It would appear to be a common theme that my stories seem to involve me either getting laid or nearly dying. Two extremes you’d have to say. And unfortunately on balance I’d have to say there appears to be a lot more death going on than sex.

Anyway, I’m 4 months into my mission to get from Pole to Pole, or as near as I can do anyway; Alaska to Tierra Del Fuego. I spent two crazy, crazy months in Mexico on a daily diet of tequila, junk food and very little sleep, so I’m now somewhat relieved to have a few weeks of calm to try and get my strength back.

I’ve travelled through Guatemala on my own passing hippy hangouts, steaming volcanoes and pyramids in the jungle. It hasn’t been easy either, as generally speaking hardly anyone here speaks English and my Spanish is terrible at best. I’m currently in Flores in the north east of the country. It’s a stopping point to see the Mayan temples of Tikal and I’ve just met up with a few new backpacker friends at the hostel; a couple from Germany, Karl and Silke, and an American guy travelling on his own, Brian. Karl is an absolute hoot. He looks like a cross between a 70’s porn star and a Hell’s Angel. When I asked him what he did for a living he tells me he’s made most of his money in life by selling drugs to U.S. soldiers stationed at an army base near his home town in Germany. And now he’s on a mission round Central America with his lovely girlfriend, getting seemingly high as a kite on grass from dusk till dawn. And Brian is a cool guy on a 9 month journey south through Central and South America, like me, heading for Tierra Del Fuego at the southern tip.

The four of us are all now making our way further east towards the Belize border, so we decide to travel and have some fun together until we all eventually go our own directions. Over the border and after a long day on a bus we jump off at a town called San Ignacio and check into the first hostel we see. The owner tells us there’s a few fun things to do nearby so we all make a plan to stay a day there and check the place out before moving on.

We arrived in darkness the night before, so next morning when we go outside to the deck to have breakfast, we see for the first time just how beautiful this place is. It’s jungle scenery in all directions, there’s the sound of bird song everywhere, hummingbirds darting around the garden and a spectacular sunrise on the horizon.

As I sit on my wooden bench and eat my brekkie, we make a plan for the day and enjoy the view. I do remember looking down between my legs when I first sat down and wondered what something was that was sticking out from under the bench, but it just looked like a bit of plant stem or something like that so I ignored it. As we were getting up 30 minutes later or so I noticed that the thing that had been sticking out earlier was suddenly no longer there. Curiosity got the better of me so I bent down to see what it could have been only to see a huge six-eyed spider staring back at me. It must have presumably been one of his legs sticking out earlier. Now I am NOT a fan of spiders, not even little ones you find back in the Uk, nevermind hand-sized hairy ones with six eyes, so the thought of that having been between my legs during the whole of breakfast freaks me out a bit. I eventually pull myself together and go grab my video camera. When I return he’s crept out on top of the bench and I slowly bring the camera closer and closer to his beady little eyes. I was on the edge of how close I dared go when all of a sudden he flips round and starts hopping down the bench and then just jumps off the end into the grass and scuttles off. I recon you could have heard my scream in Mexico.

The hostel owner had said we need to find a man called David in the town who will take us all out for a fun day. Seemed like an odd bit of advice, just to walk into the village and start asking people if they’d seen David. Not exactly an uncommon name is it, but they assured us that’s all we needed to do. We sauntered up to the first person we saw in the village and feeling daft just said “Excuse me, do you know where David is”, expecting a confused look back from such a seemingly ridiculous question. They said immediately “yeeaaah man, he’s just up there on the left” pointing up the road. I had to giggle to myself, but a few yards up the road we eventually met David who said he’d take us out on a fun day of kayaking, caving and rock-jumping.

It was while we were kayaking down the river we passed two very European-looking backpacker ladies I seemed to recognise from somewhere. We all pulled over to the side of the river for a chat and indeed I had seen them a few days earlier in the jungle of Tikal and even a few days before that in Panajachel. They were from Holland and, like us, were both on the way to the coast and the Belize Cayes for some sea and sand. We said our goodbyes and hoped to see them in a few days time.

A couple of days later we found ourselves at the harbour in Belize City. It was never our plan to stay there at all as we’d heard or read somewhere that it wasn’t exactly the most beautiful city in the Americas, but if the harbour is anything to go by then I’m sure glad we didn’t stay. It was the middle of the day and I’ve never seen so many drunk and/or high people just hobbling around the place like zombies. And intimidating as fuck too, all the men here seem to be tall, stocky guys you wouldn’t want a beef with. One of my mates back home was in the British Paratroops and I remember him telling me that of all the truly terrible places around the world he’d been deployed, he thought Belize was the most dangerous. I mean if a Para thinks that then there’s got to be some truth to it. So no-one was more happy than us when the huge power-boat whisking us off to Caye Caulker untied its ropes and headed out to sea.

