Two Worlds.

Central America, a sliver of land bridging two massive continents, acts like a bottleneck for bio-diversity. A kaleidoscope of colour, life and opportunity for adventure is condensed within its slender figure. One day I am 30 metres under the ocean exploring a ghostly shipwreck splashed with yellow and red starfish, and plastered with crusty barnacles. Parrot fish flitter in and out of skeletal forests of white coral. A yellow snapper eye-balls me through my scuba mask as a big bronze lipped grouper cruises past scattering a shimmery cloud of tiny silver fish.  

Fast-forward four days and I am standing 3000 metres above sea level, on Honduras’ highest point. Stiff gusts pepper my cheeks with cold flecks of rain. Around me the saturated green environment of Central American cloud-forest hums and drips. Tree ferns bloom and spongy moss spreads over every available space. Mist entangles itself like hair in the branches of ancient trees from where unseen birds ping and chime like cell phones. Strange shapes lurk in the shadowy background - Dr Seuss trees hanging like puppets.  In the bush clogged valley far below me a waterfall thunders incessantly. The view from the peak is mostly obscured by tattered curtains of clouds which occasionally part revealing layers of forested ranges stacked to the horizon. I think back over the last three days and about my journey from the Caribbean to where I stand now.

After two weeks fully submerged in the world of scuba diving on Utila, one of the Islas de la Bahia (Bay islands) off the coast of Honduras, I began to feel a growing urge to stretch my legs. I felt like climbing a mountain and diving into an environment of a different kind. Although I was enjoying the blue skies, bluer water, hammocks, parties and coconut palms, I was becoming restless. Not to mention the life of a rum soaked dive pirate was taking a toll on both my body and my wallet. I decided it was time for a change of scene. It was also time for Raul and I to part ways. We were headed in different directions and I welcomed the chance to travel by myself again.

The only photo I have of Raul, checking out a plane crash site on Utila. Random, I know.

I really enjoyed the time I spent travelling with Raul. He is a great character and travel companion and if it wasn’t for him I would have never visited Belize. I consider myself lucky to have met a friend on my travels, someone to laugh with, jam with, drink with and camp with, but there’s something liberating about travelling solo. Of course that freedom comes at a price – loneliness - a feeling which was waiting for me on the road.

After I left Utila I caught a rattly old chicken bus inland towards Lago (lake) de Yojoa where my guide book told of a microbrewery/ hostel owned by a Belgian man. I got off at a Honduran highway village – an assortment of stores lining both sides of the road selling everything from cell phones, fresh fruit, hand-tools and, just what I was looking for, fried chicken. As I munched through a greasy wing a child peered at me from behind her mother's legs, a conflict of shyness and curiosity. My guide- book advised me to catch another bus from here, but there were still a few hours of daylight left and the hostel was only 7kms out of town so I decided to walk. Wandering out of town I soon came to an intersection. One sign pointing straight ahead said Lago de Yojoa, the other sign pointing to the right had no familiar names on it. I considered looking at my guidebook again but recalled that the hostel was situated on the lakes edge and so I continued straight ahead, following the sign to the lake. 



The air was warm and thick with the threat of rain. Dark brush strokes blurred the tops of a distant mountain range while in the foreground white, hump backed cows chewed mouhtfuls of lush grass in vibrant green fields . As I approached they raised their heads to study me casually, apparently unimpressed with what they saw they returned to their glorious munching. Tall hedges occasionally lined the road side behind which simple houses sat, their gardens full to overflowing with life. I passed a lady taking her washing off the line, offering her a smile I got a wary look in return as she scurried back indoors.

After a couple of hours there was no sign of any hostel and I began to wonder whether I would ever reach this Belgian man and his home made beer. I was sure I had walked more than 7 km’s. I finally stopped to pull out my guidebook. I read the directions and realised that I should have taken the turn which I passed just outside the village. I let my hands fall looked to the sky and let out a groan. Good one. I had two options then, another hour to the lake, or two hours backtracking to town and a bus to the hostel. By now my feet were starting to ache and my pack hung heavy on my back, so I decided to keep going to the lake, my Belgian beer bubble well and truly burst.




As I continued fat drops of rain began to plop on the dusty ground around me. Slowly the pitter of the patter quickened until the individual drops blended into a constant roar. Before I knew it I was trudging through a downpour with my hood up and head down, my feet were sodden and my trousers soaked through. With the weather, so worsened my mood. I couldn’t help but think of that empty hammock back in Utila. I could have been kicking back, sipping a rum punch with my new friends, watching pelicans swoop and splash into the crystal clear water as smiling girls in bikinis biked barefoot past. A drop of rain ran down my spine, Why did I trade that for this?







