Bad Lands

I've just finished reading a book called Bad Lands: A Tourist on the Axis of Evil, written by Tony Wheeler, one of the founding writers of Lonely Planet. Compiled in 2006 and originally intended as a journal of visits to the three Axis of Evil countries, Tony has chosen to go and visit the most dangerous and repressive regimes on earth. He describes his travels through Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Saudi Arabia amongst others.

Tony undertakes a tour of each of these countries, some of which have never been documented by Lonely Planet and others (eg Iran), which have not had a tourist guide produced for more than 30 years because of the political climate and lack of tourist visas. For Iraq and Afghanistan, he visited some of the [relatively] safer parts of these countries, while for North Korea, the only way to get in is to join a government-sponsored tour group led by a government-provided guide and government-provided secret policeman which only visits government-sanctioned locations.

He then provides a "Evil Meter" index to quantify their relative degree of "bad" based on the way these nations treat their own citizens, their level of involvement in terrorism, and whether they are a threat to other nations (each country is rated out of three on each category). There is also a bonus point available for despots who have attempted to create a cult of personality around their leader, to give a round score out of 10 for each Bad Land.

What is the relevance of this book to my travels? As I work my way south through Latin America, I get closer and closer to South America's own Bad Land: Colombia. I'm in Costa Rica until 7 January and plan on getting a bus down to Panama after that. Then it is crunch time to decide whether to fly over Colombia or continue on the buses. Watch this space...



The following photos were taken in the Cloud Forest in the Monteverde National Park.





I'm at a funky little beach town called Montezuma on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica for the next couple of days until New Year. Wishing a safe and happy New Year to everyone!

Tikal and Flores

Not many words today, just a few pictures. Unlike Chichen Itza, I got to spend a whole day (Chrtistmas Eve) in Tikal, Guatemala. Below are a few of them. It was fantastic as the temples have been excavated but the rest of the enormous site is still thick rainforest.

The Central Americans celebrate Feliz Navidad on Christmas Eve, and Flores was a beautiful place to spend it. Flores itself is an island connected by a pont to the mainland town Santa Elena.

I flew from Flores to Guatemala City on Christmas Day, and then onto San Jose in Costa Rica where I've met up with Siobhan from New York. Siobhan is down for ten days or so, and we'll be in Costa Rica the whole time. We're currently at the Montaña de Fuega (Mountain of Fire) Hotel, underneath the Arenal Volcano. Breakfast in their dining room must be what Pompeii felt like circa AD60: listening to piped music and eating toast while a volcano bubbles away in the foreground.

A Day in Belize

I knew today was going to be interesting when about half an hour from Belize City, we passed a sign saying: Welcome to Ladyville, Population 3842. Sadly my dutch travelling buddy Jann and I didn't see any eligible ladies or even any town that would support almost four thousand residents, but it was a potent of what Belize had to offer.

However, back to the begining. This unusual day started at 7am in Tulum where I discovered over pancakes that one of the other hostel residents (and member of the gang involved in the rum and beer filled Carnival evening two nights before), Jann was planning on taking the same 8:30 bus as I was.Jann was content to go Belize City for a couple of days en route to Caye Caulker (a backpacker hang out about 10km off the Belize coast) where he plans to spend New Year.

My plan was a little more ambitious as I wanted to get from Tulum to Chetumal and change buses to see if I could find one that would take me all the way to Flores, or otherwise travel to Belize City and then to the Guatemala border and catch another local bus to Flores.

I had booked a first class ticket to the Belize border the previous day however Jann hadn't and discovered the first class had booked out and he was travelling second class. This was actually a separate all stops coach, so we shook hands and parted company.The trip to Chetumal was incident free, but took about three and a half hours, so it was almost midday before the bus arrived. I was informed that the bus campany did not run direct services to Flores on Sunday (or any other day) and I would need to buy a ticket to Belize City and take a further bus from there. So I did.

The bus turned up on schedule ... and sitting behind the bus driver was Jann! The second class bus had taken him to a different terminal where he was shuttled to a third location to get on the bus before it reached the main terminal.So we were on our way to Belize City.

The border crossing was interesting as it featured two (apparently competing) Casinos and a hotel in between the checkpoints as well as the usual collection of armed soldiers and customs officers on either side.

The bus ride provided a clear indication of just how tiny a country Belize was, in both geographical and population terms. Where the crush of people in Mexico seemed to leave all populated area dry and dusty, Belize was instantly green and wet. We stopped briefly in Orange Walk, one of the larger centres in Belize's north, and were both struck by how small it was.

The highway itself is paved but has no centre lines or reflective "cat's eye" markers either. Hardly National Highway 1.

