I left the next morning, spending the day on sorting out travel plans in Antigua, and ended up staying the night in my old haunt of Christmas, Los Amigos Hotel. Sure enough, in the bed next to mine was none other than Conor from the same episode. We had a few beers and recalled the old days, a month before, and how much things had changed(?). His friend Kaja thankfully breathed fresh life into our reminisces with stories of her work as an observer at the ongoing human-rights trials of the military for the disappearances and murders and tortures of the 1980s. Its not quite the ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ but it seems like a step in the right direction.
I left early and spent the following day doing some more chores and re-stocking in Guatemala City. Despite my familiarity with the place, I was still taking no chances after dark (nor, it seems, did any of its inhabitants) and was soundly locked up in my hotel room by 6pm. Thankfully, and possibly as a result of these curfews, even the cheapest hotel rooms in Guatemala City have TVs so I was spared an evening of actually reading one of the many heavy and impressive books I had been carrying around for so long.
As I was surfing the channels, watching Spanish MTV (did anybody know the Corrs have a single in Spanish?), Spanish CNN, Spanish Home Shopping Channel, I stumbled upon an old movie from the early 80s. As I surfed by, something twigged in my brain and so I returned to it. After a few more minutes watching it, I realised why it had twigged a memory. It’s title was ‘One of the Boys’ and was one of those coming of age movies that proliferated in that era. It certainly was a coming of age for my young mind as it was the first time that I recall seeing a woman’s breasts. This scene only takes a fraction of a second in an otherwise PG movie but I guess I had reached that time in my life when the sight triggered desires other than nutritional, that moment in a man’s life where he suddenly goes ‘holy guacamoley’ and other possibilities enter the mind. It was nice to revisit a moment that started a lifelong devotion to these most intriguing appendages. Unfortunately, the host being the Hallmark Channel, this particular scene had been edited out. Still, the memory lingered. Hmmmm…. you always remember your first time.
The excellent Canton restaurant was my host for lunch the next day – a strange mixture of excellent jazz music, fabulous Cantonese food and a 1960’s-diner-like décor (think Eddie Rockets mixed with Soup Plus mixed with Poons – especially if you have lived in any of the cities where these restaurants operate…). It also provides Chinese horoscope tablemats, in Spanish, which were an amusing diversion (apparently I would make a good spy, but not a leader). After lingering as long as I could in this lovely place, I finally had to make my way into the teeming crazy market, still masquerading as a bus station, for the bus to my final destination in Guatemala – the island of Las Lisas.
Before I get to that though, I should fill you in on Doctor Bill. I met Doctor Bill while I was in Todos Santos. I was sitting in a café there (sorry I really mean ‘the’ café there, as there is only one). I was pretending to do my Spanish homework, but actually eavesdropping on the conversation at a neighbouring table. An American guy was talking to the Israeli couple from my school about a therapeutic massage course that he runs down on the coast. I have always had interest in therapeutic massage, and having previously completed a course in Australia, I was always on the look-out for further training. He also explained that he was independently wealthy, having worked for 20 years in the US as a Chiropractor. He was further qualified as a tropical medicine specialist used the money gained from his massage students to pay for medicine. He then travelled in the highlands for months at a time treating the remote villagers who had no access to other medical care. He was at the end of one such trip when I met him in Todos Santos.
I was intrigued. But also a little cautious. There was something about the guy that made me slightly wary but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Perhaps that he volunteered so much information so quickly. He seemed, perhaps, a little smooth. I mentioned him to my classmates and Therese, the coordinator. All had heard of him or spoken to him and pretty much all of them had the same level of unease. But also the same level of interest.
In the end, Las Lisas was on my way, and there was a course starting, and I thought it would be worth investigating. I am glad I did. The four days that I had planned to stay there was extended and extended and eventually it was over two weeks later when I left.
