We came to Cabanas. Here were coconut trees. A woman with a pile of coconuts sliced them open with a machete and passed them into the train - five cents. The passengers drank the coconut water and threw the rest away. Pigs tried to stick their snouts into the coconuts and eat the flesh. But the woman had swiped deftly at the coconuts - three cuts and it became a drinking vesseclass="underline" the pigs could not get their snouts inside. They whined and chomped the husks.
We were a long time at Cabanas. It was a wooden station, and I supposed that the village was somewhere on the other side of the sand-dune. In Central America, the train station always seemed to be at the edge of town, not in the centre. The temperature in the train rose, and it seemed like an oven now. The rubbish-pile of coconuts had brought out the flies; people snored. I saw some workmen fussing beside the engine and tried to get out.
'Is this your station?' It was a soldier, one of our armed guards.
'No,'I said.
'Get back then.' He pushed his rifle at me.
I hurried to my seat.
It might be here, I thought. Perhaps this is the end of the line.
An old man began to shout. He was mocking the place. I think the heat had got to him.
'Cabanas! That is a laugh! Know what cabanas are? They are little huts - you find them near hotels and refreshment stands. Sometimes near the beach.'
The passengers were silent, but the man needed no encouragement.
'Cabanas are pretty and pleasant. You sit there and have nice cool drinks. That is what they call them - cabanas. And they call this filthy place Cabanas!'
Hearing this shout, the Indian woman in the next seat opened one eye, but seeing no more than a red-faced man wiping sweat out of his sombrero with a hanky she shut her eye.
'This is not Cabanas- it should have another name.'
The alarm had passed. He was out of breath and gasping.
'I have seen the real cabanas. They are not like this at all.'
No one cared, really. But I thought it was interesting that even these toothless farmers and slumbering Indians found this place laughable. The desolation was obvious to them, and they knew the train was junk. After this, I did not indulge in any charitable self-censorship of my thoughts. Another thing, and more curious, was the fact that people who were not disposed to conversation had no inhibitions about standing up and shouting mad speeches. The man was quiet when the train started again.
The hamlet of Anton Bram was so small its name was not shown on the ticket.
'Anton Bram!' It was the man behind me - hooting.
'What a silly name!' It was his wife.
The passengers smiled. But why hadn't they laughed at Progreso?
We entered another dead valley, and like the first, all the colour had been burned away by the sun. It was flatter than the previous one, and seemed to me much hotter. The vegetation was weird. Here, cactuses grew as tall as elms and were the same shape. The smaller real trees had died and with their bark missing had the paleness of human skin. There were spurges, plants of the genus euphorbia, which were used by some people for medicinal purposes; and other cactuses, with cylindrical limbs, the size of apple trees. The cactus is tenacious. After the shrubs with less complicated root-systems and more munchable leaves have died or been grazed into extinction, the cactus remains, its spines keeping animals away, its fine white hairs shading its tough hide and preventing evaporation. And, under the sky of clearest blue, even more fantastic plants - dog tails sprouting in clusters - hairy brown tubes, prickly pear cactuses, and sprawling nets of weed.
The train was going ten miles an hour, so it was possible to botanize here on the back pages of my Poe novel, and make some sense of the creeping confusion on the cracked nests of mudwasps. This business absorbed me until, two hours later, I saw a tractor, a shed, some wrecked houses and then a four-story structure of grey planks, with a porch on each floor: Railway Hotel.
We were in Zacapa.
It was a dusty station at the end of a dusty road and now, in the middle of the afternoon, suffocatingly hot. A group of people at the station barrier yelled at the train. I passed through and, approaching the hotel - it was a ghostly, comfortless place - heard the racket of a generator and saw some men digging near the hotel. The ground was hardened clay: they needed a pneumatic drill to penetrate it. There would be no rest in that hotel. What I could see of the town did not persuade me to linger: cracked huts, a yellow church steeple, more cactuses. So this was Zacapa. The woman in Guatemala City had not exaggerated. It seemed a terrible place, as hot as any of the miserable villages on the railway line, if a bit larger.
I found the Station Manager's office. He had a fan, a calendar, a wooden filing cabinet, a spike of papers. The noise of the generator was loud even here, so I had to raise my voice.
'Excuse me,' I said. 'What time does the train leave for the border?'
'Which border are you crossing?'
It was not an idle question: we were nearer Honduras than El Salvador.
'I'm trying to get to Metapan, in El Salvador.'
'Yes, there is a train to Metapan in two days - on Wednesday. At six-thirty in the morning. Do you want a ticket?'
Two days here! I said, 'No, thank you.'
The train had pulled out of Zacapa and was now on its way north to Puerto Barrios. The station platform was empty, the dust still settling. I studied my Cook's Timetable and saw that if I crossed the border to Metapan or Santa Ana I could get a connection to San Salvador the next day. I decided to do this - the border was not very far, perhaps thirty miles.
A man was watching me. I went over to him and asked him whether there was a bus station in Zacapa.
'Where are you going?'
'El Salvador.'
Too bad. All the buses to El Salvador leave in the early morning.'
But he was smiling.
I said, 'I would like to go to Santa Ana.'
'I have a car,' he said. 'But petrol is very expensive.'
'1 will give you five dollars.'
'For ten I will take you to Anguiatu. That is the border.'
'Is it far?'
'Not very.'
As soon as we left Zacapa we were out of the desert. I could see green hills, rounder ones, with a river running through them. I talked to the man. His name was Sebastiano; he had no job - no one had a job in Guatemala, he said. He was from Zacapa. He hated Zacapa, but he had been to Guatemala City and he thought that was a lot worse.
''There is one thing I think I should tell you,' he said some time later, slowing down at a bend in the road. He drew over to the side and stopped, and smiled sheepishly. 'I have no driving license, and this car - it is not registered. No insurance either - if you do not have a registration what is the point of insurance?'
'Interesting,' I said. 'But why did you stop the car?'
'I cannot take you any farther. If I do, the policemen at the border will ask to see my licence and so forth. As I do not have one, they will arrest me and probably treat me badly. I cannot give them a bribe - I do not have any money.'
'You have ten dollars,' I said.
He laughed. 'That will pay for the petrol!'
'So what am I supposed to do?'
He reached across and opened the door. 'Walk,' he said.
'Is it far?'
'Not very.'
He drove away. I stood for a moment on this road at the edge of Guatemala, and then started walking. Not very far, he had said. It was a mile. There was no traffic. There were green trees here and singing birds. My suitcase was not heavy, so I found the hike rather pleasant.
The border was a shed. A boy in a sports shirt stamped my passport and demanded money. He asked me if I was carrying any drugs. I said no. What do I do now? I asked him. You go up the road, he said. There you will find another house. That is El Salvador.