Finally the rain began to ease and I reached the lake only to be greeted by a stern posse of No Camping signs. There was an old jeep parked with its trailer backed into the water amongst the reeds. I saw a lone dinghy in the distance, one fishermen inside seemingly marooned on a concrete lake the oppressive granite sky pressing down above him.

I decided to play it safe and wait until the fisherman had left before setting up my tent – a bright orange tent is great for being spotted if you’re lost in the mountains, not so great when you want to go unnoticed. I found a tree to shelter under, sat down on my pack and looked out over the lake. One thing about being by yourself is you have a lot of time to think, sometimes this is a good opportunity to reflect on all the things you can be grateful for, at other times however this is a chance for your mind to take a wander down darker alleys. This was one of those other times.

Why do I constantly distance myself from people? I’m on holiday I should be enjoying myself on the beach with friends like I had been for the past two weeks. Why do I always have to take the hard road? These thoughts swirled and stormed under my hood as the rain fell before my eyes. The fisherman returned, loaded his boat on the trailer and drove away without a glance in my direction. I watched as his tail lights dissolved into grey then set my tent under the darkening sky. I climbed in, crawled into my sleeping bag, closed my eyes and tried to sleep.

The next morning I woke from a restless night, the bottom of my sleeping bag was soaked from being pressed against the wall of the tent, and my feet were freezing and wrinkled. I opened the door to a morning drained of colour. After a quick unsatisfying breakfast of soggy crackers, oily tuna and rubbery cheese I packed my things and returned to the road where I managed to hitch a lift on the back of a truck to the next town. I sat shivering on the tray as the scenery flashed past my eyes in a blur. My mind still longed for the beach, while my body floated down lonely roads towards the mountains.

I knew where I was going –a town called Gracias nestled in the shadow of Honduras’ highest peak Cerro Las Minas (2870m) which I planned to climb. It seemed like a good idea from the comfort of a hammock, but now my motivation was deflating.

Gracias is a small dusty town with short and square, flat roofed buildings.  The foot paths are narrow with high gutters, the dirt roads rutted and potholed. Street dogs sulk and sniff in piles of rubbish which the wind deftly shuffles into corners and alley-ways. As I walked down the street a mountain range loomed into view, clouds hung like a frown on the brow of the highest point, Cerro de Las Minas. At that point it seemed like the mountain was emanating an invitation, almost audible, like a rumbling bass tone vibrating through the humid air. 

I found a family run Hospedaje, offering a simple but tidy private room for roughly $10NZ. Lying on the stiff bed that night, my tent, sleeping bag and jacket hung up and drying around me, the contents of my pack spilt and scattered on the floor, I resolved to take on the hike the next day. The forecast was for rain but I wanted to snap myself out of this daze.



Early next morning I found myself bucking and jolting in the back of a moto-tuk-tuk, my backpack bouncing beside me and the engine whining determinedly up a bumpy dirt-road.

After signing in with the local ranger’s office, I followed the path into a golden morning light passing skinny shrubs and trees exploding with bright green leaves. The trail ascended quickly, steeply zig-zagging up through the forest which gradually grew older and larger around me. When I stopped for a drink of water it stuck me that I could be tramping through the rain forests of New Zealand. The colours matched, the damp rain-forest smell and the over-all atmosphere was so reminiscent of the bush back home and then, out of the corner of my eye I saw a snake uncoil suddenly and leap, quick as a fluorescent green flash through the air and disappear into the bushes. This is definitely not New Zealand I reminded myself, the image of a leaping jaguar flashing through my mind.
As I pressed on a gecko pressed flat to a tree, craned his head backwards to follow my movements with twitchy eyes.

My trusty Marmot Earlylight tent.

After a few hours walk I found a flat step on the ridge to camp for the night. As the light between the towering trees dissolved into darkness the wind picked up. I prepared my pasta and tuna looking worriedly at the branches starting to sway heavily above me, the twisting wood groaning with the strain. 

That night, it rained again. I lay in my nylon cocoon encased by the sound of a million rain drops slapping the walls around me while the trees thrashed like wild things at the night sky. Above the noise I hear a scratchy scrabbling on my tent, I shine the torch and see a mouse sheltering in the gap between my fly and the roof. Just a mouse. Later I dozed on the brink of sleep, suddenly claws grip my head, shocked into action I rip off my hat and hear a startled squeak as the frightened mouse flees into the darkness. Seems my wee friend had found a way in. A little unsettled, I noticed the wind and rain hadn’t calmed and my tent still leaned at a harried angle.

