Nature's mercy

At the beginning of October a tropical storm hits the Pacific coast of Central America and we lose sight of the sky for three weeks. It rains day and night; thick, oily drops falling heavily from cloying cloud. Several people lose their lives in mudslides and the main road into Panajachel is closed for a week.

By the time I get back from my visa run to Mexico, the lake has risen by almost a metre on top of the half metre or so already gained in the first half of the season. The entire lake edge is littered with semi-submerged houses and farms.

Trees arch gracefully from the water. Everyone has a new dock, and every dock is built precariously over the remains of others. The shops near the water in Santiago are filled to the ceiling.

There being no outlet, Lake Atitlan is vulnerable to weather and follows cycles of growth and recession that the locals meet with ancient acceptance.

If this had happened anywhere else it would have made international news, but the pace of this creep over six months of rain is too slow for today's press.

I arrive home to a considerably smaller farm. Reed islands have lodged themselves on our new dock, shielding the farm front with a wall of green. Kale lurches soggily from the shallows, the leaves of a baby lime tree barely surfacing. The lakeside path has shifted to run around the yoga shala, which used to lie twenty metres from the water's edge when I arrived at the farm in March.


At this rate, the entire farm will be under within a couple of years.


I fall into bed in the dark and wake up crawling in ants. I rip up my mattress and watch as hundreds of red leaf-cutters scatter, desperately collecting waxy white eggs and disappearing between the floorboards. Every surface blooms pale with mould. The eaves are strung with a dense network of dusty white spider's webs and my clothes are full of giant crickets.
My home has been reclaimed by the jungle.


I spend an exhausting day scrubbing and beating as much life from my belongings as I can. The rain beats rivers down the windows and the light fades through a grey imperceptibly tinged with pink.


Nico and I eat in silence in a damp rancho. With no residents at the moment the farm is strangely empty. At some point, the rain stops. I fail to notice exactly when.

I wash my dishes and walk outside.

Above me shines a star.


A small patch of the night sky overhead has cleared. It has been a long time, so I walk down to our new dock to watch from the water. The lake is glossy.


The atmosphere is light with shifting energy, the post-deluge air impeccably clean. A clear line divides the sky; on one side the nothingness of thick cloud, on the other sparkling pinpricks of light. I sit and watch for an hour as our world changes.


Like a magician, revealing his last secret, the sky is gradually unveiled. The line moves across the sky as the black hole recedes.


The wall of cloud slips behind Volcan San Pedro and at once the sky is infinite.

And, just like that, the rainy season comes to an end.

Sliding Doors

On two occasions now I have passed Salina Cruz, on the coast of Oaxaca, Mexico, at sunrise. From the window of the bus it appears ethereal, despite the offshore oil rigs; a jagged, undulating town built over rolling sand dunes, edged by white beaches turned pink in the morning light.

When Sacha and I find ourselves in Oaxaca City with no onward destination, an image of Salina Cruz comes to mind. Hours later, we are unceremoniously regurgitated from the night bus, into a station dark with 4am shadows. I pass out face down on the clinically-tiled floor. Wake up to the birds of the tropics.

Salina Cruz, once more at dawn.

We get the first collectivo half an hour out of town, to a highway turnoff that I spotted from the bus window a year ago. Opposite, a hand painted sign points us towards Playa Azul. Site of today's vested hopes for adventure.

Our mystery beach turns out to be an hour's sweat-sodden walk down a sandy track, humming with heat and violated by huge potholes. The weight of our bags draws us from our sleep-deprived stupor. We begin to itch.

The track comes to a dead end in scrubby bush and we wonder if we should start thinking things through a little before we do them. We push on regardless and emerge, steamy hot and mosquito-ravaged, on a deserted beach, edged with palapa huts seemingly abandoned for the season.

An old man with loud dogs melts silently into his small home. A lone woman rakes the sand into parallels. The water swirls with strange currents and the beach aches with emptiness.

We do not quite know what to do.

We survey the silence and decide to sit with the sea for a moment, hoping for a plan.  Although we have not voiced our disappointment, it is clear this beach is not for us.

We sift the sand into piles through our fingers and wait.

A silhouette of a man appears at the top of the beach, close to the woman raking. He does not look like a local. His hands are on his hips and he seems to be watching us.

It occurs to us how strange we must look: two blondes with backpacks and a hula hoop, squatting in the sand at 7am on this deserted shore.

We look at each other and reach for our bags. Any information at this point would be helpful.

We reach the hut just as he disappears, and when we round the edge of the building we see not one but three men of our age, loading belongings into a little red van.

I hear Sacha's voice transmit silently into my brain. "We're going with them." Without looking at her I nod and we drop our bags, smiles spreading wider over our faces. They look vaguely surprised to see us.

The van's sliding door reveals a window into Betty Ford, treasured home of three wandering australianos and rescuing chariot for these lost inglesas.

Right now, this door appears to me like a portal. Somehow more than just a van door.

This little square in the air is a passage into another world, another set of spooling stories and another three faces in an ever-growing cast. It represents a choice to step from this reality to that. A visible reminder of our junction with another path.

I know I am going to step through it before we even exchange names.

As always on these seemingly pre-determined meetings, I am struck with the perfection of life's clockwork. I think about the first time I saw the sign for Playa Azul, all those months ago, and I remember the little jump in my heart that accompanied the fleeting vision. I wonder for how long my subconscious has known of this conjunction of lives.

We have no idea who they are or where they are going, but we climb in anyway. Playa Azul has served its purpose. The back windows are partially obscured and as we drive away I do not look back.

Small child advises smaller child about a horse

  


"Don't look at that.  It's just snot and two holes."




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