The Road to Santa Marta, El Salvador

Victoria was full of dark young men in camouflage carrying M-16’s, lounging near the town square as they used their caps to keep fly’s away. I put my pack down, the soldiers looked at me and I looked at them, no one spoke. I was worried, had never been to Victoria in the light so wasn’t sure if the armies presence was something out of the ordinary. I looked around the town square, watching the locals queuing for busses, the shops selling beans and rice, a tiny market taking place under the arches of a colonial style building. Everything seemed normal, no one was noticeably anxious and so I sat down, read my book and ate some ice cream as I waited for a pick up truck for Santa Marta. After about two hours of wondering around and being stared at I was feeling really uneasy, keen to get to the village and find out at last whether they were expecting me or not. This last point was a big issue, in a town like Santa Marta there isn’t a hostel or even a guest house and I’ve yet to find anything resembling a restaurant. If I was turning up unannounced it might be almost impossible finding somewhere to stay and, being the rainy season, I could hardly camp outside. Realizing that I should have thought about this earlier I pushed all paranoiac thoughts from my head and returned to one of the worst books I have ever read, waiting for my ride.
A few hours later I was on the road again, pulling into Santa Marta aboard a clapped out pick-up in the middle of a thunderstorm. I thanked the driver for the lift, jumped into a sea of thick mud and trudged despondently over to the health center where I discovered Dr Perez was due back any minute. When he finally arrived he stopped at the doorway and looked at me with a half smile on his face, obviously my message hadn’t got through all the way to Santa Marta. Disconcerted now, I said hello in a slightly awkward manner and asked if there was any chance I could volunteer for a week. Never one to be put off by extraordinary circumstances Dr Perez smiled a toothy grin and, realizing that I didn’t even have a place to stay, said “first we will see some patients, then we will find you accommodation." Relieved but slightly taken aback I was soon seated at my usual place beside Doc P, taking notes and doing odd jobs as best I could. In the several hours I worked that day we saw dozens of patients, mostly children with various parasites.

Granada to Managua

I woke up in my massive chambers with the sun shining through the holes in the ceiling and beaten-up cars careening along the street outside. My head hurt horrifically and after grabbing an aspirin I discovered that I’d missed Arma’s insanely early departure to the Corn Islands and was now, at least temporarily alone. Still suffering from a combination of possible concussion and alcohol poisoning I packed my pack and jumped from the hostel to a speedy transit bus that would take me to Nicaragua’s capital, Managua. The plan was to go straight to the city, change for a chicken bus to Leon and see about getting to El Salvador tomorrow. If I could have ignored Managua I would have, I was apprehensive about going back there and for good reason. Mostly destroyed in a series of earthquakes and never rebuilt the city is a heap of concrete crisscrossed with the dark scars of highways, the sort of place where hordes of children follow you up the street for a dollar and a siren is never far away. Still apprehensive about traveling alone I slung the bag on the roof of the bus and clambered inside the small space, finding it full of dark passive faces.

As we whizzed quickly down the highway past the edge of lake Nicagua and out into a landscape of flat, dry planes punctuated with barbed fences and shabby settlements I felt at peace again. This is the real Central America for me, busses belching smoke as the conductor leans out of the window yelling the names of his stops, ‘Maaassssayyyyya, Massssssaaayyyya, Masssssssayyyyyaaaaa’ at siren-like volume. As we passed a pick-up truck, it’s small bed crowded with more than ten white shirted Nicaraguan men, as we dodged around an army truck filled with plastic chairs, I remembered why I loved traveling. There is something magical about leaning out of a bus window and watching such a foreign world drift by.

I was in luck on this particular bus ride because I happened to be sitting next to a very nice Dutch couple called Mathieu and Anchor, sitting with their Lonely Planet and working out a route to El Salvador. They’d traveled all the way from Carnival in Brazil and had the light, funny air of confidence that Arma had shown. As I’ve said I my original plan had been to go by chicken bus to Leon and then work my way up through Honduras straight to Managua but after five minutes I decided on traveling instead with my new friends by Tica Bus to somewhere in the south of El Salvador. When the bus stopped in Managua the three of us jumped down together and hefted our packs into the back of a cab in really good time, wading through the heat and almost visible pollution. From there we went careering off down a collection of fairly sordid streets and stopped in front of the Tica Bus headquarters where I bought a $25 dollar ticket straight to El Salvador, a trip of 15 hours leaving at the ungodly time of four AM. We also ended up staying at a hotel run by Tica Bus, the area around the terminal contained guesthouses of such dodgy quality and dubious security that they made the Tranquilo in San Jose seem like a five star resort.

After settling into a very clean three bed room with fan we caught another cab to “central” but instead of a plaza and church like in most Central American cities the center of Managua is a sprawl of expensive malls and hotels that clash horribly if you’ve been outside the town and seen the miles of slums and rubbish dumps. In a display of sudden weakness we went into the food court for McDonalds, cheesecake and fried chicken and the movies for a slice of Hollywood. In the corner of the galleria was a full sized fiberglass horse for children to ride on and it made me smile to see Nicaragua develop such weird ideas about what Americans liked to do in their spare time. About three hours later we emerged from Pirates of the Caribbean 3 feeling confused and cheated by the films bizarre surrealism and massive bevy of special affects that did not make up for the lack of concrete plot. Feeling pissed off the three of us skipped dinner and went home, settling down for an alcohol free night and falling straight asleep despite a bizarre man next door who snored like a pig rooting for truffles.

Ruined Hospital and Tree


Granada, Nicaragua

The room in the ruined hospital was dark, the only light coming from half collapsed windows high up in the decaying ceiling. A pigeon sits there, looking down at us standing in this dirty place full of abandoned medical records turning slowly into dust. Outside a herd of wind goats run carefully over the remains of a shrine to the Virgin Mary, her figurine long since gone. Standing as it is in the center of this field of rubble it seems to represent the state of many things in this amazing yet sad country. Turning to Arma I tell her, “when god’s gone, you know it’s got bad.”
Granada is to me the very heart of description, a place of innate vividness and color where the perfect photo is constantly riding past in the back of a donkey cart or sitting in the foul smelling market cutting steak for dinner. From the ruined hospital to the town square it’s alive and moving with a strange energy, looking up you can see the almost constant milky-white explosions of firecrackers thrown into the ether. Walking down tarpaulin lanes filled with closed up shops inside the Mercado Central you can buy iguanas and turtles, aviators and Playstation knock-offs. Through the streets there are massive religious parades, children beating drums and hitting those plonckity-plonk xylophone things. I like to stand by the side of the road and watch, looking at the life rolling past me even as the thunder crashes overhead in a flurry of tropical storms.
I showed Arma all this, we walked with camera clicking for hours. As the sun went down we ate pasta and drunk Coca-Colas and Cuba Libres at the open air bar outside the Bearded Monkey. Later a band played and I danced with Gringa gap year students and exchanged travel advice with backpackers heading south. There was a sense of fun in the bars, couples winding themselves around each other in Latin dance as those of us less supple nodded our heads in appreciation. If the night had ended there it would have been better, instead hours later I was dancing in Bar Canoes, a place by the water where the cows walk past and the palm trees sway in the wind.


