Maya Justice

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Oh I am a lazy writer. It’s been seven weeks since I wrote a blog, and I've been back in England for four! According to my last blog I'm sat on a beach in Mexico getting all tantastic! This couldn’t be further from the reality of me huddled up in my winter woollies, wiping my cold drippy nose and nursing a hot cup of tea. So, I've got a lot of catching up to do....

If you remember the last blog, I'd just been held up at gun point in Guatemala. God that sounds like something out of the movies now! I'd been stranded without cash or bank cards and had had to wait around for a couple of days until I could pick up some money from the bank of mum and dad via western union. Then I'd made my way to Antigua, the tourist hot spot of Guatemala, where I was going to meet my friend Rayna five days later. I cannot even begin to tell you how happy I was to see Rayna! When she walked out of that airport arrivals gate with her huge backpack covered in the most ridiculous yellow cover I've ever seen, looking quite frankly like a nob carrying a giant banana, I was jumping for joy. Finally, someone had come to rescue me. I was so overjoyed to see her that I didn’t even tell her that she looked like a nob. I kept that little fact to myself.

There’s not much to say about Antigua. It’s a nice old colonial town. It looks pretty much just like every other nice old colonial town in Central and South America. Pastores, 10 minutes out of Antigua, is however cool as hell. It’s a tiny little town comprising of one street lined with about 40 shops, all of which make and sell cowboy boots! I bought myself a nifty little pair of Caiman boots and spent the whole day singing Crocodile Shoes by Jimmy Nail. I only knew two words to that song so it got pretty annoying after a while. Sorry Rayna.

That night we were all hanging out in the hostel. Me, Rayna, about 6 other girls and Henry. Henry was built like a brick shit house and was very posh. The guy who owned the hostel, who was pretty passed it, loved walking around with no shirt on. Now this was a disgusting site. He was hairier than a monkey, had a little pot belly and bad skin covered in bad tattoos. He seemed pretty oblivious to his vomit inducing appearance though, as he was always looking around to see who was checking him out. Which was NEVER anybody. So we're all hanging out in the hostel and the half naked hostel man must have been feeling like he needed a bit of attention because he started doing push ups and pull ups. Henry walked past and, thank the lord, decided to show him how it’s done. Within a millisecond every single female in that hostel was hanging over the balcony looking down at the spectacle going on in the living room below. A little bit of coaxing from the crowd of hungry onlookers and posh Henry has taken his t-shirt off as well! I have never seen Rayna's tongue drop out of her mouth so fast! She declared that it was the best thing that had happened on the holiday so far. I told her that in all honesty it was probably the best thing that would happen over the next month.

Feeling rather excited me and Rayna decided to go and do some dancing in our room. Mine and Rayna's dancing is pretty special. We've got about three moves, which we do at different speeds depending on the music. The first move involves holding one foot in one hand and hopping around on the other one. The second involves sticking your bum out and bum jumping backwards across the room, and the third involves crotch thrusting forwards across the room whilst pumping your arms around. It’s very fun; we can amuse ourselves for hours, just with these three basic steps. So there we are, amusing ourselves, when we notice that down at street level on the other side of the road there is a restaurant full of people pointing at us and laughing! When they see that we’ve spotted them they all start raising their glasses to us and invite us over for a drink. We of course smile and nod and then run off and hide.

