I’m about 3 months into my pole-to-pole journey of the Americas, with the plan to get from Alaska all the way down to the southern tip of South America. I’m currently travelling through Mexico on the way south to the Guatemalan border, well aware that I am getting further and further away from the normal tourist destinations and places that might actually talk English.

I’ve just had the most surreal 10 days or so of my life, where I met two friendly Mexicans who took me into their lives and introduced me to their crazy world of sex, drugs and rock and roll (see the story “Mexican Bandits”. But now I’m sitting in a bus, happy to bring some form of normality back into my life, having been living a pretty much nocturnal life for the last fortnight, fuelled mostly by a liquid diet of El Jimador tequila. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been a real blast, but I’m enjoying being on my own again now, having the total freedom of my own destiny. I love meeting people, I really do, but I think I’m most happy when I’m travelling on my own. I don’t have to think about anyone else, from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. I can do what I want, where I want, when I want. It’s one of the few moments in life you are truly free, when you travel.

If you think about it, throughout your life, there is always someone else controlling whatever you do, whether it be your parents, your teacher, your boss, the government, the police, your bank manager, whoever …. there’s always someone else overwatching all your decisions with the power to say ‘NO’! But with a backpack on your back, there’s no-one to tell you what to do and when to do it. You can wake up one day and just decide to either rollover and take it easy, or get up, pack your bag and jump on the next bus heading in some direction. It’s a beautiful feeling, freedom.

On this trip, my second long backpacking trip, I haven’t set any real goals on how I’m going to get to the southern tip of South America, I’m just going to see how it all plays out. And with the madness of the last week or so I’m happy just to take it easy a while and slowly meander south over the border into Guatemala and see what happens. I’ve heard about a lake surrounded by volcanoes called Atitlan and a Mayan temple in the jungle called Tikal, so that’s the rough direction I’m currently going. How I get there and whether anyone I meet along the way will understand a word I say, I have no idea.

But that excites me.

By the time my bus arrives at the border town of Mesilla, the gate has already closed and it’s getting dark, so I check into the nearest cheapy hostel and throw my bag down. I find a crappy little restaurant nearby for a bite to eat and after that return back to the hostel.

My room is on the first floor with an outdoor corridor that goes past my room and about 6 or 7 other rooms alongside. I notice that all the rooms seem to have these huge breathing holes above the windows, no doubt to keep the rooms ventilated, but my first thought is that’s where the mosquitos are going to come in and eat me alive later on.

I don’t mind living in cheap, nasty backpacker places and hostels. The way I look at it is, if I can put up with a £5 room instead of a £10 room, I’ve just doubled the amount of time I’ll be able to travel and not have to go home. Sure, I’ll be bitten to death by mosquitos and bed bugs in some places. Yeah, I’ll stand on the odd cockroach on the way to the toilet too, have to share the room and bathroom with other strangers and one or two might even nick some of my stuff too. But as long as I’m still travelling, that’s all I care about. Just don’t nick my passport or credit cards!

For some reason, I just can’t sleep this night. It is hot, but I’ve slept through worse. The only thing I can think of is that my brain is still trying to digest the events of the last few days. Miss Chiapas ….. machine guns …… drugs ….false passports…. burned out aircraft. And as I lie there, wide awake, I notice the shadow of a man outside my room silhouetted on my curtain. Looks like he can’t sleep either as he paces up and down the metal balcony outside, taking deep drags of his cigarette and blowing it out. I’m awake for at least another two or three of his cigarettes before I eventually nod off.

Sometime later my eyes open and I look up at the ceiling. I recall where I am and what I’m doing then close my eyes again. I can’t have been asleep that long as I can still hear the man outside my room exhaling heavily as he smokes. He must be in a right state, his loud breathing seems to be getting worse and worse, and for some strange reason, he seems to be hanging around right outside my window. Every 20 seconds or so I would hear a loud exhale, clear as anything, almost like he’s in my room. This went on for another half an hour or so and it was waiting for the next exhale that something happened which changed the whole situation quite dramatically. Instead of an ‘aaaaaaaahhhhh’ exhale I got a ‘ssssssssssssssss’!!!!

My eyes burst open, my senses suddenly on full alert. I bolt up in bed and with the next ‘sssssssssss’ my eyes go in the direction of where the noise is coming from. My room is dark, but I can see from the lamp outside that there seems to be something hanging through one of the big air holes above the window. I lean over towards the bedside table and turn on the light only to see a fucking huuuuuge snake three quarters of the way into my room, looking straight at me, hissing. It’s clear that since waking up half an hour ago or so I have actually been listening to a snake breathing in my room, NOT some guy outside my room smoking!

This thing looks really pissed off and the only positive thing I can think of at this moment is that I can at least make it to the door without him getting at me. At least I think so, it’s hard to tell how long this thing is, it looks enormous. So I throw my jeans on and make a run for it out the door and down the steps to reception.

At this point on the trip, my Spanish is terrible at best, but with various gesticulations and improvised snake impressions, I just about explain the situation to a security guard at the front gate who comes to my aid.

He could speak about as much English as I could Spanish, but I did understand the word ‘peligroso’, so I knew our slimy little intruder was ‘dangerous’. That’s all I needed to know really.

Now in safety, I start to see the funny side of all this and grab my video camera and record the guard as he arms himself against this, for all I know deadly snake, with a yard brush and a bit of carpet wrapped around his other arm for protection, like a poorly equipped Mexican knight.

After struggling for about half an hour, the guard had managed to push the snake out of the air block and had grabbed it by its head. Lifting it up to show me before bagging it, it must have been a good 3 to 4 metres long and thick as your leg at its widest.

Had I not woken up, chances are the snake would have probably slithered it’s way into my bed and warmed itself up next to me. The thought of waking up the next morning, looking under the covers to find that thing looking up at me would have probably given me a heart attack before it had needed to bite me, but in hindsight it just makes me giggle.

Next morning I wake up a little bleary-eyed and tired, but mostly grateful for not being snake fodder the night before. I make it over the border into Guatemala as soon as the gates open and spend the next two days mostly talking with my hands to various bus drivers who clearly don’t understand a word of English. I eventually find my way to the volcanoes and temples I’d been told about and boy was it all worth it!

I’ve learned a couple of valuable lessons here. Firstly, if I’m going to continue my way south through Central and South America, I’d better start learning some Spanish; no-one speaks any English the further I get off the beaten track. And secondly, I can now tell the subtle difference between some bloke smoking a cigarette and a big fucking snake that wants to eat me alive ?