Honduras and Belize.

Forests of Caribbean Pine, fields of maize, pastures, and small villages mark the hills before the comic opera border post at Ciudad Cuahetemoc where Mexico ends and Guatemala begins. A dollar is payable as the entrance tax for pedestrians and then another dollar has to be paid to the man in the customs hut who issues you with a receipt but does not trouble to inspect the luggage.

A decrepit bus may be waiting; in our case it was having its wheels painted as we waited.

The landscape takes on a more exaggerated form as you enter Guatemala, the steep congested nature of the mountains resembling those in Chinese watercolour paintings. The road follows a ravine around the southern flanks of the Alto Cuchumatanes which reach up to over 13,000 feet above sea level.

Small patches of banana, coffee and peppers cling to impossible slopes.

The first town in these mountains is Huehuetenango which lies at over 6,000 feet surrounded by cattle farming country. A soldier with a sub-machine gun stood in the entrance to the Banco del Agro as I changed a travellers cheque at 7.45 p.m. on a Friday evening. A little while later we were tucking into a hearty meal of soup, grilled beef, potatoes and onions, stuffed chili pepper, fresh strawberry cake, coffee, and two beers that cost only four dollars fifty cents at Restaurante El Jardin, a simple place with no glass in the windows but friendly service.

Close by in the hills of the northeast the Ixil triangle saw some of the worst violence of recent decades when government forces killed thousands of Indians in a counter-insurgency campaign that herded the survivors into fortified villages more easily controlled by the military. Guatemala is a country of brilliant light and dreadful darkness; the struggles of the Indian majority against the encroachments of the white and mestizo Ladino minority are now nearly five centuries old.

In a village in these highlands a Quiche-Maya girl named Rigoberta Menchu Tum was born at the end of the 1950s. Her father was a local community leader. The family used to travel to the Pacific lowlands to work on the plantations.

There, one of Rigoberta's brothers died from pesticide intoxication from working in the cotton fields. The Ladino owners sprayed the fields by plane as the Indians worked. Another brother died from malnutrition,and a best friend also later died from pesticide poisoning. Following a long and expensive legal struggle with neighbouring Ladinos over property rights her father was imprisoned, released then kidnapped and tortured by the same opponents. His activities in peasant unions led to a second imprisonment after which he went underground. In September, 1979 the army kidnapped another brother who was then sexually tortured, had skin flayed from his face, was paraded before relatives in the village, then doused with gasoline and burnt alive. Her father, other Indians, and some sympathetic Ladinos occupied the Spanish Embassy in Guatemalan City to protest these atrocities. The Spanish Ambassador advised the military of the peaceful nature of the protest. The military ignored this and burnt the embassy to the ground killing all but one of the occupants. Spain broke off diplomatic relations.

In April, 1980 Rigoberta's mother was kidnapped, tortured and killed after which Rigoberta went into hiding before going into exile. In 1992 she was awarded the Nobel peace prize for her efforts to secure human rights for her fellow Maya. She dedicated the prize to all the indigenous Indian peoples of the Americas. Her autobiography I, Rigoberta should perhaps be required reading for anyone talking about human rights in an oasis like Bermuda.

Further down the Panamerican Highway, a branch road to the north takes you to the market town of Chichecastenango in the centre of the Quiche highlands. On Thursdays and Sundays the local Maya come in from the hills to sell their rainbow-coloured textiles around the market, attend the churchesand participate in the mime and dance below the steps of Santo Tomas. It is a small clustered town of cobbled streets lined by single-storey whitewashed buildings with terracotta tiled roofs. The surrounding hills are clad in pinewoods, incense flows out of Santo Tomas, whilst down the street hymns are sung in a Methodist Maya chapel with the same gusto as in a Welsh valley.

Across the Panamerican Highway to the south, a collectivo bus that may be subject to running repairs as you travel and almost certainly will be overflowing with passengers goes as far as Solola from which another bus runs down to Panajachel on lake Atitlan. If you are not too heavily loaded it is better to walk and enjoy the spectacular views of the lake and surrounding volcanoes at a leisurely pace. The lake surface lies at 5,000 feet, the volcanoes sweeping up to 11,500 feet. It has been a favourite gathering ground for travellers for a number of years, restaurants, bungalow guest houses, and souvenir stalls outnumbering private houses and earning it the nickname of "Gringotenango.'' Further east is the old colonial capital of Antigua de Guatemala, an atmospheric collection of churches, university and municipal buildings dating back to the 16th century, some ruined, some restored. In the year 1773 a major earthquake shattered the city after which the site of the capital was moved to the modern Guatemala City. The neighbouring volcanoes reach nearly 13,000 feet and loom over the town and its many language schools. There are atmospheric all-day cafes like Dona Luisa's and restaurants such as the Mistral where all is relaxed sophistication. There have, however, been some violent robberies in the streets in recent years, and after a walk on the slopes of the Agua volcano it was more than a little disturbing to read a handwritten notice in the Casa Andinista bookshop of a gunpoint robbery and rape on the Pacayo volcano earlier that season.

