A RUSTY OLD FERRIS WHEEL IN SAN PEDRO

Not recolouring my underpants whilst climbing the chain ladders at the top of Half Dome in Yosemite a fortnight ago might have convinced me that I had finally conquered my lifelong pathological fear of heights, but in the end, all it took was an antiquated Ferris wheel at San Pedro Feria to confirm that in fact, I haven't.

The rain had cleared on Tuesday evening and I was wandering amongst the stalls at the Feria watching locals eat candy floss and lose their money trying to throw coins into miniscule metal rings in the hope their dinero would land without touching the sides, when Augustin, the oldest of the brothers at my homestay was suddenly standing next to me in the street. - Quieres invitarme en la Ferris? he raised an eyebrow. As I pulled out my wallet, his younger brother Beto magically appeared beside us.

It was only after I had bought our tickets and the three of us had been locked into our seats by the flimsiest of metal bars and we had started moving skywards that I first noticed the rust on the Ferris wheel structure. And the circular holes on some of the spokes of the wheel where large screws or bolts would have seemed much more appropriate.

An anxious thought immediately crossed my mind: Was there likely to be strict fairground safety guidelines in Guatemala that the owners of a 35-pence a ride Ferris Wheel had to adhere to? The colour started to drain from my face. My legs began to turn to jelly. As I started to recall all the times I had heard on the news about fairground rides in the UK collapsing and people plummeting to their deaths, my stomach also began to revisit the queasy sensation of last Friday at 4AM.

Not wanting to alarm the two young boys I was currently dangling 40 feet in the air with, I decided to keep my concerns to myself. Not that there would have been much point in sharing them anyway, as Augustin was too busy showing me he could do the entire ride no handed (the Ferris wheel owner had just given me into trouble for gripping tightly onto one of the main Ferris wheel spokes), whilst his brother Beto was trying to show me how easy it was for him to get his legs out from beneath the safety bar.

As the ride progressed, and the Ferris wheel rotated forwards and backwards at a sickeningly high speed:rust ratio, I almost developed a casual ambivalence to falling from a great height to my death that Tuesday evening. Until the wheel stopped with the three of us at its very highest point and it started pouring with rain again and I just wanted off the sodding thing. I don't think I will ever cure my fear of heights, and I don't think I will ever go on a Guatemalan Ferris wheel again.




Footnote: When I went for breakfast this morning, my homestay host Rosa cheerfully told me that her sons had informed her when they got back from the Feria that the extranjero was scared on the Ferris Wheel.

A TROPICAL STORM IN SAN PEDRO

I remember three things from my childhood about Strathaven Gala Day. One, schoolchildren on floats (lorries in fancy dress) caused riots by throwing sweets into the watching crowd. Two, a school friend vomited on my lap one year whilst we were on the Octopus fairground ride. And three, it mostly rained.

San Pedro’s annual Feria is taking place this week, and mostly it has rained.
 

I feel really sorry for the local businessmen that have set up food stalls, a ferris wheel and other fairground amusements in the streets, as unfortunately the three inches of rain water flowing freely through everything in the town has largely dampened the party atmosphere. Almost everyone has a dejected look on their face, as they tiptoe through puddles and peer out from underneath their umbrellas. Earlier, I walked past a corn on the cob vendor with his head in his hands, looking like he was crying. And for me personally, the only light entertainment in the last few days of walking about San Pedro in wet jeans and trainers happened today, when I watched the four year old boy at my homestay pick the crisps back up that he had just dropped in a large puddle to eat them, because he reasoned they hadn’t actually touched the ground.

Felipe my homestay host tells me that it rains every year during the Feria, and it should hardly be a surprise to the depressed corn on the cob merchant given June is right in the middle of Guatemala’s rainy season. This years Feria in San Pedro also coincides with tropical storm Alex, which I am informed by a friend has already killed 10 people in Central America and is due to reach hurricane strength later on today.