This ride took about three and a half hours, and it was around 5:15 and starting to get dark by the time we got into the bus terminal, a region the guide book warns tourists about (especially after dark), and it certainly looked suitably uninviting. Getting off the bus, there was no information desk, no ticket office and no direction signs. Someone helpfully pointed me at couple of photocopied pages taped to the wall which had schedules for North, South, and West routes. According to the page there was a 5:30 Express to the Guatemalan border.

I asked someone directing people onto a bus and he said that there were no Express buses on Sundays but this would take me to the border for US$4. So I shook hands with Jann (again), we wished each other good luck (again) and I went around and put my bag in the back.

The bus itself was a very old American Blue Bird bus (Blue Bird was the name of the company that fabricated them) that feature in American television shows and movies, still. This one was painted Green and filled to the brim with locals. I did wonder what they thought of the pale skinned tourist in an Australian cricket shirt as I seemed to be the only non local on the bus.

The luggage space at the back had equal proportions bikes, vegetable produce and bags. Plus a few people, so I crossed my fingers that their fingers would stay out of my bag.I started off standing but eventually as passenger numbers thinned out, eventually got a seat.

Whereupon the bus started to make strange noises and eventually ground to a halt. The driver and conductor set to work with spanners and made a few unsuccessful attempts at restarting the engine. Belize used to be an English colony, so I could understand most of the suggestions yelled by passengers. Let's just say they weren't very constructive.

Eventually another Blue Bird American school bus came along and about half the passengers got off and got on the new bus. I was a little uncertain what to do, but as the conductor and driver were both lying under the bus and yelling, I wasn't filled with hope or the desire to interrupt them. So I grabbed my bag and climbed onto bus number two.

Well, I thought the first bus was full, but you can apparently fit about 50% more people than that when you need to and still find space for the conductor to squeeze up and down the bus collecting a new fare from those of us who had abandoned the first bus.After about half an hour I got a front seat which I shared with two small chidren and one large bucket. About half an hour later the original bus caught up to us and went passed at some speed. The conductor from the old bus grinned and waved which caused our conductor to casually suggest to the driver that he had better beat the other bus.

I can't really say if both drivers saw it as a race as our bus driver would rocket past on the wrong side of the road and then stop to collect passengers and broken bus would then swing past. However, our driver had clearly just been waiting for the chance to show it should have been him winning seven Formula One world championships rather than Michael Schumaker, and hurled the bus along ever steeper and windier roads towards San Ignacio and the Guatemala border. At the final stop a car drove myself and the other three late travellers up the last kilometre or so to the checkpoint for US$1 each.

Crossing was fairly straightforward except I used up the last of my limited currency at the checkpoint (and in fact I got a US$2.50 discount because the immigration official didn't want to deal with changing US currency).

At this point it is worth sharing what The Lonely Planet says about travelling in Guatemala:

Drunk, alone, lost, late at night and loaded with cash is the stupidest way to walk around Guatemala. And pretty well most combinations of the above are kind of stupid.

Well I hadn't been drinking, and having only emergency US dollars buried in my backpack couldn't really claim credit for cash management but otherwise "All of the above" pretty well sums up my situation.

While there were towns, service stations and people all the way up to the Belize border, on this side there were just two men holding wads of Guatemalan quetzales asking me in Spanish if I wanted to change currency and one other guy who had been pestering me right across the border zone saying "there are no buses, taxis only." And he had a point. There was nothing but an unpaved, unlit, oil covered road disappearing off into the darkness.

My Spanish/English dictionary has some interesting phrases at the back. Negotiating with a private taxi operator in these circumstances led one I never thought I'd need to use to sprung immediately to mind: ¡Me han violado! [I've been raped!]. The price was 400 quetzales which (having only a rough idea of about 10:1 exchange rate*) actually didn't seem so bad. The shuttle which stopped running at 6pm charges US$25 so this seemed rather reasonable for someone who had me over a barrel. We agreed that we would try to find an ATM in Flores but I would otherwise pay in US dollars. Of course I didn't exactly know how many dollars I needed, but hoped it wouldn't come to scratching through my bag to find out whether I had enough.

I was then directed to a very old American car which I didn't recognise but would estimate dates from the mid 70s. It was small and boxy. My driver was a small Guatemalan man called Sur who seemingly had even less English than I had Spanish. Once we established we couldn't communicate his only comment was "Muchos oil" as the car slid back and forward across the unpaved road.

Flores is about 100km from the border and fortunately there were no further incidents. Eventually we managed a little conversation in Spanish. I told him I was from Australia and worked in a bank. He told me he was married and had dos ninos (two little girls from the photo on his phone). I managed to learn a few new words, and to spread some more Australian goodwill around the world, I gave him a pair of little toy koalas for his ninos for Christmas.

