What I did not do

After some less than edifying experiences in Honduras I started this blog entry in a deep groove of railing against the unsmiling, sunglasses wearing, laptop carrying, ego-based bargaining, extreme-story dropping, 'humerous' tshirt-wearing, lonely planet-sticking, skin-showing young people from europe and north america that call themselves 'backpackers'. But, after lunch, i realise that 1. i probably would do aspects of this if i wasn't so self-concious about being a stereotypical traveller 2. it isn't very helpful and 3. if you know what i am taking about, well you already know exactly what my qualms are and if you don't then, well, lucky you.

Suffice to say 2 days on a bus took me from the amazingly creative, wise, hard dancing, hard-hustling, mexican-centric travelling folks of san christobal straight into a hostel full of north americans and europeans (and the most english people i have been with in one place since i left) that didn't say hello to each other unlike EVERYONE does in mexico, that spent their evenings watching films on their computers with headphones (some, not all), and spent lots and lots of time talking about how much they paid for taxi and bus rides to various places. it was pretty dire, but i tried to see it as a test of my character and ability to see the good in people (and obviously all of those people are, fundamentally, good people, except the ones that are likely heading into investment banking once they get their photos of the jungle up on facebook) and also keep telling myself it was worth it....

... because i was hooking up with nick- the duffman- so-called because of his love for the California Redwood duff, which is the fallen down leaves and general detritus that gathers on the forest floor and is AMAZING to sleep on (and get spider bites in). We had met 'in the duff', so to speak, in santa cruz shortly after i had moved into the forest, hung out in the kresge communal kitchen cooking, and had then gone on a hitching trip south to big sur together. i had last seen him hastily saying goodbye as i caught a ride with a swiss couple going south in... must have been june 2007.

...

and the only changes i saw as he walked through the hostel door and gave me a big hug were his now goatee and more refined muscle set. but he told me the crazy story of his life in the time we had spent apart- getting run over by a 12 wheeler articulated lorry (thats a 'semi' for my american audience), having a few hours in which he knew there was a good chance he was going to die (and in a fuck load of pain) and then a slow and (typically for him) deeply introspective healing process that is ongoing, and that involved lots of ayuasca, lots of time bushwacking in various forests (at first on crutches!!!) and a (set of) polyamorous relationship(s) in ashville, north carolina, apparently something akin to the santa cruz of the east coast. and what did i have in reply to that??

so we were two friends on the road together after both being 'alone', at least in theory, for many months each (he had come up from nicaragua to meet me). But the town was not a welcoming place. It is known as the 'party capital' of honduras, and i don't know anyone whose house is the 'party house' for a long period of time that doesn't get jaded after a while (look at belgrade road). The (for the most part) stand-offish approach of the locals probably had something to do with this. So did the man who ran across the road and pretended to pull a gun on us in a most disturbing way. So did the numerous people who tried to rip us off a little or sell us drugs... when I was in India with lauren we ran into two typically private school, well built young men who were nursing huge wounds and lumps to the head. turns out they had got wasted the night before and had been trying to chat up the local girls as though they were in soho on a friday night and in the end the local boys had tied them down and driven motorbikes over them... it was this sort of attitude from both sides that, i guess, prevailed in la ceiba that and many other friday nights.

but the next morning we were off to the island of utila, home of part of the second biggest coral reef in the world and some of the cheapest diving certification courses. Cue a week of daily diving- eagle rays, huge eels poking their heads out of caves in the coral; coral and fish of every luminous colour and tesselating pattern imaginable; vaguely swimming into shoals of fish around a wreck 30metres below sea level, angel fish, trumpet fish, a lone seahorse chewing a little plant in a sandy bed... marvellous stuff. and would you believe it- my hair turns red underwater!!!

and then yesterday, travelling back through to guatemala, an old man and a young boy presented me with two very not straightforward moral dilemmas.

