Latin America trek: Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala

On the first day of the first journey of 2014, I am operating on minimal sleep. It's a terrible and regular habit: the night before the flight I obsess over final details and still pending plans, and I never get a solid rest before the voyage on the plane. I managed a mere three hours of kip followed by a couple of catnaps on the 13-hour Sydney to Los Angeles leg. Arriving in the Californian morning, I then powered through the rest of the daylight hours to beat the jetlag—ignore the body's pleas for sleep and push through till dark. Then crash. That will reset the body clock. All of this means about four hours of sleep in 52.

This trip will see a week in Cuba, four in Mexico, and one more in Guatemala. I want to catch Fidel's Cuba before it is lost to the gradual changes the more moderate Castro brother, Raúl, is introducing since being handed the leadership. Mexico is at any time a wealth of treasures, and I have wanted to return since my memories—or rather, one memory—of straddling my father's shoulders at two years old in a Mexican souvenir shop, looking down into the bin at a punched out set of bongos. Somehow Mexico imprinted on me, with latent echoes of mariachis, piñatas and the skeletal iconography of Santa Muerta—Saint Death. And where Mexico's Yucatán peninsula bleeds into Guatemala is the world of the Maya, still here after the end of 2012 and home to colossal, ancient pyramids. I have a mission there: to reach the 2000-year-old Mayan murals of San Bartolo, hidden in the Guatemalan jungle until their chance discovery in 2001.

These things have waited a long time. But they can wait one more night. I'm going to bed.

Fever

Always carry a first aid kit.

A small group of us have driven Land Cruisers over deeply furrowed roads, kicking up blinding sheets of fine brown dust that circumvent the vehicle's seals, to the Omo River valley in the far south of Ethiopia near the South Sudanese and Kenyan borders, hours from civilisation, on a photographic expedition to shoot the traditional African tribes of the Omo. It is remote.

There are more ways to fall ill in remote Africa than there are ways to avoid it. There is malaria, of course. There is bilharzia, cholera and Rift Valley fever. Diphtheria, giardiasis, yellow fever, sleeping sickness and dysentery. Never drink the tap water. Don't eat fresh fruit unless you peel it yourself. And don't touch your face after you've held a baby, shaken hands with the tribal chief, or handled the consistently filthy money. Sterilise your soap. Tie a plastic bag around your head when you shower. Set fire to your clothes before you put them on.

Something seemed slightly amiss to me when I sat on the toilet with a rumbling belly and it quickly became a scene from a Danny Boyle film. It was like throwing open a faucet.

Within hours I was struck down with fever. It was 38 degrees out and 39 within. The group, encamped with the Kara in the tribal village of Korcho on a high bluff overlooking a grand bend in the Omo River, hastily assembled a cot in one of the wooden huts, divested me of shirt and shoes and wrapped me in a wet towel. Diagnosis: amoebic dysentery.

Here's a handy tip: travel with a nurse. My retired nurse friend Joan, who invited me on this trip, was immense help in administering medication. I knew what I needed but was so weak I couldn't elevate my voice. Paracetamol for the fever. Immodium for the diarrhoea. Electrolytes, medicinal charcoal and antibiotics. We ravaged my first aid kit.

Slowly the fever receded. I found enough strength to get myself up so I could lay down again. I crashed on a cot in one of our army tents, but when the fever stubbornly returned an hour later with renewed vigor I was too weak to call out for help and could only stretch out my hand pleadingly in the hope someone would walk by. All I got was plenty of goats. They would stop and stare into the tent and think, "Oh, man, that guy looks like crap," and move on. This isn't working terribly well, I thought. I tried collapsing onto the ground and remaining motionless. Still nothing. So, with whatever strength I could muster, I dragged myself to the threshold of the tent and managed my best impression of Clint Eastwood being taunted with a water canteen after three days in relentless desert sun. It was a dramatic performance. I was quickly swarmed with people.

They crammed some more paracetamol into me and the fever backed off. Piper, the tour leader, appeared insistent on a medical evacuation by helicopter, but I didn't want to miss the remaining tribes and struck a deal with her: since I was still conscious and sensible and responding to medication, we would give it 24 hours and then make another assessment. But I said she should immediately med-evac me if I became delirious.

And I told her to pass on the message to the goat king.

Superhuman

There is a kind of pleasant, dreamy delirium to vaulting across timezones and wandering through airports. 

As the world operates around me I drift through it, outside of time, liberated from the tyranny of temporal physics imposed on other mortals. When tired clerks shutter shops and cafe staff mop midnight floors I am piercingly lucid. Between punctuated catnaps and confined three-hour sleeps my invisible body, released from the demands of time's agenda, orbits through spinning clouds of passengers, yawning zombie-like. 

