A WEEKEND ROAD-TRIP IN CHIHUAHUA

The Mexican state of Chihuahua is home to the most dangerous city in the world, a small yappy dog favoured by rich Hollywood socialites and the worlds 28th highest waterfall. This weekend I saw the latter whilst steering clear of the former, on a 400+ mile roadtrip with the wonderful Claudia, who asides from her initial suggestion to pick me up at my hotel at the ungodly hour of 6AM on a Saturday morning, turned out to the ideal travel companion.

We climbed waterfalls, stood on wobbly rocks perched precariously on the edge of canyon precipices hundreds of metres up and talked politics, Mexican history, the British royal family and of course, how there is nothing a Scotsman likes to do more of an evening than sit at home counting his pesos. After almost five weeks in Mexico, any remaining preconceptions and stereotypes I had of the country and its people were blown away by my wonderful travel companion.

Chihuahua state may have its problems, but it also has spectacular scenery to match anything I have seen around the world, and with low entry fees and no loud tourists, a natural landscape on a par with any of the national parks of the USA.

If Mexico gets on top of its current problems with gangs, drugs and political corruption, I think Chihuahua could well become a much more popular tourist destination for extranjeros than it currently is. Fortununately, I got here before the coach-loads of noisy Gringos start to arrive.

 

 

AN ERROR IN CHIHUAHUA

As a general rule of travel, I always try to arrive in a new place during daylight, to give myself time to locate a hotel and check-in before the sun goes down and any night danger/craziness commences. As luck would therefore have it, the first place I arrive in total darkness in my two months of travelling so far is Chihuahua in Mexico. Chihuahua, home of Ciudade De Juarez, the most dangerous city on earth.

Its 23:00 and pitch black outside as the train pulls in at the station. Worse still, the word 'error' spells itself out eerily through the front window of my train carriage, suggesting to me that I may have made a large mistake.

Even when I realise I am only seeing part of the insignia for 'Ferrocarril Chihuahua al Pacífico', the train company I am travelling on, I do not feel particularly comforted. A moustachioed train security guard walks down the aisle with a serious look on his face and a semi-automatic assault rifle gripped in both hands. A full moon threatens me from the night sky outside.

As soon as I step off the train I sense danger lurking around every corner, even though I am walking in a straight line in an open space and there are no corners to speak of nearby. Dodging imaginery bullets and avoiding eye contact with local Mexicans that probably aren't even looking at me, I march as confidently as I can muster with the extra-weight in my underpants through the train station to find a taxi to take me to the nearest hotel.

I hope I do not die tonight.



Prologue:  I didn't die tonight. (however, there are still 17 minutes until midnight)

LOS MOCHIS > CHIHUAHUA ON THE COPPER CANYON PACIFIC TRAIN

HOUR 1 – 07:00

The train leaves at time, and although there are other tourists onboard, I am the only extranjero going as far as Chihuahua. The train rolls slowly passed ramshackle houses built on the side of the dustry track. As we pass underfed horses and chickens, women stand in the early sun hosing things with water whilst men with moustaches lean against walls with their thumbs hooked in the belt hooks of their denim jeans, doing nothing. In the distance in front of us, large hills loom in the morning mist.

HOUR 2 – 08:00

The train picks up speed as we enter the countryside through fields of corn, long grass and cactus. The hills are already getting closer, and the morning Sinaloan sun has already started to burn off the mist by the time we arrive art the first train station stop in El Fuerte.

Someone in the carriage is playing traditional Mexican music on a radio, and although I don’t understand many of the words, some Mexican passengers are already singing and adding to the mood of anticipation for my journey through the Copper Canyon. Other thin tracks appear and disappear every so often without going anywhere. As we head steadily onwards, a sad looking donkey tried to a post reflects on its plight as jack-rabbits jump and the sun (and train) becomes hotter.

HOUR 3 – 09:00

Cows are already sheltering in the shade of a tree as the trani driver announces our arrival in a town with a station with another loud blast of his horn. The fields have cleared to semi-desert prairie, and the air-conditioning has come back on in the carriage just in time.