The old man was, to put it mildly, going senile. i met him in the no-mans-land between honduras and guatemala, as he rendered two streetwise money changers and a minibus conductor utterly bemused with a combination of deafness, spanish spoken with an unapologetic texan drawl, totally non-sequential statements and not understanding what was going on. it turned out that he thought he was paying for the minibus but actually he was changing money from dollars into quetzals (the local currency, and also the name of the national bird of guatemala). he had a hospital crutch with the bottom bit missing, and walked very slowly. his toes poked out of the front of his shoes. you had to SPEAK VERY LOUDLY AND CLEARLY before he would even notice you were talking to him, never mind apprehend what you were saying, he didn't seem to have any money, he had a hat on saying 'costa rica- pura vida' (pure life), and, he claimed, he was trying to get to reno, california, overland, a trip of around 4000 miles that would take at least 5 or 6 days if you were constantly on buses. it seemed like a totally farcical situation, and the breakfast in the cafe on the border looked amazing (plantain, steak (there had been cattle farms all along our route), eggs, sour cream, rice and beans), but i figured that this guy could do with some help, and after hanging around for a bit while his interactions with the locals became even more disjointed, i decided i would go with him as far as guatemala city and, if he really seemed like he wasn't going to manage to get to where he was going, at least try to get in contact with one of his family members or, in the worst case scenario, the US embassy (it really did seem that bad- he couldn't even break the seal on an unopened bottle of water). I bought him breakfast (he said he hadn't eaten for 2 days) and the fragments of his life began to come out- he owned land in costa rica. his ex-wife owed him $5000, she had sent him a letter that he had unopened in his bag- maybe it had some money in it? could i find it for him? the 'letter' turned out to be a 'get well soon' card, addressed to the something-or-other christian hospital in portland, oregon, signed by many people. so he was not alone in the world, at least. he said he had 17 children, and that the eldest (she) was a professional crook and had just retired age 35.

a big saga involving banks and changing money ensued and finally he gave me 10 US dollars and i bought him a bus ticket, after a lengthy conversation of me explaining that if he wanted to go north to mexico he needed to go to guatemala (which is where we already where), NOT el salvador (which was in the direction we had come from). and he kept forgetting i was english and speaking to me in spanish.

on the bus he engaged similarly bewildered fellow passengers with random statements, but as we drove along i remembered my grandad (who died 12 years ago), who almost certainly knew he was going to die in the weeks leading up to his admittance into hospital and, despite being in lots of pain, sorted out all his papers and things (i still have his amazing collection of classical music taped from radio 3), and then made a doctors appointment which i guess he knew would highlight the cancer that was eating him up. but my grandma, seeing how much pain he was in and doing what she thought was the right and loving thing, called an ambulance the day before and they came and that was that, he died less than a week later (if i remember right). he was pretty pissed off that he hadn't been able to do these last things on his own terms.

and with this in mind, and knowing that if he did make it to california he probably wasn't going to be able to leave again, and knowing (and having observed the guatemalan peoples' behaviour towards him and knowing that both they and mexicans are generally amazing, respectful people) that he looked so vulnerable and pathetic that it would almost be embarrassing to rob or hurt him, i recognised that maybe he knew exactly what he was doing and that this was his last journey. Like the walk that old navajo native americans take into the forest when they realise it is time to pass into the next world. Perhaps if i put my nose and value set into his business i could ruin this for him. of course his family could have been worried sick about him and i could have saved many a sleepless night but, well, i only had my instinct to decide.

so when we got off the bus and he shook my hand and looked me in the eye and said thank you- the most lucid thing he had done the whole time- i told the people who had come to help us/try and sell us things where he wanted to go and that he could use a little extra help. then i headed for the next chicken bus and didn't look back. i am interested to see where he has got to though...