Last night as the wind howled and the noise of the rain battering off my corrugated-iron bedroom room sounded like a eighties heavy metal drummer in a bad mood, I suddenly woke up in a cold sweat. If a large branch could fall onto my bedroom roof when there was no wind whatsoever, could the entire avocado tree not fall into my bedroom at any minute during a tropical storm?

A LARGE FALLEN BRANCH IN SAN PEDRO

Since I arrived in San Pedro last week, my sleep has been interrupted each night by the sudden loud bangs of avocados falling from the tree beside my homestay onto my corrugated-iron bedroom roof. However during the violent storm that has continued to brew this Sunday afternoon, there was an enormous bang above my head as I studied the past tenses of Spanish verbs, a noise that I immediately realised was too loud to be even a prize-winning, Guinness Book of Record qualifying Guatemalan avocado.

Subsequent investigation by my hostess Rosa and myself confirmed that a large branch had fallen from the avocado tree, mishaping the roof and guttering outside my bedroom.With Felipe away and the other four men of the house too busy colouring in cartoon characters, it was therefore up to the extranjero guest of the house to step in, extricate the branch from the roof and then come up with an engineering solution that would minimise the leaking of rainwater from the damaged guttering onto the muddy lake that has already formed on Rosa's vegetable patch since the rain began.

I shouldn't joke as Rosa was visibly upset by the permanent damage that has been done to her crop of vegetables, but personally I think my four years of electrical and mechanical engineering at University did me proud in the subsequent feat of engineering that I put in place to limit further damage. I have as yet been unable to take a good photograph due to the significant risk of coming across as a heartless extranjero pig, but to describe my solution's basic essence in words: I used a spare sheet of corrugated metal to siphon the rainwater flooding from the broken roof guttering away from Rosa's vegetable patch.....and onto a neighbours garden.

 the scene before my feat of engineering but after my extrication

THE CARTOONIST OF SAN PEDRO

The four young sons of my homestay hosts Rosa and Felipe have largely left me to my own devices during my first week in San Pedro, except when the youngest (Jose – 4) kindly escorted me to the local shop on Friday whilst I was still in a weakened post-vomitus state, to make sure I bought him a biscuit.

This all changed abruptly yesterday when Juan (7) discovered I can draw funny pictures. I am now the resident cartoonist for Juan, Jose and their elder brothers Beto (9) and Augustin (11), and have spent a large part of my weekend taking requests to draw cartoon characters.

I have yet to have either of their much older (and both breastfeeding) sisters knock on my bedroom door to ask if I can draw them a Garfield, but perhaps this will change in the coming days as news of the extranjeros mediocre artistic talents spreads.

HEAVY RAIN IN SAN PEDRO

When it rains in Guatemala, it really, really rains.

All through last night, the rain lashed off the corrugated iron roof above my bedroom, and when I got up at 7AM this morning to watch the footy at a local pub, the vegetable patch at my homestay was a lake of mud, and the streets a river of water as the rain flowed like Grade 5 rapids down through the town of San Pedro towards Lago Atitlan. 

I hurried through the pouring rain to a bar where England versus Ze Germans was showing, past several Guatamalteco´s lamenting the bad timing of the bad weather (this week is the San Pedro feria, the local equivalent of Strathaven Gala Day), and past a dead frog whose fatal injuries looked to be less likely caused by drowning, and more likely by a tuk tuk wheel.

The game kicked off at 08:00. At 07:58, the electricity went off in Bar Playa and the surrounding neighbourhood, and I started cursing more than just my soaking wet jeans and trainers. At 08:10, the bar owner got a text message that Bar Budha still had electricity and Ze Germans were 1-0 up. At 08:10:01, I hoofed it through the still torrential rain to Bar Budha, arriving to find Ze Germans 2-0 up.

