Central America : The Rough Guide. Belize. Guatemala. El Salvador. Honduras. Nicaragua. Costa Rica. Panama

INTRODUCTION

Corrugated by mountains and studded by volcanoes, Central America reaches from Mexico towards South America like a hooked, tentative finger. Its geography – seven piecemeal nations stacked on top of each other in a narrowing isthmus – is in many ways its destiny: a distinct region caught between two larger realities. The archeological term used for the region is Mesoamerica (Middle America), and for millennia it has been just that: the meeting point of the landmasses, plants, animals and people of the giant continents to the north and the south.

This clash of tropical and temperate zones has created a startling, often surreal landscape in which dense, humid rainforests abound with the yelps of oropendola birds and the chattering of monkeys; somewhere inside the forest’s dark mesh, the antediluvian form of the tapir lumbers and the endangered jaguar steals quietly through cobalt shadows. Carpeting the eastern halves of Honduras and Nicaragua are the impenetrable swamp-jungles of Mosquitia, whose curlicued lagoons harbour mirror-surfaced mangroves where shellfish and manatees breed among the gnarled roots. Beaches, coves, cayes and island archipelagos hem the coral-laced coasts, while volcanoes – some active – form a chain of fire that stretches from Guatemala to Costa Rica.

Central America had, until recently, receded in the public consciousness, as the "news" (read: war and revolution) spotlight moved elsewhere; now, however, it’s experiencing something of a tourism renaissance. Ten or fifteen years ago, visitors to the region largely consisted of the college backpacker contingent and groups on socialist-minded "education" tours. Since the beginning of the 1990s, though, a wider variety of people, some with little knowledge of or interest in the region’s turbulent past, have come here to experience its startling natural beauty on the back of another kind of revolution – this time in tourism.

Perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, Central America seems to have been designed with the ecotourist in mind. Costa Rica draws nature-lovers by the plane-load with its impressive system of National Parks, while English-speaking Belize, for much of its history a forgotten fragment of the British Empire, has reinvented itself as a prime diving and snorkelling destination, thanks to its offshore national treasury: the second-longest barrier reef in the world. The best place to experience the region’s pre-Conquest culture is Guatemala, which has the strongest indigenous traditions, not to mention a stunning landscape of velvet volcanoes and amethyst lakes. Panamá and Honduras are just waking up to the potential – at least in tourism terms – of their rainforests, rugged mountain cloudforests, mangroves and beaches. Tourists still tend to avoid Nicaragua and El Salvador – a misguided manoeuvre, as neither is more dangerous for visitors than its neighbours, and despite considerable poverty, the people are welcoming and the basic tourist infrastructure good; plus, they too have the volcanoes, beaches and rainforests that draw travellers to their more popular neighbours.

Amidst all the hype about the region’s natural beauty, it’s easy to forget that this rugged, humid part of the world was home (along with Mexico and Peru) to the most sophisticated pre-Columbian cultures of the Americas. The splendid Maya civilization, with its diaphanous pyramids and neurotic pursuit of time-keeping, flourished in Guatemala and to a lesser extent in modern-day Belize, Honduras and El Salvador between the years of 300 and 900 AD (although the Maya have been in existence for over 4000 years). During this time, termed the Classic period, the region was made up of independent, and often mutually antagonistic city-states – Tikal in Guatemala, Copan in Honduras and El Salvador’s San Andres being three of the more prominent – which fought each other for prestige and economic dominance. As their civilization declined, the Maya became increasingly interested in blood-letting and the ritualizing of pain and death, while paradoxically setting their greatest minds the task of predicting the future through one of the most precise understandings of time in history. You can see shadows of their huge achievements in science and the arts by visiting the ruined cities and viewing their displays on calendrics, ceramics and the Maya’s wildly illustrative glyphic scripts.

In sharp contrast to the Maya, further south in lower Costa Rica and Panamá, peoples from the Chibcha group dominated. Thought to have come originally from Colombia, the Chibcha were largely agrarian, without the talent for urban planning or numerology obsession of the Maya, and have left little or nothing behind in the way of monuments or artefacts.

