The Full Montezuma: Around Central America and the Caribbean with the Girl Next Door
By Peter Moore
Bantam Books 2000
Reviewed by Jackie Coleman
Australian travel writer, Peter Moore's The Full Montezuma, is an account of a six-month overland trip made shortly after Hurricane Mitch, by the author and his new partner, a former neighbour, referred to in the book as the Girl Next Door (GND).
Anyone who has travelled in the Third World (especially with a partner) will identify with a lot of their experiences as they start in Mexico and travel down the isthmus, then across to Jamaica and Cuba. Rip-offs, sleepless nights in stifling, cheap hotels, drinking all night with a local and then having him turn up a few hours later as your long distance bus driver, searching for internet cafes and the sense of powerlessness that comes with the lack of ability in a language, "feeling like I was on an outing from the sheltered workshop", are just some of the situations that travellers will recognise.
While the tone of the book is light, the fun is poked at themselves, and fellow tourists they encounter, rather than locals. However, Moore does sketch the historical and contemporary background of each country visited. For example, he outlines the social conditions in El Salvador well, and makes an attempt to explain the problems the country has faced in reintegrating ex-FMLN guerrilla combatants and members of the former military.
He describes San Salvador as "depressing and rundown, the internal migration of the rural poor giving it the feel of a giant squatter camp". (However, since this book was written the FMLN mayor of San Salvador, Hector Silva, has made advances in rectifying some of these problems). He contrasts the "slick guys wearing Calvin Klein jeans and Lactose shirts waving wads of US dollars" with "the cardboard nests of squatters and piles of human shit in corners".
In Honduras, the nation worst hit by Mitch, he observes "international disaster relief" in action and recounts that while helping to unload some US material aid packages in San Pedro Sula, they came across a box of expensive Clinique foundation, leading to speculation on what the donor was thinking. He also decides after a day of unpacking, that the people of Honduras now won't need any more Jurassic Park T-shirts.
The visit to Cuba is the high point of the book. Having crossed many borders which were "more obstacle courses than borders", Moore was "touched" when Cuban customs officials "bent the rules to help us, rather than use them to extract extra money out of us".
Staying with a family and paying in US dollars, they were aware that they'd temporarily dislodged grandma from her room. "She sat in the corner in a rocking chair, rocking with a pissed-off look on her face", but they were pleased to see that the day after paying their rent the father has a new haircut and the girls new dresses.
Wandering around Havana he muses, "Much has been made of the plight of the Cuban people, particularly by the exiles in Miami and New York who fled the country after the revolution. They like to paint their countrymen as poor, oppressed people leading sad, miserable lives. But that afternoon I remember thinking that <@133> there was a real sense of community here in Cuba that Americans remember fondly and often wish they had back."
He describes trying to bribe his way into a baseball match. The ticket collector, he writes, "Turned us away with such an incredible look of disdain that I wanted the ground to swallow me up. With my crass gesture I had proved to him that I was the embodiment of the evils of capitalism and in return he gave me a withering look that was full of all the contempt and hatred he had for our way of life."
After finally getting a ticket, Moore describes the electrifying atmosphere in the stadium when Fidel spoke, saying, "it wasn't out of fear. It wasn't hatred. They genuinely loved the guy."
It's refreshing to read such unashamedly positive comments about this extraordinary, heroic nation.
The account of the couple's relationship is also entertaining. Of coping with the first bout of diarrhoea, he writes, "I lay in bed trying to block out the sounds with my Walkman, not altogether sure if our relationship was ready for this kind of, um, intimacy yet. Most couples don't have to deal with these kinds of noises, even after twenty years of marriage. Yet here, just over a month into our trip, I was listening to the GND doing her best cappuccino machine impersonation."
I'll leave you guessing as to whether they're still together at the end of the trip.