Its now 11:06 and Ze Germans have won 4-1 and I bet the English are already bleating about Lampard´s non-goal being the turning point in the match. It´s still raining heavily, my jeans are soaking and I bet my damp trainers stink tomorrow, and the locals are talking about a possible hurricane if the wind picks up today. But I don´t care, as England are out of the World Cup and that is all that matters.

A BAG OF SICK IN SAN PEDRO

Perhaps I was too critical of Laura the annoying American and her complaints about the local food. This morning I had my first bout of sickness in three months of travelling, and the queasy stomach, rapid-fire diarrhea and vomitus that I suffered can only have originated from something I ate at my Guatetmalan homestay.

It all started around 4AM, when I awoke with an aching stomach and an inability to get back to sleep. Thirty minutes later, I was bent double over an empty polythene bag in the corner of my bedroom (my dirty washing bag - fortunately I did my laundry yesterday), puking for Escocia.

Afterwards, I did manage to fall back asleep, but woke again around 7AM with similar pains in my stomach, this time managing to reach the bathroom before throwing up again. The following hours were spent in a miserable wretching hell in the toilet and in the poly bag in my room; I was so ill I didn´t even watch the Brazil Portugal match that I had been looking forward to, nor did I go to my Spanish classes in the afternoon, a particular shame as Clarita my Spanish teacher had been planning to give me an exam.

Naturally, Rosa and Felipe my homestay hosts have been understanding towards the extranjero with the weak stomach, giving me some plain boiled rice for lunch, and helping to extricate the polythene bag full of sick from my bedroom this afternoon. There is no formal refuse collection in San Pedro, so I am not quite sure where Felipe was going to dump my bag of sick, but I just hope he realised there were a few holes in the polythene before he got too far.

AN OVERACTIVE TRAVELLERS MIND

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.

LAURA THE ANNOYING AMERICAN IN SAN PEDRO

The American girl that has been staying in the same homestay as me this week moved out today, and I cannot say I am sorry to see her go. Even in the short three days that I have got to know Laura during our brief conversations at the kitchen table in our homestay and between classes at Spanish school, she has struck me as yet another irritating, self-absorbed 'estadosunidense' that thinks they are/know better than everyone else.

During our first meal together at the homestay on Monday, she informed me loudly in front of our Guatemalan hosts that she had had a couple of upset stomachs since arriving in San Pedro, and that I had better watch out what I ate at the homestay. Today, I watched her screw her face up as she picked at her lunch, and wondered if she realised that Rosa, our hostess, was almost certainly watching her too.

This afternoon, Laura moves into a hotel for the remaining days of her time in San Pedro, claiming she "wants a better view of Lago Atitlan" for her last days in in Guatemala. Good riddance is what I say. As far as I am concerned, if you are going to complain about the food (this lunchtime she didn't like the sauce), the weather (Tikal was too hot for her) and the places you visit (Antigua was apparently "too gringo") when you visit a foreign country, its probably best if you just stay at home.


Laura, if you are reading this:- PISS OFF. And just incase you are wondering , yes, the email address I gave you for when you come to Scotland next year was indeed made up.

MOZZIES IN GUATEMALA

Yesterday evening I almost decided it was time to start taking my daily regimen of Malarone anti-malarial tablets, around the same time as the fiftieth mosquito of the evening dive-bombed me as I sat bare-armed in an internet cafe. However today, my Spanish teacher Clarita has advised me that San Pedro is not actually a malaria-risk area, something I confirmed myself later on the Internet.

Given mouth sores, vomiting and stomach pains are just a few of the many side-effects that I may well start to suffer when I start taking my anti-malarials, I have decided to hang fire a little longer and hope that the headache caused by the homework Clarita sets me each day is not exacerbated by a deadly swelling of the brain caused by the bite of an infected mozzie.

HOMEWORK IN SAN PEDRO, GUATEMALA

My teacher at the Cooperative of Guatemalan Spanish Teachers in San Pedro is called Clarita, and she clearly isn´t going to take any nonsense from students with sore throats and runny noses resulting from too many late nights and strawberry dacquaris in smoky Las Vegas casinos - I already have to write twenty sentences and learn lots of vocabulary that I made the mistake of admitting I didn´t know as homework for my professora tomorrow.