HOUR 4 – 10:00

The cactus grow as tall as the trees on the hills now, and these trees as not shirking in size. We are back in the country again, where the derelict buildings and disrepaired telephone poles by the trackside lie testament to place where nobody lives. Ahead, a lone cowboy in denims and stetson canters on a horse on the dusty road, before we cross our first bridge of the day, over a dried out river that looks like it hasn't run in a very long time. The hills are starting to close in on either side of us now, and as we pick up some cowboys in Loreto, it starts to feel like Canyon country will soon be upon us. Is a long burst of the train horn the drivers way of letting them know we are coming?

HOUR 5 - 11:00

The railway line leads us higher as a large bird soars in the sky overhead. I hang over a train carriage door taking my first photos of the day. The door opens inwards, but I grip the rail inside with white knuckles all the same.

As we head through dark tunnels, hug the mountains around deep ravines and cross bridges over lagoons of crystalline green water, I see the skull of a cow by the side of the tracks. Sharp branches shooting past as I continue taking photos remind me not to lean out from the train too far or I could be next.

HOUR 6 - 12:00
Every sheer cliff face seems higher than the last, but like the landscape in Mexico City, none of my photographs do their size justice. The friendly Mexican I am sitting next to tells me there are more impressive vistas to come. This is his first time on the train as well, but someone in Chihuahua has told him it gets better in the early afternoon.

Equally impressive are the bridges and tunnels that carry our train through this impassable terrain. As we pass through Temoris, I wonder to myself how many Mexicans died making this journey a reality. And still we go higher, sometimes above the birds, soaring. 


HOUR 7 - 13:00
There are houses only occassionally now, lived-in but run-down, and with no luxuries such as electricity or running water. The landscape changes again and again, from desert to lush mountainside filled with conifers. But I have long given up on trying to get even one photo that does the landscape justice, so instead enjoy the air-conditioned view from my carriage, chatting to the friendly Mexican beside me as we pass through the town of Banuchivo.


HOUR 8 - 14:00
Spectacular landscapes continue, but the Mexican in white leather shoes sitting nearby continues to sleep through it all. The train is sometimes at the canyon bottom, but most of the time it clings to the hillside halfway up. A young Mexican girl sitting nearby spots the lone extranjerro in the carriage for the first time, and stares with her mouth open as she clings to her mother.

We should be in Creel in a couple of hours, where some of the most beautiful scenery is said to be.


HOUR 9 - 15:00
The train stops at Divisadero for 15 minutes, allowing passengers time to get off the train for some spectacular photos out over the canyon rim, and to stock up on delicious 'gorditos de masa azul' at the market next to the station.

HOUR 10 - 16:00
The train is busier after Divisadero, and carriage doors are more difficult to obtain as many Mexicans on the train also want to enjoy the views. An extranjero manages to find a space by lingering behind the locals looking out it until they eventually get the message and go back to their seats. And so I am back at the windowless carriage door with the one-inch thick waist high metal door my only saviour from death as the train presses on towards Creel.

HOUR 11 - 17:00
Hanging from a train door window is calming, no matter how many tree branches nearly take off your head. No matter how much you lean out you can never quite see where you are heading, however you do get an excellent view of where you are not.


HOUR 12 - 18:00
The canyon widens after Creel, where we do not stop and no really impressive scenery can be seen from the train. However, Creel is the first town since Los Mochis with several hotels, satellite dishes and an internet cafe, suggesting something special is definitely hiding nearby.


HOUR 13 - 19:00
Time rolls by quickly on the Pacific train from Los Mochis to Chihuahua, and it is now already 12 hours since my journey began this morning. The rain that has fallen almost every night since I arrived in Mexico has just fallen, and as the land flattens out and the sun slowly sinks west, I have a sense that the Copper Canyon is over.

With the pink sky behind us and only darkness ahead, pheasants rise from ploughed fields and swallows fly from their perches on poles as our train approaches La Coolta on its way to Chihuahua.


HOUR 14:00 - 20:00
The Mexican in the white leather shoes that has slept through the entire journey and whom I have not seen move from his seat in twelve hours is awake now there is only darkness to see out the window.

I still have a few hours of my train journey left, but I know I won'f find sleep quite as easily. Of course I won't sleep. The air-conditioning is cold but I have my woolen poncho and sleeping bag that is comfortable to -7 degrees to keep me warm if I need them. My train seat is comfortable and I am sitting next to a friendly Mexican whom I still don't know the name of after 13 hours of intermitten conversation, but who is not taking up my legroom or listening to loud gothic music either. But I still won't sleep on the Pacific train as it heads for Chihuahua. I won't sleep because there are no barriers at any of the level crossings we pass through, and so the train driver sounds his horn loudly as the train approaches to alert road motorists of our presence and right of way.

