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How I shall miss you when I leave this continentOh Grape Flavour
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Sure hope someone got executed for thatWe Were 15 Minutes Late Taking Off!
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A Cuban in Havana asked me if I worked at a café I was sat in front of (my Cuban trade union baseball cap may have thrown then), and then later that day someone else guessed that I was ItalianI Have Achieved Ethnic Ambiguity
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Needs more zip tiesCable Management 101
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So why is his bedspace such a mess? Bad drills, that 🙄This Guy Has Been Backpacking for 17 Years
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As much as it's supposed to be a great way to learn a language, I have absolutely no interest in reading children's books. Between that and the fact that there were no English copies available in the shop, it's time to repeat my successful-though-tedious tactic of finding a book I'm actually interested in and just muscling through with a dictionary close at hand. Hey, it worked for La Peste, and my Spanish is way better than my French ever wasStorytime
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This is my favourite Call of Duty game10/10 Book Cover Design
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The Angriest-looking Truck I've Ever Seen
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How to plug a hole in your window slats to get a bit of privacyBackpacker Ingenuity
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It's a lot easier when the bus crosses with you, you're less likely to accidentally sneak into the country 👀Crossing into Honduras
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A notoriously dangerous city (it was murder capital of the world until 2016), but it feels just like any other Central American city. Where are all theSunny San Pedro Sula
abandon hope all who enter here
signs on the way in?
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But Honduras is something elseNicaragua was Bad for Roadside Littering
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I have never been sweatier (dry patch on the bottom-right of the vest for contrast)Had to Walk 2.5km to My Hostel
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This Plug is Winking at Me
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BummerThe Beach is Covered in Trash Too
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Three Days in Honduras, and I've Had Baleadas for Every Single Meal So Far
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I was Beginning to Suffer from Hammock Withdrawal
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A small Garifuna village further along the beach from usDay Trip to Triunfo de la Cruz
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Big Duck Dreams
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Amidst this Caribbean beach paradise were several posters advising how to recognise and treat depression; perhaps limited economic prospects, loss of ancestral lands and the constant threat of violence are getting people down hereA Bit of Dark to Go with the Light
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We asked someone why everything was closed and he just said10am was Too Early to Come Here
we're lazy, we don't work before 11
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Drums-in-Progress
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Road Conditions: Variable
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Long-time Ben followers may remember when I was around 17 and my then-girlfriend brought me a bottle of mamajuana from a holiday in the Dominican Republic. Little did I know that I was supposed to drain the bottle and add my own wine and rum to the plant matter within, and I drank half a bottle of preservative fluid before I realised.Deep Cut Throwback
This whole memory came flooding back the moment I saw a bottle of guifiti, or traditional Garifuna bitters, in Triunfo de la Cruz.
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With some Garifuna coconut flapjacks for dessert and some guifiti to wash it all downAnother Day, Another Baleada
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Chin Chin
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I had to carve out some new slots, e.g. for the headphone jack, but otherwise my garish racing car phone case fits my new phoneRepurposing My Phone Case
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I swear, every time I check in to see what's going on back home the place has just managed to exceed even my most pessimistic expectations. This is a lighthearted and darkly comic example, because all the creeping fascism is too depressingMeanwhile, Back in the UK...
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Mood
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Some Off-putting Shot Names
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The MOAB (Mother of All Baleadas)
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Just think of all the squash and sage risotto I could make with this!Look at the Size of This Bad Boy
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If you've been following along for a while, you've probably seen my regular highlighting of the impacts of US machinations in this region. No matter where you go in Latin America, it's a near certainty that the US will have been behind something absolutely atrocious there, often in the not-so-recent past. But why?Fruity Business, Part 1
During the Cold War/Third World War, the excuse given was that the US was fighting communism, but this sort of thing predates the Russian Revolution and the formation of the Soviet Union. The threat of communism was always a lie, or at least only a partial truth, and the real reason was far simpler; some rich people, whose interests the US system primarily serves, wanted to become richer, and millions of people had to die to help them do that.
There were some variations on which exact group of rich people were involved in each country, but in many instances the greatest monster was the same: the United Fruit Company (now known as Chiquita). This company made phenomenal profits throughout the 20st century from extracting the wealth of several Central American nations and exporting their natural resources back to the US. With the might of the US behind it, it held such power in the domestic politics of each victim country that they came to be known asbanana republics
.
This would obviously arouse local opposition, and in each case the course of events would be depressingly similar: a leader would be democratically elected on a promise to abolish the slavery-like working conditions on the fruit plantations and to nationalise the industry so that the wealth generated could benefit the people of the country instead; the US would find some promising young fascist (often an Army officer of some sort) and train them up in the School of the Americas in Georgia; they would then foment, arm and fund a military coup that would replace the elected leader with their chosen puppet (often assassinating them in the process); then they would either turn a blind eye to, or in many cases actively support, any right-wing death squads, environmental destruction or outright genocides that their dictator decided to implement; and sit back as the profits continued to roll in.
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I say all of this now because Tela was a major transport hub for the United Fruit Company. The old offices of the Tela Railroad Company still stand, though the building is a museum now. The pier where once blood-soaked bananas and other produce from Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, etc. would arrive ready to be shipped off to the US is in partial disrepair now, though there are many people along it trying their luck with the fish. Children swim in the sea around its base, at this place where—until recently—the final stage of the grand heist of the region's natural wealth was conducted.Fruity Business, Part 2
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Dotted throughout the town are several disconnected sections of railway track, usually wherever the path of the track crossed what is now the main road. These were the tracks that carried the fruit from the interior to the coast for export. This whole region of the world is deeply scarred by a century-plus of US colonialism; these particular scars are just more visible than most.Fruity Business, Part 3
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The Honduran currency—the lempira—is named after a chief of the indigenous Lenca people who led resistance against the Spanish conquistadors; the 1-lempira note carries his image. This comes off as a bit cheeky when Honduras has been for many years one of the deadliest countries in which to be an environmentalist, with many unsolved murders of primarily indigenous people, of whom Berta Cáceres is perhaps the most well-knownBitter Irony
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In the interest of ending this set of mini-essays on a high note, it's worth noting that the future currently looks brighter for Honduras than some of its neighbours, through the election last year of Xiomara Castro (Honduras' first female president). The wife of the former president who was ousted by a military coup in 2009 (the whole situation around that is a big complicated mess), her election signalled the end of over a decade of a brutal and wildly corrupt right-wing government (backed by... yup, you guessed it). Her government has already declared electricity to be a human right and made provision for Honduras’ poorest to receive it for free, along with banning open-pit mining, halting the evictions of indigenous families and initiating a crackdown on gang violence.Hope in Honduras
The odds are stacked firmly against Castro, but several of the Hondurans I've spoken to are optimistic, saying that the country is safer now than it has been for some time. There also seems to be an emerging middle class here: there were plenty of Hondurans in León with the disposable income to spend on volcano boarding, and unlike in somewhere like El Tránsito, in Tela all of the fancy walled houses on the beachfront seem to belong to Hondurans, rather than Americans and Europeans.
I spoke to a couple older Hondureños the other day who had spent decades living in the US, but who were now coming back home to retire; I don't think that's a choice that too many would have made a few years earlier. One of them effectively summed up the same vibe that I've seen all over Central America, telling me thatthis is one of the poorest areas of Honduras, but the people here are happy; they love to come see the view, and they love to dance.
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Bridge Over the River Tela
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I'd just been talking to someone about priapism too, so there's definitely a theme of things being way too full of bloodI Regret Swatting This Mosquito Against the Lovely White Wall
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I'm all Carnevalled-out from Las Tablas still, but I saw plenty of the parade on the TVAccidentally Arrived in La Ceiba on the Same Day as Central America's Largest Carnevale Celebration
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Utila Lagoon
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A third of the price for three times the volume? I'm going to buy 10!SuperSize Me
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Blog Post: Nicaragua
In which I hang out with some hippies, accidentally sneak across a national border and climb up some spicy hills.
Read it here. -
A bunch of e-learning and some basic underwater skills (swapping masks, emergency ascents, etc.). It's just me and my instructor which is cool; apparently I'm tied for the fastest student she's ever had.SSI Open Water Course, Day 1
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Two ~45min open-water reef dives todaySSI Open Water Course, Day 2
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Two more dives today, including one around (but not in) a small wreck. Now I just need to complete the e-learning and I'll be done with the course.SSI Open Water Course, Day 3
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Finished my e-learning and passed the test with flying colours: I'm now a fully qualified Open Water DiverSSI Open Water Course, Day 4
[Photo credit: Josh Henderson]
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Get a Load of this Dork
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Gross
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More Caves
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I still have half a week here, so I decided to take the next course up – we had two dives on the first dive, one deep (30m) and one focussing on navigation (‘okay, now take us back to the boat’)SSI Advanced Open Water Course, Day 1
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At 30m, you start to lose the red end of the visible light spectrum (the instructor also brought a plastic bottle from the surface, which was crushed at this depth, but I unforgivably didn't get a photo)Absorption
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Just before I was about to pay for it, I found out that SSI Advanced Open Water is a different thing and the course I was going to take is actually a speciality sampler called Advanced Adventurer. I'll be changing systems when I get back to the UK (to BSAC), so this would have been pretty useless for me. So now I'm just taking a Nitrox specialty course instead for £100 less, which will be worth something in the UKSSI Advanced Open Water No More
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No dives today since I swapped courses, so we went snorkeling in the bay insteadSnorkeling
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From a 19-year-old girl from the US:The Best Reason I've Ever Heard to Refuse an Offer of Cocaine
No thanks, I'm waiting until I'm 25 and my brain is done developing
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Girls drank for free, but there was no real enforcement on drink sharing so I drank for free all night as well (and how!)Ladies’ Night
[Photo credit: Anaïs]
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There's Always a Cat
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Odd Choice of Room Décor
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Wise Words, I'll Buy 10
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Lives is More Safety and More Guarantee
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I can't imagine any girl wanting to own this, and I'd rather not imagine the kind of guy who'd want to own thisWho is This Forrrrrrrr?
