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The HSE (Health and Safety Executive) or ‘the pain of most of our working lives’. I’ve had to deal with them on many occasions in my life working in the construction industry. They are not there to help you, just to enforce different ways of making your life more difficult. Then there’s the under study, the company wanna be, HSE officials or just simply your company safety officers… jobsworths who are designed and educated to make your job as hard as possible and more and more paperwork orientated. Not all strictly fair they have helped construction save a lot of lives over the years but it’s the way it seems these days at work or play the lack of freedom to be able to do your job or the things you love doing and the paperwork now involved in the construction industry is one of the reasons I’m happy to be out of it. 

I always enjoyed building things, reading drawings and translating that into the field and watching it grow but filling out twenty forms before I could walk on site to do my job became a bit dull to say the least. Sorry a little bit of a work- related rant to start this ramble but I often did wonder where do the safety officers off the world go on their holidays? They can’t possibly go to India or any Asian countries and I think I’m about to count out Central America. I’m sure they all travel with their blinkers on and their long- sleeved shirts, long pants, gloves and sun hat with their factor 50+ and their safety glasses and go and sit in the comfort of an air- conditioned padded cell for two weeks in every year because they could surely never travel in the real world.

 We left the two.. shall we say… First World countries of this trip Canada and USA and entered into the unknown.  We were pre-warned by most Americans that we would be abducted by machete bearing bandits and we should in no way go to the places they have been warned about by there over cautious government (basically everywhere outside the USA) although a few had sensible heads on their shoulders and gave us useful information. These, the people that have travelled and not the safety officer type that have never left their own country let alone their own state. And so, with what we have heard from our American friends taken with a pinch of salt, we entered the unknown, the danger zone!!! Come on really!!!

We crossed a border, a simple line on a map into a new and exciting country. This will be the trend for us now for the foreseeable future as we move on down into Central America and the countries get smaller and the borders become more frequent. Don’t get me started on the borders and the masses of paperwork they generate I’ll leave that to Jyl, this subject is sure to pop up in a blog soon.

 So, we are out of America and we didn’t get shot (Sad things happened in Vegas merely a week after we left all taking place from the hotel across the street to the hotel we had stayed in). I often wondered what the American merchants of doom and gloom really think of their own countries safety, a very sad subject and we didn’t get eaten by grizzly bears while wild camping in Canada. I would dread to think the paperwork involved had that happened. This change though, the moment you cross that line on the map, everything changes. Not only the obvious, the people, the language, the culture. Within an instance things are so different. Driving the roads, the smell, the atmosphere, three people on a scooter …er.. no erase that there goes one with 4 people on it and the rider is on her mobile phone. This is it tho what we have come for. the buzz of new countries still keeps me going to this day.  As Europeans (or not if they ever sort all that Brexit out.. good luck with that back home by the way), it’s something we have had all our lives, borders to cross different countries and different cultures, right on our door step.

 It doesn’t come as too much of a shock to us to see the things we see. Ride your motorcycle down to Greece for example and travel through all the countries along the way Albania etc or ride east and cross the border and ride in Ukraine & Russia and nothing you are about to witness in Central America will shock you. However, if you are a safety officer then you’ll still be at the Mexican border measuring the height of the kerbs, the gradient of the wheel chair ramps hang on were there any??... and trying to educate the scooter riders… you’re not gunner win. I’m not here to judge and tell you what’s right or wrong I’ve done things both ways in my lifetime. My weekends spent in my youth working with my uncle Nick, helped me pay for the travels I loved but came at a price, hard work manual labour. Let’s call it manual deconstruction just pre-the mechanised demolition period. I enjoyed it, there was no one there to oversee at the weekends. The work got done, we are all still here to tell the tale. How quickly things have changed and I’ve worked on the books with method statement and programming and the Safety aspect of it all, yes, I know all a bit dull.

 As you ride along you notice the difference, the beauty of motorcycle riding your senses are so much more alive, see it, feel it, smell it, you notice everything around you, even the machete wielding Mexican at the side of the road has a smile and a wave for us. I digressed, again didn’t I??

We are deeper into Central America now and things have got even more entertaining. We are up to 5 on a scooter now, including kids, people on the roof of moving buses and common transport out here is the whole family in the back of the pickups or the truck exposed to the elements and hanging on at ever bump or corner. Imagine that on the school run back at home.  There’s less road sense of any kind in Honduras basically just do what you want here with no road signs to give you any clue, they drive where and how they like and the police who are just there to stand under the shade of a road side tree and watch it all go on. Higher kerbs, steeper wheel chair ramps… hold on are there any?... missing manhole ...... curse my sexiest tongue… inspection chamber covers…. yes that’s it phew I think got away with it. Yes, covers missing in the paths and roads. You could scape a shin just walking to the bar out here but best be careful not to ride down one, that could really spoil your day. None of these are the end of the world to the people, life goes on, homemade wooden trestle scaffolding is allowed although I’d think twice and then say no before I climbed on the ones I’ve seen.  Here’s the point I was getting to… it’s probably not right but it’s the way it is… kids selling fruit standing by the topes (speed bumps) in the middle of the roads waving down cars motorcycles and lorries. I’ve seen a mother standing over her son as he was struggling not to slide down the steep bank as he was on cutting the shrub back with a full-size machete. These are all just daily sights out here. My absolute favourite though... on a mountain road in Guatemala and at least five miles from any village in the middle of nowhere… a boy of no more than my nieces age (Hi Hannah) had been left out between villages, a heap of ballast dumped nearby and the young lad left to fill the pot holes in the road. The absolute joy on his face as we came up the hill was a picture. I’ll keep in my head for ever the smile on his face as he came to the centre of the road  long handle shovel in hand (taller than he was) to high five both me and Jyl as we rode past was priceless. I know it doesn’t sound politically correct or very child friendly to you all at home in your modern little worlds and I’m sure it’s not. I’m not here to say but it is the way it is in this part of world, or is this the real world, or do we live in the real world where to be poor is to have everything provided. Being poor in England Europe or North American is so very much different to being poor out here or so it seems.

