Trees and Ants

We've just had a very relaxing weekend. Got up about 8am rather than our usual 5.30 or 6am. You need to get up that early to get a good yoga session in before it gets too hot. Its also a beautiful time of day as the light changes and the forest wakes up. Mind you, the roosters have usually been up half the night already crowing about things. Tempts me to give up being a vegetarian and going hunting!

We hung out by the lake, went for a couple of walks and found a great cafe with a lake view balcony and delicious fruit juices - called licuados in Spanish - at 8Quatzales.


Leafcutter Ant

I have got into photographing leafcutter ants and trees. The ants are amazing. They're strung out everywhere in long busy lines of wobbling, moving bright green leaves. But the best are the gangs that hurry back and forward across one of the footpaths through the Cerro Cahui Biotopo. They have the choicest, biggest, greenest leaves and the best soldeir ants to guard them and move obstacles out of their way. Every so often an ant falls or drops its leaf and its like a small green animal has tripped. They wind their way over sticks and down the sides of the stones like an Its A Knockout course developed by Michael Bentine's Potty Time. And most of them are not only carrying a leaf 10 times their size but also a hitchhiker too. There's nearly always another ant riding the leaf. I don't know why. has it just got tired and looking for a free ride back or is it there to help cross difficult obstacles?


Leafcutter Troupe

The trees these tiny ants are diligently chopping leaves from tower overhead. Rainforest trees are magnificent. They snake up to a high canopy of all shapes and colours. What is best about them are the epyphytes that cling to their branches, sucking moisture from the air through their hanging roots. The trees are where the fertility of the rainforest is stored. Not in the ground which is low quality thin limestone soil, but growing in the air.

Remove the forest and you lose the fertility. The ancient Maya knew how to grow crops on massive mats of compost, to work with the forest rather than destroy it all. That's why they successfully sustained a massive city-state culture for over a thousand years. And the end of the city-state phase wasn't due to over-exploitation of the forest but the loss of credibility of their elites, probably caused by too much aggressive competition between cities.


Tree Dancer

Reasons to be cheerful

1 Ian Dury,of course.


and here, in no particular order...

2. the sound ducks make paddling their bills around in muddy puddles looking for food.

3. Eddie Izzard, Darth Veda and the Death Star canteen.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv5iEK-IEzw

4. The sun is back and the lake is glittering in Caribbean turquoise and purple slate tones.

5. My fungal feet are looking less like they´re heading for amputation and more like they´re on the way up: this jungle life.

6. Groups of size-correlated baby chickens meandering and scuttling around the village.

7. 2 fantastic days with the kids where we´ve all enjoyed ourselves.

8. The domino effect of 24 kids standing shoulder-to-shoulder all trying to raise their arms at the same time while standing on one leg.

9. Successfully cooking some vegetables (it may not sound much, but the technicalities have proved taxing at times)

10. Just, because.

Top of Tikal

On Monday I was taken on a tour of Tikal by Paco, the thirty-something govermnent archaeologist who works on the monument. I have got to know him through my Spanish teacher who he is married to. His English is excellent and his sense of humour pretty damn good too.

The highlights were:


On top of Temple 4, 70 metres up without a net!

climbing the scaffolding built around the very, very top of Temple 4 to stand on the 1.5 metre wide very, very top of the temple. This is the upper surface of the roof comb, a hollow limestone decorative crest to the temple which is the box like building on top of the seven pyramid platforms. At 70 metres high and way above the jungle canopy it is heighest spot in Tikal! The views were of continuous jungle all the way to all horizons! the scaffolding is there to facilitate conservation work and no, there were no hard hats, no ladders and certainly no safety lines involved.


Paco. His tunnel is beneath those tress, at the bottom.

looking into Pacos tunnel. We couldn't go in as the 'workers' were on a public holiday but its a real archaeological tunnel, 1.9 metres high, 1.2metres wide and 20 metres long. It's got another 20 metres to go before it finishes in the middle of the base platform.


