Guatemala had always been on my list of destinations, and Honduras found its way there back in January. With a few weeks between my return from Cuba and when I was due to me in Mexico, I paid a relatively short visit to each.

Costa Rica ¶

It was my third time passing through San José—its airport is just too convenient a hub to pass up—and I decided to stay a little outside the city for a few days.

Alajuela, Alajuela ¶

I flew back into San José, and decided to stay for a long weekend to sort out some admin. Not in the city itself, which I was still not enamoured with, but in the outskirts town of Alajuela, where the allegedly San José-based airport is actually located.

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In my room I met an old American guy. Within moments of us talking, and with no prompting from me, he started telling me how many countries he had visited. There was an interesting twist in this case, however, as it turns out he has a world map tattooed on his back and is a minor travel celebrity: he has his own blog and has been covered in a couple of mainstream press pieces from the likes of ABC and the Mail (where someone in the comments criticised him for his use of the Mercator projection, which was very much not what I expected from that particular cesspit).

I’ve talked before about not being keen on the whole idea of travel bagging, but at least his chosen approach is fairly novel, and he’s suffering for his art; he did say that Russia was a nightmare to get coloured in. But there wasn’t much else going on in Alajuela, and he was nice enough company. He also seemed to be having the most intense week of his life: when I met him he was engaged to a much younger Costa Rican lady he’d met a week prior, and over the course of about three days I think I saw the prospective marriage collapse. I’m not sure what the final outcome was, and he’s not yet updated his blog, but have a feeling he’s landed on his feet.

Honduras ¶

I’d had to put the kibosh on my original plan of navigating my way up along the Caribbean coast, instead settling for the easier (i.e., definitely possible) option of just getting a bus.

Honduras, Ho! ¶

After a few days of decompression, it was time for a marathon coach trip: three days of travel, two of which would be spend entirely riding the bus, which would take me all the way from San José up to the northern Caribbean coast of Honduras. Unsurprisingly, the coach trips themselves were pretty uneventful. As we passed through Jinotepe I noticed a lot of joggers and, by the looks of it, Nicaraguan ones. This stood out at weird because I couldn’t recall having seen anyone except gringos doing any form of exercise the whole trip.

I spent the first night in Managua, in the Hotel Tica Bus built into the bus terminal that I’d noticed when I came through here in the other direction on my way to Cuba. It was about what you’d expect for ~$10 per night, but the convenience was well worth it since I was up at 5am the next morning.

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The second coach brought me into Honduras, via Tegucigalpa and onwards to San Pedro Sula. The immigration office at the border was a small building with several poorly-signposted counters along each side, and the queues for each snaked around, into and through each other with little management. Women walked up and down carrying baskets on their heads offering snacks and little kids in scruffy clothes did the same asking for change. Once they’d tried their luck with each person in the queue, they started playing football with an old sandal.

As we drove through Honduras, I was not thrilled at the views from the bus windows. As far as I can tell, every single Latin American litters like it’s going out of fashion, and there had been an ambient level of background trash that I’d seen everywhere and had largely adapted to. Honduras, though, was something else, and there were entire stretches of roadside where one couldn’t see the grass for all the plastic:

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Finally, after two long days of travelling, I was in San Pedro Sula: Honduras’ second-largest city and the one-time murder capital of the world (now #42). I probably could have got in and out the same day without leaving the bus terminal, but there was a B&B not too far away and I thought I could do with a comfy night’s sleep. But reading about the city doesn’t paint the rosiest picture:

But crime stats, as I’ve talked about before, come with many caveats. Usually, and certainly in this case, those homicides are mostly to do with gang and drug conflicts, which I would be hard-pressed to involve myself in in just a couple of days. Also, if you look at the list of the 50 cities with the highest homicide rates in the world, 8 are in the US, with all but Philly higher than San Pedro Sula. Although one thing I’ve taken away from looking into this is just how compartively safe Europe is: the UK’s four most dangerous cities—Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham and London—have a combined rate of a little over 8 homicides per 100,000 people, whilst the US’s highest city is over 10 times that on its own.

