Walking the Americas by Levison Wood

Author:Levison Wood [Wood, Levison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780802165640
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2017-03-13T04:00:00+00:00

13

The Ascent

The next morning we made our way past a great swathe of sugarcane plantations that filled the flat expanse of the San Pedro Sula valley south of the city for as far as the eye could see. We walked along the main highway towards El Progreso, and then south along a smaller road passing by a village called San Manuel.

‘Yesterday was pretty intense,’ said Alberto, wiping the sweat from his brow as we plodded along a country lane. Fields rolled away on either side and we both felt glad to be back in the countryside.

‘You’re not wrong,’ I replied. ‘I’m just glad that we were in Daniel’s safe hands. I feel like he showed us just enough to scare us, but not quite the whole story.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Alberto.

‘I mean, since we warned off the gang bosses that we were coming, it felt a bit sterilised, like we didn’t get the big picture. I don’t know, it was just a hunch.’

Perhaps I’d spent too much time in war zones, but having walked through San Pedro Sula, supposedly one of the most dangerous cities in the world, and to have come out without having seen a shot fired, well, it came as a relief, but also left the nagging feeling that we’d only scratched the surface. A masochistic part of me wanted to stay and talk with more gangsters and find out what life was really like.

That was the hard part of these expeditions: no sooner had you arrived than you must leave again. You meet amazing people and build connections, and then before you’ve even discovered a fraction of their story, you have to carry on. With such a long journey, you simply can’t hang about, otherwise you’d never get there. The journalist and explorer inside me wanted to stay, to better understand the torment and motivation behind these tragic people, and to get to grips with why violence plays such an important part of their lives. The adventurer in me wanted to push the boundaries, and embed myself on the frontline of this unseen war. But then the realistic, sensible part of me said that we should be grateful for what we had got and be glad that we were sufficiently removed to be able to walk away.

‘Be careful what you wish for,’ Alberto raised his eyebrows.

‘I know, I know. We were lucky that nothing bad did happen, let’s keep our fingers crossed it stays that way. I feel like yesterday has prepared us for the rest of the journey. Nowhere else we go can be that bad, surely?’

But of course, things always happen in the places you’re least expecting them. We’d come to the end of the village and found ourselves in a beautiful lane. Cows munched away on the long grass in the meadows and we were looking forward to seeing the positive side of Honduras, when all of a sudden I noticed a crowd up ahead. Figures seemed to be milling around, loitering under trees.

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