Now, I'm off to find tacos and beer to celebrate surviving the day!

By the time I post this it will be Christmas Day (at least in Australia and the UK) so Merry Christmas to everyone!

*Actually it is more like 8 quetzales to the US dollar so the price was closer to US$50.

Mérida and Tulum

After my short visit to Chichen Itza I had a day to spend in Merida so sent out last weeks blast email in the morning and then went for a wander around the city. It is relatively large, with around 800,000 residents, and is quite Spanish, at least according to The Lonely Planet.

Merida exemplified an interesting example of how Mexican history is recognised. They celebrate the Spanish conquerors of each region, (who mostly slaughtered and enslaved the indigenous Maya) in this case Francisco de Montejo, but also celebrate the leaders of the various Mayan uprisings (who were typically brutally and publicly executed when the superior Spanish military might subdued the unrest) as well as the humanitarian politicians who eventually granted the Maya slaves emancipation. All three are featured in a series of works hung in the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Areno de Yucatan.

Francisco de Montejo's house (and most of the other historic buildings including Central Americas oldest cathedral) all date from the mid to late 1500s and were constructed out of materials recycled from older Mayan temples and other city structures.

After arriving at a hostel from inland Merida to beachside Tulum, I was immediately welcomed into a group consisting of two American couples: Dea and Trevor from Washington State and Leslie and Steve from Colorado, plus a very funny Dutchman from Amsterdam called Jann. Oh, and the hostel's resident dog called Peso. I was then offered "a rum and coke ... but we're out of coke" which was the start of a very funny evening of tacos, beer and (lots) more rum that ended at about 3:30 in the morning at the local carnival (which was still rocking when we left).

Today was spent at the beach which is also the location of the Tulum ruins, so I'll add a few photos from both when I upload.

Later: For anyone in London or New York at present, yes the beach is as good as it looks.

My first full day of travel and second post I decided to bus to Chichen Itza, a ruined Mayan city about half way between Cancun and Merida. Once again my translation skills let me down, although it wasn't so much my Spanish as a true grasp of the implications of "second class" travel. Departing Cancun half an hour after the morning express bus, the "las doce" (or 12 o'clock) bus was due into Chichen Itza at las quince y diez (or 3:10pm), and arrived at 4:22pm sharp.
Of course my guidebook said the park was open until "5 or 6pm in winter" ... and it closed at 4:30. So I had about 10 minutes to do a lap, still shouldering backpack, and snap a few pictures. Fortunately there was also a night show so I stuck around for that and got a couple more. The bus to Merida was running half an hour late too so it was a pretty long day.

The major pyramid is known as The Castle or The Kulukun Pyramid and has snakes built down its sides with open mouths at the bottom. It was designed and oriented such that at about 3pm on the equinox in March and September snake shadows appear to slither up and down its western side.

A little bit of Mayan history, assuming Lonely Planet knows Central American history better than closing times, to accompany the photos. When the Conquistadors arrived (bringing smallpox which wiped out a lot more Maya than the invaders despite the latters enthusiasm for genocide) they would use the conquered Mayans as slaves and the stones from their cities as materials in building new Spanish cities. Merida for example is a Spanish city constructed using the stone of its predecessor T'ho.

As Chichen Itza had been abandoned a few hundred years before the Spanish arrived it was never discovered to be harvested for a new Spanish city.

And why was such a spectacular city abandoned in 1224? Noone knows although my theory is they were sick of the unreliable bus services.

¿Habla castellano? (Do you speak Spanish)

Given this first post gets attached to my email letting people know where I am going, I am suffering a little performance anxiety, especially since I only arrived in Mexico 12 hours ago.

I spent seven of those hours sleeping and a further two hours practicing my Spanish only to discover that I was still completely unintelligible to the hombre at the desk at the Hostel. Fortunately I have focused on a couple of things learned from earlier travels where I discovered that the most important thing was to be able to ask "how much" ¿Cuánto es? and be able to reliably understand currency amounts. It doesn´t make for interesting conversations but at least you don´t feel an idiot handing wads of cash at the person you are trying to buy a bottle of water from.

Failing to have taken any photos in the time I have been here, I will attempt to attach one of the cubicle in the Internet Café. It pretty well sums up my thoughts of central Cancun: smelly, dirty and hot. However, like the Computador in the café everything seems to work despite being held together with duct tape.

I´m planning on going to see the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza (apparently Chichen is not Spanish for "chicken" - who knew?) and then on to Mérida tonight, so hopefully my phtographic images (and blog topics) will improve a little by tomorrow.

For the next week I´ll be in eastern Mexico and may try to get down through Belize and Guatemala and then I´m heading on to Costa Rica for about 10 days.

Saludos
David