Check out Chac

going into a cordoned off old excavation tunnel to look at two large statues of the face of the rain god Chac.


Temple 1 in the late afternoon sun

Thank you Paco for a great tour and wonderful day out!

There's more Tikal photos on my flickr photostream flickr stream

25 30

Yes the groups just keep on growing and if we´re completely honest today was pretty hard work. Hats off, as ever, to all you teachers out there.

However, all the kids now know their height and weight, even if the littlies couldn´t write them down, somewhat changing my plans for a session on charts, averages and Excel (!) and I look forward to an easier session with yoga and playdo tomorrow ... surely...
I plan to do it again at the end of our time here and see whether here, as in the UK, all children get longer over the summer holidays!

But how to split a group so keen as this? Let me count the ways.

This pulsating world

Under the clarity of a sliver of moon by the illuminated lake, I walked in the thick sound of scintillating crickets and frogs. The occasional snort of an invisible horse in the reeds below and the trajectories of fireflies like another, gentler, stream of tracer bullets.

By day, the reeds rustled louder than usual, surely not the usual nesting birds. A red t-shirted man emerged clutching his home-made harpoon, just one fish at his belt so far.
I’ve been invited to go harpooning with the hordes of small children and teenagers who try their luck daily. They’ve explained clearly that only one species of small fish can be taken - those that will grow no larger. If it’s a Petenero white fish, or the other favourite staple, then it must not be taken until it is cubit length at least. Stock management, village style.

Yesterday was my first involvement in the project. A young Polish microbiologist has arrived for a few days and is taking a 3-day project on recycling and making recycled paper postcards to sell to tourists. It was fun to take a back seat with the littler ones while I admired her excellent group management and communication skills, before finding out she’d trained as a teacher as well.

They were startlingly happy to be handed a single piece of paper and some crayons and worked assiduously on their first images, gradually getting used to me and eventually working up the confidence to request HB pencils and colouring books from which to take inspiration for their next drawings. I’ve displayed them all, and given them books in which we’ll make a portfolio of their work over time. And an ongoing project is to encourage them to write their names large and in bold colours, as part of my intentions to bolster self-esteem and the sense that ‘I matter’ over the next few weeks.

We’re intending to open the space every afternoon, sometimes hosting special activities and sometimes simply putting out materials for them to use, ringing the changes with different things on different days. It’d be great to try to organise a group outing to Tikal nearby, but I’m not sure how feasible.

Anne has said they’re keen to do some yoga. I’ve yet to decide whether to offer this in the morning or as part of our afternoon open time a couple of times a week. It’d be great to incorporate it into an ongoing ‘Who am I’ project with social identity, physical and mental and emotional, self-awareness & well-being strands, some basic health and nutrition, arts and crafts on the themes, etc.

Meawhile I began reading them The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe in Spanish. I’ve no idea if it sounds OK or sounds horrible, but am pretty secure that my reading is more fluent than theirs will be, since handing over the book to another teenager for a while. I’d like to structure in opportunities for them to be read to and to read aloud a few times a week.

So it’s all kicking off! Meanwhile Bill’s to get involved in advising about sustainable tourism in the area, and I’m about to swim in the lake before wandering up for an afternoon at the project. I’m looking forward to learning to make recycled paper too!

Cumpleaños feliz

I am 40. Say it loud and say it proud. I am 40.

And what a day it was. Up at 4.30 after very little sleep to a fantastic yoga session beginning under stars in the dark and moving through the dawn into the daylight as all the birds and creatures of the forest came awake. The sun arrived to shine and the lake glittered.

The floor of our cabana was covered with an array of cards that made me squeal with surprise and I have to thank you all for forethought, love and a spoon... nice one K&J! It is, I have to say, a very superior class of spoon and David Mellor has done a great job in getting it to be a real pleasure to use - perfecto for the pineapple brekky.


Georgia's birthday breakfast with cards and pressies

Thanks also ... well you know who you are and what for.



