Arrived in Nicaragua.

After so many border crossings today didn't feel that special, perhaps entering a country that you haven't been in before should feel pretty good. I did make it across the border and have to sweat just a little because I had got about $10.00US on me and there were rumours flying around that there was not a cash point - or cajero automatico in Ocatal where I am currently staying. After finding two that didn't work I made it to the third which did and I was so overjoyed that I must admit that I nearly fainted with relief that I'd got some cash for the next few days. Things look like they're going well but I guess that the other complicating factor here is that there appears to be a strike on at present involving drivers and one of the roads that I want to pass is blockaded at present so I may be stuck here for a few days if the worst comes to the worst. Because of the hard days travelling, I was up at six to get the bus to Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, and then on another bus at midday to get to the border and then another from there, I've booked into one of the better quality places that I've stayed at in Central America which is costing me about twelve pounds per night.

It's not been the most eventful of days, although, as I was boarding the bus in Juticalpa this morning there were checks of hand luggage taking place and there appeared to be one person being asked to take the bullets out of his pistol in order to be allowed on the bus. As I state the border crossing itself was uneventful - the only thing of interest was seeing the football on the TV behind the immigration official -the Germans were completing their victory over the Turkish as my papers were being stamped.

So far after a only a few hours in this country I've not been able to form any real opinion on what may provide the national flavour to the place. There does tend to be a slightly different mix of trees on the hillsides though that is most likely only due to recent agricultural policy - the mix of palms, pines and others does seem quite unorthodox. I've taken a short wander around the centre of town this afternoon on the way to cajero automaticos and it appears to be quite a nice centre. The old style colonial buildings appear to be intact largely and there is quite a peaceful atmosphere here. It was interesting to see the queue at the bank next to the cajero automatico - this was something that I started to see a lot of in Guatemala - I presume that virtually noone in the country uses cajero automaticos and as a result they have to queue to get their pay from the bank when it's the pay day in the week or the first of the month. It would also explain why there doesn't seem to be any incentive for the banks to get the cajero automaticos fixed when they break, it doesn't disrupt enough of their customers schedules.

The last few days weren't easy travelling and I did find myself staying in a couple of places that I'd got no intention of staying in. I tried to get from Trujillo to Tegucigalpa by chicken bus down the dirt road that runs through Juticalpa and was forces to stay a night in San Esteban which was a town with only dirt roads and horses tied up outside the cafe-bars which did have a slight feel of the wild west about it. Then from there I managed to get down to Juticalpa and was informed that there were no buses on account of the strike action that appears to affect both Honduras and Nicaragua. Both of the towns lacked any real excitement other than the meal that I had in Juticalpa in Oregano's Restaurant. The guy running it, Luis, was the only person I had a conversation with in English and he seemed really nice. He offered me a lift to Tegucigalpa early this morning but I wasn't up in time to meet him. It's a shame that the mountain scenery that you can see from the chicken buses as they trundle down the dirt roads is not that well publicised. I thought a lot of the scenery in Honduras was pretty staggering and is almost worth the visit for that reason alone.

The shot above is one taken from a bus window on the first leg of the journey from Trujillo to San Esteban and I assume that something like it has appeared at SBPS many moons ago. It does look a little familiar to me. Shots of Trujillo to San Estaban are online alongside those from San Estaban to Jutigalpa. There is also a few shots of the Atila Bars. For the strong willed there are a couple of duff shots of Trujillo too.

San Pedro Sula - City of nothing much.

It's a real shame that today I was misinformed by staff in the otherwise excellent Cafe Via Via. A few Salva Vidas too many last night and I did slightly oversleep and not make it back into the ruins at Copan. I made my way at about midday via La Entrada to San Pedro hoping to catch a connecting bus from there to La Ceiba, the port from which you can get to Roatan, the island where I may do a little diving. Unfortunately as I state I was misinformed - the buses don't run after about three thirty so when I arrived at five I had little else in the way of choice but to stay over in San Pedro until I can get a bus in the morning.

I don't know if my mind was open enough to challenge what is stated in the PDF guide book I have when I walked here from where I was droppped off by the microbus. The guide states that the town is largely work oriented and very much the opposite of La Ceiba, which is if anything a party town. I don't know if there is anything of real substance in this. As per ususua in Central America everyone appeared to be generally friendly, honest and helpful as I made my way from Parque Central to the Hostal. The only problem was that no-one seemed to understand what I was asking and I must have asked about eight or ten people if I was walking the right street to get to this place and all of them agreed with me that it was Avenida 11 when I think it was Avenida 10. I used to place practical jokes like that on Japanese tourists in the 1970's when I was a kid - maybe there is some form of second city link and the Hondurans are in touch with the childish sense of humour that I had.

The hostal, Hostal Tamarindo, is covered with murals which mimic the work of Picasso. This only really tends to make me wonder about the real Picasso's which are probably located around Honduras as one of the sites where former Nazi's headed. I wonder how many there are in Honduras at present. I hope they don't run the hostal... I was glad I didn't have any de ja vu today - especially when I came into the Hostal, it was very unnerving going into the Manzana Verde and finding that it was similar to one of the SBPS images. There were only about three types of birds that were possible to photograph in Copan and I managed to get images of the very same one's that were entered in club contests several years ago. Can't recall who bloody entered them. Arghhh!!!