Hospital Gate


Ruined Hospital



Roof top in Central Market


Limes



Shoes


The Nicaraguan equivalent of Tesco's


Exploring Corruption



The Wonders of New Glasses

San Jose to Granada

The last few days I spent in San Jose were fraught and stressful, I’d had my camera stolen in a bar and devoted the rest of the time to finding a new one. There are places in San Jose, near the infamous Marcado Borbon with its piles of produce and grubby shop holders, where you can buy the hundreds of digital cameras and camcorders stolen from tourists every day. This area has the reputation of being very dangerous and though I shop there for fresh fruit almost daily the thought of carrying massive wads of cash around didn’t appeal in the slightest. Luckily, after mooching about the hostel for a few hours I met André, a blonde South African surfer with a very strong accent who’d fallen foul of thieves and didn’t want to pay $300 for a new camera. ‘Alright Bru’ he smiled when I told him about the “Black Market”, ‘sounds great.’ The next day we took a taxi through the outskirts of the red-light district towards the market but became lodged in fearsome traffic jams. As Tico after Tico revved his engine, beeped his horn and became increasingly agitated André got talking to our driver with the help of my horrible translations:

Gringo’s: Ah, it’s very busy here!

Taxi Driver: @#*&ing busses, they clog up all the roads. (He gives a five-minute explanation of the entire San Jose traffic system complete with eloquent hand gestures.) Why are you going to Marcado Borbon anyway?

Gringo’s: (Bashfully) We had our camera’s stolen and we really need to buy new ones, do you know a shop?
Taxi Driver: See, that is the problem with tourists. You must hide your stuff like all Tico’s do, look… (he swerves across the road to show us his socks, explaining that he hides his wallet there.) A lot of Costa Rican’s rob tourists. Many of my friends do, but I am a taxi driver and all I do is drive my taxi. Hey, do you want any cocaine?

Gringo’s: (to each other) did he say… I think he… what??? (to Taxi Driver) we’re alright thanks!

Taxi Driver: (Pulling up at Marcado Borbon) Ok, watch out for thieves because they’re probably going to rob you here… bye!

The camera shops we found when we got out of the cab were bizarre, places selling mountains of mobile phones and foothills of welding equipment for some strange reason. After two hours of bartering we found what we were looking for and went back to the hostel where I met my friend Emma and took her to the movies.


Plaza Morazon, somewhere in the Red Light District


Sleazy market

This morning I caught the bus straight to Granada. We left San Jose as the sun was beginning to come up over the roofs of the 70’s era government buildings and the green dome of the national theatre. I’d been unable to find anyone traveling up north but the need to return to the road proper was making me antsy so at the last minute I forfeited my plans to travel with an English girl to the beach and took a taxi to the Ticabus headquarters instead. Nothing happened till the border, but there amid the fruit juice sellers and crowds, moneychangers and armed policemen I bumped into Arma. A 32 year old Dutch woman, she’d just finished working in Costa Rica and was heading north to Cancun, Mexico. We decided it was less lonely traveling together and for the rest of the bus ride we sat together as I pondered over a pile of $1 DVD’s I’d borrowed. Later we arrived in Granada, capital of Nicaragua’s growing tourist scene. The tiled pavements and crumbling colonial roofs are a delight to someone who’s been dealing with the 1984esq architecture of San Jose.


Rosie in San Jose

Arma in Granada

Last night I landed in Costa Rica, the plane touching down at Juan Santa Maria and the heavy door opening to tropical heat. I stood alone on the airport bus as it rattled it’s way to the terminal, disgorging groups of lost looking tourists who searched nervously for their bags and were met by cheerful tour guides. I alone stood near the baggage carousel and waited, looking around at posters tacked to the walls, some threatening to prosecute sex offenders and others promising to reward gringos with the best in the way of shining white hotels and tacky, palm thatched restaurants. Presently my Mum appeared, an amazing occurrence considering we’d flown from opposite sides of the world and still managed to arrive in San Jose within ten minutes of each other. After many hugs we grabbed our packs and headed for the exit where a large brass band was busy playing mariachi music in the underground car park.

This morning I woke to parrots hooting outside the red painted window of Hostel Tranquilo, reminding me of times I spent here last year. Most of the staff has changed and, because it’s off-season, there aren’t any backpackers sleeping on the floor and in hammocks by the reception yet it’s still the dirty pit of inequity I remember. There are the piles of cigarettes in bamboo ashtrays, wine bottles with oozing candles sprouting from them, red lamps hanging from the ceiling. We meet Penny here in her tiny room and Mum is amazed by the leopard-striped tiles in the bathroom and the beds that defy all scientific principles by refusing to collapse in a heap. For breakfast I commandeer a taxi that takes us speeding through the town, past Plaza Morazan with its grand bandstand and cast iron statue of Simon Bolivar and through the barrios to Marcado Borbon.

A sprawling maze of fruit shops and dirty Soda’s Mercado Borbon looks like a dingy Soviet subway system that just happens to sell piles of bananas. Damien, an old friend of mine once said of it, “Costa Rica exports all it’s best fruit, then all the grade #2 stuff gets sent to Mercado Central and what’s left over ends up in Mercado Borbon.” Whether this is true or not, what’s certain is that in this subterranean Aladdin’s cave you can by bags of watermelons, papaya’s, coconuts and bananas for a few quid. After getting as much as I can carry we jump into another taxi and high-tail it over to a bus station on the edge of town, a razor wire fortress of rebar gates that services the small mountain towns of the Tarazzu Valley. It was in San Marcos de Tarazzu that I lived for almost three months last year, carrying my machete and learning to pick coffee from the Robles family. It seems right to me that my first few days back in Costa Rica be spent there.

The ride back to the valley takes us three hours in the thick fog, our driver edging his way along a sheer ravine. I regret coming back at night, I don’t see enough to reminisce and because it’s rainy season the sky opens up just as the sun goes down. We arrive without incident in San Marcos however, though Penny is enthralled by the pastel colored dresses worn by the female Panamanian Indian migrant workers. Once off the bus I search the main street for a taxi that knows where the Vargas’s house is and we heap our bags in the back and clamber in, heading up a rocky path dotted with coffee farms.

‘Tonnnn’ yells Mama when I knock at her door, still unable to pronounce my name. She’s wearing a dressing gown and has obviously just woken up though it can’t have been later than seven. I’ve missed her a lot, this bustling little woman who coo’s over me and starts talking excitedly in very fast Spanish. Calin, her husband, comes to the door next and gives me a tremendous bear hug as he shows me to the guesthouse where I used to live. It takes about ten minutes for them to open the door before I can slide into my old bed and go to sleep and I actually remember when Prouty broke it a year before, the lock never working properly again.

Mercado Borbon


The Robles Family

Elian in his families fields

Atlanta, Virginia

In almost an hour and a half I will be leaving for Central America for the sixth time since I first rolled across the Mexican boarder in a Shackleton bus, leaning out the window as we left a trail of dust in our wake. I remember fences made of dilapidated car doors, chipped shrines of the Virgin Mary clinging to the roadside, mariachi bands in dusty squares, cowboy hat wearing men driving pickups full of cows. Now though I sit here at my gate in Atlanta’s airport and watch the Latino’s begin to congregate beside me, thinking that I’m more at ease than I have been for weeks. A few hours ago I was in Boston and, though my friends there are some of the dearest I will ever have, the pressures of work had reached a painful breaking point of sleepless nights that I knew I must escape.

