, who was looking the other way at the time) that mournfully flapped off into the distant underwater twilight, and a colourful and strange array of coral.

The abundence and variety of marine life was astounding, especially for a place where the through traffic of unskilled snorkellers must have been enormous, and the potential for destruction and exploitation of the natural resources huge. Without ever seeming uptight, the staff on the tour gently sheparded us between and around locations without relenting to the measures that seem to be repeatedly resorted to in order to sate tourist greed; there was no evidence of infrastructre around the reef, or of littering. It also never seemed that we were being herded along a well trodden route, recipients of a fairly sanitized and templated tour, the presence of our fellow boat passengers never being felt as overbearing and the quantities of dive boats at sites never exceeding a couple.

Somewhat sun fried and giggly from the strong rum punch that we'd been supplied with and steadily drowning in after the last dive, we arrived under sail to the jetty from whence we came. All drunken promises to exact a rampage upon the town in the evening rapidly disintegrated as the effects of a full day in tropical sun and the booze set in, sending us to our beds in our small, lopsided wooden shacks at a disgracefully early hour.

Caye Caulker, Belize
18th July 2009

An Executive Means of Travel

2009-07-17T09:40:00.001-07:00

As we got further from the Mexican border, the tension in my shoulders started to ease, even though it would turn out to be some days before I would let my guard down and start trusting locals again. Via a blissfully simple entry into Belize we rattled along a baked tarmac road to the dusty bus station of Corozal. Realising simultaneously that everyone spoke English and that we had an extra hour to hand due to the time difference, everything suddenly became very possible and we realised that we could be on the tiny island of Caye Caulker to meet our friends within a day.

Quickly compromising economy, we decided to fly the fifty miles or so to the island instead of waiting for the water taxi the next day, and were shuttled in a battered car that had pretensions as a taxi to the local airstrip, where a light aircraft stood waiting by the hut that constituted a waiting lounge. "Looks like yeh plane is reddeh" the taxi driver said, as we dumped our bags by the side of the plane and paid the price or our urgency. Within minutes we were crammed behind the pilot, the only passengers on board and feeling like royalty to have our own aircraft laid on for us. These feelings quicly evaporated, however, as the aircraft bumped along the runway and shook itself into the sky causing one of the other passenger seats to worryingly crashed sideways onto the floor.

The aircraft quickly rose, and the ground dropped away behind us to reveal electric blue water thinly covering the black outline of coral reef, dark patches of cloud sliding across the surface of the water. As we watched tiny boats below us draw white trails out behind them and small islands come and go hundreds of metres below, Mexico already seemed like a long way away. We landed in nearby San Pedro after a fairly ridiculous twenty minutes to change planes, joining a mixed group of Belizians, ex-pats and tourists and, after handing in our seemingly pointless giant red laminated cards bearing only the information "BOARDING CARD", rapidly took off and passed the last leg of the journey which ended on a bumpy landing on the Caye Caulker airstrip. The only two to get off the plane, we shuffled down the sand track to the "arrivals lounge", basically standing outside a shack, until our luggage was untangled from the aircraft and trolleyed to us. It was, all in all, the closest impression of a commercial airline infrastructure that I have ever seen.

Exiting the airport by way of a white sand path, we soon encountered a huge Belizian lady proudly driving a golf cart, the local laternative to standard vehicles and taxis. Thus we found ourselves, some four hours out of Mexico, facing backwards down a sandy Carribean road bordered by brightly painted wooden stilted buildings and clinging to our possesions while our driver cheerfully swung the golf cart around the twists and turns of the island, taking us closer to what I could already feel would be a very refreshing change in direction from the last two weeks.

Caye Caulker, Belize
17th July 2009

A Fond Farewell To Mexico

2009-07-17T09:40:00.000-07:00

After a stirling turnaround by the British Embassy, the passport found its way back to our eager hands within a couple of days of arrival. So excited to finally be leaving Mexico, and even more so Chetumal, we rushed back to our dingy hotel to collect our belongings and get out of town before doing damage, either to ourselves or others.

Bowling along to the border in a taxi, spirits were high with the immanence of escape until, regrettably, we reached the border. Exiting the taxi at the Mexican exit stamp booth, I asked the taxi driver to wait a second with our belongings while we got stamped and transferred to a bus. Straight away we were descended upon by a smooth talking Belizian who dressed close enough to be a priest, in black with a white collar and the obligatory crucifix dangling from his neck, who proceeded to try and rush us through the process so that he could accompany us in a taxi to the other side of the border, a journey that turned out to be some 15 minutes long and would have, under his reccommendation, cost us 350 pesos compared to the somewhat more economic 20 peso fare for the bus.

Making it clear that we didn't need his assistance, language or religion, we arrived at the window to the booth, where an obese sour faced Mexican official bulging from within a sweat stained uniform checked our passports and decreed within seconds that my paperwork was not in order and as Lou had no entry stamp in her brand new passport we would have to return to Chetumal to pay the necessary charges. When I explained in my most restrained way that it was simply not an option to go back, he pounced with the inevitable proposition that he could "forgoe the hassle" with a simple payment of 400 pesos. Our pseudo-Christian friend stuck his head into the fray at this point to helpfully suggest under his breath that he was an undercover cop, and that we should play along so that he could gather evidence.

We were completely at the mercy of the Fat Official; under no circumstances would we return to Chetumal, and he knew it. With steam spiralling from my ears, I held out two 200 peso notes which he insultingly ignored for a while, busying himself with papers on the other side of the cubicle while muttering to himself about the outrage of being asked for a reciept for the costs incurred. The tiny exit stamp was placed in the passports, lacking the aplomb that I would have hope 400 pesos would have paid for, and I stormed away from the window to confront our taxi driver who, insensitive to our recent travails, had decided to charge us double the agreed fare for a 10 minute wait. My Spanish was suddenly released from its bonds of English decency and I let fly in a tumbling cascade of obscenity at the injustice of it all, sparing a little something for the Belizian "undercover cop" who was sidling around us trying to carry our bags and asking for some money "for the effort".

Lou sheparded me onto the bus as I scowled at anybody who I could make eye contact with and as we rolled across the border, finally, into Belize I reflected with a degree of sorrow that the last taste in my mouth of the place that I called home for 6 months was made bitter by corruption, greed and self indulgent opportunism.

Corozal, Belize
17th July 2009

One Very, Very Good Reason to Visit El Salvador

2009-07-15T11:59:00.000-07:00

Chetumal
15th July 2009

Trouble for Big Blue

2009-07-15T11:14:00.000-07:00

With the reflections of human impact on ocean environment still prevalent in my mind, a couple of pertenant things landed in my inbox, which did very little to improve my mood; the first an article from one of my favourite subscriptions, the National Geographic writer John Bowermaster about the recent effects of rampant "eco" tourism on an increasingly fragile Galapagos Islands, and the second about the latest sensationalist film about the destructive power of humans on natual resource, this time covering the effects of overfishing.

Always slightly grumpy about the haphazard and fairly diffuse of the "eco" label by tourism outfits, this latest dispatch serves to distance me yet again from seeing intelligent, sustainable and considered tourism as a possiblity. Check out the trailer.

Hailed as "The Inconvenient Truth About the Oceans" by the Economist (a debatably good association), the film "End of the Line" was released on June 12th and seems to be garnering a fair amount of interest. Based on the book by Charles Clover, the film looks at the effects of the commerical fishing industry and, draws some fairly sobering conclusions.

Despite best efforts and a nice relaxing break in Bacalar next to the impressive Languna de Siete Colores (Lake of 7 colours), morale is low and we remain keen to cross the border and escape to Belize, where necessary but gloomy revalations about the capacity of humans to systematically ruin things can be shelved for a while.

Chetumal
15th July 2009

Killing Time

2009-07-12T11:12:00.001-07:00

So, after an excruciating day of trailing around Palenque town performing administative duties required to eventually get a new passport from the British Embassy in Cancun, Lou and I wearily put ourselves on the next bus to the captial of Quintana Roo, Chetumal. This dusty and soul-less town sits on the border with Belize, and would form our base for time unspecified as the dynamic forces of the Embassy processed Lou's passport application. After a single night, we realised that we would probably end up killing and eating someone if forced to spend a full week waiting in the same place, thus hiring a car and driving with enthusiasm towards the Carribean coast.

Our point of escape, with no particular form of planning, turned out to be Mahahual. Arriving on a blustery and overcast day, we were greeted to the sight of a deserted town bordered by acres of dead mangroves on one side and a classic carribean sea on the other. Two days was about all we could handle in our slightly fragile state, frustrated by our forced improsonment in Mexico by circumstances; the strangeness of the town was, in our particular state of mind, a bit too much.

Mahahual grew fast from a small fishing village into an overflow point for the more famous beaches to the north of Playa Del Carmen and Tulum, also developing a healthy passing trade in backpacking tourists. Things were going nicely until Hurricane Dean hit in 2007, flattening the entire town and tearing the life out of the mangrove forest that consequently delivered a crushing blow to localised marinelife and ecosystems. Since then life slowly recovered and Mahauhual regained some form of income as a cruise ship stopover, with up to 5000 people simultaneously flooding the tiny town at sporadic moments to come ashore, engage in drunken debauchary along the seafront and return back to their cabins after some hours. This, no doubt, was instrumental in breeding a very predeatory feeling to the place; one could not escape the sense that the locals watched you like hawks as you passed; not through curiosity, but sizing you up to see how they could get what they needed from you before you left.

Speaking with Evan, a young Texan expat with verbal diahorrea who was the proud proprietor of a new local bar/restaurant/cabaña setup, another sobering revalation came to pass. At the point of our initial arrival we drove up the coast in a bursting desire for exploration, and noticed a fine skin of rubbish littering the ungroomed aspects of the shoreline outside the main seafront in town.

"I've picked up some of the rubbish to check the labels when I've been wandering around the beach sometimes," explained Evan, "And it always says that it was made in a different country; China, Cuba, Europe, the United States. It never says 'Made in Mexico'".

It was saddening to realise the global impact of negligence in such wide scope, and got me thinking about the footprint of human activity at a time that was already more gloomy. Turning the car around and heading back inland, we once again began the search for a place to put our feet up for a few days, recuperate from our traumas and wait.

