El Retorno del Maximon

– January/February 2003 –

Rollover Collages of Page Background by Jim McPherson, 2008

© copyright 1996 - 2009 Jim McPherson

Hi everyone, just to let you know that Maximon (‘ma-SHEE-mon’), the modern Mayan embodiment of Evil Delight, seems to have hitched a ride on my tour buses. Should have realized he'd tagged along when I met the Tour Group I’d signed onto and was informed there was a last minute addition to our courageous gang of intrepid ‘touristas’.

(NOTE: The company who put on the so-called ‘adventure tour’ shall remain nameless, as shall all but one of its participants besides myself. Shall do so not so much for fear of lawsuits as more a matter of trying to remain as inoffensive as possible. As the saying sort of goes, they know who they were.)

Addition was an Italian who paid for the tour in his homeland but for some reason did not get his name on the group leader's ledger until he showed up at the hotel in Cancun alongside the dozen who had the proper vouchers. (The first half of the tour I joined in Antigua Guatemala began in Cancun.) That meant there were suddenly 13 people on the tour instead of the usual 12.

Ever heard of ‘triskaidekaphobia’? Not absolutely sure about the spelling (and neither is the spell-checker on the computer I’m using) but, howsoever it is spelt, it means fear of 13s, as in Friday the 13th.

Must I tell you his name? I kid you not, -- it’s Maximo (‘ma-Shee-mo’)!

By way of background, I started out in Antigua, the very place I first encountered Maximon back in Nov 2001. For those of you with access to my wall of masks, he's the moustached fellow with the rolled cigarette in his mouth.

Shrines dedicated to Maximon that I’ve seen scattered throughout Guatemala and the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico regularly show him smoking an often-lit cigar, with an open bottle of Johnny Walker, scads of scantily clad, if clad at all, girl-dolls laying at his feet, burning incense sticks and all manner of suchlike gringo-decadent delights arrayed all around him.

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To carry on ...

From the moment I joined the group just about everyone except myself and a couple of other late arrivals have been sick. Meaning, since we started out on public transport, that the smells are worse than usual. (Have to admit the buses themselves are moderately more comfortable than I’d anticipated. Then again moderately isn’t saying much. I had anticipated them being positively hellacious.)

First day on the road, heading due south just before the Honduran border, the driver hit some old man who apparently ran in front of the bus deliberately. Someone who saw it happen (I only heard and felt the thunk) said it looked like he had an immediate desire to meet Jesus and presumably wanted to avail his family of the opportunity to collect the consequential insurance. Sadly, at least according to the 2 doctors onboard, the victim isn't likely to have survived beyond a few hours in the hospital.

As the ambulance dutifully carted him away to his predetermined destiny on high (or down low, if it really was a suicide attempt), the local constabulary not only carted away the bus driver but the bus as well. Although minibuses arrived on the scene with amazing alacrity, the resultant delay meant we did not get across the border and into the town of Copan Ruinas until past 1 in the afternoon.

I’d been looking forward to seeing the Mayan ruins at Copan. Sooth said they were one of the major reasons I signed up for this tour. Very much unfortunately they closed at 4pm. Not only that, they were a good twenty minute walk from town.

That meant I had approximately 2 hours to see the ruins, the tunnels beneath two of the ‘crumblies’, where the remains of even older structures had been discovered, and the new museum, which is quite impressive and beckoned for much more of my time than I could provide.

Interestingly for me – and maybe for you, if you recall the PHANTACEA comic book series or followed “The Trigregos Gambit” when it was being serialized in PHANTACEA on the Web a few years ago – according to a plaque I read and photographed in the museum the Copan Mayans had a bat cult.

It required of its initiates, who were mostly priests and ruler types, blood sacrifices and possibly ritual cannibalism, including the consequently non-symbolic drinking of blood.

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Next day we're well on our way to the Caribbean Island of Roatan when the back of the public bus we were on started filling up with smoke. Evidently the fan belt and radiator cooling system had gone kaput; meaning, needless to say, the bus had done a ditto.

Thankfully, given what befell yesterday’s first transport, no one was hurt. What wasn’t so lucky was our tour schedule.

We had one chance at a ferry, which left at 3 pm. (Next one wasn’t until the next morning and the mainland port town itself, the name of which I’ve already forgotten, has a very bad reputation even for Honduras.)

