Words and photography: Vasily Korf
Centram26
Four countries. One bike. One mountain. One king. Ten sharks.
A trip report from the isthmus, written in the heat.
Contents / Centram 26
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p. 02
Out of Munich
Prologue. One-way ticket. Sandals.
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p. 04
Guatemala: Ash
Chicken bus. Acatenango. Fuego throwing rocks at the stars.
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p. 08
El Salvador: The Bike
Orange tank. Coca-Cola pueblos. Ciber Sharks.
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p. 12
Honduras: Stone
Copan. A king in a wall. A dog who is a priest.
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p. 16
Belize: Teeth
Tropic Air. Caye Caulker. Nurse sharks heavy as sofas.
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p. 22
Go Slow
Outro. Sand in the GoPro.
Out of
Munich
Prologue / Words: Vasily Korf
Munich in January is a fridge with a tram in it. Grey sky, grey river, grey faces checking grey phones, and me in the middle of it with a return ticket I did not want and a one-way I did. So I bought the one-way. Backpack, GoPro, one pair of sandals I would come to hate and then love, no plan past the first chicken bus. That is the whole method. Kerouac had a car and Neal. I had a Tropic Air timetable and a photo of a volcano somebody posted in 2019.
You do not go to Central America for the ruins or the sharks, not really. You go because something in the office air has started to taste like printer toner and you need to be scared by a real thing again. A mountain. A dog. A truck full of strangers who wave you on board without asking who you are.
Four countries. One isthmus held together by heat, Coca-Cola signs and diesel. The notebook got wet in Belize so some of this is reconstructed from the photos and the burn on my neck. All of it is true. Most of it happened.
“I bought the one-way. That is the whole method.”
Guate
mala
Ash
Acatenango 3976m / Fuego, next door, loud
The chicken bus is a retired American school bus that went south, got religion and a sound system, and now does ninety on a two-lane mountain road with a man hanging out of the door shouting the destination like a prayer. Mine was red and yellow with "Guatemala" in cursive on the back like a tattoo. Inside, three to a seat, a woman with a sack of onions, a kid with a phone louder than the engine, me with my knees in my mouth. The road up smelled of burnt clutch and pine. Nobody looked at the drop. The drop was for tourists.
Then Acatenango. You start in a cornfield and you end in the sky. Six hours of volcanic sand that eats one step for every two you give it. At the top the ground is grey gravel and the fog comes in so thick the world is a sheet of paper somebody forgot to print on. Fuego, the neighbour, clears its throat every twenty minutes. A thud in the chest first, then the sound. At night it throws orange rocks at the stars and you sit in a sleeping bag that smells of a hundred previous people and you think: okay. Okay. This is the real thing.
I did it in sandals. Do not do it in sandals. I have a photo of my feet on the ash, toes black, and I look at it the way other people look at wedding photos.
Down in Antigua the cobbles were still warm at ten at night and a man in a straw hat sat on the kerb eating something out of a bag with the calm of a person who has never once thought about a quarterly review.
“Fuego clears its throat every twenty minutes. A thud in the chest first, then the sound.”
El
Salva
dor
The Bike
Orange tank / one working mirror / horn optional
I rented a motorbike from a guy whose only question was "you know how to ride?" and whose only paperwork was my passport in his drawer. Orange tank, a mirror that showed me my own elbow, a horn that worked when it felt like it. San Salvador spat me out onto a road that went straight at the sea like it had somewhere to be. Nothing on this earth is like the first hour of a bike on a hot road in a country you cannot pronounce yet. The air is thick as soup, the smell is diesel, frying plantain, wet tarmac and burning sugar cane, and every pueblo is a Coca-Cola sign with a village attached.
Red kiosks. Pulperias with grilles on the windows. A corner shop painted a green so loud it buzzes. A place called Ciber Sharks with a shark on the sign and nobody inside. I stopped for that one. I stop for all the sharks.
Pickup trucks pass with eight men standing in the back holding the rail like it is a ship, and they look at the gringo on the little orange bike and they laugh and they wave and you wave back and for one kilometre you are all the same thing: people going somewhere in the heat.
I rode until the sun was a red coin behind the hills and then I rode a bit more because the hostel had a patio with graffiti on the wall and a dog who had decided, from the first second, that I was fine.
“Every pueblo is a Coca-Cola sign with a village attached.”
Hon
duras
Stone
Copan is a Maya city that the jungle tried to swallow and only half managed. Stelae stand in the grass, carved so deep that the faces still have expressions after twelve hundred years. One king stares out of a wall of stone, headdress, jaguar, serpents, the whole catalogue, and he looks like he is still waiting for the tribute. I stood there sweating through my shirt and I thought about every Slack notification I had ever answered and I felt the king judging me, correctly.
To get there you take a red tuk-tuk from a place called Pulperia Carmen. The driver's dog rides shotgun. The road is a suggestion. Horses stand tied to trees on the jungle trail, saddles on, waiting for nobody in particular, and a man in a white shirt checks the straps with hands that have done it ten thousand times.
The light in Honduras is different. Heavier. It comes through the trees in slabs. A dog sleeps on the stone steps of the ruins with the authority of a priest. I sat with him for twenty minutes. Neither of us said anything. It was the best conversation of the trip.
“The king looked like he was still waiting for the tribute.”
Belize
Teeth
Caye Caulker / GoPro / water: bathwater
The plane is a Tropic Air Cessna the size of a van and the pilot is in flip-flops. Below the window the sea goes from mud to green to a blue that does not exist in Europe, a blue that looks like somebody turned the saturation up and left the room. Then the reef, dark shapes under glass. Then Caye Caulker, a sand bar with wooden houses on stilts, no cars, golf carts, bikes with baskets, and a sign that says GO SLOW and means it.
I rented a bike with a basket and a bell. I cycled the sand streets with my hands on the bars and the sea on both sides and a jungle path that closed over my head like a green tunnel. Lobster in a styrofoam box at a shack on the dock, rice, coleslaw, the whole thing for the price of a coffee in Munich. The dog at the shack did not beg. He supervised.
And the sharks. You go out on a boat and the captain throws something in the water and the nurse sharks come, five, eight, ten, grey and slow and heavy as sofas, and the rays slide under them like shadows with wings. You go in. The water is bathwater. A shark the length of me passes close enough that I feel the push of it. It does not care. It has never cared. It has been doing this since before the Maya and it will do it after Munich is under the sea.
I floated there, GoPro out, breathing through a tube, and I understood the whole trip in one go. You come down here to be small and alive. That is all. That is enough.
“Grey and slow and heavy as sofas.”
Go
Slow
Outro / Last day
I flew back with sand in the GoPro, a scar on my shin from the bike, and a notebook that had been in the sea. Munich was still a fridge. The tram was still grey. But I had a photo of my feet on a volcano and I had been pushed by a shark and nobody in the office could say the same.
Here is the report, then. Four countries, one bike, one mountain, one king, ten sharks. Hot, loud, cheap, kind, dirty, alive. Go. Buy the one-way. Take the chicken bus. Stop for the sharks.
“You come down here to be small and alive. That is all. That is enough.”