However, one thing I had read was not to get in the taxis waiting outside the bus station, which are apparently largely controlled by organised crime and known to take clueless tourists down dark alleyways to rob them (or worse). I asked the place I was staying if they could call me a taxi, and they just told me to use Uber. After my recent experience with Airbnb I was expecting trouble, but to my surprise the registration process was smooth and I soon had myself a ride. I’d never really seen the appeal of Uber in the UK, but after my experiences getting high-balled by taxi drivers here and given the added sense of security it provides, I can see why the service has spread like wildfire in this part of the world.

My B&B (Casa Altamira) was nice enough, although there was nowhere to get food nearby. However, the lady who ran the place cooked me up a free breakfast the next morning, which was jolly nice. I got another ride back to the bus terminal, and the driver did a spit-take when I said I was from the UK. He said he’d never met a Brit before; we don’t tend to come to this part of the world.

I hopped on the bus to Tela, but it dropped me off a couple kilometers away from the place I was going to stay. After some lunch and a coffee, and several abortive attempts to book another taxi, I decided to just set off walking with my bags.

By the time I arrived, I had probably lost about 20 kg in water.

Tela Me All About It ¶

Tela is a small beachside town, and I was staying outside of the centre at Hostel Casa Verde. One trip to the nearby beach was enough for me; not even it was spared from the trash onslaught:

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Instead, I spent most of my time laying in the rooftop hammock and looking out over the other houses. It had been about a month since I last had a hammock, and this was a sweet reunion indeed. However, Honduras was markedly hotter than anywhere else I had been (except perhaps León), so even just laying perfectly still would cause one to sweat profusely.

After my first one for breakfast back in San Pedro Sula, here my crippling baleada addiction further developed. There was a small hole-in-the-wall place at the end of our road called Golosinas Yireh that served sizeable ones for next to nothing, so I ate there every day. My hostel kept us supplied with all the watermelons we could eat, and between the two I’m sure I was hitting all the most important food groups. For a special treat, the hostel owner’s son drove me and a couple other guests into the town proper for dinner at Aloha Bar & Grill, where they offered a ‘megabaleada’ which was sure to plug any remaining dietary gaps.

I was sharing a room with a German girl, and the bunk bed setup was ideal for long conversations; not being able to see the other person gave it a psychiatrist’s sofa-esque feeling, and we talked a lot. There was also a German guy staying at the hostel, and after the girl had left the two of us went on an excursion to the nearby Garifuna village of Triunfo de la Cruz, which Wikivoyage had suggested was one of the more interesting things to do in the area.

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Our taxi dropped us off around 9:30, and we wandered for a while trying to find anything that was open. I’d read up on the village and had an idea of a few places I wanted to check out, but it soon became clear that we’d come far too early. We waited by the beach for a while. A guy came and sat with me, showing me videos on his phone of him singing and playing piano (always shirtless, for some reason), whilst I watched the German guy struggling to set up his phone to automatically take a picture of him sat on a boat in the distance. Eventually I took pity and asked if he wanted me to take it for him.

We headed back to the centre of the village as things started to liven up. We found Panaderia La Lucha and bought some gorgeous coconut flapjacks, and then joined a few guys sitting at a bar (Tiquina Bar, really just a table outside somebody’s home). We asked why everything was closed, and one of them told us that we’re lazy, we don’t work before 11. Me and the German had a couple beers, whilst the locals clearly preferred smokier, more herbal intoxicants.

We were about done with Triunfo, but I wanted to find some guifiti (a traditional Garifuna bitters). With some direction from our new bar friends we set off up the main road out of town towards the workshop of Don Ceferino Norales. We found him in the middle of making some drums, and after a brief conversation me and the German each walked away with a small bottle of home-made brew.

One taxi ride back to Tela later, we decided to sample our new wares:

Fruity Business ¶

Throughout this journey, I’ve highlighted a lot of the impacts of US machinations in the region. No matter where you go in Latin America, it’s a near certainty that the US will have been behind something absolutely atrocious there, often in the not-so-recent past. But why?

During the Cold War, the excuse given was that the US was fighting communism, but this sort of thing predates the Russian Revolution and the formation of the Soviet Union. The threat of communism was always a lie, or at least only a partial truth, and the real reason was far simpler: some rich people, whose interests the US system primarily serves, wanted to become richer, and millions of people had to die to help them do that.