Bill had run a course the previous week and almost all the participants from that course had stayed around. In fact, few of Bills students leave once the course is over, for many reasons. Bill is an interesting teacher, he has a fascinating library of books, he gives some provoking lectures in the evenings, not to mention the utter paradise that is Las Lisas and the space and time for reflection that is possible there. In fact some of Bills students stay for a very long time, some of them for months at a time. Lars, a German student, left the week that I arrived, having been there for 9 months.
The course itself was great. The method is a trigger-point therapy massage which was invented by a Dr Nimoe, a Japanese practitioner. The training was by watching demonstrations for a couple of days and then by several days of practice. It wasn’t intensive though, and the days were filled with other activities. Some of the other students had done the meditation retreats in San Marcos and others were reiki practitioners. Bill himself gave lectures in the evenings on other complementary therapies, on the reading and treatment of chakras, on crystals, reiki, shamenism and a host of other topics. On top of which he had a stock of books from classic self-analysis (e.g. ‘The Erroneous Zones’ and ‘The Road Less Travelled’) to cutting-edge theories at the x-file end of the spectrum (‘The Bible Code’ and ‘Approaching the Zero Point’).
My fellow students were equally absorbing. Hours and hours were spent talking to each other, practicing on each other, discussing, arguing, navel gazing and philosophising, not to mention drinking lots strawberry licuados. And all of this intellectual, spiritual and physical development was taking place in paradise.
Our hotel sat right on the beach and the large spacious balcony that we occupied faced due south across the achingly beautiful Pacific Ocean. The beach curled off on both sides as far as the eye could see, and so, uniquely in my experience, the sun rose over the ocean at one end of the beach and set, spectacularly, over the ocean at the other end. There were no other tourists, other than an influx of Guatemaltecos at the weekends. And when the heat of the day got too much the ocean was wild, and cool, and refreshing.
The days progressed at the rate of snails. Some whales passed by, the fishermen visited, the turtle sanctuary was two doors up. I spent hours watching the waves, large and numerous as they were, cutting each other off in a rip-tide in front of our hotel, almost as if they had forgotten their manners in their haste to kiss the sand. Pelicans patrolled the wave tops, flying in a strict single-line formation along the crescendo of the waves, always inches ahead of the white horses breaking loose. The waves reminded of a folding sheet. If you can imagine a wide sheet on a bed and two people folding it forward with a snap – the fold rolls from both sides towards the centre in a spiralled turn until all is, once more, flat and calm.
It was at this point, when the two spiralling ends meet in the middle that the pelicans would break off their patrol, gliding in a three dimensional S-shape, first ahead of the foam, then up, over and down behind to catch the next wave. Their wing-tips almost touched, almost caressed the wave-tops. In fact it seemed at times that the waves were rising to their touch and not the other way around. Their patrols lasted from dawn till dusk and not once did I see them dive out of formation to catch fish. In fact the only time they seemed to fish was when sitting on the calm ocean or following the fishing boats which passed a couple of times a day. Their wave-top flying seemed to be for the pure thrill of it. The thrill was mine.
Bill left us for a few days in the middle of my time there, to get his visa stamped at the border, and it was during this period that I got particularly close to the Karen, Jane and Dawn, the soon-to-be-dubbed Witches of Las Lisas. Due partly to my past life working in merchant banks etc., and my sceptical and questioning mind, it was soon decided that I was actually a spy, working for the CIA or some such agency of the capitalist empire. Every boat that came close to the shore, every helicoptor that passed overhead, was deemed to be my extraction mission. Oh how we laughed… I didn’t bond with the boys (Bill, Vanya & Ryver) as much as the girls, with the possible exception perhaps Lars, who was a gas man. I guess they weren’t around as much as the girls so I didn’t get to spend as much time with them. And in the days while Bill was away it was just me and the girls.
