Guard duty over the two women was much lighter than tree-felling in the steamy forest or sawing up the timbers into six-feet lengths, then splitting them into staves for the stockade, the master's house, and the other habitations they were erecting in the settlement.

While this country prepares for elections, rebels in the steamy forests here are getting ready for war.

In Guadalupe Tepeyac, deep in the steamy forests of southern Mexico not far from the border with Guatemala, all 400 people who once lived here have abandoned their homes to seek refuge from the army, leaving behind prized possessions like their machetes and their pigs.

With it's crypts and cobwebs and eerie old castles set in batty, steamy forests, it's sumptuous enough to have acquired a considerable reputation.

While Sebell didn't doubt that the fallen tree was 'not far' from the Southern Hold, it was also not an easy trek through steamy hot forests where the trail had to be hacked out afresh.