We went to Tikal. You are bound to see increasing numbers of photos on Bill´s Flickr of Tikal. Set in dense jungle, this Mayan site has a great mix of reconstructed, part excavated and still green, draped and jungle covered pyramid like constructions which speak of a culture declaring brute power. The approach road boasts a menagerie´s worth of yellow beware of the XXXX crossing signs: snakes, deer, jaguars, coatis, you name it...



I was treated to lunch in the Jungle Lodge, the poshest restaurant on site, a flawless environment of white damask and large white plates on top of other large white plates. Good stuff and a very different way of ´doing a site´from our usual Milk Every Second approach that sees lunch as for wimps and our duty to be knocking on the door before it opens and then be last to leave.



Since our landlady´s son-in-law is currently excavating onsite Bill´s going back for a day to do some real Indiana Jonesa type stuff, where the diggers´tunnels themselves resemble a network of catacombs and that´s before you get to the archaeology!

We were back in time for a sunset swim in the lake, which is ever various and ever beautiful, and I crashed while bill ran around like a runny thing getting my party dinner ready. What a great opportunity to have a celebration with the people we´re going to be sharing the next few weeks with. There was even a cake -- thanks Anne! I don´t think they could fit on the right number of candles but we came near to burning the terrace down nonetheless.


Eva and Carolyne (vols), Mimi (our host), Anne (project leader)and the birthday girl

I felt very cherished all day.

Tarantula!

On my way along the road to the nearest fruit and veg shop I was enjoying the hundreds of fireflies buzzing their tiny little yellow lights on the verge and the flat grassland between the road and the lake. I was thinking how peaceful a sight this is when a large black thing scuttled across the road. This has to be a spider I thought so hurried to see it close up before it reached the verge. When I got near it stopped. I stopped. I looked at it and I’m sure it looked at me. Who would make the first move? Well, I took it in. Eight long black hairy legs and a great big black hairy body. And two big things sticking out from its front that looked like they might be used in biting. A bloody tarantula, not that it was covered in the blood of any victims you understand, but the first real life tarantula I’ve seen. The spider of childhood legends and tales of explorers poisoned in the jungle. So I moved on. I had seen how quick it could amble after all. Just think how quick it could move if angered.

On the way back from the shop I saw another one. Two in one night! But now the shadows were deepening on the road and I couldn’t necessarily tell which could hide a tarantula in its darkness.

Next time I’ll get a picture!

Mimi´s House

On Monday we moved to Mimi’s House in El Remate, on the lake road on the way to San Jose. The place is paradise! The cabana is very posh and in a beautifully terraced garden. She and her husband have designed the house and garden to be a place to relax and enjoy. Trees and palapas with vines give shade from the sun. There is plenty of covered outdoor sitting and a large central courtyard. Her house is on two levels – a wooden upper storey with large verandas, one of which overlooks the lake, the other is I shade, and a concrete ground floor with kitchen, washing area, storeroom and another lake view veranda. Almost everywhere has a lake view!

Introducing IxCanaan

On Friday Georgia rang Anne who runs Project IxCanaan in El Ramate on the eastern side of the lake. She collected us in her pick-up from our hotel along with Carolyn, a Canadian who has come down to volunteer to run the library for a year.

Anne showed us the clinic where we met Enrique, the local doctor who Anne met 15 years ago and decided to stay to help out the local community. We then toured the library, with its 12 or so internet-connected computers and small collection of Spanish books and larger collection of English books, the new women’s centre with kitchen and forest garden and Gringo Perdido – the guest house owned by Eduardo, a well-connected Guatemalan who adores the Peten. He helps to fund the project as well as buying tracts of land to reforest.

