Our travels in 1999 took us along the "Mayan Route", taking in four countries: Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras. We had visited Mexico right at the start of the nineties, when we toured Mexico City, Acapulco and some of the "Colonial Cities" in between. Technically, in fact, this was our third visit to that country, for, in the late eighties, we had, during a tour of the Southwest USA, crossed over the border to spend a few hours in Tijuana (not, in my view, the way to get a good first impression of Mexico!) This was, on the other hand, our first foray into Central America. La Ruta Maya is an initiative launched by the countries in that region to promote tourism with a Mayan theme and we visited, in all, ten of the main sites.
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| Antigua, Guatemala |
We stayed overnight in the border city of Chetumal, once rather sleepy but, with the development of La Ruta Maya, starting to figure more on travellers' itineraries. It is a pleasant town, in a ramshackle sort of way. The main attraction is the superb new Maya Museum, whose exhibits include models of how various sites used to look in their heyday. It set the scene very well for the remainder of our tour.
In Chetumal, we ran into elections, not for the first time on this trip. Here the ruling party in Mexico, the curiously named Party of Institutionalized Revolution (PRI), was holding elections to decide who its presidential candidate will be in year 2000. The PRI, having been continuously in power for a world-beating 70 years, is trying to make itself more democratic, hence the institution of US-style primary elections. We found ourselves amidst a rally for the candidate who went on to win, a Signor Labastida. A good name, maybe, for a politician!
Next day saw us over the border in Belize. This is a small country, little bigger than Wales with a population of around a quarter of a million. Yet it has a varied and fascinating landscape, with a fast-growing eco-tourism industry. Embedded in Latin America, it is an English-speaking enclave, having once of course been the colony of British Honduras. There is not in fact a land border with Honduras. But its immediate Central American neighbour, Guatemala, laid claim to its territory for many years, and British troops were stationed out there. But now the two countries have made peace and ambassadors are exchanged.
The map in the customs house on the Guatemalan side of their mutual border still depicts Belize as if it were the twenty-third Guatemalan department. It holds to its Anglophile traditions: the Queen is still Head of State (with no referendum planned on becoming a republic, as far as I know) and road distances are given in miles, not kilometres. But they did have to give up on driving on the left - virtually all road vehicles are imported from the States and are left-hand drive.
We stopped at the town of Orange Walk for an exciting trip by motor launch up the New River, where we saw a variety of wildlife, to the Mayan site at Lamanai. As we approached there was an ominous roaring sound which made us fear that something very fierce must be lurking in the vicinity. Did they still have dinosaurs in Belize, we wondered. Then we saw the beast - a tiny howler monkey! From the top of the ruin, fine views were to be had over acres of dense jungle.
We stayed overnight in Belize City, and had a city tour the following morning. Not one of the world's loveliest cities but kind of attractive in its own way. Our journey now took us inland to the town of San Ignacio for a two-night stay. En route we paused at Belize Zoo, located near the pleasingly named town of La Democracia. Neither of us had looked forward to this for we are both opposed to caging wild animals.
But Belize Zoo is nothing like this and maybe shouldn't be called a zoo at all. It was founded by a remarkable lady, Sharon Matola, who, after the shooting of a wildlife film, found herself left with a number of animals, who were no longer capable of surviving in the wild. She therefore established a "zoo" for them. It contains only local wildlife ("so you won't see any elephants", our Belizean guide told us), all birds or mammals who need some kind of ongoing care. There is plenty of space for them to roam. Its residents include the only large indigenous mammals: the tapir and two types of jaguar.
We also passed through Belmopan, established in the early sixties as the new capital - a would-be mini-Brasilia - after Belize City had been devastated by Hurricane Hattie. This stuck me as an experiment that had not really worked. It seemed to have no character and we saw no impressive examples of architecture. The population, mainly civil servants, is still very small and Belize City remains very much the country's centre of gravity.
San Ignacio was our base for a number of further excursions in Belize: two more Mayan sites, Xunantanich and Cahal Pech; the beautiful Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve whose attractions include the Thousand Foot Falls and Rio Frio Cave, carved out by a river; and a trip by dugout along a river to the Rainforest Medicine Trail. The latter contains a wide variety of medicinal plants and was founded by a chap named Dr Eligio Panti. He lived to 103 so must have been onto something good!
Not all Mayan sites, by the way, are as romantically named as they sound. There is not the ability to decipher Mayan hieroglyphics - an equivalent of the Rosetta Stone has never been found - and some of the original names have been lost. Cahal Pech, for example is a name of recent origins and means - "place where ticks are found"!
Our first overnight stop in Guatemala was a hotel on scenic Lake Peten Itza. This was our base for visiting one of the most important Mayan sites, Tikal. Our trip had many highlights and I cannot pick out a single one as the very best. But Tikal certainly has to be one of the best. This site is all the more spectacular for being set amidst dense jungle. It covers a large area - and its pyramids offer some challenging climbs! From Tikal we were taken to the airport at Flores for our flight to our next overnight stop, Guatemala City. Internal ~lights can be a pain - on two previous holidays in Latin America, in Venezuela and in Peru, we had had some tiresome delays. Here too there was a lengthy delay. But for once this was good news. Our tour guide arranged for us to spend an hour in the nearby city of Flores, which we would not otherwise have seen. This small and attractive city is located on an island in the Lake, reached by a causeway.
We had two nights in the Guatemalan capital. On our first I had difficulty in getting to sleep. There were noises outside rather like gunfire. Was this a `first' for us - arriving in a country in the middle of a revolution? In fact it was the sound of firecrackers, let off by supporters of political parties. For a presidential election was taking place that very night (to the chagrin of some in our party, sale of alcohol is banned on election nights!). The posters of contending candidates were just about everywhere. The winner was a certain Signor Portillo - a rightwinger, naturally, but not, I think, related to our own Michael Denzil Xavier.
