Yikes Readers...never thought I´d try this one....


Cave diving. I have read Dead Man´s Handshake (a very scary essay in Bonnington´s book Quest for Adventure) and The Darkness Beckons (even more scary history of cave diving, written by Martyn Farr ´at a time when many of the original participants were still alive and available for interview´). That, I thought, would put me off for life.



But, well OK, this was only cavern diving (less serious and more spacious than true cave diving), in a cenote in Mexico called Chac Mool.


A cenote is a freshwater pool forming the visible part of a submerged cave system Some of them extend for miles under the flat landscape of the Yucatan.


Random notes....

• Less scary than I had imagined - good visibility, powerful torch, and 1:1 with the dive master.
• Interesting stuff: a) a thermocline, where the warm water below meets the cold fresh water above, together with b) a halocline: a subtype of chemocline caused by a strong, vertical salinity gradient within a body of water. The overall effect is like a floating mirror-mirage until disturbed,which becomes quite hazy when disturbed. Only visible when you are in it, or very close to it.

• Underwater stalactites and stalagmites, formed when the limestone cave was above ground millions of years ago. 

• Swim around in passageways large and small, stop at an amazing air bell (roof decorated with cave straws) where you can take your mouthpiece out and chat, and generally gawp at the darkness.

• Not deep (12m max), very up-and-down dive profile. 
• Fish in the cave seem to be able to swim between the two layers of water with no problems. How do they do that?  

Climbing at Quetzaltenango (aka Xela), Guatemala

These crags are in the Cerro Quenado to the SE of town. We spent a lot of time searching for access and topo info, and then even more time searching for the crags, so here´s what to do if you´re interested.  

Access: take a taxi (50Q each way - the driver will come back and pick you up if asked) from the main square in Xela to Baues (3-4 km), turn right up a cobbled road to La Muela (2 km, steep), and then Chicua (1km, flat). Crag visible on the skyline above and right. You can get a bus to Baues (ask for the Almolonga or Zunil bus) - only 2Q but you´ll have to walk the rest.

 

Main Crag (above Chicua)

Visible from the road. Head up paths through various weird, makeshift shrines of all manner of Christian denomination (very busy on Wednesdays and Sundays) for 20 mins, steeply uphill. 

About 15-20 routes. The face climbs are bolted, and most are hard (5.11-12), with the first bolts missing, and start in horrible pits strewn with garbage and poo.

There are some excellent-looking cracks, but you´ll need chunky trad gear - hexes and big cams.

Also, there are some nice easier routes at the left-hand end, including a superb bolted arete with 2 finishes (about 5.8 on the right, too windy on the left, at least when we were there!).

Plenty of new route possibilities on blank faces, if you have the requisite bolt-kit and steel fingers

Summit Crags (above La Muela)

We went here on our first day, by mistake. From the edge of La Muela, a track leads up to the skyline crags via a football pitch.  30 mins, steep.


Basically, you´re exploring. There are some interesting pinnacles and unprotected faces (bolts needed), and a few cracks around to the right.


The main pinaccle has a few iron spikes on top, so has obviously been climbed. Accessing the summit via a scramble behind this pinnacle, then a pitch of Diff, then more scrambling, makes for a good adventure. Good views.

Bouldering and new route possibilities in Honduras

We spent a few days at Copan Ruinas over the border in Honduras (good Mayan ruins).

For those seeking a little rock action, there are a couple of crags in the area.

This is the only info you´re likely to find. Don´t get too excited

1) Copan Crag. Above the ruins, to the west, is a hill. Facing the Copan ruins, a small crag is visible just below the skyline. There are a few decent aretes (that look unprotected but solid), and some easy bouldering at the far right end. About 10 problems.

Access: after crossing the bridge leading out of Copan Ruinas towards the Mayan ruins, a dirt road leads up left after about 200m (currently signposted for Macaw Mountain). Walk up this for about 400m and then strike up right almost to the summit of a grassy, sparsely wooded hill (popular with kite-flying kids). Contour round to the right, negotiating a coupe of barbed-wire fences, to find the crag. 