There were some variations on which exact group of rich people were involved in each country, but in many instances the greatest monster was the same: the United Fruit Company (now known as Chiquita). This company made phenomenal profits throughout the 20^th century from extracting the wealth of several Central American nations and exporting their natural resources back to the US. With the might of the US behind it, it held such power in the domestic politics of each victim country that they came to be known as ‘banana republics’.

This would obviously arouse local opposition, and in each case the course of events would be depressingly similar: a leader would be democratically elected on a promise to abolish the slavery-like working conditions on the fruit plantations and to nationalise the industry so that the wealth generated could benefit the people of the country instead; the US would find some promising young fascist (often an Army officer of some sort) and train them up in the School of the Americas in Georgia; they would then foment, arm and fund a military coup that would replace the elected leader with their chosen puppet (often assassinating them in the process); then they would either turn a blind eye to, or in many cases actively support, any right-wing death squads, environmental destruction or outright genocides that their dictator decided to implement; and sit back as the profits continued to roll in.

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I say all of this now because Tela was a major transport hub for the United Fruit Company. The old offices of the Tela Railroad Company still stand, though the building is a museum now. The pier where once blood-soaked bananas and other produce from Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, etc. would arrive ready to be shipped off to the US is in partial disrepair now, though there are many people along it trying their luck with the fish. Children swim in the sea around its base, at this place where—until recently—the final stage of the grand heist of the region’s natural wealth was conducted.

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Dotted throughout the town are several disconnected sections of railway track, usually wherever the path of the track crossed what is now the main road. These were the tracks that carried the fruit from the interior to the coast for export. This whole region of the world is deeply scarred by a century-plus of US colonialism; these particular scars are just more visible than most.

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The Honduran currency—the lempira—is named after a chief of the indigenous Lenca people who led resistance against the Spanish conquistadors; the 1 lempira note carries his image. This comes off as a bit cheeky when Honduras has been for many years one of the deadliest countries in which to be an environmentalist, with many unsolved murders of primarily indigenous people, of whom Berta Cáceres is perhaps the most well-known

In the interest of ending this mini-essay on a high note, it’s worth noting that the future currently looks brighter for Honduras than some of its neighbours, through the election last year of Xiomara Castro (Honduras’ first female president). The wife of the former president who was ousted by a military coup in 2009 (the whole situation around that is a big complicated mess), her election signalled the end of over a decade of a brutal and wildly corrupt right-wing government (backed by… yup, you guessed it). Her government has already declared electricity to be a human right and made provision for Honduras’ poorest to receive it for free, along with banning open-pit mining, halting the evictions of indigenous families and initiating a crackdown on gang violence.

The odds are stacked firmly against Castro, but several of the Hondurans I’ve spoken to are optimistic, saying that the country is safer now than it has been for some time. There also seems to be an emerging middle class here: there were plenty of Hondurans in León with the disposable income to spend on volcano boarding, and unlike in somewhere like El Tránsito, in Tela all of the fancy walled houses on the beachfront seem to belong to Hondurans, rather than Americans and Europeans.

I spoke to a couple older Hondureños the other day who had spent decades living in the US, but who were now coming back home to retire; I don’t think that’s a choice that too many would have made a few years earlier. One of them effectively summed up the same vibe that I’ve seen all over Central America, telling me that this is one of the poorest areas of Honduras, but the people here are happy; they love to come see the view, and they love to dance.

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Utila, I-tila, We All Tila Together ¶

After some time at the beach, it was finally time to head to the island of Utila; the entire reason I was in Honduras to begin with. Since being told about it by my American travel buddy back in Panama, I was keen to cross off my project goal of learning to dive at the cheapest place around. I think, even taking into account the travel required to get there, it still worked out cheaper than somewhere like Santa Catalina.

I first spent a night in La Ceiba, accidentally timed to coincide with Central America’s largest Carnevale celebrations. I didn’t fancy them, but saw plenty of footage of women in elaborate costumes dancing on every TV I encountered whilst waiting for my food. My hostel was accessed via a Chinese restaurant, which I certainly wasn’t complaining about.

I finally arrived on the island and made my way to Paradise Divers, which I’d been recommended by my Panama pal. I was there to do an Open Water Diver course, initially via PADI, but at the instructor’s suggestion that SSI was more flexible I switched; the cost was the same, and it would all be equal once I got back to the UK and adapted to our own system.