Later that night we're in a bar having a drink and this guy comes over to us with the most enormous smile on his face. Its only one of the guys from the restaurant! This guy turns out to be pretty interesting and me and Rayna have a man on the bus moment. For those of you that don’t understand jibberish I’m referring to the book Danny Wallace wrote called The Yes Man. In the book Wallace meets a guy on the bus who tells him something that changes his life. Now given that I’m writing this blog eight weeks after this happened, I don’t actually think that this guy did tell us anything life changing. Actually I know he didn’t because neither of us has changed anything. BUT at the time we thought that he had! So I will continue under the premise that this guy was our man on the bus, when in actual fact he probably just had asperger syndrome or something. Anyway the basic gist of his ramblings was that according to the Mayan calendar the world is going to end on 21st December 2012. Or at least that’s what lots of people believe. You see the Mayan calendar is in a pyramid shape. Each level represents a block of time and after it passes we move up to the next block. And the very tip of that pyramid is the year 2012. So if there is no more calendar after 2012 that must mean that there is no more world. Now this might sound a bit ridiculous if you’re not familiar with the Mayan calendar but those Mayans were very clever people and they have predicted many major occurrences with their calendar, so if they chose to end their calendar at the year 2012, it wouldn’t have been because they ran out of space, it would have been for a good reason. Just like the shape of the calendar. You see each block of time or layer on a pyramid is smaller than the one before it. That is because the Mayans believed that as time went by everything would speed up. And they were right. Think about how long it took for anything to change at the beginning of time. Millenniums would pass before anything happened. Then it become centuries, then decades and then finally years. Think about technology, think about the environment, global warming for example or natural disasters like earthquakes. It all fits into the pyramid calendar. The frequency and speed at which it all happens is increasing. It’s a very interesting subject and you're probably already aware of it even if you don’t realise it. The Hollywood film 2012 is in fact based on the Mayan premise that the world will end in 2012. Of course that is just one way of interpreting the calendar. Our man on the bus from the restaurant told us that he had a theory all of his own. And I’m sure he won’t mind me sharing this with you. He believes that the pyramid will INVERSE! He's convinced that something catastrophic will happen and that only those people who have developed themselves in mind, body and spirit will survive it. After we've all been culled, (because let’s face it, how many of us actually fit into that category?!) the select few will go on to live in a world where change will begin to slow back down again. The blocks of the pyramid getting bigger and bigger. Our friend believes that he personally is going to have some major part to play in all this. And I have to be honest, right up until that point where he told us that he personally was going to change the world, he really had us!

The next day we went on a little adventure to Volcan Pacaya, which, unbeknown to us when we set off, was going to test our mind, body and spirit in ways which have never been tested before. And I pray, will never happen again. Climbing a volcano sounds fun doesn’t it! Especially when they tell you that it’s a live volcano and you can see lava! COOOOOOL we said, and off we went. And it was pretty cool on the way up. Or at least I thought it was, but then I didn’t have problems breathing in the altitude and have to catch a ride on a 1000 year old donkey! The base of the volcano was covered in volcanic ash, so it was like walking on a very soft sanded beach uphill. Pretty hard work, even for a fit little fiddle like me. Ahem. The top part of the volcano was made of very spiky, very sharp rock. It was actually like climbing up a mountain of coral. Quite painful when you had to pull yourself up onto the big rocks. So up and up we climbed. Higher and higher until we were above the clouds. The sun began to set turning the sky a beautiful mix of yellow, amber and red. Higher we went. And hotter it got! You could tell that we were coming up to lava land! And then there it was. Red hot molten lava oozing out of the rocks! It was so hot that when I stuck my walking stick into it, it caught fire and burnt like a blowtorch! I felt like I was in an action film, jumping from rock to rock over cracks through which you could see the bubbling lava. It was so hot that it felt like I had opened a scorching hot oven door onto my face. Except it wasn’t just my face that was burning, it was everything! Especially my bum when I crouched down to have a picture with a river of lava flowing over the edge of the volcano. I’m probably romanticising this live volcano lark a bit, making it sound like an action film adventure, but to be fair, one little stumble or foot in the wrong place and you’re going to have a serious problem. Like death. Or burning one of your limbs off. If this was in England, it would be illegal to set foot on it.

And justly so. Coming back down was horrendous. Watching the sun set above the clouds and seeing the lava glowing was amazing. But it also gives you the slight issue of being on the top of a very dangerous, very steep volcano in the pitch black! Scrambling down over sharp volcanic rock which is covered in slippery volcanic ash in the dark is, and I’m not exaggerating now, a living nightmare. I have to be honest, the first time Rayna fell on her arse I thought it was quite funny. The second time, not so much because I’d lost my footing a couple of times myself and it was starting to dawn on me that we were in a very dangerous situation. The third time she slipped she was off, skidadaling down the side of the volcano on her arse, illuminated by the light of my head torch and the sound of my scream. I actually thought she was going to die. She was hurtling towards this drop when, thank god, her leg jutted out at a funny angle and wedged her into a rock. She was covered in cuts. All over her hands and her legs. Luckily that was the worst of it, up she got and we carried on with the downward ordeal for a good couple of hours more. By the time we finally got to the bottom we were both mentally and physically exhausted from the concentration needed to not die. Still I figured that we had probably developed our minds, bodies and spirits enough to see us through into 2013.