the boy was a different story entirely. in panachajel, a tourist town on the edge of the beautiful lake atitlan that i will begin to walk around tomorrow, i got chatting with one of the multitude of mayan ladies selling beautiful shawls. perhaps we were flirting; my spanish isn't good enough to be sure. i played my mbira, ostensibly for money but really to meet other musicians and let passing children have a go, and then sat with her and a woman selling atole (a delicious drink a bit like watery rice pudding but with maize instead of rice), drank some chocolate atole, and chatted. after a while a boy came over with a little bowl of handicrafts for sale and what seemed like a very intelligent way of being. we chatted more and then i left to go and eat more.

later, as i walked home, he breathlessly caught up to me and asked me, once again, the name of my instrument. then he kept asking questions about this and that not in an annoying way, but like a clever inquisitive youth who has a lot going on in his head. eventually he asked me if he could ask a questiona about 'sexualidad', and whether i thought 'el hombre con un autre hombre' was buen or mal. i told him that there are gay people all over the world and in some places this is accepted and in some places, notably uganda, you can go to prison for a long time and even theoretically be killed for some overconspicuous bumming action. i told him that i believed sexuality was linear, not 'either' 'or', thinking that he might be somewhere in the middle. then he asked me 'how' to have 'asere lo'- to 'do it'. i went back to my room and got my dictionary.

but there was something else on his mind. he kept returning to homosexuality, even though i had asked him if he liked other boys and he said no. he asked me if i thought it was ok to like other boys. a shoeshine joven walked past and he told me that that guy was gay. would i have sex with him if he asked me? no i wouldn't. why not? because i don't like having sex with other men. why not? i don't know, i just don't. do you? he pulled a face. and then he asked me to show him how to masturbate. so i drew him a picture and looked up the word for foreskin- prepucio. and then i really needed my dictionary when he told me that the 20 year old shoe shine kid wanted to play couples with him, a 14 year old, and, well, he kind of wanted to say yes, what should he do?

what would you say to that?

on the one hand, obviously there is massive room for exploitation with him so mentally and physically underdeveloped, it is illegal in guatemala (even though he said it wasn't), if he was caught he could be ostracised by his family and community. one disastrous night- and there are many ways disaster could occur- could fuck him up for a good long while.

but i am not so old as to forget what i felt when i was 14 and thinking about sex and simultaniously craving sex and being really i guess disturbed by the wierd emotions that the whole subject pulled out of somewhere deep and dark inside of me. and if there was an older woman who had been like 'ok ben, lie back and let me show you how it is', well that would have been cool. and if i could have a conversation with myself at that age i would want to reassure and say do what the fuck you like, relax, everything is cool, just don't let yourself be exploited. and i know my 14 year old self would have said back to me 'that's all very well for you to say, you fucking hippie, but i want SPECIFICS and i want PRACTICE and i want them NOW'. and perhaps this 20 year old kid would have been real nice to him and they would have had a really positive time together. is my initial 'no don't do it' answer the answer of someone conditioned by the west and all it's fucked up stuff around sex (sexpowermoneycapitalworthegopridecreation
destructiondaddymummylolaferrarimargaretthatcher)?

then he asked if i could 'teach' him... if he could watch me crack one out. he looked at me embarrassed but resolute. no, i said. why not? he said. images of being lynched by the towns people of panachajel ran through my mind. it's not necessary, i said; just go somewhere private and practice. i told him about my experiences- not having any idea about how to shake the vinegar condiment until one day the good old channel 5 11pm friday night movie just made it happen out of the blue, and i was like 'oh, right'.

but he was insistent. could he not look on the internet? no. was there not someone else he could ask? no. could he not just chill the fuck out and let things run their natural course? again, from my own experience, i knew the answer to that one.

renton in trainspotting tells the story about how he once swapped blowjobs with this guy on the principal that if a sexual act is just a sexual act, who gives a fuck what the gender is of the other person? this would fit into my belief that much of the 'normal' sexual value set that we have is a product of our society (it is well known that the ancient greeks saw the young man as the ultimate symbol of power and beauty and influential hetro men would queue up for the best 'adonis's), and a 14 year old by and large knows what he wants...

what would you have done? assuming you wouldn't have said yes, what would you have said to be of some insight and comfort to him?

in the end, i did not masturbate in front of a 14 year old guatemalan boy. i gave him 5 quetzals and wrote down the names of a couple of free porn sights and outlined the technique of switching between windows on the computer when you think someone might be looking over your shoulder (of course his only access to the internet was in internet cafes). he maintained total dignity, thanked my for my help, picked up his bowl of stuff and walked off. i smoked a cigarette and shook my head at a day that could not be found at a backpackers' hostel.