I won't sleep but I won't write any more either.

THE END

Prologue: I never did find out the name of the friendly Mexican. Nor did I get any sleep.

A SLEEPLESS NIGHT IN MEXICO CITY AIRPORT

I think someone once said that it is not what you see in A or B, but the experience of getting from A to B that is the real enjoyment of travel.

Tripe, is what I say to that. I wish someone would invent time travel so I can get from A to B without losing precious sleep. This time A is Mexico City and B is Los Mochis. Its a 24-hour bus journey which I had not been looking forward to, so I was extremely pleased this morning to find a last minute flight that cost not much more than the bus and takes only 2.5 hours. The only fly in the ointment is that my cheap flight leaves Benito Juárez International Airport at 06:50 AM tomorrow morning, and the Mexico City metro system does not open early enough to get me to the airport in time to catch my flight.

So for the third time in two months, a cheap Scotsman that steadfastly refuses to pay for an exhorbitant airport hotel-room finds himself sitting at an airport the night before a flight, wishing time would fly quicker so he could fly sooner to his next destination.

I know I won´t sleep tonight. There is nowhere quiet to hole myself up in for the night. There are no seats and the tiles on the ground are haemarhoidally cold. And it also appears that the airport building maintenance nightshift here at Mexico City´s International Airport ake the same approach as Guatemalan overnight bus drivers, ie to leave the air-conditioning on 'Arctic Tundra' setting even when the outside temperature has dropped over twenty degrees centigrade.

My only saving grace for another night of freezing temperatures is my GBP 5.00 woolen poncho that I bought whilst drunk in Chiapas, and even that is slightly bitter sweet, as although it is warm, it is already attracting airport security staff like moths to a bright light, as I look like a homeless Mexican.

COSAS ME GUSTA EN MEXICO D.F

Me gusta que Mexico D.F como me gusta todos los ciudades grandes que visité en el mundo, pero creo que me gusta algunas cosas un poco mas.

Me gusta la enormite de Mexico D.F, y que la ciudad tiene miles de historia por dentro y alrededor. Me gusta que Coyoacán es parecido de Camden, Chapultepec es mismo de Hyde Park, y Polanco similar de Chelsea o Kensington.

Me gusta que Mexico D.F no es un semillero de crimen y violencia como las prensa britanicas siempre dicen, y me encanta que en realidad la gente en la ciudad estan mas amistoso y amable que muchas otros lugares ya visité en mis viajes. ¿Secuestros? ¿Tiros? ¿Robos? Habua visto cosas muchas mas peligrosas en Londres u Glasgow (!pero no en hombre muerto en la calle!).

Me gusta que lost viajes en el metro cuestan ´15 pence´, y me encantan intentar que suponer cual cosa la persona vende cuando el tren sale el anden proximo. Me gusta que la gente venden cosas en transporte publico, y además que los policiacos no hacen caso de la gente qu venden software, musica u peliculas ilegal.

El fin, mi gusta Mexico D.F

 

 

A DEAD BODY IN GARIBALDI SQUARE

Mariachis normally congretate in Plaza Garibaldi each evening to play popular Mexican music. However when I arrived there tonight, there was a sombre mood and no sound of guitars or trumpets. Then I noticed a crowd gathered where some policae cars with flashing lights were parked. Then I noticed a pink blanket on the ground with a pair of trainers sticking out the bottom of it. The blanket was covering the body of a dead man.

- 'What happened?' I asked a man sitting nearby eating monkey nuts.

- 'Se fue.' he replied. He went.

Judging by the looks of an inebriated man slouched near the dead body mourning loudly, the deceased was a homeless drunk. I don't think foul play was involved, or at least not according to the man shelling legumes next to me, who motioned that the man had died from drinking one too many chupitos (shots of spirits).

My own high spirits at having earlier eaten a quarter roast chicken with pan, papas and a bottle of fanta naranja for the equivalent of GBP 1.80 and then also finding a cheapish copy of 'Las venas abiertas de america latina' in a second hand book shop on the way to Plaza Garibaldi were already seriously deflated at seeing the dead body with its feet sticking out from beaneath the pink blanket. On top of that, I was also starting to get into an uncomfortable debate with a greasy-haired Mexican in an AC Milan top that had sat down next to me, as to whether Scotland was a country or a colony of England.