It is the transiting circuit through the living of ghosts and mythical beings.

Saudia reviewed

To my delight, I must have scared everybody off Saudia Airlines with my previous comments. Not only were both flights in and out of Saudi Arabia very comfortable with full service and full meals every few hours – even for transiting passengers during the layover in Riyadh – but I practically had both the modern-equipped planes (an Airbus A320 and a Boeing 777) to myself. An entire division of elegant air hostesses served a couple dozen passengers. And I didn't think any airlines still gave away those little comfort kits of eye masks and toothbrushes.

All this for $300 from Africa to Singapore?

This is what airlines used to be like before the industry became a bankrupting proposition. I guess Saudi Arabia has so much oil money that throwing a wad of it at the national carrier is pocket change.

In an Ethiopian home

We doff our shoes and enter the one-room Harari house. My guide, Sisay, has invited me to the family home of his girlfriend for coffee, Ethiopian style. Ethiopia is the home of coffee, and the traditional way it is served throughout the country is dubbed a ceremony, such is its deep infusion in the culture.

Sisay's pretty girlfriend welcomes me at the door. As soon as I enter, however, I am floored by her sister. She is stunning: a handsome woman in her forties with orange-painted nails against dark chocolate skin and dyed henna corn-braids. She wears a full-length yellow and black deria, the light cotton traditional dress of the Harari women, and bronze, silver and metallic blue peacock feather earrings. My inner photographer wants to expel everyone else from the room, including her husband, and do a complete shoot just with her.

I regain my senses in time to collapse onto the floor. The protocol of making oneself at home in Harar is to stretch out on a rug and prop oneself on one arm on a pile of cushions. I do as I am told.

Sisay's girlfriend prepares the coffee. She rinses some pale green coffee beans, locally-grown and organic, and tosses them onto a tin charcoal stove to roast. With what looks like a small woven basket lid she fans the glowing coals with one hand, then shifts some of them to a bowl-shaped burner and sprinkles incense over them, disseminating the smoke with a little tin can-like chimney. Sisay plucks and passes me a handful of chat leaves.

Chat, or khat, is a controlled substance in many countries but is legal in Ethiopia. It is a plant with an amphetamine-like stimulant that produces a mild euphoria when chewed and makes one more talkative. It also purportedly aids digestion.

Chat has been a social ingredient in the horn of Africa for centuries. The World Health Organisation considers it a drug of psychological dependency – though less so, and less harmful, than tobacco, marijuana or alcohol – and the bustle in the local chat markets from first thing in the morning appears to confirm this. Still, it seems the worst that can be said of chat, apart from the inelegant clamour for it, is that it competes as a crop with coffee and staples such as sorghum and millet, and farmers are switching to the more water-intensive crop because they can make a greater profit exporting it to countries like Yemen.

Sisay gives me a handful of peanuts with the chat. The peanuts help to grind the leaves and mask the slight bitterness. I pack the mix into my cheek and chew as the coffee beans, now fragrantly roasted to a dark brown, are scraped off the stove into a mortar and pounded with a pestle. Our young host places an earthen coffee pot, called a jebenna, onto the stove, pours the ground beans in with a cupped hand, and tops the pot up with water. Everyone else indulges in the chat. I still don't notice any effect so work through a second, and then a third, handful.

Yet another beautiful girl enters. What is going on? She is the neighbour, come to join us for coffee. She lounges on some cushions on the opposite side of the room. Drugs, incense, beautiful women... I think I'm enjoying this.

Sisay packs a shisha bowl with apple tobacco and passes me the snaking pipe. Shishas, or hookahs, the glass water pipes for smoking tobacco, are actually banned in Ethiopia, but the ancient historical trading junction of Harar has gained semi-autonomy in recognition of its cultural identity, and the local administration allows shishas as a cultural Muslim practice. Which I'm happy about. I love it. The smoke is sweet and smooth, inducing not the slightest inclination to cough, with a flavour reminiscent of anise that slightly numbs the tongue.

The aroma from the coffee as it is poured into small cups is not bold or harsh but gentle, the subtlety best appreciated from the lip of the cup. I sip. It is smooth, and velvety like dark chocolate. The consistency is more akin to cocoa, as the finely pulverised grounds are part of the brew, than to a filtered espresso. It is served with or without sugar, and if sugar is taken it may be stirred or not. I opt for sugar unstirred, which allows a layer to develop in the bottom of the cup and each sip to get progressively sweeter.