Soon I will be in Central America, backpacking my way across an area of juxtaposition; waterfalls, volcanos and beaches set against civil strife, poverty and a slight sheen of tropical dirtiness and decay that is becoming increasingly comforting to me the more I travel. Daringly I have only bought a one-way ticket to Costa Rica and yet, within eight weeks, I plan to arrive dirty and tired back in Boston having followed a route I have not even planned. For the first three weeks I will be traveling with mum and her friend Penny through Costa Rica then I’m off up North alone, only dust, footprints and the odd pair of socks left behind in my wake.

So Today as I sit here in this mammoth airport with it’s flocks of milling Americans I am making a commitment, three actually, never an easy thing for me at the best of times and under my present circumstances probably doomed to dormancy.
The first is that I will explore my first full continent this trip, Belize, Honduras and Panama my final targets in this goal that has spanned a long time. The second is that I shall make it all the way to Boston by any means possible and the third; however hostile the terrain gets, I shall write an entry in my blog for every day that I’m backpacking.

Boston, MA

It’s four in the morning on a Thursday and I should be sleeping, warm in my relatively luxurious bed across the common in 150. Instead I’m sitting on a cold floor next to a dismantled futon in someone else’s grotty apartment next to the State House garden, a giant bronze eagle souring up towards my window on it’s massive stone plinth. Library books are spread about me, as is a empty gallon of chocolate chip ice cream , several bananas and a flashlight I’ve propped towards my text so I can read as I type. Now I’ve spaced out for a few hours, time I spent looking out of the window and trying to work. The latter is a painful process of keypunching, head holding and yawning as I try to balance my torch on a table beside me.

I wish I’d just gone home to sleep instead of trying to do my work, but a awful English deadline looms six hours away and as the sun rises I still can’t be bothered to walk back to my dorm from my friends house. I’ve been here a long time, since before noon yesterday and at first the prospect of working from a roof seemed to a good one. I set up my torch and books but the wind drove me off and I was relegated to the living room. A good idea really, if I had fallen asleep it would have been really easy to roll off the tiny space I’d been crouched on and become squashed four floors below. Oh god, I’m tired and writing was definitely a bad idea, as was ice cream for two breakfasts in a row. You know your tired, I've decided, when your playing Final Countdown and singing slowly along to the lyrics in a monotone. I guess Kings of leon and that hey ho-hey ho song by the Ramones will have to do and keep me awake. Luckily help is on the way, for looking across the common in the growing light I can see the lights going on in Capital Coffee, a safe haven for businessmen, politicians and caffeine starved students. University is nearly over for the semester, soon I’ll be in Costa Rica and able to relax for the first time in a while. I’m keen to keep writing now but whatever sense is left in me knows that my vocabulary has halved and my sentences transformed into the equivalent of sludge.

Suffolk University, Boston MA

I live on Boston Common, only a five minute walk through fairy-light covered trees separating me from the Capital Building with its magical golden dome. If one were to stand on the eleven floor of my dormitory you could see the frog pond far bellow with it’s ice skaters, the M.I.T power plant and even the long snaking line of the Charles River stretched out below you. As luck would have it however I live on the fifth floor, the view from my room not one of stately majesty but instead a dingy alley through which the occasional crack dealer runs, blue lights somewhere far behind. It doesn’t really matter that I seldom look out of the window though; my current living situation is usually interesting enough to keep me occupied for some time.

150 Tremont is a fascinating building to live in; it’s Victorian walls and horizontal flagpoles conceal a bizarre dichotomy of student life amid shabby furniture and halogen light bulbs, walking through the door is like peeling the bark from a dying tree and examining the insects scuttling below. Whether it’s eight in the evening or five in the morning I can lie on bed with my boots on and listen to the signs of life echoing around our utilitarian corridors, usually loud music and shouted curses. There are roughly four hundred of us here, each living in a separate reality with it’s own morals, social structure and time zone. Like the stray gas modules I was once forced to watch in school, we bounce off one another, ricocheting through life and occasionally combusting in fits of anger.

There is lumbering Bart who punched a policeman in the face during a night out in China Town and fled the scene. There is my roommate Raj who sits late at night on a chair in the communal bathroom, a curious expression on his face as listens to Citizen Cope on repeat and ruminates over continual cigarettes which he then stubs out in the sink. I could write about Taylor with her massive sunglasses and contempt for almost everything, bottle of vodka stuck in an expensive purse. There’s Tim, caught unscrewing a door and turning it into a table, Amanda who shattered a homeless mans jaw in a street fight, the third floor jocks with their wiffle bat games in the corridor and the sixth floor reprobates and their massive jars of condoms in the corner. Now I feel bad not including the stammering Macquaid with his notebook crammed full of disturbing drawings and various guests who seem to spend their waking hours throwing up in the toilet.

In Tremont there is exemplified everything one can find both shocking and exemplary about American culture. I have seen countless vile excesses of drugs and alcohol, spurred by a realization that no parent figure exists in the dorms. Along side this however, there exists a code where on the most part friend supports friend through the pitfalls of early adulthood without qualm or question. The school has another dorm that’s ridiculously nice, more of a hotel with its plush fittings and plate glass windows yet strangely not half as charming as 150.

Santa Marta, El Salvador


My time in El Salvador is almost over, with this ghastly revelation one must suck the marrow from every moment till at last the plane door shuts and my time here is finished. As departure comes closer though, it’s necessary to reflect in writing and try to make some sense out of this place, how ever impossible that task seems to me now. How can one understand El Salvador when the towns we pass by are either strewn with bullet holes or have disappeared, burned back into the jungle by ruthless government soldiers? What is reality when the old woman you are living with sits in her chair at night and talks, eyes glazed, of pregnant women thrown on spikes by armed men?

I’m writing this in a hammock, somewhere in the North East near the Honduran boarder. Appropriately I’m wearing my green Che shirt open to the heat, machete on the floor beside me as I listen to the sound of cocks crowing in the growing twilight. My memories are fragmented now by a need to sleep, flashes of mountains reaching far into the gathering dusk, a cow wandering dusty streets with a perplexed expression on her face, political slogans and bullet holes sprayed across whitewashed walls. Through this sea of thought I see Kyle, clinging to the back of a pick-up truck as I film him talking about guerillas he has known. If images can stay with you forever then these might. There was a church as we drove through the jungle to La Mora, it’s roof gone, the edges of it’s windows stained black with soot. It’s crumbling façade caught my eye and wouldn’t let go until the church finally disappeared around a bend and was gone.

I viewed all this through the viewfinder of the video camera I carried slung over one shoulder. Filming in the heat and dust was hard. I remember keeping focus on the person I was interviewing while a team of builders knocked down the house behind me, trying to be able to hear as a hoard of insects started their singing in the tree above a meeting I was trying to record. Every morning Roy would toss me the film bag as I’d check the batteries and grab the tripod. Sometimes we’d have to run to capture a moment on time, stills cameras bouncing up and down on our chests, laying the tripod just as an ex-guerilla, a teacher, a doctor began talking. Sometimes it was incredibly moving, the camera rolling as a man describes how he'd been tortured during the war and a doctor tells of his struggle to prevent AIDS and HIV. In the end perhaps we're wannabe war reporters, slugging beers and talking to girls at night, fingers clicking on camera triggers during the day, a constant stream of footage carving it's way into our tapes.