I think it took Karl about 20 minutes from arriving on the island to find someone he could buy some grass off and as soon as we checked into our hostel he immediately fired up the sort of joint that would kill a normal human being.

That night we went out to the bars in the main town of Caye Caulker. There was a real hippie feel to this place, very relaxed, laid back and I’m sure almost everyone there was a backpacker. What surprised me most though was how little tourists there were here. The bars were almost empty and apart from a handful of backpackers walking around, there was hardly anyone here. And this was the most popular of all the cayes.

Anyway, it didn’t detract from how beautiful and relaxed this place was. Karl had talked me into having a few tugs on his Bob Marley sized joint, so I just sat there in this open-air bar with a big smile on my face, listening in to conversations on the other side of the bar, owing to my new found grass-improved super-hearing. It was at this point the two Dutch girls walk in and sit down with us.

Trying my hardest not to look stoned, we all had a chat about what we’d been up to the last few days and enjoyed the chilled-out vibe of the bar. I metioned that we had an early start next day as we had booked a day trip out on the reef snorkelling, so after one more beer we retired for the evening and arranged to meet at the same place the next day.

And what a day that next day was too! I may be a bit afraid of the open sea, but I do enjoy snorkelling, especially when the water is so clear, and this it seems is one of the best places on the planet to go scubadiving, supposedly the 2nd largest barrier reef on the planet. The first place we stopped was to swim with stingrays. I’d never seen them before nevermind swim with them and feed them. It’s times like this where ignorance is bliss. Maybe if I’d have known the reason they were called stingrays is because they have arrow-like sharp spikes on their tail that can kill you, I’d have thought twice about getting so close to them. These were after all the very animals that killed Steve Irwin, the Australian zookeeper and tv presenter, who when he got too close was attacked and stabbed multiple times by one stingray, with the barbs on it’s tail piercing Steve’s heart and lungs. These can clearly be very dangerous creatures if not treated with absolute respect. Not knowing this at the time however meant I played with them for ages and let them flap all around me, totally unaware of how dangerous they can be. Probably a good thing really, as I may have never even got out of the boat had I known that.

Any hoo, next stop was a location where we could swim with sharks. They weren’t huge sharks, but they were about 7 or 8 feet long and when you’re watching them underwater with just the sound of your breathing you can’t help but think of Jaws. And to be fair, 8 foot of shark when you’re in their domain feels pretty intimidating. I was a bit more weary of these things than the stingrays and had asked before getting in just how dangerous they were. The captain just said to keep our fists clenched while we were in the water so the sharks don’t think our fingers are small fish. I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not so I kept my fists clenched the whole time and tried to keep my distance in general from them as they swam around us. While I was in the water there, I wondered why they kept swimming right up to me and just hanging around. It wasn’t until I checked my video camera later on I saw that while the captain was recording it for me, he was throwing bits of chump around me so the sharks would stay close. I was a bit on edge the whole time I was there to be honest, but what an experience. After an hour or so with the sharks I climbed back on deck and watched one of the other tourists get back on the boat with his hand pissing blood. I asked what had happened and he said he had forgotten to clench his fist for one moment when one of the sharks suddenly bit his hand. He said the teeth were like razors and just sliced through his skin like butter. Sharks can smell blood a million drops of water to one drop blood, so it was probably a good idea he got out of the water at that point for sure.

What a fantastic day on the sea. Swimming with stingrays and sharks will stick with me for years and years. The rest of my life no doubt. And back at the hostel, Karl fired up another super-sized joint and we headed back to the bar from the previous night to meet the Dutch girls.

At some point I remember talking with one of the girls saying I thought hairy legs on a girl was a real turn-off and jokingly bent down to lift up one of her legs, only to find what could be described as Sasquatch’s hairy sister’s leg staring back at me. Oops. With her just giving me an ice-cold stare I thought, oh well, I’ve blown it with this Dutch girl.

Not long after this I think Karl realised that even he’d smoked more than he should have and poor Silke had to walk him back to the hostel, zig-zagging the whole way. Brian, the two Dutch girls and I decided we’d buy a bottle of whisky (fuck knows why, I hate the stuff) and go find somewhere quiet to have a drink. At this point I thought great, Brian, you work on the Dutch girl I had clearly just deeply offended, lets call her Chewbacca, and I’ll take the other one. In wingman terms this is known as diving on the grenade.