Smoke from the charcoal, incense and tobacco fills the air. The home is warm and cosy. I start to feel mildly relaxed and happy from the chat, though I continue to chew as the effect seems short-lived. This might account for why the Harari chew chat steadily for hours. In any case, part of the effect is that it stimulates chewing, as I was to discover hours afterwards when I was still, to my annoyance, working my tongue uncontrollably.

The Ethiopian coffee ceremony consists of three servings: the first is called abul, the second tona, and the third is berakha. Typically the grounds in the bottom of the pot are not replenished, so the third serving is the weakest. It is usually for children. Sisay fires up another shisha, which I eagerly await. Videos of traditional music play on the Ethiopian equivalent of MTV as we all lounge and sip our way through the coffee ceremony.

To finish we have ashara, a tea made from the roasted husks of the coffee beans. This is not part of the ceremony, but simply a nice treat. It is unexpectedly delicious, and florally aromatic in a familiar way that infuriates me until I finally pinpoint what it reminds me of: jasmine.
I am drunk with stimulants. Coffee. Ashara. Tobacco. And a countless amount of chat. I think I've had too much. I feel a bit anxious as we get up to leave. Ethiopians are not big on long goodbyes, so I thank them, take a last appreciative look at my beautiful hosts, and disappear unceremoniously out the door.

Saudia

I'm flying home from Africa now – a 38-hour journey, involving two 9-hour layovers in Riyadh and Singapore. There are better timed routes than this, but flying Saudi Airlines and the Singapore Airlines-owned budget carrier Scoot, I can accomplish an Addis Ababa to Sydney fare for less than A$600.

Saudi Airlines is so cheap that it beats the nearest-priced competitor on the route from Addis to Singapore, the reasonably-priced Ethiopian Airlines, by a factor of three. Enticing, but suspicious. Why is it so cheap?

Reviews of Saudia are seriously mixed, and there is no fence-sitting. International routes seem to receive better appraisals than domestic. Some passengers prepared to forgo certain conveniences, such as being able to transit Saudi Arabia as an unaccompanied woman (disallowed), praise the prices. I think these passengers are men. Others vow never again, recounting experiences of rude staff, neglect of safety procedures, and aisles full of passengers, luggage and oxen.

The Aviation Safety Network details the airline's record. In 2008 one of the engines of a Boeing 747 caught fire after landing. Dramatic, and the plane was written off, but all passengers and crew were evacuated safely. In 2000 and 2002 there were hijacking attempts in Iraq and Sudan – frightening, but hardly the airline's fault, and dangerous destinations anyway.

It would seem that Saudi Arabian Airlines does, however, hold a dubious attainment of featuring twice in the top ten most deadly air disasters. A fire on the plane at Riyadh airport in 1980 killed all 301 aboard. And a mid-air collision with a Kazakhstan Airlines flight in 1996 killed 349.

Hm.

Well, I'm already booked.

Harar

An hour's flight east of Addis Ababa, and another hour by road, is Harar. A major trading junction between Ethiopia and Somalia for centuries, the people speak their own language, Hadarenya, and are majority Muslim in a predominantly Orthodox Christian country.

The Harari are friendly in a different way than the people in Uganda. Ugandans are enthusiastic and expansive. The Harari are laid back and a bit more reticent, though I am readily welcomed by strangers many times with handshakes.

The children are often excited at the "farango", the local word for foreigner ("ferengi" in Ethiopian Amharic). One little girl runs up and hugs my legs. Others call out, "farango! Photo, photo!" eager to pose and see the result on the camera. Even the adults are at complete ease with being shot. This is a vast difference from the Ugandan villagers who, considering it a social intrusion, get extremely angry if you take their photo. The men will point menacingly at you and shout, "You! Fuck off!"

Jugol, the hilly walled section and heart of ancient Harar, is the oldest part of the city and is as lively, lived-in and bustling today as it was in the middle ages. Lonely Planet says to be mindful of your wallet in the Jugol, especially in the market, and my guide, Sisay, tells me the same thing. But the people are welcoming and friendly and I never feel anything but safe.

The market is colourfully packed with lanes of orange and yellow sacks of spices and brown and pink-painted porcelain coffee pots. Incense fills the alleys outside tiny mosques squeezed into corners. The smell of charcoal stoves wafts from inside the walls of homes painted white, salmon, chocolate or aqua, the latter reserved for those who have completed the Hajj to Mecca. We walk up a cobbled street for tailors, all sitting at tables sewing with Singers in front of shops piled with bolts of cloth, and down another street for butchers, who carve meat from hung slabs peppered with flies.