Sometimes though, there's a time to stop. I remember now hanging with one hand onto the back of a pick-up truck I’d haggled hard to use, finger far away from the film button as Roy crouched down trying to light a cigarette. The sun was going down, the sky rosy, orange, blood red all at the same time as if in mourning for the past day. My lens cap was on, I'd tried to get the sunset on camera at first, but there are some things you have to see for yourself. Around us all was still as the light fled over the horizon, leaving only the truck, the wind and us.


Are you sitting comfortably?


Roy and Camera, San Salvador


Arrival at the Airport



Camera Rolling...



The Suffolk Documentary Team Setting Up Shop, Santa Marta

Santa Marta, El Salvador

A man once told me that, roughly speaking, El Salvador has one doctor for every six thousand people. His name is Aristides Peres and for him the above isn’t just some mindless statistic, it’s an every day reality and job description. Dr Peres is one of a six member medical team in the remote village of Santa Marta, a two-hour long pick-up truck ride from the nearest town along pot-holed tracks almost impassable in the rainy season. We went there to interview several men who’d once met congressman Joe Moakley during the 80s and ended up staying three days. The first time I met the doctor he stood tired, stethoscope draped over his shoulders, a dog walking aimlessly along the floor of the medical centre as we interviewed him about AIDS (SIDA in Spanish.) His English was good and he reminded me of another man a long time ago, a fat doctor in Cambodia who played the violin every Thursday night and educated tourists about T.B between every song.
After Dr Perez had finished speaking and Roy had began to pack up our equipment I approached him. Our initial conversation was short and to the point:

ME: Hello, I enjoyed your speech. I was just wondering… I’m a wilderness paramedic by the way… I was thinking that I’d really like to help you in any way I can.

Dr Perez: Ok, can you come in five minutes? I’m must do a government health check on children at a school in the mountains. You can help me?

Me: (slightly taken aback, having expected to be given a job scrubbing the floors at best) Yes, of course…

I bounded up to Judy seconds later, a massive smile on my face as I asked her permission to accompany the doctor. She smiled and told me to get going. Ten minutes later I was walking out of the centre with a medical team that consisted of the doctor, a young looking dentist with long hair and aviators, a ferocious female nurse and another man with a stack of files under one arm. Together we climbed high up a dusty hill above the village, weaving erratically around docile cows lying in the middle of the road. The sun was out and the air hot and dry with the ever-present smell of animal dung. As we passed old men taking a break from work each raised their cowboy hat slightly in greeting, nodding their silent respect to the doctor who seemed to know every one. Eventually the village disappeared behind us and ten minutes later we’d arrived at the blue walled complex that was the school of Los Rodeo. As we entered through a massive steel gate Dr Perez turned to me, ‘remember to lock it. The children see us come and think we give them vaccinations so they run away.’ This I did as the others set up shop in the schools open air atrium, tables dragged out, dentist tools set up and piles of forms disgorged from bags. All the children lined up in front of us, laughs and smiles contrasting with limbs thin from malnutrition and arms riddled with ringworm. They took great sport in sneaking like tigers to pounce from behind and slap me over the head before disappearing behind a wall of their friends, everyone giggling shyly. The doctor pulled out a chair designed for a six year old and turned to me, ‘If I tell you what to write can you record each child?’

Three hours later I’d seen dozens of children, most with some small complaint like a common cold though a few had intestinal parasites. We worked like a production line, each child stepping forward to have his arms, mouth, eyes and ears examined before being given a slip for medicine and sent to the next area to be measured. I took down information, name of patient, age, sex, complaint in Spanish. My shirtsleeves were rolled up and sweat poring off my brow by the time we finished. There were other things I’d see working with Dr Perez, disturbing things I’d rather write about later when they are not so vivid.


Cow in the Road, Santa Marta


Mural on the wall of a school, Santa Marta


Kids


The Dusty Roads of Santa Marta

San Salvador, El Salvador

We were walking down an empty street when I noticed the policeman. He stood, high above us on the edge of a small park, a mountain bike resting against one blue-trousered leg. He wore a cap and carried a truncheon, his face indistinct in the near dark of the El Salvadorian night. We’d seen him earlier when we’d wondered down a quiet avenue and spotted the police station, two officers sitting listlessly by the forever open door. Both Roy and I had been drinking so, camera at the ready we sauntered up smiling and I introduced us in pigeon Spanish, “Hola, nosotros es Journalistas de una periodico en de Eustados Eunidos, donde es graffiti political por photographia?” This translates vaguely to ‘hello, we’re journalists from a newspaper in the United States, where is the political graffiti we can photograph?’ It was a harmless lie, more likely to get us an interview than admitting we were two college students on spring break.

Perhaps it was my Spanish, maybe they didn’t believe the story, it could have even been that the policemen were taken aback by two hairy gringos with a paparazzi style camera and the stink of tequila on their breath suddenly appearing from the night and demanding directions. Whatever, they gave us bull-shit instructions and waved vaguely towards the entire village before returning to the more serious business of putting their feet up on desks and looking bored. Disheartened by this sudden failure we slouched off up the hill towards our guesthouse, buildings pitted with bullet holes all around us, mangy dogs slinking from shadow to shadow. It’s an odd feeling to walk through a sleeping town and know that ten years before the entire place was filled with flying bullets and explosions, I can never put the past together with the future in places like that.

As we crossed the park, almost home now, the policeman appeared on his bike. He sat looking at us for a few seconds before signaling that we should follow him through the strands of palm trees towards a grubby red pavilion, it’s paint chipped and tile floor dirty. Just by its entrance he stopped and put the bike down, pointing above our heads at something. Looking up I could see what appeared to be the tail of an aircraft, olive green, stuck to a pole in the middle of the park. “American” the man said in Spanish, “from the war.”

For the next half an hour we talked to the policeman, who was soon joined by another. Roy set up the tripod and camera, snapping pictures and searing the darkness with his high-powered flash. Every so often he’d glance up from the viewfinder and ask me to translate for him, then something would catch his eye and he’d return to the camera, trying to photograph the plane. The tail section was definitely that of a military aircraft or helicopter we decided and the writing in English stenciled all over it seemed to confirm what the man had said. The conversation between our new friends and us went something like this, all be it with many mistakes and awkward pauses due to the language barrier:
Me: American, you’re sure?
Policeman: Si, a warplane. The Americans fought in the war.
Roy (to me): The Americans were actually fighting here? They must just mean the plane is American.
Me: (to the policeman) Only American planes or also American pilots?
Policeman: Si, pilots too
Me: You’re sure the Americans we’re here?
Policeman: Yes, and the Israeli’s.
Me (Half miming): The Americans were on the ground and in the air?
Policeman: Yes, the Israeli’s trained the troops and the Americans also fought.
Me: And the American’s dropped bombs (miming an explosion) here?
Policeman: Many bombs, in the hills there is a village the Americans destroyed. There are unexploded American bombs there. (He writes the name down)
Me (to Roy): I might be getting the translation slightly wrong but he seems sure that American pilots and troops we’re actually fighting here during the war. Did anyone ever mention that before?
Roy: S***. He seems sure?
Me: Yes. He also says they destroyed a village.

Afterwards, lying half asleep in my hammock I thought about what the man had said. My own countrymen dropping bombs on innocent people for the greater good, it reminded me horribly of Cambodia and the two 50 ton bombs turned into the pillars of a gate, marking the entrance to Aki Ra’s landmine museum at Siem Reap. It seems tragic that in the countries I love the most the people who are so amazingly kind to me have the least reason to be so. I should feel ashamed when they welcome me into their house and give me their food, after the damage the western world has done they should with every right lock their door and turn me away.


