Trippy Traveller in South America

Trip Down the Amazon: Manaus to Santarem

2010-09-02T08:32:00.000-05:00

Once we got to the heart of the Amazon rainforest and discovered that it was one big duty free shop devoid of mosquitoes and rain we had to tackle the next problem. And that was getting out of the city that was surrounded by thousands of miles of jungle.

Manaus is in my top five strangest places I've visited. It promises so much and delivers so little. I wonder if Timbuktu is the same. Romance and reality like an unwanted pregnancy collide. I thought I was going to get a settlement on the muddy banks of the world’s most vital river with dignified shacks heroically wrestling to keep the forest at bay. A town with monkeys and parakeets festooning roof tops, with the constant patter of rain. And with the charm of indigenous people trotting past covering up their nakedness with a stick skewered through their penis. Instead we got crumbling colonial facades, miles of street stalls selling trainers and electrical equipment. We got a big port where people sat all day drinking cold draft beer. We got a small zoo with one manatee and one monkey. And we got a rash of rich Japanese tourists and over-priced tour companies flirting with each other. The best thing that happened to us in Manaus was meeting a middle aged professor with a smooth bald head and dandy moustache who made the worst joints I’ve ever tried to suck on and who spoke at length about one, global warming being a fiction; two, indigenous people being immune to money and the work ethic; and three, how nature's resources were not there to be exploited by this generation but to be preserved for future generations. Once his first joint fell apart and I could repackage it into one of my trademark rolls his tales fascinated my wife and I. We both sensed something contradictory in what he said and something manic about the little bloke with a fine moustache but sitting on the roof looking out over the city it all made for the perfection of the moment.

I was a little disturbed, however, when in the men's dorm that night he approached me in the grey darkness in his underpants and knelt down beside my bunk and waited for me to open my eyes. What the? He wanted cigarettes. Always willing to oblige a smoker who had done me a good turn, I got up and gave him a couple of fags.

The next morning we packed to leave and before checking out the professor gave us his address and a small nugget of compressed weed.

We had carefully prepared for the journey down the river from Manaus to Santarem. The book said it should take between 30 and 36 hours to do the journey. Other travellers explained that you strung up a hammock on the deck so you needed to get there early to get a hammock spot.

For months I knew this was coming. I had imagined it would be like some floating refugee camp and that we would be squeezed into some filthy corner next to a family of twenty, doggedly guarding our bags and praying for disembarkation.

We had bought our tickets the day before despite people telling us that we should rock up at the last moment and negotiate with the captain to get discounted tickets. We opted to ignore this advice because we wanted to get a good spot and when we went down to the port the previous day we saw a ticket barrier stopping people entering the loading areas, and what is more, we couldn't find any gathering of wily captains sipping cognac and wearing misshaped naval caps.

Early on the day of departure, we walked with a massive burden of packs, hammocks, food and water to the port, squeezing past school kids and street hawkers and finally found our boat. It wasn't as massive as I imagined and it wasn't a floating oil stained barge. It had a bottom loading area, a middle area for hammocks and a top deck with a bar. The hammock area was filling up but there was still plenty of space. There were three metal poles running down the length of the boat from which people slung their hammocks. We padlocked our bags to a nearby post and put up our hammocks. My wife did the classic slapstick. She got in her hammock and the knot slipped and she sunk to the ground with a bang. She retied and plopped back on the hammock and the rope unraveled again. A couple of our fellow passengers were smiling with mirth. A man in bright beach shorts and an impressive belly peeking out from a stretched T-shirt took the rope from my wife and tied a firm knot in 10 seconds.

All settled in with book, fags, water and baggage secure we watched as more and more people squeezed their hammocks on the middle deck.

We left 30 minutes late and went down the river for only 10 minutes before a police boat pulled up next to our boat. I had the professor's weed on me. I popped it in my mouth and waited. The boat was loaded with bananas, duty free plunder and swinging people. To go through everything would take a week. It took an hour and a half. The police never came up to the middle deck. They must have dallied to tut over the bananas and drive up their bribe. Whatever the reason, when we started again I was glad to be finally on the mighty Amazon chugging low in the water, heading for the Atlantic coast. Being in a hammock, drifting down the river with nothing to do but relax and occasionally stare at the dark brown river was not half as bad as I thought it was going to be. Something about being hidden away in the folds of a hammock with dozens around you gives you a certain type of anonymity. The bloke next door fondly took out the power drill he had bought in Manaus, the mother on the other side of me studied a Christian pamphlet and two blokes just a few meters away shouted and sloshed back and forth a bottle of cane spirits. Normally such happy drunken morons would find me out as surely as a smoker would find that last fag in the packet. But no, ensconced in tough woven material I was somehow beyond their ken.

The river was as wide as several football pitches and mostly just impenetrable jungle on both banks interrupted every hour or so by a few rickety wooden piers and shacks leaning over the muddy bank. And of course a few makeshift football pitches. We saw nothing but the odd bird and butterfly. Not even a mosquito made it out to the center of the oceanic river. Where were the anacondas so big they could swallow Jennifer Lopez's arse in one half-bite? Where were the pink dolphins sporting in nature's greatest reserve? Where were the pigmy rainforest people in their dugout canoes? Where were the other passenger boats? In fact where was anything?

As night approached we got bored of nibbling on biscuits and sipping warm water and decided to investigate the dining options. It turned out that a woman had a small kitchen by the toilets and you could buy tokens from her for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We spent seven Reals each for a plate piled with the standard delicious Brazilian carb fest of rice and beans and chicken with manioc powder and two strands of lettuce. We ate at a collapsible table two meters from out hammocks. It folded up from the side railings. So we gazed at the blackness. The families around us were busy concluding their showers, changing into sleeping clothes, brushing their teeth and just generally being very at home. By eight-ish as we squeezed the last plastic spoonful of rice and beans into our mouths it was already lights out. Young and old in a suspended squash swung gently and dozed.

The two men nearby who were boozing out of a bottle had been politely shooed away.

I pulled out the mad professor's gear and made a two skin number hidden in the depths of my hammock. Once done Mrs. and I went onto the top deck.

There was a roof which stretched over the bar and a small seating area. The top deck was about 10 or 15 meters across and about 30 meters long. At the back near the cabins (for the rich folk) and the stairs was a little bar selling cold beer and sodas with a TV on the bar. The TV was hooked up to a crackling speaker and blared out Brazilian pop. Sure enough the drunken brothers had passed the test of the bottle and now were pushing and pishing on with the canned brews. I grabbed 2 drinks and got change in the form of tokens (that anything-above-$5-is-impossible-to-give-change thing). We gave the Marx brothers a wide berth and found a windy spot at the front of the boat. We sparked the spliff and watched the moon over the jungle.

Seconds later I was in love with the Amazon, Brazil and possibly the world.

Nobody bothered us.

Everything and nothing trickled across my mental radar.

We enjoyed the cool breeze

Stoned on a boat going down the Amazon.

After a couple of joints and a couple more beers we decided to move to the tables at the bar. And sure enough Abbot and Costello were keen to communicate. They offered us drinks (which we refused) and asked us a barrage of questions in Portuguese. A gawky 12 year old stood by the table in the half shadow and silently watched the meeting of cultures. I tried my best to guess their meaning and reply with a few keywords in Spanish. Just the smallest success at communication is fatal when dealing with happy drunkards. Like a bull forever lunging at the elusive red sheet they stumbled over the same shared words and never really got across the point which was inflaming their enthusiasm. They could have been trying to tell me the location of the lost treasure of the Inca Kings. Or perhaps not. We made our apologies and escaped after one drink.

Early next morning we woke up dehydrated. I had a piss and some water and went back to sleep. I vaguely noticed everyone get up, have a shower, put on fresh shorts and T-shirt and tuck into bread and fruit as I drifted in and out of sleep.

After pleasantly dozing for a couple of hours we got up and performed minimal ablutions. I washed my face and arm pits in the sink by the toilets and changed my T-shirt. Breakfast was fruit, biscuits and water. Mrs. TT had somehow befriended a shy teenage girl and was being introduced to her baby sister and chubby mum. I read my book.

The day passed like the previous day: staring at the river, stopping at the occasional small town on the way and eating unfeasibly stodgy and good food. The only difference about this day was that my astute traveller's brain was telling me that 30 hours meant only one night and not two. Surely it was a late landing at Santarem? Maybe they had conscientiously managed to make up time via nautical mastery and full throttle.

The half a dozen neighbours I had, told me that Santarem was tomorrow and not to worry. Since there were no attendants in nappy little skirt suits and dinky little caps to confer with, no handsome crew to be spotted in uniform at the bar, it was to my neighbours and the woman in the kitchen next to the toilets that I turned to for información. Tomorrow it was with a blitheness that was breezy and Brazilian. Not to worry; we still had a couple of mad professors left of green and I still had some tokens in my pocket from last night which were fully exchangeable for cold canned beer.

Late afternoon we got up on deck for the sunset. Moments like this it should be gobsmacking. It was a dull blur. The mist and humidity generally did a good job of spoiling the sunset. It momentarily cleared and the black river sparkled. Then it went dark.

The next morning I woke up and poked my head over the hammock. Shit we've stopped and lots of hammocks are missing. We hurriedly packed up our stuff. Everyone else just unhurriedly carried on sleeping or packing up. It was 6am.

At 6.30am we were standing outside the port. I knew it wasn't the centre. I was vaguely convinced after studying the LP that we could walk to a bus stop to get us to the beach, Alter do Chao. We seemed to be the only foreigners on the boat and now we were the only people attempting to walk somewhere. The streets were empty except for the odd jogger and homeless dude. Worse was the fact that the streets stretched on and on in the 100% humidity. My wife was beginning to hate me.

After forty minutes lugging our packs we got to a small fishing port just up or down the river (I wasn’t sure) and I got out a pen and paper to get really serious with the communication attempt. Dripping sweat, I smoked a fag as I crossed a road to a kiosk made of weathered wood. The chubby kiosk lady was nice as pie and seemed to get my gist about the bus to Alter do Chao. She consulted with her only costumer and they agreed I should take the road behind the kiosk heading up a hill away from the water. It made sense to me. We started up the road and didn’t spot a bus stop but did spot an open supermarket. Toilet, food, ciggies, cold drink: all essentials for the demands of the moment and good for the morale.

Refreshed and newly enlightened from a taxi driver's directions we set off further up the hill. The ailing wife spotted a fellow that looked Japanese and asked him something out of the phrase book we had been given in Bolivia that she hoped was Portuguese. He was pointing back down the hill. No, no, no. I took the leader's prerogative of ignoring this information and heading into a shop on the corner at the brow of the hill. It took the till bloke 5 minutes to check out 3 items and sort the change out. He then gave me his attention. He pointed to the road that crossed the road we were just on. He seemed certain. My wife wasn't; the face was creeping on. I boldly rallied the troops and we set off on a new course. Sure enough we got to a bus stop. It was an underwhelming experience since there was no timetable or fellow-in-waiting to confirm that this was the bus stop we needed. At least we had come to shade and a stop.

Twenty minutes later a newish bus bounced over the potholes and stopped for us. It was the bus to Alter do Chao. Result. Of course we struggled to get through the turnstile with our packs. But it was only 2.3 real each. That’s less than a dollar. To my mind that made it all worthwhile.

And when later that day when we came out of our little Posada in Alter do Chao and strolled down to the river and paid 3 real for a boat to ferry us across to an idyllic sand bank 30 meters away it seemed even more worthwhile.

The small island or sand bank had a beach on both sides and a line of restaurants. It was Sunday so everyone was out, enjoying the sun. We looked for a quiet spot and soon ran into a group of artisanas or hippies. They spoke a bit of English and got us stoned.

The usual edge of paranoia crept into the proceedings when I had to pay the money up front for some cousin to go off and score. They seemed cool and 50 Reals was not too painful an amount to lose.

As we waited I went for a swim in the warm river water. On the town side the bottom was muddy and unpleasant. On the other side of the sand bank it looked like an ocean, the river disappeared into the horizon with no evidence of a distant bank. The river bottom was also sandier.

All was well with the world. The gear came. I walked 500 meters up the beach with the young cousin who looked somehow like he had a job. When the beach was empty he handed over a brick of sticky weed. We made a couple of joints and walked back.

Awesome.

We hung with our new found friends, most of whom lived on the beach, for another hour or so and then made our excuses and left.

Back in the air-con room, with fridge, shower/toilet and view of badly made wall we recalled with a laugh that just a few hours ago we were losing heart under the Amazonian sun.

After a long stoned sleep we got up and splurged on a fish dinner in a restaurant on the main plaza. Now we were best of friends again and in mutual agreement that this beach was‘something special’. A term we reserved for only a handful of the many beaches we had visited over the years.

I loaded up with cane spirits and guarano pop at the small shop on the other side of the plaza and we went back to our room.

The beach, the hot weather, the luxury room and non-luxury view and the happiness of getting a new brick of weed made it one of the best days of the trip.

This was more like the heart of the Amazon.

Photos From Ecuador

2010-07-31T20:54:00.001-05:00

Here are a few photos of our time spent in Ecuador. Not the most exciting country in South America, but far from it's worse. As you travel up the west coast of the continent from Argentina north you can't help but notice that Ecuador marks not only the equator but the start of Caribbean America. Suddenly it gets hot and humid, suddenly people are no longer white or indigenous but sporting the rich hues of Africa. Jungle covers the interior and the sea is a bit warmer to swim in. This was particularly noticeable to us because we travelled through the southern winter months.

