We went to Guatemala to visit David, a friend I hadn't seen for more
than twenty-five years since I lived in Venezuela. We stay with his
delightful family, a house full of delightful women. We go to
Chichicastenango on market day and witness the strangely pagan firework
procession from the church; we take a cruise around Lake Atitlan and
stop off in the villages around its shores. We fly to Tikal, climb
pyramids and hear about the end of the world. And David takes us up the
active volcano of Pacaya where we brave poisonous sulphur clouds and
risk being bombarded with tephra bombs that David says land with a splat
like red-hot cow pats. But the most amazing part of our trip, something
we hadn't bargained for, is that David reveals he was for over thirty
years 'Our man in Central America'.