So rather than hanging around for the official post mortem results of the dead man in Garibaldi Square, I instead headed home to my hotel, walking quickly and looking over my shoulder several times to make sure the man in the AC Milan shirt wasn't following me.

DIA CERRADA CON UNA CHICA MEXICANA GUAPISIMA

Most things are closed in Mexico D.F on Mondays, making sightseeing a considerable challenge. Fortunately, I spent my lunes with the gorgeous and well-travelled Bren, and so got to enjoy the views from Torre Latinoamericana, snack on a tamale made in a secret location by mafiosa street vendors, dine on cactus and mole in Sanborns, and to top things off, still manage to score a couple of tourist attractions off my Mexico City to-see list.

Not bad for 'Dia Cerrada' in Mexico D.F.

THE BEST GOAL OF THE CENTURY, IN MEXICO

THE YEAR: 1986.

THE LOCATION: Estadio Azteca, Mexico D.F

THE GOAL: A beatiful one-two from the foot of Maradona to Valdano/Hodge, who plays a neat chip into the penalty area and onto the fist of Diego to score the most beautiful goal the game has ever seen.

Argentina 2   England 0

The second goal Maradona scored that day wasn't bad either, but it's his opening goal that will be remembered most fondly (in Scotland). Walking around the Aztec stadium afterwards, I stumbled upont a small religious shrine covered in flowers. About to pay homage to Diego, I was sorely disappointed to discover it was only for the Virgin Mary.

 

ARRIVING IN MEXICO CITY

The bus ride into Mexico D.F is spectacular, One minute there is countryside, the odd pueblo and a couple of dormant volcanoes. Then the road goes over the brow of a hill into a panorama of buildings in every direction as far as the smog will let the eyes see.

With twenty-one million people living in and around Mexico´s capital city, real estate is clearly at a premium, as is evidenced by my hotel room bathroom. Two blocks from the central Zocalo, my Hotel Niza toilet has clearly been designed with space consciousness in mind. Its not possible to fully open the bathroom door to get to the sink behind it, and I have to sit on the toilet at right angles to the cistern, with both feet in the shower.

However even with the uncomfortable bathroom visits and only one channel on the 1970´s television in my room, its difficult to complain too much when the Hotel Niza is costing me 180 pesos - 10 quid - a night, for a central location a stones throw away from the 15pence a ride metro system that makes it easy for me to get around the city.

It does however leave me asking myself why Londoners pay around GBP 3.00 for a single journey on an underground system that carries around 4 million passengers each day, when Mexico D.F'ers pay only GBP 0.15 to travel on a metro network that carries over 5 million people.

I wonder if the Mexico City metro runs on SAP.

2500 YEAR OLD RUINS AT MONTE ALBAN

A 2000 YEAR OLD TREE IN TULE

THE MYSTERY OF THE DISAPPEARING WOMAN ON THE BUS TO OAXACA

I awoke on my overnight bus to Oaxaca last night to armed soldiers in full camoflage storming the bus with machine guns. Fortunately I had read about random checks on buses on the internet a few months ago, so already knew that this is a fairly standard occurrance in Mexico. It's only when the men with the guns getting on your bus don´t have uniforms that you really need to start to worry.

The soldiers took a random selection of passengers off the bus to search them, but fortunately I was not amongst them, so my illicit cache of Cuban cigars bound for Las Vegas remains intact. Then some more soldiers got on and started ripping panels off the toilet cubicle at the back of the bus. The bus driver started complaining. Sniffer dogs under the bus started barking. Two indigenous Mexicans at the back of the bus sat like rabbits in headlights, but perhaps I also looked like that at two oclock in the morning.

Then all off a sudden, a woman with a child sitting opposite me that also hadn´t been picked out for the random searches stands up, grabs her bag and walks off the bus. The soldiers hadn't asked her to do so, and don't think they even noticed her going.

I think no more about this until the soldiers thank us for our patience and get off the bus, and the passengers that had been searched get back on. All the passengers except the woman and the child sitting opposite.