Chetumal
11th July 2009

Guns, Knives and Short People

2009-07-09T10:22:00.000-07:00

On the next brief stop-off from the high speed journey from San Cristobal to Belize, Lou and I booked onto a tour to pay a lightning visit to Agua Azul, a collection of Very Blue Waterfalls that had been reccommended by numerous people. Shooting past campesinos heavily laden with wood who trudged along the side of the paved roads in our air conditioned tour bus with tinted windows I felt the vestiges of a sinking feeling. The feeling grew to a nagging discomfort as we arrived at Agua Azul to find a series of well paved walkways between different "viewing galleries", crowded with tourists merrily elbowing each other out of the way to get their perfect photographs.

Persevering despite growing negativity, we continued up the hill alongside the sections of the falls with the hope that the vast majority of photo-goons would not see the value in trying to break crowd mentality. Hope became smugness as the paths became empty the further away from the carpark we got and we soon found ourselves trotting along beside electric blue water bordered by jungle and lush green banks.

Within five minutes our blissful wanderings brought us to a chap lounging by the side of the path wearing a "rural tourist police" t-shirt with a radio strapped to his belt, in the process of informing a Dutch couple that they couldn't go any further up the track. Fortunately for all concerned, my 6 months of spanish practise allowed me to talk with him and ascertain that it would be fine to go up the track, provided that he remained with us as an escort. With smiles all round and the smugness building, we continued to the end of the track where a large, foreboding sign proclamed that we we premitted to go no further, UNDER ANY CIRUMSTANCES. Merrily casting aside all possesions on the tiny fine sand riverside beach to be warily watched by our police friend, we tumbled into the water and spent the next half hour splashing around, basking on the large stones that sustained the small section of waterfall and throwing ourselves into the rapids to be spat out spluttering in the calmer waters.

Eventually following the example of the Dutch couple we retreated to the beach to towel off when, in a rather surreal moment, I looked up to see four figures heading out of the jungle in a running crouch; from the fact that they were all wearing either balaclavas or hankerchiefs over their faces and carrying rifles and machetes, I quickly ascertained that it was unlikely that we'd just recieved participants for a picnic. In a moment of uncharacteristic lucidity I threw Lou's waterproof camera behind me into the shallows with the knowledge that we were, at the very least, about to lose all our possesions. Meanwhile one of the group had taken up position next to our guard (whose radio proved to be a somewhat ineffective measure against a firearm) and had the barrel of a rife tucked against his skull. Our attentions were immediately directed elsewhere, however, as a remarkably short assailant with a knife that would have made even Crocodile Dundee think twice arrived within chopping distance and informed us in as many words that we would do very well to give him a lot of money.

With visably trembling fingers the Dutch couple handed over 1500 pesos and were relieved of their camera, pleading for the memory card and trying to enlist my help to get our diminutive new best friend to take the time to locate the card slot, perform the complicated operation of extraction (which would require self-disarmament to facilitate the use of both hands) and allow them the gift of the 300 photos that were stored. My Spanish capabilites, already somewhat under stress from the situation, ground to a halt as I briefly considered and then discarded my capacity as bi-lingual negotiator. Aside from dynamics of practicality with their issue, I was also distracted by the worsening problems of Lou and I; having run our financial resources slowly down in anticipation of leaving the country and transferring currency we only had 120 pesos, not deemed a sufficient enough haul for the risk undergone through armed robbery. Drawing himself up to his full height of almost my nose level, our masked aquantence took Lou's day bag from the ground, rifling though it and growing incresingly frustrated as he encountering items of value such as personal journals, mobile phone chargers and ladies personal effects. With a noise of frustration somewhere between a grunt and a squeak, he scuttled off cradling Lou's bag, the camera and money to retreat to the safety of distance where the rest of his companions were waiting, presumably with the mentality that somewhere in the bag, eventually, he would encounter untold riches and ignoring my jumbled requests to return something of little value but great importance, during which I'm pretty sure I accidently referred to him as a "señora".

Sadly for us, the bag contained Lou's passport. Without the benefit of time to reorganize her stuff, this cruicial jigsaw piece of our Belizian picture was disappearing into the undergrowth in the hands of a group who almost certainly had absolutely no use for it. And disappear it did, leaving our slightly shell shocked group standing on the small crescent of sand criss crossed with the footprints of the past couple of minutes. Our wide eyed guard leapt from the log on which he'd been sitting and let fly with a tumbling stream of terrified language, disavowing all responsibility, blaming our actions, cursing all and sundry for the ill luck and the looming possiblity of their imminent return.

With eyes cast fearfully towards the opening in the foliage we collected the scattered remenants of our belongings; mercifully our wallets had been left, containing our identification and bank cards to finance the impending lengthly administrative process of insurance claims and obtaining a new passport that sat like a black cloud in the back of our minds; the Dutch couple through a blessed twist of fate had managed to retain their bag which contained both their passports and wallets; I retrieved the camera from the shallows of the river, a minor triumph that would prove to be short lived when it would, at some point, slip from the bundle that I was carrying and fall to the trail never to be found again; and began the walk back down the hill past groups running the other way driven by radio alerts that had come too late, to a new and painful phase to our freshly begun travels.

Palenque

9th July 2009

Ruined

2009-07-08T10:22:00.003-07:00

Reflecting on the swift dash from the oven temperature depths of Chiapas to the Belizian redezvous with friends, it seemed somewhat daft to ignore the archelogical heavyweight of Palenque that I would be bussing straight past. Thus after a late night drop off in the tourist friendly spot of El Panchan, tucked neatly into the edge of the jungle in the amaiably run "Jungle Palace" collection of cabañas, I found myself lulled to sleep by the noisy chorus eminating from the foliage, hinting fears of the army of mosquitos that were no doubt poised to breach the cube of mosquito netting in which I was installed and drain me dry.

Fortunately the night passed without failure of my defense measures, and Lou and I found ourselves shuttled rapidly over the well greased path to the ruins by colectivo that hundreds of thousands of tourists had worn down over the years. Despite fears that we would be two heads in a vast seething crowd of tours, the site was really quiet. The ease of access and slick measures at the ticket booths for entry hinting at a much higher expected level of traffic and, coherent with experience elsewhere, showed the fairly devastating effect that negative public relations of swine flu and drug wars has exacted upon national tourism.

I wasn't complaining; wandering without aim around the site having given the brush off to countless offers of paid guidance was an impressive experience. They estimate that only 5% of the already vast site has been discovered and excavated to some degree, and that much was evident from the range of buildings on display. From the groomed and towering edifice of the palace, covered with workers chiselling stone, brushing dust and trimming grass, bringing it to as close a state as they dared to demonstrate it's former glory to the tucked away and overgrown residential housing blocks partially swallowed by jungle, the site (intentionally or not) gave a sense of discovery as you moved betwen buildings. The majority of the tourists going no further than the impressive entrance buildings in the main plaza left a sense of isolation, leaving us to duck in and out of the jungle that formed some of the most impressive views of the site as the sprawling ruins of a once powerful civilization did battle with the vegitation that was reclaiming them.

After dispiriting examples of a country's effort to showcase its natural drawcards, Palenque was a site in which I sensed a respect for the area in the way the tourist infrastructure was developed and the place was groomed and maintained. It is encouraging to see that despite some unfortunate reported behaviour of visitors (building guards describing examples of tourists taking stones from structures as keepsakes and using inner chambers as toilets), the keepers of the site have had the capacity to act with a perspective of sustainability, taste and intelligence.

Palenque

8th July 2009

Mexican elections

2009-07-07T10:57:00.000-07:00

After an extensive, and no doubt expensive, campaign on television by the key political parties, the national ballots opened on the 5th July. Due to concern by the higher powers that the availability of alcohol would somehow inhibit the process of democracy, no booze was made available for 48 hours prior to The Big Day.

Perhaps due to their weekend festivities being spoiled or otherwise, the elections did not sit well with the population. In an overwhelming lack of involvement, 55% of the population (some 43 million voters) decided that it wasn't worth the effort, with another 5% choosing to openly reject the state of modern politics and vote null. Information regarding the election results is surprisingly thin on the ground, with this skewed article being the only item of significance after a bit of digging:

http://www.narconews.com/Issue58/article3665.html

A sad time indeed for Mexican national unity and the communication of the government with its people, especially in a country that has needed to draw together when under so much international pressure of late with the issues of drugs conflict and swine flu.

San Cristobal de Las Casas
7th July 2009

On The Ropes in San Cristobal

2009-07-06T10:21:00.001-07:00

Somewhat punch drunk from the end of the teaching semester, I arrived with my good friend Lou Whitaker into the familar clutches of San Cristobal de Las Casas. Utterly bereft of energy and enthusiasm for progress, the majority of the weekend was spent completely sedentary, occasionally breaking into a slow shuffle; respect due to Lou, who no doubt in a state of recent escape from the UK was keener for a somewhat more dynamic approach. Apart from a booze free weekend thanks to the proximity of the Mexican elections and partaking of food and coffee at various establishments, we paid a visit to one of my favoured spots in San Cris, the Kinoki Theatre. A small independent cinema combined with a tea house that makes for a very pleasant evening sitting in tiny screenings of up to about 15 people watching alternative films from the comfort of a sofa.

One such film that we partook in was a locally crafted piece of engaging propaganda about the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (or Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) and their ongoing struggle against the Mexican government since coming into the public eye in 1994 with their opposition to the then recently signed NAFTA free trade agreement with the USA. Whatever opinions might be held about the Zapatistas, it has certainly been a fantastic achievement for them to coordinate remote rural groups without the benefit of any modern methods of communication to provide opposition to the manuevers of the military during the most intenseperiods of stuggle. It is also refreshing to see an element of the population galvanised in reponse to political agenda in a time in Mexico that seems to be characteristic of political indifference, judging by the recent elections.

For better or worse, their local presence in recent history has been a valuable drawcard for the tourist industry, with Zapatista dolls available on every street corner and licence given any wannabe revolutionary to spout their idealogical leanings over their drinks in the numerous coffee houses and bars about town.