Oaxaca & Chiapas

La Ceiba, Honduras: hot, Caribbean influenced, filled with fried chicken and American school buses. Thicker tortillas, dustier streets, a special type of mango that is sour and crunchy... I arrived here last night after 38 hours on 7 different buses from Chiapas, Mexico, half totally excited to see my old friend Nick, aka Duffman, but half thinking he might bail on me at some point on his journey up from Nicaragua.

And, it seems, he has. Especially as I left much, and much potential, to come here. I was in San christobal de las casas, in Chiapas, Mexico, the town that sits in an augmented set of hills that was taken over for 3 weeks by the Zapatistas back in 1994. And what a place.

Before that i had been in oaxaca, heading for a hike up in the mountains, but when i got there after a twisting bus ride up the hills, the mist was almost rain and the village at the trailhead had this quality that reminded me distinctly of dharamsala, himachal pradesh, where the dalai llama lives. the whole thing was mystical but also lent itself to loneliness and introspection, a bit like the place before Lyra and Will cross the river in the last throe's of Pullman's dark materials trilogy. I walked around and translated the inspiring mottos on the primary school walls with my dictionary, then unfolded my pack of american spirit on a moist rock, sparked up and almost immediately decided i would sack off the whole idea of hiking and come home the next day. the fact 1. i was hoping to camp but camping for 4 days would have been possible but unpleasant in the rain (cheapest coop hotel was like 10 pound a night) 2.that i had refused to pay for a guide and just had a little map, and had been warned twice that the trails were badly marked, augmented the bad vibes of the rain and so i rented a little wooden hut with a big old fireplace and wrote letters by the firelight and felt like Coleridge.

The next two days i spent readjusting my hat in various old Zapotec ruins... as much as i wanted to, they just didn't do it for me... the food in the cafes on the outside was always much more fun. so i said goodbye to Ben and Kate, two cats who i met in Yelapa with whom i had been kicking it in Oaxaca, and took a bus south to...

San Christobal: Artesans from Mexico City, Guadelajara and Veracruz stand shoulder to head with the indigenous mayan people that make up the majority of the population of the surrounding hills. A huge market with the most delicious fruit and most beautiful jewellery, clothes, fake DVDs... in the evenings live music in most of the bars and in at least two hidden away social centres- and we are not talking the breathless, over-debated, under populated social centres that can be common in england; everything was done so well- excellent food, art; a clean and orderly swap shop, inside smoking, cool and cheap stuff for sale, live music... people just couldn't not come, and they did. that for the red in me and for the green, a beautiful, tranquil meditation and yoga space run by real solid men men who played tabla (though not raga), sang kirtan and generally exuded calm. In the time i was there, at different spaces around town, there was a 5 day contact dance course, 2 day intro to meditation, two independant cinemas showing great films every evening, PANIC theatre, puppet shows... all the good shit that you find in london, LA etc but condensed down into a town of around 100,000 and with none of the ego that can be found in those other places.

i arrived at midnight last saturday night, a day before i was meant to, and called my couchsurfing host, valerio, hoping he wasn't in bed. a long walk getting lost and a short taxi ride getting found and walked into 'cafe revolucion' to find valerio, francesca, two typically beautiful argentinians and a few others dancing to some heavy cumbia. a jug of slightly watery beer later (what is the difference between american beer and sex in a canoe? they are both close to water) and we are in a proper club, the first i had been in in months, squashed in and dancing with abandon. and that was that- we were friends. I spent a whole week with valerio and francesca. two italians doing a Phd on the relationship between fair trade coffee growers in mexico and buyers in europe (i couldn't help but smile in rememberance the sigdon road cafe at soas with the zapatista coffee and the t's posh coffee machine). He said yes to my couch request because of the line on my profile about subverting the capitalist system, and had inbibed some ayuasca a couple of months previously in peru, so you can imagine we got on just fine, with quantic energy sessions and conversations that got to the heart of matters all round.

