Mayan marvel

On top of the hill the old man and his wife were standing next to the altar they had made, muttering words into the smoke.

The dogs that had been fighting in the bushes had gone and the raucous rock music that had been pulsating from the town a mile away had mercifully stopped. There was a moment of total peace and tranquillity.

Two black vultures suddenly broke from the horizon of trees and wheeled low over our heads. The old woman knelt down and kissed the earth while the old man kept on chanting, in a strange guttural language full of creaks and hisses. If languages can sound like the lands they inhabit, this one seemed perfectly attuned to the volcanoes, cloud forests and ruined temples of Guatemala.