Leaving Copan Ruinas

Time to leave. Didn't manage to see as much of the ruins as I would have liked. I did like the layout and presentation of what is there as a world heritage site. From
250AD to 900AD the city dominated the region, in effect it was the Mayan ‘Capital’.

It is more significant now because of the hieroglyphics and sculpture rather than the scale of the structures, so perhaps they were just plain lazy as builders and didn’t like lifting heavy objects up that high. Stylish and nicknamed the Paris of the Mayan world as a result Copan is meant to be a real sight. The area has been inhabited for about three millennia according to archaeologists who established the names of former kings to have been 'Waterlily Jaguar' and 'Smoke Imix' who sound more like DJs than anything else. I don’t know how they came up with their names in the Mayan kingdom but they sound a bit daft to me. The 13th king was called ‘18 Rabbit’ and his successor was called ‘Smoke Monkey’ which strikes me as a little odd – 18 Rabbit is bad enough but Smoke Monkey is possibly worse. Maybe the Mayans did spend too much time on the pottery, sculpture and art and not enough on building tall buildings and thinking up decent names for their kings. Who am I to rock the boat? Apparently Smoke Monkey didn’t make a big impression on the kingdom archaeologically, so perhaps he made all his subjects eat smoked monkey during his reign (738 – 749AD). His son apparently commissioned buildings which are the most impressive, his name was Smoke Shell, which makes smoked monkey seem quite appetising.

I wonder what Pete and Dud would do if they could see Copan now? The last two rulers were called Yax Pac (Sunrise or First Dawn, 763 – 820AD) and the final U Cit Tok whose power came to an end following defeat in battle in 822AD. I wonder if there was a loss of faith of the Mayan’s who supported their king after First Dawn started what may have been little more than a programme of gentrification aimed at beautifying a city when there could have been more substantial improvements which may have supported the quality of life in the area for his subjects. I guess there may have been an element of ‘let them eat cake’ but really I don’t have enough evidence to go on at this point. The guidebook, Lonely Planet: Central America on a Shoestring, indicates that the city broke its ecological limits in terms of its ability to support a population within the valley area. Deforestation on hillsides around fertile farmland led to flooding and large scale erosion. Presumably the last king had some form of impediment.

There is also reference to disease taking hold of the populations which is indication of the fact that the cities had grown to a size where they were large enough to propagate disease – a disease like measles apparently requires a population of over 100 000 within a city or dwelling, otherwise there will not be enough contact between people for the disease to become contagious. This gives rise to some diseases being known as the diseases of industrialisation, or more correctly perhaps, the diseases of urbanisation. What I think is interesting about this is that as I stated earlier in the blog is that there only seems to be reference to the diseases that were caught by the Mayans when Europeans first made their impact in the region in the sixteenth century. Personally, I think there are grounds to question what has been undertaken. Were they spread strategically?

Just had a little bit more de ja vu, and I really wish I knew what was going on. I think this is something to do with the memory inhibitor issue but I really can’t say. I assume that there could easily have been some influence but I can’t say what I think has genuinely gone on over the last few years that could facilitate this de ja vu feeling which makes me feel as if I’ve dreamt about such things.

Arriving in Copan Ruinas.

The van pulled into Parque Central at about four this afternoon. Copan Ruinas is, as far as it seems so far, quite a nice little town. I feel very much at home as a result of the rather globalised feel of the particular cafe that I'm in, it's been done out in much the same way as many of the Central American themed places in the UK as far as I recall. The style does lack something in terms of the authenticity that one gets if one is willing to dice with diarrhea in a real local bar that tends normally to resemble a transport cafe done Honduras style but there is something infective about the music in a place that can override anything traditional or genuinely local about it. The place feels globalised as a result: the music, the decor and the menu - largely arranged to suit the westerner. There is little in the way of the authentic Honduras about the place though on the one hand the place is an almost sterilely stylised-Honduran bar and other the hand integration of culture is what keeps people together and the world ticking over.

Today was a largely uneventful day. There were a few 'familiar faces' around. In Mexico in a couple of places there were people who resembled J-Lo and today again I saw someone with very similar bone structure to a point where I did consider the woman I saw to be likely to be related to her. I don't know if Emma from OCR has any relatives out here but one of the other women I was close to for a few minutes looked a lot like her. It really wouldn't surprise me if there was something in the way of a big connection between Central America and the Midlands - perhaps the international business community, cum ruling class, cum European Monarchy have ensured that seeds have been spread around the world, I can't say. It's most likely due to my state of mind that there are things going on around me that seem to defy conventional explanations.

I'm in a backpackers that I don't think that I've been to before but I did have a very strange de ja vu when I entered the dormitory. I think it may have figured in images in SBPS and may have been a place that the other guy had been to - it's not that it bugs me it's that I don't actually know when I dreamt about the three bedded room that I'm staying in, whether it was before or after the night at SBPS. The dream sequence I had seemed to finish with a woman - though I don't know how this was facilitated, it does seem very unusual that this took place in the dream. I think I'll be heading back alone tonight. Pulling doesn't seem like a viable option with what has gone on. Annoyance like this aside, Copan Ruinas is a nice place to be.

There's a guy from Israel who seems to look a little like Mike H from Plymouth Poly days and a guy who announced himself as being from Birmingham, though actually in the cold light of day he's from Cannock and I'M THE ONE FROM BIRMINGHAM. It does get on my wick that so many people in the public eye especially seem actually not to be from Birmingham but from Smethwick or Dudley or worse of all from Solihull or Sutton Coldfield. The likes of Tessa Sanderson, Joan Armatrading and Jasper Carrot are more Brummie because they've actually lived in the city good and proper. God, I think I've been drinking a little too much recently but for Christ's sake, who lets them say they're from Birmingham on the so-called reputable BBC.

