In search of a lost world In this country everything is vivid. Superannuated American school buses come south a uniform shade of murky yellow. In Guatemala they are set back on the road transformed, belching black fumes still, but with their flanks striped with tinsel-bright chrome, every inch of their chassis painted with flames or flowers or wild zigzags. These are the 'chicken buses', in which the people of the southern highlands take themselves and their livestock to market. Cemeteries glow from the hillsides, the house-sized tombs painted in dazzling mauve or rust-red or green, the colour of hope, not the quiet retiring green of British front doors but luminous shades of lime and aquamarine and emerald. The homes of the living are even brighter. The architecture of village houses is simple - cube-houses of breeze-block and plank - but their colouring is extravagant. Yellow and orange. Turquoise and maroon. Watermelon-pink and purple. Nature adds its notes to the visual cacophony. In towns mauve jacaranda petals lie in carpets on red earth. In the countryside sulphur-yellow, white and coral-red blossoms flame from the edges of the maize-plots. The people dress up to their setting. Townsfolk speak Spanish and wear Western clothes, but in the villages the language is Mayan and the costume is sumptuous. Life isn't easy. Small, stocky men trudge by with loads of firewood on their backs. The women chatting in the streets carry plastic urns of water on their heads. But however hard they may have to