After lunch, then a swim in the warm lake, we stopped by at Carolyn’s new home. She is renting a wooden bungalow from an ex-American Embassy employee called Mimi. Our search for somewhere to live on the project was solved instantly. The beautiful bungalow has a twin! Each is made from polished local wood with an en-suite bathroom, bed made from tropical wood and strangler fig and has a verandah overlooking the lake. They are set in a lovely courtyard garden with a wooden platform perfect for yoga, a kitchen, covered outdoor seating area and a night guard. A dock into the lake perfect for swimming sits opposite the entrance. Mimi built the house with her retirement bonus to escape one week every month from Guatemala city and the cabanas to earn a retirement income but she has already discovered the frustrations of renting them out on a night-by-night basis. Having long-term tenants is ideal for her because it is less work, great for us because we have a fantastic place to stay with kitchen so we can cook for ourselves (there are plenty of interesting-looking local vegetables to try out) and do morning yoga before a swim and breakfast, and great for Anne because her volunteers have a safe and relaxing place to live.

Mimi seems fantastic. A very laid-back and happy Guatemalan looking for a peaceful retirement. We are both very excited about moving in on Monday.

Working in the rain

With the skies thick with clouds and the streets emptied with regular heavy bursts of rain, Georgia and me decided we may as well get on with working on the comic and graphic novel for the Don Gorge project. Not quite the Caribbean holiday we had planned to start our trip with but this was good for two reasons. 1, we needed to get on with the redrafts and get comments to the artists as quickly as possible and 2, the tropical depression was turning into something of a storm affecting Belize and Honduras which would not have been good for staying on a caye miles out into the sea. The clouds we were experiencing are, we were told, a result of Caribbean storms and should pass in a few days.


The View from our Flores office

Check out the photos for our café-based lakeside offices of a couple of days.


The palm - the ideal work tool


Hard at work

A pick-up truck full of male and female twenty-somethings singing to another Latino love song has just driven by and a friendly crested-lizard keeps bobbing along the terrace balustrade. This is what I call global working fine style!

Eating with the fishes

By far the best place to eat and drink was in a very stylish restaurant with great service and tables on a wooden three-sided dock that ran out in to the lake. The palm-leaf thatched roof was supported on polished branches of twisted strangler fig. Beautifully lit below with purple neon that reflected in the lake, a spotlight attracted fish into the middle of the dock dining area. Waiters periodically through bread into the water to create a mass of writhing, feeding fish that sounded like rats scuttling through a drain. It may not sound appetising but it was fun.

And the fod was awesome, inciting wows from both of us when our vegetarian kebabs were lifted with some effort on to the table by our waiter. Forget the thin, emaciated vegetable kebabs of summer barbecues. These were monsters, bracketed at either end by half onions and loaded with pineapple, tomato, potato and pepper. They were truly delicioso, muy rico and fantastico (just to prove I’ve learnt some Spanish while here).

Flores

Flores in the lake

We approached Santa Elena with sun bursting through the leaden sky of clouds after a rain-soaked journey thinking this a good sign for better weather until the rain came back in time for us getting out of the collectivo. Santa Elena is the muddy (or dusty depending on the weather), busy, noisy, polluted mainland cousin to the historic island town of Flores which is joined to the former by a causeway. Santa Elena guards the approach to Flores like Rapunzil’s mean father. Both are on Lake Peten Itza, the largest lake in northern Guatemala. It is surrounded by jungle-covered hills where villages nestle against the shore.


Bright Street of our hotel

We were whisked through the ugly to the good by another collectivo who just happened to be waiting at our drop-off point. Our arranger drove us around a few hotels until yes we agreed with him, the one he recommended was the best. As it was at our price we happily took it and he presumably happily received his commission.


Door of Perception

Erin and Nick booked in next door and Georgia and me went out exploring the narrow cement and limestone-cobbled streets lined with brightly painted buildings. The island was the ancient Mayan city of Taxapal and still today bits of Mayan buildings and burials are found during construction work. At least some, we were told, were found by archaeologists working alongside the builders.


