It's research - I swear

'Central America in a G-string' - a range of travel guides to the discotecas of Latin America, set to rival the hegemonic market position of Lonely Planet's 'on a shoestring' series. And it's going to make me a fortune (cue evil laugh: ha, ha, ha)... This blog entry, however, will be rather less saucy. In the latter two weeks of June, I made my way from Guatemala to Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, finishing in Panama. And yes, I did visit a discoteca in each country. They weren't all fun, but they were all interesting. From the Guatemalan venue, where all the gringos stood around watching the locals dance salsa until the music changed, and all of the locals stood around watching the gringos grind to North American R&B. Or the Honduran discoteca that felt more like a wedding than a nightclub - it had that bizarre mix of ages that you usually only find at large family events. And there was the Nicaraguan discoteca with the very angry young Nicaraguan man who spend the night telling us how much he resented our presence and our tourist dollars. (In the end, we just politely excused ourselves, and took our unwanted foreign dollars to another bar). And of course, there was the Costa Rican cesspit. Unequivocally the sleaziest place I've ever been (and I've been to the Bot, more than once). The night's entertainment took the form of a dance 'competition' among the local women. Seriously, this place made wet t-shirt events look high-class. I put it down to cultural differences and held my nose for the night. The discoteca tour finished, happily, on a high note, in a very cool venue in Panama City. A live reggae band in a beautiful courtyard, surrounded by beautiful people. In its nightclubs, as in all else, Panama maintained its status as the least Central American city of all Central American cities (and just to be clear, I'm not suggesting that that's necessarily a good thing). But yes, between the assorted discotecas, I did manage to fit in some time for sightseeing. Of which more anon...