Homework aside, I think my time in San Pedro studying Spanish is going to work out perfectly, particularly since I have organised my classes for the afternoons so I can spent my mornings watching all the remaining World Cup football matches. In fact, I am already thinking about extending my fortnight in San Pedro to a month, as at USD 150 a week for spanish classes plus homestay accommodation and all meals, it works out significantly cheaper than travelling, particularly when I do not have the anticipated large windfall from the Pai Gow tables of Las Vegas to fall back on as dinero gets tighter in the coming months. Heck, I may even learn some Spanish whilst I am here in San Pedro, as long as I steer clear of the many Australians that seem to be gathered in this neck of the woods/jungle of Guatemala.

Asides from falling in with English-speakers, the only real danger I foresee during my time in San Pedro is the risk of mountain landslides. Clarita told me during todays lesson that her own mother had a narrow escape in a derrumbe a few weeks ago, in which a neighbouring child lost her life, and her mother lost her kitchen. 

Hearing about this did not surprise me, as the muddy scars of landslides are visible on all the steep mountains around Lago Atitlan, as were the rocks and rivers of water covering many of the mountain roads that I travelled on in the minibus, Toyota pickup truck and motorised three-wheel tuk tuk that took me the last few miles on my journey into San Pedro yesterday.

It has not rained at all since I arrived yesterday, however if I am destined to down in a muddy Guatemalan landslide during my time here, I do hope it happens before I have spent numerous hours doing my Spanish homework.

San Pedro, one month after Tormenta Agatha

A PIDGEON IN COLOMBIA

A LONG JOURNEY FROM LAS VEGAS TO SAN PEDRO, GUATE

The journey from Las Vegas south to San Pedro in Guatemala was always going to be arduous, even with a good nights sleep the night before. As it was, I had no sleep, a hangover from drinking about 30 drinks during the previous 24 hours, and the remnants of a cold that have stuck with me since three weeks ago in Chihuahua, Mexico.

It took two flights (Sin City to Houston to Guatemala City), one shared taxi ride from GC Airport to Antigua, a chicken bus from Antigua to Chimaltenango, another chicken bus from there to a main road in the middle of nowhere where I was dumped unceremoniously with no clue as to what I was supposed to do next, a cooperativo (minibus) to Santa Clara, followed by a 15 minute ride standing up in the back of a Toyota pickup truck to somewhere called San Pablo or San Juan or San Something else - by this time I didn´t give a crap and was starting to suspect Guatemala´s public transport operators were conspiring to fleece me for all my quetzales I had in my wallet before I finally arrived in San Pedro.

As it was, the three-wheeler motorised tuk tuk that I got from San Whateveritwas did finally get me to San Pedro on the banks of Lago Atitlan, albeit after the driver tool several corners around high mountainside roads on two wheels whilst picking his nose with one hand, and after I had a small argument with him for suggesting I should pay double the original agreed price because of the weight of my rucksack on the suspension of his tuk tuk.

24 hours since I played my last hand of Pai Gow poker and 48 hours since I last slept, I have finally arrived at the house of Rosa, Filipe and their breastfeeding teen daughter and other younger children, my homestay for the next fortnight. Its 17:40 on Sunday and my first class at a nearby Spanish school doesn´t start until 14:00 tomorrow, however I already have a fairly good idea on what I will be doing for the next 16 - 20 hours, and that it will largely involve staring at the insides of my eyelids whilst snoring.

REFLECTIONS ON THE USA AS I HEAD BACK TO GUATEMALA

The USA seems to have visited a tattoo parlour since my last visit, and McDonalds seems to be on a general decline if various unsuccessful searches in San Francisco and the airports I visited are anything to go by. But asides from almost everyone having ink on some part of their body and a lack of Golden Arches whenever I most needed one, nothing has really changed in America, it never really does. The car is still king (especially if its got 4WD and is the size of a bus), and America is still a country I would like a lot more if some of the Americans that live in it did not live in it.