2) Macaw Mountain Crag. This is visible from the town, up the valley past the Macaw Mountain park. It´s an orange-grey outcrop inset high above a steep vegetated slope. A path leaves the road at just the right spot, but we didn´t hike up there. Looks good but hard to get off the top. Access rights probably non-existent. Take a bolt kit, watch the roly-poly possibilities, and don´t get shot.

What Afterlife 

Part 17 and a bit - the Maya today

After the last entry in the W.A. canon, in which a rather baffled author failed to see any afterlife benefits available for the ordinary Mayan civilian in ancient times, much was today revealed concerning the fate of their modern counterparts, ie the larger part of the Guatemalan population.



Henry Crow and his crack team of psi-investigators (well, Linda anyway) found themselves at the hill village of Chichicastanega on market day - a bustling, chaotic bazaar of local goods and wares designed by thousands of colour-blind Mayans on acid.

While we recovered from temporary retinal damage, a helpful local guide took us to a hill-top shrine where the locals worship a deity known as Pascual Abaj -  a god of fertility, represented by a small black rock in a fireplace. A couple of the local shamans were out and about, building small bonfires of offerings and doing a bit of chanting.

It emerged that the modern Mayan has many dozens of gods, many varying between communities, with the main ones comprising a constant triumvirate of sun, moon and rain. 

However, all ceremonies, with the exception of a certain amount of ancestor worship, aim to improve matters for the mortal man or woman, and consist of prayers for crops, rain, health and suchlike. There is no concept of a soul, and no notion of rebirth, redemption, salvation or....gasp....afterlife, that are the stuff of most theologies.

Thus, What Afterlife has drawn a blank with this one. No afterlife. When your dead, your dead, and that´s it.  Not the faintest hint of a whiff of metaphysical ether.


So, nothing to see here, everyone back on the bus....

Antigua, Guatemala - one or two volcanoes around here, and have been up one of them. However, the red-hot lava promised by the tour agency had long since cooled. You can crawl ito lava-tubes that billow warm water vapour, and cook marshmallows in the vents. A good view of the neighbouring volcano of Fuego, which puffs out an occasional plume of smoke every now and again.

The Earth, we are told, has not yet finished cooling after 4.5 billion years. Hard to beleive for those native to the north of England, but here´s the evidence before our eye.

Or eyes, if you like plurals and cliches, though I draw the line at very.
 

And then Atitlan, quite good for a lake, allegedly said by Aldous Huxley to be the most beautiful in the world. I don´t know whether he ever saw the Padarn, or the gravel pit next to the steelworks in Barrow, but he may well be right.

Zip-wires through the jungle too. Caramba! Spider monkeys watch out!

Copan Ruinas, Honduras

Have spent the day wandering around the best-preserved stelae and statues of the Mayan world. 

Indeed, several days have been spent in major Mayan sites so far.  As noted by this blog´s sister site, the generally wittier and far more accessible Gullible´s Travels, this trip has encompassed many, many Mayan ruins. Some better than others. Indeed, rather than subject you to all of them, Gullible´s has prepared a selection of some of the best seen so far. They include ruins from Tulum, Belize, and Guatemala, including the mighty (and frankly marvellous) Tikal. More here: http://lindafullalove.blogspot.com/


Back at JHBsbigtrip, this presents an excellent opportunity to catch up on a bit of....


What Afterlife?

Part 17, possibly.  The Maya

The Mayan civilisations have come and gone, but wherever they happened to set up a pyramid or two, they were obsessed with power, succession, sacrifice, and glorification. That meant lots of blood and guts, a bit of a ball game, and some more pyramids for the next-in-line. And quite an acceptable quality of life-after-death, if you happened to be one of the select few. 

First off, the Maya creation myth.