Unexploded Bomb in Northern El Salvador

San Salvador, El Salvador

El Salvador is a mess, from it’s shit strewn streets to the crimson-rimmed bullet holes in the clothes of long dead priests. The roadside advertisements are faded from the sun, by the entrance of every bank there is a man leaning languidly on the barrel of his scarred pump action shotgun. For the past few days all I’ve witnessed here are signs of conflict, from the blood stained robes of Arch Bishop Romero to stories of rebellion and torture told to us by a former guerilla. The worst part is there is little to balance these gruesome sights, the Capital San Salvador is a bleak eyesore of decay and cat piss that winds it’s way across the land in a series of malls and highways. There is no real center like the ones in most Central American cities, only dirty streets and the plush tennis courts of the American Embassy.

What seemed to have affected me most are the symbols at the Jesuit University here in San Salvador, the UCA. Walking through the airy, tropical campus I can’t make sense of the fact that on these well-manicured lawns six priests were executed by the El Salvadorian army less than thirty years ago, rose bushes now guarding the plot their innocent blood one stained. On your way to the universities museum one passes a fence that the hit squad scaled to access the compound and a small rock that marks where the Jesuits housekeeper and her young daughter were slain by a vicious slew of bullets to the head. Kyle leads us around the compound and tells us about the men who died, how they came from Spain to help El Salvador and ended up face down in the mud. To back up what he’s saying an American Jesuit showed us piles of photo albums taken the day the priests were murdered. The bullet holes in the walls, bodies slumped in never-ending sleep, those photos I will never forget, should never forget.

Confronted by the sight of such brutality and lost goodness I am filled with an immense sadness and sense of futileness that I don’t think anyone of conscience can truthfully ignore and put out of mind. In this strange land emotion runs wild and the most surprising people in my group cry without warning, probably trying to rationalize the incomprehensible. Later, sitting in an air-conditioned room in the American embassy I wonder why those responsible for El Salvador’s decline seem so unrepentant. Three U.S representatives in almost identical suits talked to us for an hour about GDP growth and political polarization, not once touching on the history of American involvement in the area. The question is of course, if I was in their position would I do any different, could I do any different?



The UCA


The fence the hit squad used to acess UCA



Roses Mark the Spot of the Killings


The Priests are Buried in the Chapel of the UCA

Suffolk, Boston

Making my way up Tremont Street today I bumped into Barry, an old Shackletonian who once worked in the Boston Office and was one of the last to walk away from the school. It felt odd speaking to her there outside the Suffolk buildings, dressed in my grubby suit jacket with a computer bag slung over one shoulder, a high school student no longer. We gossiped for a few moments before parting and, as I walked across the infernal wind tunnel to class I was struck with a sudden sadness. It’s the same feeling I always get when thinking of Shackleton, a sense of regret now the doors of Base Camp have closed and the busses finally put out of commission and left to rust in a junkyard somewhere. Though I am often overly sentimental when writing about my old home on spring hill it still seems tragic that no one else will have the opportunities the few of us experienced. I’m still only twenty-one and yet thanks to that school I’ve seen hundreds of miles of America, Central America and Asia, talked to a myriad of people and been given some of the most important life lessons one could wish to have.

Thinking back I remember Liz and Nikki standing laughing by a trail in Maine with backpacks on, Simon leaning against the temple of Angkor Thom with his camera out, Steve talking Spanish in Nicaragua with an complacent border guard. I don’t think I’ll ever again have the honor of working with such a committed group of educators and mentors, only a handful of whom I’ve mentioned above. Though I didn’t always respect or listen to them and was at times quite rude they were literally my parents away from home, my guides through the wilderness and at times both my biggest critics and largest supporters.

As I interact with students here and listen to what they have to say, I feel deeply that what this country (and perhaps this world) really needs are schools where the students are given an opportunity, whether they take it or not, to step away from everything they’ve known before and develop an expressed thirst for learning. Shackleton was by no means perfect but to this day I’ve never seen nor heard of any institution that comes as close constructively breaking the hard mold of humdrum normality and unoriginality as much as Shackleton did. I hope that somewhere there are other people like Luke O’Neil, making huge sacrifices so as to pursue their crazy dreams and that one day I’ll have a school like Shackleton to send my children to.

Mum’s been on at me for a long time to start writing again. Occasionally I glance at Student at Large, gathering electronic dust as my life moves on and leaves it behind but the effort to write, edit and proof read always seems too much. In my defense, a lot has happened over the past year and a half that’s affected my entire family and me and made writing difficulty. I’m hoping that I just needed a break from the blog scene while I sorted things out and picked my way through a haphazard first term of University. Now the snow is melting on the common, transforming it from a winter wonderland to something that resembles a ravaged park in downtown Sarajevo. People’s mood seems to reflect the increasingly volatile weather, tempers fray more easily than before and I’m increasingly pressed to provide all the requests of alcohol runs now I’m finally twenty-one. I find myself thinking more and more of El Salvador, waiting for Sunday when I’ll finally be shouldering my backpack once again and boarding a plane heading south. I think it’s this next adventure down south that’s spearheading my renewed attempts to journal again and I’m hoping that this entry isn’t merely a one off.

It’s probably best that for once I actively explain why I’m heading out from America in a flash of hiking boots and backpack instead of having the reader guess from the occasional dropped hint. The trip I’ll be taking next week is different from anything I’ve had the opportunity to do since I left Shackleton. I won’t be doing anything stupid for one thing; chances are there will be no machete strapped to my pack and a severe lack of bizarre Nicaraguans with rifles sharing my bus. In truth I’m not even traveling by public transport, this expedition will be by mini-van, a luxury that fills me with trepidation. Several months I was selected to take part in a Suffolk trip to El Salvador that would follow the footsteps of a Suffolk Law graduate, Joe Moakley. Former congressman Moakley is famous in Central America for his role in uncovering a conspiracy concerning the deaths of El Salvadorian missionaries and their housekeeper. We’re going down, video camera in hand to gain insight into the political events that has left El Salvador one of the most scarred places on earth.

Now preparations are nearing completion, the date of departure nearly upon us. I’ve been growing a slight beard so an El Salvadorian barber will have something to shave off with his close edged razor and thick brush. In the Moakley institute where the aforementioned congressman’s files are stored I checked over piles of equipment and wrote down a list of camera parts I would need. After a great deal of nagging I even managed to persuade my best friend Roy to sign up and join the small group of fifteen though I’m worried slightly at his enthusiasm concerning the machete he hopes to buy the minute we land. Now however the sun is setting in Boston, dinner waiting in sickly heaps in the dormitory cafeteria and Roy and Freddy returning soon from a weekend in Maine. I’ll leave thoughts of Central America behind and return to the mundane task of doing homework, something that never ceases to fill me with dread and is unfortunately never as interesting as procrastination.

