Guatemala: Volcanoes, Fishing & Plastic

It's good to be back in the Third World again. "Guatemala" means land of the tree, apparently. I'd like to petition that it's renamed: "Land of the plastic bag".
An incredibly beautiful and very photogenic place, as rubbish dumps go.

You know you're back in the Third World when short people are launching lumps of meat and peanuts through the bus window, and all the passengers are launching plastic bags and cans back out.


		Twilight and the volcanoes cast their eerie shadows over the villages around Lago De Atitlan.

Kids the world over; why do they always eat it?

Views from the top of San Pedro (extinct) volcano. Very nice and all that, but as Dave from Melbourne reminded us, "don't be fooled; an extinct volcano is just a f***ing big hill". A good point well made.

Notice at the ATM: "Please leave your unexploded munitions outside".

Lava, for the uninitiated.

The clouds gathered and the light dimmed over the church at Santiago during the Semana Santa festival, all adding to the strange and almost solemn mood of the packed square.

Below: Lynne plays pied-piper to the kids of Santiago. You can get a football team for a bag of Skittles and a Mr Whippy.

Above & Left: The crowds crammed into the square, finding any square inch of a vantage just point to get a glimpse of some knackered looking pall bearers shuffling by with a shop-dummy in a casket.

A rare picture of Guatemalan culture: a kid that was shy of a camera AND didn't ask for a Quetzale afterwards. Give him time though - he'll learn.

Don't Lookdown.

Iztapa's resident Lounge Lizard. They wheeled him to the pub, and they wheeled him back home... and still no one had sussed that his legs actually worked.

The kids working at the fish processing shed in Iztapa were dead keen to show off both themselves and their wares. Their dad's weren't so keen to take a desperate gringo fishing though.

Capitan Alfonso (yet another one) displays his teasers across his handlebars. They fluffed me up, anyway. I must have the word "SUCKER" slapped across my forehead.

And even Alfonso's missus down the Puerto de San Jose market joined in the fluffing up with a couple of big Jacks. The teasing little minx.

At least the cudas weren't hard to come by out on the sea. I suppose.

Above: Capitan Alfonso took a quick break from chucking plastic bags overboard to show off a fish.

Right: While I wanted to fish, he wanted to cook. Not quite what I had in mind. Yet again. A point at which it all began wearing me down.

Above: "Ohhh- pescado grande...! Photo senor?!" Hmmm. Say cheese. Don't let the smile fool you. I was thoroughly pissed off by this point. This is quite clearly neither a Jack or a Roosterfish.

Opposite: Local fella hand-line fishing amongst the poo and plastic bags of the Puerto San Jose creek. A shit-hole the like of which I have rarely seen.

Street life in Antigua: The mime artists were excellent.

The ancient ruins of Tikal®. Constructed by Mayans 2500 years ago and nowadays visited daily by 2500 tourists in khaki shorts and nasty sandals.

Guatemalan cliché photo #435: "Church facade, Antigua blah blah blah". There must be millions of these in circulation round the planet.

The sun sets over the jungle canopy and the temples at Tikal®. There's a whole lotta Ohmming going on on top of that temple.

Hide & seek? Listen mate, Toucan play at that game. (Apologies).

I went looking for Snook along numerous structures like this (the jetty that is, not the church) but failed miserably afraid.

Dawn rises over the jungle on the Rio Dulce upstream from Livingstone. A lovely place, but I have no idea where the Snook were. Honduras probably.

Bait of some sort. Not sure if Snook eat them though; it would seem not.

More bait. Pretty and all that, but so small it almost burst like a maggot when I stuck it on a 4/0 hook.

Above: I have been known to miss the obvious, but isn't this bad news when it's painted on the neighbour's front door?

Foraging for bait... to catch a baitfish... to catch a Snook. The further up the food chain things got though, the scarcer the commodity became I'm afraid.

"Smile. God Loves You".
Another feelgood moment
down at the cornershop!