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If you're gonna buy a gun for the purpose of shooting pepper spray, I feel like you might as well go the whole hogMace Gun
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I'm coming to the end of my trip, and I'm expecting to have some income once I get back to the UK, so I've been loosening the pursestrings and allowing some frivolous purchases.RIP My Brief Musical Career
Thus I found myself the proud owner of a bright pink floral ukelele this morning, but alas: the thread on one of the tuning pins was deformed, so I had to return it.
I continue searching. -
For Some Reason My Card Only Works if I Fake Out the Cash Machine First
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Possibly My Best Hammock View Yet
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Maurice the Moray
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Shy Li'l Guy
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Not a Bad Life, Eh?
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E-learning and exams done, plus two dives on nitrox tanks (i.e., oxygen-enriched gas mixtures to increase dive time or add a safety margin over normal air); fully-qualified on mixes up to 40% oxygen (air is 21%)SSI Enriched Air Nitrox Course
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I tried to teach people a 3-rule card game, and they complained it was too complicated. Then I tried one that is literally just calling a coinflip, and they still whinged. I can't work with this material.Too Dumb for Drinking Games
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To end the week, a day of partying on the cartoonishly perfect Caribbean island of Water CayWater Cay
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Two terrible things happened for the world and humanity in the last 48 hours: Henry Kissinger lived to celebrate his 100th birthday, and Erdoğan won another five years (and probably the rest of his life) as dictator of Turkey.Two Terrible Things
There's no positive upside to either of these things. Often, the world is just awful. -
Apparently the ‘half-your-age-plus-seven’ rule for calculating the lower bound of who you can date without it being weird isn't the universal rule I once thought, nor even universally UK-known: 1/2 the Brits I asked recognised it, as did one Kiwi, but an Ozzie, a Yank and a Honduran all thought I was being weirdTIL: Universals Aren't Always So Universal
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León was a close second, but I think this is the hottest place I've been yet. Think ‘break out into a full-body sweat laying motionless in a hammock’ hot.Hotduras
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I originally had a bus booked to Guatemala City for yesterday, but between reading up on buses in Guatemala and wanting to stay for the party last night, I skipped it. Now today I have 15 hours of bus that'll take me straight to Antigua insteadOn the Road Again
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But now I barely bat an eye at an armed guard at a Wendy's; I think I'm jadedI Used to Find it Weird That Lancaster Had Security at Late-night Takeaways
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Cel-shaded furniture: genius!Incredible Café Aesthetic
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Literally every road in this town is cobbled; RIP every motorcyclist's arseVolcán de Agua Looming Through the Clouds
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How Much Sugar Do They Expect Me to Use for My Coffee?!
