Unexpectedly I find myself washed up on the shores of Caye Caulker island, a miniscule sliver of sand and palm trees off the coast of Belize. It takes about fifteen minutes to lope the island's length, and about a minute to lope the width. If you were walking at an imperial pace it'd be five minutes. Caye Caulker is populated with natty dredd mons, expats and hermit crabs, all of which lope at the same slothlike speed. If you don't lope you don't look cool. I am decidedly uncool sporting a brisk trotting shuffle, and if it weren't for the 185 miles of barrier reef within eyeshot of this island I'd be within eyeshot of stir crazy. Or did that just happen...
Mum is adapting extremely well to the backpacker lifestyle and has read about five books, eaten hot sloppy street tamales, kicked back in the carribean ocean and crawled all over Mayan ruins jutting like cracked teeth in the skull of this Meso-American dream. She touched down in Cancun a week ago but I haven't said hi to y'all in two months so let's go back to where I last hit a keyboard...
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| Iguana Hostel, San Cristobal de las Casas |
After my border run to San Cristobal in Mexico I set up shop in Antigua back in Guate. It's pretty similar to San Cristobal in a lot of ways, with cobblestone streets and colonial buildings squaring off every corner, all sunk into a setting of active volcanoes and Lord of the Rings style mountain ranges (the hobbit-like stature of the locals exacerbates this metaphor). The town is such a perfect grid that I got lost perpetually in the first week, since my brain is wired more like the inside of a golfball than a rubik's cube. Engineers, architects and math nerds you'd be in your element you big cuboid weirdos. It's also full of crumbling Spanish churches from whenever the colonisation went down. Very pretty in a conservative 'we don't like things to look different here' way. I'd insert photos except I didn't really take any. For the last two months there I pretty much just painted, drew stuff, drank coffee in central park whilst getting stuck into the crotchet hook and ate out at cafes with friends. Let the show and tell time commence!
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| The Terrace Hostel, Antigua Guatemala |
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| I gave a couple of flower painting lessons to Nick, a new friend from Minneapolis. |
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| Banana Azul Hostel foyer, Antigua Guatemala |
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| Banana Azul Hostel foyer, Antigua Guatemala |
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| Central Park knit offs, Antigua |
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| Central Park knit offs with Lauren and Alyona |
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| Yarn bombing and paper-craning Central Park with Lauren, Antigua |
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| On the way to the live music scene at Angie Angies with Lauren, Omar and random hostel person I forget the name of. |
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| Little Frankie and Olivia wrestling on the street |
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| Unfinished mural in a room of Banana Azul Hostel. To be continued... |
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| Another Banana Azul Hostel room |
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| I have strange recurring dreams where spiders bite my eyes... |
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| Yet another room in Banana Azul Hostel |
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| The staircase of Banana Azul Hostel |
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| Ink piece for Valentino, which I am currently carrying around on the side of my backpack. It's been in three countries so far... |
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| I had a dream that my hand was a deciduous sloth. I have half-baked ideas for a kids graphic novel. |
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| Ems and wittle Frankie at Angie Angies. |
There was one day a few weeks ago where I left the Antigua gridlock to visit Monterrico beach with a group of happy people from the hostel I was staying at whilst painting (Banana Azul Hostel). I'm still getting black sand out of my ears because the waves were all nasty shore dumpers but after nearly six months away from the beach I had to go for full submersion anyway. Getting dumped in ankle deep water is pretty humbling, and also hilarious once you get used to the idea of not breathing as regularly as you'd like to. Monterrico had a strange vibe, like an abandoned town out of a Stephen King novel. There were unfriendly dogs dotted on the beach like forgotten flotsam, and unoccupied hotels slumping like children's sandcastles into the tide. I did like the hot wind coming off the ocean and the loneliness of the place. Was making 'dodda chok dodda chum' songs up in my head and pretending I was waiting for Roland Deschain to appear from a door in the sand. Sometimes life feels more like the Dark Tower universe than not. There are certainly other worlds than these.
A week ago, Lauren and I both took the 32 hour bus challenge and ambled from Antigua back to San Cristobal, briefly stopped overnight with enough time to eat slab ice cream in the rain before jumping on an ancient bus-shaped crustacean headed for Cancun. The discomfort of riding in a creaking, sweating lump of metal full of damp humans with windows so cracked they looked like dragonfly wings and were therefore unable to be opened, combined with the realisation that said lump of metal did not come equipped with air conditioning, is bordering on unbearable and I don't recommend it. We were spat out at 5.30 in the morning in Cancun, the plastic pretendy wonder world of big hotels towering into the sky and wrapping the entire coast of what is otherwise a spectacular wedge of ocean! When one looks out to the watery horizon and forgets about the lameness of what happened onshore in the last forty years, it's still a paradise.
Mum had booked a couple of nights accommodation at the Hyatt, the balcony from which I took this shoreline photo. It was an interesting contrast from the places I've been staying in this year. Everything is designed so that it doesn't touch your consciousness, and you can float on through having whatever head trip you feel like. A weird way to live.
Since then we've checked out ruins Chichen Itza and Tulum, and then somehow jumped on a water taxi and ended up on Caye Caulker Island off Belize. Lauren and I went snorkelling with loads of sharks and stingrays yesterday, and even saw a couple of green Moray eels - joy! Lobster season opened here just yesterday and after 13 years of not eating any animals and having no inclination to do so I totes ate a lobster burger. Exceptionally delicious. It's ok kids, it's not a 'gateway animal' and I'm not frothing for the taste of flesh as I type this.
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| Chichen Itza and mum looking like a schoolkid who has forgotten where she was supposed to meet back with the group |
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| who's hat is lamer? Hard to tell. Is that like a genetic thing, an inability to choose cool hats? |
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| A cenote a few minutes drive away from Chichen Itza |
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| Tulum |
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| Tulum ruins on the beach are spectacular |
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| The main street of Caye Caulkre Island, Belize. No cars here, only golf carts and bikes. |
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| Nothing says tiny town like a shitty derelict remnant of some sideshow alley. |
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| Natty dredd mon is cooler than you, and has a nice voice so he sings Creole style reggae loudly as he shoots the sunday breeze. |
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| Mini Natty Dredd Mon is also cooler than you. |
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| Practicing Poi back at the hostel. |
Where to from here? Mum is jumping on a twilight sailing boat tonight, and I think I'm gonna snorkel with manatees! Excitement plus. We are headed for Guatemala soonish, although it's pretty hard to imagine leaving this place right now. I mean 185 miles of reef right here...that's an entire other universe to trawl. Smell ya's later :)