As my heart rate returned to normal I began to laugh. I laughed at the absurdity of leaving an idyllic tropical island to go camping with a mouse in a tropical storm. I realised it was pretty ridiculous, but I also realised that if I had stayed in that hammock I would have regretted it. I'm a traveller, I'm in Honduras to explore and experience all I can and, to me, that means getting out of my comfort zone and straying from the pack every once in a while. Feeling sorry for yourself or focusing on what you've already left never gets you anywhere good.

The next day the sky is a very neutral grey, the trees silent and still, appearing dignified and immovable again after their wild rumpus the night before. The forest smells fresh, birds sing, insects ring and light bounces off the leaves washed clean by the rain. Everything seems recharged after the storm, myself included. I pack up camp, hitch my pack on my shoulders and head up to the summit.

A foreign land.

From the mountains, fiords and glaciers of Patagonia, my next trail building contract took me to the barren desert of Northern Mexico. In this totally unfamiliar environment I realised how much I took for granted back in New Zealand, and it dawned on me that maybe Fred Dagg was right when he sang "we don't know how lucky we are, mate."

"How much further to the top?"

It's Dan, I can tell by his voice that he's only a few metres behind me but a wall of thorny branches blocks him from view. "Well, surely we must be at least half way up by now." My reply sounds less reassuring than I intended.

We are in the middle of a steep, tight canyon choked with thorny bushes, in the desert of Northern Mexico. We encounter these ferocious trees every day while cutting trail and have dubbed them "piranha bushes". Usually there's space to manoeuvre around them but here they bristle all around us, their thorns grinning.

What an alien place this is, so different from anything I’ve experienced before – in terms of the environment, Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego aren’t massively different from parts of New Zealand, but here, this is like another  world. And the differences don’t stop with the environment. 

Two months ago, in a bike shop in San Antonio, Texas, when I told the attendants that I was going to cross the border to build trails in the North of Mexico they couldn’t believe it. “Are you crazy man?! It’s super dangerous down there.” I dismissed the comment as a typical American over reaction - close minded Texans who have been exposed to too much Fox News fear mongering. I took my new bike and wheeled it out the door, leaving them shaking their heads behind me. Turns out I was the ignorant one.

Because the truth is, a war rages in North Mexico. A war fought between drug cartels that battle for control of supply routes into the US. In the past five years almost 40,000 people have been killed. The police here are the most corrupt in the world (while New Zealand’s, apparently, are the least), the politicians, if they’re not in the cartels pockets, are too scared to make a stand, those who do are often gruesomely executed, as are the journalists who are brave or foolish enough to tell the truth. The criminals are the ones in power here, and they rule with terror and ruthlessness, attacking super markets, churches and even pre-schools to instil fear and maintain control. Can you imagine living in a place like this?

Working at Rancho San Enrique - a cluster of unassuming buildings adrift in a sea of sand and cacti - 5 hours drive from the closest town, we are able to carry on blissfully ignorant of the war which crackles and burns around us. Our main concerns out here are the bike trails we are building, what the weather is doing and how many beers are in the fridge. The only obvious sign that things aren’t completely stable in these parts is the military check point we pass through to get here and the giant machine gun mounted Humvee which occasionally rumbles down the road, packed with young soldiers armed to the teeth.

For the past two weeks we have been cutting a track in the shadow of Taco Canyon, a huge rift cutting deep into the sun-baked mountains which define the Northern border of Rancho San Enrique. Often, while leaning on my rake (discussing work of course), my eyes drift up to the head of the sheer sided valley and I notice a big crack in the cliffs. It looks like a good way to get up to the tops, from where there must be some amazing views out over the desert.  Dan, Kieran and I decide to give it a shot one afternoon. Our plan is to walk up the canyon to the bottom of the crack and then see if we can use it to access the top. We jump in the Kubota, a small 4wd buggy, and drive it down the long sandy road. Cacti whip the windscreen as we go.

We follow the road straight to the gaping mouth of the canyon then plough into the soft and slidey gravel of the valley floor. Soon boulders like giant, pale dice block our path. We leave the Kubota ticking in the shade and, taking our packs of water and snacks, continue on foot. We clamber over and around these massive, smooth, cool grey rocks, tyring to steer clear of the thorn bushes which snarl and scratch from the cracks. After about an hour we reach the base of the gorge, the sun high and harsh in a burnt blue sky, and we gulp back more water.