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The first day of the course introduced basic kit handling, followed by a swim test—dull, but easily passed—and some shallow-water descents to demonstrate skills like underwater mask removal. We got through these in record time, my instructor saying I was tied for the fastest student she’s ever had; apparently I was surprisingly placid about removing my regulator underwater, whilst most people struggle with it.

The second and third days featured two dives each with a couple of exercises to start and finish, but generally just finning along at a leisurely pace. I made sure to get the most use out of my newly-acquired action camera as possible. There was also a theory component that I postponed to the last day, but it didn’t prove particularly taxing; the biggest challenge was getting the SSI mobile app. to work with the ropey Wi-FI connection.

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I had expected the course to take a full week, but we were done in just a few days. I wanted to fill the rest of my week there with something, and initially embarked on the SSI Advanced Adventurer course, thinking it was the same as Advanced Open Water Diver. However, after the first couple of dives I realised that the two were separate: the latter was a level of recognition, to be achieved automatically after a set number of dives and specialty courses, whilst the latter was a qualification-free taster package of different specialities. I had also had a reply from BSAC to my enquiries about how different courses compare, and knew that this would provide me nothing in my home system, whilst the BSAC Ocean Diver course included a couple things that my Open Water Diver had not. To fill those gaps, I decided to switch to the Enriched Air Nitrox speciality course instead.

As I had a couple of free dives as part of my Open Water package, this worked out fine; I just retrospectively re-classified the two Advanced Adventurer dives as fun dives. They were still useful learning experiences: one was a deep dive, where we got to see the effects of absorption on the visible light spectrum first-hand (as well as pressure, the instructor having brought a sealed plastic bottle down from the surface); the other was a navigation exercise, and it turns out ‘okay, now get us back to the boat’ is easier said than done when all parts of a reef look pretty similar.

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The accommodation at Paradise Divers was very basic, but there was a good group of people there. We had a café on-site which did very cheap baleadas, as did Mama Rosa #2 in town, which became a regular breakfast haunt. I think across the whole time I was in Honduras, I only had a couple non-baleada meals.

When we weren’t diving we went out on snorkeling trips across the bay:

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We also went out drinking most nights. One time we went to a ladies’ night where the girls drank for free, and the bar staff told us snippily that anyone seen sharing drinks would get kicked out; nonetheless, I managed to get quite drunk without paying a thing.

Anaïs

There was a lot of cocaine floating around, which I had only really encountered on this trip in Bocas del Toro (where a good proportion of dollar bills would come complete with blood stains). I’ve always thought coke is a mug’s game, and it’s particularly un-fun to be around people using when not partaking, so I tended to clock off fairly early most nights, which had the benefit of leaving me pretty much hangover-free all week. One nineteen-year-old girl made me chuckle when she turned down an offer with the following: no thanks, I’m waiting until I’m 25 and my brain is done developing.

I tried to buy a ukelele from a shop up the road, but had to return it shortly after as the tuning threads were busted. I spent most of my time during the day laying in any of several hammocks with a perfect view out over the bay; however, it was still phenomenally hot and even laying still in the shade brought out the big sweats.

I also received an email during this time about my action camera, promising me my choice of various accessories in exchange for filling out a survey. Every single thing about the email screamed sketchy to me; I used to make IT security e-learning courses, and it looked exactly like the kind of demonstration phishing email we would use in them:

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Nonetheless, I couldn’t really work out the angle unless the survey also asked for my bank details, but to be sure I emailed Akaso directly to verify it: they said it was legit, so I went ahead with the survey. Even the confirmation page seemed very odd:

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However, shortly after I heard that my requested pack of accessories had arrived at home: thanks, Akaso! I also found out that I had been put on the reserve list for a job in Antarctica I had applied for back in January, which was exciting, but did present a further delay on my ability to make any plans post-return to the UK.

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I extended my stay by another night so that I could join everyone on a Sunday trip to Water Cay, a small islet only reachable by boat. Pretty much everyone from the dive shop was going, and we lugged along a whole BBQ and plenty of food (and, more importantly, drink). The cay itself was pristine Caribbean white sand, and we had a jolly old time. I remember hearing a song playing about papaya which, as a recent papaya convert, obviously appealed.