Guatemala City is an unattractive, sprawling metropolis of 1,500,000 inhabitants that has been hit by earthquakes twice this century, but it is the place to catch a plane or the bus to the far north and the jungles of El Peten. The bus journey takes anything from 15 to 30 hours and costs about 12 dollars whereas the plane takes less than an hour and costs about 70 dollars.

The destination of Flores is on an island in Lake Peten and is the base of visits to the ruins of Tikal. The city of Tikal reached its zenith in the late 7th and early 8th centuries A.D. under Ah Cacau, Lord Chocolate, who ruled from 682 until about 720 when his son Yax Kin succeeded him, ruling until his death in 768. The temples of Tikal soar 180 feet above the jungle floor and are the tallest structures in the pre-Colombian Americas. The surrounding forest is the home of howler monkeys, toucan, foxes, coatimundi and wild turkey, all of which may be seen on a visit of a few hours. Whilst the central core of Tikal covers some six square miles and its estimated 3,000 buildings are impressive enough, the total extent of the city in its early 8th century heyday was close to 25 square miles with a population of 100,000. In Europe at this time only Moorish Cordoba and Christian Constantinople were larger.

Flores has a reasonable selection of accommodations, most with pleasant views over the surrounding lake. The water level has risen in recent years and engulfed some of the lower streets. The very helpful owner of the Hotel Peten who also arranges tours and foreign exchange will direct you to other accommodations if his hotel is full. Around the corner, the proprietor of El Faisan restaurant provides good food at reasonable prices in a relaxing atmosphere that is part-Guatemalan, part-Western bistro. A dinner of chicken, vegetables, spaghetti, onion soup, two beers and a coffee costs about five dollars.

At 5 a.m., a minibus service departs for Belize City and Chetumal in Mexico.

We crossed into Belize after two hours of dirt road and were at once on a smooth asphalt highway and in a very different culture. This English-speaking enclave was founded by 17th century privateers and wood-cutters and only finally recognised by the Guatemalan regime in 1991. Its modern population of 200,000 is an extraordinary mixture of the indigenous Maya, West Indian Creole, Black Garifuna Carib, Chinese, Salvadorean mestizo, north European Mennonite and North American. Comparedwith the distinctly dubious Guatemalan military, the British colonial infrastructure of a stable democracy, unarmed police force and law courts in a quaintly Caribbean setting is very reassuring and economic development is at a correspondingly higher level. Drugs and street crime are the main clouds on this horizon. Eco-tourism is the boom industry here with destinations such as the jaguar sanctuary at Cockscomb Basin, the baboon reserve at Bermudian Landing and, immediately offshore, the greatest coral reef system in the Americas where the opportunities for scuba diving are almost unlimited. There are also ancient Mayan ruins such as Altun Ha and Lamanai to divert the visitor. If you do not decide to linger on the cayes and out-islands of Belize you can travel on to Honduras and find similar retreats on its Bay Islands which are a continuation of the same barrier reef system. A boat crosses the intervening Gulf of Honduras, but most will opt for one of the regular afternoon flights to San Pedro Sula, the boom city of the Honduran west.

In spite of this buoyancy the relative poverty of the country soon becomes apparent; a dead horse lay on the roadside verge between the airport and town.

That evening rats scuttled between the trees in the restaurant garden.

Honduras is the original `Banana Republic', much of its economic life having been dominated by the United Fruit Company of Boston which became known locally as the octopus or El Pulpo.

There have been more than 300 rebellions, civil wars and government changes since independence in 1821. In spite of US economic control the country hovers above bottom place in the PanAmerica mainland league with Bolivia and Nicaragua.