Basically, there were, somewhere, a bunch of idle gods who messed around with different recipes for making people, and of which flopped. Until, one day, they hit upon a potent mixture of corn and blood. Add 10 parts blood to one part corn, mix in a large clay pot, and, hey presto, Man is born.

Also, it would seem, the world is actually a giant crocodile standing in a sea of water (sounds a bit like the giant turtle favoured by myths elsewhere, and not just those in Terry Pratchett´s imagination). Man and the animals live on the crocodile´s back, but it´s not yet clear to those of a questioning nature whether the crocodile had always been there before the gods started messing around with recipes.

Corn and blood is the way to go, and thus whipped into existence, Mayan Man is keen to offer up lashings of the same mixture as a sacrifice to the Gods who created him.

Especially blood. Lots of it. Gallons.

So, what afterlife?

When the time of dying came, the big chief, the city-state ruler who handed down power to his sons for a dynasty lasting hundereds of years, El Top Dogo (not his real name: he was actually  known as something like Eighteen Rabbits, Four Turtle Doves, or Two Dogs Urinating), had a big ceremony, was laid to rest with some pots and tools, a fancy plume of feathers and a nice pair of large green earrings, and sent off to a ritzy afterlife in the underworld, with a honking great pyramid for a mauseleum. All well and good. If, that is, you happen to be a ruler.

What of the thousands of poor locals who were sacrificed? Well as usual, there were plenty more where they came from. For most of the proles, it must have been a case of keep your head down, as any of the king´s henchmen, or any roving band of Mayans from a competing city-state, on capturing your live ass would be keen to bind you like a hog, march you back to their own city, throw you in the holding pen and feed you meagre rations till the time came for a ritual sacrifice. Meanwhlile, wherever Two Dogs Urinating and his son happened to hold court, they were looking forward to a major gorefest and another big pyramid.

The takeaway for What Afterlife pop-pickers? Not worth a look-in unless you're extremely well connected. 

Why, one has to ask, did the proles fall for this kind of rough-and-ready treatment? How did the kings maintain power and how did they keep the system going? I haven´t seen any mention yet of police, troops, or gangsters in the reported translations of Mayan codex or the textbooks.

Although not well understood, the reasons for the collapse of Mayan civilisation are not thought to be due to war or invasion, but rather to social factors and environmental unsustainability. The puzzling question for me is, how did it ever get started?

Millions of Mayans still live today in the region of Guatemala-Belize-Southern Mexico, and seem to have chosen Catholicism as a much more attractive option than what went before. I suppose it must be easy to understand what the Pope is all about. Even if the actions of a carpenter on another continent, long before the Mayans really got going in Central America, and the concept of monotheism, may seem a little obscure.

Golf carts on the fairway at San Pedro, plenty full with large Americans, but OK if you don't let it putt you off your stride. 

South of the border, down Mexico way. Mayan ruins and swimming in the sea - so far so good. Tomorrow Belize.

The man in the corner shop is always good value.  I just moseyed down there to pick up the Saturday morning paper, as you do. Sifting through my change, I caught sight of a fleur-de-lys and think, that's strange, is this a coin of ther realm or some Euro-type change from my last trip to Spain? But it must be a 50p  - it's 50p-shaped. Flipping over the coin I see the Queen's head; flipping it back again there's the fleur-de-lys.

'Never seen that before - a French symbol on an English coin.' I squint in the dim light, making out some wording - 'Be prepared' - before realising it's not a celebration of the Camembert Republic, but something to do with Baden Powell and his Scouts - a centenary maybe.

'All good tender' says the shopkeeper, who's usually keen to engage you in his views on the state of the nation.

'Well, you never get anyone turning it down' I say, turning to escape before he pounces with the inevitable question 'What do you think of Cameron's pathetic little tiff with Clegg?', like a swordsman barring your exit until you spar your way out. 

But he doesn't say that, he just grins and says 'Do you buggery.'