The famous tourist beach of Ecuador is Montanita. It was cheap and backpacker friendly. The surfing waves were great and if you looked carefully you could spot the small hippy weed smoking community. We did a great day excursion to hump back whales from Montanita.

After Montanita we spent a few days travelling up the coast on buses. One journey involved changing buses in the middle of the jungle. On that particular journey a passenger put his baby pig in the luggage hold of the bus. The little critter shat on my wife's backpack.

Sua and Canoa were average beaches. It was the weekend and people poured into the seaside towns at night to dance to loud salsa music and get pissed. A big bottle of beer was only $1. And I mean literally $1 since Ecuador uses American money. I can't decide if this is a good thing for their economy or not.

In Quito we heard numerous stories about the murder rate in the city. It did seem to have its problems - we saw kids jacking up on the street - but perhaps no more than any other big city in South America.

My wife collapsed while we were walking around Quito taking in the colonial sights. A kind taxi driver drove us to a private hospital who were very efficient and also had English speaking doctors. It turned out she was just hyper-ventilating. But the good thing was that they found numerous parasites living in her stomach left over from food poisoning in Bolivia and Peru. Getting the right antibiotics to treat the problem was definitely worth the $50 odd dollars that it finally cost us.

From Quito we caught buses over the border and into Colombia. After a few days in Colombia I realized just how average Ecuador is.

Cuenca

Montanita

Isla de La Plata

Canoa

Sua

Quito

The Journey to the Heart of the Amazon

2010-06-07T01:30:00.000-05:00

For years I've been in love with atlases. I find it exciting to pour over the pages, my nose close to the book reading the names of remote and exotic locations. I try to memorize the beautiful names of far away spots – Raratonga, Timbuktu, Palau, Ulan Bator, Tashkent, Turfan, Srebrenica, Livingstone, Srinagar, Xanadu, Ushuaia. Just the euphony of the words transports me away to far flung beaches, deserts, frontier towns, isolated mountain communities, jungle settlements and islands far from anywhere. The words are pregnant with the possibility of adventure. The syllables contain the potential of journeys fraught with challenge. While killing time in class I sometimes look out the window at the distant mountains and I imagine riding a horse on the frozen plains of Patagonia, of taking a boat into the heart of Congo's darkness, of trekking in the mountains to get to a village without road access. As more and more of the world falls victim to the malignant virus of globalization I have a growing desire to breathe the rarefied air of climes uncontaminated with ‘backpacker hostels’, menus in English and tourist class buses. Booking ahead, travelling in comfort, having it all explained in a guide book, encountering English speakers, and worst of all finding Starbucks and McDonalds just convinces me that a world without petrol might not be a bad thing. Convenience and familiarity is the false coin by which the exotic is being debased. Travel is big business and big business is only bringing the world together in the sense that everyone now knows the value of a dollar and putting 10 bunk beds in a room and charging laptop carrying twats $20 dollars a night for shared accommodation.

Enough of the rant. This piece is about how I managed to get to one of those remote spots on the map that I had dreamed of. That place is Manaus in Brazil. If you look at the map you will see that it is slap bang in the middle of the Amazon Rain forest. Two obstinate syllables holding out against the unquantifiable might of the mightiest forest. A place surrounded by one of the last refuges from the twenty first century. The Amazon is about the continuity with a dying past and simultaneously about the future. Amongst the centurion trees new species of flora and fauna are being discovered all the time. Many believe that the remedy to every disease and every cancer is to be found in the biosphere of the forest. There are tribes with little or no contact with the outside world, tribes who have been spared the ‘word’, who have escaped the trivia of ‘career’, ‘cash’, ‘play station’ and mobile phones. People who are blessed with nothing but the need to hunt food, make music, procreate and dabble in the planet's biggest pharmaceutical treasure trove. No police, no politicians, no lawyers, no taxes, no plastic. No buy one get one free. Man remembering that he is an animal who has guile and language on his side; not man with his head up his arse carrying round trinkets like iphones and car keys incapable of action unmediated by technology. The Amazon is one of the last places where ‘fast food’ refers to a flighty creature not a carcinogenic burger or a tortured chicken product.

There is only one road into Manaus and that is from Venezuela. That was a fun journey. We travelled through the night from Ciudad Bolivar down to the border. At the empty bus station at Santa Elena de Uairen we grabbed a couple of empanadas and sodas and negotiated with a wizened old man who owned the only taxi in sight. He drove through rolling green pasture land to the border. We strolled up a hill in the blazing sun past a load of impounded cars (anyone caught trying to smuggle more than a tank load of Chavez's oil out of the newly dubbed Bolivar Republic of Venezuela forfeits their car) to a small road side booth where they made us fill out forms about avian flu. We showed them our immunization cards proving that we had had the tamiflu injection. The fat woman in charge was irritated with this breach of protocol. She just wanted us to fill in the questionnaire and be on our way. Then we walked over the road to immigration. There were no other people crossing the border. There were no police to be seen. It would have been an easy feat to enter Brazil illegally. In the immigration office two huge smiling black mamas looked at our passports. They wore African headscarves and jangling bracelets. We had gone to a lot of trouble getting yellow fever certificates because the Crowded Planet and the Brazilian government website bang on about the need for the document. The mamas deliberately ignored our yellow fever certificates. My wife, who is Japanese, had bought a visa in Lima, Peru for Brazil. She handed over her passport with it open at the page of the visa stamp. The mama who took the passport instantly turned the page to find an empty spot to stamp. It seemed the whole place was on some type of industrial action where they would not only work slowly but incompetently. We both got 60 days. My wife's visa wasn't stamped. We both could have been carrying bird flu, swine fever, yellow fever and foot and mouth over the border and nobody would have moved a muscle to stop us. The only thing of interest seemed to be Venezuela's nationalized oil.

The first Brazilian town was about one kilometer down the road. Like many border towns the main money spinner seemed to be selling ‘duty free’ this and that. I went into a shop and with my shambolic Spanish managed to change the last of our Bolivar Fuerte (strong Bolivars – that’s a laugh) into outrageously strong Reals. We were in need of a much bigger injection of local currency to take us down the solitary jungle road to the heart of the Amazon, to the remote city of Manaus. My wife queued at the only bank for 30 minutes only to be told that they didn’t deal in any form of foreign currency exchange. The delightful lack of facility didn't strike us as so quaint at the time. We had been travelling for over twelve hours and had eaten only empanadas and cake the entire time. Warm water and ciggies had been keeping us going.

When faced with an obstacle it is often the case that the only thing to do is to carry on regardless. So we asked where the ‘terminal’ was and headed out of the one horse town down a concrete road shimmering in the heat. The bus terminal was one small office, a bench and a restaurant. As is so often the case, a money changer appeared out of nowhere. He had one of those odd hairstyles where it is greased flat at an angle across the forehead, like a footballer. He was the stereotypical entrepreneur who had long ago sold his grandmother because the margin was juicy. I had a vague notion about how much my dollar should get. After the usual to and fro with the calculator I changed a $50 bill. His best rate still seemed bad to me. He vanished in a blink of an eye.

We then approached the small bus company office and waited for the bloke to come back from lunch. When he did, we were struck by two things: firstly, how friendly he was and secondly, how beyond our budget bus journeys were in Brazil. We only had enough to get us to Boa Vista, about a quarter of the way. He helpfully suggested I put it on my credit card. This was not a bad idea because I had got hold of my first ever credit card just months before just for such an eventuality. My pin number didn't work. Oh well. We bought tickets to Boa Vista anyway. Let the future take care of itself. We went next door to the restaurant and enjoyed our first proper meal since we left Angel Falls. Chavez's socialist utopia is so ridden with crime that nobody ventures out at night in Ciudad Bolivar and through some genius stroke of town planning the town has not one place to buy food, not one supermarket or vegetable market anywhere in the town centre; only shoe shops. The markets are on the outskirts of town, past muggers’ paradise. Mr. For-The-People Chavez has wisely given all the police guns and green uniforms and told them to prepare for the imminent invasion of America. So despite the cost we filled our bellies with our first plate of Brazilian food. And the good thing about Brazilian food is that it not only fills your belly, it stretches it to the limits of endurance – rice, beans, pork, manioc and the smallest amount of salad washed down with some mysterious fruit juice.

While sitting on the only bench another bus arrived and one of the passengers to get off was a Japanese 40 something wearing one of those fisherman's jackets with dozens of pockets and a big camera strapped around his neck. Like so many of his compatriots he was in an unfeasible hurry. In his case, the rush was to get to Venezuela and see the Angel Falls and then fly back to Japan before his boss noticed he was missing from his desk. He spoke neither English nor Portuguese. His Spanish was no better. He stopped for five minutes to chat with my wife and get his bearings before taking off down the road looking like a fisherman who had lost his river.

The bus was late in arriving. Nobody seemed surprised about that. When it did make an appearance it looked reassuringly better than a Bolivian conveyance. It had a huge green parrot logo emblazoned across its side. We got on with a couple of other people who were obviously only going a few clicks down the road. It mercifully had air-con.

The road was a bit bumpy but in amazingly good nick considering that it ploughed a lonely furrow through the mighty Amazon. We passed small towns carved out of the tree line and farms sucking the goodness from the soil. The bus driver stopped a couple of times at shacks by the side of the road to drink a leisurely soda. Here was a man with a healthy disregard for time.

In the late afternoon we made it to Boa Vista. It was a big open town with empty wide avenues and tropical trees festooning the roadside. I was vaguely considering staying the night and spending the following day looking for a cambio or bank interested in traveller's cheques. Mrs. Trippy Traveller wasn’t so keen to break the journey merely because of a lack of funds. I agreed that it didn’t make much sense so we did a check of the bus companies just to confirm that we didn’t have the cash to get to Manaus. We searched the high ceilinged terminal for a change place. Nothing. But we did find a small glass office with a sign promising “Tourist Information”. A brown man (everyone was some shade of African) in shorts was watching the TV; not exactly burdened with his duties. We entered his air-con office and he was most solicitous. He didn't know a word of English but he was quite prepared to be patient with my random keywords in Spanish. “Quiero cambio. Hablo dollars Americano. Donde esta banco?”

And then he did the last thing I would ever have expected. He looked in the newspaper for the official exchange rate. Until that point I had never seen anyone in South America pay any attention to what the official rate should be. They had always inflated the strength of the local currency like true patriots. Our nice Tourist Info man then made a couple of calls on his mobile phone. Perhaps he was checking with the central bank of Boa Vista to see if they had the funds to change $100. No, he was actually talking to a shop owner 10 meters away. I know this because he took us there. The shop sold sodas, sandwiches and dusty souvenirs. The chubby girl behind the counter opened the till and emptied it. The entire contents came to $100 exactly. We were very grateful to her and the tourist info bloke. All we could do was to keep on saying “obrigado”. We had only been a few hours in Brazil but I was already liking the place much better than paranoid Venezuela. Nobody was that interested in our presence in this bus terminal and they certainly weren't interested in trying to rip us off. Rather it felt like it was only good manners in Brazil to aid the occasional foreigner that strayed onto their radar.

As we waited for our night bus we spent a few valuable Reals on a strange sweet green soda made of guarana berries to stave off dehydration. We sat on hard benches and watched a young man with a tray of watches accost random Brazilians and persuade them that they needed a watch. Looking back on the experience I have to laugh since where ever we went in northern Brazil the time varied from clock to clock and watch to watch by as much as ten minutes, and nobody seemed to notice. Was this healthy disregard of exact time partly fostered by the man standing before me flogging dodgy no doubt made in China timepieces partly to blame? I kind of hope so.

The bus might have arrived late or it might have arrived on time. It depended on whose watch you consulted. Yet again a random Brazilian approached us as we milled around the bays where the buses parked and asked in broken English where we were going. The young man just wanted to make sure we got on our bus.

The bus was more crowded and slightly better than the last one we had boarded. It had free bottles of water on board which was a definite boon when travelling in the Amazon.

The bus made a stop an hour or so into the journey at a restaurant that reminded me of Thailand. The place was just a corrugated steel roof and concrete floor. No need for walls in the 100% humidity of the jungle. My wife and I studied the system. It seemed to be a buffet whereby you could fill a 12 inch place with a mountain of meat and carbs for a fixed price. We bought one plate and shared it. Other passengers were doing the same so we didn't feel bad about it. I didn't know it at the time but this was par for the course in Brazil. There is a huge disparity in the country between the price for things and what the average person can actually afford. For example, I'm sure the price of a bus ticket from Boa Vista to Manaus would represent nearly a month's wages for an average Brazilian. I guess like so many of the world's population not blessed with an American, European, Japanese or Australian passport they had learnt to survive on virtually zero money. What distinguishes the Brazilians is that they achieve this feat with a smile.

We got back on the bus and with our bellies full again we fell asleep on the dark bus slowly bumping its way through the jungle.

We arrived early the next morning. We had spent the last two nights on buses and felt the dirt and tiredness to our very bones. It is at such points that relationships become strained and the desire to just chuck money at the situation becomes tempting. Only we didn't have any money to get off so lightly.