I would regard myself as having a healthy combination of open-mindedness and scepticism. The books I was reading, the conversations I was having were challenging both of these traits. I heard things I had never heard before, some of which seemed that they were right, as they fit into previous theories and previous truths. Some, on the other hand, went a little bit too further than my open mind could accept. For example, Bill maintains that AIDS is a creation of the CIA, that the pharmaceutical companies and medical industry are suppressing cures for everything from malaria to cancer, that he had, himself, cured somebody of cancer by ‘cursing it in the name of God’. Yet maintained that he wasn’t part of any church, not to mention that his own wife had passed away only a year before from cancer. He spoke about previous experiences of talking in tongues when presenting to foreign audiences, and yet his command of Spanish, despite 7 years in Guatemala, was pidgin at best. And there was much more.
But what he did create was a really precious and in some ways, sacred space for people to come and relax, to read and to listen, to learn and to grow. He was responsible for an atmosphere that attracted some of the most beautiful and loving and open souls that I have ever met. I learned as much from my fellow students as I did from the teacher. He provided a listening ear for those who were troubled, and some wise tales for those who were searching. This atmosphere, these people, this time was something that was difficult to leave behind.
And yet I was still torn between staying and going. Remaining in a comfort zone or setting out into the unknown, searching for the unknowable. This is a common theme of this trip. Perhaps a common theme of my life. Every evening, during our ritual observation of the spectacular sunsets, my resolve to leave the next day would dissolve as slowly but as surely as the spectrum of light gave way, colour by colour from white, through, red, orange, purple, and navy, to the darkness of the night. Such was the regularity and absorbing nature of the sunset, that we began to refer to it as if it was a nightly soap opera. Karen and I had a running joke along the lines of:
“What happened on last nights episode of Sunset?”
“Well, the sun moved inexorably towards the ocean. Can you imagine? And eventually it got there, and went out of sight in a blaze of colour!! It was fantastic!”
“Oh my god?! Are you serious? I wonder what’ll happen on tonights episode.”
Oh how we laughed.
But anyway, I guess my difficulty with staying meant that I would continue to get more sceptical of Bill and some of his theories and practices, and I felt it was distracting me and the rest from the experience they were having. He didn’t brook criticism too well and I don’t suffer too well in silence. I also read in one of the books, which was a book on Tibetan Buddhism, that in the context of Buddhist monks seeking a master, the student who is searching should find a teacher that makes sense to him, that speaks to his heart, to his intuitive recognition of the truth. If he doesn’t find this, then he shouldn’t try to change the teacher but should rather try another teacher. It seemed like a reasonable suggestion, and one that I felt was appropriate, in this case, to follow. So after a final sunset (‘the season finale’), a final group dinner, and a final sunrise, I took the boat back through the tree-line river to the mainland, and jumped on the bus to the local town Chiquimuililla.
I spent the day there, catching up on emails, calling my sister, who was having her birthday party and, I learned, her engagement party too. Seeing as I remember winding her when she was an infant, this particular piece of lovely news made me feel rather old. I was ready to leave at sunset, for a quick spin through northern El Salvador, but given the lateness of my departure and the confusion and disorientation associated with Central America borders, I thought I would leave my departure until morning.
I waited in the bus station the next morning. The sun rose over the mountains as I waited for the early bus to El Salvador. The clouds were banked low and were grey until the rising sun transformed them into delicate luminous sponges of white, covering half of the sky.
I was in a reflective mood. The pharmacy by the bus stop, called “The Sacred Heart of Jesus II Pharmacy”, made me wonder what happened His first sacred heart. Sometimes sitting on a beach for two weeks can mess with your head. As the suppliers arrived in trucks to stock up the shops and banks for the day, I also couldn’t help noticing, once again, as I had all over Guatemala, that the only vehicles that come with shotgun-toting security guards are the bank trucks, the beer trucks and the Coca Cola truck. I guess it shows their (and probably our) sense of values. My bus eventually arrived and saved you all from more mental meanders.