The issue that was raised a few days ago, on Saturday 8th June, regarding the need for El Salvador to have it's own version of the Goodies may have been overlooked by the BBC but I think Honduras may actually be a better place for this. Why do those BBC prats not do what I want for once? Why don't they think about the input to the Central American economy that could be made by making a few programmes as good as Cod almighty part one, part two and part three? It's amazing thinking about the BBC's reputation when the special effects from the sixties and the seventies are considered. Would the British tolerate a developing world nation producing TV of this nature? I somehow doubt it. Comic relief could consider what they could do in this position.

Another thing I've been doing of recent is adding on models on facebook who have turned up on 'do you know these people' or ‘these people may be your friends’ as you've got mutual friends in common etc. What's been interesting is that I now have made friends with Rhian Sugden and Sophie Howard, not that they're the real things. It's probably some spotty teenager in Kettering who's added on images of his favourite models. I wonder if he's reading this thinking you sarcy sod, why did you add them on in the first place? Facebook a place where I've got loads of friends, most of whom you’ll never meet...

A rave-like crowd have just pulled into the bar and despite the range of western English accents (eg. American, Canadian, English, Scottish) there does seem to be just a little bit of an influenced youth culture that has spread into our twenties and thirties. It's probably the music that's the key factor for me to bind groups of people together who wouldn't normally have a great deal in common. But I don't know if I'll find anything more than music to bring a group together. I don't know if there's going to be anything more substantial - politics should be a greater focal point for the youth of the nation and the population at large but understandably there's great cynicism around it. When it comes down to it there's no doubt some degree of concern over the credibility of politics as a pursuit that should bring you closer to other people but leisure and work seem pretty much firmly divided for the majority in the west and this stops politics being the form of meaningful recreation that it could be.

I did find the poetry group I attended to be a relatively meaningful pursuit, if only for a short while, but there appeared to be a few games going on that I didn't think I should have been subject to. I do wonder when someone is subject to games which amount to little more than harassment within somewhere like a poetry society whether they'll ever be free of games in the least. It does strike me as being rather sad that this happened there but I guess that the annoyances that has bothered me over the last few years, this is relatively miniscule in the grand scheme of things.

To Los Chorros de Calera

I paid a whole US$5.00 for a guide to accompany me today to the waterfalls known here as Los Chorros de Calera - for the two and half hours we took it was what I class as well worth it even though he was about seven years of age. There are shots online at Los Chorros de Calera should you wish to see what the setting is like.

There were quite a few people in and around the location which is also a hydro-electric power station although this is pretty well hidden from view. It is a nice spot and one that I think again that I'm familiar with through SBPS though I won't whine on about this again. There are about 75 shots on the slideshow so it could take some time to get through them. The divers were not bad in the least though I don't think they'll be representing El Salvador in the olympics. It's easy to understand how the diving at Acapulco became such a phenomenon because it is quite a sight even when the action is scaled down to the level that it is at this kind of level. I can understand people paying them to take shots of them and how the poor may be enticed into this kind of sport purely to get out of poverty and risk serious injury because of the relatively high risks involved. As a result I didn't pay any of the divers - I just took photos of them.

I got back to the hotel dripping with sweat largely because I've never really got used to altitude, although I've only been at this kind of level, about 1300 metres, for a few days. Participating in sporting events in these kind of conditions really does not appeal in the least - the number of Brits who have suffered in these conditions does spring to mind and I can wholly understand how it happens.

The picture above is of Rhian Sugden who I think would be particularly well suited to modelling in this kind of location, though I'm sure she can make her own mind up about where she works. Los Chorros is a nice setting even without a glamour model.

Fuentes Georginas & Zunil.

I was half expecting decent scenery in the area of Zunil which is about an hour away from Xela, (Xela pronounced Shay-Lay) and was pleasantly surprised - not only with the quality of the scenery but also the fact that I had seen it before elsewhere at SBPS, almost certainly amongst the work of Peter.

I found the area around the springs I was visiting to be reminiscent of the visits I made to the allotment off Fox Hollies Road in Acocks Green when my dad had an allotment there in the 1970s. There was a very healthy feel to the sodden earth which appeared as far as I could see to be fertilized organically. The crops appeared to be plentiful as I descended the hillside towards the town, Zenil, after taking a dip in the hot springs.

The springs themselves, Fuentes Georginas, were as pleasant as you'd imagine. The water was hot but not as hot as a bath, the pools were of different temperature so you could switch around if you found one pool too hot or too cold. The shots of Fuentes Georginas and Zunil are passable but lacking in originality as far as I'm concerned. The dream scene, a place I stated I had at least one dream about may be worth checking out.

If you're unsure about what the scenery is like up close in Guatemala, I for whatever reason would say that I found it a lot like the Dingles off Cole Valley Road. Maybe we could fake some shots of Guatemala there on my return. Does anyone know any people who look central American?

Finally to Quetzaltenango.

After a couple of attempts I finally made it to Xela or as it's more formally called Quetzaltenango. It has been chucking it down at a rate that it rarely does in the UK and I've been pretty much disabled by the volume of rain that has come down.