San Cristobal de Las Casas

6th July 2009

The End of The Beginning

2009-07-06T10:21:00.000-07:00

Suddenly, with the fanfare of the end of term exams and the obligatory sugar-fuelled party classes on the final Friday, I was no longer a teacher; my semester had reached its conclusion. Memories still bounce around inside my skull of the final day, recorded with forensic precision in my personal journal; my smallest and roundest student from my 4pm class, Nimsy, participating only partially in the "construct a mummy" race as he stood in his giant heeled wheely shoes gazing with affection at the miniature donut in his hand as a team mate knelt at his feet, industriously wrapping them in toilet paper; the unexpected and terrifying wall of early teenage female hormones that doused me in tearful goodbye hugs as my 5pm class said their farewells; the highly dubious homemade money for my 6pm class game of poker, ranging in value from $73 per note to an ambitious $100,000.

Goodbyes were said all round; students, teachers, mexican family and friends amassed over the last 6 months, and with little delay I very nearly ran to the colectivo stop on Saturday morning in my final bid to escape the heat, dogs, noise and watered down local celebrity status of white, foreign, confused teacher.

How does one summarise 6 months of being dug into a small town, and reflect with brevity on the experience? Maybe a better Blog Scribe than I could achieve it, but I struggle. The fundamental things that shuffle into focus are the times of incredible challenge and difficulty trying to build meaningful relationships and assert oneself in a town which had no scope for English communication, the kindness and curiosity of the population of Chiapa de Corzo, the blistering heat and propensity for incessent sweating, the rollercoaster of teaching children and teenagers, a blend of teeth grinding patience, magical humour and dark longings for the return of corporal punishment.

It has been a true test of my self assurance and personal security, being given license to interpret every situation in which I flounder without the benefit of understanding on a daily and frequent basis as a positive, strengthening learning experience; grasping constantly for some hook, some point of understanding as to how those around me are feeling and how it is reflected in their relating to me.

With this first step away from the securities and familiarities that sit thousands of miles away back on the shores of Jolly Old England, even in these early stages of change I can appreciate in retrospect that all the struggle and difficulty has been for the benefit of, paso a paso, becoming closer to where I am.

San Cristobal de Las Casas
6th July 2009

Technical Issues

2009-06-24T11:22:00.000-07:00

Due to the unfortunate loss/theft of my camera at Puerto Arista, all posts until further notice (i.e. at the discretion of my insurance provider) will now be accompanied by images appropriated from the internet. Hurrah for the information revolution and social media.

The Management
Chiapa de Corzo
24th June 2009

Bad News for Democracy

2009-06-22T11:04:00.000-07:00

I've just indulged in my first surfing excursion for two months, escaping in the twilight weeks of the teaching semester to the coastal town of Puerto Arista. Now, you would think that the experience of thrashing around in the turbulent, hurricane fueled waters of the pacific under steely grey skies would be a fine subject for discourse. One would assume that conveying the experience of swimming in warm ocean water whilst the seasonal rains pound the coastline and strong storm winds bend the palm trees would be a priority, and under any other circumstances I would happily oblige this focus, but for the unfortunate incidents of Saturday afternoon.

Having climbed out of the sea with a powerful hunger, I advanced with the two teachers with whom I was traveling, Willow and Lewis, to the nearest restaurant in sight. Within seconds of arriving we were purchased beers by a stringy grey haired chap in a standard issue Mexican vest sitting amongst a group of men. Despite the amiability of the gesture, alarm bells were ringing in Teacher Willow's head, warning of impending sleaze. This, unfortunately, turned out to be a perception of painful accuracy.

Swaggering over, our new (and fairly sozzled) acquaintance introduced himself as a figure of Great Importance in Local Government, sat down with us and proceeded to pester Willow with comments about how beautiful she looked, requests for her phone number and eventually (in sotto voce so neither Lewis nor I could hear on the other side of the table) complimenting her on the size of various parts of her anatomy. Willow, at this point shell shocked and disgusted, told The Towering Pillar of Sleaze with incredible restraint that his company was no longer required, sentiments that I echoed to him as soon as I realized that some fundamental boundaries had been crossed. The Excuse For a Human Being unapologetically apologized and wandered back to his group, leaving a trail of slime in his wake.

The whole incident passed time no greater than 5 minutes, but it cast an unpleasant air over the rest of the weekend trip. Up until that point all of us had been treated for the most part with respect by the people that we had encountered and such a disrespectful violation of said respect (by a figure of authority in government, no less) left us all raw and distrusting of how others might treat us for the remainder of our trip. It is unfortunate that the kindness which is received and trust which is bestowed following the actions of so many others can be shaken by the inconsiderate ramblings of a single pendejo drunk on alcohol and their own position of power.

In advance of the national elections on the 5th July, not a vote swinger for the resident political party methinks...

Puerto Arista
22nd Julio 2009

Come and See the Brown People

2009-06-14T11:12:00.000-07:00

Two weekends ago, I teamed up in San Cristobal with a couple of friends from Semana Santa with the intention of indulging in a spot of meandering about town and participating in some good tourist activities to try and curb the loathing that was developing inside me, fuelled by my Canyon Sumidero experiences.

One such jaunt that we signed up to following the recommendation of a very sweet and diminutive elderly lady was a horseback ride to a local indigenous village, San Juan Chamula, that was purported to have a good local market and an impressive church that was worth visiting. Nervously mounting our unashamedly flatulent horses, we swayed throught the outskirts of the town and proceeded for the most part along a winding concrete road, apparently recently installed and greatly diminishing the intended adventurous feel of the trip despite the guide's best efforts to diverge from the road at all available opportunities. Despite this setback, positive experience prevailed as the outfit was run by very sweet, well meaning Mexicans who made every effort to provide us with a good time.

The rub came when we dismounted our horses and wandered, stiff legged, down the hill to investigate San Juan Chamula. The concrete road wound its way down into a settlement of concrete block houses that didn't do much to differentiate the village from the suburbs of San Cristobal (those areas that were suitably distanced from the tourist quarter to incite any coherence to the finely crafted aesthetic evident in the town centre). The market, sitting raggedly in the midst of the town square, was a sad looking collection of stalls vending almost identical wares, a limited display of plastic goods, handicrafts and fruit and vegetables; this, in all fairness may have been due to us missing the morning action having failed categorically to rise early to head out on the earlier trip. The wonderful church of which I had heard so much sat looming on one side of the market square, which after purchasing a huge entrance ticket, we entered.

It's plain colonial exterior matched the architecture of the high, curved ceilings inside, but the difference lay in the huge amount of candles that lined tables fronting row upon row of glass cases butted up against the walls of the church that contained the effigies of white faced saints and martyrs. The multitude of opportunistic local children that had been pursuing us relentlessly for change began dispensing facts about the habits and rituals of the scattering of indigenous people that moved sedately about the interior, as our heads rotated every which way trying to take in the draped decorations, twinkling chandeliers that reflected the candle light, and the thousand dancing and flickering points of light that studded the church.

It was at some point that I learned that the the church, far from being an ancient building of worship, was actually a construction of recent times, and the realization of things began to swim into focus. These dignified, distanced and very, very closed people were being showcased. It seemed like some sort of degrading anthropological zoo; tourists were being shuttled to and from buildings financed and fabricated by supporting local authorities which provided a platform to allow easy viewing access to the religious practices, trading and living environments of the indigenous community. It was no wonder that any words I exchanged between the people there were either as the basis of an attempted transaction or the abrupt finalization of one. The people there no doubt were aware of their role, acting as unwilling portrait photograph models and required to represent an insight to authentic village life, and the weariness with which they conducted themselves served to illustrate it.

It is a sad thing indeed when the effects of tourism not only define an experience, but the livelihood and way of life of those that it seeks to provide experience of. I have begun to feel the same way about native communities tourism that I do when they bring animals into the ring at a circus. Livelihood for entertainments sake should surely be left in the domain of those who proactively choose it, and I am not sure the people of San Juan Chamula have had much choice in their fate.

Needless to say, my impression of tourism has not evolved favorably of late.

San Cristobal De Las Casas
14th Junio 2009

Professional Plummeters

2009-06-03T10:54:00.000-07:00

Last weekend the Great State of Chiapas put on a free high diving event in the mouth of the Canyon Sumidero. After following numerous directional red herrings, I found myself crouching in the bushes alongside my companions and a sizeable representation of the rest of the town opposite a giant orange structure that allowed an international selection of high divers to drop 25 metres into the water and be duly fished out by a selection of jet skis. After an extended wait in which we were peppered with propaganda about the Great State of Chiapas whilst the mosquitos had their fill or our exposed arms and legs, the competition commenced, an incredible display of skill, grace and balls-out stupidity.

Out of the field of international competitors, I'm delighted to say that the gloriously pasty Brit gave everyone else a jolly good kicking and walked away with first place. How did we ever get to be so good at throwing ourselves off high things?

Chiapa de Corzo

3rd Junio 2009

Por Fin, el Canyon Sumidero

2009-06-03T10:20:00.001-07:00

So, after some five months spent at the foot of the majestic Canyon Sumidero in my sweaty little pueblo, a visit from some of my aquaintances from Semana Santa finally prompted me to take an eco-tourist eco-boat ride down the eco-canyon.

Sumidero was an incredible spectacle, sheer rock faces rising up out of the muddy, sluggish river and bursting through the covering of trees that lined its edges. However, it wasn't long before I started to feel somewhat jaded by the process of experience, shoehorned onto a fibreglass motorboat with a selection of Mexican and foreign tourists, all armed with cameras and camera phones who took every opportunity to point and shoot whenever our tour guide, acting with the token weariness of a seasoned driver, would point out the "features of interest", which regrettably paled into insignificance in relation to the Canyon itself. We cheerfully drove up to members of the local crocodile population to sate the lust of the tourists for wildlife shots, bringing the boat within feet of them to prompt a grumpy shuffle back into the water or submergence out of sight to prove that they were more than inanimate models placed for the benefit of photo hungry tourists looking for a genuine experience (oh, the irony).