For those coming by bus from Guatemala it is a rather slow and tortuous journey through the mountains on the border but the reward of the Mayan ruins of Copan awaits just inside Honduras. It is a much smaller site than Tikal but the quality of the carving, the stella columns and the Jaguar staircase all set in a verdant valley next to a small quiet village with one tourist inn and several simple guest houses make it a charming destination worth the hours on the road to get there. A trio of scarlet macaws and a tame spider monkey called Pancho greet you at the entrance gate to the ruins. The surrounding agriculture is distinguished by tobacco fields and drying sheds. The valley is sunk in a deep calm.

The main road to the capital of Teguicigalpa climbs from the plains around Sula into hills and forests, those close to Lago Yojoa being home to jaguar and puma. Further on, the old colonial capital of Comayagua dates back to 1537 and has a number of interesting churches and shaded plazas. It is a peaceful and untouristed place.

Tegucigalpa sprawls across a bowl in the mountains, a jumble of old traffic-choked streets and tree-lined boulevards connecting modern suburbs and shanties to the city centre above the river Choluteca. There is noticeable air pollution from the traffic, and establishments such as Cafe y Libreria Paradisco, an old European style coffee house and Al Natural's garden patio next to the cathedral provide welcome relief from the streets. The main news in the papers apart from an approaching election was of the first rumblings of the incipient banana war between Latin American producers and the European Community. Some distant politicians in Brussels were in the process of reducing the quota for imports of cheap Latin American fruit by 20 percent in order to protect the more expensive produce of the Caribbean islands. It seemed unlikely that anyone had bothered to consult the European consumer, let alone the Latin American farmers. Had anyone considered opening up new markets in tropical fruit-starved eastern Europe and thereby avoiding this disruption to livelihoods and international relations? It seemed unlikely; the more I travel the less faith I have in the competence of national politicians to rise above their own narrow interests.

At the popular and raucous Terraza Don Pepe's, a satisfying evening meal of home-made onion soup with egg, grilled beefsteak with vegetables, a litre of beer and a coffee will cost just four dollars and fifty cents. A five-year old girl appeared towards the end of the meal, dusky in her street-hardened scruffiness, but determined and armed with a plastic collection bag. She made it clear that she wanted any left-overs from the meal and scooped the fewremains of vegetable rice and bones into her bag before approaching the next table. How many family members was she food gatherer for, I wondered? One of the roads to the Nicaraguan frontier goes to Danli and El Paraiso, pleasantly high and cool small towns in scentedly pine-clad mountains where coffee, tobacco, and beef cattle are the main crops. It is as well to stay there before proceeding to the border at Los Manos which is very much a do-it-yourself affair. You get stamped out of Honduras, walk past a flimsy barrier, a dented Sandinista placard, and another shack or two, and get stamped into Nicaragua. Then you discover that the only facility for changing money is that clutch of local money changers back in Honduras. You walk back to explain the situation to an unsurprised border guard, find one of the money-changers and buy a supply of Nicaraguan Cordobas. No one is bothered by this backtracking. The next bus does not leave for another hour, the sun is warm, the surrounding hills overhanging with woods splashed by the occasional tree in brilliant yellow bloom. A coffee helps while away the time watching a German, a Japanese, two Italians and a Canadian traveller having to make the same return trip to Honduras to buy currency.

The battered yellow bus that took us as far as Ocotal, the first town, was an appropriate opening statement about the present wretchedness of Nicaragua. The bus had been rejected by an American school district back in the 1970s, survived the revolution against the Somoza dictatorship and the ensuing civil war between the Sandinistas and Ronald Reagan's Contras, to limp into the 1990s unpainted, barely serviced and close to breakdown. Ten years ago this country of 3.5 million people was supposedly a threat to world peace, today it seems to have been forgotten by the regional superpower and left to try to haul itself out of post-civil war bankruptcy. On the bus from Esteli, by this time in much drier greyer country, a Salvadorean itinerant preacher was telling me of his mission and the difficulties of life and of the Government in a state with no money. A German traveller was talking about his visit to a northern town where the Re-Contras were again causing problems and a number of women and children had recently been killed.

The capital Managua had its centre destroyed by earthquake and civil war and has so few street names that addresses are described by referent to landmarks.

I decided to try to drive to Leon. The bus journey there was pure third world theatre, the vehicle breaking down several times, stopping on one or two social visits to outlying relatives of the driver; the radio seemed to have more power than the engine. But we all survived in good spirits and reached Leon at 8 o'clock in the evening.