Our packs were thrown on the concrete and a vulture taxi driver appeared out of nowhere. I tersely refused his offer and located our bags and dragged them off to the side. We had a fag and considered our next move. The CP mentioned that the terminal was miles from the centre. I had got the name of a hostel from a fellow traveller and had found it on a map. It was just a matter of doing the local transport to get there. With my fast wilting wife we hauled our packs onto our backs and headed for a bridge spanning the busy highway next to the bus stop. I was too tired to notice that I had made it to one of my dream destinations. It just felt like the outskirts to any big chaotic third world city.

We had no one to follow so I was thrown on my own resources. I got out my compass and considered which direction was mostly likely going towards the centre. I then checked at a gas station at a corner junction. The gas pump guy struggled to understand my latinate gibberish but eventually seemed to twig and pointed to a stop 50 metres down the busy road.

My wife was on the verge of hating me for subjecting her to this final round of endurance. We smoked and waited in silence. A bus pulled up after ten minutes. Getting on the bus was a challenge. Passengers entered from the back of the bus and had to go through a turnstile after paying the bus fare. Naturally our bulky packs wouldn't fit through the narrow turnstile. As the bus lurched around corners we passed the packs to each other over the metal railing while at the same time searching for change to give to the huge African ticket lady.

Another obstacle overcome. Plenty more on the way. My brain rose to the next challenge: where to get off? I studied the Lonely Planet map and the names of the streets whizzing past. Luckily, colonialism has made it easy to spot a centre. The grand buildings built by raping the land and exploiting African labour (the locals fucked off into the jungle rather than become the Portuguese lackeys) suddenly hit the cityscape. I judged we had arrived at a key bus stop and roused my half dead wife to action.

Luck was on our side. We were on the map and soon were dodging our way down the busy street to our intended hostel. Beat up cars filled the roads, vendors pedaled snack foods from small wooden booths; office workers, school kids, rich and poor packed the sidewalks. White, brown and black skins sweated in the heat. Suits, Bermuda shorts and football jerseys provided the colour to the city. It was a thriving city devoid of parrots, insects, birds of paradise, monkeys, indigenous people, exotic flowers and creeping vines. The only noises were from gas belching cars and buses and from the hubbub of the denizens. Not a trace of the Amazon forest was to be seen or heard.

As we negotiated the crowds through the heart of the city near the port we spotted a place that had a painted window announcing money changing services. Just when we weren't looking for what we were in desperate need of, we found it. How like life – contingency provides what determination failed to deliver.

As we approached Hostel Manaus the crowds thinned and we soon made it to a goal. Just one more hazard to negotiate. Did they have dorm beds for us? Yes, they did but we had to pay in advance. Typical - there but not there. So we waited in the lounge smelling of two days of sweat for nine o'clock when the change place would open. They wouldn't let us have a shower or eat breakfast or check our email. We just sat in a semi-delirious state smoking the last of a ciggies praying that the place around the corner would change traveller's cheques.

When nine-ish arrived we headed out again and found the place we had spotted earlier. They changed traveller's cheques at the official rate but charged a flat $5 fee per cheque. Fair enough. We changed one $500 cheque, found a supermarket nearby and bought water, fags and some food. And then like pilgrims on the last stage of the journey we found new strength to walk smartly back to the hostel and finally get a bed each.

There Must Be an Angel Playing with my Heart – a tale from San Pedro Prison in La Paz, Bolivia

2010-03-22T00:42:00.002-05:00

I finally broke into the prison,
I found my place in the chain.
Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows – Leonard Cohen 'The Old Revolution'

I love prison literature. I think I've read nearly all the great tales of incarceration: Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Dostoyevsky's The House of the Dead, The Damage Done by Warren Fellows, Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, Papillion by Henri Charriere, and of course Marching Powder by Rusty Young. There is no better way to understand freedom than to have it taken away from you. Prisons produce existential accounts par excellence. And all my reading of tales of horror in prisons has convinced me of one thing; convinced me utterly and profoundly that I never want to go to prison either as an inmate or a visitor.

It was thus with no small amount of interest that I sat on the roof of Cordoba backpackers in Argentina and smoked joints with a Canadian in his late twenties and listened to him tell his story of how he had bribed his way into La Paz's San Pedro Prison in Bolivia.

For all of you not familiar with Rusty Young's book Marching Powder, San Pedro Prison is a prison that was run like no other in the world. Inmates were allowed to live with their family. They had to earn a living because nothing was free in the prison. Cells could be bought and rented. If you wanted to eat you went to one of the many restaurants in the prison or you purchased food at one of several grocery stores dotted around the house of correction. Money could buy you not only a cell with amenities but also I whole slew of other privileges including nights outside the prison. It was all based on the pandemic corruption that existed in the prison from the governor down; they nearly all took bribes and let the prisoners run the prison like a mini barter town. It had several cocaine labs. San Pedro was where the cheapest and purest cocaine came from. And enter Thomas McFadden from the UK who was caught trying to smuggle heroin out of Bolivia. Stuck with no money and no Spanish he had to quickly adapt to his new surroundings. After many trying times he eventually learned Spanish, got an Israeli girlfriend, opened a restaurant in the prison and started a lucrative business showing backpackers around San Pedro and finishing each tour by treating the voyeuristic tourists to a cocaine binge. The tour was so famous that it made the Lonely Planet.

That was before. Before the BBC snuck cameras into the prison and exposed the corruption of the authorities and before Brad Pitt decided to make a movie about McFadden's life. That shamed the Bolivian authorities into draconian measures. The guards are regularly replaced, the infamous side door where tourists used to enter has been shut, the cocaine labs have been closed down and now inmates are no longer allowed to cohabit with their families.

For the Canadian who I had just met this was a real shame. He was on his grand tour - Central and Southern America overland through ten countries to the bottom, to Argentina. We had run into him at the end of his adventure. And of all the things he had most wanted to see and do on his journey it was to do the tour of La Paz prison. He was another chap who had the aura of indestructibility about him - the charming naiveté of youth.

And so here is his tale. Maybe his tale is one of the final traveller's tales about San Pedro. He was in La Paz, Bolivia. He had tried the two bars where you could openly consume coke. The one night the one place whose name I won’t mention was raided by the police. As is so often the case, a brief hullabaloo started seconds prior to the police arrival. Our Canadian hero, Greg, sat calmly at his table. A table of Swedes wearing superman outfits, panicked and fled into the kitchens. The police soon rounded up all the foreigners and started extracting bribes from them. 20 minutes into this procedure one of the Swedes bursts from the fridge in the bar, a frozen super hero. He just couldn’t handle the cold any longer.

Greg and the others got off lightly: just a few dollars extra down for the night. He should have heeded the warning but instead he actively pursued his dream to enter San Pedro. He eventually got hold of the telephone number of a man called ‘Angel’ who could facilitate his desire to experience the inside of a Bolivian prison. He phoned Angel and a meeting was set for 3pm the following day in a park outside the prison.

Greg arrived a bit late and desperately scoured the park to find his contact. He said he felt really ridiculous going up to several Bolivians asking them if they were called ‘Angel’. He approached one shady local who wasn’t Angel but was willing to sell Greg some coke. Greg enquired about the price out of interest. It was cheap; only 70 Bolivianos ($5). Greg was not, however, to be so easily distracted from his main purpose. He had picked up a fair amount of Spanish on his journey and proceeded to explain that though the coke offer was tempting it was an entrée into the prison that loomed up within eyesight from where they were standing that he was really wanting. The Bolivian who wasn’t Angel said he could arrange it. They haggled and agreed a price of $20 per person. A meeting was set for the next day at 4pm.

That night Greg confided in other backpackers in the hostel about his day’s triumph. Greg was a charming man whose confidence was infectious and it didn’t really surprise me that he got four other backpackers interested in doing the tour – two fellow North Americans and two Europeans.

So the fateful afternoon arrived when Greg hoped to fulfill his ambition of seeing the inside of a Bolivian prison. They found the man who wasn’t Angel and after a bit of to and fro agreed to pay him his fee in halves - half then and half when they safely exited the house of correction. No Angel reluctantly agreed. He took the money and set off. They followed him. He stopped by the main entrance and told them to wait. He then vanished around the corner. The gang of jail breakers lost heart. Where was No Angel? As they debated whether they had been fleeced, Greg spotted a prison guard and a group of civilians making their way towards the entrance of the prison. In a flash of inspiration he shuffled over and joined the back of the group. The others followed Greg. Before they knew it the prison doors had shut behind them and they were in. They could see the famous courtyard where Thomas had spent his first night shivering in the cold. They could see inmates lolling around enjoying the last of the afternoon sun and they could see a big Bolivian guard blocking their way. They were ordered into a side room next to the door keepers’ quarters and told to wait. No Angel was nowhere to be seen and it was agonizingly obvious to Greg and his followers that their money hadn’t bought them anything. They were in prison in the poorest country in South America and a tour was looking very unlikely.

They stewed in their own stupidity for thirty minutes before they were marched into the office of a more senior policeman. He soon discovered that Greg was the only gringo with Espanol.

“What are you doing in San Pedro Prison?”
“We wanted to see the prison, senor.”
“Do you want to buy marijuana?”
“No senor. We just wanted to do a sightseeing tour.”
“Do you want to buy cocaine?”
“No senor. Only the tour.”

With that the interview was over and they were led back to their previous holding pen. Another thirty minutes elapsed before a guard took them to a bigger, plusher office. They were introduced to the governor of the prison. Again it went:

“Why are you in San Pedro Prison?”
“We wanted to do a tour of the prison, senor. We paid a man to get us in.”
“Do you want to buy marijuana?”
“No senor.”
“Cocaine?”
“No senor.”

Just then two prison guards dragged a very shifty looking No Angel into the room. The guards had him cuffed. They said a few words to the governor and put a small plastic bag of powder on the table. No one needed three guesses as to what it might have been.

No Angel didn’t hesitate in putting forward his side of the story. He quickly fired off his Spanish at the governor. Greg caught the gist of it. No Angel was claiming that the gringos had given him money to score some coke for them, the coke that was presently on the gov's hardwood desk. Greg responded like his life depended on it and in some ways it probably did. He protested vociferously that No Angel was lying. The money had been for a tour of the prison, not to buy drugs.

The boss man considered the group of frightened tourists and considered No Angel. He then demanded to see the foreigners' passports. Greg explained that they had left their passports in the hostel because who would be foolish enough to bring anything valuable into a prison full of...

That last thought lingered in the air unspoken. Who would be foolish enough to want to visit a prison full of murderers and rapists, innocent and guilty, the condemned, the bottom of the slag heap?

No Angel was taken away cursing Greg. The gringos were taken away to their makeshift prison near the gate. The governor deliberated.

It took an hour or so before it was explained to Greg and the four others who were in a state of severe fear for their future liberty that they would be allowed to go. The only condition was that they would be escorted back to their hostel where they must present their passports to their police escort.

No doubt with much adrenalin charged relief the five rash gringos were lead out of the prison. They got to the hostel and made photocopies of their passports. The policeman took the copies and demanded a bribe. Greg refused and wasn't stopped from re-entering the gated hostel. The five of them watched from a window as the policeman lingered outside. He eventually gave up and drifted off.

That night they were on the news. 5 foreigners had been arrested trying to break into San Pedro Prison. I could see that Greg loved telling the tale, and that he had already told it several times. I was less certain as to whether he had drawn any lessons from his tale of near incarceration. I mentioned this and he said that if he had been sent down he would have taken over as the head gringo and tour master.

Humpback Whales in Ecuador

2010-03-08T04:42:00.000-05:00

This was one of the highlights of our trip. Something about seeing big animals up close that is truly inspiring. The video clip below was taken in the Manchalilla National Park in Ecuador, which is sometimes called "the poor man's Galapagos'.

After doing a few such excursions, treks and trips you come to realize that much of the time the animals aren't willing to co-operate. You might get a glimpse of them, but it is so fleeting that it is unsatisfying. These monster humpback whales in Ecuador surprised us by being so unconcerned about our little tour boat trundling along parallel to them. They seemed so joyously wrapped up in being whales in the mating season - splashing and diving and lifting their huge tail fins. Brilliant.

The whole trip including lunch and a walking tour of a bird colony only came to about $30. It was worth it. Obviously not as animal-tastic as going to the Galapagos islands; but still full on. Besides, as I've mentioned before, there is an irritating smug factor about going to the Galapagos islands that puts me off wasting the thousands of dollars. People confuse going to special places with them being special people. Charles Darwin managed both - bless that long bearded Victorian that American God-lovers have come to despise.

5 'Must Visit' Places in Argentina

2010-03-02T01:09:00.004-05:00

Argentina is the second biggest country in South America and is blessed with a great diversity of lanscapes and cultures. In the north are the surreal moonscapes of the Andes with a strong element of indigenous cultures. In the east there are steamy tropical jungles. In the West there are mountains, lakes and the best wine growing areas. In the South is Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego - vast open spaces and habitats for a huge selection of flora and fauna.

It was a hard job but I've narrowed down all the great destinations in Argentina to my own personal top 5. They are not in any order of preference.