Guatemala is a beautiful country and its people are friendly yet the past few decades have been rather grim, with a succession of dictators plus a long-running guerrilla war thrown in for good measure. But a peace agreement was reached in 1996 - we saw a memorial to this in the capital's main square - and democracy has been enthusiastically embraced. The rebels have laid down their weapons and entered the democratic process, their presidential candidate garnering about an eighth of the total vote.
More generally in Central America, the future looks more promising than it perhaps has done for many years. For in El Salvador and Nicaragua too, also afflicted for many years by civil war and/or revolution, peace and democracy seem to be taking root. This is not of course to say that these countries don't still have serious problems, not least widespread poverty, which no visitor can avoid seeing, and an alarming rate of population growth.
Our day in Guatemala City was split between two tours. In the morning we had a city tour, which included visits to the Presidential Palace and Cathedral. We also saw a chunk of the Berlin Wall, a gift from the people of that city but not, somehow, something we'd expected to see in Guatemala! In the afternoon we visited the old capital, Antigua, about an hour's drive away. It has to be said that much of the downtown in the capital has a rather down-at-heel feel about it and seasoned travellers in this region are more likely these days to base themselves in Antigua. This is a beautiful colonial city, abandoned as capital after a devastating earthquake in 1773.
Now that Guatemala is at peace, its fortunes are in the ascendant and visitors now flock there, perhaps to stay at one of the most interesting hotels we have seen anywhere, the Casa Santo Domingo, located within a partially restored convent and beautifully and imaginatively illuminated at night by countless candles and lights. Alas we had to return to Guatemala City so didn't get to stay there but they seem happy to let people look round for free. Also seen in Antigua: a shop displaying the sign "broken English spoken perfectly".
The next day involved a long drive to Copan, a few miles over the border in Honduras, and location of another of the more important Mayan sites. This is magnificent, the fine hieroglyphic staircase being of particular interest. It differs from Tikal in being far more compact and lacking any really tall buildings; as our Honduran guide put it, "Tikal is the New York of the Mayan World, Copan its Paris". Our overnight base was in the attractive nearby town, Copan Ruinas, where we stayed at the Hotel Marina Copan. This is some fifty years old; luxurious but charmingly eccentric, it is a world away from the big chains. It could not, we felt, exist anywhere else but here!
In the seventies and eighties, Honduras was spared the war and strife that afflicted all three of its neighbours but its charming people do have an enemy, poverty: this is one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere. The return of peace in the other counties boosted Honduras's economic prospects as well but, in late 1998, Hurricane Mitch had a devastating impact.
It was interesting, however, to look at a book produced by the national tourist board. The Honduran Government is keen to attract tourists and the book urged visitors to forget about Mitch and enjoy the country's attractions, for the resultant damage was now, it assured us, scarcely noticeable. The message was along the lines that the country had picked itself up, dusted itself down and started all over again. In a somewhat unneighbourly swipe, visitors were urged to discover the charm of its capital: "why bother with pricey Antigua Guatemala when you can visit Tegucigalpa before it becomes trendy".
We returned to Guatemala City the next day, diverting via another Mayan site, Quirigua, which is noted for its striking stelae or free-standing columns. On the following day we flew back to Cancun. Taca Group, the Central American airline, kindly laid on a bit of fun for us: they cancelled our flight. A lengthy diversion via Mexico City was necessary. But we made it eventually to our stop for the next two nights, the splendid Hotel Mayaland, right by the gates of Chichen Itza, another of the main highlights of our tour. We had a full day of exploration here, with a sound and light show following in the evening. There is a great deal to see, including the massive Pyramid of Kukulkan, which provided another challenging climb. I'm glad to say I managed not once but twice but gather that, after 1999, climbing will no longer be allowed. This may be for conservation reasons but I've read somewhere that there are also worries about litigious Americans falling down the steps and suing the authorities. Comment had better be withheld!
The final two nights of this tour were spent in another fine hotel, the Lodge at Uxmal, again located right by the entrance of the site. En route from Chichen Itza, we broke our journey for a two-hour walking tour of Merida, recently proclaimed the cultural capital of the Americas. Uxmal is another fascinating site and here too there was a sound and light show in the evening. It is a bit smaller in its extent than Chichen Itza, allowing time for a quick trip to one of the smaller Mayan sites in this part of the Yucatan, Kabah.
Whenever we can, we like to finish our trips with a few days of relaxation on a beach and on this occasion had booked seven days on the Yucatan coast. Eschewing the brash modernity of Cancun, a resort founded as recently as the seventies, we opted for Playa del Carmen. A health warning is necessary: the Yucatan coast is now heavily developed and Playa del Carmen can no longer be described as a quiet fishing village. But it is a friendly place and still has a lot of charm; unlike in Cancun, one does actually feel one's in Mexico!
There are many restaurants and a lively nightlife: "a real cool town", as we heard an American exclaim. But it is not in any way tacky. The sand, white and stretching endlessly along the coast, is about the finest we have seen anywhere and, for some reason or other, does not get hot when the sun is shining, so there's no risk of burning ones feet.
Out of curiosity more than anything else, we did do a trip to Cancun, which has two main areas, the Downtown and Hotel (ie seaside) Zone. We were very glad we hadn't stayed in either. Call me Mr Old-fashioned but it seemed a place quite without charm or character utterly soulless in fact. Even the bit of beach we saw was unimpressive. Other trips from Playa del Carmen were a return visit to Tulum and a ferry trip to the nearby island of Cozumel. A good deal of time was spent simply relaxing after our hectic but thoroughly enjoyable fortnight on the move.
First published in VISA issue 36 (spring 2000).
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