The US does a lot of things extremely well (maintaining its National Parks, providing free soft drink refills and selling petrol at an acceptable price being a few examples), but they also do a lot of things not quite so well, like breeding a lot of people with an artifically inflated level of self-confidence for example. 

That said, I think I will still be back in the States again fairly soon, if not only because a lot of new casinos have sprung up in Las Vegas (... since the US economic crisis begun) - and we did not get time to visit any of them during this vacation due to pressing matters on the Pai Gow tables of the previously visited, tried and tested Bills Gamblin´ Saloon.

HALF DOME HIKE, YOSEMITE, USA

9 hours, 17.5 miles and a spare pair of underpants needed for the final ladder ascent ....

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK

LAKE TAHOE, USA

LOTUS, CA : A CAMPFIRE, VODKA, BEERS AND AN UPSIDE DOWN TENT)

SAN FRANCISCO, USA

AN INTERESTING FIRST HOUR IN SAN FRANCISCO

Within one hour of arriving in San Francisco after 2 days sitting on buses and in bus stations, I have already been offered acid and cocaine by a 'beggar' trying to rustle up the money for a bus ticket to Oklahoma, been given a leaflet on how to relieve stress by a Jehovah Witness, and been asked if European men have big appendages by a gay Mexican called Harry.

Harry sits down next to me as I wait outside the European Guest House, the cheap hotel in a seedy part of San Fran that my friends have booked us into for our brief time in Frisco. Its 07:30 in the morning and although the hotel doesn't open until 09:00, its not too early for Harry to offer me "crystal" and tell me I have nice blue eyes.

Quickly switching to Spanish to inform Harry that I used to have a Spanish girlfriend and that I met some beautiful Mexican girls whilst I was in his country, he seems to get the message and so instead explains that he has lived in the US for 5 years, got political asylum from Mexico for a reason I didn't quite understand but related to homophobia, and that he only smokes crystal meth during sex.

Not long after this, the hotel opens, and so I dump my rucksack in reception and tell them I will be back at 11:30 to check into the room and get some sleep whilst I wait for my friends, wave a sad goodbye to Harry, and quickly head to a nearby Chinese restaurant to have an English breakfast.



Footnote: For the benefit of any Irish readership that I may have on my blog, I can confirm that my L&M breakfast came with with fried and not boiled potatos.

GOD BLESS GREYHOUND

I grew to hate Greyhound when I travelled around the US in 2002. It only takes me 15 minutes at Los Angeles Greyhound bus station in 2010 before I begin to dislike them again.

A greyhound employee in an orange jacket tells me I need to speak to someone in a yellow jacket when I ask for some simple directions. The employee in the yellow jacket I subsequently speak to points right when he actually means for me to go left.

Greyhound want to charge me $24 to leave my rucksack in storage with them until I leave San Francisco this evening. Their internet access point costs 25 cents a minute, or at $14 dollars an hour, a more expensive world wide web experience than the extortionaly priced, but third-world, Cuba.

I suddenly notice that there is always a Western Union office in or nearby to every Greyhound bus station, and I realise this is probably so Greyhound staff can quickly wire all monies received to a locked down corporate bank account before passengers on their buses realise just how badly the've been ripped off and started demanding a redunf.

The people that travel by Greyhound are even worse, making the bus stations a hotbed of the worse down-and-outs and out-and-out degenerates that US society has to offer. Everywhere I turn ius a reminder that somewhere down the line the American Dream turned sour for a whole bunch of people.