The first thing I noticed upon entering El Salvador was the buses. Where those in Guatemala had a strong Mayan influence in their colours and designs, those in El Salvador were decorated in a graffiti-art style. More dramatic and visually noisy and busy and, to my eye at least, a little less pleasing.
I passed through Sonsonate to travel on through La Ruta de Los Flores (the Road of the Flowers), reputed as one of El Salvadors prettiest spots. It didn’t disappoint. The verdant coffee plantations covered the hillsides as the bus meandered to Apaneca. The plantations fields make up a waffle-pattern on the landscape – the thin green lines of the coffee plants were surrounded by squares of more robust trees to protect them from the elements. The deep green and brown lines were therefore surrounded by generously flowering trees of intense colours – crimson, violet, indigo, citrus, russet (am I sounding like an interior decorator or what?).
I stopped in Juayua for a couple of hours, and visited the peaceful and beautiful waterfalls, although on my hike back up to the town I noticed that every other group of tourists (and I was the only gringo) had a machete-wielding escort with them. Apparently safety is an issue here too.
Back in the town, I met a shopkeeper who was thoroughly incredulous that I had no reason to be in El Salvador other than as a tourist. “Buy WHY are you here?!”. A later bus dropped me in Apaneca for the night, and my tourguide in one of the nearby coffee plantations was thoroughly well versed in the plantations history as well as the local flora, fauna and even the local history.
Other first impression of El Salvador: tie-die cowboy hats, clean streets, published fares and ticket prices on the buses, ticket inspectors to keep the bus drivers honest (this would NEVER happen in Guatemala, where each and every ticket purchase is a haggle), tourist offices, eager and knowledgeable guides. I wondered suddenly was Guatemala over-touristed and their people jaded of us. The closest description I can come up with for the bus drivers in Guatemala is that guy who drives the school bus in The Simpsons – they drive the same bus (except theirs are repainted) and they take similar quantities of drugs (except theirs must be uppers instead of doobies). In all, on first impressions, and despite its more recently violent history, El Salvador seemed altogether more civilised.
The forthcoming elections provided two noisy, rambunctious and altogether upbeat political rallies which interrupted my dinner and my conversation with a couple that I bumped into in the restaurant. As the only other gringo in town, Heiko, from Germany and the US, invited me to join him and his friend Maya from San Salvador. She works in the administration of NGO funds and he is trying to set up and NGO in the US, so the conversation was enlightening to say the least.
The next day was long, covering a lot of ground in Northern El Salvador. I went from Apaneca to Ahuachapen, finishing the rest of La Ruta de Los Flores, and then on to the commercial and transportation hub of Santa Ana. A slow hot and winding road brought me to Aguillares and the finally high into the mountain town of La Palma as the sun was setting. More impressions struck me along the way: a 24-Hour Undertakers, presumably as a result of the 24-Hour Gunshops. Plenty of sports too – I passed a childrens triathlon, a mens soccer match, a womens soccer match – all on a very hot day. I don’t think I witnessed one organised sports event in my two months in Guatemala. El Salvador was feeling exotic perhaps for its familiarity.
There was a fiesta in La Palma when I arrived. It wasn’t, as I first believed, in response to Irelands glorious victory in Murrayfield, in the opening match of the Six Nations Rugby Championship, our first victory over the Scots at their home ground since 1985. Nevertheless, I joined in. Even the fiesta felt differently from Guatemala – they’re were few drunks, few explosions, and generally lots of activities for the kiddies, even if one little man with a traumatised expression on his face was clinging for dear life on to the merry-go-round. A good family festival.
I returned to my hotel thinking that the dangers in El Salvador had been thoroughly overstated by the guidebooks. My race through the north (and I was leaving the next morning) was partly driven by this and partly by the desire to get to final Mayan site on this part of the trip in time for the third and final full moon of this journal entry. But in comparison to the amount of guns that were visibly on view in Guatemala, I had failed see one in El Salvador that wasn’t in the possession of a uniformed policeman or soldier. And then I turned the corner to my hotel room to a guy dressed like a commando, cradling a shotgun, less that 10 metres from my bedroom door. Thankfully he was there to guard me.