Suffolk University, Boston MA

I think a lot about Music, looking out of the window on the ninth floor with the Christmas lights playing moody patterns across the common. Mostly I imagine my life as a movie, the soundtrack to which blasts forth from Meredith’s ipod when I have the presence of mind to steal it. Though my time in university is but brief I could easily write a scrawled list of music titles that would cover most of the check-sheet book I’m so proud of. All are related to memories; the merest bar of Elton Johns Tiny Dancer conjures up hours of reminiscing, and it’s far from alone. There are some songs however that speak so vividly to me that it’s all I can do to stop myself from instantly going to Facebook and clicking quickly through the reams of photos found there. These songs form a jagged ribbon through events, through deeds done and mistakes made and eventually out the other side to reevaluation and a sullen seriousness.

The Early Days of Chaos and Plenty



When I arrived in America, in the days before my chaotic lifestyle reduced my computer screen to a dozen glistening fragments, it was Franz Ferdinand I’d listen to. Chaos was the order of the day, running from class to class with assorted papers clutched under my arm, beer pong parties amid a sea of baseball caps and t-shirts. I’d listen to Jacqueline, the anthem of confident Scottish Middle-upper-class party animals, as I’d try to iron my favorite pink shirt amid clouds of fetid steam. Speaking honestly I don’t think work was a big concern then, in my defense I’d come from a near friendless existence and found myself plunged into the opposite within minutes of setting foot off the plane. I was more concerned with finding my way through the dormitories, trying to shyly hold hands with a girl when we’d walk back across Boston common after dark.

Reality Sets In


Within the first few weeks the work had thickened, the food seemed to be even stodgier than before and I’d fallen out with my roommate. This was a time I spent sleeping on couches for fear of incurring a massive row in my room, losing my key for days on end and regularly running out of money and persuading the canteen staff in my rusty Spanish to undercharge me. Two songs spring to mind, firstly The Who’s Pinball Wizard for the time spent lying on my bed while my roommate charged frantically in and out, blasting the above song and screaming into a cell phone. The second half of my existence then, trying to stop people from throwing my clothes and homework off the sofa I was living on and having to share it with eight others can only be described with Rozorlite’s America.

Apartment 606


About a Month into school I met Roy and Danny. Listening to Me Gustas Tu, a song written by Manu Chao in French and Spanish about Sun, life, Motorbikes, love, El Salvador, planes, traveling, the sea and a great many other things always brings back memories of their small apartment and all the people who’d find their way there. I’d arrive at about midday on a Friday night, sit down to grape leaf salad, borrow a laptop off the boys and get to work. Later, glass of red wine in hand I’d rip my work from the printer with a proud flourish and begin the gruesome chore of cleaning their sink, a sure gateway to hell and pieces of forgotten food and stale beer. I first really discovered my talent for hosting at 606, juggling glasses, guests and the ever-present complaints from neighbors.

Meredith


The night I became true friends with Meredith Jones we stayed up for seven hours straight, talking in a basement shower room and listening to Coldplay’s The Hardest Part. Whatever my previous mistakes might have led you to believe, I’m not the owner of a wooden sole, who’s one interest in women whether or not their easy. I can truly say that it was Meredith who proved to me that I didn’t have to seduce a girl for her to become valuable to me. Indeed, Meredith taught me that sometimes a person is too precious to even be considered romantically, that I could have a best friend who was female. Writing this now I know what she’d say if she was proof reading over my shoulder, know she’d coo “chheeesssy” before we both erupted into fits of giggles, and for some reason that thought makes me want to show her the rough draft more urgently than I already did. In a way she’s become my redemption, soon after we first started hanging out I fell asleep and Merri was so cautious of awaking “Angry Tom” that she left me snoring for hours. Realizing things like this, I’ve started to improve, to become more organized and less vigilant, and live for the times when I catch her eye in a party and see she’s giving me a wink and pointing towards a girl, mouthing “Japan 4”, our secret code for attractive people of the opposite sex. Partly to guard against Merri’s disapproving glare I make most of my classes, do large chunks of homework and actually get some sleep.

Where I am Now.

One of the many things I always appreciate about hanging out on the ninth floor with Merri is the view for my own room looks onto a drug infested alley and hers the golden dome of the statehouse, magnificent amid Christmas trees. My life as I write this has changed since I arrived here, I have friends whom I love and who love me, though I still struggle with work I am aided so much by a dozen different people who offer their time without complaint or price. Yes, I still suffer from petty stress and constant forgetfulness and yet I have learned the power of sitting with people I actually care about, listening to Yann Tiersen’s Summer 78 and knowing that I have found something worth keeping. Hopefully next semester I will take a break towards the end, whether it be in the jungles of El Salvador or the snowy streets of Boston and look at my laptop to find out which six songs I’ve listened to most.

Glen Lyon, Scotland

On the Second night of my teaching adventure I try to write and ignore the fact that my eyes are tired, my hands callused and a thin stream of mucus hangs from my nose and fights constantly with some grubby tissues. The dusky valley reaching up around the farmhouse where I sit is wet and uninviting. Closer to us, puddles form in the muddy road that reaches across the rivers icy grip to crawl up grassy mounds and arrive gracefully at the fluttering union jack keeping watch over this house. Now though I’m inside, protected from the thin sheets of drizzle and letting the staccato beat of Immortal Techniques “Peruvian Cocaine” fill my ears as I try to sum up this day with some accuracy.

I was awoken early by the noise of camp. For those who have never slept in a tent camp noises ungulate hour to hour, from the “zzzziiiip” of someone sneaking dubiously from their bed late at night to the “oh god” of a camper discovering a lack of poles/sleeping bag/ socks in their backpack. This time though, it was the raucous and happy shouts of what sounded like the entire camp, people who I gathered must enjoy waking up early. Groggily I climbed from my disgustingly orange hued tent and stumbled gratefully into breakfast where a mug of thick tea and a sea of brown toast awaited. After eating, Alex (the deputy head) drove myself and a small pack of rowdy kids along the beautiful valley to a wooded park, gentle oaks and stocky pines all reaching towards a sky that was for once devoid of cloud.

It was in that park I was introduced to “Biscuit” a rock climbing guide who would attempt the daunting task of teaching outdoor activities to children for whom the business of everyday living is a scary and daunting experience. I spoke a lot to this Biscuit, a man who had the fortune of having both a grin and a perpetual look of merry amazement on his impish face. We talked of climbing, he taught me to fix thick nylon rope to trees, clip carabineers into harnesses and help the kids learn to belay. ‘Why are you called Biscuit’ one of the students asked him, the question we were all wondering but too tactful to ask (not that I minded him having a interesting name of course, in my time I’ve met a child called Hope, a computer geek by the name of Max Powers and the smoked ham curer Chip Conquest.)

“Well” he cleared his throat and we were dealt a flood of ridiculous stories, my favorite being “Well, you see I was in Africa as a child, and my parents left me and my sister with a tribe when I was only three.” We stand looking skeptical “So, one day I was running through the camp” he empathized this with a mad scientist-esq waving of arms “and I fell flat on my face and got a massive bruise, here on my forehead. Then the chief walked up, and he stands looking at me like this” he stood on one leg and crooked the other strangely, one arm outright as if holding a spear “and he says ‘biscotti’ which is of course Swahili for ‘egg head’ so from then on I was known simply as biscuit.” Everyone stared, eyes narrowing as the kids tried to sum him up. before they could come to a successful conclusion we were off, running down steep paths and jumping from rocks in our own interpretations of free style walking.
It was with biscuit that I really got to see how determined the kids I was minding were. Sure, some of them refused to climb the rock walls and caused trouble on a deathtrap of a rope swing and one even disappeared, but several of the girls really pushed through their fear of heights and made a go of the activities. I found myself hooked into the rope at the foot of a crag, shouting upwards with all my breath to encourage whoever was pulling themselves up the cracks and weathered ledges.
So, apart from an embarrassing show of my appalling archery skills, the nagging specter of jetlag, forgetting to take a shower and being mauled by midges it was a great day of adventure.

