For Cookies and Cricket

I had the feeling I was already behind schedule before I ever left Barranquilla. I didn’t realize yet how badly I was underestimating the road home. For past last three weeks my ass has been on a bus, boat, or where I can find them, an exercise bike--I was advised to get some training in before biking the Natchez Trace--when not sweating its way through the jungle.

I count just under 100 hours in motion. Granted, just about every first year Wall Street analyst I knew boasted about working 100 hours a week, back when they still had jobs. So maybe there is time, but I’ve been spending those hours watching the stars, or hitting the nearest Salsa bar to practice my Spanish. I've had less computer time than I'd like, and I now find myself carrying my notebook by hand apart from my bags. If I get robbed, I have no backup for those pages. Maybe it wouldn't matter, losing the real details I'd just make up others. The stories tend to get better with time anyway.



I could have spent a month alone on the way to Panama. 400 of the most pristine islands on earth sit off the Panamanian Caribbean Coast, and the Kuna Yalu who govern the area prefer to cram themselves onto less than 50 of the islands, leaving the rest uninhabited. I leave them for another trip. As I do Costa Rica.

Wait, that last part is not true. I could live a happy life without ever visiting Costa Rica again. Hard to explain how a country with beautiful nature, super-green energy policy, and miles of gorgeous coast line could be so far down my list of top countries. I blame it on the gringo real estate bonanza. Maybe the Depression up north has washed some of the undesirables away, did not have time to confirm, though my suspicion is that it will take years for the locals to forget the invasion.

Central America looks so tiny on the map. 42 hours busing the Panamericana from Panama and I would have thought I'd be much further along than El Salvador. Five countries in just under ten days is the kind of all-American blitz travel I vowed to never do again after my first experience with a Euro rail pass. It's not so much that it's exhausting as that such speed necessitates closing doors to opportunities along the way. Goodness gracious, I have a good life when my sole complaint of the year is that I don’t have enough time to enjoy my travels!

I did make my one mandatory site seeing visit to a forgotten graveyard outside a passed over town in Southern Nicaragua. I had forgotten to bring along the old musters with clues as to which gringos might have been buried on the grown over hill. I'll read the names when I get home and then write it up, I don't think they will mind, I might have been the first person to knowingly visit them in years, so they can wait a few more weeks for the publicity.

Without a few cookies on the trail I might have said to hell with it and holed up in one of the mountain towns I didn't have time for. But I'm a sports fan, and a jingoist--two nations could be playing cricket and I'd take an interest.

This is not hyperbole. When procrastinating over my master’s thesis, what still may be the shortest paper ever to receive honors in Global History at LSE, I took a committed interest in a five day Test Match between England and the West Indies. I was writing about Jamaica so it didn't seem to be that off topic, I mean, I was watching Jamaicans who may have been ancestors of the 17th century slaves I was writing about. That week five years ago I could have explained the rules and terminology of cricket to you, and I could have offered an opinion on each team’s five day strategy. I watched every over of the first four, shouting the updates to my amused English housemates who were busy in the garden. I made Turkish coffee for tea time.

Alas, it wasn’t much of a Test. England didn't need the fifth day to retire the Windies side. Sometime between then and the close of the Olympics, the paper got written, a small miracle.

This is all to say that when two nations compete mock-warfare, I am interested. In a sport I actually care about, when I hold a passport from one of the nations mock-warring, it is ON.

The carrot that got me here ahead of schedule is USA versus El Salvador this Saturday in a qualifying match for the World Cup.

El Salvador just elected a president from the FMLN, a former Communist guerrilla outfit whose campaign was financed by Hugo Chavez, ending 20 years of conservative rule, and all anyone can talk about is how La Seleccion (national team) will do against Tio Sam. It is bad manners to talk politics with strangers, but even the leftists marching around with bullhorns outside the National University gave me their opinion about the match. I was surprised the young Communists had an opinion on the game as they looked like the kind of purists who might have shunned the consumption of mass opiates. Not one of them predicted victory, so at least their pessimism was in character.


The press here believes US soccer has arrived to elite status thanks to a combination of excellent player development, a competent domestic league, and a coherent, Teutonic style of ball control and balanced attack. It's partly hype to build up the home side's status as underdog, but it's also a reflection of the growing consensus that the USA, not Mexico, is now the reigning hegemon of CONCACAF.

I asked the receptionist at my guesthouse the safest section of the stadium to view the match. She told me to watch it on TV in the hotel. I opted instead for the expensive seats, and a twelve dollar El Salvador knock-off jersey. After a walk in the jungle what's a little international rivalry amongst rich strangers.

The next carrot is on Mexico's Caribbean coast late next week. Until then, I've got some chants to learn and a mustache to grow.

I am halfway home.

More on that graveyard, and how to cross the Darien Gap in a manner that is not a creative endeavor in suicide, to follow. I promise.