1) No list about Argentina would be complete without mention of Buenos Aires. It is a perfect city for a backpacker because there is plenty of cheap accommodation available. The city is safe to walk around during the day. There is a plethora of interesting places to visit and things to do. See the dog walkers in the rich areas of recoleta, visit the necropolis where Evita is entombed, see the freaky indigenous art on the top floor of the Belle Artes Museum, check out one of the energetic protests forever happening on the streets, admire the beautiful colonial architecture. And there's more: visit the funky coloured Boca area, see street tango, and party hard at night in one of BA's many nightspots. At the weekends bars and clubs are bursting full of the young and beautiful until the late hours of Sunday morning. Buenos Aires is not just one of the most interesting cities in South America it is one of the coolest cities in the world.

2) Amaicha del Valle is in the north of Argentina, high up in the Andes in the Calchaqui Valley. It is a small town with a remarkable 350 sunny days a year. It is said to have the purest Indigenous population in Argentina. There is a mother earth or Pachamama festival every February. But what really makes Amaicha special is the Quilmes Ruins a few kilometers out of town. The Quilmes people resisted the Spanish for 130 years. Their main city was near Amaicha. It is a place of special energy. The terracing is spectacularly constructed in a giant wedge in a mountain. The history and culture of the Quilmes people is fraught with injustice. The Spanish shipped them out of the area and sold their sacred city to a business man who built a hotel on the spot. It wasn't until the 1970s that they got their holy site back. Even wikipedia keeps quiet on Spain's great shame.

3) No list about Argentina would be complete without mention of the incredible Iguazu Falls near Puerto Iguazu. The Iguazu Falls form part of the border between Brazil and Argentina. They can be viewed from both sides. Indeed from Puerto Iguazu it possible to do day trips to two other countries - Brazil and Paraguay. In Brazil there is Foz do Iguacu and in Paraguay there's Ciudad del Este which is near the world's second biggest dam, Itaipu dam. But the main event is definitely the Iguazu Falls on the Argentine side. They are in a big national park. The various falls can be seen from a network of catwalks or pasarelas. The most spectacular of which is the one above the falls that ends in the famous viewing point above the Devil's Throat, Garganta del Diablo. There is a wealth of flora and fauna in the park. There are over 2,000 plant species, 400 bird species, jaguars, caimans, monkeys and cute coatis (see picture below). The park offers great trekking opportunities as well as a variety of boat trips. In the Guarani language 'Iguazu' means 'Great Waters'. Indeed they are.

4) Patagonia is a vastness of open spaces the likes of which I've only seen in Tibet. It is also the home to the first Welsh settlers in Argentina. Our guide to the Valdes Peninsula told us an amusing story about Princess Diana's visit to the nearby town of Trelew. She wanted to visit a tea shop to show her appreciation of all things Welsh (after all at the time she was married to the Prince of Wales). Her handlers got it very wrong because she ended up visiting a tea shop run by Italians. You have to admire the Royal Family's incompetence.

That aside, the Valdes Peninsula near Puerto Madryn is a very special place. As you drive around the windswept roads you see horses and guanacos (a relative of the llama) and if you are lucky you can spot rheas and armadillos. The real treat, however, is the coast line which is littered with elephant seals lounging around in the sun. You will also see sea lions and hundreds of Megellanic penguins and on rare occasion a pod of orcas looking to snack on a seal. Most tours of the Valdes Peninsula also include a trip to Puerto Piramide where you can catch a boat to view southern right whales who sometimes seem almost playful.

5) Last but far from least there is the Perito Moreno Glacier near El Calafate. It is one of only two advancing glaciers in all of South America. You can get close to the epic glacier and spend many an enthralling minute watching huge chunks of ice falling from the 5 km-wide glacier and making a terrific booming noise across Lago Argentino. For the more adventurous types there are trekking trips available onto the ice using clampons. Nearby is Bahia Redonda, where you can see black-necked swans and flamingos. El Calafate is also a great stop on the way down to Tierra del Fuego and the End of the World.

These are my 5 'must see' places in Argentina, but to be fair there is just so much more. More mountains, more lakes and lagoons, more wildlife, more architecture and more nightlife to experience and enjoy in a country whose economic woes have suddenly made it a lot more affordable to backpackers and travellers.

Brazil-istics Part Two

2010-02-25T21:31:00.004-05:00

The other half of the South American continent, Brazil, feels like a continent in itself. Despite many similarities with their Spanish speaking brothers and sisters to the South, West and North, Brazilians are different. The heart of this difference lies in the smallest details. I started listing those details in Brazil-istics Part One. Below are my concluding observations about what makes Brazil so Brazilian.

1) Something that is so obvious but it is still worth mentioning is music. Whereas, the rest of South America is going crazy to salsa music every weekend, the Brazilians love samba, reggae, bossa nova, maracatu and afoxe. Music seems a lot less clichéd and more surprising in Brazil. It is not just about losing yourself and getting laid (although it’s that as well); it’s about finding your roots. The African influence in afoxe, maracatu and the drumming of Salvador are evident in the hypnotic rhythms and the trance dancing and the euphoria and the spirituality which connects the musicians to the audience. I remember waiting in Belem bus terminal for three hours and watching a band bang out tune after tune of maracatu. They had their own dancers but other waiting passengers frequently joined in the elaborate man and woman dance pairings. And the strangest thing was that despite the frenzied and erotic dancing on display nobody was getting drunk. It seemed the music was doing that for them.

2) Brazil could have the highest concentration of surfers per capita outside of Hawaii. Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Salvador are big cities with access to surf beaches. On any given weekend at any beach with surf you will see 100s of young people twisting and turning in the waves, displaying awesome board skills. They often dispense with wetsuits and cords on their ankles: just a board and bright beach wear is all you need for hours of fun in the surf. From the head of the Amazon River in the north all the way down to Porto Seguro is one great long beach with barrels and breaks and pipes for those in the know.

3) The cold drinks seem colder in Brazil than in other South American countries. Even those countries in the north blessed with equatorial sunshine couldn’t, if my memory serves me right, produce a beer or a coke that spins you out with its dangerous but refreshing iciness.

4) Brazilians are the fondest in South America of the football top. Football is a South American religion and in Brazil they wear their religion on their back. The most popular tops are the yellow of the national team, Adriano and Ronaldinho. Surprisingly we spotted a Tevez in Manuas and a Messi in Trancoso.

5) Something that you can’t fail to notice about Brazil, especially northern Brazil is how racially mixed up the people are. Nearly everyone is a shade of brown or black. It is the white people who stand out, but somehow they don’t stand out because they fit in. As you get to meet people and their families you notice that blood crosses the racial divide. In fact perhaps for many there is no real racial divide. You fancy who you fancy and skin colour is probably no more important than the colour of the iris. What separates people is not colour but money. Brazil for me felt like the future – when racial prejudice has gone what remains will bear an uncanny resemblance to Brazil.

6) No list about what makes Brazil stand out would sadly be complete without mention of armed robbery and serious crime. The day we arrived in Rio a helicopter was shot out of the sky by a gang with machine guns. And that felt like a typical news item. Every time we saw the news on TV there was always a section where they displayed for the cameras all the guns and drugs the police had managed to uncover. It is perhaps the saddest irony of Brazil that for a country where 99% of the people are friendly and honest no one has been left untouched by the violence. Everyone has experienced a gun or knife pointed at them by a crazed and desperate youth demanding money. Everyone advises you to just pay because the desperation of your assailant will not make them think twice about killing you. We heard stories from travellers and locals about armed robbery, rape and cons that I don’t want to even start to relate. The locals warn you, the guide books warn you, the movie City of God shows you – violence is rife; night time is a time for caution. Just to put this in perspective – in 2002 a study was carried out by the Brazilian Geography and Statistics Institute. The unpublished results found that homicide was the leading cheap cause of death for persons aged 15 to 44.

7) My last observation will go some way to counterpointing the grim reality I have just stated. And this observation is that Brazilians are some of the most helpful people you could hope to meet. From our first day in Brazil we experienced kindness that surprised us. From the start we were caught off guard by how expensive the buses were. From the Venezuelan border we could only afford a bus to Boa Vista. In Boa Vista bus station we looked to change some dollars at a fair rate (obviously that’s not going to happen at the border). We walked into the tourist information in the bus station and the man struggled to comprehend my grating Spanish, but once he did he found a newspaper, discovered the official rate of exchange, made a phone call and within 5 minutes we had exchanged at a small shop in the terminal – we pretty much emptied the woman’s till, but she smiled and said you’re welcome. And that set the tone for much of the rest of Brazil (except for Salvador where people cuss you out, beg and try to short change you). Locals were forever guiding us on to the right bus, helping us reach our destination, running off to get ice, ready to go that extra mile to show genuine hospitality. A hospitality that is not to do with politeness and formal manners but rather indicative of a practical mind that knows how to apply help and is willing to do so for nothing more than a thank you.

Brazil-istics Part One

2010-02-07T22:44:00.001-05:00

“We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path.” Paulo Coelho

I have my share of pain and renunciation I guess, all neatly held back by denial; but, putting that aside, I was impressed with the path that was revealed to me in Brazil, and I crave your indulgence to allow me to expand on some of my observations about Brazil. I apologize in advance for any judgments – they are just my projections, my daydreams for how life should be. Finally, before I begin, I would like to point out that the ordering has no hidden agenda to it. That is just the way the thoughts fell out onto my notebook.

1) In the bus stations, airports and hotel lobbies the clocks show slightly different times. There is a nebulous 5 or 6 minutes-ish about all pretensions to an exact, official time. This seems to be especially true for departures. A bus scheduled to leave at 16.00 that leaves at 16.06 is most definitely leaving on time. This Brazilian generosity over time, this indifference to living your life at the mercy of the clock is slightly different to the famous Peruvian 20 minutes. In Peru when you arrange to meet, a person often responds by claiming that they will be over in “20 minutes”. This can lead to some infuriating waits until you realize that a Peruvian 20 minutes is somewhere between 40 minutes and 2 hours.

2) Northern Brazilians in particular are some of the most casually dressed people you are ever likely to encounter. They all appear as if they are heading out for a day on the beach. They wear beach shorts with bold splashes of colour, havaiana flip flops and football tops. Or they dispense with the tops and just let it all hang out. Women, especially bigger ones, will squeeze into tight leggings or hot pants and colourful blouses that show a generous portion of spare-tire midriff and overflowing cleavage.

3) Following on from number two, women seem unashamed of their body shape and their extra weight. The average over-weight woman has no problem grabbing the affections of a young slim chap. At the beach they wear the tiniest bikinis that reveal a wealth of stretch marks, cellulose and big wobbly behinds. This fulsome package turns the heads of the young men.

4) Brazilian men of the north who are permanently attired in beach shorts seem to forever be grabbing their nuts and scratching them in public. That is what men do.

5) Brazilians, as everyone will tell you, are the happiest folks you will encounter in South America. They are forever smiling and love nothing better than to meet a foreigner and give them the thumbs up. This thumbs up business is a core characteristic of communication. Life is a continual round of thumbs up. I never encountered a thumb down when I was there. Apparently, Brazilians have an alter-ego to their sunny dispositions called saude. It is claimed that saude is untranslatable. It is a type of philosophical melancholy which will periodically wipe the smile from their faces and cast a shadow on their hearts. There's something beautiful and human in that as well.

6) The stereotypes of normal folk struggling to survive in developing countries are nearly always wrong. Yes, the majority of Brazilians are not wealthy and matters are not helped by the high prices in Brazil to buy food, bus tickets and other everyday stuff. Yet, I saw so many people use credit cards to make purchases. I guess they have tiny overdraft facilities. It also makes sense when you consider how rampant armed robbery sadly is in Brazil.

7) Brazil seems to have the highest percentage per capita in South America of hippy folk who live on beaches and at the edge of towns and villages. They are allowed to put up tents, erect make-shift accommodation and sling up their hammocks. Perhaps the country is so big and nature still, despite the inroads made by loggers and farmers, so pervasive that they can afford to be more relaxed about the laws of land ownership and allow land squatters. These colourful folk aren't usually your average beggars. Instead they cultivate talents for juggling, diablo sticks and making jewellery and manage to get by that way. There is always fishing and selling the odd bit of weed to keep things ticking over and hold back hunger. With the weather always hot and a place to stay free, they seem to get by.

8) Brazil is less overrun with backpackers than other South American countries. The masses are drawn to Machu Picchu in Peru and the high Andes in Bolivia. Concomitant to this, there are fewer hostels. Instead you find yourself staying in bed and breakfasts called pousadas. They cost more than your average hostel but the breakfast (café da manha) is much better than the poxy coffee and croissant that passes for a breakfast in much of the rest of South America. To save money camping is a good option.

9) There is a logical explanation for the huge ladies. Brazil serves the biggest plates of food I've ever encountered. They have this amazing thing called prato feito, universally known as ‘PF’, which consists of rice, beans, some type of meat and manioc powder. It is a mountain of food with only the smallest amount of vegetables. It is amazing everyone doesn't die of scurvy.

That is it for part one of Brazil-istics. Just writing this has filled me with joy; it has thrown me back to all those idyllic days spent getting high and lying in a hammock; and it has left just a trace of sadness on my soul when I consider where I am now – in Japan where all the clocks are synchronized.