I had spent a little time last night thinking about the work of Marcelo Monecino: shots of Guatemala from the 1970's. While they're a good set of shots of various situations and events they may leave a little to be desired in terms of basic technical matters. I thought it would be fun to try to explore the area around the hostel and try to do something that would compliment what was done then. I don't think what is here is that original again I would have to whine that I've tried to do something better than what I've seen before and I don't think that I can really state that I've done anything more that what has already been achieved. One or two of the shots I recall from SBPS. Ho, hum... click de ja vu shots of rainy afternoon in Quetzaltenango.

The town seems quite nice though I don't think that I have had any real opportunity to explore it yet. I caught a microbus (a small independently operated bus service that is run by people who normally look as if they've just come out of prison) from the bus station to close to here and I didn't have any problems. The streets were pretty much deserted with the volume of rain as I walked across the city and I, as I state, took a few shots largely just to have done something other than completed the four and a half hour journey today.

It was amusing taking the shots of the women in shops in the late afternoon, whom I thought would be sat very bored but they seemed to take advantage of the quiet period in the day when nothing happened and chilled out. The two girls who look very much alike, I've got to assume they're sisters, ran and hid rather than state that they didn't want any shots taken. I assume that this was just the superficial game that may be expected and they were flattered rather than willing to pose in a documentary context. As I state it killed a little time but again when I had completed the shots there was more than a tinge of de ja vu.

I did start writing about the prospects of trying to work on a photo-essay today and I don't think that I produced any thing that original....On Marcelo Monecino's work an essay plan included:
He has broken quite a few rules. Some shots remind me of some of the shots of Nepalese kids I have pictures of in the sets I’ve put online in Nepal, with what appear to the western eye to be very uncomfortable smiles. It’s perhaps interesting to think of how well posed and how boldly the smiles of most of the indian kids I saw really did seem to convey a sense of deeper happinnes and yet the images of kids in Nepal were so totally different.

Monecino's locals are shoeless and usually ragged. I don’t know what genre I would describe his work within as there do tend to be a lot of shots that are technically not great but owing to the drama they manage to hold, they work. Despite the main subjects within the shots not having their faces to the camera, to be quite often walking away from the camera and for there to generally to be quite tense composition if any at all, the images hang together well. The images tend to work as documentary slides and possibly because of his willingness to break the rules there is a sense of anarchy about the shots. This is consolidated by the revolutionary atmosphere in shots which include rifles sticking out of bushes mixed in with rather disorganised shots of school children with nuns surrounding them.

There tends to be an absence of motor vehicles altogether from the shots which is substantially different in the wealthier gringo-fied Antigua that I've been in over the last few weeks. Mist tends to hum from the slums and is used to good effect as a backdrop to several scenes. Religious ceremonies tend to only convey a sense of the individual lost in a warehouse like space and local culture experienced in barbershops and other locations tends not to convey more than a bold, cheap environment with few frills.

Some compositional rule breaking does tend to query the seriousness of some shots. For instance, the man with the flag who has the trees behind him that appear to be coming out of the top of his head, and the two men sitting on a coffin of someone perhaps killed in battle. Whilst there are a great many disingenuous images surrounding war and rebellion these may more genuinely convey images of what peasant involvement in military activity has been like in this region - that those involved may be left at a point of exhaustion.

From the other images Monecino has on flickr there appear to be images going back ten years before these were taken giving indication that he had ten years experience. I should weigh this into the time scales I have to work on and consider the images that have been taken so far in my photographic life and work around this particular matter. Some rule breaking may not be warranted and some of it does tend to mock the subject and could be classed as being offensive or derogatory. This project was carried out about thirty five years ago and if I were to replicate much about this I would hope that I could try to have moved with the times and developed further. This does not seem an easy exercise owing to the lack of information I have got on genres and how they have changes specifically within the last thirty years or so.

Museo De Cafe y Mayan Musica Museo.

Well, I've finally broken my duck and done something today. I must admit that there were echoes of the Duff Beer Factory from the Simpsons when I was in the coffee museum that is on the edge of town. The tour guides were pretty good and came across in a very warm manner that is difficult to fake - they did seem happy in their work which does make quite a difference. I managed to take dozens of shots of the coffee plantation which no doubt will resemble some of the shots I saw at SBPS but I guess I can at least get some form of original interpretation of them after working on them in photoshop for a while.

Guatemala is the seventh biggest coffee producer in the world and according to the tour guide it produces the third best quality coffee beans of the major providers. I think he also said there are only about seven different types of beans and all variations of coffee flavour are based upon different combinations of these and degree or roasting. Somehow I prefer it when I've only got things to blog about like the multitudes of American women who seem to be in Antigua to fall in love. Not with me but with anyone else I imagine. Reporting of factual information from the coffee museum, which contained production machinery made in Aberdeen, Scotland, does not seem to hold the same degree of interest.

The coffee museum is also adjacent to a Mayan music museum. Traditional Mayan music was quite interesting but somehow I managed to resist buying any CDs. It was a kind of discordant folk, to me at least, which reminded me of up-tempo high energy house music crossed with Theolonius Monk and the Wurzels. People will think that reference to the Wurzels is just some weak low jibe at Guatemalan-Mayan culture but I think the Wurzels are underestimated for their influence. Geldof would never have come up with the idea of live aid unless it had been for that song "I've got a brand new combine harvester". Why I didn't buy any CDs I don't know. Most of the people who were on the tour made some form of attempt at playing the instruments that were in the shop at the end of the tour and they were pretty tricky to play. We sounded worse than the folk music. Maybe I'll get macharina lessons when I get back to the UK.

