Central America
15 January - 12 March 2017
Politically tumultuous, chaotic and unfortunate in terms of
geography, Central America has been the unfortunate ‘play thing’ of the USA,
predominantly in the late 70’s and early 80’s, when Communist revolutions
started to spark through most of those countries.
The USA has feared that any
victory by Communist forces in those parts would lead to an isolation of South
America, where it had ‘other’ interests. Hence it acted as a major protagonist
in the Nicaraguan Revolution, Salvadoran
Civil War, Guatemalan Civil War and the ongoing manipulation and coercion
in Honduras and Panama.
Again, the spike in my interest
for Central America came from the awareness of troubled part of the world in
between North America and South America. Of course as an early teen I didn’t
really understand the root of the conflicts but one moment that made the
greatest visual impression on me was the United States invasion of Panama.
During this invasion the defacto
Panamanian, military and dictator Manuel Noriega was deposed.
So it was with this knowledge and
these images that I put the idea forward to Inga for us to do a tour through
Central America.
The attraction to this part of
the world, admittedly, was never strong. I’d never had an overwhelming desire
to visit these countries and neither had Inga, but, the desire for us to travel
far outweighs our desire to see a city, country or area, and so we decided to
put together a few months of budget travel. We designed a Central America on a shoestring adventure based upon back backing
adventures that neither of us had really had and the fact that we thought that
Spanish speaking countries as a whole are pretty cool places.
So I bring to you Central America – ‘Because it’s their tour’.