Central America was "discovered" by the Spanish on Christopher Columbus’s fourth and last voyage to the Americas in 1502–4. Columbus himself barely set foot in Central America, preferring to anchor offshore and write florid letters back home to his sovereign, packed with references to maidens and gold (of which the Spaniards unhappily discovered there was little). Nearly ten years later, an incredible sight met the eyes of Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, the first real conquistador of the region, who in 1513 slashed and clambered his way over the scaly mountain spine of Panamá to become the first European to set eyes on the American side of the Pacific Ocean.

Within a few years of Balboa’s thrilling sight, the Spanish had established Panamá City, in 1519; León, Nicaragua, followed in 1524; and in 1527, in Guatemala, they built their most important capital, the future colonial seat of the Empire, from which the region was administered. Still, Central America remained a backwater of the Spanish Empire in the New World: gold-poor, stuffed with venomous serpents, impenetrable jungles and often hostile natives. In human terms, the ensuing colonial period was characterized by waves of yeoman farmers emigrating from Spain, followed by waves of deaths of indigenous people from diseases to which they had no immunity. Slave labour was taken from Costa Rica and Nicaragua to work the mineral mines in Peru; in Guatemala the conquerors, led by the handsome blond adventurer with a taste for massacre, Pedro de Alvarado, set about a systematic, if drawn-out, destruction of the Maya peoples, who have, against all the odds, maintained their culture to this day, albeit in much reduced numbers.

