The End.

A patchwork of farmer’s fields perched on steeply-sloped hills with women dressed in brightly-coloured skirts carrying baskets of market produce balanced on their heads - The Guatemalan Highlands turned out to be exactly what I had always envisioned. The trouble with touring the Guatemalan Highlands, however, is that once the novelty of seeing indigenous Guatemalans wearing their indigenous weaves and living their difficult indigenous lives has worn off, there isn’t really much to do.

Looking for something out of the ordinary and off the beaten track, we decided to board a bus in search of the rogue saint Maximon, also known as San Simon. We traveled through Guatemala and the rest of Central America on old school busses, retired from their North American routes and painted wild colours both inside and out. These chicken busses, so named for livestock they often carry, or perhaps for the game they play on blind corners of steep hillside roads, can carry up to seven times the allowable amount of passengers as suggested by the Blue Bird Bus Co. This adds up to as many as six adults across a row of cheap vinyl seats and a few children at their feet and as many people standing in the aisle as space will permit. There is no better way to get a feel for a place than to travel with the locals.

Maximon is worshiped in several small towns across the Western Highlands, so we picked Zunil as a likely place to find his statue. After asking around the town, we found Maximon in a tiny and dark front room of a house down a narrow laneway. Although venerated by practicing Catholics, his image is not allowed in the Catholic Church - evidently the Vatican has never fully recognized this Guatemalan saint of gamblers and drunkards.

In the small candlelit room we paid our entry fee (a dollar extra if you want to take a photo), and watched people leave cigarettes and rum for the bully saint – an idol to whom you make offerings so as to be left out of harm's way rather than asking for any favours. And there was San Simon, a mannequin wearing a cowboy hat and sunglasses with a bandanna covering his face, awaiting our offerings of money, smokes or spirits. We offered nothing, which may be why a week later we found ourselves in a small boat, alone on a river at night being circled by sharks and crocodiles.

With only a week left in our travels, we flew from Guatemala back down to Costa Rica. We made our way to the Pacific coast and set out on a hike through Corcovado National Park on the Osa Peninsula near the border of Panama. After a hot 10 hour hike through seaside rainforest over sandy soils, we arrived at the ranger station where we spent the night.

At breakfast the next day, we were let us in on a secret – the rangers have a little boat they are happy to loan out. And off we went with our paddles in hand to find the boat at the end of the path by the river. Shore birds and butterflies fluttered around us while schools of fish were swimming by – occasionally a bull shark would do the rounds reminding us to stay out of the water. We didn’t see any crocodiles, but we knew they were there. Within no time a family of squirrel monkeys came down to the water's edge for a half-hour photo session. While watching the monkeys we became more aware that the sharks had their eyes on us.

Look closely...

One of the scariest things I have ever done is sing karaoke at my friend Olenka’s stag and doe. I didn’t really sing as much as I did the back up ‘la-la-la-ing’ with Jennie and Dinah while Greg belted out the Crocodile Rock. Now the absolute scariest thing I have ever done is to get back in the ranger’s boat for a night paddle in crocodile-infested waters.

My heart skipped a beat with every fish that jumped. Only a few meters down the river bank from where we pushed off we caught a pair of beady-red crocodile eyes with our flashlight – if we hadn’t been before, at least now we were a safe enough distance away. Kieran paddled on and I combed the surface of the water and the river banks for signs of life. The fish kept jumping, my heart started thumping harder and finally, lightening started to flash overhead. I told Kieran it was time to turn back and reluctantly (for him the adventure was only just beginning) we did.

Slowly we turned the boat around, and I shone my light ahead.

“Kieran, do you see that?” I said. I could barely breathe.
“OH-Yeah!” he said.
“It’s coming right at us…”
“Uh-huh.”
“Uh, ok, I want to go now. So.”
“Shhhhhhhhhh”

And for a few terrifying seconds the beady-red eyes got close enough that you could make out its long rigid body – only a meter and half from our boat before SWOSH! It disappeared under the water.

“OK LET’S GO.” My fear was turning to panic.
“Hold on a minute, don’t want to make any sudden moves...”
“OK, but can we go now?”
“OK, but just wait a minute.”

Paddling back to the shore, I kept the light on the water ahead. I realized we were being circled again, this time by sharks. As I drew deep breaths, I rationalized that we were in no immediate danger from the sharks so long as the crocodile didn’t decide to capsize our little boat.

The thing is that we lived to tell the story. We lived long enough to hike 11 hours the next day and long enough to do some incredible SCUBA diving a couple of days later in Drake Bay. We survived the peninsula and made our way back to San Jose and survived the journey home to our respective countries where we find ourselves today, both unemployed and homeless on opposite sides of the Atlantic. And as experience has shown, we’ll survive that too – there just won’t be as many colourful photos to document the experience.