Whilst on this trip we have visited so many wonderful interesting and spectacular places with a whole list more to come yet. Again, there are huge differences, spectacular in their own rights (although Mr USA) you do have some wonderful natural sights but so have all the other countries we have visited, not quite on your scale though. For example, we have visited one in particular. Carlsbad Cavern in New Mexico, an absolute treasure, a spectacular cave and rightly so proudly protected from the idiot tourist by park rangers ticket kiosk and hand railed walkways throughout the caves making it accessible for any tourists to see. Even a ranger led flight of approximately 10,000 to 15,000 bats every evening can be viewed from a purpose- built seating area at the mouth of the cave, a truly wonderful natural sight but you must conform hush, hush and switch of all phones and cameras. You must not upset the little bats. Wind the clock forward a few months and we find ourselves in kantemo Mexico, crawling over bat guano through tight spaces as the bats exit the cave through the same tight gaps. Bats were bumping into us as they flapped past trying to avoid the snakes that hung from ceiling to catch them. Nowhere in the world could you experience the things we saw and did in that cave and I have to wonder how long it will be before some jobsworth will decide that while getting eaten by snakes is ok for the bats, bumping into tourists isn’t and will put an end to it.  Then a few weeks further on in our travels we find ourselves swimming up a river into the mouth of a cave where it is common or even aloud to grab the stalagmites or tights to pull yourself along in the fast running water that you are now chest high in. Health and safety hold on, I’m not finished yet. The reason for the visit into this Mayan underworld in Belize, is to see the skeletons of the sacrificed people left on display here. Some bones of children our passed amongst us by our Guide. Again, it’s not gunner happen anywhere in the world. He made sure the bones were respectfully replaced. At this point we are all soaking wet in a cave with only our wet socks (shoes had to be removed before entering the sacrificial chamber) on our feet and after climbing some more rocks we are confronted by a section of steel ladder, loosely tied and to vertical and short at the top (less than a four run over run Mr safety man). Up there is the main event a complete skeleton of a 16-year-old ish boy sacrificed years ago and preserved by the caves atmosphere. One by one we climb the wet slippery steel ladder in our socks and negotiate the slippery rocks above. You couldn’t imagine the safety officer face had he ended up on a tour like this. Needless to say, we had to clamber down the ladder as well. I’d recommend it to any one, though the ATM cave in Belize, like I said before, I’m sure it will be taken away from them soon while steps, bridges and concrete paths with hand rails are constructed. It’s another one of those where you want it to remain protected but it’s so cool to be hands on in these places.

 So, is it wrong, or right??? Maybe I’ve at long last got to the point of this ramble! Hang in there I’ll just refer back to the wonderful social media and blogs and post that are very common recently coming more so from you older kids quoting things that used to be happen in your youth!! Things that are extinct now (Health and safety again I suppose) like the coal man baths in the kitchen sink, your granny drawing a fire, the joy of climbing trees and then picking on the young uns because they haven’t had these experiences. Change happens and mostly for the better, any way they have Google now, they can relate to anything anywhere any time. Another example just sprung to mind. We rode past a lorry being unloaded by hand the other day by 2 skinny but fit lads. A lorry of cement in old size 50kg bags long since out lawed in the uk (cut by half) to 25 kg bags to reduce back injury. I could nearly see the safety officer on holiday clip board in hand taking notes, his poor long- suffering wife just shaking her head in the background.

Is then less more and maybe more is sometimes just too much. It seems whenever, wherever you travel the people with less want to give more. How many times have you been granted ‘Good Day’ today or indeed wished someone a ‘Good Morning or Afternoon’. Almost everyone I’ve walked past today has to me, likewise me back to them. By the way at the time of writing we are in Granada a large ish city in Nicaragua but it’s been the same thought Central America. So, who lives in the real world? I know the modern world, the rat race where no one talks, everyone is afraid of everything or something and everyone is in a rush… the world we've left behind but will one day have to return to. Is the modern world really the real world or just the world we have become accustomed to?

I do have one last piece of my humble knowledge to share with you (Thank god he has nearly finished I hear you mutter) and I hate the fact but a whole lot of people down around here would probably live or have lived a whole lot longer if health and safety and a few road signs had been here a few years ago. Yes, I know, sad but true, health and safety has to be an overall good thing but I seriously don’t think we really need to be wrapped in quite so much cotton wool...