A missed opportunity

We nearly always have a camera with us and, though we are not trigger happy, we have managed over 1900 photos so far. One thing I wish I had been able to capture has been the profusion and variety of footy pitches; particularly those we have seen from the roadside as we plough past on the chicken bus.

Pipes, including curved corners, brought fom the suv on the beachfront; the litter strewn marsh to rock of Caye Caulker; the holidaymaker mini nets inflated for the kids on La Ensenada beach on Saturday. The real fascination for me was with the pitches on 20 degree slopes, the minature pitches with huge stick goals, the well groomed end-of-runway bowling green pitch with nets, the pitch overgrown with 150cm weeds but with nets, goals with wooden posts that must be the only straight beams i the village, crossbars of tape, crossbars of rope, y-shaped stantions, plastic pipe stantions to bind the wooden posts, swamp pitches, tiny ones, huge ones, roadside dirt ones, the gleaming watered pitches of Costa Rica... And the stadium in tiny San Marcos where we saw a commotion and waited around to see the annual clash of the two young village teams, including the procession of the queens with their crowns, the announcer you could hear across the lake, and with ten goals - it finished 6-4 and we only saw the first goal!

San Marcos nil, San Marcos... er... nil