It got me thinking about the nature of tourism; why would I seek to experience things in such a manufactured and predestined way? What personal significance and sense of development does it instill in me? Aside from the memory of impressive vistas, the only tangible product that I take from the experience is photographs, and what is their purpose; to be shown to other people?

So with this in mind, I hope you enjoy the photos for this entry. They are probably much more impressive than wherever you are.

Chiapa de Corzo

3rd Junio 2009

A Rather Unpleasant Business

2009-06-02T11:04:00.000-07:00

Now, I'm generally thought of as a mild mannered sort of chap, but a blog article from the folks at Equal Exchange that popped up in my RSS inbox recently got me a bit cross.

It seems that the looming multinational banana corporate Dole Food Company has been caught in no uncertain terms funding right wing paramilitary groups in Colombia to, among other things, murder union leaders and organizers, use terror tactics to discourage workers from joining unions or negotiating collective bargaining agreements with Dole and driving small farmers from their land to allow Dole to plant bananas. All pretty shoddy stuff, and my fingers are crossed for positive progress with a lawsuit that has just been filed against Dole.

Some very strong reasons cited on Equal Exchange's "Small Farmers, Big Change" blog that have caused me to cite this recent legal development in an effort to increase awareness in what small way I can, are as follows:

1) An international human rights organization, the International Rights Advocates, is asking people to take action. Labor rights activists feel that pressure is needed to bring justice to the plaintiffs in this case.

2) These lawsuits are occurring at a time when President Obama is attempting to craft his direction on free trade agreements in Panama, Colombia and elsewhere. Although Obama was clear during the campaign that the existing free trade agreements, such as NAFTA and CAFTA, should be renegotiated, he has reportedly not maintained the same level of commitment since coming to office. Human rights abuses and labor union assassinations remain high in Colombia; and it is hard to imagine that a trade agreement which truly respected and protected the rights of small farmers, labor and the environment, could actually be negotiated and implemented in this kind of climate.

3) Transfair USA has just given Fair Trade certification to Dole bananas. Several years ago, Fair Trade activists were outraged when Transfair USA tried to bring Chiquita Brands into the system. Could small farmer bananas ever successfully gain market access and compete in a market with Fair Trade plantation bananas sourced from a multi-national company as large and sophisticated as Chiquita Brands? Did a company with the kind of history that Chiquita has had “belong” in an ethical Fair Trade system? Could Transfair have the capability to ensure that plantations were respecting worker rights and Fair Trade agreements such as the use of social premiums? Many labor organizations were in favor of giving Fair Trade certification to unionized plantations, as a way of further promoting workers rights and they were at odds with the Fair Trade activists. Chiquita itself appeared uncomfortable giving a stronger voice to labor unions and vetoed the idea of Fair Trade premiums being decided by union members. In the end, amidst much controversy (and some secrecy), the deal collapsed.

Now, without much fanfare, Dole Fruit Company bananas will soon “appear” in the Fair Trade system and on the shelves. Those working on the Dole lawsuit have made it known that if we think Chiquita was a dubious company and were concerned about its entrance into the Fair Trade system, we should be even more upset about the certification of Dole bananas. While Chiquita has allowed many of its plantations to be unionized, apparently Dole has a much less tolerant view of unions and worker rights issues.

Aside from reflecting about how terrible this all is, you can actually do something about this situation; using the link below, you can send a request to the US Justice Department to instigate an investigation into the business dealings of the Dole Food Company, which one can only hope would extend to wider investigations of the behaviour of other such multinationals overseas that have been conducting their affairs in a very unethical way.

http://smallfarmersbigchange.coop/2009/05/26/dole-food-company/

At a time when the winds of change are blowing for the USA, please take the opportunity to make a positive impact on the situation for the thousands of workers in Colombia.

Chiapa de Corzo

2nd Junio 2009

Welcome To June, We Hope You Enjoy Your Sunset

2009-06-02T10:58:00.001-07:00

Chiapa de Corzo

2nd Junio 2009

A Breath of Fresh Air, Musically Speaking

2009-05-24T14:41:00.000-07:00

I've just completed an extensive and thoroughly cathartic music intercambio (exchange) with fellow teacher Willow, deleted my entire old music library from the iPod and subsequently inheriting, amongst other things, the insane delights of Gogol Bordello. For those of you unfamiliar, this "Gypsy Punk" band from the lower east side of New York arrived in 2009, lead proudly by Eugene Hutz and have subsequently refused to leave. Quite a lot could possibly be explained by Hutz's origins, from the town of Boyarka, near Kiev and also the Chernoybl nuclear disaster. The manic ballard below is a tirade against American weddings, and how dull they are. Enjoy!

Chiapa de Corzo
24th Mayo 2009

...And Then The Rains Came

2009-05-15T10:04:00.000-07:00

Sitting in my cuarto in a grump following a frustrating lunchtime interaction with the language barrier and the two tweenage girls of the household, I suddenly hear the patter of raindrops against the window pane. Within a minute the patter has turned to an uproar, and the rainy season begins. I've heard this seasonal change mentioned by various people and decide in a flash that I'd sooner go outside and risk a soaking than be inside with myself for company.

Grabbing a waterproof and the camera, I duck out of the house and tiptoe my way around the block under the awnings of the houses as the rain lashes down, heading for the central plaza. The stories I've heard are fully substantiated; the cobbled streets have become rivers, torrents pouring through the town, paying attention only to the inexplicable variation of gradients. Eventually I stand at one of the block intersections, facing an ankle deep, fast flowing stream as cars thrash up and down the street and the detritus of the town drifts lazily by, heading for the river. Finally tired of waiting, I step into the tide and feel my shoes instantly saturate, slopping big, wet footsteps across the intersection as I am watched by the curious townspeople from the shelter of their windows. Once again, I misrepresent foreigners as a bunch of curious eccentrics that would sooner be soaking themselves in the filthy first rain of the season than sheltering in warm and dry interiors, waiting for the storm to pass.

And pass it does, the forking lightning and loud, violent rumbles of thunder diminishing to nothing along with the pounding of the rain. Sopping wet and dripping in the shelter of the vast town fountain in front of a curious crowd of Mexican tourists, I watch the skies clear. The rapid turn in events of the weather permits the rest of the teaching staff to forge their way to afternoon classes without having to wring their socks out and leave them to dry on the desk at the front of the class.

Chiapa de Corzo
15th Mayo 2009

Awfully Large Fruit

2009-05-14T08:59:00.000-07:00

It is Mango Season in Chiapa de Corzo right now, and the trees are dripping with big, plump, tasty fruit. For those lucky enough to have a tree on their property, it's a great opportunity to earn an extra couple of pesos selling them outside the fruit market, allowing us consumers to grab as much as we can. One obvious benefit (if you don't have a tree in your back yard; oh, I wish) is that the hoardes of old ladies sitting patiently behind their vast stacks of mango have paid absolutely nothing to be in a position of selling their wares, and thus pass this on to the fruit craving masses. I paid not a cent more than 10 pesos (about 50p) for a bulging carrier bag of top quality produce, fresh as a daisy. The only problem is that now I don't think I have the capacity to eat it all.

Chiapa de Corzo

15th Mayo 2009

Shameless Self Promotion

2009-05-13T09:25:00.000-07:00

After a great deal of cursing the general state of Spanish grammar, Acer laptops, the speed and availability of internet connections, Google Documents, Google Translator, Microsoft Word, Blogger and my own lack of patience, I have finally completed the opus that is my Curriculam Vitae, in English and Spanish.

You can now view the English or the Spanish versions hosted by my friends at Google Documents. In addition, I've posted a couple of links on the left hand side of the blog under "Odds and Ends" thus allowing easy access for the multitudes of Fairtrade companies who are aimlessly browsing random blogs looking for potential employees.

Gissa job.

Chiapa de Corzo

13th Mayo 2009

Mexican Sunday League

2009-05-10T09:17:00.000-07:00

Following an invitation by my Mexican friend Manuel and a couple of friendly 11-a-side games in the blistering afternoon heat at the Centro Deportivo on the outskirts of town, I was asked by Octavio, the team manager in his machine gun chatter if I would like to play in the local league. I graciously accepted the tenure of novelty international signing and began jumping through the flaming hoops of procuring tiny photographs for my league ID card and copies of all my particulars (in the eventuality than the authorities would conduct an on-pitch inspection, I suppose) and purchasing the "uniforme" of a green cotton t-shirt with a number on the back and a fetching pair of white short shorts and matching socks of the finest polyester. Unfortunately, despite my slavish attention to process I turned up for the first match on the Sunday for a 12pm kickoff, already sweating in the shade, without the necessary regulation moulded stud boots; essential for running on rock hard, dry earth.

Thus I found myself watching, and not participating in, the epic battle of my team against a considerably more professional looking and organised opposition (their replica shirts had sponsors and everything). Despite the fact that I was thousands of miles away from the green and very uneven pitches on the Bristol Downs, I was surprised at the similarities; both teams labored around the pitch, veering between periods of enthusiastic capability and utter ineptitude; a gaggle of devoted spectators, substitutes and "managers" screamed completely contrary advice from the touchline and sporadically lapsed into laughing and joking from bulging eyed abuse hurling and, synonymous with my Bristol days, I was none the wiser as to why some players were deemed to be having had a fantastic game and others worthy of a death sentence when for all intents and purposes everyone seemed to be doing as well as each other.

The only difference seemed to be in the diverse and frequent circumstance of injury that plagued the game; the included photo depicts one of countless additions to extra time that the players no doubt cursed as they waded through the heat of the day. I can only put this down to the fact that the players were tottering around on regulation studs on a surface akin to a basketball court, but with dust.

Sadly (no doubt due to my absence on the pitch), my team received a resounding 3-0 beating which led to the familiar British post-match rounds of backslapping and joking about how awfully we played/what a bunch of bastards the other lot were, punctuated by occasional involuntary silences and shaking of heads. If I can last 90 minutes without expiring in the heat, I think I'll have a great time with this for a couple of months.

Somewhere outside Chiapa De Corzo

10th Mayo 09

Friends, But Not Where You Expect Them

2009-05-05T15:39:00.000-07:00

It is a strange occurence indeed when, after tearing oneself from the homeland and travelling vast distances to the other side of the world, you bump into familiar faces. A couple of times. Within five minutes.