Emma Skegg

The 19-year-old decided to give coke a go after all, and then spent the rest of the afternoon complaining that it wasn’t having an effect. Later, after we’d returned to the dive shop and she and a 30-odd-year-old dive instructor proceeded to make out in the middle of the seating area, I discovered that the half-your-age-plus-seven rule wasn’t as universally-held as I’d always assumed; I’m sure there’s a correlation between people who have younger sisters and people who adhere to it.

Guatemala ¶

I had originally intended to spend much more time in Guatemala. My parents had travelled there before I came along and they had given me several recommendations, but in the end I only had about a week to spend between my course in Utila and my planned activities in Mexico. I decided that of all the places I had heard about, Lake Atitlán sounded the most my speed: beautiful, relaxing and with a good variety of different towns and hikes to explore.

Journey to the Lake ¶

My original plan had been to leave Utila on the Sunday, return to San Pedro Sula and catch a shuttle from there to Guatemala City, where I would then make my way to Atitlán by chicken bus. However, part of my decision to stay another night in Utila was due to reading about the dangers of bus driving in the capital. Ultimately, I decided that I was happy swallowing the booking cost and getting another route there. So, on the Monday I found a shuttle going direct from La Ceiba to Antigua Guatemala, and hopped on.

I was only in Antigua for one night. I stayed at Volko Party Hostel, but I must’ve missed the party because it was pretty quiet. The building was cool though, with an upstairs terrace bar complete with hot tub (itself complete with a mysterious pair of pants laying off to the side). I found a great restaurant called Rinconcito Antigüeño that served big portions of local food on the cheap; the second time I went there all the tables were taken, but an American–El Salvadoran lady beckoned me to sit with her and we had a nice chat.

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Having just gone from a low of -40m to a possible trip high of 1,500m, the weather was markedly different and (after Hotduras) incredibly refreshing. I also encountered my first portrait bank note, which I thought was cool because I’m the kind of guy who knows what ’numismatics’ means.

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As I sat waiting for my shuttle to Panajachel to arrive the following afternoon, I realised with 10 minutes to spare that I’d accidentally booked it for the wrong day. Thankfully, I banked on the reliable Latin American lateness and flexibility, sending off a WhatsApp message to the booking company to ask if the shuttle was still in town and could pick me up today. Not long after, I was on my way to Atitlán.

Atitlán ¶

I had booked a cheap hostel (Hostal Dulce Sueños) in Panajachel, the largest town on the lake, for three nights. My plan was to stash my bags there and make excursions to the other towns; the price was cheap enough that I wouldn’t mind paying for a glorified storage locker if I decided to stay elsewhere. As it went, I arrived in the midst of the first downpour I had seen for some time, moments after two other girls who were sharing my dorm. We went out to do some shopping and cooked up some food back the hostel, and I ended up making plans with one of them to go to San Pedro La Laguna the following day to hike up San Pedro.

I also looked through the Wikivoyage article for the lake, complete with helpful one-line summaries of many of the towns to help indicate which I might want to visit: San Marcos, for example, sounded like primo crystal dipshit territory, but some of the tiny villages like Jaibalito sounded interesting. I also learned about a charitable hospital in Sanitago Atitlán that both offered volunteering options and tours. Fresh off from Cuba, I was intrigued to see what healthcare looked like in other places, so I contacted them and arranged a tour.

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As we crossed the lake on a very flimsy-feeling lancha, it was clear that San Pedro would be a bust: the top of it was covered in cloud, as were all the other high peaks in sight. I suggested that we should get off instead at San Juan La Laguna and head up to the viewpoint there, which was one of the only spots that looked to have any visibility. We did, and it was incredibly sweaty, but the views were pretty great.

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We debated whether we wanted to continue climbing up to the Indian’s Nose, but given that I would be spending the night in Santiago Atitlán and had no spare tops with me, I decided against it. As we descended, locals passed us carrying stacks of cinderblocks on their backs using cloth straps tied around their foreheads; they rather showed me up as I had been panting most of the way up whilst carrying precisely zero bricks.

We walked along the road to San Pedro, and spent the rest of the day wandering aimlessly through the town, taking interesting-looking side streets largely at random.