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The OG Chicken Bus
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Volcán de Agua from My Hostel Rooftop
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Portrait-orientated money could be an interesting innovation, but what sort of lunatic only does it for one denomination?!Guatemala, You Crazy Sonnovabitch
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I always dreamed of one day getting to be a sexy boat figureheadWater Cay Throwback
[Photo credit: Emma Skegg]
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Isn't that just ‘having fixed prices’?Happy Hour All Day
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I've come straight from sea level to 1,500 m altitude, probably the highest I've been all trip so far (Boquete was around 1,200m). After Hotduras, this is just the cool refreshing temperature I neededGuatemala is So Cool (Literally)
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Five minutes before my shuttle from Antigua was due to pick me up, I realised that I'd accidentally booked it for Thursday due to the Web site being set up weird. Luckily, the guy was still in town and a WhatsApp message to the right person got it all straightened out; good thing nobody here is ever on timeNearly Had a Disaster Getting to Atitlán
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I was told a week ago that I'm on the reserve list for interviews for the IT Manager position, and that they'd get back to me within 2 weeks, so hopefully any time this weekAntarctica Update: I'm a Reserve Candidate
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San Juan La Laguna
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At World's End
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Artists at Work
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We were originally going to try hiking it, but decided against it after seeing the cloudsIn the Shadow of San Pedro
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So instead we walked up to the lookout point below the Indian's Nose, which we could actually see (a little bit) fromMirador
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We walked from San Juan to San Pedro, then spent the rest of the day walking down random side roads.Nooks and Crannies
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Untitled
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I'm staying in Santiago Atitlán tonight so I can go bother a hospital in the morning, but I still have a hostel bed back in Panajachel so I left my stuff there.Travelled a Bit Too Light
There's a bit of a threat of banditos on the trails around here, so since our initial plan was to hike up San Pedro I intentionally packed as little as possible: no laptop, no e-reader, only one of my passports.
That would have made me look very clever had we actually been robbed on the trail, but as it stands we didn't even go near it and now I have nothing to do all night. -
There seems to be an election coming up here in Guatemala; there's election posters absolutely everywhere, to a level of saturation that puts even Arizona from the start of this trip to shame.Election Fever
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In a country as wracked with political corruption as Guatemala, I would definitely think twice about voting for the
Cabal Party
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As I walked back to my hostel from dinner, I heard a commotion ahead.A Surreal Little Episode
Outside what had previously been some sort of large-scale BBQ, whose smoke had billowed out into the narrow streets and half choked me on my way to get food earlier, there now stood three flatbed trucks, each piled high with speaker systems, drummers, little kids in elephant costumes and more. Everyone wore matching yellow t-shirts with a picture of an elephant on.
I walked on by and saw a woman closing the metal shutters of her shopfront. Wanting to doublecheck that things weren't about to get spicy, I asked her¿que es eso?
and pointed back at the peculiar parade of pachyder.s.
Político
, was all she said in response. -
I've seen these signs crop up in all sorts of unexpected places on this trip; in this case, a Guatemalan burger joint that may or may not have been a rebanded McDonald's. El Salvador famously made Bitcoin legal tender back in 2021.We Take Bitcoin
There's a lot of dumb stuff to do with cryptocurrencies; maybe most of the stuff is dumb. But I've always said that there are clear use cases beyond the guff, and whilst it's essy to write these off as a silly gimmick for tourists, every time I see one of these signs I'm reminded of perhaps the only interesting article I've ever read about cryptocurrencies.
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Whilst in Santiago Atitlán, I made sure to track down Maximón. The story goes that he would sneak into towns and sleep with men's wives whilst they were out working the fields. In revenge, the men cut off his arms and legs.I Found Maximón
From that inauspicious start comes possibly the most bizarre saint worshipped anywhere. Every year around Easter, the shrine to Maximón moves to another random home in the city; my map app had several of the former locations on it, but not the current one. After asking around and being led down a winding alley by an old man half my height, I found him.
The air was thick with incense, and a couple people kneeled before the cigarette-smoking effigy making their prayers. I asked if I could take a photo, and was told that Maximón asked for Q10 for the privilege; my note was tucked into his torso, which seemed to be made entirely out of neckties.
It was all very bizarre and entertaining, and I decided not to add the location to the map: the hunt is half of the fun.
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The colonial church in Santiago Atitlán dates back to the 1,500s. It also houses a shrine to, and the heart of, Stanley Rother, a Catholic priest who worked in the city and was killed by right-wing death squad during the Guatemalan Civil War (and if you've been following along for a while, you can probably guess a) which large North American country instigated that civil war and backed those right-wing death squads and b) which large fruit company that was partly on behalf of). In 2017 the Catholic Church declared him a martyr for the faith and beatified him; he was the first Catholic martyr to have been born in the US.Santiago Catholic Church
On his decision to return to Guatemala from Oklahoma, despite knowing his name was on a death squad kill list, Rother wrote thatthe shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger.
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Not even necessarily better, just differentThings Must Be Bad if a Party Can Run on a Platform of Just
Things Will Be Different
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Because my travel itineraries are definitely normal, I spent the rest of my morning in Santiago Atitlán touring a hospital (as if I hadn't had enough of that in Cuba already).Hospitalito Atitlán
Hospitalito Atitlán is a non-profit private hospital that primarily serves the Mayan community that make up the overwhelming majority of people in Santiago Atitlán and the surrounding rural areas. Many are deeply impoverished, and so the hospital aims to provide treatment for all who need it, regardless of ability to pay. The hospital was initially set up by the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma, and Stanley Rother (see previously).