I didn´t sleep on my first overnight bus because of the freezing cold air-conditioning. I didn´t sleep on my second overnight bus because of an overweight girl playing loud goth music. This time I am wearing my GBP 5.00 woolen poncho and sitting next to a pencil thin man with a pencil thinner moustache who isn´t listening to any music, but I still won´t get any more sleep on by third overnight bus I am travellng on because of the excitement of the bus search and the disappearing woman.

 
 

A PAY BY THE HOUR HOTEL ROOM IN TUXTLA

The matrimonial suite of Posada Maria Isabel in downtown Tuxtla Gutierrez is not somewhere I would necessarily want to spend my honeymoon anyway, but after an uncomfortable walk in the Mexican blazing sun trying to find some cheap accommodation for the night, I would probably still have been unhappy to be staying there, even if my room had a jacuzzi, waterbed and complimentary minibar.

As it is, my GBP 9.00 a night room has none of the above or a toilet seat, and the lightbulb is positioned directly above the electric fan so you can self-induce an epileptic fit if you have both on at the same time.

A sign in my room warns that any surprise discovery of guests using drugs will be reported to the authorities. Another sign at reception suggests the hotel may well be one of the more seedier Mexican establishments that I read about on the Internet back in the UK before I started my travels, a hotel in which guests can pay for a room by the hour.

Realising this makes me start to wonder what sort of men bring a women to the Posada Maria Isabel, and what sort of women let themselves be brought. I think for a woman to come willingly to the hotel I am staying in, she must either be drunk, hopelessly in love or be getting paid a very good hourly rate herself.

A FEW BEERS AND A PONCHO IN SAN CRISTOBAL

This afternoon I met a Spanish guy whilst lingering on the free internet at my hotel in San Cristobal. Over a few beers later, Ruben explained that he had been redundant from his bankrupt employer in Galicia last year as a result of the recent economic crisis, and had decided to head to Mexico to do something completely different for a few years. Four months later, he is a qualified dive master taking tourists to the reefs and cenotes around Playa Del Carmen, ie where I was a few short weeks ago.

Several 2-for-1 Tecate cervezas (Dos Equis’s in Ruben’s case) and an extremely persuasive local saleswoman later, I am now the proud owner of a GBP 5 knitted poncho, and Ruben, who already had a Mexican poncho, several bracelets better off.

A BIT OF A LETDOWN IN SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS

As has already happened a couple of times during my travels, a place that came highly recommended by both guidebooks and people I have met has turned out to be nothing special when I got there. For me, San Cristobal De Las Casas has one too many extranjeros with dreadlocks, nose piercings or a flowery, tie-dyed ankle length skirt, and is really just another town with colourfully painted houses, quaint cobblestoned streets, blah blah blah.

I did however make an astonishing discovery whilst exploring San Cristobal's large Central Market where rural farmers from the surrounding countryside all bring their fruit, vegetables and pirate DVDs each day to sell, finding a hidden-away stall selling not only cures for acidic urine and your mind going blank, but also a cure for cancer. It turns out that pharmaceutical giants have been wasting their time over the last few decades in their search for a cure, as the indigenous Mayan people have already uncovered that it is possible to get rid of cancer by drinking a few pieces of coloured wood boiled in hot water.

Now I am back in Mexico, I have been quickly reminded of my earlier experiences in the Yucantan peninsula, namely of locals avoiding all eye contact. Only one Mexican has started a conversation with me today, a man with part of one finger missing that spoke dialects of Spanish and the native indigenous Tzotil language, neither of which I could understand. Frustrated with a day of not talking to many people, I bought a corn-on-the-cob and watched a bible-basher preaching in the street.

Hopefully a few more locals will speak to me tomorrow when I head out on a day-trip to San Juan Chamula, before heading west on Wednesday to Tuxtla to have dinner with a girl called Laura.

ANOTHER SLEEPLESS NIGHT ON A BUS

One of the secrets of shoe-string budget travel is of course timing bus journeys so that they run overnight and accomodation costs for the night can be avoided by sleeping on the bus. A large assumption in this money saving technique is of course that it will actually be possible to sleep on the bus, which is in itself dependant on things like the air conditioning temperature being at a comfortable level as affected me on my night journey in Guatmala and also not having a massively overweight girl playing loud music on her personal stereo sitting beside you, as happened to me last night on the bus through Mexico to San Cristobal De Las Casas.

As a result of the fat girls annoying gothic music, I again had a night of broken sleep on the bus, whilst she seemingly slept the whole way, presumably thinking about what she was going to have for breakfast as her thighs took up most of my legroom.