From Antigua we travel west to Lake Atitlan. Lake Atitlan is huge. 1558 metres across. It is surrounded by volcanoes and is absolutely breathtaking. Majestic even. Many believe it to be the most beautiful lake in the world. What a shame that they managed to pollute it this summer. That seems to be the way most things go in Guatemala though. It is a beautiful country. Breathtakingly beautiful. But it’s an absolute mess. If the Guatemalans know how to do one thing, it’s how to take something good, and turn it bad. Anyway, we went for a boat ride on the polluted lake, and explored a couple of the little villages sat along the lake shore. Then we went back to Panajachel the small town in which we were staying. There really wasn’t much there, one main street lined with tourist tat and a few bars and restaurants. You'd think that nothing much ever happened there. But you'd be wrong! Because, let’s not forget, this is Guatemala. The day before we had arrived one of the local market store holders had had a visit from a man and two women who had come to extort money from her. Now extortion doesn’t go down too well in Panajachel. All of the locals had rallied together and blocked off the roads into the town with big boulders and uprooted trees. The police didn’t stand a chance in hell of getting to that man when the locals doused him in petrol and set him on fire and murdered him. His body was left, as a warning to other would be extortionists, in the town centre. The two women were next. They too were covered in petrol, but just before they were set on fire a police helicopter came in and rescued them. This kind of thing isn’t uncommon in Guatemala. In fact it was the third time that it had happened in as many weeks in that area. They call it Maya Justice. And I guess that when the police don’t do anything about these kinds of social problems that are rife in Guatemala, what else can the locals do? In 2009 alone more than 175 bus drivers were murdered on duty by extortion gangs for not paying up on time. 175 in just one year! In a country with a population of just 14million. It would seem that the solution might be to put a pre pay system into place so that the drivers don’t have to carry large amounts of money with them, but that would require a major infrastructure change, and that’s not something that the Guatemalan government seem very keen to do. And let’s be honest, if it weren’t the bus drivers the gangs would probably just find some other group to focus on.

When we crossed the border into Mexico on the 8th December I was so relieved. Guatemala is a complete mess. I was so shit scarred being there. Horror stories aren’t really horror stories, they are the norm. It’s a sad sad fact of life in Guatemala. Murders and rapes happen on a daily basis. Corruption, crime and poverty have got that country into a terrible terrible state. And it doesn’t look like anybody is doing anything about it.

Visiting Guatemala had quite an effect on me. I’ve had a bit of a change of heart about backpacking. This is the last time I am doing it. I wasn’t very pleased about losing all of my things when I was robbed, but I was far from upset about it. I was just thankful that I was safe and nothing bad happened to me. When I think about it I really don’t know what the point of going to Guatemala was. I don’t think that there is any need to visit countries like Guatemala anymore. Why put yourself in a potentially dangerous position? Maybe it’s because I got engaged and my future suddenly means more to me, maybe it’s because I’ve realised just how fragile life is and how easily it can be taken away, but I think that’s its far more important to be safe (as far as you can control that) and happy than to go visiting third world countries where gun crime is the norm.

Anyway, that’s my deep and meaningful over. Back to Mexico.

It seems that my old friend, the transport fairy came back to me at the Guatemala - Mexico border. We sat there for hours waiting for a road block to be cleared. Not that I let myself get bothered about stuff like that anymore. You come to expect it.

