So, one week left to
go. My plan to gently cruise through central America over the course
of a few months has gone to shit and I now have to cross eight
countries in seven days. Should be a nice relaxing last week. My
journey will take me from the capital of Nicaragua through Honduras,
El Salvador, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, Germany and then the UK. It
is by no means going to be pleasant, but for some reason it is not
bothering me in the slightest. I guess it is because I am looking
forward to coming back to the UK, and the journey ahead just feels
like the final effort for the reward of getting back to see everyone
that I have missed for so long. This trip has undoubtedly been the
best times that I have had in recent memory, but it kind of grinds
you down after a while. My health is declining to third world
standards and I have been unable to shake off a chest infection for
almost two weeks now. People probably expect that I am dreading
coming home, but I am not. I can't wait to get back and I am now
facing a bit of a race against the clock to make my flight in time.
By my calculations I need five days and a half days of constant day
travel to make it to Cancun from Managua. The highways are a bit
sketchy in some of these countries and a few of the routes are
bandito territory, so there are no night buses. This is a bit of a
shitter, as I am really going to have to be on my A game to make some
of these optimistic connections. They are all long journeys and
therefore the last departure time for most of them are early
afternoon. This means that I have to catch absurdly early buses 5am
tomorrow and then arrive in a capital with around thirty minutes to
find the next bus terminal and get myself on the bus. If I miss the
connection then it could set me back an entire day. This is of mild
concern, as I need to be in Cancun by 23rd, and tomorrow
the 17th begins my journey. I am not quite sure how I got
myself into this mess, but I am pretty sure that repeatedly missing
the ferry off Ometepe was largely similar to the Gili Islands last
year, where I missed the boat Bali about six days in a row. I was
with people who I liked a lot and I did not want to leave.
But the Nicaragua is
only half of the story, I felt like I did a genuine tour of duty in a
month in Puerto Viejo. The place was like a vortex and is one of the
most fucked up places that I have ever been in my life. Predictably
the best story that I can tell to sum it up was also the most
terrifying experience that I have had whilst travelling. The hostel
that I was staying at was sort of a group of cabina's that were
within a fenced compound just off the beach, most of the site being
outdoors (sort of like a campsite with a few buildings scattered
around). It was the same hostel that I had been at for a few weeks by
this point, and I had got to know a number of the local guys quite
well. I had heard various things about the owner, a guy in a wheel
chair who lived almost opposite my cabina. but from what I had seen
in my first couple of weeks there he was nothing more to me than a
doting father who spent ninety percent of his time with his young
daughter sat on his lap. My initial assumptions about him was that he
had perhaps had a stroke, as he did not seem to have movement on one
side of his face. I got to know him a bit and what I found out later
came as a bit of a surprise, but I would be lying if I said it was
total shock. As an alleged player in the drug wars in those parts he
had shot and killed a rival gang leader some years before. As
retribution that shot him seven times, including once in the face,
landing him in a wheel chair for the rest of his life. Following his
recovery he was then sent to prison for murder. This took me by
surprise in the sense that he was such a nice guy, but I was aware
that shit was going on, it was hard to ignore. At all times of day
and night locals were comin'a'knockin and leaving again suspiciously
quickly... Anyway, so a few weeks in and I was sat doing some work in
the adjacent restaurant when I decided to pop back to my shack for a
cheeky joint. Literally two minutes after leaving the restaurant and
ten seconds after lighting the joint I start hearing people running
by the outside and then suddenly people were shouting police and
someone started hammering on my door. My anus pretty much imploded as
I stood there with smoke all around me and an eighth of bud sat
neatly right next to the door. I put it out and threw the joint and
the rest of the weed into a cigarette box and threw it as far as I
could under the bed. My heart felt like it was about to explode out
of my chest as I opened the door and was greeted by a man pointing a
gun towards me. Ho tidy I say's to meself.
So he ushers me out of
my shack and walks me over towards where they have begun rounding
everyone up on a bench that everyone eats around at night. I had
picked up a bottle of water on my way out to try and give myself any
kind of distraction, but I was so weak with fear that I could barely
lift it off the ground (in fairness it was a six litre vat of water).
