Moving on

Amusing Country Song title #1 (in an occasional series) 'It's hard to kiss the lips, at night, that chew your ass out all night long' Stupid question #? (no point in even trying to keep track of these) Why do all female dogs south of the US Mexican border have udders? The song of the above title was heard in a bar on Pigeon Caye, one of 10 or so Cayes lying off the Honduran Bay Island of Utila, where we bacame so damned good at diving. Pigeon Caye is connected to Jewel Caye, where the dive school is, by a wooden bridge. To walk from the end of one caye to the end of the other you'd have to allow a good five minutes if you were sauntering in the heat of the day and about 30 seconds if you're riding four to a bike like the local kids do. There's a Norwegian anthropologist staying on Pigeon Caye at the moment writing an ethnography of the Utila Cayes, as well she might: these keys are mighty strange to gringos like us. Jewel and Pigeon Cayes have a population of about 250 people which is small but diverse, with a pretty even spread of white, black carib and spanish people. This population manages to support 7, yes 7, churches. Combine that fact with the song title above and you're starting to get the picture. With the clapboard houses and everyone going by the name of 'Miss Daphne', 'Miss Ruth' or 'Mr Donald' we felt a little like we'd stumbled into a kind of Caribbean Steel Magnolias. Even the dive boat was called Miss - Miss Kary, which I have to admit, made me suspicious. It's not a name that quite inspires the confidence you require from a boat that carries your emergency oxygen. The cayes, like the Bay islands, are pretty much bilingual. Whilst everyone can speak spanish, you're more likely to be spoken to in a kind of pidgen english which sounds like a cross between a deep southern US accent and a more kind of trademark Caribbean accent. When we were confused over whether or not to speak spanish or english to someone, one of the dive instructors advised us; 'if they're white speak english, if they're not, speak spanish'. That's all well and good but when you get a reply it's one thing to not be able to understand spanish (and after 2 1/2 months in spanish speaking countries, 3 weeks of which was at a spanish school, that's bad enough), but when you don't understand english when it's spoken to you, you just feel plain daft. A strange, confusing and beautiful place! Anyway, enough of the cod anthropology, what, dear Schmeeta are we doing now? Well, at present we're in San Juan del Sur, a small fishing town in the south east corner of Nicaragua. We came here hoping to hear of Sandanistas, revolution and to learn a little more about Nicaragua's recent bloody history which has led it to be one of the poorest countries in the region, second only to Haiti. So far, however, we've spent more time listening to northamericans tell us how much profit they're going to make off their newly purchased Nicaraguan real estate and advising us on the best place to start building a hotel than having ad-hoc history lessons from former revolutionaries. Apparantly, if you buy land in Nica at the moment you get 10 years grace on income tax (30% the man said, disgustedly) and 5 years duty free import rights. I appreciate why, after years of war, corruption and poverty the Nicaraguan government is trying to promote tourism. But this seems to be to the extent that Nicaraguans don't stand a chance of reaping any of the benefits. Anyway, I appear to have digressed into cod economics now, on with the show... So, we've reached a bit of an impasse in our plans, a figurative brother to the physical impasse of the Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia. We've got four weeks left and Bolivia is still a hell of a long way away. Whilst we really wanted to get to know Nicaragua and Panama a little we've come to the conclusion that we're better off getting south as quickly as possible from this point. We could go to a few other places in both countries, but to be honest our time now is so limited that we don't feel we've got enough days to spare getting off the beaten track enough to avoid the Canadian and American real estate junkies, the backpacker trail, and bars called things like 'Dave's Wave Bar'. Dave's wave bar is a very nice place, don't get me wrong. But it feels like a while, what with our two weeks in the curious cayes and the fact that so much land in beautiful places and so much of the tourist infrastructure in central america is owned by foreigners, since we've been able to spend any time with people who are actually from here! So, we hope to be in Peru by the end of the week, ready for a bit of Inca action and Bolivia soon after to follow the trail of Butch and Sundance. Still the tourist trail, clearly, for that is what we are, but in a whole new continent...