I was granted the gift of a seven day weekend by the recent inconvenient national (and, in all credit to the global media, international) panic of swine influenza. Rather than sit quarantined in my cuarto shaking with fear at the remote possibility of death, I decided along with my joyfully impulsive friend Willow that the best course of action was to travel on a multitude of chicken buses surrounded by potentially lethal locals towards the distant but beckoning location of Lago Atitlan, Guatemala.

As it turned out, the apocalypse predicted at every step of the journey was dissapointingly inevident. We reached and crossed the border without incident and the worst thing that happened to us was a diversion off the section of Pan American Highway currently under construction into the winding muddy single lane mountain switchback that was groaning under the capacity of two-directional traffic. After 2 hours of squeezing our bus past other grimly patient motorists in the gathering darkness and sporadic heavy rain of the wet season, we reached the grim town of Huehuetenango, designed specifically to be left as soon as possible.

Once clear of Huehue, we crawled overland to the pretty colonial (i.e. strangely simular to San Cristobal, near my hometown) town of Antigua and spent a very pleasent couple of days with a friend of Willow looking at picturesque ruins and vistas, drinking picturesque coffees and watching the hundreds of picturesque tourists and language students crawling all over the town hunting for picturesque experiences. If it wasn't for the bloody great volcanoes towering over the streets I'd think I was forty minutes down the road from CDC.

After this that I parted company and headed for Lago Atitlan with the intention of meeting ex-teacher Abi in a setting that she had told me in previous emails that I would be a fool to miss. True to her word, the lake was incredible; surrounded by the lush green slopes of volcanoes rising up through the early morning mist of the glassy lake and the jungle that enshrined the scattered communities clinging to the slopes. The afternoons yielded fierce downpours, forcing me to find shelter and enjoy a cup of something warm in a nice hippy run eco-restaurant and wait for one of the arching rainbows that curved over the landscape and plunging into the lake.

It was in this dreamlike setting that I met my ex-university housemate of two years, a Mr. Jon Buick, on a weekend break from furthering himself professionally in nearby Xela, and bumped into Abi some minutes later in the same spot. It really serves to illustrate that no matter how far we go, we're much closer together than we think. We do, after all, live on a sphere; sooner or later everything leads to everything (or everyone) else.

Lago Atitlan

3rd May 2009

Far From The Banda Crowd

2009-04-28T11:20:00.000-07:00

After trawling the strip at Playa Zicatela, the main beach, upon my arrival to Puerto Escondido in the painful aftermath of a new bout of food poisoning 24 hours before I procured a surfboard against my better financial judgment. After finding no spare rooms in the hostels and hearing advice about the availability of beds out of town further towards the distant rocky point at the other end of the bay, I merrily blundered out into the heat of the bay along a dirt track until I realised some ten minutes later that it was a far from opportune time to wander around with a board, my possessions and a notably absent plan.

It was at this point that I crossed paths with my place of refuge from the intensity of Puerto Escondido during the sinful distractions of Semana Santa; the Sexto Senso hostel, run by two wonderful ex-pat Italians, who wreaked havoc with the development of my accent with their version of the national language. The place was full to bursting, but after recognising the frendliness in the owners and the few people drifting around the place, I snapped up a hammock spot, hanging in an open air shaded spot on the first storey of the building that overlooked the ocean. I hung intermittently in that spot, lulled to sleep by the waves and woken by the sunrise for the next week.

The hostel was a fantastic spot, quietly located in the absolute middle of nowhere on the beach front; whitewashed meandering buildings bordered by palm trees, furiously tended grass and lopsided busts of naked women and cherubs dotted about the place.

Puerto Escondido
13th April 2009

Chicahua

2009-04-28T10:26:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting on my board, submerged up to my chest in water, forty feet or so beyond the end of the breakwater that extents out from the sun baked collection of wooden shacks that calls itself Chicahua, one of only two surfers in the calm, glassy, grey-blue water. As the first collection of smaller waves from the set begin to roll in I begin paddling for the horizon, only too aware from the previous beatings that I have taken in the same spot that the bigger, more powerful waves will be arriving shortly; terrifying, but predictably peeling uniformly and perfectly off the point in the light offshore winds.

A testimonial to my learning curve, a huge bulge of water suddenly rises out of nowhere as, beneath the surface a hundred feet away, the sea bottom suddenly rises up from the depths; the pulse of swell that has traveled for hundreds of miles trips over its own feet as, my mind completely numb, I paddle towards the shore, my back to the growing 10 foot face of water. A quick glance over my shoulder tells me that my guesswork has paid off and, this time, I'm in the right spot for a takeoff.

I can feel the force take the tail of my board and kick me forwards as, within a second, the surface of the water drops away, leaving me looking down a dizzying drop. The roar of water in my ears builds as I cease paddling for a second to feel that the wave has me and then, without thinking, plant my hands on the rail of my board, straighten my arms and hoist myself into a crouch, poised over the precipice. For a brief moment I teeter on the brink until suddenly, gravity takes over and with a quick glance in either direction I make the drop, screaming down the face of the wave faster than I've ever been and shift the weight to my back foot, digging my rail into the water and carving a hard turn up, up, up towards the lip of the wave that I can see beginning to curl in the corner of my eye. Twisting my shoulders, I drop my hand below me to brush the water and twist my body hard, feeling the board snap around underneath me as I carve back away from the top of the wave to look down into an even bigger, steeper drop than the first.

Suddenly, I'm four hundred metres from the takeoff, kicking out of the back of the dying wave as the section closes out, eight, maybe even nine turns carved into it behind me. Impulsively, I let out a huge shout at the wide, sweeping bay and the distant, hazy forest covered hills as the adrenaline and seratonin sweep through my body in a moment, leaving me with the long, long paddle back to the point.

Chicahua
Monday 13th April 2009

Taking Corporate Mascots to the Next Level

2009-04-19T10:01:00.000-07:00

Those of you aware of the loathsome cut price pharmacy chain Farmacias Similares will no doubt be aware of their cheerful quack mascot, Doctor Simi. In times ruled by the mobile phone camera and the tatty/glorious output of YouTube, the marketing geniuses of this company have decided to employ dispensing employees who have a natural affinity for dance and are willing to showcase their talents in the heat of the day inside a vast costume outside the numerous widespread stores that litter Mexico.

My first acquaintance with him was on the town square of Chiapa de Corzo to the sound of pounding techno music and I have long tried to capture the results on video, but a quick search of YouTube yields far more entertaining results, including the "anti-corporate" bunch of Mexican teenagers who have taken great delight in public mobbings of the cheerful (but now slightly wary) face of cheap dubious medical consultations.

Chiapa de Corzo
19th April 2009

Mescal, The Police and My Shoes

2009-04-18T17:38:00.000-07:00

Following an enthusiastic evening in the party charged Puerto Escondido during the national Semana Santa holiday, I found myself carving a decidedly wonky path through the sand of Playa Zicatela, the main beach. My point of departure was a beach bar constructed mostly from pieces of haphazardly connected driftwood, loud classic rock tracks and clientele enthusiasm where free Mescal was served with every beer purchased. For the uninitiated, Mescal is the physical representation of a bad idea, and goes a long way to explaining my inability to hold a steady tradjectory. My destination was my hostel, some ten minutes down the beach as the crow flies, an efficiency sadly lacking in my progress. Taking a break from walking with a fellow hostel companion who had also undertaken the transition, we gracelessly collapsed on the sand and began a long and rambling discourse about something of critical importance, which I obviously can't remember.

Our break was interrupted, unfortunately, by a local law enforcement officer. Appearing from nowhere (most probably from some distance within my direct field of vision) he cast a disparaging up and down me and my companion who, thankfully, was less influenced by Mescal than I, and with all the subtelty of a Broadway musical, requested money.

My cunning, drunken plan (after taking in the sight of his badge and gun with my bloodshot eyes) to plead utter ignorance to understanding his Spanish seemed to work; after a minute or two of persisting, he grew bored and frustrated, changing tack and shifted his demands to jewellery. When it became apparent that neither of us were adorned with any, he seemed to give up. Unfortunately as we rose to leave he noticed our sandals sitting on the sand, and with a calculated stare he descended on mine, sweeping them up with a triumphant shout "Estan nuevos!".

He was, sadly, correct; they were brand new. After a week of walking barefoot on red hot sand (my previous "handmade" footwear having expired a week before) I had decided to invest in a nice pair of flip flops, enticed, as always, by the expensive surf brands touted inside the beach front surf shops running up and down Zicatela. After parting with more money than advisable, I was able to showcase my new investment and give the soles of my feet a break. Until, that was, later that evening when this shoe savvy local law-scout saw opportunity knocking.

Before I knew it, he had disappeared into the night, forever, with my brand new flip flops in his grubby hands. I had just been shaken down...for a pair of shoes.

Puerto Escondido
18th April 2009

A Well Read Gentleman

2009-04-17T10:57:00.000-07:00

Hurrah! I've just finished my first book in Spanish! All ninety-something pages of "El Principito" (or "the Little Prince") are now conquered and I prepare to take on my next challenge, the abridged version of Alice in Wonderland; I can feel my reading age slowly increasing to the giddy heights of almost a six years old...

Chicahua
17th April 2009

The Confusing Business of Doing Good

2009-04-09T12:34:00.000-07:00

In the quest to make a professional name for myself out in these foreign climes under the umbrella of Fair Trade, I've had to come to terms with an unexpected barrier in the path of my progress; the variety of certifications available for consumer products (which consumers are, naturally, supposed to recognise and differentiate). A case in point are two recent heavyweight certification events; the crossing over of Cadbury to Fairtrade for it's Dairy Milk bar and the Mars Inc. commitment to The Rainforest Alliance for it's Galaxy chocolate bars.

So what are the difference between these two different organisations? Surely any commitment to certification standards by a mutli-national is good news? Well, fundamentally it depends on what you percieve as important in the inclusion of the standards that the Mars's and Caburys of this world are supposed to follow.

