San Andres

Welcome to San Andres!

Arrival

Turbulence and the ping of the subsequent alarm wake me from a heavy doze.The lights are dark and only a few people watch the one television suspended over our heads. All is hushed.
The plane shudders slightly again. I pull up the window cover and press my nose against the cold plastic to try and see something of the deep night beyond. I can just make out the scattered constelations above and the cluster of street lights below, both smudged from time to time by a light passing cloud.
Light! A flash, a brilliant white scribble inthe sky which dissolves into ghostly clouds. And then another, neon blue, replies. Maybe this is what it is like to watch the birth of planets in great nebulas. And I am a little fairy light hovering around come to watch the spectacle.
Slowly we leave the storm behind only for another to appear on the horizon. Is this safe, I wonder? SHouldnt the pilot land or announce something? (I realise a week or two later that lightning and storms are a daily regular which people get through. If planes waited for a storm free sky around Guatemala there would be very few planes and therefore very few tourists to ever reach the country. But somehoe they still hold me enthralled.)
As the plane descends the lights below become destorted in the suggestion of hills. When the lightning illuminates the sky I see black jagged shadows cutting into the sky. Mountains and volcanos. When the plane finally touches the tarmac the world is greys and pinks. It is raining very gently.
After one panicked hour in the terminals I finally get my reserved ticket to Flores and board a tiny plane with propellors under the wings. It is a short uneventful trip to the glistening lake of Peten Itza and the towns of Santa Elena, San Benito and Flores.
Somehow the taxi driver distinguishes me as the lone foriegner he has to pick up from the airport. The two things I am able to communicate to him my name and my need to change some money through lots of gesturing and pointing. Other than that our conversation is zero. Well, I tell myself, mark this spot in the tank of your spanish comprehension. You start at Zero. Anything you learn from this point on is progress, no matter how slow.
The road beyond San Benito is bumpy and dusty.Trees and fields extend beyond it. I think there is jungle on some of the distant hills and realise that the little shacks we pass are peoples homes. We enter Sand Andres when the shacks become more frequent and are made of concrete and tin, occassionally thatch, sticks and mud painted white.
We take some turns down steep streets and stop at a little house perched on a corner of the road which dips down to more houses and eventually the shore of the lake. The glistening blue waters extend across half the horizon. It is a beautiful view. My room is clean and much smarter than I had expected, but the first thought in my head is... wheres the furniture... where am I supposed to put my clothes?
I am taken lastly to the parque where I meet Mateo who takes me on a quick tour. A few volunteers are around a table under the parque house making soap. Most of them dont take a lot of interest in me. One of them, Zoe, I get to speak to enough that we walk the mile home together. Mateo shows us a short cut.
After dinner I am shown a recliner made of metal poles laced with a plastic string which I lie on looking up at the blue sky through leaves. Jet lag claims me and I fall asleep, peaceful and happy in the knowledge of a safe arrival.

Before

Right now I feel like one of those brave or foolhardy souls who dared sail with Columbus into the unknown west. After June 7th the daily familiar stops, suddenly. And I will drop off the edge into the wide unknown, alone.
And I'm going in exactly the same direction, to discover the same cultures he and others who followed him did. West, to Central America.
How long will I be gone?
I have no idea, its a one way ticket. I know no one there. Not yet. But I will be setting base with a volunteer organisation set on the edge of the jungle, by an ancient lake, not far from crumbling old temples.
I want this to be an adventure into the great unknown. I want the uncertainty of travel and life in a foriegn country. At some point I know that the new will become the ordinary, the strange and exotic may become commonplace. So right now I want to savour that place in between, the edge.