As we stroll along the beach, we take in just what a lovely, balmy evening it is. The kind of temperature you could wear a t-shirt and shorts all night and you’d never get cold. We’re right on the water’s edge, so every now and then you’d feel a lovely gentle breeze, just for a moment, that felt so lovely as it swept across your brow. Walking along the beach-front looking for somewhere nice and quiet to have a drink, we saw a long jetty going out into the sea and thought perfect, let’s go sit right at the end. It must have been a good hundred yards long before we got to the end of it, with just the sound of water lapping against the jetty and the odd sound of boat sails flapping against the mast in the breeze. The bright lights and sounds of the bars and clubs are long in the distance and out of sight and earshot. We’ve picked a cracking spot, there’s no-one around as far as the eye can see.

The four of us sit there and start sipping away on our bottle of whisky, passing it around as we share stories from our individual adventures that have brought us all together to be sitting right here, right now. Brian is trying his hardest to impress Chewbacca and I’m now concentrating on the one that clearly brought a razor with her on this trip, Helena. And it’s going well too. I’m even getting signals from her. She occasionally leans against me, holds my hand every now and then and is even giving me the odd cheeky little smile that I know means she’s interested.

By now I’m thinking if I carry on drinking slugs of neat whisky I’m not going to be able to do anything other than fall over and go to sleep. So at every opportunity I try and signal to Brian that he should maybe go off somewhere with his girl to leave me and Helena alone. It looks more and more obvious that Chewbacca isn’t that interested in him unfortunately, but he eventually sees that my girl is pretty much throwing herself on me and asks Chewbacca if she would like an escort back to her hostel. She turns to Helena and says something in Dutch which was clearly to the effect of ‘Are you coming’ to which she grabs my hand and replies something suggesting she’s not going anywhere. Brian gives me a cheeky smile and a wink and I say I’ll see him back at the hostel shortly. Brian and I are actually sharing a room here so if anything is going to happen then it’s going to have to happen elsewhere.

I chat with Helena and we slowly see her friend and Brian disappear into the darkness down the jetty. Finally we’re alone. She’s lovely. Long blonde hair, that lovely Dutch accent and a deep golden-brown suntan from a few weeks travelling in the Central American sun. The scene is set, it’s a beautiful evening, it’s just the two of us, sitting on the edge of a jetty, sipping whisky and feeling like we couldn’t be any further from our normal lives back home. So happy. So free.

I start to wonder whether I should make a move or not and also where I should do it. Thinking all the pressure is on me to make the first move, Helena suddenly takes a big slug of whisky, sits up on her knees and in one swift movement grabs the bottom of her one-piece white cotton loose dress and just pulls it up over head and sits there proud, completely naked with nothing on but a smile. Wow….. I like her style. Those Europeans are so uninhibited by sex and nudity compared to us reserved Brits. Without a care in the world, she starts ripping my clothes off and we spend the next half hour shagging on the jetty to the sound of her swearing her head off in Dutch and not a single thought as to whether anyone else was coming or if anyone could see us. With just the stars above, the sound of the lapping waves and the odd scream of “JEZUS CHRISTUS” …… it was the perfect end to a perfect day.

Thank you God!

Putting our clothes back on we started walking back down the jetty and the VERY FIRST boat we walk past ……. the very first ….. there’s a man standing there on his deck ……. and in a strong Jamaican accent he says “You people have a great evening now, you hear me”, smiling his head off.

He must have seen and heard everything…………………FFS.

Oh well ….. we’re clearly drunk enough to not really care about the free sex show we’ve just put on for this bloke as we start to see the funny side of what’s just happened and so burst into laughter. The cute little Dutch girl wasn’t content there though, nooooo. She demands seconds, but back in my room, which poor old Brian wasn’t exactly over the moon about, but hey-ho, shit like this doesn’t exactly happen every day does it? So when life chucks opportunities like this at you, you’ve got to grab them with both hands. And anyway, why the hell don’t I meet ‘sweet’ girls like this more often?!

Next day, with my new appreciation of Holland, we all head off in different directions. Karl and Silke head north up into Mexico where a week or so later their hire car is broken into and they lose all their belongings and souvenirs before having to arrange new passports and fly home. Brian’s fortunes on the other hand were somewhat better, he carries on south into South America where he eventually meets a girl he, a few years later, ends up marrying. I fly from Belize City to Costa Rica to meet up with a Canadian girl I had just met a few days earlier in Guatemala. Like me she was heading to the Costa Rican west coast to see the giant leather-back turtles, so we had swapped details and arranged to meet there in the hope of seeing them laying eggs on the beach.

With any luck she’ll be sitting there waiting with a bottle of whisky in hand when I arrive. Hope she’s shaved her legs too.

I’m not sure what happened to the Dutch girls, I never bumped into them again and years later I’ve never been able to find Helena through Google or Facebook as I didn’t have her surname. I get plenty of hits for Chewbacca though.

Death 17 – 3 Sex