A Day out cycling in the Quebrada de Cafayate

2010-01-26T11:47:00.001-05:00

We rented out mountain bikes for 35 pesos per bike from the the Rusty-k Hostel where we were staying. The man preparing the bikes gave us a quick lecture as he handed us a puncture repair kit and pump each. The gist of the talk was that we should only ride on the road and push the bikes on the gravel. We cycled off to the bus stop with a Swiss woman, Sonia, who intended to do the excursion with us. At 9.30 am we had put the bikes into the luggage hold of the El Indio bus and paid the 17 pesos each for the bus fare. Luckily the Swiss woman spoke good Spanish so she explained to the driver where we wanted to be dropped off.

The bus travelled up winding mountain roads for an hour before we finally disembarked. We unloaded the bikes and re-attached the front wheels. Then we locked them up and went to see the first sight on the tour, the famous Garganta del Diablo (the throat of the devil). It was an impressive gorge in the mountain side that started as a narrow gap and then opened up to a circular amphitheatre. The mountain face was various stripes of pink.

At the entrance to the natural rock phenomenon there were various hippy looking young people selling trinkets and snacks.

We spent 40 minutes clambering around the devil’s throat before pushing the bikes back to the road and heading off back to Cafayate. Before we started off we stopped to chat to another tourist who was struggling to replace the inner tube on his front tire. He had obviously not heeded the advice given to him when he hired the bike, or perhaps, he had not been fortunate enough to get the pre-departure lecture.

Ten minutes down the road we came to the next natural attraction called el Aphitheatro. It was similar to the previous place but opened up into a bigger amphitheatre with a sand floor. A hippy played guitar and sang. Her voice echoed eerily off the walls. By this point I wanted to buy a cold drink to quench my thirst. We had some water but I really fancied a cold coke to hit the spot. Bizarrely enough we could buy all manner of hand -made jewellery but not a drink.

We had 50 kms back to town so we didn’t linger too long at the amphitheatre. The road was all up and down and twisting. The wind blew viciously into our faces making the going slow.

Just past the rock that looked like a frog (el Sapho) we happed upon the young German who had been changing his inner tube. He was one lucky bugger. A van had stopped and the owner was helping him load his bike into the back. His wheel had never been right again and he had decided to hitch back into town. He told me all of this quickly as he squeezed in the van with his naff mountain bike and sped off. I was quite envious because the riding was hard going and our water was running low.

Not to be unduly disheartened, the three of us continued to ride the mountain road. Sonia was loving it. She brought up the rear of our little posse. She wanted to see everything. She had a guide book with her and notes from a local about all the sights along the way. At one point we left the bikes to trek through some scrub to a river. On the other side of the river was a rock decorated with lots of white pebbles. The scenery was stunning – vast and unforgiving under a bright blue sky, with no signs of human habitation for miles. The mountains were multi hued and oddly shaped by the fierce blasts of the wind. It was easy to imagine I was tripping because I could make out all kinds of figures in the lumpy mountain sides.

About half way into the ride we came across a shack selling pottery. I went to inquire about cold drinks. No they only sold vases and cups. Oh my kingdom for a coke. Sonia wanted to go off on a trek at this point to view another odd rock formation she had been told about. Bugger that I thought, I want a drink and I want to be back in the hostel. So we parted company: Sonia plodded off up a mountain path, and my wife and I got back on the bikes.

From there on the fun bike ride stopped being fun. It just goes to show it is all to do with your state of mind, and your supply of fluids. By the side of the road were signs every 5kms telling us how far we had left to Cafayate. At every marker I stopped and waited for my wife to catch up. Each time we had a fag and a sip of water and headed off again. I no longer took much notice of the scenery. My biggest thrill at this point was reaching another marker.

The final few kilometers of the road were flat. On our left were vineyards. We passed the occasional local on his horse.

As soon as we reached the 0km marker and the edge of town we spied a kiosk. With joy in my heart I finally got to buy the coke I was fantasizing about. My wife had a mineral water.

At 4pm we rolled into the hostel and gave back the bikes. I headed straight for the kitchen where I had put a bottle of black beer in the fridge. To my chagrin it was gone. That was the down side of hostel kitchens with communal fridges. I cussed bitterly and decided to seek my own justice. I grabbed 8 empty bottles from under the sink and marched wearily to the corner shop where I managed to exchange the empties for 2 full bottles. I was soon back in the courtyard quaffing on my cold beer when I ran into an Argentine hippy I had previously befriended. He owned up to stealing my beer. I had doubled my beer stash for no extra money so I didn’t vent my wrath on him. He was a nice lad with a beautiful girlfriend. Instead we chatted in the late afternoon sun.

That evening he scored a lump of grass and got us stoned so he more than made up for his transgression. As we smoked up in his room and laughed about this and that I looked back on the day and decided it wasn’t so bad after all.

The next morning I had not only the devils throat but the devils head to deal with, not to mention aching muscles.

A Perfect Man in Medillin

2010-01-19T20:04:00.010-05:00

Chuck Aranal the semi professional body boarder was a definite type. The type who you just know will never get into trouble, indestructible. A man who could stroll through a battle field with bullets flying left, right and centre, mines under foot exploding, bombs falling from the sky and he would emerge from the conflict unscathed and a hero. And naturally such a gift was given to an irritatingly shallow man who could do nothing except boast. We met Chuck in Pablo Escobar`s hometown in Columbia, Medellin. He was a tall golden boy with dark curly auburn hair and square-jawed good looks from Newcastle in Australia. He was travelling with a spotty mop haired sidekick surfer dude who also hailed from Newcastle. Chuck was a non-stop talker and his sole topic was of course himself. At any pause in the conversation he would look to take centre stage, which funnily enough as he got more stoned, he found harder to do. It was our first night in the city. We were staying in the Casa Kiwi Hostel. I had scored my usual box of cheap red wine and was sitting around the communal table in the back garden guzzling plonk and smoking tabs trying to get a bit of distance. My dear wife was hustling in the kitchen to concoct a nourishing slop for our evening meal. I had just met Danny from Huddersfield and we were enjoying a good natter about footie and drugs, as you do. Chuck and his mate sat down at the table and started making friendly noises so I found him a glass and poured him a helping of box wine. This started his first big ‘me’ conversation about how he used to work in a ‘bottle shop’ and how it was his job to pick the wines. He bizarrely enough liked my cheap plonk and began a tedious monologue about his ‘bottle shop’ days. It was hard to tell what his job description actually was. Perhaps he was a manager or perhaps he was a box shifter, but boy could he rabbit on. I could see total boredom enveloping Danny like a cloud. Luckily, the conversation moved on. It turned out that Chuck was waiting on a guy who worked in the hostel to score some weed for him. Chuck`s mate bought up the possibility that the local in question looked pretty rough and beaten up and he might be conning them. Chuck thought otherwise – of course the bloke would come through, after all this was Chuck Aranal we were talking about. Danny was visible heartened by the escape from the ‘bottle shop’ reminisces and just to make sure that subject was truly dead and buried he started upon the pertinent topic of drugs. This sent Chuck into overdrive. Man had they snorted a lot of coke in Columbia. Death defying amounts. One evening they picked up an ‘8 ball’ (I forget how many grammes that is). Not only did they do it in one night, but they tried to do it in one line each! Chuck gleefully described how his silent spotty partner in crime had only got through half his mega line when snotty white stuff started oozing from his nostril. That led on to the astonishing claim that in the six weeks that they had been travelling from Mexico to Columbia they had only had six days when they didn`t ‘party’. I made a quick calculation that`s one day a week or 2 days a month of sobriety. And then just on cue the dodgy geezer appeared and gave Chuck the nod and they both vanished to make a deal. It was good timing for my wife had also finished cooking so we sat down to our pasta slop with bread and wine.

After dinner Chuck reappeared with the smug grin of a man in possession of gear. He showed me a bag with about an eighth in and told me how wickedly strong it was and how reasonably priced it was. His only problem was that he didn`t have any papers to roll with. Me being me had a ready supply for just such a contingency; so off I went to rummage in my pack. We reconvened on the decking at the front of the hostel with my wife and Danny in tow. As Chuck clumsily got a number together he told us of some of his plans. They were heading south. They were keen to find surf. First up were the breaks in Peru, then Chile, Argentina and finally Brazil. Astonishingly enough Chuck thought they might have to miss out Machu Picchu for lack of time. This struck me as being profoundly bigoted and not a tad Australian. And then Chuck said the oddest thing. They planned to fly to Las Vegas for two weeks and then fly back to Brazil to continue their surf tour

Danny: Las Vegas?
Chuck: Yeah my dad`s paying for me and my mate to meet him in Las Vegas.
Danny: Why?
Chuck: Because I`m going away for two years and he won`t get to see me.
Danny: Where you going, mate?

It was obvious to me and my wife that Danny was taking the piss. However, the moment passed as the much anticipated joint was finally ready, a badly made one skin. It only made it around the circle once but my couple of tokes hit the spot. Chuck apologized for this sign of imperfection and then made the incredible assertion that everybody in Australia only smoked weed from a bong.

Chuck to me: You ever heard of the Darién pipe in Mexico?
Me: No. Oil pipe? Chuck: Surf pipe, dude. You could fit a bus in that pipe.
Me: Whoa. Chuck: Some of the waves were the size of the one, no two, no third story of this building.
Danny: No way.
Chuck: No kidding. We were in a hotel 500 metres away from the beach and even from that distance the waves looked huge. There`s a picture I took with my camera. I can go and get my camera and show you.
Danny: That`s alright. Chuck: There`s a dude in the picture and he`s tiny in comparison to the wave. I thought it politic to move the conversation on; after all we wanted Chuck to make another of his shoddy single skin efforts.
Me: And after you get back from Las Vegas to Brazil and do some surfing, you`re going back to Oz, right?
Chuck: No we`re going to Sweden for a year. We`ve got Swedish working holiday visas.
Side tick: Swedish work visas are cheaper than UK ones.
Chuck: And Sweden is full of hot chicks; there`s snowboarding and my mate got some kind of council job in Sweden and he makes loads of coin.
Me: What`s he do?
Before Chuck could answer Danny butted in with the obvious.
Danny: He`s a councilor.
Chuck smiled and didn`t take offence. Instead he set to work on joint number two. And while he clumsily worked on that he continued to expand on their plans.
Chuck: And after Sweden we go to Canada.
Danny: How long do you think all that will take?
Chuck: About two years.
Chuck: I figure if you`re gonna take time out when you`re 21 you might as well do it in style.

At that point Chuck complained about joints and started off on an eulogy about bongs and his perfect set up in his garage (presumably his parent`s garage) with sofas and the world`s biggest and most perfect water pipe. As the lumpy joint made the round we giggled at the thought of a bong the size of a Japanese car. The Colombian gear was impressive, stronger than the standard Paraguayan fare we had been used to smoking throughout South America. We chatted about this and this spurred Chuck on to make the announcement he was heading out to buy a bong. I checked my watch. It was eleven o`clock. I told him that seemed unlikely at this time and besides how wise was it to walk the streets of a Colombian city late at night.?Chuck manfully pushed aside these reservations and told us that he had spotted a man selling bongs on the street in a nearby square and besides he could do with a Big Mac. His spotty wingman also fancied a burger. And so stubbing out the joint the two Australian heroes departed to score a bong. Danny and I thought their mission absurd but I conceded that it was most evident to me that Chuck was indestructible and he might well prove us wrong and re-appear with his much vaunted bong. Indeed we both wanted him to return and continue to share his stash.

It was over an hour before Chuck and his mate returned. They hadn`t managed to buy a bong. Instead they had got a taxi to a McDonalds to indulge in globalised burger sins. He promised to join us in a bit but first he wanted to hang with some other travelers and let them bask in the glow of his perfection. So Danny and I got a beer from reception and shot the breeze. It was a beautiful warm night without mosquitoes. Chuck emerged from the dorm thirty minutes later with three big blunts. He sparked up the first and hit over-drive.

Chuck: I am a semi-professional body boarder. I`ve made money in body boarding competitions and been sponsored and shit. This one time in Mexico I entered a body board competition. Cost me a few bucks. And guess what?
Me: What? Chuck: I won it! I busted out some great moves and won it.
Danny: What was the prize?
Chuck: It was a new shinny scooter all chrome. It was cool. I drove it around Mexico for a week then sold it for a thousand bucks.

The joint was really pokey and I was fading in and out of reality as Chuck was giving us the good news. My wife had had enough and went to bed. I stayed for the next one. By this point Chuck was slowing down and Danny and I were struggling to form sentences. Stoned silence is not a bad thing to my way of thinking, but to Chuck it was producing existential discomfort. He wanted a captive audience. He squirmed on his seat as he tried to prolong the stories of his exploits. It was too much for me. I went to bed and stared into the dark listening to the multiple conversations going on in my head before blissfully passing out.

The next morning Chuck sold me the remains of his gear before heading out in search of waves. My wife and I had an awesome day in the city. We went to the botanical gardens and the Fernando Botero museum; cultural stuff of no interest to Chuck. Thinking back to the previous night I realized how convoluted Chuck`s proposed journey was: Brazil, Las Vegas, Sweden and Canada and yet no Asia or Africa. His exposition was full of half baked assumptions about hot chicks and loads of money and his idiom was so full of ‘dudes’ and surf jargon that it left me pondering how does Chuck manage to be so perfect and untouchable and yet so superficial and self-centred? It struck me that shallowness can be perfected and can produce something wonderful that deserves some type of admiration. As Oscar Wilde wrote, “Ignorance is like a delicate fruit; touch it, and the bloom is gone.”