Corrugated by mountains and studded by volcanoes, Central America reaches from Mexico towards South America like a hooked, tentative finger. Its geography - seven piecemeal nations stacked on top of each other in a narrowing isthmus - is in many ways its destiny: a distinct region caught between two larger realities. The archeological term used for the region is Mesoamerica (Middle America), and for millennia it has been just that: the meeting point of the landmasses, plants, animals and people of the giant continents to the north and the south. This clash of tropical and temperate zones has created a startling, often surreal landscape in which dense, humid rainforests abound with the yelps of oropendola birds and the chattering of monkeys; somewhere inside the forest9s dark mesh, the antediluvian form of the tapir lumbers and the endangered jaguar steals quietly through cobalt shadows. Carpeting the eastern halves of Honduras and Nicaragua are the impenetrable swamp-jungles of Mosquitia, whose curlicued lagoons harbour mirror-surfaced mangroves where shellfish and manatees breed among the gnarled roots. Beaches, coves, cayes and island archipelagos hem the coral-laced coasts, while volcanoes - some active - form a chain of fire that stretches from Guatemala to Costa Rica. Central America had, until recently, receded in the public consciousness, as the 3news2 (read: war and revolution) spotlight moved elsewhere; now, however, it9s experiencing something of a tourism renaissance. Ten or fifteen years ago, visitors to the region largely consisted of the college backpacker contingent and groups on socialist-minded 3education2 tours. Since the beginning of the 1990s, though, a wider variety of people, some with little knowledge of or interest in the region9s turbulent past, have come here to experience its startling natural beauty on the back of another kind of revolution - this time in tourism. Perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, Central America seems to have been designed with the ecotourist in mind. Costa Rica draws nature-lovers by the plane-load with its impressive system of National Parks, while English-speaking Belize, for much of its history a forgotten fragment of the British Empire, has reinvented itself as a prime diving and snorkelling destination, thanks to its offshore national treasury: the second-longest barrier reef in the world. The best place to experience the region9s pre-Conquest culture is Guatemala, which has the strongest indigenous traditions, not to mention a stunning landscape of velvet volcanoes and amethyst lakes. Panama and Honduras are just waking up to the potential - at least in tourism terms - of their rainforests, rugged mountain cloudforests, mangroves and beaches. Tourists still tend to avoid Nicaragua and El Salvador - a misguided manoeuvre, as neither is more dangerous for visitors than its neighbours, and despite considerable poverty, the people are welcoming and the basic tourist infrastructure good; plus, they too have the volcanoes, beaches and rainforests that draw travellers to their more popular neighbours. Amidst all the hype about the region9s natural beauty, it9s easy to forget that this rugged, humid part of the world was home (along with Mexico and Peru) to the most sophisticated pre-Columbian cultures of the Americas. The splendid Maya civilization, with its diaphanous pyramids and neurotic pursuit of time-keeping, flourished in Guatemala and to a lesser extent in modern-day Belize, Honduras and El Salvador between the years of 300 and 900 AD (although the Maya have been in existence for over 4000 years). During this time, termed the Classic period, the region was made up of independent, and often mutually antagonistic city-states - Tikal in Guatemala, Copan in Honduras and El Salvador9s San Andris being three of the more prominent - which fought each other for prestige and economic dominance. As their civilization declined, the Maya became increasingly interested in blood-letting and the ritualizing of pain and death, while paradoxically setting their greatest minds the task of predicting the future through one of the most precise understandings of time in history. You can see shadows of their huge achievements in science and the arts by visiting the ruined cities and viewing their displays on calendrics, ceramics and the Maya9s wildly illustrative glyphic scripts. In sharp contrast to the Maya, further south in lower Costa Rica and Panama, peoples from the Chibcha group dominated. Thought to have come originally from Colombia, the Chibcha were largely agrarian, without the talent for urban planning or numerology obsession of the Maya, and have left little or nothing behind in the way of monuments or artefacts. Central America was 3discovered2 by the Spanish on Christopher Columbus9s fourth and last voyage to the Americas in 1502-4. Columbus himself barely set foot in Central America, preferring to anchor offshore and write florid letters back home to his sovereign, packed with references to maidens and gold (of which the Spaniards unhappily discovered there was little). Nearly ten years later, an incredible sight met the eyes of Vasco Nuqez de Balboa, the first real conquistador of the region, who in 1513 slashed and clambered his way over the scaly mountain spine of Panama to become the first European to set eyes on the American side of the Pacific Ocean. Within a few years of Balboa9s thrilling sight, the Spanish had established Panama City, in 1519; Lesn, Nicaragua, followed in 1524; and in 1527, in Guatemala, they built their most important capital, the future colonial seat of the Empire, from which the region was administered. Still, Central America remained a backwater of the Spanish Empire in the New World: gold-poor, stuffed with venomous serpents, impenetrable jungles and often hostile natives. In