2: MY ONGOING PROBLEM WITH THRUSH

Why am I in Guatemala?
Truth is I don’t really know.

I originally planned to spend my whole time in Costa Rica on a photographic mission to capture some of Central America’s more weird and wonderful animals. It was for my upcoming exhibition in London (easter sometime, called ANIMALS: DEAD OR ALIVE? - I’ll explain later). Even then I knew the trip was a poor excuse for a holiday but I had hoped to turn it into some sort of contrived Darwinian adventure. Where Darwin had revolutionised our understanding of the way creatures evolve and co-habit I hoped to broaden our aesthetic appreciation of the similar creatures by taking a number of shots from quite literally ‘new angles’. Here for example is a shot I got of a monkey with its testicles trapped against a branch.

MONKEY PHOTO TO BE UPLOADED SOON

You see, London had only offered me pigeons and dogs and a few stray tabbies and it wasn’t enough to satisfy my hunger for form, line and devastating composition. I knew that the jungles of the pacific coast would be a rich hunting ground for the images I needed. How wrong I was.

Many of you will be aware of the experience that Becky and I had in the lush cloud forests of northern Costa Rica so I will only summarise. We were told, correctly I think, that Costa Rica has more wildlife or ‘species’ per square mile than anywhere else on earth. What we weren’t told is that they HIDE. After three hours of searching through humid foliage with an exceptionally long lens and an impressively INDIGINEOUS guide we stumbled across our first sighting: a thrush (or maybe it was a finch). It had flown over from the UK (or maybe france – but who cares). The guide was terribly excited. My entire body clenched with disappointment. We walked for another hour, occasionally breaking into a run because the guide thought he saw the QUETZAL bird flashing through the trees. The Quetzal bird lives more in the popular imagination than it does in the wild. No one ever sees it except on the back of every coin in central America, where it is small and squashed. In reality it is full of colour and wonder. It has a tail twice as long as its body, rich inky plumage that shimmers in the light and an effortless flight that when seen across the jungle canopy makes even the most indigineous guide weak at the knees. It is magical. But it HIDES.

As I was about to give up on the day our luck changed. Coming through the large and no doubt dangerous leaves came a long haired pig. It was heading straight for us. I fired off a series of shots risking my life in the process. When I was done, lying on my back with my rucsac under me like an upturned turtle the guide calmly explained that the pig was called Charlie and was owned by the café at the park entrance. It could beg for bananas. I got up and let it trot past.



When I returned to our hostel, and after I had asked if they had any duvets, we were told that most animals come out at night.
OK!
A text book error had been made. Perhaps I would see the rare Quetzal bird after all. (By now I had decided, quite naturally, that to see the Quetzal bird was the goal of any self respecting wildlife photographer in Costa R. Once I had seen its magical colours and its supremely long tale I could return to the UK happy, put down my camera and concentrate on producing grandchildren by sitting in an old rocking chair on my porch. This was my Yeti, this was my Nessy, my tootenkarmooon (also a cupboard range at Ikea)……this was my cure for Thrush!

Becky and I once again decided to risk our lives and booked a night tour into the jungle with an even more indigineous guide who no doubt had incredible sensory powers the way that the Indians in films do when they can hear a flea’s fart from 1000 miles by placing their ear to a rock (although to assume this is to be culturally bigoted. So I didn’t) We knew to wear shoes and socks and to take our hands-free torches. The ground would be alive with venomous ooze and we would need our hands free to to grapple with unidentified silent creatures silhouetted against the moon, their eyes blinking amogst the stars. Little did we know that we were to encounter the most dramatic and astonishing creatures of all, a wild breed that is feared the world over:

THE FAMILY FROM WOLVERHAMPTON.
Britainicus touristicus terribilus. It makes you want to weep.

On a night walk through the jungle the first rule is to be neither seen nor heard. The hunters and the hunted are playing a devastating game of hide and seek and to be a witness is to wear ninja slippers, place your fist in your mouth and sink into silence. This is spectacularly difficult to achieve with a family in bright wind breakers whose hyperactive children are called ‘Ben Bens’, ‘Little Jess’ and ‘Ralphy’ and whose father has just bought a ‘great new Panasonic minicam in the sales, bloody marvellous it is1 3 megagiblets, but I don’t know for the life of me how to work the bugger, isn’t that right Ben-ben’s… Ben-ben’s?? …. Ben-ben’s! Take your hand out of that hole in the ground’. (No no ben-bens, put it in deeper … please!). Just their very presence made the chance of seeing the Quetzal bird, or antynig else for that matter, shrink as quickly as a willy in a cold bath. It seemed as if with a single flick of his Panasonic to ‘ON’ father-father was able to send the entire eco-balance of the forest into irreversible chaos. Where vines and trees had been living in precarious symbiosis and butterflies were forming delicately overnight, the whole balancing act came crashing down like a house of cards as the video starting rolling and the narration began: ‘COME ON EVERYONE LETS STAND IN THAT BUSH, LETS GET A BLOODY GOOD SHOT OF US IN THE JUNGLE! RIGHT, HERE WE ARE IN THE JUNGLE!!!! BEN BEN’S I SAID OUT OF THAT HOLE!!!’ I half expected Dom Joly to turn up with a huge camcorder ‘I’M IN THE JUNGGGGLLLLEEE!!!!’ LOOKING FOR AAAANNNNIIIMMAAALLS!’. While the fiasco unfolded, and while Ben Ben’s started his campaign for chocolate icecream and Little Jess couldn’t do up her windbreaker and so mother started to curse Marks and Spencer, the deadly fer-de-lance snake and the rare three fingered sloth (which normally moves only ten metres a night) had long packed their bags and were on their way, with directions from the Thrush, to Uckfield, Sussex.

Needless to say my entire body clenched in disappointment.

Me and B fell to the back of the group and dropped our heads in despair barely able to even turn on our torches. We reluctantly followed the group to a hole in the ground which Ben-Ben’s tried to put his hand down again. He was stopped abruptly because it was the home of a tarantula. Shame. The guide assured us the spider nearly always came out at night. Me and B tried to watch through a tangle of Wolverhampton legs and arses, but we were barely able to recognise one hole from another. Father-father pushed his way to the front and stuck his Panasonic down the entrance to the hole. ‘STAND BACK KIDS I’M FILMING THE BUGGER!!! RIGHT COME ON TA-RAN-CHOO-LAR!’.
Did it come out?
Did it fuck.
It was like expecting to get a press conference with Osama Bin Laden by installing a large group of reporters from CNN outside a random cave on the Afghanistan border and throwing Big Macs into the hole.

We did see a few things. Bats, a few slugs, a snake a long, long way away (on its way to Sussex) and some dull insects, most of which were asleep. I got a picture of a sleeping worm. It is the best photo of a sleeping worm that I have ever taken.

WORM PHOTO (uploaded soon)

In a brutal hit of irony we also came across a sleeping thrush. I don’t know if it was the same as we had seen during the day but I bet it had flown over from the UK too. It must have done because it wasn’t in the slightest bothered by the windbreakers or loud mouths and carried on sleeping. Perhaps it was on UK time.



Things were not good. The Quetzal bird was fast flying from my imagination and the colour of my hope turning to grey.