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Panajachel hadn’t appealed to me much, but as we meandered through San Pedro the vibe started to click for me. Between the verticality of the largely-improvised construction, the thick crowds and the omnipresent tuk-tuks, it felt more like what I imagine south-east Asia to be than anywhere in Latin America. My pal introduced me to horchata and agua de Jamaica (i.e., cold hibiscus tea) as we waited for the last lancha back to Panajachel, and then I headed further on to Santiago, where I stayed in an otherwise-empty B&B.

As I walked back from dinner, I heard a commotion ahead. Outside what had previously been some sort of large-scale BBQ, whose smoke had billowed out into the narrow streets and half choked me on my way to get food earlier, there now stood three flatbed trucks, each piled high with speaker systems, drummers, little kids in elephant costumes and more. Everyone wore matching yellow t-shirts with a picture of an elephant on.

I walked on by and saw a woman closing the metal shutters of her shopfront. Wanting to doublecheck that things weren’t about to get spicy, I asked her ¿que es eso? and pointed back at the peculiar parade of pachyderms.

Político, was all she said in response.

One thing I noticed whilst walking around Santiago Atitlán was the lack of police presence, compared to the other similarly-sized towns around the lake like San Pedro and Panajachel. It turns out that, following a massacre in 1990, the Atiticos kicked the Army out of the city and instituted their own means of maintaining security and order. In this 2010 article it says that they were discussing doing the same thing with the police, so perhaps they went through with it in the end. I’ll be spending a lot of time with radical Mayans in Mexico, but it was interesting to see that a similar thing had occurred here, and that I had never heard about it before.

The following morning, I explored Santiago a little. I checked out the colonial Catholic church, which hosts a shrine to (and the heart of) Stanley Rother, the former priest who had been killed after defying the right-wing death squads. I then set off in search of another Santiagan religious icon: Maximón, the patron saint of ‘banging your wife whilst you’re away’. I asked the B&B owner if she knew where he was, and she sent her daughter to take me to the place he had been the previous year. They gave me a vague direction and I headed in it, eventually encountering an old man standing around waiting for something. I asked him if he knew where I could find Maximón, and he led me through a winding series of narrow alleyways. I did think that this might be a dumb idea on my part, knowing the violent crime rate in Guatemala, but I was also easily twice the size of the man so figured I could probably hold my own if it came to it.

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In any case, he took me to the shrine and I stepped in. The air was thick with incense and I watched as someone finished making their benediction to the strange, tie-clad figure. I offered some money, and the attendent slipped it in behind the ties. After taking a blurry photo with my potato of a camera, which struggles in low-light conditions, I headed back out to fresh air, gave the old man some change for his help and set off for the Hospitalito. I considered jumping on a tuk-tuk, but the weather was temperate enough that I decided to take the scenic route and walk. This turned out in my favour when I had the chance to get an incredibly sweet breakfast from a small café called Casa de las Granizadas; it only cost me a quid.

Hospitalito Atitlán ¶

Hospitalito Atitlán is a non-profit private hospital that primarily serves the Mayan community that make up the overwhelming majority of people in Santiago Atitlán and the surrounding rural areas. Many are deeply impoverished, and so the hospital aims to provide treatment for all who need it, regardless of ability to pay. The hospital was initially set up by the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma, and Stanley Rother (see above).

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The tour started with a video summarising the history of the hospital. The video’s well worth a watch if you have fifteen minutes, but the short version is that the hospital and the Mayan communities it serves weathered the brutual 30-year-long civil war—during which government forces burned many villages as part of a scorched earth strategy and conducted a campaign of genocide against the Mayans—and the subsequent economic turmoil only to be wiped away in a 2005 landslide that killed hundreds.

With donations from the local community and overseas donors, a new building was constructed in a new site, identified as safe from future landslides. Currently they serve around 1,000 patients per month with an almost entirely Guatemalan staff, supplemented by specialists from overseas volunteering their time and expertise.

There are several services on offer, from orthopedics to pediatrics, plus an emergency department. Some specialities are only available on certain days: the opthalmologists were in today carrying out eye surgeries, so we couldn’t look around the operating room.