So after being sat there for thirty minutes surrounded by around
twenty police officers wandering how much of a bumming that I was
going to get in prison they begin to pad us all down and send us back
out of the campsite towards the restaurant. As I passed my cabina I
opted to lock it back up and hope that they had already gone in there
and not found anything. It turns out that these guys were the Costa
Rican FBI and had been watching the owner for a while. But this
information only filtered through after two hours of pure fear sat at
the restaurant drinking straight rum hoping that this was not the end
for me.
So that was pretty
fucked up. They took away our hostel owner and the next day he called
the youngish guy on reception who I had been hanging around with a
bit. He was told that there was a rat at the hostel who had reported
him, and needless to say I was not keen on being involved in the rat
hunt, so a few of us decided that it was probably a good time to ship
out of that place and move on to Nicaragua (although as always, it
took about a week to actually mobilise ourselves). The longer we
spent in that town the more fucked up things we began to hear,
involving several rape and drugging stories (naïve teenagers mainly)
and also a rumour that a tourists head had been found on a beach –
although I am not sure if I believe any of this. This place is a
walking advert for the impact that tourism has on small coastal
communities like this. I have seen this same thing every place I have
been, beautiful picturesque settings and entire cultures destroyed by
travellers arriving with their money and behaviour that is entirely
inappropriate to the customs of the local natives. I recently read an
article about vang vieng in Laos, where I went tubing last year. This
place has been completely ravaged, and last year in the local
hospital alone (many get taken to the capital and aren't included in
the stats) twenty seven tourists died on the river as a result of
drunken / drug behaviour. The town has turned into ibiza and for a
culture that is offended by nudity the indigenous folk have to stand
by and watch half naked people wander around town drunk all day and
night being sick on the streets and generally fucking up what used to
be a stunning place.
The funny thing is that
despite everything that was fucked up about it I felt a real affinity
towards Puerto Viejo. Several times I felt like I should be moving
on, bearing in mind that when I got there I only had about seven
weeks to get up through six other countries to Cancun. However,
something kept me there. I felt like I should be “travelling”
more and seeing new places, but the more I learned about the place
the more interesting it became. There are a lot of people who seem to
go from place to place, spend a few days in each and then move on.
This is fine for short periods, but it wears me down. In Puerto Viejo
I learned so much about the people and what went on there that it
became intriguing. The receptionist guy told me about an
international gigolo who lives there, international drug smugglers
who had disappeared off the face of the earth (captain zero, famous
apparently), hostel co-operatives beating up local muggers,
mysterious geniuses gone insane and pretty much everything
in-between. I met a writer there who has three books published in
Spanish about the local black magic scene, sounds pretty fucked up.
Another day I was sat on a rock writing in my notepad and this black
dude walks over with a girl, and really awkwardly they sit really
close to me on either side and start reading what I am writing. I
recognised the bloke to be the one who had told me that he was a
“citizen of the earth” when I asked where he was from (he speaks
with an American accent). He started questioning me incessantly about
what I was writing and then told me that two days previous he had
started a conversation with an American woman in the same way and it
turned out that she had a current top ten New York best-sellers title
in the charts and had just sold the movie rights for it. Pretty cool.
What was not cool, not in any way, was what happened next. He told me
that he was a signer songwriter and the previously silent woman urged
him to sing me one of his songs. Get the guitar I thought to myself.
The next four minutes were hell. He sat about half a foot from my
face singing directly at my and I did not have a fucking clue what to
do with myself. After he finished I said it was good and encouraged
he pulled out his ipod and made me listen to the recorded version.
Some people. It turns out that he is actually in the charts in
Central America with this song, but I really wish that he did not
feel the need to sing his song in my face, it is a bit much.
When it came time to
leave I was sad to say goodbye to the place, but it was probably for
the best. I had been hanging out with a forest fire fighter from
Montana, a couple from Austria (the guy is called Bernhard Berger,
genuinely used to crank call a guy called Bernard Burger because of
his name) and an eighteen year old English girl who incredibly was
travelling on her own in Central America (I say incredibly because
personally I would not have had the guts to travel this area as an
eighteen year old). We were headed for Ometepe, Nicaguara, an island
in a huge lake formed by two active volcanoes. We had timed the
travelling to avoid moving during Easter, as the Latin American's
shut down everything over this period and basically go nuts for four
days. When we arrived we stayed the first night in some shitty hotel
where a squirrel took a piss on me, and on this basis we sought
somewhere better the next day. We found an awesome hostel where we
had three double beds in one room and two doubles in the other, along
with a massive private balcony running the length of the two rooms
(had our own floor of the hostel) overlooking the volcano.