Sisay is under instruction to show me the city as a photographer, not as a tourist. I don't want to see the museums. I want to see how the locals live. Sisay is one of them, and he shows me. In fact, he is a hobby photographer himself and understands the photographer's sensibility. He doesn't own a camera yet but he is saving for one with his work as a guide.

To show me the life of a local family, he invites me to his girlfriend's family's house for a traditional coffee ceremony. Of course, I jump at the offer. It turns out as one of my favourite experiences on the entire trip.

~ ~ ~

I hired Sisay through Teddy Belay, a Harar guide who specialises in catering for photographers. Teddy also arranged the transport into Harar from the airport in Dire Dewa. Teddy can be contacted by email on teddyharar@gmail.com. Sisay can be contacted on +251 913 450 433. I recommend them both.

Ethiopia time

Ethiopia operates on the Julian calendar, not the Gregorian used by the majority of the world. It has 12 months of 30 days, followed by a short 13th month of five days (six in leap years). The year begins in Gregorian September. It is presently 2006.

The day begins at sunrise: our clock starts in the twelve o'clock position at midnight; theirs starts in this position at our 6am. So a clock running Ethiopia time always appears six hours fast. Or slow. Though initially confusing, this actually seems sensible – why begin the day in the middle of the night?

This could all be horribly confusing if the Ethiopians were not entirely prepared to use Western time with tourists. They essentially run two systems.

I think it's a shame the world didn't settle on the International Fixed Calendar: it has 13 months of 28 days, which operates much more closely to the 28½-day lunar month on which the entire concept of a month is based in the first place. Each month has exactly four weeks of seven days, meaning that the dates of each month fall on the same day of the week as the next month – the first always falls on a Monday, the second on a Tuesday, and the twelfth on a Friday. This accounts for 364 days in the solar year, leaving one monthless day (or two in leap years) as global holidays – Year Day and Leap Year Day.

The idea never got much traction. Religious groups objected that these extra days interfered with the pattern of the seventh day of rest. Strangely, the only institution that ever adopted it was not a country but a business. Kodak. The film company. It was their official calendar until 1989.

Getting around Addis Ababa

After the fiasco of my flight out of Rwanda I arrived in Addis Ababa three hours late for the Meskel eve celebrations. It was frustrating, given the effort I had gone to so I could see it, but such things happen. Travel is full of unplanned events.

The mood in Addis was still celebratory. Music was playing and people sat drinking with groups of friends in their courtyards while the smell and white haze of smoke from innumerable bonfires blanketed the sprawling city. I got just a taste of it. My friendly driver from the great little Addis Regency Hotel, J.J., who picked me up from the airport, was sympathetic with my frustration. On the way to the Regency we swung by Meskel Square, the site of the central celebrations and major bonfire, where we located the ashes and, per tradition, drew a cross on our foreheads, as the Catholics do on Ash Wednesday. I'm not religious but was happy to participate in the festival in even a small way.

The following day was a public holiday, so the usually frenetic roads were quiet and the typically chaotic traffic subdued. It was a nice but false introduction to Addis. It isn't usually so easy to get around.

The cheapest mode of transport in the city is on the public transit system of orange and yellow buses, but I was warned off them. They are crammed with pickpockets. Violence against tourists in Addis is almost completely unheard of (would-be perpetrators fear too much the consequences: if caught by the police, they could be beaten to death in front of you. Since the oppressive regime of the Derg in the latter 20th-century there remains a healthy fear of the police, though this has abated somewhat in recent years). Pickpockets, however, abound. Common sense and an air of confidence, though, with a few phrases in Amharic to sound like a local, will dissuade them.

The better transport option is the private licensed blue and white minibuses. These are found all over Africa. An independent traveller could actually cross the continent in them, provided you can understand the destination the conductor shouts out the window. In Addis the prices are fixed, and they won't cheat you.

For the beaten up blue Peugeot taxis and the little blue three-wheeled tuk-tuks with white canvas roofs called bajat, prices need to be negotiated. A short trip shouldn't cost more than 100 birr, about AU$6. And when you tell the driver where you're going, forget about street addresses. They are meaningless. Locals don't use them, or even know the street names. As is the way in old cities, navigation is by landmarks and districts: you tell the driver, "Take me to the Itegua Taitu Hotel in Piazza."

Now, Ethiopia...

Ethiopia: ancient Abyssinia, land of Sheba, Ras Tafari, home of coffee and mother of modern humankind. Itinerary: visit the tribes of the south, explore the ancient history of the north.