In a sentence (for those members of the social networking revolution with dwindling attention spans that can be measured only in nanoseconds) and in the case in point of Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance the following differences in focus of accreditation are;

Fairtrade addresses the trading system, ensuring that producers receive a minimum price for their coffee plus a premium for investment in community projects.

Rainforest Alliance aims to cover aspects of sustainable agriculture: environment, rights and welfare of workers and the interests of local communities.

Another important factor to consider the factor of consumer recognition and relationship with these various different badges that are stamped on products; certified coffee appears relatively expensive because of the use of conventional coffee in some countries as loss leaders with substantial discounts. This is a significant barrier to expansion of certified coffee. Where discounts are not used, it is very difficult in many cases for consumers to compare prices on a rational basis because so little information is given on the origins and quality of the mainstream coffee brands. There is so much variation in the price of coffee, depending on the brand and the outlet.

Despite setbacks, consumer awareness of certification seems to be high and growing, and can only get better with the big league commitments shown over the last couple of months. However, factors also have to be considered of the certification bodies to maintain standards under a rapidly expanding remit of certified producers and their ability to monitor and enforce required best practise; a tricky balancing act with resources stretched thin by the momentum of growth.

All in all, an exciting time for ethical international business, and an especially exciting time for chaps wishing to roll up their sleeves abroad and get jolly well stuck in.

Puerto Escondido
9th April 2009

My poor ears

2009-03-29T09:46:00.000-07:00

Life in Mexico is a noisy, relentless business. In my quaint little pueblo alone, the peace of the day can feasibly be interrupted by the exploding of fireworks to celebrate the movement of one of the innumerable saints from one house to another in the town, the howling sexual frustrations of the resident cats and dogs that prowl the streets, cries of salesmen proclaiming the existance of everything from cheese to knife sharpening services (the rear wheel of a bicycle turned upside down affixed to a rotary grinding stone; a fantastic contraption of Heath Robinson proportions) and the roving ice cream vendors, their mobile freezers supplimented with dynamo driven sound systems that play rag time piano classics at a variety of pitches depending on the gradient of the hill that they are trying to ascend, are but a few disturbances of the peace available.

In tribune to this rather wearying nuance of mexican life, I offer my top three least favourite noises since arrival, in no particular order:

1) The gas trucks

The lifeblood of CDC, gas is a commodity worth attaining a monopoly over. This mindset is executed with gusto by the numerous service providers about town. Competing for business, trucks bearing gas canisters roll through the streets and alert the townfolk to their presence by dragging a metal chain behind them, exacting the kind of effect expected by ice cream vans, only on a much more industrial level.

magic captured courtesy of Ann Hadley; thanks awfully old bean.

2) Dolly the Dog

Appearing cute and worthy of lavish affection, this dimiuative incarnation of the dark lord himself wakes me up at any given hour of the night with ear splitting and relentless barking. This trick is also repeated with avid devotion any time that anything (man, beast or inanimate object blown by the wind) passes within fifteen feet of the house. Unfortunate, therefore, that passing traffic is prolific. Other quirks of the behaviour of this entity of aural destruction include stealing the dirty socks from my laundry to line her bedding, chewing on the toes of my bare feet under the table during mealtimes and attempting to escape the house every time I try to leave through the wafer thin crack of the open door.

3) Those bloody rug salesmen

It would not be appropriate to discourse on the nature of Chiapan noise without a hearty mention of the Fiesta de Enero, after which all other noise seems akin to whispers. For a whole month, pillows were pressed to ears as the relentless racket of festivity continued morning, noon and night. At the very pinnacle of this heap of sound lie the rug salesmen, thankfully long gone from town who, at first, impressed us with their relentless amplified sales patter and then eventually cased us to wish for their rapid and painful demise. Established on vast booths containing mountains of rugs and carpets, teams of fast talking carnival folk would work around the clock with microphones strapped under their noses to allow their hands to remain free in order to point at rugs and demonstrate them (surely a rug foregoes the need for demonstration?). The placement of the mic removed all bass from the sound of their endless and apparently mindless rug-related nonsense and this, combined with the offensively loud volume perpetrated by unecessary amplification, created one of the most "character building" experiences of Fiesta de Enero.

Chiapa de Corzo
29th March 2009

The End of The Road, by Accident

2009-03-22T19:20:00.000-07:00

Last weekend saw an escape from the rigors of teaching and learning Spanish up into the hills, rattling in a colectivo in the advancing dusk to San Cristobal De Las Casas where the evening was spent in various bars, steeped in live music and a carefully and very effectively cultivated ambiance. I was delighted to find that my Spanish had advanced an inordinate amount since my last outing some weeks ago, and celebrated by gleefully berating anyone who was willing to engage in conversation with me. Waking up the next day with my first sore head in months, I formulated a complete absence of plan with fellow teacher Willow to head to nearby Comitan, following notable recommendations from almost everyone that i´d spoken to about it. Once again, we piled onto an enthusiastically driven colectivo and shot across the rugged landscape, characterized by dry pine forests that were ready to ignite at the strike of a match.

Cometan was a peaceful place, it's subtle demeanor occasionally interrupted by houses of violent colour, or one of the infrequent trees with deep purple blossom that seemed to punch out between the buildings, littering the roads with a carpet of petals. The local market was the expected cacophony of noise, smells and bizarre sights, but with the interesting difference that the people seemed to regard us with a benign interest instead of the pushy entrepreneurial optimism that seemed to be a characteristic of daily life in Chiapa de Corzo.

Recommended by a local Italian resteraunteur who was in posession of one of the most magnificent noses that I`ve ever seen to the nearby national park which contained numerous lakes, we made the decision to leave sleepy Comitan beind and head further away, towards the border of Guatemala. Valleys and hills gave way to sweeping agricultural plains and villages surrounded by corn fields swaying in the breeze as we sank slowly into the feeling of increasing distance and remoteness.

Reaching the park, we were dropped beside a deep green lake in the middle of a silent and dense alpine forest. After refusing offers of horseback and truck tours in favour of stretching our legs, we wandered along roads and tracks through the forest with no particlar plan, occasionally stumbling across lakes of a fantastic range of hues, pinned in by dense woodland. The rustle of the wind through the trees served to exaggerate the quietness that settled over the place, and it made me realise how noisy and relentless life in Chiapa de Corzo is.

After walking for a couple of hours, with tired grumpiness starting to set in, we wandered down a track that suddenly opened out into a lakeside fronted by a range of dusty, dilapidated huts that fortunately included a restaurant of sorts presided over by a woman with a warm smile and incredible food to match, cooked over a wood fire that brought back memories of camping trips and outdoor adventures. With full bellies and hot chocolate in hand we sat by the side of the lake and watched as the wind pushed cloud shadows over the lush shoreline on the distant banks and gusts sent patches of ripples racing across the face of the deep blue water.

Eventually, with growing curiosity we scurried around the edge of the lake investigating the strange and deserted collection of buildings. The desolate feeling of our surroundings and the eerieness of the abandoned buildings did eveything to suggest that, almost entirely by accident, we had somehow reached the end of the road. With a strange heaviness, we turned around and began the walk back up the track, leaving dusty footprints on the first part of the long path back towards Chiapa de Corzo.

Chiapa de Corzo
22nd March 2009

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world...

2009-03-13T12:46:00.001-07:00

I´ve been subscribing to all manner of blogs and websites over the last couple of months to see just what the most crazy types of this world up to at the moment. Two fine items crossed my inbox over the last week, demonstrating wonderful examples of what can happen if you are prepared to do things a bit differently.

The first was a great find from The Adventure Blog, one of my favourite daily digests. It´s a video of some crazy and very entertaining French chaps (are there any other type?) climbing a peak in far flung Pakistan. The film is about 20 minutes long but I´d recommend watching every second. I have no idea how you build up to having the skill and insanity to do this kind of thing, but I'd love to give it a bash some day...

Elsewhere, the Bristol based loonies known as the Adventurists have opened entries for their latest race, from Peru to Paraguay. In typical Adventurist style, racers are permitted only to carve their route in a motor taxi of the poorest quality. Well worth your attention if you are chewing your arm off with boredom at your desk and are looking to opportunities to get away...

Image courtesy of The League of Adventurists International Ltd.

Chiapa de Corzo
13th March 2009

Messin´about on the river

2009-03-11T11:22:00.000-07:00

This weekend, in the vague pursuit of physical activity and a taste of the outdoors (I´ve been cowering inside avoiding the heat of the day for weeks now), I decided to take up the offer of a friend/brother/cousin of my family (as far as I can tell everyone in this town has a connection of some kind with everyone else) to use his canoe to explore the wide river that flows past the southern edge of the town and into the Sumidero Canyon.

I managed to procure a kayak of a most modern design with relative ease, and within a short space of time hopped over the malodourous bank to the river and launched into the water. It was a great experience, paddling solo alongside the banks; as it was a Sunday, all the families and mobs of kids were out in force, splashing around and generally deriving a great deal of amusement from an inquisitive foreigner paddling past them. As I got futher down the river and the only signs of life were the occasional tourist motorboat hurtling past and causing near capsize inducing wake, I got one of my first feelings of proper solitude since I arrived; a welcome break from the relentless noise and attention that awaits me every day in town.

It transpired at roughly the furthest point from my intital location on the whole trip, that I was sharing the boat with a squad of very sociable ants. When these friendly beasts decided to put in a appearance, I can only imagine the sense of value for money that a boatload of passing tourists must have felt, watching me suddenly and inexplicably paddle furiously for the bank and leap from my craft, slapping myself repeatedly all over my body whilst hopping around frantically. The ants and I eventually reached a truce mostly instigated, I assume, by the act of ant genocide that I committed, dragging the boat out into the river and giving it a bloody thorough washing, inside and out.

Chiapa de Corzo

9th March 2009

Evil has a name, and that name is....Nimsy?

2009-03-07T17:56:00.000-08:00

With the successful completion of my first month of teaching combining unexpectedly with a clean sheet of mental and physical injury, I though it an opportune moment to share with you the rogues galleries that are my classes before the possibility of a Lord of the Flies-esque scenario rears its ugly head.