Finally, I made it through present tense in Spanish and have now started to cock up all things possible about the past tense. At least I'm trying. Not that it's really worth bothering with at present. Tomorrow is the final day so hopefully I'll become fluent in Spanish in the next 24 hours or so.

The image above is nonsense really - the shot of the woman in the chemists. I don't know anyone who would class the attempt at capturing the nature of contemporary chemists in Guatemala. Perhaps with almost religious conviction someone will someday. One reason I was taking the weirdest shots in Nepal of half finished buildings was because of the Urban Geography course that I taught on - it has made me consider the nature of building materials and they how vary around the world. Having said that I did find myself taking shots of Guatemalan breeze blocks which are what most buildings here seem to be constructed from at present and what quite a large proportion of the buildings in Nepal were being made from. Long gone are the days of the earthquake-proof, four-foot-thick walls that the Spanish used to construct the buildings of religious significance from. Breeze blocks are probably not a good subject for conversation and I do recall wincing when a woman who was a researcher at the Faculty of the Built Environment, University of the West of England, was proposing Ph.D. research on the subject of 'pavements' in historic cities in the UK - important though it may be, I think there is not a great deal of interest in the subject of pavements nor Guatemalan breeze blocks. After giving the issues area of pavements just a little thought over the following years I would have to agree that it is a relevant subject matter for doctoral research especially because of their impact on an area. This is something that even Prince Charles wouldn't kick up a fuss about though.

One of the main means I've had of trying to regain some equilibrium has been through the work of Paul Weller of recent and having seen The Jam Going Underground in the last few hours it is a slight dig in the ribs to the establishment while still only playing along with consumerism. I don't think Weller was out just to make money because the venom in songs like Start and Eton Rifles is really just too much. It even matches the all time greats like Tommy Cooper's Don't jump off the roof dad which is as good as Ernie the fastest milkman in the west or Right said Fred by Bernard Cribbens. Oh to be a Lennonesque rock demi-god eh? Okay, so I've had a few beers.

The shots of the coffee plantation which I took today are online should anyone from SBPS be interested at Coffee and Mayan Music Museums. It's startling but I can't find a way outside the inspiration. Why do I bother this is so much like The Rebel that I can't believe it. Maybe I do end up with a landlady like Irene Stubbs modelling for me so I can make some form of lavish sculpture that is only fit for the insides of a town house. There's probably more effort made in undermining the arts in the UK than there is input into it which is perhaps a rather sad reflection on the country. I guess I conspire that the artists that do 'make it' in terms of public awareness at least may have uncovered something about the meaning of life and have consequently been put in a position where they can comment to the well informed who may read between the lines whilst the rest of the population are completely at a loss. These words sound familiar to me - I wonder who may have said this to me in the past. Where's my beret?

It makes me so angry I'll probably end up doing Porridge though there are some grounds to think that this won't happen. Ho hum, and back to the homestay.

Hungover in la casa de Verona.

One of the issues that struck me when I was working on the community newspaper, the Earlsdon Echo in Coventry, was that journalists must tend to be good at finding a new slant on what are in effect almost repeated stories. It was something that I found quite interesting within the context of a community newpaper group as each members of the group would have their own 'bag' and would offer repeated updates each month. This was something that I recognised as one of the main skills of journalism on this level after contact with the team on only a few editions of the rag. After spending a few more days in Antigua with very little to blog home about I do find this to be a similar situation, I do find that I'm not challenging myself and I'm not doing enough to have that facinating a blog to skim through.

I have been quite lazy and though I've attended my Spanish lessons I haven't done a great deal in the way of practicing. Spanish feels pretty comfortable as a language: there seems to be a great deal of regularity within the language in a way that I don't recognise in English and I may be speaking to soon, but it does feel like it's beginning to sink in. There were a few days right at the beginning of the course where I felt like I should get some form of prize for having learnt to say my name in Spanish. Now at least I have some form of hunger to be able to express myself in Spanish and really be able to communicate without this being that big a deal.

In terms of things I've been up to and whatever has been an issue of the day, nothing really has crossed my mind as that significant about the area as I don't really know a great deal about the rest of Guatemala and would find it difficult to compare the area with anywhere else in the country. The Lonely Planet guidebook states that Antigua is very much different to anywhere else in Guatemala and it defies explanation as to why the town is laid out so well and managed to maintain so much traditional character. Personally, I think there are probably quite a few former Nazis in the area and they have controlled the town planning significantly. It wouldn't surprise me - I've met a lot of Americans here but not that many Israelis. I was going to suggest to the manager of the school, Tecun Uman, that he only offers home stays with people who have been screened for any Nazi connections because it must cross a few people's minds from time to time.

I was half expecting one of those scenes from Father Ted where Ted finds himself in a room full of Nazi memorabilia owned by another priest, I forget the episode exactly. You walk into a homestay in Guatemala and find yourself having lunch with Goerball's secretary and Adolf Hitler's tailor's wife. Nice place apart from the Nazi links. I did wonder if the combination of sounds that was put together by 'The Destroyers' was in any way linked to combination of Latin sounds with Oompah pah bands from Germany. Maybe this would be a good way to lure out the Nazis in Guatemala. It's a long shot but it might just work. Maybe the Israeli government could fund the Destroyers to tour latin america.