There is the stony-faced Latino sitting nearby that is somehow defying all laws of gravity by wearing the waist of his jeans just above his knees, but without his jeans falling around his ankles. There is the 50+ years old afroamerican woman that keeps walking past in high heels, that is somehow defying all laws of gravity to keep her cleavage inside a low cut top more suited to someone half her age. There is the drugged up redneck that is asking everyone in the station if they have a cell phone that he can borrow to call an emergency aid travel agency company that will help him get home for free as he is stranded in LA with no money, but extremely dilated pupils.

Everybody in the bus station seems to have a story. Everybody seems to have a tattoo or walk with a limp. One fat American that walks past me has neither, bvut he does have a mullet haircut and a mobile phone hands freee kit that would seem to be more suited to the chief of communications at NASA, Cape Canaveral.

A few hours later, the redneck walks past again, this time talking to himself as his face twitches as if he's on crack. An afroamerican walks the other way shortly afterwards, a large comb sticking out his afro hair. GOD BLESS AMERICA I think to myself quietly as another afroamerican, ths one sucking on a piece of greasy barbecued chicken, walks past me in a bandana and shiny trainers. He's got tattoos on both arms, and walking with a limp.

THE GREAT AMERICAN BUS JOURNEY

EL PASO > TUCSON > PHOENIX > LOS ANGELES > SAN FRANCISCO

36 hours of miserable broken sleep and tediously boring layovers. 1000+ miles of uncomfortable travel on Greyhound buses that have less seat comfort and legroom than any of the much cheaper bus journeys I have made in Mexico and Central America so far.

My only entertainment during the arduous journey is watching ordinary Americans going about their daily lives. I spend most of my time trying to work out what passengers are genuinely disabled and which ones are just trying to walk like an L.A gangbanger, and taking enjoyment from watching some class-act trying to get some shut-eye on the metal seating in the Greyhound bus station, in what at least to me, appears to be a rather uncomfortable sleeping position.

My only blessing during the arduous journet is the GBP 5 woolen Mexican poncho that I bought in Chiapas. I get two seats to myself all the way from El Paso to Los Angeles because no Gringo getting on the bus wants to sit next to the bleary-eyed, bad-tempered Mexican.

WELCOME TO THE GOOD OL' USA

I am only in the United States for one hour when the country already begins to annoy me. Surprisingly, it happens before someone with a big smile has said 'how y'all doing today?', before I see a star spangled banner flying from somebody's house, and indeed before I have had to heave my rucksack through a pedestrian-unfriendly city with piss-poor public transport.

My first 60 minutes in the US are spent in a long queue of Mexicans waiting to get 'permiso' to enter the country and be a part of the American Dream. There are 15 windows at the US Immigration desk at the border point between Ciudade De Juarez, Chihuaha and El Paso, Texas, but only one extremely bored looking official sitting behind them, or two if you count the similarly uniformed woman that appears to be doing nothing except combing her hair.

My second hour in the US is spent slowly moving up the same queue of Mexicans, the bored offical seemingly disappearing on a toilet break between motioning forward each Mexican wanting to enter the country to his window. As I sit impatiently waiting my turn, I am already suspecting his weak bladder is part of a deliberate US Immigration and Homeland Security policy of delay tactics, to make it so excruciatingly slow and frustrating to enter the US from the south that Mexicans decide to stay in their own country instead.

After two and a bit hours of waiting, I do eventually get to the front of the queue, and the US immigration offical immediately becomes overly polite and friendly when I pass him my British passport. Unfortunately for him and his country, it is too late for jokes about the upcoming football (not soccer) world cup. The damage has already been done. My general distaste for most things American has already been refreshed in my head.

When I finally walk onto US soil with my freshly-stamped green visa waiver, further damage is done, this time to the wallet of a Scotsman travelling on a shoestring budget. My *&%$# bus that I was travelling on from Chihuahua has departed for El Paso bus station without me, because I have taken so long to clear US immigrations.

I grab a taxi, grit my teeth and curse the land of the free.