So, Introducing my 4pm class, from the left; Emannuel, Alexan, Paola, Nimsy and Romina (Maria Fernanda, Ana Jose and Vareli sadly absent). This photo somehow manages to perfectly encapsulate the personalities of all the students. Pay special attention to Nimsy; he´s going to be an evil genius or a Broadway musical star when he´s older. I haven´t yet ascertained which is most likely.

Next are my 5pm lot, sufficiently old enough to be more inhibited in a photography situation. From the left; Carlos, Fernando, Marcos, Sergio, Jose Manuel, Citlali, Rocio, Nohemi, Mara, Jessica and Eduardo (Manuel sadly absent). This lot veer between childish excitement at the prospect of playing pictionary and being too achingly cool to practise speaking exercises.

Sadly lacking in presence from my synopsis are my 6pm unit. Due to the behemoth task that is behaviour management with a bunch of hormonally confused teenagers, I spend my lessons either exerting my limited authority with an iron fist or ecstatically riding the brief wave of cooperation and good will. In either case capturing them on film during lesson times seems like as distant a possibility as apprehending Bigfoot and engaging in a tea party with it and the Loch Ness monster. I live in hope that one day I´ll be able to distract them with candy and Britney Spears songs long enough to bag a snap without them destroying the rest of the lesson.

Last, but not least is my Saturday Bunch. Unable to engage in weekday frivolities because of working commitments and/or abject fear of my other students, they foster a more mature approach to learning until, that is, I unleash Guess Who. From the left; Laura, Amada, Carolina, Jessica, Cristina, Xavier, Manuel and Alexander.

As an epilogue, an action shot of the Girls Team from lessons this morning; as you can probably tell, they crushed the Boys without mercy.

Chiapa de Corzo
7th March 2009

Challenge Clarke pt 2: Shoes of Doom

2009-02-28T16:11:00.000-08:00

Refreshing once again, if I may, the iron clad gauntlet laid down to me by my good friend back in the UK, Ms. Polly Williams;

1) Ride something not of the equine world (i.e. no horses allowed)
2) Find out about Mexicans before the Mexicans, as it were
3) Purchase, and enjoy parading in, some handmade footwear

One of these now lies defeated, as those who have seen my childlike screaming captured on video will no doubt testify. Owing to reasons of impending need to pertain more appropriate footwear or risk social exclusion and utter bone idleness to research the anthropoligical history of Mexico, I´ve prioritised the third part of the quest.

Owing to the helpful comments of fellow teacher Martin that, in cirumstances of purchase of any one of the multitude of beautiful pairs of leather sandals adorning the tourist shops around the central plaza, my shoes would, in a short space of time "Smell like ass", I decided to consider other options. My feet have always exhibited a propensity for excessive perspiration, and I needed a more rigourous solution.

Combing the back streets away from the tourist strip, I happened upon a hole in the wall enterprise, similar to the countless alternatives dotted around the town and propiented by two small boys. This one, however, contained a pair of sandals that I deemed fit for purpose and after a laborious and drawn out exchange with the two "assistants" I managed to walk away with my toes singing songs of freedom to the open air. All was well until I noticed that that one of the straps was torn almost to point of breaking; the two miniature entrepreneurs had just sold me a dud.

Flip flopping back to the same hole feeling somewhat aggreived, I confronted the salesmen with my sandals and asked in my abysmal spanish for a replacement pair. This request was gleefully denied and it was at this point that my language aptitude left me high and dry; I could request a replacement, but had no hope for understanding the reasons for a rebuttal. An old lady sauntered onto the scene as the intensity of the discourse between the boys and I increased, but unfortunately she proved to be no better at communicating a solution; my admission of lack of comprehension was only met with a different slice of rapid fire language, and with the cackling and shouting at me by the pint sized fiends I had the feeling that my incomprehension was greatly at my expense. Despite trying everything from trying different routes of explanation to issuing threats to rubbish their reputation about town, the best that I could do was explain that I would return with a translator within 5 minutes to develop a more productive discourse. Returning shortly afterwards with Padre Javier I was almost unsurprised to find the shutter pulled down over the lot and not a sign of life to be found.

Anecdotes about fighting children for shoes aside, this serves to illustrate one of the greatest challenges that I struggle with every day, that I never comprehended before I arrived and still struggle to articulate now. I´m surrounded by people and circumstances that operate on a completely different language and this, to a huge extent, strips me of the familiarities, securities and comfort that I took for granted in a place where I was in command of communication, and able to articule and play with the spoken medium. For the first time abroad, Im not cocooned with the comfort of an english speaking populus in tourist routes and locations, or the knowledge that I´ll be moving on from somewhere within days as part of a trip. I´m here to learn the language, so I have to force myself to confront my inability to communicate every day, and at a teeth grindingly slow pace start, little by little, to circumnavigate those barriers.

Not understanding a language that I live amongst is, without doubt, one of the hardest things I have experienced. Some days, every laugh or joke seems to be at my expense, every comment made seems impatient or condescending. On those days my Spanish lessons seem to achieve nothing when I try and instigate a simple conversation with anyone, or understand a kindly comment put my way. Other days, I can feel the fragments of understand align for just long enough to give me a glimmer of hope that somehow, in the coming months, all this chaos and incomprehension will being to make sense to me. There have been times where I´ve managed to raise a smile or a laugh from somebody with a joke that I´ve tried to make; the connection between us, however brief, forges a link that buries itself deep into my conciousness. For that moment, I can understand that despite all the stuggle, confusion, embarrassment and frustration, it´s going to be worth it.

For the benefit of Ms. Williams, I can confirm that I did manage to claw back a replacement from that shop, but even with Javier´s explanation I was still no clearer as to any justification beyond bloody minded stubborness as to the original refusal. For the benefit of all those due to meet up with me at some point during the future tenure of my sandals, I can also comfirm that they do not (as of yet) smell like ass.

Chiapa de Corzo
28th February 2009

Another Top Notch Weekend

2009-02-21T18:48:00.000-08:00

Just outside town, Im fortuate enough to have a very nice selection of waterfalls and natural climbing walls. These have provided me with an excellent couple of weekends, and adequate training for my adventure based future existence post teaching, no doubt hacking through jungle, scaling mountains, looting ancient temples etc.

Somewhere outside Chiapa de Corzo
21st February 2009

Teacher Jon, Figure of Authority Amongst Seven Year Olds

2009-02-21T13:44:00.000-08:00

Many thanks for your patience, chaps. I seem to have broken the back (at least for the moment) of my new workload. I am now at liberty to discourse, once again.

Contrary to what many of my imaginary loyal subscribers may believe, I have not spent the vast proportion of my time thus far in Mexico sodden by booze and languishing in the depths of an eternal party; I´ve actually been training to teach English as a Foreign Language. For those of you who do not know what this entails (I certainly didn´t when I reluctantly parted with the cash for the course), the purpose of the training is to allow a qualified individual to impart aptitude in spoken English onto a local population that doesn´t understand a word of the language. It´s all a bit colonial, like back in the ruddy good old days when we refused to acknowledge that the natives were probably an awful lot smarter than us, and things could be done much better if we paid some attention to the way that they lived in their natural surroundings. Nevertheless my experiences have been well worth the investment, and I´ve been instilled with a great deal of respect for the teaching method.

Trawling back through my journal reveals an interesting progression over the course of the month´s training. It´s probably worth noting that the school at which I trained (The Dunham Institute; a wonderful and highly commendable enterprise) has a specific way of doing things, both in the execution of their teaching and their TEFL staff training, and my experiences were most likely somewhat different to other ways and means of obtaining qualifications. The essence of the course, from the outline in the front page of our nice blue folders, was to put trainees through as much classroom contact time as possible, with a wide a variety of teachers and their students as was feasible, maximising practise, observation and teaching contact time. This was, naturally, a methodology that we all heartily agreed with.

Starting out fresh faced at the beginning of January, my course mates and I were cheerfully informed that we would be teaching an hour long class within 3 days, and leading classroom exercises by the following day. This naturally caused some minor concerns within the trainee encampment, and unfortunately for us this proved to be agenda by which the graduates of the Dunham Institute were persecuted with, generation after generation; either get thrown into circumstances over one´s head and survive or, alternatively, leave. The comparative quantity of teaching time in my current undertakings put my early shaky steps into rather stark perspective, but initially, leading an 15 minute exercise with ten little confused faces staring up at me as I tried to convince them to sort paper slips of nouns into two highly obvious columns on the floor was a teeth-grindingly hard challenge that I hadn´t faced before.

The key thing in the classroom that became apparent very quickly was the lack of comprehension of the things in language that we take for granted as native speakers that are simply not present in a learner. The language and mannerisms of the teachers I observed and eventually took over from were conducive to simplicity, and represented everything absent in the trainees; clear logical progression and linking between ideas, rigorously re enforced learning motifs, processes and patterns (repetition was a huge part of dealing with the earliest beginners) and slow, steady speech complimented by just about every medium of communication available to a human being; mime, dance, sounds, pictures, movement, body language and countless other routes by which the students could be brainwashed into understanding the significance of English vocabulary and grammar without the benefit of their mother tongue. It was these things that we all, without exception, managed to get thoroughly knotted in the early days, leaving the poor students with furrowed brows and slack jaws.

I became aware over the course of my training of the pains of lesson planning. As an exercise, planning a lesson is much like anything else; define your objectives and specific goals, and then break down preparation, actions and review process with these in mind. What caused the first few lesson plans, artfully conceived over long stressful hours to levels of intricacy equalled only by the choreography of a West End musical, was the black cloud of panic that descended upon us as we attempted to predict how a room of children, accursed agents of chaos, would react to our schemes. It was this, regrettably, that also caused our beautifully constructed 50 minute opuses to fall, for the most part, to dust. In trying to sculpt every aspect of the lesson, we became restricted by our rigidity.

Aah, English grammar. I was all too aware of my ignorance before I started the course, and I´m not in the least bit ashamed to say that my awareness was set on foundations of granite. Learning alongside trainees who had studied language in college, I found myself screaming up a near vertical learning curve, wrapping the loose strings of my brain around infinitives, tenses, prepositions, conjugations, participial adjectives, reported speech and all the other wonderfully cryptic terms used by linguists that I still, on most occasions, am completely confounded by. The scope of my grammar orientation was prescribed to the nature and progression of the TEFL process and I was led through the concepts as they would be introduced to students from a state of complete beginner to advanced. It was, by and large, incredibly interesting to see how my native language was constructed, and certainly a great help in catalysing my appreciation of Spanish language construction for the lessons that were due to start on completion of the course.