human terms, the ensuing colonial period was characterized by waves of yeoman farmers emigrating from Spain, followed by waves of deaths of indigenous people from diseases to which they had no immunity. Slave labour was taken from Costa Rica and Nicaragua to work the mineral mines in Peru; in Guatemala the conquerors, led by the handsome blond adventurer with a taste for massacre, Pedro de Alvarado, set about a systematic, if drawn-out, destruction of the Maya peoples, who have, against all the odds, maintained their culture to this day, albeit in much reduced numbers. In the early 1800s, nearly 300 years after Spain9s first incursions in the isthmus, the region was caught up in a fervour of independence; in part this was fuelled by the growing anger of the criollos (Spanish people born in the New World), who were thwarted from advancement and political office by Spain9s snobbish insistence on promoting only those born on Spanish soil and their descendants. By 1823 the collective drive towards autonomy was strong enough for the Central American states all to declare themselves independent, forming a loose federation amongst themselves (with the exception of Panama, by then part of Colombia). In many of the countries, separate but eerily similar internal conflicts erupted between the self-styled educated, Europhile Liberals (demanding egalitarianism and 3democracy2) and the moneyed, land-owning Conservatives. With a few refinements to encompass the middle classes, the neo-liberals and the newly rich, this rift between the right and the left, still intact today, remains the most divisive, destructive and dynamic presence in Central American politics. When it comes to relations between the countries, Central America is rather like a family where there9s little love lost, but they recognize that sticking together is their best chance for economic survival. Amongst themselves, the nations have oscillated between surprising regional solidarity to outright war, sometimes in the form of incomprehensible and arbitrary conflicts, such as El Salvador and Honduras9s infamous 3Football War2 of 1969, a five-day border war ostensibly sparked by a soccer match. National stereotypes are bandied back and forth with relish (Costa Ricans think Nicaraguans are intrinsically violent, Nicaraguans think Costa Ricans placid opportunists, virtually everybody thinks Hondurans wrote the book on corruption) even while the region9s politicians describe neighbour nations as hermanos (brothers) and seek to build a Central American trading bloc to neutralize the effect NAFTA has had on their economies. However, it was internal conflicts and relations with the US, rather than any cross-border tensions, that sparked the ravaging wars of the 1970s and 80s, a time when Central America was seen as a place of brutal conflict where nuns were raped and priests slaughtered. Nicaragua notably succeeded in its attempt to shake off its dictator, Anastasio Somoza, and the cynical, corrupt regime he had spawned around him, with its galvanizing - if ultimately failed - internal revolution and subsequent US- sponsored Civil War (1981-1990). El Salvador, too had its own devastating version of war throughout the 1980s. Now peace reigns, or at least a certain kind of peace-in-name-between-governments. Less conspicuous conflicts persist, however, for example in Guatemala, where the state9s long-running campaign of repression against its own (mostly indigenous) inhabitants shows signs of continuing, despite the recent signing of official peace accords. Nowadays, generally speaking, Central America is keen to shake off its reputation for machine guns and earthquakes. Most Central Americans want to forget about the past and look towards the future, and they9re likely to succeed: these are young countries - for example, around half of Nicaragua9s population is under thirty, and 26-year-old politicians or 20-year-old mothers of three are commonplace. Travellers are often surprised by the multicultural nature of Central American cities: there are families of Chinese restaurateurs (who have usually been in the country for generations), Syrian shopkeepers, and Brazilian hotel-owners; Catholic churches sit side-by-side with their tin shack Evangelical equivalents, and most cities have a synagogue; and you9ll also notice evidence of European immigration, if only in the occasional blond, blue-eyed Central American. Equally apparent, though, are traditional ladino values - of family, religion (usually Catholic), hard work, shrewdness, suspicion when necessary, and a sardonic, even biting, sense of humour. In these years of so-called peace, the region has had to work out its relationship with the overwhelming presence of North American culture. Whether it be four-wheel drives, shopping malls, fast-food outlets or credit-card spending, American culture is wholeheartedly embraced by the urban upper middle classes, and trickles down into the poorer echelons in the form of much-prized baseball hats and Nike trainers; as in the rest of the world, any ropa americana is better than the homespun equivalent. This relatively new yen for the good life through T-shirts and cars is one reason why Central American society is described - at least by economists - as 3modernizing2. Times have changed from when countries like Honduras and Costa Rica were bona fide banana republics, little more than hosts providing land and cheap labour for the huge, US-owned fruit companies. Manufacturing and service industries are increasingly investing in the region: communications giant Intel recently opened a factory in Costa Rica, with other new arrivals belonging to the biodiversity, resource management and pharmaceutical industries. Piecework factories churning out women9s clothing or face cloths for the US market, called maquiladoras, still provide many people - particularly women - with employment, but there9s a feeling that NAFTA is already forcing these countries to diversify. There9s not much evidence that this new-found investment is trickling down into the pockets of the poorest Central Americans: income differentials here are still among the widest in the world, and much of the population lives in poverty, sometimes abjectly so - you don9t need to look further than the faces of begging children on street corners or at border crossings, asking to relieve you of your extra menudo (small change), or at the high rates of common crimes like pickpocketing and burglary. These are still the sort of crimes most travellers, as well as locals, have to worry about, although it9s true that violent crimes against tourists are becoming more common. Certain cities, like Managua and Panama City, have always had bad reputations: where dangers are real - mostly in cities - they are well-publicized, and locals will often volunteer warnings and advice. Travelling in Central America is hardly risk-free, and visitors should read up on the various dangers before arriving. Wherever you go, it9s easy to get around. Travel networks in the region are well-developed, with reliable air and road transport systems. Flying from Guatemala City to San Josi or Panama City can save you a lot of time, as what looks like a short hop on the map is often a lengthy road journey thanks to the (often bad) state of the highways and the effects of weather. In the riverine waterways of Mosquitia, boats are the only way to get around, along with light planes - if you can stump up the cash. Most of the time, though, you9ll be going by bus - cheap, frequent and cheerful, and the quintessential Central American experience, where you9ll find yourself seated among knitting grandmothers, travelling evangelists, gum-popping teenagers and perhaps the odd chicken. The other inescapable Central American reality is bureaucracy (in Spanish, tramites), which in Central America has taken on the character of a grotesque social art: witness the unhappy queues of locals trying to get drivers9 licences or any other kind of permit. For travellers, crossing borders will illustrate the eccentricity of the local interpretation of paperwork - lots of it, and each piece will cost you a couple of dollars. What to see The archetypal image of Central America is of the grey-white pyramids of the ruined Maya city of Tikal, rising smokily above the rainforest canopy. Almost everyone who comes to Central America makes tracks for these haunting, rainforest ruins: Tikal is the best known, but there are other popular sites at Copan in Honduras, San Andris in El Salvador and Lamanai in Belize. Even if you don9t visit the ruins, everywhere in the isthmus you can appreciate the craftsmanship of the Maya peoples, in their technicolour textiles (which are not just decorative but a visually encoded social history), exquisite wood carvings and jewellery made from local or imported jade, turquoise and silver. Life on the Caribbean coast of Central America is a sharp shock for those who are used to the formal, rather staid code of good manners and appearance that are so dear to the highland ladino culture. The atmosphere in these slightly rancid coastal towns - Lmvingston, Bluefields, Limsn and Colsn, to name a few - can be raffish; certainly the machete-feuds and drug-running are real. On the Caribbean coast it9s Marley, not marimba, you9ll hear; English, cricket and herbal teas make an appearance, too. Immigration from Jamaica and Barbados to work on banana plantations and railroads in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century transformed this coast into an anthropological Galapagos, more Caribbean than Latin American, dominated by West Indian accents, subsistence agriculture, and a quaint allegiance to the Queen (even if they don9t always know which Queen is in at the moment). Overall, though, it is the natural rather than cultural attractions of the isthmus that entice travellers, especially as ecotourism becomes ever more popular. In Central America, the term can encompass the more traditional pleasures of palm-draped Caribbean beaches, or diving and snorkelling off the coral atolls of Belize, lolling with the tourists on picture-perfect beaches of Costa Rica9s Pacific coast, or exploring the sand-fringed islands of Panama9s San Blas archipelago. For wildlife enthusiasts, Guatemala9s Biotopo del Quetzal and the Monteverde Reserve in Costa Rica, high in the misted cloudforests of the Cordillera Central, will be high on the itinerary. In the pristine forests of Nicaragua9s Matagalpa region, the shimmering quetzal, the sacred bird of the Maya, is still abundant; while in Costa Rica9s Tortuguero region you can take steamy boat-journeys through mirror-still canals, and watch sea turtles nest by night. Commentators struggle to represent this staggering biodiversity in spiralling numbers: 3000 species of moth in Costa Rica9s Guanacaste province alone, 850 species of bird (more than in the whole of North America) and literally millions of plants, some as yet uncatalogued. For most travellers the cities of Central America are not much of a draw in themselves, with their pothole-scarred, traffic-choked streets, cheap skyscraper architecture and gutters full of soapy water and rotting fruits. Yet in each of them, if you can get beyond the initial ugliness - on sunny days even Panama City and San Josi can look enticing - you9ll find a vibrant, if hectic, urban life with enough cafis, bars, galleries and museums to keep you busy for at least a few days. True city-lovers will want to indulge in spates of salsa dancing, join ice-cream-eating teenagers lolling on the benches of the local park, or improve their Spanish by watching the latest subtitled blockbuster American movie in a theatre filled with sighing