Casa Veija

Today, Flores, is a major tourist hub for backpackers and holidaymakers visiting the ancient Mayan city Tikal, just over an hour’s drive away. This means lots of gift shops selling Tikal t-shirts and traditional clothes, internet cafes and many, many restaurants selling Western specialities for prices expensive compared to local. Where a meal of squash and salad in Santa Elena would be 15 Quetzels, in Flores a meal costs twice as much. We did both, also finding a great street taco place near the lakeside with a buffet of salads and salsas.


Spot the Difference

There's more Flores photos on my flickr photostream - flickr stream

Like a Hurricane

We`ve just found out that the derivation of the word hurricane is Mayan. The original is Juraqan which was the Mayan one-legged god of rain, fire, storms and thunder. He was one of the three creator gods of Mayan myth.

It`s great to find at least one Mayan word that has made it into the English language. So, we`re wondering if any more have, even if via spanish, and will look into maiza, cacao and chocolate.

Disappearing Belizean Buses

After only one night in Belize, enough time to eat some nachos, have a beer, get a bus ticket, buy fruit from a stall - ´you´re not in Mexico now. We don´t use kilos´said a guy hanging round to explain everything is sold in numbers of fruit per Belizean dollar.

We have met up with an America couple, Erin and Nick, who decided like us to head inland during the stormy weather rather than go out to the cayes. We waited for the B$15 direct bus to Flores in Guatemala which was due to leave at 9.30am. Some confusion ensued when a bus to Flores turned up to depart at 9.30 but the guy we bought the ticket from told us it wasn´t ours, leaving us thinking how many buses can there be to the same town in a foreign country setting off at the same time.

It turned out that there were two competing companies and we had a ticket for Mundo Maya buses, not Linea Ordana. It was the latter that was setting off and out bags were being taken off again. Which was a bit of a shame giving that the ticket seller then popped up again to apologies that he had just been called to say the Mundo Maya bus had broken down and we should wait for the 2.30pm bus. Not being well-pleased with this we got a refund, tried to find out how far the LO bus would have got to see if it was worth catching it in a taxi. Another ticket shop said it would be too far out of town. I was edging towards getting to Guatemala by the ordinary buses when Georgia suggested this. Erin and Nick decided to come along too so we got a taxi to the bus terminal to try the next bus. This turned out to be a much better option, longer, cheaper at B$8 and on a proper bus with locals rather than an air-con coach cut off from the world and people. It also allowed us to have fun at the border towns getting a beating up old taxi (B$2) to the Belizean side which was reminsicent of the illegal taxi that we once got from a night at Undertwo and caught fire on the way to St Pancras Station.

We were immediately descended on on the Guatemalan side by taxi and collectivo touts while paying the border offical the unofficial, 20 Quetzal entry payment. Luckily, as we hadn´t changed money, Georgia´s 8-year old Quetzals we handed over still being current. We found out later that some were out of circulation and that might have been a bad move on the border. The offical never once took his eyes of the soap opera playing on the TV about 1 metre from him which was a contract to the USA electronic finger-printing and mugshot welcome. The touts buzzed around us with one particular attentive aide offering a collectivo for 50 quetzals each. However, someone else had let slip that a collective cost 22 so we played the game for a while, were introduced to a driver who could take us for 45 which dropped to 30 after we showed little interest getting a drink and catching our breath. A quick walk to the collective pick up point and the same van and driver we had been introduced to came by with half a van full, including a diminutive nun, and we got on board. When we eventually stopped opposite Flores we handed over 25 quetzals each - the proper price. Welcome to Guatemala.

Soon we were on the island town of Flores and in a hotel. And still it was raining.

Tulum Too-rar-ay

Here we are in Belize City, 3 days after landing in Cancun, Mexico. It's been an eventful few days. Flying was a breeze, really easy and with no Delta raw sewage. Infact the much-maligned US airline was better than Qantas.

After an evening in the square at Ciudad de Cancun eating quesidillas while a clown entertained the crowd we crashed out before getting the bus to Tulum beach for the weekend.