Butterstone, Scotland


After the revelry of Boston I needed to be out of my depth again. I’d had too much fun, partied too hard and was in danger of becoming bothersome with my manically cheery attitude. America had been a whirl of new faces, most instantly forgotten and replaced by the next in a way that left me feeling quite shallow. True, I was more popular that ever before, but the sudden recognition by my peer group was in danger of going to my head and forcing me to change into something different. I’d become arrogant with the attention of so many and Simon would have cut me down to size. What I needed to do was step outside my comfort zone and try something that scared me a little bit, experience things that showed me I still had need to grow and develop.

The chance to try something was waiting for me the minute I got off the plane in Aberdeen the day after orientation, though I’d been planning it far longer than that. Months before I’d been bored and out of work, ringing anyone I could think of to ask if they needed paid help, a volunteer even, and finding that no, they didn’t. Eventually I was saved from the monotony and offered a week of employment after orientation. I’d be working at a school for learning difficulties in Scotland that I’d once attended, a tiny Hogwarts perched on a hill, the odd tower springing from its limestone walls. The kids there struggled with learning disabilities as I once did, their stories at once both tragic and thought provoking. Protected from the outside world, I’d be entering an environment that was at once innocent and frightening, a society no bigger than fifty people.

The newly appointed headmaster was an old friend of mine and had got me the job. Once a teacher there, he’d been one of my most powerful mentors and propelled me through my first few years of boarding school. It was Andrew who had introduced me to the wonders of the English language and the powers of creative thought, who had taught me the meaning of antidisestablishmentarianism, simply “because it sounded good.” A few brief phone conversations and my employment was finalized. Id be working as a “care assistant” at a rural summer camp the school held for a week in a long green valley north of Perth. I was thrilled at the chance to pay back an institution that had been my home for four years and glad to be working with Andrew again. Overall though, I felt nervy to walk through the limestone and paneled wood of a school as a member of staff rather than a student.

So, weeks later I arrived in Butterstone with my eyes full of sleep and backpack leaking hiking boots. I hadn’t really gone back there in my six years since leaving and memories cascaded back to smother me. I felt like the ten year old who had first entered through the blue door, taking baby steps with my head lowered. I remembered running up the dingy stairs to my dorm in the old servants quarter, the dead flies on the window and the sense of happiness that seemed to override the smell of socks and B.O. For me it was a time of innocence, I was protected from the world and didn’t have to worry about a thing.

Andrew met me at the door and we saw how much we’d both changed, a boy who’d become a man and a teacher who’s once short hair now fell graying to his shoulders and who’s beard made him look like some ancient prophet. I didn’t see it then but I laugh now at the thought of my mentor being a man who could pass himself off as Jesus. Soon after our initial reintroduction he was off, running away on some errand while I was heaping my camping equipment into the back of a truck to be taken to the camp a hours ride away. At this time I still didn’t know exactly where I was going.

Boston, U.S.A

I returned to the United States of America at eleven on a cloudless summer night. Cloudless that is in Boston, in the U.K my planes were chased by bad weather and consequently delayed, the end result being me sitting sweaty and gross on a hulking 747 that refused to move until we were all ready to crucify the air traffic controllers in their air conditioned office. When I eventually landed in America the door hissed open and the passengers emerged white and clammy, gasping at the clean air in a similar state to rescued submariners. As I pushed past the mass of humanity trying to escape our aluminum prison and walked down the labyrinthine corridors common place in all airports, I felt my stomach twist itself into knots. This was (A) due to British Airways food (an oxymoron I’m sure you’ll agree) and (B) to the prospect of the dreaded customs officials that I rightly suspected were skulking around every corner.
What is it about American customs officials that make me feel like I’ve entered a totalitarian dictatorship whenever I pass through their officious grasp? According to my mother “guns and snappy uniforms” turn these mild mannered people into lecturing megalomaniacs who delight at the discomfort one shows as they read and reread your passport as if it were the bible. I half expected the customs team to begin speaking German and end each transaction with a precise “Heil.” This time however I offer customs no quarter and, as it’s nearly midnight, the poor man at his little kiosk lets me through at double time once I’ve explained my failure to fill out entry forms stems from my status as both resident and visitor.
I grabbed my bag in record time, hoisted it over my shoulder and walked slowly into the echoing arrivals hall with its glass walls and shiny metal surfaces. There I met Alexis, swaying slightly she was so tired, and was gratefully bundled into the back of her boyfriend Bobbies retro Mercedes (the sort everyone drives is Russian spy films), resisting the temptation to look behind for secret police in unmarked cars. Through Boston we were quite, the easy silence of good friends traveling together. Bobby steered us away from Logan, over the concrete spine of the big dig and down into Back Bay, a town sleepy now the students have left for the summer. We parked outside his frat, a red-bricked building with a small plaque by the front doors discreetly displaying the fraternity’s letters.
Later that night I lay slumped on a leather sofa in the wood paneled Charter Room, the lamps turned low. On the staircase outside are lined the portraits of young men who’d once lived here, the overall style waxing and waning through the decades. In one the boys are in black and white, their hair cowlicked and clothes smart, in another someone posses in 80s blues brother glasses. I laugh now and imagine the frat with a little bit of Harry Potter mixed in, the pictures talking to each other and swapping frames.

San Jose Costa Rica to Granada Nicaragua

When the boat stopped, I wrongly presumed that crossing the border would be the worst part of my journey. Waking up, gummy eyed and dehydrated, I could see the narrow cargo launch had been pulled over and that camouflaged men were waiting to come aboard. Around us the jungle seemed to simmer in the midday heat, the pea soupish river sliding slowly past, carrying its collection of black plastic bags and tour boats I knew not where.

I don’t know why I came back to Nicaragua. It wasn’t to “bag” another country; I’d already visited the state and seen its three biggest cities. It wasn’t to show off, Peru would have been the one for that and, as I was alone it wasn’t for the company. Two days after I had originally planned to leave I was woken at four by Andreas, my body angrily protesting both at the time and the presence of the four-dollar gin in my system. Hopping around in the gloom I was saved the bother of changing by the grubby jeans and tee shirt I had slept in for the past two days and was soon sneaking noisily from the room. An hour and a half later I stood in an empty bus concourse among a dozen shifty eyed Nicaraguans who were to be my companions to Los Chiles, the last town on the Costa Rican border.

I had chosen the Southern road to Nicaragua because most tourists pale from taking a river boat past rickety military checkpoints and as usual I wanted to be different. Unfortunately, I had planned out my trip the way I feel British generals must have planned out the battle of the Somme. I stood at a tiny wall map, moving my hand up massive expanses of green jungle and brown mountains, explaining how I hoped to be half way across the country by nightfall and yet not bothering to consult the guidebook. In the end it took this merry incompetence half a day to manifest itself and by the time I caught the bus and rode the boat across the boarder I thought I was doing really well.