Now then, New Year and all that...

Resolution: get more involved and all that...

OK, have written to my MP asking him where he stands on the referendumn on voting reform coming up in May, and why. And let him know (in case he's interested/cares) what I reckon.

Have also written to the Peak District National Park Authority asking, basically, what they are up to flogging off the family silver, sorry, Roaches Estate.They don't give much away here, though what's obvious is that they speak with a forked tongue the size of the Derwent-Wye confluence:

http://www.peakdistrict.gov.uk/roaches-estate


Result! Now I feel much more involved!

Now, what was the other resoluition? Ah yes: try and get out more. 


And then I got diverted and wrote some stuff about prog rock on a chat site, where many contributors expressed quite understandable revulsion, loathing, etc. Before too long my reponse was far too long for that purpose, but too much fun to delete entirely. Here it is...
 
Percentage Padding Discount for Piss-Poor Prog - a new marketing plan for the download era

Most objections to Prog centre on its pretentiousness, rather than it being rubbish, which seems a little superficial. A more discerning listen would reveal that much of it was, in fact, rubbish. But much was not, and these days when I listen to Prog I try to forget about the alleged pretentiousness. Otherwise I can't get anywhere and enjoy it, which I do now much more widely than I did in its 70's heyday.

Although 'pretentious' was a word bandied about habitually in the '70s, it wasn't the dismissive condemnation it is now - rather it was often perfectly descriptive. So much so as to be superfluous: much of prog was so deliberately theatrical that it hardly made contact with reality at all. For the truly rigorously anti-pretentious rock fan in the mid-nineteen seventies, Steely Dan and Little Feat were pretty much your only port in the Prog storm. I know, I tried to be as anti-pretentious as living in a Barrow suburb would allow, which was plenty, but if you were at a Boy's Grammar School in 1974 and wanted any friends you had to buy in to the Prog deal to some degree or you were walking home with the speccy kids who did their homework on time and sat at the front in class (OK, we all did our homework on time, I admit it). Or the ones that sat right at the back and were into Sabbath and metal, most of which was just too dumb.

There's not much sex and precious litle rhythm in Prog, so you can throw out another set of dimensions along with your pretensiousness-ometer. Look at Prog in this new light and, paradoxically, it benefits from a pretty minimalist aesthetic, potentially free from blues and folk influences, as well as pop (obviously), but allowing poetry - most of it terrible, needless to say. Semetimes the poetry would be quite good and the band would be co-opted into Prog despite actually mostly playing three-minute pop songs  - this happened in the case of Procol Harum for instance. 

A lot Prog was interesting stuff, if flawed. Here's a simple trick though: if you apply just one measure, Percentage Padding, to Prog LP's you can usually discern a direct assessment leading to the best prog albums. 


100% is worst, 0% is best.


Thus...Yes albums max at about 75%, largely mitigated by tunes like Roundabout and And You and I, whereas Genesis LP's score a more respectable 60% largely due to no-padding heavyweight tunes like Firth of Fourth. ELP generally hovered in at 50%, while The Floyd were erratic as hell scoring anything between 10% (eg the brilliant Ummagumma disc 1) to 100% (eg the hopelessly self-indulgent Ummagumma disc 2).

As it happens, this rating scheme correlates pretty well with the quality of the remaining, ie non-padded, music, presumably due to some built-in quality control ethos that stopped things getting too silly too often. 

It has its limitations, granted. Neither Hawkwind nor Van der Graaf Generator lend themselves to assessment by Percentage Padding. Hawkwind realised that their live audience basically would tolerate any amount of pointless repetetive headbanging so long as it was loud enough to make you feel like you were on a space shuttle to Metabelis Three. Any music you can dance to has a sex element, so Hawkwind weren't really prog, but still score a respectable 35% for padding on most of their 70's LPs. Van der Graaf Generator were unique in realising that their audience of male postgrad physics students were interested in chess, not music, let alone sex. If you manage to listen to a whole Van der Graff LP in one go - a task so weightily bereft of enjoyment that it regularly defeats me -  you're well on your way to imagining what it's like to write a PhD thesis. 