And so i began to do what i have learnt i like best when arriving in a cool new town- walk around with calabash under one arm and book and water bottle in the other and eat street food, read in parks, climb hills and look at the view, chat with people, sit in churches and look at the pictures... and now and then put the mbira in the calabash, find a piece of the street, put my hat out, start playing and see what happens...

and boy did things happen. first i met bessie, a chiapan with a djembe. she and her friend made a living playing drums and singing songs (one about mole...) in restaurants. i went out with them one night- we would just walk into a restaurant and start playing. she would introduce us over the beat and we would play- two verses, one clarinet solo, two more verses, conversing, and then the guy with the shakers would pass the hat around. i couldn't believe the audacity of it, but it definitely worked. i leant a lot that night. we culminated with an amazing break dancer appearing and jiving with us just as my couchsurfing hosts and their friend showed up to join in the dancing. magic. couchsurfing is, by the way, amazing. check it out- couchsurfing.com - if you aren't familiar with it (we can even be friends there). apart from a free place to stay it gives you an 'in' into wherever you are- you see all the bits that tourists don't necessarily see, you get to cook for people and be cooked for, and there is someone to drink a beer and have a dance with on an evening. so much more convivial than hostels. and all couchsurfing hosts, like pretty much all pickers-up of hitchhikers, are totally sound people who Get It, and much can be learnt.

But anyway, the next afternoon i met and played with two amazing argentinian marimba/balafon and talking drum player. we immediately found the groove. these guys were young- 19- and had never been to africa, but they could play, sing and improvise with the best of them. we would play and gather crowds around us, something that is really hard to do for me alone on the mbira, and in between would sit and smoke and talk. one of them was just so full of life and dreams and a thirst for knowledge- so refreshing! his biggest dream was to go to west africa and learn from the masters. i told him to just go and do it, and i think he will. we culminated playing in a big domed room with mayan kids running and playing around and a superb acoustic. francesca recorded it and i hope to have it posted up here soon enough.

and when returning down a steep path from a venture up into the hills around chiapas i saw two men, said hello, and carried on. vbut a moment later i felt someone behind me and turned around just as they kind of tried to hide themselves behind a tree. hen they saw that i had seen them they whisted then came at a kind of jog towards me. and it turned out they were not two but like 15, perhaps half the men of the village, from boys to elderly, returning from whatever work they had in the town. 'what are you doing here? what is your work?' they were suspicious. i realised that, comical though it was (they were all very short and i couldn't uite take their angry faces seriously), i was a stranger and potentially a threat and they had come to check me out. as soon as i picked up the mbira though they crowded round and whistled through their teeth in appreciation, then when i had finished shook my hand in gratitude for the song and, without another word, all turned around in unison and disappeared into the bush.

Next stop: Scuba Diving in Honduras

Yelapa - Oaxaca

i sit down to send this on the day the US government kill bin laden. does it strike anyone else as odd that they had a live twitter feed of, basically, an execution? why, then, was the US so up in arms when someone leaked the video of saddam getting hanged? because murdoch didn't own the rights to the DVD? if there was technical difficulties would they have waited a while? was bin laden's mum watching live on the same video link? when the revolution comes, will it be morally ok to allow dear barak to watch his own summary end live and uncensored as it happens? anyway, on with the blog...