A couple of the more interesting things to crop up in my befuddled circumnavigation of English were;

1) Nouns (object words) are countable and uncountable i.e. they can or cannot be assigned a numeric quantity. For example, you cannot specify a quantity for the following; milk, traffic, sunshine, honey or chocolate. You can, however, assign quantity to loosely affiliated objects or measurements for these items; 2 bottles (of milk), 5 miles (of traffic), 3000 Joules per kg/greys (of sunlight) and so on, thus creating a world of confusion.

2) Statements can be classified as "passive" or "active" depending on the orientation of the "subject" and "object" of the statement. For example, "Steven (subject) read the book (object) to the class" is an active sentence, where the focus is on the subject. In the passive sentence, "The book was read to the class by Steven", the focus is the book, and not the reader. It´s mildly amusing to note that a particular use for passive constructions is in the formulation of excuses, when someone wishes to distance themselves from an event e.g. "The vase broke when I was in the room". It makes one wonder what other tendencies for language construction are wired into our skulls, ready for the knowledgeable amongst us to interpret...

1) There are 3 different types of conditional statement ("If..."), ranging in application from universal statements of certainty e.g. "If you heat water to 100 degrees centigrade, it boils", to those that wistfully proffer desired alternatives to events that have already happened e.g. "If you had done your job properly, we wouldn´t be in this mess right now".

As the course progressed and the colourful cross section of grave errors unfolded in my teaching practice, I stoically towed the line that anything that happened, however awful, during the classes would serve as a stronger learning experience, not repeated once my head was tucked inside the foxhole of eduction, my teaching campaign having actually begun. It was, for the most part, this simple maxim that dragged me through the training process and the seemingly impossible increasing intensity of the course requirements until, suddenly I found myself two days from the end of the course with all my task boxes ticked and my feedback sessions returning pleasingly positive responses. The heartless and despotic doctrine of the Institute had given me as much time as humanly possible practising the job that I would be doing, and poked and prodded me forceably in the right direction with rigourous peer and qualified teacher feedback for all my student contact time.

I would continue to make untold errors over the coming weeks with my class of completely fresh faced beginners, but my confidence and aptitude leading classes was a world apart from the first shoddy student activity that I´d fumbled through. Incredibly, I´d passed the course with distinction and was the unashamedly proud owner of a shiny TEFL certificate. My sense of pride was only overshadowed by the subconsicous terror of managing a workload four times of that experienced during the training within a few days of graduation, but I managed to hold this off with magnificent execution of flat denial, escaping to the seaside.

It´s been a highly liberating experience to cast myself into a completely new vocation and accepting the humility that comes with being a beginner, enjoying the white knuckle ride of a fast learning curve and appreciating the personal development that happens in such a short space of time. However, I´m glad it´s February; I´m bloody knackered.

Chiapa de Corzo
21st February 2009

A Brief Note of Apology

2009-02-15T16:43:00.000-08:00

Jon wishes to express his regrets for his recent lack of additions to his blog. This is not due to a distinct lack of subject matter on which to communicate, but rather a surplus. This state of affairs may, regrettably, continue for a short while while he grapples with his new and highly intensive teaching and spanish lesson schedules.

Jon wishes to thank you for your patience.

The Management
Chiapa De Corzo
15th February 2009

Snow, you say?

2009-02-03T13:06:00.000-08:00

Noting with surprise the pictures on the BBC website today, I thought it would appropriate to share the details of my first "Mexican holiday" in the depths of Chiapan winter that filled the gap between the end of my TEFL training and the start of the teaching semester.

All three of the freshly qualified teachers, myself, Martin and Laura, took a trip to Boca De Cielo, the closest peice of coastline to Chiapa de Corzo, roughly four hours away. The main beach of said town forms one of the extremities of a 40km long, narrow island that lies a few hundred metres off the mainland. The rest of the island is covered with coconut trees and palm leaf roofed cabanas, a tranqial getaway that was apparently enjoyed in a low season lull; in Semana Santa in April, the place is mobbed by Mexican tourists. On the mainland that we arrived from by way of a short boatride, the land rises up into a mountain range that sits hazy in the distance, seemingly a world away.

Winding our way down through the mountains from Chiapa de Corzo, I saw the same range for the first time through the window of the collectivo crested by a sheet of cloud that sat like a blanket, stretching for miles along its length. A short walk along the beach yielded a wonderful range of houses and camping plots perched on the edge of the other side of the spit, steadily being advanced upon by the eroding tidal current, a product of the unfortunately short sighted act by locals of destroying the mangroves to improve access and generate more beach front. In the mornings and evenings between games of beach football with local children and body surfing the waves, we gorged ourselves on fresh seafood, and afterwards lay under the stars in the warm night breezes.

The trip for this long weekend marks my first excursion from CDC since I arrived; it´s been 4 weeks of incredible pace, change and excitement since I walked out of that UK departure gate. Sitting on the buses as I moved progressively closer to the coast brought back nostalgic pangs of exotic trips gone by and I felt a strong desire to keep moving, further South and deeper into Latin America; I´ve been walking the same few blocks for the last months, wrapped up in the rigours of teacher training and the incessent festivities of January and it´s not been until this point, where my horizons have broadened and allowed me the opportunity to reflect, that I´ve realised how insular and focussed the last month has been. It´s going to be a great catalyst for my desire to use my spare time to travel, and keep opening doors to new adventures.

Boca de Cielo

3rd February 2009

When language goes wrong

2009-01-29T18:51:00.000-08:00

This particular gem, recently discovered on a review of the various different photo albums, was snapped by Laura during the day of the Parachicos. It's probably worth mentioning that the license plate belongs to a bus owned by the church.

Chiapa de Corzo
29th January 2009

Ordered Chaos; A Mexican Carnival

2009-01-26T11:05:00.000-08:00

Last week saw the festival signed off with a grand carnival, bringing together all the elements of the chaos and debauchary over the last month. The teaching staff and vaious different families with which we were affiliated took up station on the second storey of my familys´ shop, cameras poised to snap anything that moved. The procession was led by the "Annuncio" crowd, an exciteable gaggle of children dressed as ranch hands mercilessly harassing a man with the effurgy of a bull on his back, who took great delight is stampeding said children into the front rows of spectators to roars of approval from the crowd. For those who are unsure, an Annuncio is an event designed by some of the greatest minds in known event management history; a party whose entire existence serves to bring attention to an upcoming larger party. I am not entirely sure if this concept has been further extended to encompass Annuncios for Annuncios (infinite regression is entirely possible here), but judging by the attitude of the townsfolk this month, it is entirely possible.

Next came the Chuntas, led by the same racially questionable gentleman present at my night of cross dressing. The Chuntas were a force to be reckoned with, spraying the surrounding crowd with confetti and, bizzarely, root vegetables.

A series of carnival floats followed, each intricate in its own design and showcasing a range of "carnival queens", who waved regally to the crowds (an adorable sight in the case of the chubby 7 year old versions) and dispensed a range of candies, money and corporate merchandise. Every community group seemed to have their own float, from the cheeky "forest pixie" primary school childrens float to the beautifully presented and noticably aloof chinese society.

The Chinese Societies` float was supplimented with a Chinese dragon procession and entusiastic percussion, which came to blows somewhat with the following masses of Parachicos, eager to blow off steam before their dormancy for the rest of the year. Squabbles and bickering spread among the two different factions due to the commonly held perception that the Chinese lot were moving too slowly, and finally with a display of restrained democracy the dragon moved to one side as the Parachicos thundered past them, spreading everyone thin in their overcooked desire for progress and concluding with a rather sweet and confused regrouping a short distance down the street. Meanwhile the the dragon and the rest of the Chinese Wannabe Mexicans re-established their cohort with a lot of unecessary reversing of vehicles, shouting and pointing and, to the cheers of the crowd, proceeded to enthusiastically charge up and down the street once more, scattering pedestrians and spectators in all directions.

The carnival queen followed this debacle, smiling and waving to the onlookers laden with chocolate, money and vegetables and, finally, it was over. In retrospect, I wonder what I would have made of the bizzare cow baiting, cross dressing and masked antics if I did not have the benefit of a couple of weeks orientation with the various different components of the wonderful events of the last month. I can only think that, as opposed to being consumed by the randomness of it all, I was able to appreciate the synergy of the various different elements of the traditions and truly appreciate the pride and passion of the participants, as well as the perceptable sorrow that they would, for the next 11 months, sink into a state of expectant longing for next January.

Chiapa de Corzo

26th January 2009January 2009

Jon Clarke, National Mexican TV Star Transvestite

2009-01-24T16:29:00.000-08:00

As you may have gathered from one of my previous posts, I was (mis)fortunate enough to be featured on Mexican national television in my first week dressed as a lady. Well, thanks to the wonders of modern technology and the openness of the TV networks here, you can now view my TV appearance.

I´m so embarrassed. Many thanks to Padre Javier, who took great delight in being present for my first viewing of the footage.

Chiapa de Corzo
24th January 2009

Latin American Brands I Love: Sol

2009-01-20T16:55:00.000-08:00

The staple diet for Fiesta de Enero (aside from tacos and churros) is the mighty Michelada. The principal purveyor of these skull splitting Mexican versions of the bloody mary is Sol; I knew about Sol before I departed the UK, but it is here in their native setting that the company truly comes into their own.

Unconstrained by the scruples of the diverse range of regulatory bodies in England, Sol gleefully uses the simple but incredibly effective method of association with scantily clad women with large breasts to flog its wares. Another of their specialities is paying lip service to drinking responsibility with superb irony. A couple of nights ago I noticed the warning message below; for reference I´ve also included a picture of one of these mighty cups in use. For the uninitiated, "Evita El Exceso" translates to "Avoid Excess".

Chiapas De Corzo
20th January 2009