Some last thoughts on El Salvador – they need a marketing manager. First they need to train their citizens to be blasé when then encounter somebody who actually wants to visit their country instead of asking them if they are crazy. Secondly they need to reconsider some of their places names: Rio Sucio means Dirty River, Cara Sucio means Dirty Face. Not quite in keeping with the name of the nation – The Saviour.
Final amusing thought that struck me the next morning as I crossed into Honduras. The two soldiers at the crossing, sitting side by side, were from the armies of Honduras and San Salvador. One was reading his newspaper, the other cleaning his fingernails, both with M16s casually resting on their laps. They are probably there every day, swopping news, enquiring about the wives, as friendly as it is possible to be with somebody who has been at war with your country several times in the last 50 years and with whom war could break out again. So what happens when war breaks out. Do these guys have to reach for their guns and shoot each other? The first casualties of war? This story was a lot more amusing in my head…
And so to Honduras. An Irish comedian once told a story about the way Irish people generally ignore fire alarms. He said that if a group of Irish people were in a pub made from old Christmas trees and petrol, and which was situated between a fire-works factory and an institute for young arson offenders, the only thing that would get them out of the pub was the heat of flames licking at their bar stools. Well I saw something almost matching his description in the border hills of Honduras – a wooden shack soaked in the gasoline that its owner was selling, and an owner who smoked. In fairness though, Honduras did seem to have a slightly increased regard for safety as I noticed my bus driver was the proud possessor (if not actual user) of the first vehicle seat belt that I had seen in three months.
My destination was Copan, or more specifically, Ruinas Copan. My cunning plan was to round out my trip in El Mundo Maya with a full moon visit to the other major Mayan ruins in the area. Copan is viewed by archaeologists as the eras Paris – a city of culture and refinement, to Tikals New York – big, imposing, but a bit of a jungle. It didn’t disappoint and it museums and monuments were stunning. Although I have to say that some of the Gods resembled Sam the Eagle (of Muppets fame) and others were definite images of Podge and Rodge (of, well, Podge and Rodge fame). I guess you can judge a culture by todays standards. Some day, someone will excavate leg warmers and then what will they think of us?
In the end my ‘ruins-by-full-moon’ plan was scuppered by the authorities, who closed the ruins at 4pm, and by the forces of nature, which covered the place with clouds from the time I arrived to the time I left.
And that was about it. Even though I had already crossed two more national borders I was still in the land of the Mayans. But, this was about to change as I was about head off for some diving off the Caribbean coast, (which incidentally turned out to be some of the best diving I have ever done – the night dives in particular, with its octopi and sharks, turtles and stingrays, and most especially, after we had turned off our torches, the phosphoresce and the magical, breath-taking, alien-esque, “Strings of Pearls”), and then sprint south far past the reaches of the Mayan Kings through southern Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama.
Or so I thought…. But that’s a story for another day.
My final night in the land of the Mayans I sampled one last flavour of the local cuisine – Copan’s Chinese restaurant. I walked in there and picked up a menu. Behind the counter was a beautiful latina girl, with deep dark pools for eyes and short bob of endearing black ringlets. She smiled sweetly and picked up her notepad and put her pen to her lips and cocked her head, awaiting my order. “The rice is good” she said. “Do you want rice?”. “Hmm…”, I said, “Sure”.
We began chatting. I asked if it was her restaurant. She said yes. I asked if business was good – she said it was great. We to-and-fro-ed and managed to get through quite of bit of our respective vocabularies in Spanish – mine consisting of three months immersion, and hers, three years (for that was the tender age of this cute little button). Thankfully her mother arrived shortly afterwards to take my order. I guess it was just as well as I was running out of things to say.
Much, in fact, as I am now.
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