A BUS JOURNEY BACK INTO MEXICO

Today I left Guatemala and started the long journey north to meet friends in San Fransisco. Travelling on Ticabus (the Central American equivalent of Greyhound) cost me just over GBP 10 for a 7 hour bus journey from Guatemala City up to Tapachula (just over the Mexican border) to catch a connection bus onto San Cristobal De Las Casas.

I am going to be seeing the insides of buses a lot over the next three weeks as I travel approximately 3000 miles up through Chiapas and Oaxaca to Mexico City, then onto Los Mochis to ride the Chihuahua-Pacific railway train through the Copper Canyon, before a final marathon bus journey across the US border and up through California to Frisco.

On the positive side, I only have one more border to cross to get to the Golden Gate Bridge, having again been exhausted today at the Mexican border by the begging children, crooked money-changers and this time a man that tried to sell me a form that I didn’t need.

REFLECTIONS OF GUATEMALA, ON THE BUS TO MEXICO

The contrast between poverty and wealth is significant in Guatemala, however I have only really started to notice the divide since I arrived in the nation's capital. In Flores and Antigua, the occassional policeman or security guard with a gun could be seen, but here in Guatemala City, armed officials are everywhere. As well as numerous policemen and soliders holding weapons in the streets of G.C, some of the chicken buses I have travelled in have had not one but two guards brandising guns on them, most of whom look too young to be carrying a water pistol, let alone a pump-action rifle.

Anajose, the guatamalteca that I spent time with advised me not to go into the city centre (after I had already wandered around aimlessly there without incident), and indeed told me that her parents had instructed her not to go to Zone 1 because of the real risk of violent crime. Meanwhile out in Zone 10, expensive residential complexes house the rich, large glass skyscrapers house the financial industry, and the futuristic Oakland Mall houses Tommy Hilfiger, Hugo Boss, Massimo Dutti and a massive array of other designer labels. I cannot think of any other country I have visited in the wrold where you can go from running the risk of being robbed by an armed thief to being robbed by an overpriced Italian fashion house for the price of an 8-pence bus ticket.

Guatemala feels like a country that is slowly on the up, but I am told this is being hampered by corruption at all levels of goverment. Having read myself in the newspaper about the murder of a high-profile lawyer that had spoken out against the political establishment, and indeed filed a videotape of himself forecasting his demise at the hands of the prime ministers cohorts just weeks before he was assassinated, Anajose also explained that hundreds of millions of public money had gone missing in recent years, and that the political elite were lining their own pockets with money that should have been improving the lives of guatamaltecos. She was not optimistic of change, as apparently the politicians curry facour with the poor by giving them cash handouts and other sweeteners in exchange for their votes at election time.

Of course, the common denominator in Guatemala has of course again been the people, who have always been friendly and helpful. From the many locals that have helped me get from A to B on the chicken buses (including a man that left his pizza dinner to walk three blocks with me to show me where to catch my next bus), to Anajose giving up her Friday evening and Saturday morning to show me around her city to the old lady that offered a complete stranger her spare room, the Guatamaltecos have been accommodating and patient with a extranjero who is a lot better at asking questions than he is at understanding their detailed responses.

Climbing an active volcano and looking out over a lush jungle canopy at ancient Mayan ruins are the obvious highlights of my time in Guate so far, however the chicken buses of Guatemala City are also an experience I will fondly remember. Sometimes it seemed that every passenger on the bus knew where the extranjero was trying to get to within a few minutes of me getting on the bus, such was the frequency of people that I had not spoken to coming up and tapping me on the shoulder to tell me what bus I needed to catch and where.

The wind of change can already be felt on the capital's transport system, and although an underground train system can apparently not be build because the government have "lost" the plans to the city, a new system of modern green bendy buses have already arrived on one route through the city. Personally, I preferred travelling on the antiquated chicken buses, with their conductors that insist all passengers under the age of 90 jump onto the bus whilst it continues moving down the street, and its drivers that generously refund the QZ 1 (8 pence) fare to extranjeros that have foolishly got on the wrong bus.

I have only scratched the surface of Guatamala during my brief time in the country this month, and although I will see more of it in June when I return for a few weeks of Spanish classes, it is obvious that there is a lot more to see. Whereas I am probably unlikely to return to Belize or Cuba or indeed Mexico after I leave there in a fortnights time, I could definitely see myself revisiting Guatemala again in the future.

