Are there mosquitos in the jungle?

Central America Caribbean » Guatemala
November 18th 2011

Published: December 9th 2011

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chipsandgravy

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Word up Gangsters

I am so hot right now. Not in an attractive way, more a temperature way. Well maybe a bit of both. If I manage to get through writing this blog without the computer exploding on account of the amount of sweat dripping onto the keyboard, then it’ll be a miracle. I don’t think going out for fish soup for lunch has helped us to be fair. We are currently in Belize in a town called Hopkins. We are staying in an apartment for the week (9 days to be precise) and trying to catch up with ourselves before we head off to Honduras. There is a hostel next door who own the apartment and we regularly head around there to chat to the complete and utter morons which it seems to attract. I think it is a ‘party hostel’ but I’m still not sure what that means. They generally sit around drinking rum by the gallon, smoking copious amounts of cheap fags and generally all look a bit depressed. Not my kind of party. I prefer maybe fancy dress or at least some kind of cake or cheese board. A few more ‘traveller’ looking people

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have just turned up. You know the ones who look like a wrinkled tea bag that’s been in the sun for too long with matted hair and they do juggling with fire and sell crappy bracelets they’ve made out of stuff that’s just washed up on the beach. Yes them. One of them walked past me earlier and didn’t even acknowledge me, only looking down her pierced nose at me like I was some Capitalist Nazi because I shower daily and my wife shaves her legs. Her dad’s probably an investment banker in ‘the city’ who is funding her travelling/ crack habit. If I wasn’t also travelling (on holiday) I’d be shouting “get a job” out the window at them but I haven’t got a job so it would be a bit hypocritical. So the next few days should be fun.

We left you last in Lima airport before we were just about to head to Guatemala. Our flight from Lima was a bit delayed but it didn’t matter as we got upgraded to the posh seats and I didn’t have to speak to any poor people all trip. It made our connection into Mexico City a

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bit tight but thankfully the good old Mexicans were up to their usual tricks and our connecting flight was delayed also so we made it in plenty of time. We caught a taxi straight from Guatemala City and headed for the beautiful town of Antigua where we promptly checked into our hostel, had a quick lie down and woke up 6 hours later. After a day of relaxation reading our books (I’m up to page 71 of my first book – Judith’s on her 6^th book), we headed to the market. Within 5 minutes of being there someone came up to me and asked me if I wanted my machete sharpening. Oh dear. All the rumours about Guatemala are true. We are going to get butchered alive. As it turns out most people carry around a machete for work purposes or for protection so that’s ok……..

The lady who ran our hostel was called Blanka. She was nice but didn’t do any cool special moves such as a rolling attack or electric thunder like Blanka from Streetfighter 2, nor was she green with massive orange hair. We met the token twonk in our hostel who told me

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he was a writer and he’d come to Guatemala to get some inspiration. Being mildly impressed I asked him what he was writing to which he replied “my dissertation”. You are a student not a writer you idiot. We did however meet a nice couple in our hostel from Amsterdam who took us out in their Mexican Beetle for the day to the Sumpango Day of the Dead Kite Festival. The festival was excellent although it had about as much health and safety regulation as a bare knuckle gypsy boxing match. We ate pig and drunk beer in a graveyard at 11am which I think is hugely disrespectful in some countries but is welcomed in Guatemala with open, machete wielding arms.

We took a trip out to an Eco Lodge which is basically a hostel where they charge you more money to be there because it says ‘Eco’ in the title a bit like ‘organic’ food. It was nice however and we spent the night in a tree house which was very cool although it was probably one of the most pretentious places I’ve ever been. The sort of place a writer for Lonely Planet would gush

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about. I’ve been getting into Trip Advisor recently (you know cos I’ve got nothing better to do) which is proving to be a useful forum for me to shout about people’s general level of incompetence. For example here is a snippet of my review of the Earth Lodge:

“She paraded around the place like she was Debbie Harry who confused being ‘uber cool’ with being plain rude. My wife asked where the showers were only to be talked at like a complete moron. What a ridiculous thing to ask in a hostel – how dare we!!“

I did this review of a hole we stayed in Argentina which was simply titled:

“We got our food nicked and its like sleeping in a dusty library (in a morgue) and the staff are morons”

Fair I think. We bumped into a group of hairy French girls with guitars and bongo’s who were just arriving as we were leaving the Eco Lodge. Thank god we were leaving. We shared the back of a pick up truck back to Antigua with a woman who stood at the front

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of the truck with her arms in the air telling us how “amazing it is to be free” whilst waving at all the local people we passed like she was some kind of messiah in Prada Sunglasses.