It was a bright sunny day, the river was beautiful and small children were jumping of moss-clad trees into the water. I was still in the best of moods as we crossed the border and entered Lake Managua. The boat chugged up to a massive sprawl of decaying corrugated iron and grey concrete that appeared to be a small port town. As we entered a large ferry (the one I had intended to catch to Granada) slipped its moorings and headed out to sea trailing a thin line of smoke. Even then I wasn’t really upset, there would be other boats waiting to take me up the lake that disappeared into the smog to my left. As I exited the launch and clambered onto the immigrations services dock I could already smell the fine food waiting for me in Cordoba.

“four days”, the customs man holds up his grubby fingers to further emphasize a point I have trouble grasping. I have just discovered that, to catch the next ferry from the aforementioned grubby port I will have to wait in the infested hellhole for four days, subsiding on money that is inaccessible as the nearest ATM is on the other side of the country. Now thoroughly missing Tattie, Jamie and all other my lovely friends in the Tranquilo I ask if there is any other way to get to Granada. The man smiles and nods, “autobus” he grins in a slightly ominous manner.

Thirteen hours later and the bus ride continues like some daemon rollercoaster I have become locked onto. For the first few hours I tried to read but the excessive jolting makes my eyes skip every second word and I soon give up, deciding that the road conditions are marginally worse than in Cambodia. Sitting opposite me is a young man, a fellow refugee from the boat who wears the massive fake Rolex that seems to be the Nicaraguan national uniform. Jammed next to me in the seat are two giggly female students who find it very amusing that I cannot sit straight due to the size of my legs. Everyone seems really smiley and happy, (or they did for the first few hours) and the only person I am slightly concerned about is the mustachioed man with a cowboy hat and wrapped sack conspicuously containing a small rifle. Soon it will be my turn to sleep and I will exchange places with one of the girls and climb onto the bed of rice sacks lining the isle.

One hour after that I am jumping down from the yellow bus, pack on my back and no idea where I am. The city is not the one I remember, shuttered and dark as dogs creep through the shadows and crack whores chase me up the street, demanding either sex or something to eat. Finally avoiding them, I climb over large piles of rubble and reach Hostal Central to find it boarded up with a large For Sale sign tacked to the door. Luckily, as a drunk runs after me up the road, I find two happy policemen who chaperone me to the nearest hostel and, with hands on machetes, persuade the doorman to let me in free of charge.

Volcano Arenal, Costa Rica

Flame, bright and orange, juts from the blackness ahead and cascades downwards with the smell of burned sulfur and an odd popping noise. We stand there, transfixed as the volcano above us erupts in erratic bursts, spewing magma and smoke into the jungle. In the dark I could see Ryan smiling, the click of his camera in sync with the occasional booming roar and flash of flame. The American couple between us seemed oddly out of place up here in the cloud forest, and indeed had they had not picked up two bedraggled hitchhikers (me and Ryan) they probably would never have found this muddy path leading upwards into the crater. We all stood and stared, united by this common glimpse of natural beauty that stirred something deep within me. The romantic part of my brain tells me that maybe I gained contact with some long dead ancestor who once stood, clad in furs thousands of years ago, watching the bright flash of mysterious energy explode from the earth with the same sense of wonder.

I had not planned to go to the Volcano and was instead making far grander plans. Lying one night on my rough straw mattress in Costa Rica’s Tarrazu highlands I had decided to see my friend Rosie. She was in Peru, I knew that much, and at the time South America seemed relatively easy to get to (after all, when consulting my tiny map of the world, courtesy of the C.I.A Costa Rica and Peru seemed to almost touch they were so close together) so I packed my bags and headed for San Jose the next morning. Upon arriving at the Tranquilo, which had yet again become my base of operations in Central America, I stared dumbfounded at a full-scale map of Central and South America. There was Costa Rica, and further south (a lot further south it turned out) was Peru but in the middle was a huge chunk of mountainous land labeled COLUMBIA in ominous black writing. Later that night I was planning my trip and had come up with two possible ways to get down to Peru, which I eagerly presented them to two men who had offered to travel with me. The first, a dreadlocked tyrant who claimed to be a writer/master mariner/ former drug dealer and who carried a massive serrated killing blade wrapped up in his towel seemed none too enthusiastic about my ideas. He promptly informed me that if I was caught stowing away on a cargo boat enroot from the Panama canal the crew would either drop me off at shore, or simply put, “they wouldn’t.”
Ryan, my new Canadian friend looked very strangely at me when I told him I might go through the Darien gap. “Its idiots like you” he told me “that give Columbia a bad name.” He then informed me that in this small strip of land I would find “paramilitary, rebels, other rebels and bandits pretending to be rebels.” I must say I found his cynicism rich, coming from a man who had argued in favor of a hair brained scheme involving the use of geese as a new means of transport. In the end though, he persuaded me against South America and we set about a expedition that would take us to a small island off Costa Rica’s western coast, together with Rick the aforementioned “master mariner” who reckoned he could appropriate us a yacht somehow.


Rick


Ryan

Problems arose very early in the planning of our trip however, as it was soon apparent that the island was not on any maps. Looking at the massive wall chart of Costa Rica pinned on the grubby hostel wall we finally found it in a magnified white box but were unable to place it on the actual map. That night we asked the hostel cleaning woman if she knew where the island could be found and were amazed when she nodded and pointed at the map. ‘Here’ she said, tapping the part of the chart where the little white box was, ‘here.’ Later, after we had given up on that trip and were instead heading to Costa Rica’s only active volcano we still talked about her mysterious island, hidden somewhere off the coast and incased in a massive white box.

An average price for the trip to the volcano of Arenal, a dip in the closed off hot spring there and a night’s accommodation is close to sixty dollars. Thanks to Ryan’s sense of cunning we were able to shave off bunches of dollars in all these areas, taking the overall price to about ten. We started this bonanza of saving by living in a room reminiscent of the house in Fight Club, a squalid hole where the toilet seat slipped off the bowl without warning and there were not enough beds. While Rick and his long suffering companion Cheryl decided to pay full price for a hot spring tour and disappeared off in a bus, me and Ryan and decided to walk up the Volcano. We had Rick’s head light, together with the promise that he would “stab us” is it wasn’t returned in once piece and there was still an hour before the sun went down. Cockily we started off alone the highway, taxi’s and pickups flashing by in a blur of steel, the volcano always ahead and yet hidden for the time being by a mass of white cloud.



For several hours we walked, the sun disappearing fast and apart from a slight detour into a forest reserve (we were promptly ejected by a tiny bat who bounced along the road before swooping over our heads) we made good progress. Soon the light was completely gone and sweat and humidity had soaked the dress shirt I had stupidly chosen to wear for the hike. On we hiked, into a jungle and finally onto a barren road where the nice American couple pulled over in their rented 4x4 and let us clamber in. From there the expedition passed with surprising rapidity as our speed freak of a driver threw the car over every bump we saw at full speed, and it was not long before we had reached the hilltop observatory/hotel where our new companions had planned to stay. The gate guard, a angry man with a clip board refused us entry, even after Ryan assured him we were on the guest list, under the name Oscar, ‘Oscar with a X.’ Luckily we had received directions to a hidden area where (after jumping a few fences) we were able to swim in a free hot spring and watch the lava cascade down the mountain.
The expedition might of turned out slightly differently had we not met a nice Tico who gave us a quick lift up the road and slightly worrying directions to the volcano. ‘Turn left and you’ll get a great view of the volcano’ he told us, ‘turn right and you’ll die.’