Playa Blanca in Colombia

2009-12-15T10:48:00.012-05:00

Playa Blanca is an incredible caribbean beach that is perfectly under-developed where you can camp or rent a hammock. There are no annoying hotels with pools or hostels full of 20 something hormonally-charged twerps getting pissed. There are no boutique shops, there are no dickheads with ATVs. Instead there's blue skies, warm clean water, pelicans, cows and a few basic businesses.

Playa Blanca is on an island, a short distance away from the old colonial port town of Cartagena in Colombia. Because it's the caribbean it's always hot.

How to get there? Well there's the expensive way and there's the cheap way. The expensive but convenient way is to take a speed boat from Cartagena port. You have to haggle for the boat price (we got our tickets for $15 per person) and then you have to pay a port tax ($6 per person). The boat takes about an hour. It's a flat bottom boat that violently bobs up and down even on the smoothest waters. On the return journey with the boat you have to negotiate with the captain and you don't pay tax. We got it for $7.50 per person. Alternatively, there's a bus going from the market in Cartagena. Again you have to haggle. The big saving is there's no port tax.

Once you get to Playa Blanca there's nothing to do but relax. Swim, smoke blow, lie in a hammock, play with the dogs, get a massage, chat with the locals. In the evening the sun sets over the ocean. A magic time for a rum and coke and a spliff on the beach.

It's a really long beach. It gets a few boat loads of tourists every afternoon, but they just stop for a meal and a swim and then go home. On Saturday and Sunday masses of locals catch the bus to the beach, but they all congregate in the one corner and get pissed. That's the only time you see the police there; to control the weekend binge drinkers.

We stayed in the middle of the beach next to a small restaurant and shop. We were the only one's staying there. We had 3 dogs to guard our stuff. We camped literally on the beach, only 10 metres from the water's edge.

The food in the restaurant was limited (chicken or fish with chips or rice) and it was comparatively expensive. We knew this was going to be the case so we bought water, tinned food, jam, bread and biscuits with us. During our three blissful nights on the beach we hardly spent anything (for details of costs in Playa Blanca click here).

It was basic living - the shower and toilet were open air - but anymore would definitely be less in my opinion.

Playa Blanca was quite possibly my favourite place in South America. Why? The beautiful beach, the warmest water, the isolation, the nature, the friendly people and the lack of people.

Sunset with great rum and good green. What a winner!

The bucket shower. $2 per bucket.

The restaurant with our guard dogs snoozing.

Just behind our tent was a lagoon with cows. One night they passed en masse in front of our tent; much to the chagrin of the dogs.

Our tent with basic tarp covering for shade.

Isla de la Plata and humpback whales

2009-10-22T17:21:00.005-05:00

While staying on Ecuador´s famous surf beach Montanita, we made a day excursion to Parque National Machalilla which was only a few clicks down the road. We paid about $40 each. For that we got free transfers to and from the boat at Porto Lopez, paid admission fees to the park, lunch and use of snorkel equipment.

It was an awesome day out. The best part came first as we saw loads of humpback whale action on the way to the bird colony island (Isla de la Plata).

I had never been to a bird colony before. Because nobody inhabits the island the birds don´t see people as a threat. Rather than flying off when our group got close, the birds just ignored us and carried on with the important business of mating, fishing and defending their territory.

The guide spoke good English and was spot on with his advice so the tourists didn´t disrupt the birds. In our group there were about 20 people and I reckon I was the scruffiest one amongst them. Despite that I was the only one to show my appreciation to the guide by tipping him.

Isla de la Plata is sometimes referred to as the poor man´s Galapagos Islands. $40 instead of $2,000 - you bet. I´m sure the Galapagpos is unparalleled in it´s variety of flora and fauna but in this holiday we´ve noticed the huge smug factor of those who have done the islands. Their main joys in life are lording it over the peasants who haven´t been and smelling their own farts.

Only joking of course.

This is a humpback whale enjoying big splashing fun. They seemed oblivious to the presence of the boat as they frolliced in the waves. It was meant to be the mating season, but we didn´t witness any humpback penetration action, more like post coital play.

These are the delightfully named blue feet boobies. They nest on the ground and walk around in Charlie Chaplin fashion showing off their blue extremities.

This is a Nazca booby (I think).

This is the appropriately named magnificent frigate. To impress the females the man expends considerable energy puffing up the red bladder on his neck and making an odd screeching noise. Maybe not a turn on for everyone, but in my opinion more impressive than a new pair of trainers.

A Few Places in Peru

2009-10-17T16:26:00.007-05:00

Lima was awesome because of this fine local. A good friend that we knew from Japan. He put us up and showed us around. We went to karaoke, international volley ball matches and pyramids. Our only bit of couch surfing. Big up Augusto!

We splashed out $50 dollars each and did the Nazca lines fly over. Jose Carlos yanked the 6 seater plane 90 degrees left than 90 degrees right so everyone got photo ops and lurching stomachs.

Mancora was Peru`s best beach. The weather was great and the water warm enough to swim enjoyably. While we were staying a crazed mass of birds swarmed over the coastal waters dive bombing the waves for fish.

Huanchaco was our first beach of the trip. It a bit cloudy, but very chilled and cheap. There´s plenty of good waves to catch and it´s not flooded with twats doing the gringo trail. We had our room with cable TV and bathroom 5 minutews walk from the beach. Free internet and kitchen use. All for $7 a night.

Huacachina

2009-09-03T16:22:00.006-05:00

Huacachina (pronounced something like waka-cheena) has a great name and is one of the most recognisable icons of Peru because it´s on the 20 (or is that the 50) Nuevos Soles Note. It is the picture postcard perfect oasis, something out of Lawrence of Arabia. There are, however, very few berbers and camels around. In their stead are Peruvians on benders and days out (especially at the weekend) and party backpackers and a few surf dudes looking to surf the massive plunging sands that encircle the tiny town.

It is a town entirely for tourism. Meaning there are no proper shops, post offices etc. just hostels, bars, restaurants and tour operators. The accommodation was mostly expensive by Peruvian standards, and the cheapish dorm beds we found were next to a bar. There is obviously a quick turn over of guests in a generally very anonymous fashion.

On the positive side, we found a place selling 5 soles set meals.

For all of that, the oasis is special and as soon as you climb over the first dune you are in the desert which stretches to the horizon.

We stayed one night. Waka went for a kip after lunch and I climbed a sand dune and watched the continuous stream of dune buggies taking tourists on hair raising drives through the desert; and also the people sliding down the dunes on beat up snow board looking things.

Copacabana and Isla Del Sol in Bolivia

2009-08-03T13:31:00.015-05:00

Copacabana in Bolivia is nestled on the coast of Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world. It`s a funky little town with some cool things to do. There`s trekking and finding Inca ruins and hanging out in the sunshine and eating trout. The people are friendly and it`s a picturesque place set in a magnificent background.

And indeed the Incas supposedly designated the nearby island of Isla del Sol as the navel and birthplace of the Inca religion. The island has two main centres. In the north are some inca ruins and a gorgeous white sand beach, and in the south the vegetation is more lush and there`s a ball breaking high altitude set of steps to climb, which were originally placed by the Incas. The boat tour for all day is 10 bolivanos ($1.5). It`s also possible to stay on Isla del Sol in the south.

Check out the photo from Copacabana cathedral, which has 2 moorish towers outside, an oily black room full of candles and this gem of a picture of Jesus on the lake with his audience looking surprisingly Bolivian.

Copacabana

Isla Del Sol

Machu Picchu

2009-07-22T14:17:00.011-05:00

So we finally made it to Machu Picchu. We couldn´t be arsed doing the Inka trail or one of its alternatives. Somehow, to my ears, the phrase "organised trek" is anathema. I don´t want anyone carrying my bags and telling me where to go; and I don´t want to head off with 30 other people.

So we opted to take the train and organise our own tickets and accomodation.

We were horrified that the shortest train journey with the cheapest fare was $30 one way! They must have been studying British Rail prices. And to make it even more infuriating all the train places were heavily booked up.

After queuing for ages at the train station in Cusco we eventually secured a "backpacker" ticket one way, and a more expensive "vistadome" fare to return. In all $77 each. On top of that our tickets to enter Machu Picchu cost $40 each.

It struck me that Peru is charging a lot more than Angkor Wat, the Pyramids, The Taj Mahal or temples in Kyoto. It is debatable whether the train fees and entrance fee represent comparative value for money.

So feeling ripped off before the journey began, we took a mini bus to the small town of Ollantaytambo. A fantastically picturesque place which has been continously inhabited for 800 years. On one slope it has a famous Inka fort where the Spanish were famously defeated. You need the touristo boleto ($40) to enter. Naturally we didn´t have the ticket but managed to sneak in through an exit. We stayed the night at Ollantaytambo and scored a massive plate of chicken and chips for dinner.

The next day we took the super-expensive train to the town at the bottom of the hill where Machu Picchu is situated. Strangely enough the place is called Aguas Calientes, which means "hot water". It was a lovely place made deplorable by crass commercialism and a surfeit of Americans and tossers with walking sticks.

After a few arguments we got a tiny double room for 50 soles, got something to eat and got stoned in our room for the rest of the day.

At 3.45am the next morning we got up, dumped our rucksack on the Peruvians sleeping in the cupboard next door, and headed off for the walk up to Machu Pichu.

Needless to say many others were trekking with us in the dark up the 1,700 steps to the summit. The reason being that only the first 400 visitors to Machu Picchu can do the steep climb up the neighbouring mountain, Wanapicchu.

When we reached the top at 6am there was already a big crowd of people waiting to enter the ruins. Just before they started letting people in, buses from Aguas Calientes started arriving and a few cheeky fuckers from the buses started to push to the front of the line. Needless to say I thoroughly enjoyed calling these rich folks "motherfuckers". You can´t beat a bit of righteous indignation.

Once in we made it straight to the Wanapicchu office. We were numbers 48 and 49. At 7am we started the one hour trek up Wanapicchu. It was hard going. At the summit the paths and steps were slippy and had no rails stopping you plummet 100s of metres to your doom. My wife and I found a secluded spot and had a piss and a joint and took in the epic view.

By the time we got back to Machu Picchu we had been walking for hours and felt exhausted. We strolled around the ruins trying to catch snippets of information from passing tour guides. Eventually we found a beautiful terrace over a sheer drop, had another smoke and lay around in the sun.

At 1.30pm we had seen pretty much the whole site (including a detour to see the Inka bridge) and so we started to slowly descend the mountain back to Aguas Calientes. When we got there we were exhausted and filthy. In such a state we hung around until 6.30pm for our train back to Ollantaytambo. For the extra $10 for the superior "vistadome" train we got nowhere to put our pack and a sandwich.

All bad value but what is beyond doubt is that Machu Picchu is a magical (possibly spiritual) place that didn´t disappoint. It was great getting stoned there, but even without the herb, the place would´ve spellbound me. It is a massive site (the lower terraces aren´t open to the public) and despite what the tour guides claim, it´s purpose and true significance remain shrouded in mystery, like the mountains are covered in clouds.

Hiram Bingham, the yank who paid an 11 year old boy to lead him to Machu Picchu in 1911 and thus became "the discoverer" of the World Heritage site stole several artifacts from the area, and to this day Yale University refuses to give them back. Which just goes to show that from the very beginning of the history of foreigners visiting Machu Picchu people have been on the make.

Wanapicchu (the mountain that looms over Machu Pichu)

View of Machu Picchu from Wanapicchu

Behind the Watch Guard´s House

Llama drinking from the fountain

Potosi, Bolivia

2009-07-13T13:48:00.005-05:00

Potosi at 4060m is the highest city in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

It was founded by the Spanish because of the vast silver deposits nearby. For 200 years Potosi bankrolled the Spanish Empire. It is estimated that over 8 million indigenous people and imported slaves have perished in the mine. Even today thousands of Bolivians work under ground in dangerous conditions hoping to strike it big. And the sickest joke of all is that tourists pay between 10 and 15 dollars to visit the mines, see the suffering of the miners and then blow something up. I was ashamed that I met only 2 people who missed out on the mine tours because they felt similarly to me. Travellers, the LP and organised tours seemed to have robbed people of their own sense of what is right and what is exploitation.

Gaucho Festival, Salta, Northern Argentina and Waka¨s birthday

2009-07-06T17:24:00.005-05:00

4 Day Jeep Tour from Tupiza to Uyuni in Bolivia

2009-07-01T13:37:00.018-05:00

Day 1

We paid $150 each (La Torre Tours) for a 4 day jeep tour of Southern Bolivia departing from Tupiza and finishing in Uyuni. The price was slightly cheaper than was originally quoted because another person joined our jeep at the last moment making 5 people. We also skipped the extra charge of paying for an English speaking guide. This, in hindsight, might have been a bad move because all our driver would say was "Over there, Chile!" and then go on chewing his coca leaves. Still despite his awful musica folklorico (think El Condor Pasa) and lack of factual commentary he was an amusing chap and I got to like him.