We left Antigua and headed off in a minibus to San Pedro la Laguna on Lake Atitclan. It was a 2 hour bus ride which took 4 hours as in Guatemala you just double what they tell you. 2 hours GMT is 2 hours Guatemalan Manana Time which equals 4 hours. There was a guy on our bus who looked just like Boy George but sounded just like Tony Soprano. It was very confusing for my brain. San Pedro is a bit of a backpackers playground. There are bars and restaurants everywhere and loads of the wrinkled up Dot Cotton esque traveller types there. We had a 90 minute massage in San Pedro as after 3 months of travelling my back was sorer than a Cyril Sweett employee who’s been writing up 6 facet surveys for 4 weeks solid. The masseur was mental. I checked her qualifications and her address was listed as:

123 Bananas Drive

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Cloud Cuckoo Land

Guatemala

After the crazy massage we went to the market which for some reason was full of midgets. Even Judith felt like a giant. Even though there were so many vertically challenged people I didn’t find any stalls where I could buy one. In Guatemala everyone barters for everything. It is very hard to barter for something when you are English as it’s not in our nature. But we soon got into it. I even bartered with a 10 year old for a bottle of shampoo. Judith got a nice pair of Roy Bons for £2 down from £4 and I got a pair of flip flops for £2 down from £3 which have already fallen to bits. We’ve even taken to asking for free drinks in restaurants and asking for a discount on the menu. It is amazing how much you can get for free if you just be really cheeky.

We stayed a few days in San Pedro until I got knarked off and then we headed off to Semuc Champay in a village called Lanquin. We had a nice 11 hour bus journey to Lanquin in a

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minibus on the worst roads I’ve ever seen and we arrived at our hostel at 11pm in the rain and mud to be greeted by a drunk German in our bed. Nice. We had a rubbish nights sleep even though the German had been removed and bedding changed. We know that hundreds of people have slept in the beds we kip in but you just don’t want to see it. The next morning I was in the mood for killing some students so we forewent the organised trip to Semuc Champay (a river thing) from the hostel and flagged down a bus off the side of the road. Luckily they were after more passengers to add more weight to the back of the bus as the previous day’s rain had resulted in lots of mud on the hill to Semuc Champay. If you want extra weight, I’m your man. So we ended up landing on our feet and getting the trip for half the price without having to spend it with any of the nonces from our hostel.

You should see some of the poncy graffiti in the toilets in the hostels. In the Lanquin hostel there

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were Radiohead lyrics, Oscar Wilde quotes and all sorts of other pretentious pap. But thankfully for the interests of balance someone had drawn a massive tadger and a pair of boobs up half the length of the door. I would have taken a photo but the last time I took a photo in a toilet I nearly got arrested.

We left Lanquin and headed to Flores to see to the Tikal ruins. The bus journey was horrendous. There was 14 of us squashed into the smallest minibus of all time. It stank and it was redders. People kept closing the windows as the ‘wind was hurting their ears’ which meant the people like me which were wedged between my good lady wife and a fat French bloke were literally cooking. We were only in it for 9 hours and we had a nice break as we got off the bus to cross a river on ‘a boat’ which looked more like a plank of wood with an outboard motor.

Flores is a tiny island in a lake joined to the main land by a road which one day was a Mayan settlement and was

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quickly smashed to pieces when the Spanish arrived. One thing the Spanish didn’t destroy in Central America was Tikal which are some Mayan ruins set in the middle of a huge jungle. We were lucky enough to share our trip to the ruins with an Israeli idiot who asked the most ridiculous questions I have ever heard:

“Are there mosquitoes in the Jungle?”“What shall I do if I get attacked by a Jaguar in the Jungle””“Are there any poisonous spiders in the Jungle?”“What shall I do when this bloke from Yorkshire next to me smashes me in my face repeatedly with a dead spider monkey?”

I made the last one up but you get the picture. We swiftly ran away from the tour group of idiots and investigated the ruins our sens. It was so quiet in the ruins apart from the occasional mating

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call of the native Yank who would walk past like an ignorant prat shouting “Hey dude like totally take a picture of me in front of this old building for my facebook” at the top of their voice whilst Judith and I are quietly watching some monkeys frolic in the trees. My favourite part of the whole trip however was when we kept bumping into these two Canadians who were making a rap video. Filming a rap video in a Unesco World Heritage site has got to be the least gangsta thing you could possibly do. To top it off one of them had a yoga mat in his back pack. My usual foot in mouth timing played its usual hand when I was slagging them off on top of one of the pyramids only to realise quickly that they were just stood on the tier below me and heard everything I said. Ooops.

We left Flores and headed to Hopkins, Belize. A steady journey which included a tuc tuc, a minibus, a border crossing, a taxi, a reggae reggae bus, another bus and a taxi. It is great here though, we are 1 minutes walk to

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the sea and because there’s nothing really to do here we are literally doing nothing. I’ve only been stung by one jelly fish so far whereby I had to do the thing you do to stop is stinging. Judith thought it was funny. Next stop is Honduras on Monday. We need to get moving again I think. Need to meet more idiots.

Just before I go I’ve had a letter here from a big fan, it reads:

“Hi Steve love the emails. I was just at home listening to my new Lady Gaga album and I was wondering whether the hair had grown back on your shins following your skiing trip in Bariloche, Argentina? Thanks, Danny Malone, Leeds”

Well Danny, thanks for your email. Yes it has in fact grown back for sure on my right leg and it’s almost there on my left. Well kids we’d best go. Judith is anchoring to go do some boggling

See you in a bit

Stephen and Judith

More photos here

Antigua

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