The old city centre was full with promenading youth. Pro-Sandinista slogans and murals attested to the liberal traditions of Leon, but the colonial facades and strolling crowds could not obscure the poverty. At La Cueva del Leon, a cavernous and popular eating place, a sad-faced urchin approached the supper table. I bought a bag of biscuits to have with coffee. The urchin broke down in floods of tears, telling me through the sobs that he had lost all the day's earnings. The waitress indicated that this was just a story but it was difficult not to believe in some of what the urchin said. The distress seemed very real. On the way back to the sanctuary of the Hotel Europa I was detained by the harangue of a committed Sandinista lamenting the recent setbacks of his country and loss of friends and relative sin the civil war. Without apparent concern for her unstinting support for Ronald Reagan he did make a point of telling me how brave he thought Senora Thatcher and British soldiers were.

Perhaps this was in part historical hangover from the days when the Royal Navy controlled the Caribbean and carried out raids on the Spanish mainland.

The following morning, after a leisurely breakfast in the garden of the hotel, I went to look at the huge cathedral. This dates from the 18th century mistake of a papal envoy who confused Leon with a grander destination in the Viceroyalty of Peru. It seemed as empty of life as a museum. There was more life in the square around the statue of Nicaragua's literary giant Ruben Dario. He lived here early this century. But it was getting hot and the dustiness of the streets added to the forlorn feeling of general poverty. It was time to move on again.

We skirted the suburbs of Managua by taxi as the bus from Leon stoppedon one side of the city, the bus to Masaya departing from the other; there was nothing very revolutionary about these suburbs just a rather disorganised sprawl of American ribbon development with added tropical untidiness. At Masaya there is a large local craft market which provides a rare opportunity to purchase souvenir straw work, pottery, hammocks and carved wooden items. At the edge of Masaya is an opaque grey-green crater lake under a small volcano.

The surrounding country is dry and scrubby, dust is everywhere and signs warn would-be bathers that cholera is a threat. An old man asked me how I liked Nicaragua. I told him that I found the people friendly but that the poverty was troubling. He hoped it would be better in a hundred years. Perhaps this is the fatalism that comes after 50 years of dictatorship and a decade of revolution and civil wars compounded by natural disasters that have included earthquake, volcanic eruption and most recently, tidal wave.

Granada, on the shores of the great lake of Nicaragua, was historically the stronghold of the conservative faction. It was once wealthy enough to attract attacks by British and French pirates sailing up the San Juan river from the Caribbean and then across the lake. This great lake is nearly 100 miles long and 30 wide and home to freshwater shark. Volcanoes dominate the islands offshore. Vultures hang in the sky as the midday sun drives the inhabitants indoors for siesta. The Alhambra hotel had recently been closed as a penalty for tax evasion. Next door, the bar El Otro provided a cool refuge to linger over a large grenadilla juice under a high old ceiling with lazy fans. Outside in the main square a sign advised that the Norwegian government was providing assistance for the restoration of the colonial city centre. A German group had nearly completed the refurbishment of a patrician villa. At least there were some signs of renewal here.

At Rivas the last bus had already gone to the frontier but a taxi was waiting and the drive to Penas Blancas with views of the lake and of the island of Ometepe and its twin volcanoes was a pleasant one. The country gets lusher as you approach Costa Rico as if in anticipation of the greater prosperity across the border. It was a three mile walk from Nicaraguan customs to Costa Rican immigration but the evening was soft and the surrounding pasturelands reassuring. The scale and modernity of the buildings at the Costa Rican border advertised the relative wealth of Guanacaste province where Pacific beach tourism and beef cattle have fuelled economic growth last seen in Nicaragua decades ago. This frontier divides bullock cart-drawn agriculture and beggar children from personal fax machines and surfing culture. In La Cruz, a grilled fish supper at the Mirador restaurant, looking out toward the night-black Pacific and the silhouette of a mountainous promontory, confirmed the feeling of escape from poverty. That tearful urchin in Leon was now a whole world away, no doubt struggling through another day and night on the streets ...

Simon Farmer is an associate lawyer with Appleby, Spurling and Kempe.

Left, Textiles at the Chichecastenango market, Guatemala. Top, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. Above, Mayan stela column, Copan, depicting royal life, circa seventh century AD.

Top, Mayan temple, Tikal, Guatemala. Above, Sixteenth century Spanish colonial church, Comayagua, Honduras. Right, On the road to market, Chichecastenango, Guatemala.

RG MAGAZINE JUNE 1993