Again, I was rather disappointed with my lack of creativity with regard to photography as I seemed to be following Peter's path again. I did realise when I was facing the one hotel that I took a shot of that I'd almost definately seen the images at SBPS - the shots aren't bad and they do make a reasonable photoessay by my standards at least - see Antigua chicken buses. I took a few other shots of the market, see 'belts' above, but I guess that they're just the same as Peter's as ususal. Some of the shots of Parque Central also looked very familiar when I saw them on my laptop yesterday evening when I downloaded them. I liked the one image of the one teenager standing provocatively near the boy who was shying away. It's a pleasant place to relax.

Lazy day in Antigua.

Whoops! Slipped into student mode and done nothing of any note today. It was quite tricky getting over my hangover, very hard work sometimes. I finally managed to get a few shots on my flickr photostream of Andy Hamilton and the Blue Notes at Symphony Hall Foyer on the 15th December 2007. It was a good gig as far as I can recall. I had a quick look at Garry Corbett's flickr site and it was good to see some shots of the gigs I've missed since I have been in central America. I did hope that there would be someone else or a few other people who would try to document some of the gigs at the Commuter Jazz after I started doing it back in 2005. While I've been doing it for longer Garry has really done well at producing very clear, crisp professional images that do a lot of justice to the performers. The images I was producing did tend to make them look a little taxed and sometimes a little out of place but I think they captured something of the gigs that most people may overlook. The shots I have of the Birmingham Jazz Festival from 2005 do make me feel a little nostalgic especially when I think of the gig at House of Frazer when the Paul Sawtell Quartet played in Knickers, Bras and Haberdashery. That was the section of House of Fraser they were in, not what they were wearing, should you have wondered exactly how liberal the midlands jazz scene is. I plan on reworking some of the negatives from the summer 2005 gigs one day though I can't imagine that this is going to be that near in the future the way things are going.

Having said all that I did manage to get some shots of the trip to Flores, Guatemala online at Flores Lagoon. The shots are passable but really nothing to blog about.

I'll make some attempt to photograph one or two of the live bands here in Guatemala and who knows maybe Levi French, Brian Connolly, Steve Ajao and others may find this enough of a link to play gigs here in Antigua one day in the future.

Antigua Thunderstorm.

Up late this morning. Saw Corrie and didn't get any verbal for not having made it to the lunchtime date that we had on Saturday. Managed to do okay in the Spanish lesson and found out a little more about my teacher's hobby of refereeing local non-league games. He said he had a good game largely because he had no problems refereeing it with difficult or contested decisions, rather than because the football was good. Mind you one of the referees in the same league had a gun pulled on him once for showing a red card. I don't know if things are comparable in the UK with the one non-league referee having a player who'd just been sent off drive his work van on the pitch and try and run the referee over during the game - let's face it we're just the same as them - only we don't have guns. Some of the phrases I learnt were suitable for singing at football matches - "Sus burros son viejo" sung to 'Go west' might catch on - it means 'your donkeys are getting old'. Maybe the gunners will sing it to Tony Adams when Arsenal play Pompey next.

Today there was thunder and lightning. It was pretty spectacular. Took a few shots and again when I got home I realised that they looked a lot like Peter Bardell's. Wish he would contact me and get the stuff on a website so I don't copy. Tomorrow, I have a salsa class in the afternoon and I would hope that I don't get overaroused if I dance with this American woman. I should be so lucky....

Fumigated - not me, the hostel.

Hurrah, through the cold at last. Now I'm just making miserable growling noises and coughing like a 60-a-day-chain smoker. At least I can move today, I spent most of yesterday and a little of this morning trawling youtube for more eighties classics. Why, oh, why do Depeche Mode appear not to take miming seriously? At some points they appear to be singing a different song altogether. Are they singing 'I just can't get a f**k!' - it makes no sense to me, maybe this is why Mike Read got a bee in his bonnett about 'Relax'.

At least I did something constructive for half an hour today. I had to because the hostel was being fumigated. It sounds bad but I guess it keeps the cockroaches at bay. The shots I took of a cloudy day in Antigua are worth a quick look at though they're not really that special. I don't feel to inspired photographically unless there's a lot of direct sunlight and even then the shots are not really worth waiting for.

At least I'm over the business of the flu, short lived though it was. It did come on pretty strong, I didn't know what was going on at first - I had the weirdest nights dreams when it was beginning. There were a series of three dreams: the first was almost a montage of hazy pain - like procol harem under water; the next was a vivid combination of boys from the black stuff and the Italian Job - it was almost like some form of gothic horror set underground involving inch thick grime, soot, coal, steam and choking fumes, continuous pursuit by the police and any other agency that may have reason to stop us doing what we were up to and a team that had no hope of carrying off the crime they were undertaking but somehow they managed to escape the onslaught of professionals doing all they could to catch them. There was constant shifting between levels, chambers and Victorian railway architecture influenced interiors (like Isambard Kingdom Brunel following a holocaust) - a filthier trainspotting; the third was rather much ruder but I was in a dorm with three women two of whom kept showing their legs to an unnecessary extent. Try as I might not to be influenced by this, I think they managed to permeate my subconscious, if you believe any of that nonsense. My Spanish isn't up to the point where I can object to sharing dormitories with scantily clad Israeli women, maybe one day.

I don't know if Irving Welsh based Trainspotting on a dream that was caused by the onset of influenza but it wouldn't surprise me if he did. It did cross my mind if trainspotting would have been considered more vulgar if it involved railworkers taking heroin - they seemed to be treated by some sections of the population as the lowest of the low when I worked for Central Trains.

