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