Tulum Beach

It was great to return to Tulum, to start where I ended my last trip to Mexico 8 years ago. I thought we'd look for the place I stayed before but couldn't remember the name and the pouring rain meant we took the nearest affordable beach cabana to where the taxi dropped us. We had thought about a place called El Mirador but the taxi driver assured us it had closed 2 years ago.


View from our cabana

We were in a typical Mexican sand-floored, wood and concrete palm leaf thatched cabana right on the beach for 250 pesos. All it took as a left turn and a short walk and we were in the Caribbean. A quick look around suggested some things were a bit different and then the owner of the cabanas supplied the answer - Hurrican Wilma had hit this part of the Yucatan coast 2 years ago randomly decimating some cabanas while leaving others standing. Half of his were out of order while the others were fine and he hadn't the money to yet rebuild the ones he had lost. But where was the place I stayed before? I was sure it was only a little further along the beach towards the headland with the Mayan ruins. And there they were - or what was left of them. A few sticks, some rectangular depressions in the sand and lost of debris. The place I had stayed, and my memory at last caught up to tell me it was El Mirador, had been flattened by Wilma. The cabana I had shared with a German backpacker was a wall, a door and a place where rubbish collected.


Remains of the old place

We had met an American who lived in Isla de Mujeres who claimed that as it was the rainy season we would get an hour of rain each day at 3pm but that a low depression was moving south-west from Florida. How quickly we were to discover it was heading our way. The first day the rains came at mid-day and stayed for the rest of the day. Then the second held dry until 3pm but after a dawn downpour and then the rains came at midday on the 3rd day too. Each day we had a 3 or 4 hour window of sun to swim and sunbathe in before huge dark grey towering columns of clouds moved in from the sea like marauding armies crossing a plain. Spectacular to watch, bands of rain drenched everything in their paths. The first night we watched four lightning storms play themselves out silently behind different cloud banks, like the spaceships in Close Encounters silently communicating to each other. The light show was awesome. So were the gale force winds and sheets of rain. Our plans to go to Caye Caullker in Belize for a week or two of snorkelling were looking somewhat unlikely. This was simply reinforced reading a Mexican paper over a woman's shoulder. Even my limited Spanish could not hide the two pages of news about the low front that could turn into a tropical depression that was swinging in towards Belize and the Yucatan from the Caribbean. The news warned of two to three days of stormy weather. There wouldn't be a lot to see at sea.

So, we have hastily re-arranged our plans to head straight to the Peten jungle of northern Guatemala and start language school. The rainy season will be here for a few weeks so we may as well enjoy the mornings then go to afternoon language classes overlooking the jungle-cloaked lake Peten. Not a bad plan B. We can then go to the Cayes in December after volunteering when the rains should have passed, the waves dropped and the silts settled.

Tulum worked out as a great place to rest up after the flight. Highlights were of course swimming in the turquoise sea, lying on the fine white sand and enjoying some Caribbean heat. The storms have been great to watch and rain isn't so bad when its so warm you can still wander around in swimmers. Our cabana has been beautiful to wake up in, light drifting through the poles that make up the front wall. We have also been inadvertently entertained by someone who must have been Boss Hogg retired from trying to chase the Dukes of Hazard on holiday in Mexico. Loud, dang-gawd, Texan stereotypes live and breathe! There's a few Tulum photos on my flickr photostream - flickr stream

Now we have a sultry night ahead of us in a clapboard guest house near the waterfront in Belize City, from where i'm online via their wireless network, before catching the bus to Guatemala in the morning.

Relaxing

After three weeks of frantic packing cleaning drinking visiting frenzy on our way out of this country, it is so good to relax out in the country at my mother's. Yesterday morning was bliss to wake up slowly and do some yoga outside in the warm sun. Lying on my back I watched a pigeon scoop itself through the air like a self-propelled hazlenut icecream and felt relaxed!

We feel like we're really on our way now, even though we've taken an odd detour via Northumberland!