I don't know what to do my time while I'm here my education wasn't good enough to get me through writing anything as much as a short story about the blackstuff-job though combining it with Kes if at all possible may have some form of virtues. Please click education "...We'll laugh about the thrashings I gave them...", is such a good line and tell me if you can watch without laughing please. Other scenes are just as good such as story sir? and cliche though it may be is very funny and saddening at the same time. It does make me wonder what it's like being a teacher seeing kids who have an extremely high chance of developing mental illness knowing this is very likely to happen and not being in a position to do a great deal. It must be tough. I've wondered how much prevention of mental illness should be debated as a political issue as there is a great deal of action undertaken to reduce the chances of mental illness being in effect passed down a family line though I don't think there is necessarily clear enough indication of what differences there will be between the political parties. Perhaps Kes was very much geared to raising the issue of building self esteem in the classroom which has certainly changed over recent years as Cathy Come Home was in raising the issue of homelessness. [There isn't any of the television 'Cathy Come Home' on youtube believe it or not, I'm going to write to my MP.]

There didn't seem to be very many down and outs in Belize although I didn't really go anywhere in the country that they were likely to be and what has surprised me here in Guatemala is that there do seem to be really strong divides between the upper class, the relatively poor working/middle class and the people right near the bottom socio-economically. I did think about asking a few people who work in agencies related to homelessness in the UK who I've met through work to consider doing some voluntary work in Guatemala as it seems to be readily encouraged. Hopefully, it's fruitful as well as being well intentioned.

I must eat....

Getting blown away - somewhere safe where the flu don't stay.

So, sat in a hotel room in Antigua writing a blog that a whole two or three people read flued out with some terrible bug. I had to get along to the Spanish lesson this morning because I hadn't got around to cancelling it last night, not that I was busy. I'm afraid in the virtual world that I was inhabiting I only really managed to reminisce about the 1980s and watch a few things like this: Young Ones - Sick . Other people in the Hostel haven't managed to get the bin bags over my head but I have been running round to avoid them.

Earlier today, I also met a woman called Corrie who took me by surprise. I managed to resist cracking the joke by asking if her life had been 'a bit of a soap opera', I assume that as an American she probably wouldn't find it that funny. I was almost knocked back by the smile she gave me, it may be attributable to flu or some other state I was in but it made a real impact on me. The smile she gave may have made me think about Semisonic - Secret Smile but possibly more of Neil Young's Like a Hurricane. You have to wonder if the person who put the Semisonic images together was also suffering from flu and just killing a bit of time. Maybe it’s the thing to do if you like a song put some images together and stick them on youtube.

The lines in 'like a hurricane' "...and I'm getting blown away, some where safer that the feelings stay, I wanna love you but I'm getting blown away...." may reflect some form of similar feeling because sometimes that immediate attraction is so strong that it can kill off any chance of a reasonable relationship. Cynical that I may be I do just think after an experience like that today which felt like being pushed back a few feet merely with the glimpse of a smile which should have left me feeling just moderately okay. The line "...I am just a dreamer and you are just a dream, you could have been anyone to me...." could be something that I read too much into but I assume that old Mr. Young was just a little sceptical about what had led to this visionary experience he had of a woman, I presume a woman, who had a major impact upon him, he couldn't rationalise this. I wouldn't be surprised if he wrote it about Dylan and his wife, but I don't really know enough about them and this period.

Excuse the teen-indulgence here, Neil Young is really quite cool. John C mentioned a few weeks ago how good music was as a teenager and how this tends to be lost in your twenties leaving quite a gap. Listening to music alone was really all that was necessary to feel really damn good and Neil Young is possibly one of the few who can still lift me this much with tracks like 'hurricane'. In the one-person-eighties revival I had I couldn't avoid the conclusion that Suzanne Vega's Marlene on the wall was the best track of the decade but I didn't have anyone to discuss it with because I've tried to quarantine myself in the last 48 hours.

Still reflexive verbs to get to grips with and a more than a few nouns to learn in the next day or two. And, at mid-day tomorrow, lunch with the lady herself, Corrie. I think I should have said I was washing my hair really but I just couldn't say no. I don't think I'll get past pronouns with her, she knows a lot more Spanish than me. Ho hum! Hopefully I won't lose my head. It does make you wonder how the BBC got the reputation for quality productions looking back.

Out of interest, the lad in't photo up top is someone I saw in the Pokhara, Nepal. Leave a pile of cabbages around and someone is going to do somersaults on it, I say! All nonsense today, I've dropped too much lemsip to make any sense.

Guatemala: Tikal, Crash Bandicoot and the lost images of SBPS.

It is a rather sad reflection on how cultured I feel when I get to a place like Tikal, which is an hour away from Flores, Guatemala, where I am currently staying and I the strongest link I have to the Mayan city ruins that are known as Tikal is that they strongly resemble the backgrounds in some of the Crash Bandicoot series on the sony play station. Tikal is quite astounding and well respected as a Mayan site of pyramids and burial grounds. It is indication of perhaps a very strong pagan desire to mark the passing of a loved one by creating a monument which is still relatively important in European culture despite the more superficially sophisticated processes relating to it. Maybe we admire the cultures despite their general demise because they managed to mark the loss of loved ones in a manner which has lasted until now. Perhaps they were sacred sites and this will always be respected across cultural boundaries, who knows.