Our first stop in Mexico was San Cristobal. San Cristobal is another one of those old colonial towns that all look the same. It’s pretty high up so it’s absolutely freezing at night. We did the usual, looked around a few churches, a couple of markets and went to a museum. We ate a lot of churros (Mexican donuts) and clicked our fingers a lot shouting arriba arriba. The best thing about San Cristobal was the lady who works in the tour agency. I have never had cause to do so many impressions of one person in my life. She looked like she should have been in the mafia. A huge lady with no neck, who slouched in her arm chair and talked with her hands. She had great big drawn on eyebrows, a huge Italian nose, and a drawn on lip line that was so oversized it was practically touching her nose and ears. Her accent was right out of an Italian mob film. It was great! We asked her what she thought of Mizunte, a beach town that we were thinking of going to. Her answer was brilliant. Given it might not seem so funny reading about it, but I tell you it was the funniest thing that I have ever seen. Try to picture this woman and imagine her huge booming Italian mob accent and her arms flying around everywhere.
'Girls, I’m not from San Cristobal, I came here with some tourists from Manchester and I liked it. So I went home and I got my entire family and I brought them here. I'm from Mizunte. It’s hot. Very, very hot. I was so hot there my face was meeeeeeeelllllllllting. It was meeeellllllting I tell you meeeelllllting.' Which it really must have been given her apparent need to draw it back on, with what looked like a set of felt tip pens.

So from the icy cold of San Cristobal we went to the face melting heat of Mizunte. I liked Mizunte. There was nothing there but a beautiful beach and a handful of holiday makers. It was a far cry from the likes of Cancun or Acapulco. There were no hotels, only beach hut type places, no nightclubs just a few shack type bars. There was absolutely nothing to do. Getting dressed became a full blown activity. As did having a cup of coffee. One morning I actually got dressed, went for a walk on the beach and had a cup of coffee all within the space of an hour and half. When Rayna surfaced a while later and I told her how busy I’d been she was as impressed as I was proud of myself.

We stayed on the top of a giant rock overlooking the beach in Mizunte. The first night we slept in hammocks and the next few in hanging beds. Hanging beds are very cool, although the rocking that results from even the slightest movement can make you feel a bit sea sick. The view from the top of the rock was amazing. I think that we must have had the cheapest ‘bed’ on the beach and the best view. Seeing the sunrise in the morning was spectacular.

One night Mizunte in particular is etched in my memory forever. We call it the night of Tequila Boom Boom. It started out very pleasantly, in a nice restaurant having some tasty mushroom spaghetti. Me and Rayna, being the sophisticated ladies that we are, were quietly discussing world politics and Haute Couture when one of the waiters arrived with two shots of tequila mixed with lemonade. He told us to cover the tops with our hands, bang them on the table as hard as we could whilst shouting boom boom and then down them in one. It took a fair bit of coaxing to get me and Rayna to partake in this unrefined activity, ahem, but when we did we got a round of applause from the other diners. Then came two more tequila boom booms and two more still. The conversation changed from world politics to doing impressions of the mafia lady from San Cristobel, at the tops of our voices, for the entire restaurant to hear. In actual fact, I talked in that ridiculous mafia accent for a good hour much to Rayna's amusement and the waiter’s confusion. We moved from the table to the bar where still more tequila boom boom action took place. We integrated one of our favourite dance moves into the boom boom action, inserting a double crotch thrust and arm pump after the boom boom and before the drinking. This went down very well and we were presented with still more tequila boom booms just so that we could demonstrate the new move to anyone and everyone that came into the restaurant. When we were boom boomed out we went for a walk on the beach and discovered that the sea was full of those tiny glow in the dark algae! So in we went, kicking the shit out of the little bastards until they glowed as bright as the stars. The stars, from Mizunte, are spectacular. No joke, we saw four shooting stars zooming across the sky within the space of about half an hour! And if we were actually seeing straight no doubt we would have seen more.

We met an interesting character called John in Mizunte. He was from Leeds, was probably in his 50's and had come to Mexico to be reborn. I was crying with laughter listening to him explaining how he had been taken into the forest with a load of other mugs and been made to get naked and roll around in the dirt (to connect with mother earth), whip each other with twigs (presumably for someone’s personal amusement?) and then be cooked in a big oven shaped like a uterus. 'I didn’t even know what shape a uterus was until they put me in that big cooker’ he said! John admitted that he did suspect that he might have been had, given that he didn’t really feel any different after his rebirth. Oh my god, it was the most that I had laughed in a long long time.

