It can be fascinating how ones mind overreacts in situations that are strange and unfamiliar.
As my three-wheeled tuk tuk descended the winding mountain roads into San Pedro on Sunday, every machete-carrying man that we passed on the road was a jungle bandit waiting to rob me. Every occassional bang on the corrugated iron roof of my homestay bedroom for the last few days has been the first rock of a massive landslide, until I discovered yesterday that they are actually just avocados falling from a tree beside the house. Tonight, every pair of shadows lurking in the darkness of the alleyway I have to walk along from the internet cafe to my homestay casa was a gang of dangerous muggers waiting to rob a fat walleted extranjero, until a squint into the darkness confirmed it was just young Guatemalteco couples enjoying their courtship away from the prying eyes of the extremely close-knit, Catholic community here in San Pedro.
Just as every sudden loud explosion in the Mexican night was a gunshot until I discovered it was just youths letting off fireworks, just as the man in Cuba that came pointing at my midrift was wanting my wallet until it turned out he was just telling me my zip was down, just as every man in that has tried to rob of me of my rucksack as I get on a Guatemalan chicken bus has turned out to be the bus conductor wanting to put it on the roof rack, every unidentified dark moving object in every hotel room I have stayed in since I started travelling has been a cockroach until formally proven otherwise.
someone once said 'Fear only fear itself', and I am starting to think they may indeed have a point. However that said, I still don't know why every man I drove past on Sunday in the tuk tuk was carrying a sharpened machete, and I don't intend going for a leisurely stroll in the mountains by myself until I do.