The Mayan indian culture does start to get under your skin after only a short while in this country. It is only a very short period of time before things start to feel right in Guatemala especially. I have felt pretty comfortable here on the whole. I seem to have an inverse relationship with danger: the more dangerous a country is meant to be, the safer I generally feel. Perhaps I should think about a holiday in Afghanistan.

I guess also today was the day that I recalled the influence of the shots I took in India that resembled some that I had seen in South Birmingham Photographic Society Club events. There was a member called Peter Bardell, at least that´s what I think his surname was. He had also been to Central America, and shown pictures of his work at the club. I don´t know for definate, I think he entered a picture in one of the club competitions called ´cheap tomatoes´ and with no intention of copying what he had done, I found I had produced and images and finished it last night. Peter if you´re listening, please put your shots on ´Flickr´ the free yahoo site so I can see what you did here. I just want to avoid copying what you did and try to do something original while I´m here.

Wishing everyone at SBPS well, at least I hope that someone from SBPS reads this and can contact Peter who I think was living in Kings Heath the last I heard. Kind regards, Steve.

Laundromat: This isn't photojournalism, is it?

I'm not making any serious attempt to enter photo journalism and I doubt that I would be able to sell any of these pictures but it was quite a good challenge while I was doing my laundry yesterday to try my hand at capturing what it was like to do laundry in Belize on a Saturday afternoon. As laundromats go, the semi-deco style does have at least some appeal as a building but the overall deccay is probably what would strike most people when looking through the 'Laundromat' images on FLIKR, if you use the link in the top right of the screen.

The sight of the pensioner walking down the road crossed with images of the vice closing in was meant to signify what life is like here for the elderly. Not too many have pensions so most really can't be described as pensioners. There are a lot of elderly men working on the Island of Caye Caulker and they seem to be relatively content here but I guess I'm just passing through.

I didn't set up the shots of the Lizard with the lump of chicken breast that he somehow can't manage to chew - it did seem quite unusual watching him attempt to eat it. In England I guess you may pay a trip to a park and feed the ducks in Belize I guess it's easier to feed a lizard while you're doing your laundry.

Some nice shots but really, this just isn't photo journalism, is it?

Palenque, meaning in photographs and Mexican women.

While I´ve dabbled in photography more in a pseudo-documentary style managing to capture only the most cliched of images, it has provided the basis of at least a continuing ´reason to be´ rather than a discipline which has helped my get my act together. I state this having looked at the area of fine art photography which to the novice may appear to be a means of conning some unsuspecting art lover out of a few hundred thousand for one or two images that were created on a PC and then printed to a high standard. This is something that I have not achieved, nor aspired to believe it or not.

The question of where 'art´ comes into a photograph will always be asked, even in the case of individuals like myself who can barely remember what they did from one day to the next and tended to want a record largely to ensure that they had at least the vaguest recollection of what had gone on the previous few days. The images I have of Mexico, which to me vary from ´standard holiday photo´ to ´club amateur who has stepped out just a little´ by for instance, combining images of architecture influenced by some still life photography that he saw at one of the club exhibitions a year or so before. Whether there is the gulf between fine art and club photography tends to be a question that maybe could be addressed over several seasons. To an extent, it´s the gulf between enjoyment and possession, the difference between self and society as well may be.

Shots I took this morning didn't really do the landscape justice. The pine forests that surround San Cristobal on the decending journey down to Palenque tended to frame valleys which were filled with mist. Each ridge of pine forests was getting more and more opaque as you looked into the distance with the mist increasing every few hundred yards. Maybe there could be some form of fine art image from this, but it is too self indulgent. The images I did get together on the way would cause a great deal of frustration for some. I know how some club seniors wince at the thought of a shot taken through the window of a bus.

The shots I took in Palenque tended to be rather straightforward snaps until I started heading towards the exit and the pathways down to the museum were shaded with darts of light dropping through onto the stone pathway. Then things really came alive for me. Can't upload today because my cables are in left-luggage while I wait for the bus tonight to take me to Chetumal before crossing the border tomorrow daytime into Belize.

Palenque as an historic site does require a little preparation before wandering in amongst the ruins of what was probably a very notorious kingdom. The Mayan Indians tend not to be as widely discussed in the west as say the Aztecs, however, there is testament to their ingenuity shown by the aqueducts that remain with water still running through and at the sheer scale of the monuments which have largely been restored and replenished rather than showing the nature of the damage that had been done to them by several centuries of dereliction. I can only imagine that Hollywood could capture the surprise that must have been experienced by the Spanish colonisers when they were informed of this lost kingdom which had become overgrown and dominated by the encroaching jungle. Exploring something that would have been disregared by westerners, if not totally unknown to them for the first time must have been quite remarkable.

Having said that there were some very cute looking Mexican women wandering around the site as well - I don´t know the Spanish phrase for ´marry me you sexy beast´ but suffice to say if I did I would probably have used it a few times by now in the last ten days in Mexico. It is almost as if Hollywood was created to transmit an image of beauty of tanned women with high cheekbones, broad smiles, full figures and exotic eyes that seems to be synonymous with the look of the Mexican woman. I guess I struggle to find the words for shock when an attractive woman appears from behind a street corner and just happens to wander right past. Or maybe the heat is getting to me...

Palenque is well worth a visit if only to marvel at the thought of the first people from the west to explore what was largely lost to the world for several hundred years. That and the senoritas who also happen to inhabit the site these days.