It is hot. The man i am sharing the shade of the tree with repairs a worn television and turns up the radio as 'Zombie' comes on and rages the still air. I am in Acapulco, Guerrero, Mexico (where all the taxis are white and blue VW beetles!), waiting for a bus to take me to the mountain hiking trails and revolutionary posturing of Oaxaca. A day of hitchiking in the Mexican May sun yesterday has taught me that the heat here can overwhelm you if you choose to try and ignore it. So, as I now watch the TV repair man barter over the purchase of 2 more TVs from a passing man-with-a-cart, I sweat even as I sit in the shade, but it is ok.

_____

(some of this written post-acapulco)

I am on the move again. My stay in Yelapa (see the last post) kept extending itself as i fell deeper into the forest canopy of all the things i love to do... literally. The list of things that I LOVE DOING goes something like this: jamming with thoughtful and enthused musicians, playing gigs, swimming in the sea, looking at the sea, cooking with sharp knives and fresh, local produce, waking up to birdsong, massages, the sun, hanging around wise, positive people, having space to think about things, trees, girls with multi-coloured eyes, friendly strangers, having lunch whilst listening to a podcast of From our Own Correspondent, making a little money here and there doing things i enjoy (like carrying peoples' bags) sleeping in hammocks... yelapa had ALL THAT in ABUNDANCE. can you believe such a place exists? if you don't, go there and see for yourself. there were several 'doesn't get better than this' moments, my favourite being my first experience of KAYAKING TO A GIG with my clarinet in a waterproof bag and the calabash wrapped round my back. being paid for said gig in margharitas and chilli shrimp. reading the tao tse ching in a hammock on top of a hill eating fresh guacamole with no pants on (hummingbird buzzing around in the background)... In the last 4 days I played 2 gigs with a couple of great musicians from Mexico City; we took turns on clarinets, saxophones, guitars, cuatros (mexican 4 stringed guitar), percussion and voice, and had I stayed we really could have boiled the lid off the pot.

I could go on but i think you get the idea. but, alas, all good things must come to an end and after a month the blossoms had all fallen off the tree and it was time to tighten my contact lens case and head south.

You may have heard about all the dead bodies they keep finding in Mexico, the ones with the heads chopped off and suchlike. Two states below Jalisco, Michoacan and Guerrero, are centres of the narco-traffiking and killing (which, i might add, is in a large part fuelled by wanky coked-up american stockbrokers and ivy-leaguers who i am sure don't give a fuck that their $50 a gram habit is fuelling an economy in guns, blood and despair a few hundred miles south of their parents' condos) and I had been warned by americans and, significantly, other mexicans, just not to go there, and certainly not to hitch there. But the other option was to go through Mexico City, the biggest and most polluted city in the world, something i just didn't fancy. And the coast road was beautiful and slow and i had been on it since Vancouver and shit, why would anyone want to kill me? So i made my sign and thumbed south on a really hot morning last friday. It was slow going, and getting into the afternoon when i hit a market town and was accosted by a muscular drunk guy with a beret. Total stereotype of an ex-army 40-something who used to feel respected and needed and worth something in the army and, since he left his uniform behind, has flailed in a world that doesn't give a fuck who you used to be or what you have done in the past, but just what you have to offer and how much it costs. So he drinks from the morning and by midday the demons are circling.

He spoke good english ('The CIA are monitoring everything i do...') and gave me some 'tips' about where i should hitch, and then moaned for a while about how i was lucky because i was white and would get lifts, but he wouldn't. I moved away and stood in the hot, hot sun thumbing and waiting. eventually i got a ride 40miles down the road and when i got out at a petrol station realised that this drunk had been on the back of the truck the whole time, and now we were in the middle of nowhere together and he was clearly going to squeeze me for what i was worth to him. He wanted to use my white face as a ticket somewhere, anywhere i guess, and it wasn't in the spirit of cameraderie, though he was pretending to be nice.