The first day was mostly driving to get somewhere. Driving through dry moonscapes over a road that wasn't really a road. The first night we stopped at a small settlement high in the mountains called San Antonio De Lipez. The whole economy of the place seemed to be based on two things - llama wool and tour groups.

While waiting for diner Tom (an Irish lad), Derrick (Polish) and I got the football out the back of the jeep. No longer was it flat. The lack of air pressure at this rarefied height made the ball fully inflated. We were soon joined by locals, our driver and some other tourists. It was a good laugh. Every few minutes one of us collapsed from lack of oxygen.

Day 2

After freezing night under a multitude of blankets we get up in the dark at 5.30am. Breakfast is waiting for us next door. It's the usual bread, jam, dolce selection with coca tea. The five of us pile in the back of the jeep and we're off driving in the dark. The driver probably knows where Chile is even in the pitch dark but he keeps the information to himself as he focuses on the non-road.

Our first stop was "Phantasmagoria Village." It's an abandoned mining village. Legend has it that discoveries of gold lead to murders in the village and consequent hauntings. The villagers couldn't stand it any more and moved out to San Antonio de Lipez (where we had stayed the previous night) and given up prospecting for gold and turned to the llama instead for economic survival. It was cold, snowy and slightly eerie. We had a quick look and a piss and got back in the jeep.

By about 11am we entered a National Park and made our way to a big lake. In front of the lake was a bricked off thermal hot pool. The tourists from the other jeep in our convey braved the cold weather and got in the pool. The 5 from our jeep waited in the cafe and dining area for our lunch. Some of the other groups coming through looked really rough - a combination of no sleep, altitude sickness and cold had taken the youthful pallor from several faces.

After lunch we stopped off at some thermal steams before arriving at Laguna Verde, the Green lake. It was indeed very green and very big and still. Surrounded by towering mountains at 5000 meters the place had an unreal, impossibly bleak beauty at the place. Like a painted backdrop for a Sci Fi movie. This was the highlight so far.

For the rest of the day we drove. The driver chewed and pointed out Chile and we enjoyed the vast scenery.

Late afternoon we arrived at a small town. I bought a pricey plastic bottle of coke to mix with my vodka and we drove a bit further to a long line of basic accommodations just a mile or so away from the famous Laguna Colorada (25kms east of the Chilean border).

Dinner was the usual stodgy, hearty fare. They had electricity and a wood burner which was a rare threat. Tom and I stayed up getting pissed before the pissed off locals told us to stop wasting electricity. We sat in the dark for a further 30 minutes drinking and smoking before retiring to ice cold beds.

Day 3

Day three started at the more reasonable time of 7.30ish. After breakfast we drove to the famous Red Lake which the Bolivians are pushing hard to be included in the new 7 wonders of the World. It was indeed impressive but I couldn't give a monkeys about the list. It is a salt lake with some odd chemicals that give it a distinctive red hue (either that or there's a Chinese factory nearby). What makes the lake special is the flamingos that feed there. Unfortunately it was winter and only a hardcore few who felt like our driver had refused to migrate to Chile.

Next up we drove through a desert and stopped off at a collection of massive rock formations that had been sculpted by the wind and sand into Dali dreams.

As we made our way to our night's accommodation we saw a fox near the non-existent road. The driver chucked out a bit of bread for it to eat. The fact that the fox wasn't frightened by our presence suggests this was not the first time the fox had got an easy meal.

We arrived at our most salubrious accommodation, the salt hotel. The name was most appropriate as it was made of salt bricks. The beds were made of salt. The tables were made of salt. The only things to escape the salt treatment were the pre-historic one channel TV and the glass window to our room that I nearly broke (who would suspect such trappings of civilization at 4,000 plus meters in the back arse end of no where).

While waiting for dinner we got together another footie game with the drivers and some local lads. Tom was a star. As a consequence the foreigners came out on top. One of the local lads felt the defeat bad and refused to shake hands at the end.

That night after dinner the TV went on and we discovered that the King of Pop, Michael Jackson was dead. If only it had been Chile instead. That night our groups joined with another from a different company. We meet an ex-professional footballer and an Israeli who was heading up the security for some Bolivian magnate. This was a great night of boozing, playing cards and speculating on the death of MJ. And more importantly we ran into Mr. Football and Mr. Security in Cusco and they gave us a healthy bag of gear.

Day 4

Our last day of the tour. My wife and I were the only ones who hadn't taken the 10 Bolivianos hot shower. It was too cold to smell anything I figured.

We got up really early before sun up and drove to the Salar de Uyuni, the salt plains near Uyuni. They are the largest salt plains in the world. They are at 3,653 meters and cover an area of 12,000 sq kms. Apparently it was a pre-historic salt lake that covered most of Southern Bolivia. It dried and left a white cracked desert.

We drove to an island in the salt plains, had a potter around amongst the cactus and then had breakfast. After we got another game of footie together. All the groups from the previous night were present so we had two full teams. The nations were separated - Bolivia versus the rest of the World. I was the only gringo chosen for the home team. They put me in goal and forgot about me. Despite having the home advantage and being used to breathing air thinner than a silver rizla paper the locals conceded more goals than they scored. This was due to their complete indifference to defending and keeping positions. I tried my best but couldn't staunch the flow of goals going against the home team.

An hour or so of such hilarity and the groups parted again to drive off deep into the heart of white weirdness to enjoy some nothing but salt plains action. With the horizon nothing but salt plains perspective is altered. This makes for fun photos.

Such a great day and sadly it was coming to an end. We said goodbye to isloation and drove to the illegal salt hotel and paid for a shit. Then drove into Uyuni, a dusty, mud shack place surrounded by millions of bits of plastic. Only the buildings in the center had any sense of permanence or importance. Our driver dropped us off at a cheap hotel. One of our number still hadn't paid for the tour - he was a beret clad archivist from Spain. Somehow he managed to persuade them he would pay at their office in Potosi. Honest folk.

The hotel had a pathetic shower that worked in a furiously unfair system of proportions whereby the more you increase the water pressure the colder the water becomes. I had a cold miserable shower and then ran back to the icebox room we had got for the night.

During the war of the Pacific (1879 -83) Chile went to war with Bolivia and Peru. Those motherfucking Chileans took 350kms of coastline in the war and left Bolivia landlocked and probably perpetually locked in its status as poorest country in South America. I am ashamed to say the Chileans won because of the economic and military assistance provided by Shell who were keen to get their grubbies on the nitrate deposits in the Atacama Desert. Sad and wrong.

Serendipity

2009-06-13T18:26:00.015-05:00

I usually consider fate to be nothing more than wishful thinking. Those souls attached to the notion of predestined events are merely using hindsight; reading the book backwards as it were to make a series of coicidences more than just mere coincidences. This is especially tempting if one of the events turns out to be momentous. A plane crashes that you were scheduled to catch, but you got sick and missed ther flight. It is easy to imagine that your sickness must be fate or the hand of a higher power saving you from harm´s way. Of course cause and effect is at work but there´s no great mystery or higher significance to it.

Another dimension to this small meditation on fate and free will is the topic of decisions. Maybe you missed the aforementioned hypothetical flight home because you could not tear yourself away from a recently met lover. As soon as she finds out her love made you stay and thus saved your life, she´s going to think you were meant to be together for always.

How many such decisions do we make of this magnitude of importance? Deciding what colour boxers to wear or whether to go to the pub or whether to have another joint before hitting the sack are decisions without any significant ramifications. However wearing unsexy boxers, smoking too much grass and then going out to the pub could conspire to ruin your chances with the fit bird you meet outside the chip shop.

The following tale relates a series of chance events and decisions that ended with a happy conclusion. A serendipitous ending one might say.

We arrived in Tafi del Valle in the Calchaquies mountain range in the afternoon. A small town at about 2,000 metres above sea level. To save money and get a more outdoor dimension to our travels we decided to camp. Once our tent was set up we were approached by a burly Argentine man. He brusquely signalled me to follow him. My wife was off looking at the horses grazing at the bottom of the campsite. I followed the man to a BBQ spot where he and his wife, baby and 4 friends were having a party. My wife found me and we were soon plied with chicken, bread and red wine. Despite our lack of Spanish and their complete lack of English we managed to have a good time. Argentines seem to be great communicators and are keen to find out all about visitors to their country. We chatted, ate and drank before they packed up to go home. They left us a pot full of left over food and a tin of green peas.

That night was literally freezing but the great chicken stew, ganga and cheap red wine kept our spirits up. We huddled over the charcoals and played with the local stray dogs. Being winter in Argentina we had the place to ourselves. I was loving it but my wife was suffering from the cold even after putting on several layers and getting in her sleeping bag. So it was that I had to conceed to her wishes and the next morning we checked into the hostel down the road.

Having conceeded to more comfortable and warmer accommodation, I used this as a bargaining chip to get my wife to accommopany me on a trek. We took the advice of Alex who worked at the hostel and set off on the walk to the nearby village of El Mollar. We began walking at 10am through the small town. We easily found the start of the trail. It was the first turning on the right after crossing the bridge. It was a wide dusty track that followed the nearly dried out river bed. As we walked we passed an incongrous dental surgery and then more congrous rustic and basic houses belonging to Artisanos. (Sometimes it feels like every fifth Argentine is an artisan). Within twenty minutews walking we were out in the wild. It was a wide gently sloping valley with greenry all round. The sun was shinning and we happily made our way slowly down the trail stopping often to observe the variety of birds nesting nearby. One bird was particularly striking - a small bird with floresent green plummage. We also passed idyllic small ranches hugging the mountainside with pasture out front for a few grazing horses.

About 40 minutes we reached a fork in the path. Following Alex´s directions we took the path to the right. We were now close to the big lake of the area, (Dique La Anglostura)Soon the trail passed infront of a small cemetry. It was walled on one side and the other side was the mountains. The necropolis contained hundreds of small but colourful graves. Most were made of rough cement, a few were tiled. They all had plastic flowers and small headstones made into small boxes with locked glass fronts that contained photos and memorabilia of the dead. The cemetry was empty. The moment was perfect as we walked up the rows of grave markers, like a scene from a movie or an interlude in a dream - the two of us in the valley walking amongst the beloved but deserted dead.

Full of weighty thoughts we left the cemetry and continued down the trail.

We passed a small village called Ojo La Aqua which was composed of a string of ramshackel housing, a school and a football pitch. Gradually the road got wider and better as we approached the centre of El Mollar. We arrived at the central plaza at 3pm which contained a field of menhires. Alex had told us that there was a bus at 4pm back to Tafi del Valle. Keen to avail ourselves of the benefits of an easy return journey we went searching for the bus terminal. We walked down the main road for a couple of kilometres to the edge of the village, and still we found nothing resembling a bus stop. We asked a local and got a fairly incomprehensible reply in Spanish; but a definite point back to the central plaza. So we went back to the plaza and found the only open restaurant (everything closes in the afternoon in Argentina). The empanadas and milanese especial sandwich was great.

Come 3.50pm we hurriedly paid the bill and posted ourselves on the corner of the plaza, convinced the bus must pass this point. There were kids playing football on the road and a couple of fat brown skinned old ladies sitting on a bench nearby. We pegged the ladies for fellow bus travellers.

It got to 4.30pm and still there was no sign of a bus. The old ladies had been picked up by a car. We started asking around about the bus and were told there was a bus at 5pm embarking from a plce just down the road. We followed the points and found a group of 20 locals hanging outside a parrilla restaurant. It looked more hopeful for us, and when we saw a bus pull over we were overjoyed. But what was that? Everyone had tickets. We rushed into the restaurant in search of elusive tickets only to be told that the bus wasn´t going to Tafi but to Tucuman. We were informed that the bus we wanted departed at 6pm.

There we were, the sun following it´s track down the sky past the mountains and stuck in a village. There were no taxis to be seen. To let off steam I cussed for a while and then pulled myself together and assessed our options. We could wait for the possible 6pm bus, walk back the way we had come or try and find the main road back to Tafi and hitch. We didn´t have any map or much Spanish. My trust in the local bus timetable was at a very low ebb. So I gritted my teeth and told my wife we had to speed hike back the way we had come. Seeing that I had made up my mind, my wife fell in and we quickly re-traced our steps through the village to the trekking path.

We made good speed and soon cleared the outskitrs of El Mellor. Then a minor miracle happened. We spotted an old beat up grey pick up truck slowly making its way down the stony road. I put out my hand and flagged down the vehicle. The old man who was driving the pick up stopped. I opened the passenger door and said the name of our destination. He shook his head and I was about to turn away when he signalled for us to get in. That was a big relief. The old man then continued to negotiate the stony road. At least we were going in the right direction, and faster than walking. With my nearly non-existent Spanish but highly attuned sense of guessing we had a basic conversation. He told us he wasn´t going all the way to Tafi but could take us a few kilometres down the road. He wanted to know where we were from and how long we´d been in Tafi and where we were going next. I was just about to try and cobble together a question about what he was doing driving down a fucked up road when my wife indicted for me to look behind. The pick up was full of gas bottles. That explained all the horn honking when we got to Ojo El Aqua. We were riding with the gas man.

After the small village the gas man stopped at a junction and pointed out the route for us to follow. He said we had 3kms to go. What a tme saver; and the sun was still above the mountain line. In no time at all we made it back to the cemetry and started remembering the various twists and turns the path took up the valley.