Astonishingly a replacement minibus, hired by the group leader on the kaput-bus-spot via a borrowed cell phone, made it to the ferry dock at 2:53 pm; that is to say with seven whole minutes to spare. Needless to also say, for the foreseeable future we are springing for private transportation.

Have to say that the aforementioned Copan Bat makes a guy like me wonder who really invented Dracula: Bram Stocker, the Carpathians, or the Mayans? Also makes me wonder what Maximon – who, albeit with an Italian accent, I’ve decided due to extreme events thus far described is definitely travelling with us – drinks besides whisky.

Can tell you what something else definitely does drink and that’s me. I can say that with certainty after barely surviving Roatan; emphasis on barely, as in the clothes we’ve taken to [not] wearing.

It seems the no-see-um sand flies there (unless they're sand fleas, which strikes me as even more likely) only attain visibility in the form of bite-bump-lumps that promptly turn into unsightly, scabrous blights on your otherwise perfectly tanned skin after you scratch them bloody.

We had one chance at a ferry, which left at 3 pm. Next one wasn’t until the next morning and the mainland port town itself, the name of which I’ve already forgotten, has a very bad reputation even for Honduras. According to Group Leader Laura – who’s been through the area before, she nervously gives us to understand – gang warfare, kidnapping tourists for ransom and plain murder, as much for sport as for settling disputes, dominate local headlines on a daily basis.

Astonishingly a replacement minibus, hired by said group leader on the kaput-bus-spot via a borrowed cell phone, made it to the ferry dock at 2:53 pm; that is to say with seven whole minutes to spare. Needless to also say, for the foreseeable future we are springing for private transportation.

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I am now in Granada, an old Spanish colonial town on the shores of Lake Nicaragua that appears mostly undamaged by the civil wars, hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that have been plaguing old Nick for most of its long and perhaps surprisingly eventful history.

The hostel where we’re staying is quite a lively place. An American co-owner’s taking bets on the upcoming Super Bowl. He rather fancies being addressed as the Boss, presumably not after Bruce Springsteen, and says Tampa Bay is a shoe-in.

(Even though I’m a ‘go Raiders go’ guy this year, I’ve thus far resisted putting any money where my teeth are, as the saying goes.

(If the Bucks are such a shoe-in, shouldn’t he be giving me odds instead of insisting the Raiders are the favourites and wanting me to give him the odds?

(If he really wants my bucks then this boss evidently ain’t as brilliant as he thinks.)

First thing this morning there was a kerfuffle (sp?), as in hurly burly, in the courtyard outside my cell (and it is a cell – the hostel was once a work prison the Bucks fan tells me). Backpacking women (one sporting a zipper implanted in her midriff from navel to beneath-waistband) were actually fighting over mangos that had fallen off the overhanging trees overnight.

Yes, fighting: yelling, spitting, hair pulling, namescalling, albeit mostly in German, scratching claws extended. A spat this wasn’t – and there were a few going at it. Bucky the Boss should have been taking bets on the free-for-all.

My money would have been on the zipper lady. Never seen anything of the sort. One assumes it wasn’t there to save a surgeon having to perform a caesarean next time she got pregnant.

As for the fallen mangos, I’d been wondering what was banging on the tin roof and therefore keeping me awake most of the night. When the couple next door weren’t doing a ditto, it could also be noted.

Later on this morning I walked past our pal Maximo. (Which, I’ve only just learned, is properly spelt Massimo.) Max, as everyone calls him, even if ‘Mash’ would make more sense not just sound-wise, was standing in one of the courtyards at the back of the hostel.

Was wearing only a towel and had something on his head I took to be a beret. I dared make mention that he was looking very continental, lacking only a cheroot. A pretty girl walked by, one who was also wearing only a towel, with an only slightly smaller one encompassing her hair.

Noticeably she gave Max a wide berth. I took another look. It wasn’t a beret he was wearing at all. Was his underwear! (See what I mean about him being a second coming of the embodiment of Evil Delight?)

Am running out of time for water taxi to the islets in the Lake. Said islets reputedly literally fell out of the sky some 10,000 years ago when one of the local volcanoes discharged its fiery fury big belch time. One trusts more are not to come crashing down anytime soon.

Until next instalment, I remain hopefully longer than just for the time being, Jim (Not Max).

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