I WHILED AWAY A fortnight on Ambergris Cay in an unadorned room above a liquor store. Still I was restless and I took a short flight to the mainland followed by a long bumpy bus journey westward to northern Guatemala.
Here I roamed an archaeological park and scaled the partly excavated pyramid of Tikal. Oversized stone steps covered with heavy mosses and loose rocks and slowly I clambered as far as I could go until I was above the clouds with a view of monster raptors slinking on air currents and gradually I was stunned into an interior silence I had never before experienced. A magic quality I could not identify but that I could feel. It hushed my worries and transported me further than any bus ride into the jungle. Something profound was happening and by the time I returned to earth I was changed, lighter somehow.
Another bus trucked me east into Honduras and I began to feel I was a fully fledged explorer and lost in a great space, just as I had hoped for.
I befriended Ivan, a traumatized Australian orphan with outrageous stories of childhood abuse, locked in attics by nuns. Together we wandered the ruins of Copan, and whenever I bleated I was thirsty or hungry he would eye me coldly and say, “You’ll live,” and I imagined this was what he had been told a hundred times as a frightened child.
We traveled together and wended south and along the coast, bonded as if I had adopted him. Together out on the open road with our open emotional wounds and it was a glorious sensation to feel that level of unfettered freedom. Anonymity the ultimate soothing balm.
One evening we entered a rickety restaurant and because I was not paying attention I body-slammed into a grown man exiting. “I’m sorry,” I exclaimed, but gradually and shockingly the man and I recognized one another. A friend from New York City. Him in his preppy attire and me with my feral orphan.
So much for getting lost!
Image by
MARKO NIKOLIC
~from my library of super talented Serbians~
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