By 6pm we made it to the trail head and onto the bridge leading into town. We felt elated as only you can be when you´ve had an intuition that your bacon has just been saved.

And it gets better. As we were crossing the bridge over El Rio Churqui a young woman on a motorbike flew past us. In her dust fluttered a white and pink note. My wife and I immediately recognised it as a 100 peso note and dived into the road to retrieve the bill. As we looked up she was gone. If she had been driving slower we might have been able to signal to her that she had dropped some money.

So we had our first day in South America where we recorded a profit in the daily leger of costs.

To trace the series of accidents and decisions that lead to this happy state of affairs I will sumerise in numbered points:

1) We decided to move to a hostel because the night before camping had been freezing.

2) Because we moved to the hostel, the English speaker had recommended the trek to El Mollar.

3) Because the bus didn´t go back to Tafi at 4pm, 4.30pm or 5pm we decided to trek back to the hostel.

4) Because we got a lift from the gas man we got back to the bridge just at the exact moment when the woman dropped a 100 peso note on the road.

5) Because of the 100 peso note we recorded a profit for the day.

Now that´s serendipity for you.

Tucuman, Tafi Del Valle, Quilmes Ruins and Amaicha del Valle

2009-06-13T14:59:00.018-05:00

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Cordoba and Alta Gracia

2009-06-06T07:51:00.009-05:00

Alta Garcia , near the bus station

Childhood home of Ernesto "Che" Guavara, Alta Garcia

Estaciona Jesuit and church, Alta Garcia

Cordoba Cathedral - The oldest cathedral in Argentina

View of Basilica de Santo Domingo from terrace of Cordoba backpackers

La Buena Vida

2009-05-31T12:14:00.022-05:00

Lou Reed wrote a song about a perfect day - sangria in the park, a movie and sex. Well my wife and I did none of those activities but had a day to rival Lou and his bird´s. The day before we had left Buenos Aires. Despite being a city of grand culture, the experience was made difficult to enjoy because of the jet lag, cars and lack of sleep. On our last night in BA we scored an eigth of nicely compressed, dark green sativa bush. From the first smoke it was apparent that it had been worth visiting South America after all. Playing with my head in an oddly level manner, similar to Indian charas. The symptons of which are having vague thoughts about not being stoned and then giggling to yourself.

The first two smokes sent us to a sleepily blissful state and so we bid goodnight to the collected company of a Portuguese bloke who worked in a Weatherspoons pub in London and his dutch photographer mate who had driven a car from Holland to South Africa and then got it shipped over to Argentina. Nice bloke but that shows far too much love to the great symbol of pollution, namely the automobile. Having brushed my teeth, I settled down and drifted effortlessly off to sleep after two pages about a an english explorer in Congo adopting a gorilla baby and mothering it in the heart of the jungle. Only my dreams of giant birds with startling plumes was soon disturbed by the lurching footfall of a young French man who fell over his locker. A few loud fumbles later he had opened his locker and had opened a bottle of Quillmes and was pouring into his glass. He gulped it down and then re-filled his glass. Obviously he did this in the dark stupidly assuming that he wasn´t disturbing the people sleeping. How daft. Waka and I listened forlornly as he proceeded to close his locker and knock his beer glass on the floor over.

Anyway this secret bar routine went on much of the night. I met the chap the next morning hanging to the wall in the toilet corridor like some pathetic monster gecko.

And then we got on a mega luxurious bus to Rosario, a town 4 hours up the Parana river famous for being the birthplace of Ernesto ´Che´ Guevara. The seats were massive, like massage chairs; and they reclined far back almost horizontally. On arriving we had an educational 30 minutes waiting for a local bus from the coach station to the centre of town. We got on a bus only to be ejected for having a 2 peso note. I sort of remembered reading that you needed kiosk cards to pay for bus journeys so we went back into the coach station and found ´the kiosk´ thanks to tourist information. This delayed us somewhat. The we got dropped up at Plaza Sarimento and I read the map wrong causing us to take a few wrong turns.

No biggy: we found the hostel and were rewarded by a dormitory with only one other incumbent. The hostel didn't have a bar and was close to a supermarket. Apart from the irregularly cleaned toilets it was a cool place. Kitchen, smoking area, TV lounge all housed in an old colonial building with high walls and tiles. Needless to say, that after returning from the supermarket with some great meat and wine bargains we chowed down, sorted our kit and got blazed on the balcony. It rained quite a bit, but that was the start of it. That´s when the perfect day started happening. Namely it started the day before.

A great sleep and then a bright sunny morning. Free breakfast and then out to hunt down Che´s home (more of which later) followed by mass at the local cathedral (also more of which later). Then back to the supermarket for lunch. We bought bread, olives, and an amazing Italian style lentil stew. And some Quilmes stout. What a find! Lunch and a smoke and then off to stroll along the river. Lots of people were out walking their dogs and drinking mate. There was traditional dancing, a bmx stunt course, kids driving electric cars, caporohea duelling and circus acts. Boxed and watching the people enjoying their Sunday pleasures was primo. We made it to a market and I bought an orange fleece because I had somehow managed to not pack a sweater. The steet vendor wouldn´t even drop 2 pesos off the 42 peso asking price.

Then back to the hostel for smokes and spare rib with olives, salad and bread. Oddly accompanied by the TV anti-spectacle of a crowd watching a local football match. I watched the crowds ´ows´ and ´ehs´ for 15 minutes before I got what was going on. Namely if you hadn´t given Ruperto Murdock a few pesos you weren't getting to see anything but the crowd and the score board.

Not to mind because the bottle had already been opened and I was settling into a relaxing late afternoon and evening of showering, smoking and watching Jimmy Hendrix at the Isle of White. Also we met Santi who was up from Buenos Aires for a weekender away from the big city and a nice Australian couple who turned out to not be a couple but cousins.

To return to Argentina, the commemoration to Che Guevara is very small. Just a small sign like a bus stop next to an un-extraordinary door that forms the main entry for several flats. On the same street is a place offering Microsoft Lessons. Nearby a garage and hostel. Quite unremarkable excpet that it seemed to continue the trend set by fashion of turning the great revolutionary into an icon capable of generating revenue for multi-nationals and big companies. The supreme Jacobean style revenge - fitting and insulting - making Che another pixel in the capitalist matrix. Che envisioned a united Hispanic federation for South America not individual countries. He was too radical for his own country and indeed too radical for Fidel Castro it seemed. Perhaps Argentinians admire him because he was an important man in history and a great changer, a true man who held his destiny in his hands and chose to sacrifice it for an unbending moral dogma.

Of course the reality is Catholicism and the state. These two towering institutions mimic each other´s architectural styles and often sit next to each other around the central plaza. The church next to the Presidential Palace on San Martin Plaza doesn't even look like a church from the front. Instead of the high door and grand entrance of a church, the building had huge roman columns. It look like a senate. And inside there was a side chapel guarded by men in ornamental military costumes. Inside was enshrined a monument to, or perhaps the ashes of, the revolutionary heroes. General Belgrano, Vincente Lopez et al. Just as the church pays to homage to the state, legitimizing and engrandizing big ideas like Argentina, liberty, and independence so the state similarly goes down on one knee for the church. In Rosario the state memorial to the war dead is a huge Roman platform with towering columns at the entrance, a pinnacle with female statue and the eternally burning flame set off further down the platform, separated by 2 sets of stairs. And beyond that a a 3 petal rounded ending with massive statues of neptune and some liberation hero. All done in that Michelangelo style where the muscles and thighs are huge but the mars bar a piddling fun size. It was on a grand scale; broadcasting the pagan religion of sacrifice and the Christain one of state supremacy.

On the same theme of church and state, Santi told me that San Martin (proudly commemorated by the names of countless plazas, roads and towns), that great leader of a people, passed a law saying that anyone caught blaspheming the Holy Madonna should have a hole put through their tongue with a burning hot poker. This might in a round about way be connected with why Zidane got himself sent off in that final against France.

The fact that my mental faculties were being fired by thoughts not even remotely connected to work and the grim monotony of holding down a steady life, made me happy. The fact that I had at last got into the herbal story of a continent and that I had a stroll in the park and seen so much new culture made me happy. And all these facts made a perfect day.

I will sign off with a quote from Che. It´s not in keeping with my elevated mood but it does rail against political apathy in a way that obviously frightened a lot of people, not least of whom was the CIA.

It is a sad thing not to have friends, but it is even sadder not to have enemies.

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Buenos Aires

2009-05-28T15:42:00.013-05:00

Buenos Aires or City of Fair Wind is polluted from too many cars and the streets are covered in dog crap. Nevertheless it is a city of charm and culture. The colonial architecture makes the city look like Madrid.

We are staying in Lime Hostel on the corner of Avenida de Mayo and 9 de Julio Avenida, the main thoroughfare in the centre. It is a funky hostel with marble floors and a high ceiling with a skylight. Dorm rooms are 28 pesos. (At present 1 US dollar is 3.7 pesos). Not mega cheap, but a crap breakfast is included and use of the kitchen. Like all hostels around the world there is an abundance of young people and the obligatory perennially pissed Irish man. His name is Jimmy. To my puzzlement he always carries a red towel when he´s on the lash. (Which reminds me of the hitch hikers guide to the galaxy).

There are lots of street cafes and everywhere sells pizza, pasta, hamburgers, expresso and a genius food called empanada, which is a pastie filled with meat, cheese, onion and tomato. Every 50 metres there´s a street vendor selling newspapers, magazines and porn. One imagines there must be a huge demand for news and nudity. Also very numerous are MacDonalds. Although evil forerunners in the globalization conspiracy, they supply the only public toilets to be found anywhere in the city.

The locals are called Portenos. They are famous for being arrogant and loud. Apart from a bloke at the Museo de Belle Arts who told me roughly to get out of the way, this has not been my impression. What I have noticed is the sadly high percentage of posterio grande. This must be the result of the doughy fare on offer. The keen eye will spot a few chicolita magnifico.

The average porteno is pale skinned and casually, if not scruffily, dressed. As a result Buenos Aires is only the third city that I have visited outside of the UK where I have been mistaken for a local. This results in me being bombarded with a barrage of Spanish. Sometimes a smile and a slight nod of the head or a si produces favourable results, but mostly I have to reveal my gauche Anglo-Saxon inabilty to parley espanyol.

It is only my second night in the city and I have already discussed the relative merits of the Liverpool football squad with a bloke selling fags.

As far as fags close cousin beer goes, litre bottles of Stella Artois cost 5 pesos in the supermarkets. The local brew is called Quilmes. It is an average drink that is less toxic than Thai Chang beer and is a moderate 5% in strength.

Finally, Family Guy comes out the latin mangle as Family Gay.

Lariam and the Swine Flu

2009-05-18T02:46:00.004-05:00

Two oddities I've experienced in my preparations today.

Firstly, Lariam or Mefloquine - the new wonder malaria pill that perhaps sends you mad or gives you a heart attack costs a whopping 1,500 yen or $15 a pill in Japan. Considering we need 50 of the little buggers, I've decided to try and buy malaria prophylactics once we get to Argentina. My god, no wonder Japanese people only go to Italy, Guam and Hawaii.

On the plus side, because of the N1H1 virus epidemic (which has jumped exponentially from 20 cases in Japan to 140 in one day) the doctor's surgery was empty. All the usual mothers with their kids and bored old people are forgoeing the pleasure of a visit to the local clinic. Marvellous. We only waited 5 minutes for the receptionist to tell us that the doctor would not see us or advise us or prescribe for us anything to do with malaria pills. What a dick! At the least the refusal was quick.

Mission Statement

2009-05-15T04:30:00.002-05:00

Trippy Traveller Sets out the Plan

After slogging our way through 10 months of gruelling labour in Japan, me as an English teacher and my wife as a convenience store clerk, we have saved enough pennies to do South America. We have very little clue exactly about where we are going to go or what we are going to do. Obviously there's Machu Pichu and the Nazca lines in Peru; Patagonia and the Iguazu Falls in Argentina; the Amazon in Brazil; and coke in Bolivia. Other than these obvious must do's and see's we are hoping to be guided by the good advice of fellow travellers and my own whims. We have an open 6 month return back to the land of the rising sun. We have 6 grand US in traveller's cheques which makes the maths simple - that's a grand a month. To help make the money go further we've bought a cheap tent and sleeping bags plus a few cooking pots. We are also armed with the LP to help us locate those cheap deals out there. I'm ambivalent about the whole LP phenomenon but at least it provides a place to start research on a given place.

Neither of us has been to Latin America. For me it represents perhaps the final continent that I've been wanting to go to. I've ticked the boxes of Asia, Africa and Europe and now it's time to go for the Latin box.

Talking of boxes, we hope to get boxed and stoned and tripped as much as possible. On this front South America holds great promise.

Other draws include food and music and culture. Somewhere where people don't have the bowing fever; somewhere with good cheese and bread; somewhere where a steak doesn't cost an arm and a leg; somewhere far away from salary men sleeping on trains; somewhere away from school kids mesmerised by their mobile phones; and somewhere cheap with less rules and more chaos.

Naturally trepidation is mixed with excitement. I always fear for our safety but try to placate the anxiety with thorough preparation.

We leave on May 26th and arrive in Buenos Aries the following day.