The five regularly-offered services had an office each; this was the paediatrician’s:

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One of the key focuses of the hospital is reducing infant mortality. Guatemala has the highest rate amongst under-5s in Latin America, and around 50% of children are malnourished. This is the maternity ward:

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Apparently the Mayan custom is for expectant mothers to stand up and walk around a lot to relieve strains, so the maternity wards open directly into a maternity garden for perambulatin’. A large number of births here take place at home, so the hospital has done a lot of community outreach work to win over the comedronas, or traditional local pregnancy assistants (think more ‘doula’ than ‘midwife’) so that they will be more willing to send people in need to the hospital.

I talked a little about the Mother and Infant programme we had learned about in Cuba, because I am now a qualified expert on it. My guide told me that the patients they tend to see tend to skew young; he said they didn’t see many cases of conditions like polio, but mainly diabetes and early-onset COPD. The former he attributed to recent changes in lifestyle from more agrarian to more sedentary following the rapid growth of the city following the end of the war, whilst the latter he blamed on the face that Mayan women spend much of their time cooking inside smoke-filled kitchens.

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The Mayans are apparently a bit skeptical of modern medicine, so the hospital also has a garden round the back where they grow plants and herbs for use in traditional medicines. Coincidentally, Cuba is doing something similar, though for very different reasons: it needs to lean on alternative medicines for which the ingredients can be grown locally because the blockade means they struggle to import medical supplies and equipment.

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There were a couple of dogs knocking about, one apparently older than the building itself. We looked at the staff board and my guide pointed out one of the doctors who had come from Cuba, which probably shouldn’t have surprised me.

My guide told me about the outreach work the hospital does, from its dedicated community social worker to ongoing first aid workshops delivered by a pair of retired American paramedics. He also told me about the hospital’s paramedic scholarship scheme, and about their current plans to build a training facility for nurses.

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The whole thing was designed to be environmentally sound, which means it’s designed to let a lot of natural light in and temperature control is managed by natural ventilation: the upper levels are open to the air, and it has none of the aseptic hospital smell one may expect. It’s easily knocked the Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital (NSEC) off of the top spot of my ’nicest hospitals’ ranking (though I do still have a soft spot for NSEC’s spaceship port design and matching sci-fi-looking uniforms). On the roof are 600 solar panels and some sun heaters for providing hot water.

Wouldn’t you know it, I happen to have read the NHS’ Delivering a Net Zero Health Service report (no, I’m not sure why either) and we had a little chat about efforts underway in the UK.

Photo by the author

I was also shown around the hospital’s warehouse area, and spoke to one of the guys working there, who was about to finish a degree in paramedicine thanks to the aforementioned scholarship programme, about pre-hospital care in Guatemala; the hospital’s ambulances are for transfers, and Guatemala follows the old US system of dispatching firefighters to medical emergencies.

Most trash in this area of the world is a) thrown on the nearest patch of floor or b) burnt. I asked what happened to clinical waste from the hospital, so they decided that must mean I was a weirdo and wanted a tour of the hospital bin stores. He also showed me the hospital’s collection of literature, covering topics ranging from managing diabetes and healthy recipes to childcare advice, all translated into the several Mayan languages present in Santiago. At the end we discussed volunteering opportunities for a computer scientist with the world’s most electic CV. I definitely want to come back to Guatemala and Atitlán when I’m next in Central America (to hike the lake’s circumference, for one) and helping the hospital seems like an ideal excuse to do so. Watch this space.

Off to Mexico ¶

I headed back to Panajachel for the final night. I had thought about visiting some of the really small villages on the way, but decided against it as I wouldn’t have had much time to spend there, and I would much rather come back and give them a proper go some other time (and the same goes for Guatemala as a whole; I don’t really feel like I’ve been there yet).

At 5am the following morning, I hopped on a shuttle heading to Mexico. It was a small minibus and was, unlike my luxurious ride from Honduras, full, meaning I had to snatch some sleep wedged in between someone else and the window. When we arrived at the Guatemala–Mexico border we went through passport control, and then just… waited. For about an hour, and nobody seemed to know why. Eventually, we set off, whereupon I learnt that we wouldn’t be taking the same shuttle (unlike every other border-crossing trip I’ve been on), and so I had to rush back to grab my stuff before they set left; in the rush I left some snacks and my SNTI baseball cap behind.

As I returned to the border, the group had gone. Flustered, frustrated and not really knowing where they had gone, I stepped across into Mexico and hoped I wasn’t about to illegally immigrate again.