The following day we
decided to rent 200cc motorbikes and explore the island. I have never
driven a motorbikes before, although I have driven several
semi-automatic mopeds which apart from the power were not that
different to operate. The only slight difference was that I had Katie
the English girl on the back of mine and I had not really driven that
much with a passenger before. We decided that we were going to drive
to a waterfall we had heard about, despite being warned about the
fact that you have to ride for over an hour on a very difficult dirt
track. I was a little apprehensive, and when we arrived I realised
that I had every reason to be. Jesus. I fell off within about thirty
meters, and Katie opted to ride with an Aussie lad who had come along
too and had a little bit more experience. As soon as I had her off
the back I turned into a bit of a maniac and actually really enjoyed
the buzz of scrambling up and down dirt paths over rocks and
boulders, I can see why neiler loves motocross after that. In total I
spent about ten days on that island, and I would have moved on sooner
to not make this journey so bad but we had such a great group of
people that it made it very difficult to leave. Every evening I said
was my last from about day four, so we would get pissed and then I'd
miss the ferry the next morning. But there was plenty to do and
plenty not to do, and I enjoyed both with equal measures. The hostel
itself gave plenty of reason to stay. It was a great set-up. As well
as being a hostel is was a animal rescue centre, and there were four
monkey's living out back. In addition to this there were wild deer
roaming around who would go into the monkey pen to get wanked off (no
shit). I tried wearing a pair of fake antlers to get involved but
they were having none of it....
 |
| Easy rider |
A few nights before
leaving we began to hear a few stories about the people that run it,
who are apparently part of some infamous cult on the island. People
were suggesting things about pedophilia and also someone reckoned
that their belief was that knowledge was spread through semen. A few
of the guests left upon hearing this but I did not feel anything was
really up with the place, although I did feel a bit smarter every
time I had extra mayo on my burger... It seems that when you stick
around a place long enough you always get to hear these funny little
stories about the people living there, and anyone considering
travelling I would definitely advise to spend more time in less
places than just go from place to place non-stop, it is a far more
rewarding / bizarre experience.
I will finish this
entry, very possibly my last of this trip by revisiting the month of
March, one that I had previously highlighted as being”important”
according to the weird mind reading guy. What was doubly weird was
that whilst at the hostel in Puerto Viejo I was telling a lad from
California about what happened, and he said he knows someone who this
happened to aswell. I was about to share my relief that it was
probably a con, but his story was even more bizarre. It happened to
this guy in India, same kind of thing, but then when he was in a bar
in Jakarta Indonesia some months later, a man approached him and said
“I have to speak to you, as I know my brother has been in contact
with you”. This guy had seen him in a bar and somehow sensed that
someone with similar abilities had spoken to this guy halfway across
the continent three or four months previous. Weird. So, what happened
in March? In addition to the two job offers from California I filled
an entire 180 page notebook with writing for my book, which has taken
me from a relatively early part of the story to being close(ish) to
completion. In addition to this I came up with an idea for an
entirely new book based upon Puerto Viejo, along with establishing
several key contacts within the town. I wrote a credible business
plan that I intend to peruse with a couple of mates when I get back.
And then finally I met a girl who is pretty much exactly the same as
a character that I was writing, but was previously struggling to
develop, and she has agreed to tell me her story to help me along.
This was an incredible stroke of fortune, which does not sound so
mind blowing but the circumstances of the meeting were fairly
unlikely and the links between her and the character are absolutely
undeniable. So was March an important month for me? Yes, I would say
so. Now I am ready to come home and start putting all of this into
action. I don't know whether this is it for me travelling, I doubt
it, but for the foreseeable future I am focused on concentrating on
real life issues, like caring for a big brave abandoned bulldog. I
actually wrote the first part of this blog yesterday and after a 4am
rise I have cleared Nicaragua, Honduras and I am currently sat in
some shithouse hotel in El Salvador, where random people on the
street seem to be walking around with guns. So provided I make it
through the night then I'll see you all soon...
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| Time for the hobo's return |
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