A couple of years ago i would have bitten my tongue and been super polite and, well, i don't know how i would have got out of the situation, maybe bought him so much alcohol he passed out then run away. but these days (for better or worse) i am more assertive and less concerned about the consequences of being blunt. i told him in my best spanish that there was no way we were going to get a lift standing next to each other on the road, that it was important for me to travel as expediently as possible and, therefore, i wouldn't hitch with him unless he 1. threw away his bottle of mescal and 2.went and sat out of sight in the shade and when i got a ride i would ask if he could come along to. i knew for a fact he wouldn't agree to the first condition, but infact more than that he generally got REALLY FUCKING ANGRY in a drunk out-of-control sort of way, started telling me i was a son of a promiscuous donkey, that this was his country, not mine, and i should fuck off NOW and started getting up in my face, bringing the mango stains in his chin into focus.

for, i think, the first time in my life i didn't show any fear or back off, just stood there and met his stare and told him again that he had a choice: stop drinking and sit and wait for me to get a ride, or leave me alone. i guess we were both weighing up our chances and i think perhaps we both realised if it came to it mine were better: he was clearly strong and taller than me but he was drunk and moved slowly and i was wearing boots and would almost certainly have the support of the petrol station people and the watermelon seller who by now had their full attention on us. he backed off. and went across the road and stared at me and brooded.

i took a deep breath and adjusted my silly-looking panama hat and went and bought some cucumber with salt, lime and chilli and talked to the watermelon man. he was the one closest to us and, though he was old, i think he was ready to weigh on on my side if the shit had hit the fan. when he saw my sign saying 'oaxaca' and noted the direction i was going in he looked at me like i was mad. 'you CANNOT hitch between manzanillo and acapulco' he kept saying 'es de massiado peligroso'- too dangerous. he looked at me in the eye and it wasn't a 'oooh well i wouldn't do that if i was you', it was a 'DON'T DO THAT! DON'T DO THAT!' and then he flagged down a passing flatbed, explained the situation of the drunk guy to the driver and next thing i know i am riding away, more than somewhat relieved.

So i figured if someone helps you out like that you should probably take his advice, and i took a 12 hour bus to acapulco and then another on to puerto angel, where i spent a day and a night finding out whether my 1989 'mexico survival guide''s (the precurser to lonely planet) description of a nearby beach, zipotec as a 'place to do as little as possible, wearing as little as possible, and spending as little as possible' still held true 20 years later. in the shared pick-up truck that passes for public transport here a woman gave me 3 different types of mangoes to try- one sweeter than sweet, another with skin like an avocado. since i have passed a stall selling 9- count em 9- types of mango...

on arrival i found a tired and extremely hot (40 degrees) beach with amazing waves, an extremely strong current, overpriced bodyboard rentals and local kids generally stoned senseless. some guy who seemed really nice took me to the nudist beach at the end of the bay and, over the course of a couple of hours, it slowly dawned on me that this was a gay beach, and the guy i was with wanted to fuck me. (he found a dead fish, said 'hey ben, here is something we can eat tonight' and waggled it around his dick) the culmination of this was when i went into the sea to do some bodysurfing and 4 naked men followed me in. it was... uncomfortable, but shortly after two mexicans with lots of kids came to catch sardines in nets for their supper, and i observed the fascinating scene of these gay guys in the water, the fishermen casting their nets, the kids picking the flapping sardines out of the nets and squealing with delight when their dad's caught a proper big fish, orange crabs moving at lightning speed to pick up the sardines left behind by the waves and carrying them back into their holes, two dogs looking lazy and bemused, the sun arcing down to crest the waves... it was almost worth the wierdness (infact i think it probably was worth it.) A scene full of life.

later i played percussion-based music with some of the various dreadlocked, adonis bodied chilangos (with one random italian), tops off, sweat in runnels down our backs even though we were sitting and it was dark. that night i lay in my tent as moist as a snail, aching for sleep to deliver me out of the heat. it was the hottest night i have ever been through and the decision to leave before i had to do it again was made.

the next morning i walked to the edge of town and, after a couple of hours wait, hitched one ride in a dodge ram 250km over a high almost-mountain pass clear to Oaxaca city.