And John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra don't count - they are so unmitigatedly turgidly terrible that no-one, repeat no-one, has ever listened to them, not even John McLaughlin.  

Nowadays we allow ourselves to be grateful that songs generally got shorter in the 80s. This is generally accredited to the effects of Punk, but plenty of Prog bands were already trimming their sails well before the Pistols shook the still brown waters of the River Thames and The Clash went international with smart songs that even American kids seemed clever enough to want to imitate. Contemorary ex-prog acts like Yes and Genesis were selling many more, generally terrible, singles than punks were in the 80s. We also allow ourselves to believe that this happened just in time to stop the 78-minute, one-track prog CD ever taking off. But the truth is that the grat ship Prog just drifted off into the twighlight because it ran out of ideas, taking its audience and Procol Harum with it. Mike Oldfield would have you believe otherwise, but what's he ever done in three minutes? Oh God, I remember now.... 

These days the multi-keyboard wizard Brown Bottle, the only truly unashamed beacon-carrier of Old Prog, largely gets by because he knows that it's impossible to be accused of pretentiousness when you're unshaved, drunk, abusive and quite funny. No wait, I mean Rick Wakeman....

But, as I see it, in the current age of diminishing possibilities for a serious career in music, some sort of return to the sonic adventurousness of the Prog era seems like quite a liberating proposition. I'm not sure how Prog can ever happenagain, given the prevailing culture of the 69p download, but the answer may be to pay per minute for your 20 minute Progathon masterpiece with a Percent Padding discount for each album, 

For example, this would mean a 75% discount for most Yes albums . However, for Tales from Topographic Oceans, where padding and pretentiousness levels uncannily converge at exactly 100%, Trades Descriptions implications would dictate a free download. 


Imagine a world where young people, exposed to endless free downloads of the worst kinds of preposterous, pompous and difficult music, pick up proper instruments like oboes, lutes and twin-neck guitars and declare they can do better. 

For any Amazon or i-tunes business planning executives who happen to be reading, I'd be happy to set the 'Padding Percentages' - drop me an email with your business plan...

The 'Two Line Review' lives on!

But gets seriously carried away...

127 Hours (the Danny Boyle film)
(~100 minutes. Confusing isn't it?)

Go see this film, it's about as good a mainstream film about the outdoors as I've seen - involving on every level.

It's especially good cinematographically, with some trademark Danny Boyle split-screen storytelling put to very good use, and the Utah Canyonlands scenery - for my money, the most breathtakingly rugged and impressive wilderness on the planet - is stunningly shot.

Some familiar stylistic devices have been appropriated from obvious and not-so-obvious film sources (I won't go into details - they are pretty obvious and fun to spot) but, being used quite appropriately here, they smack of a well-researched project rather than of plagiarism, and generally add to the film's authenticity.
 
Importantly to 'us lot' it is true to the spirit of the outdoors and is technically accurate. It's also very absorbing - given what you happened to have in your rucksack, you ask yourself what you would do if you found yourself in that situation. Seemed to me like he made the right choices. 

To the 'he should have known better' tribe, I'd say this. In the film (I haven't read the book) the guy was competent, doing what he loved, and got himself into a tricky situation then got himself out of it again. He doesn't blame anyone but himself. This is OK by me. Lord knows I've been down many a canyon and soloed many a mountain V Diff without telling anyone where I was going. It's not that I prefer it that way, it just that 'being sensible' doesn't always happen - especially if you're remotely adventurous, and this is an adventure story. If you want to be judgmentalist about that kind of approach then you're going to have to switch off your 'inner adult' to get the most out of this excellent film.

I'm not sure if it will do much for the sales of canyoning guidebooks, but they say any publicity is good publicity...