REFLECTIONS OF MEXICO, ON THE BUS TO EL PASO, TEXAS

Two people were killed in a shooting in Chihuahua yesterday. It was on the television news this morning along with the rest of yesterdays headlines, namely a shooting in Tijuana, a double shooting in Morelia, and of course, the obligatory multiple shootings that happen every day in Ciudade De Juarez.

I asked a guy at the bar in my hotel in downtown Chihuahua the other night if he thought things would change in Mexico in the future, and he shook his head and said not unless the politicians change their ways. He told me that the Mexican government needed to lead by example, but that the example they were currently setting was one of greet and corruption. Everybody I have have asked a similar question to during my travels in Mexico has given me a similar response. The girl I did a road-trip with in Chihuahua told me during our car journey that the biggest traitor in Mexico's history was probably the president that sold California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico to the USA for a song in the 1800's for his personal gain. Last night on CNN Espanol was the news that the mayor of Cancun had been arrested on charges of money laundering and drug trafficking. Mexico's politicians definitely need to change.

As my bus passes through heavy traffic in Ciudade de Juarez on its way to the US border at El Paso, Texas, I count the number of four-wheel drive police trucks with armed soldiers standing in the back, and consider the irony that it is the US that buys the drugs that creates the drug market in Mexico, the US that sells Mexico the guns that arm the gangs fighting for market share, and that it is the US that thumbs its nose up at any suggestions from Latin America that its neighbours gang problems is anything other than Mexico's own internal problem to sort out.

I never felt particularly unstace whilst travelling in Mexico, although in Chihuahua it was definitely at the back of my mind that I could end up with a bullet in the back of my head if I was unlucky or stupid or both.

Ironically the police presence in North Mexico was actually a lot less than I saw elsewhere in the country, however like everywhere else, most of them covered their faces with black masks, presumably an attempt to avoid reprisal attacks if they had the audacity to arrest a gang member for doing something wrong. I myself started to suffer the consequences of the fear of reprisal attachs during my last few days in Chihuahua. The other nigh, it took me almost 15 minutes to be servered at an empty bar because none of the bar staff would look at me. Whilst growing thirsty, I reached the conclusion that the reason nobody ever makes eye contact with me in Mexico is so they can truthfully tell the police they have never seen me before if they are 'witnesses' to me being kidnapped or murdered.

Putting the miniscule risk of danger aside, I've had a fantastic time in Mexico, and thoroughly enjoyed myself here. Fron the natural beauty of the Yucatan peninsula and its reefs and cenotes that I dived in to its ancient man-made wonders at Tulum, Chichen Itza and Teohuacan, from its spectacular landscapes in Chihuahua that matched anything I have seen elsewhere around the world to the massive man-made wonder that is Mexico City, Mexico has a lot to offer.

More than anything, I've enjoyed meeting the many Mexican people I have met along the way. Friendly and welcoming, they all quickly helped dismantle any unfair stereotypes I previously had in my head about Mexico and its people, and ultimately left me wishing I had more time to spend in the country.

Unfortunately I don't have more time, as time is short and I have already been in Mecxico for a lot longer than I originally intended, and so now I head north to San Francisco for the next leg of my journey through the Americas.

PONDERING EXPENSIVE BRITAIN AS I LEAVE INEXPENSIVE MEXICO

Why does it cost me 15 pence for a single journey on the Mexico City metro, yet around GBP 3.00 for a similar journey on the London Underground? Why does a long distance coach journey through Mexico cost me half the price for infinitely more travel comfort than I would ever expect on National Express. Why does a visit to Mexico´s Cinepolis cost me a third of the price that going to a Vue cinema in Britain would cost me, for infinitely more comfort and popcorn that actually tastes like popcorn.

Why is Britain so expensive?

Is it because we get paid too much, or do we get paid so much because its so expensive to live? Are we inefficient in Britain? Or do we overvalue ourselves and the work that we do? Why is McDonalds one of the few things that I have found is actually similarly priced here in Mexico as it costs back home in Britain?

Answer = because of that thieving swine, Ronald McDonald.