From Mizunte we went to Oaxaca, pronounced wa-hack-a, on the worst night bus that I have ever been on. The road was twisting and turning everywhere, so much so that it was throwing us around in our seats and it was impossible to sleep. It was icy icy cold and a disgusting fishy smell was wafting up into the bus from the luggage compartment which had been loaded with big boxes of dead fish. These boxes had been crammed with so many fish that there were heads and tails sticking out everywhere. And they were sliming all over Rayna’s banana backpack. Urrghhk.

Oaxaca is another one of those cities that looks just like the rest of them. Humm can you tell that I’m getting bored of travelling!? It’s got a nice Zocalo (square) where there’s always something going on. Live music, entertainment, that kind of thing. We did the usual stuff again; markets, churches and a salsa club and then we went up to Mexico City, our last stop before New York.

We arrived at our hostel in Mexico City at about 11pm-ish on December 18th after opting to take an afternoon bus instead of a night bus. The music was pumping, the bar was busy and there we were, checking in at reception, Rayna looking like a nob with her giant fishy banana, when the bar man runs over, yells 'Excuse me, you need to do this, right now', grabs Rayna's head, tips it back and pours neat tequila into her mouth. I don’t know why I was laughing so much because he got me next. And again when I came back down to reception for tour information, and again when I returned for some water. You might think that this sounds brilliant but it wasn’t. Having neat tequila poured down your throat when you’re tired out and desperate to go to bed is not pleasant. The first time I accepted, not wanting to look like a pussy in front of a bar full of backpackers. The second time I protested, but gave in when I realised that he wasn’t going to leave me alone until I did it. The third time I made a dash for it across the bar and tried to outrun him, but he was a little Mexican man and was way too fast for me. He grabbed me, yanked my ponytail back and began to pour. I was not best pleased about this so I gently pushed his arm to the side and it took him a good few seconds to realise that he was pouring tequila all over his chair and floor. HaHa! Serves the little fajita right! "Why did you pour tequila all over my fucking chair?" he screamed in his little Mexican voice. "Why did you pour tequila into my fucking mouth?" I yelled back "and where’s my fucking lime?” That was the last time he attacked me with tequila!

We did quite a lot whilst we were in Mexico city. We went to Teotihuacan, 'place of the gods' which is thought to date from around 300BC to 600AD. Teotihuacan is a vast ancient city that may have housed 250,000 people. The most impressive part of the complex are the gigantic pyramid structures of the Temple of the Moon and the Temple of the Sun. What’s interesting about Teotihuacan is that every 52 years (their equivalent to a century on their calendar) they completely rebuilt everything on top of the old structures. So when you look at the cut outs of the excavations you can see room under room under room. They did it because they believed that every century should be a fresh start and that you can’t go forward if you carry baggage from the past with you. Makes sense, we all know that, these guys were just taking it very literally, leaving everything as it was, and building a new city right over the old one.

The other place that we visited that we both loved was the floating gardens. There’s not that much to say about it really, it’s an old canal system with lots of brightly coloured punt-like boats which you can hire for an hour or two. You sail around enjoying the sun, looking at the floating shops, listening to the floating bands and getting a snack from one of the floating food stalls. Other than that we did the obligatory museums and churches and looked at a hell of a lot of murals in Mexico City.

On Christmas eve we left Mexico city for New York! Yes that’s right, Xmas in New York! Could life get any better?

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Comments

[Abena]

ariba ariba
loving your work Laura - although I'm not sure about being referred to in your last entry as "abba dooby wotsit" or whatever it was! So are you in London Town now? And please can we have a reunion of Club Loser? Going by past experience, I'm sure that Spencer will turn up somewhere. Perhaps from under a coffee table, or he'll be in McDonalds tapping away at his brick and see us walk past. x