The tour started with a video summarising the history of the hospital. The video's well worth a watch if you have 15mins, but the shirt version is that the hospital and the Mayan communities it serves weathered the brutual 30-year-long civil war, during which government forces burned many villages as part of a scorched earth strategy and conducted a campaign of genocide against the Mayans, and the subsequent economic turmoil only to be wiped away in a 2005 landslide that killed hundreds.
With donations from the local community and overseas donors, a new building was constructed in a new site, identified as safe from future landslides. Currently they serve around 1,000 patients per month with an almost entirely Guatemalan staff, supplemented by specialists from overseas volunteering their time and expertise.
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There are several services on offer, from orthopedics to pediatrics, plus an emergency department. Some specialities are only available on certain days: the opthalmologists were in today carrying out eye surgeries, so we couldn't look around the operating room.Services Offered
The five regularly-offered services had an office each: this was the pediatrician's.
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One of the key focuses of the hospital is reducing infant mortality. Guatemala has the highest rate amongst under-5s in Latin America, and around 50% of children are malnourished. This is the maternity ward.Maternal Infant Care
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I Just Thought This Painting Was Cute
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Apparently the Mayan custom is for expectant mothers to stand up and walk around a lot to relieve strains, so the maternity wards open directly into a maternity garden for perambulatin’.Maternity Garden
A large number of births here take place at home, so the hospital has done a lot of community outreach work to win over the comedronas, or traditional local pregnancy assistants (think moredoula
thanmidwife
) so that they will be more willing to send people in need to the hospital.
I talked a little about the Mother and Infant programme we had learned about in Cuba, because I am now a qualified expert on it.
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The Mayans are apparently a bit skeptical of modern medicine, so the hospital also has a garden round the back where they grow plants and herbs for use in traditional medicines.Other Garden
Coincidentally, Cuba is doing something similar, though for very different reasons: it needs to lean on alternative medicines for which the ingredients can be grown locally because the blockade means they struggle to import medical supplies and equipment.
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Apparently he's older than the current hospital buildingSelfie with the Hospital Dog
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Perhaps Unsurprisingly, One of the Doctors Here is Cuban
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The whole thing was designed to be environmentally sound, which means it's designed to let a lot of natural light in and temperature control is managed by natural ventilation: the upper levels are open to the air, and it has none of the aseptic hospital smell one may expect. It's easily knocked the Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital off of the top spot of myThe Power of Architecture
nicest hospitals
ranking (though I do still have a soft spot for NSEC's spaceship port design and matching sci-fi-looking uniforms). On the roof are 600 solar panels and some sun heaters for providing hot water.
Wouldn't you know it, I happen to have read the NHS' Delivering a Net Zero Health Service report (no, I'm not sure why either) and we had a little chat about efforts underway in the UK.
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I was also shown around the hospital's warehouse area, and spoke to one of the guys working there who was about to finish a degree in paramedicine about pre-hospital care in Guatemala (the hospital's ambulances are for transfers, and Guatemala follows the old US system of dispatching firefighters to medical emergencies).The Remainder of the Tour
Most trash in this area of the world is a) thrown on the nearest patch of floor or b) burnt. I asked what happened to clinical waste from the hospital, so they decided that must mean I was a weirdo and wanted a tour of the hospital bin stores.
At the end we discussed volunteering opportunities for a computer scientist with the world's most electic CV. I definitely want to come back to Guatemala and Atitlán when I'm next in Central America (to hike the lake's circumference, for one) and helping the hospital seems like an ideal excuse to do so. Watch this space. -
Sports Field
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The Shores of Lake Atitlán
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That's a papusa full of Takis: the crisps I've been addicted to for months.Central American Crisp Butty
In probably-unrelated news I feel quite sick now, which doesn't bode well for my 11-hour bus ride tomorrow.
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It's still 7 weeks away, but this is my last big thing to book before my flight back to the UK. It all feels very final.Just Booked My Flight from Mexico City to NYC
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One thing I noticed whilst walking around Santiago Atitlán was the lack of police presence, compared to the other similarly-sized towns around the lake like San Pedro La Laguna and Panajachel. It turns out that, following a massacre in 1990, the Atiticos kicked the Army out of the city and instituted their own means of maintaining security and order. In this 2010 article it says that they were discussing doing the same thing with the police, so perhaps they went through with it in the end.Atitico Independence
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Chill Vibes at the Hostel Courtesy of This Man's Wok
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Oh how naïve I wasThe Border Looked So Welcoming and Simple from the Guatemalan Side