 

Apart from the obvious military presence, there are other, more subtle signs that life here in North Mexico is far from easy. One day I was talking to Louis, one of the local labourers who I became friends with, we were outside the house watching  the sky blaze with another stunning sunset, chatting about nothing in particular, when I asked him whether he had ever seen any gang violence in his home town. I can still remember how his eyes glazed over, as if hardened with some memory of his past. He suddenly became evasive and made an excuse to leave. As he walked away I had to wonder at what those eyes had witnessed.

It was then I realised how different we were, Louis and I. No matter how much we got to know each other, there was always going to be this invisible barrier between us. Our histories were just too different.  I had grown up in one of the most peaceful countries in the world, somewhere where you can trust the police, where the violence on the TV news takes place in another world, far away over miles of ocean. For him it was right outside his front door.

The going doesn't look easy. It´s a steep and narrow ravine, tangled with thorn trees and boulders. From here we can see to the top and it looks a long way off. Wouldn't it be nice to go back to the ranch, get out of the sun, put our feet up and crack a cold beer? Certainly, but we can't go back and tell the 12 other boys that we didn’t give it a shot can we? No way Jose.

We slowly work our way up and once amongst the boulders it's a matter of guessing which thorny alley-way will take us the furthest. The walls creep closer and closer on both sides as we climb higher, until the sky is just a narrow ribbon above our heads. We look in envy through the sweat in our eyes at the clear and open blue space. A jet black raven passes in front of the sun, his shadow sweeping over us.

"How much further to the top?"

I have no idea.

The more I think about the situation with Louis and I, the guiltier I feel. What did I ever do to be blessed with this life - getting paid to travel around the world building mountain bike trails? Do I really deserve it?  Here I am, a tumble-weed gringo blow in, earning ten times as much money as him and riding around on a bicycle that he could never afford, while he toils and sweats under the harsh desert sun for peanuts, hundreds of kilometres from his wife and kids. For me this is just a short stint, a small taste of life in the desert, something to brag about to my mates when I get back home. This is his reality.

As we push through the bushes, the thorns tear at our skin, snatch at our hair and clothes. I never expected things to be this hard. For a long time it seems we are making no head way at all. We are getting tired and running low on water. But then the piranha bushes begin slowly to thin out, the river of sky over our heads widens and suddenly we emerge, scratched, sweating and dirty, onto the mountain tops.

I remember one evening when I was having another chat with Louis. The sun was low on the horizon, dousing the craggy and barren mountain range behind us in electric golden sunlight. I was telling him about a hike I did in Tierra del Fuego, trying to explain the strange landscape of frozen lakes and glacier covered peaks. Shaking his head in wonder, he asked me questions about the cold, the ice, the wildlife. Then he asked me if I was going to continue travelling after my stint here. I was kind of reluctant to tell him, I didn’t want him to resent me for having these opportunities he would never have. In the end I told him my plans to travel south through Mexico and into Central America, then fly to Europe to work and travel over there. His eyes lit up, I could see how excited he was for me. He was saying how cool that was going to be, and how he would love to go to Europe. There was no resentment or jealousy, just admiration and excitement.

From up here we can literally see for miles. An ocean of desert laid at our feet, dissected by dead straight roads heading determinedly into oblivion. In the distance we can see spiralling chimneys of dust tracing their toes in the sand, heads swaying like cobras. Great pale faces of rock rise sheer out of the earth like icebergs. Dan, Kieran and I stand in silence, surveying the foreign land we find ourselves in. Three kiwi lads surrounded by a harsh wilderness of scorpions, coyotes and rattle snakes, marooned on an island of peace in the midst of a war we will never fully understand.

 

Louis' unexpected reaction made me think. In life everybody is dealt a different hand, and it’s seldom a fair deal, but what really matters is how you play your cards. I have been blessed with a good life, and I can’t let shame or guilt stop me from playing my cards the way I want to. Seeing the way people live over here has opened my eyes to a grim reality – it’s a cruel world – but it has also made me realise something else, that to not make the most of each and every opportunity is not only an injustice to you, but an injustice to all the people who will never get that opportunity themselves. If Louis knew I had passed up on seeing the world because I felt guilty for receiving the opportunity, he would think I was an idiot.
When I return home, I will definitely appreciate our green and tranquil little country that much more. But for now I think I will wander a bit further, open my eyes a little wider and see what more I can learn from this crazy, cruel but wonderful world. After all, I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface.