4: THE COLONIALS WON

First stop in Guatemala: Antigua



The old Spanish colonial capital, right in the south near the border with the other countries. The Spanish conquerors were real bastards to the indigenous people but they built great cobbled streets. It all seems to level out in the end. Antigua is horrifically, painfully pretty as a result of all that historical craziness.



Wide streets are bordered by low lying buildings whose walls are covered with perfectly flaking paints in rich reds, burnt ochres, rusty blues and faded greens, and which always– ALWAYS – have an old man in front wearing a big hat and a sun worn expression.



Moving people (walking, running, pushing etc) I have noticed, rarely wear hats.



This is a man with a briefcase who is in a hurry and HE HAS NO HAT. Maybe the desire to wear a hat is linked, on some neurological level, with the desire to watch life go by. People with little time have little time for hats. No one in England wears hats you see. Apart from students, who have lots of time.

The food here is good and cheap and the bars friendly. Daily markets sell vibrant coloured weaved fabric which are good for buying and then throwing over various family and friends on return.

Kids play to the camera...



and sometimes not...



but indigineous mayans in ethnic dress stand won’t let you take pictures because their spirit will be taken away. However 3 Quetzales (20pence) puts it back. That seems cheap and slightly insincere to me, even by their economic standards, but to say that is probably being ignorant, deluded, culturally blasphemous and in the end only demeaning myself.

Inevitably the local idyll has attracted a traveller’s scene.



Wherever there is beauty there are dreads. Its Nature’s way of balancing things out. Every cheap hostel has a burden of dope-smoking-ethnic-trouser-wearing-north-American-guitar-strumming-bob-Marley-listening-hair-braided-henna-tattooed-fire-breathing-bad-juggling-bearded-DREADLOCKED traveller TYPES (of course to call them TYPES is to imply they have no unique identity which I must not) who offer you endless dope and eternal friendship. Actually I enjoy their company and deep down I think I have some whitey dreads and a strong tendency towards spiritual nonsense. The other day an ageing traveller from Norwich with beer in his goatee told me that it is vital to learn something new everyday. I nodded.
He said ‘once you stop learning you stop living’.
I nodded again and looked at the ground. After the appropriate amount of silence I asked him what he learnt yesterday. He looked taken aback then took a long swig of local beer and said slowly ‘I learnt that if you place your candles in a certain order it means something.’
‘Oh I see,’ After another pause I asked ‘…and…what does that mean?’
He took one more long swig. ‘I’ll learn that tomorrow’.
I wanted to tell him that yesterday I had learnt the Spanish for frog. And that today I had learnt that it was of no use at all.



But then I thought better of it. I didn’t want to steal his thunder. I pondered what he had told me, chewing it a bit like cheap pork scratching from a pub, it tastes good but you know its full of shit, and then examined the stain on his beard. He was probably a good man who loved numerous stray dogs and who had a family somewhere, but I couldn’t help feeling that a haze of sadness surrounded him. He had been travelling for 30 years. He talked to everyone and was full of stories. He was well and healthy. But you have to wonder why anyone travels for 30 years and I got the sense that all the people he spoke to were like figures passing outside the window of a train and he was the only passenger. I hope one day he wakes up and learns how to stop and get off. That might be the best thing he ever learns.

The traveller scene is thankfully none too toxic. Any amount of dreads and spiritual nonsense is easily diluted with a large dose of refried beans and an expansive view of the volcanoes. Breathe in. Look over there, another bloody volcano, look over there another plate of refried beans, oh look ANOTHER volcano. Volcanoes everywhere, beans everywhere, volcanoes, beans, volconoes, beans

This is the volcano that looms over the town.



You eat beans and then you fart, you look at a volcano and it puffs smoke. Sometimes there is so much symmetry in the world I want to cry!

The volcanoes are dark and strangely protective when silhouetted against the open sky. Some are still live and puff out their smoke, others collect clouds at the top which spin off as candyfloss into the big sky. But when you see how many volcanoes there are, an army of them marching into the distance on their way across Central America you have a feeling that trouble is afoot. Something is bubbling underground. Grrrrr it goes. This is a land that was formed from fundamental instability, from bits of the earth going wrong, trying to clamber on top of each other, thrashing and ugly. It’s geological war frozen in time. To admire it as landscape seems a little like looking at football hooligans for a millionth of a frame and appreciating their flying fists and angry bodies as if they are marbled venuses. If you really think about, if you really look at the smoke from the volcanoes, if you really consider that central American is a crashing of plates coming together like rucking bulls things begin to feel off kilter. Beauty hides threat. The recent history of Guatemala, what terribly little I know of it – civil war, mistreatment of the mayans, poverty, lack of education etc etc – seems to have been played out on a fittingly unstable stage. Although the country is now relatively secure again and the economy back on its feet (only just – apparently the economy is so dependent on the coffee exports that when the international price for a container goes down children have to beg on the street, when it goes up they get to go back to work) there are still a few volcanoes puffing a little smoke, reminding you of the danger that could return at any moment. And wherever you look there are men with guns hung around their necks as if to prove the point. Oh don’t get me wrong, there is nowhere more pleasant than Antigua with its cafés and cake shops and bars and tequila, and there is no where with more smiles, but when you see a twelve year old walking down the street with a shot gun on his shoulder, although you know it WON’T go off, the smoking volcano in the background tells you that it COULD go off. So you think nothing of it and go and get another cake. And then…

And then something does go off.
An earthquake. Fuck. Next posting....