GUATEMALA - HIGH LIFE, LOW LIFE... HIGH TIMES (GUATEMALA REVIEW)

Steven Froelich’s Cocaine-Fueled Journey Through Guatemala

For about a decade, from 2006 to 2016, Froelich organized his travel around a simple and unapologetic set of priorities. “I was looking for vacations which would bring me a) to countries I had never visited, b) where coke was readily available, and c) fun,” he says. Belize, Nicaragua, Colombia, Guatemala. The itinerary tended to follow the supply. Guatemala is the first of these “misadventures” to see print, chosen, he says, because it’s the most accessible of the lot. The one least buried under the drugs...

A GONZO HOLIDAY MAKER

Someone, early on, floated the word gonzo. Froelich has a good line about it. “If Hunter S. Thompson is a gonzo journalist,” he says, “then I’m a gonzo holiday maker.” Less a claim to the throne than a cheerful abdication of it.

Push him on the tradition and he keeps deflating it. “Gonzo does not quite fit the bill,” he explains, “because gonzo writers are wild sophisticated adults whereas I’m more a kid on coke looking for friends and fun.” It isn’t false modesty so much as an accurate job description. And he’s quick to wave off the idea that he was ever chasing trouble. “I’m not looking for chaos, I’m looking for the fun and ecstasy of coke,” he says. “With excess cocaine comes chaos.” He wanted Oscar Zárate’s illustrations to give the book the feel of a kid’s comic rather than a countercultural artifact. The register he’s after is play, not prophecy.