POLLO CAMPERO

Whilst out in Zona 10 yesterday evening with Anajose, she gave me a few recommendations for traditional Guatemalan food that I should try whilst in her country, such as tamales, chuchitos, rellenitos and hilachas. As a last resort, Anajose also suggested a visit to Pollo Campero, a Guatemalan fast food chain that had apparently chased KFC out of the country a few years previously with its superior fried chicken products. I will give you one guess as to what last resort I headed straight towards this evening.

Having not been a fan of Colonel Sanders and his greasy chicken for several years following an unsavoury incident one night in Central London when a friend was served only 9 nuggets in his 10 nugget KFC bucket, I am pleased to report that a Pollo Campero chicken sandwich plus a side order of two pieces of breadcrumbed chicken really hits the finger-lickin’ spot.

With its ambient local atmosphere, metal cutlery and friendly waitresses eager to seat and serve everyone except for keen first-time extranjeros that march straight up to the kitchen counter in their search for chicken wings, Pollo Campero is almost certainly a place I will revist during my Latin American travels, whenever all other dining avenues have been exhausted and I am in need of resorting to a last resort.

 

FOOTBALL STICKER OUTRAGE IN GUATEMALA CITY

I will never forget the boyhood excitement of coming out of a newsagent with an unopened packet of Panini football stickers that I had just purchased tightly gripped in my hand, or indeed the absolute elation of actually completing the sticker album, normally after months of pocket money spent, weeks of tense negotiations swapping doubles in the school playground, and frantic minutes of risking permanent injury amidst the chaotic stampede of a sticker scramble, when someone else that had recently completed their album threw all their stickers in the air in the school playground for everyone else to fight over.

Imagine my disappointment therefore, to today discover that here in Guatemala City, it is possible to buy the 2010 South Africa World Cup Panini sticker album with all the stickers already in it, or, for those that enjoy peeling the backs off stickers, an empty album plus a box of stickers that the woman guaranteed would give me all the stickers to complete the album for Q 412, approximately GBP 30.

I wouldn´t be over-exaggerating if I say I felt bitterly cheated to find out that it is possible to complete the sticker album in such an underhand manner in Guatemala this afternoon, and indeed that the whole episode has left me with a sour taste in my mouth that might only be removed by several bottles of Gallo beer with a girl called Anajose this evening.

 

CHEAP DIGS IN GUATEMALA CITY

When the chicken bus from Antigua made its final stop in the outskirts of Guatemala City, a crowd of locals gathered to help give directions to the extranjero that had done no hotel research and didn´t know where he was wanting to go.

Three women heading in the direction of where I neede to catch another chicken bus into the city center said I could follow them, which I did. A few calles and avenidas later, an offer came out of the blue by the oldest of the women that I could stay in her casa.

- 'Es major que un hotel. Y mas barato.' she promised.

- 'Cuanto es?' I replied immediately, my interest already piqued at the unexpected opportunity at a cheap ho'mestay for my time in Guatemala´s capital.

- 'Veinte dollars cada noche.' the woman mumbled, in an unsure voice that indicated she had not given much thought to this aspect of the transaction when making her original invitation, and also that suggested to me that I was probably the first extranjero she had met at the chicken bus stop and invited back to sleep in her spare room.

That said, 20 US dollars was certainly not mucho mas barata than a hotel, and indeed was more than I actually wanted to pay for a hotel room if I could possible avoid it. - 'No tengo mucho dinero.' I reminded the old woman quietly.

- 'Triente-cinco quetzals cada noche'. the old woman revised the cost of her spare room, and changing to local currency for the benefit of a poor extranjero from Scotland.

35 quetzales is about GBP 2.80, which as well as being a fairly sizable reduction from her original offer, is almost certainly the cheapest room I am likely to sleep in during my travels in the Americas. - 'Esta bien.' I told her quickly, trying not to smirk.

My hostesses name is Doña Luz and although her house in Zona 5, an 8 pence bus journey from the city center is no Ritz Carlton, I haven´t seen a cockroach yet. If I leave for Mexico on Monday in one piece and with all my luggage still in my possession, Senora Luz is likely to be on the receiving end of a warm hug and a generous tip.