This is the last day and my emotions are not really in sync with it. I'd expected to be filled with joy and excitement about going home and seeing my friends and family. I also expected to be choked with sadness that I had come to the end of my journey. A journey that has allowed me to see incredible things, to finish things I'd never have dreamed of completing, and meeting some of the most amazing people I think I'll ever meet.
But I don't feel either way. I feel a bit sick because I've drunk too much and eaten too much over the last 5 days. Or maybe the last 5 months. I can't really tell.
But I'm determined to go out of Buenos Aires fighting so I've forced Gina to book us into La Cabrera, the best and most famous steak house in Buenos Aires. I'd heard that the sirloin for 2 was ridiculously big at 800g (28.2 OZ), and not to be ordered for one person. I felt like my whole trip had been building up to this moment, and that this steak could be used as a analogy for my trip:
A obscenely large meal, to be eaten by a greedy, naive individual.
When it arrives I feel what I can only describe as fear run through me. The thing is enormous, it looks like a big, thick, sweaty brick. And for a split second I think about asking Gina to cancel her steak and share mine. But it's too late as the waiter brings everyone's food at the same time.
We plow in and I decide to cut out a third at a time and eat away calmly. The meat is lovely and cooked to perfection, and couple it with the Septima Malbec, it's quickly jumping up the ranks as the best meal I've had. Ever.
I'm already full as I carve off the next part of the sirloin, my conversation has dwindled, and I swear someone's turned the heating on. Kate and Danny have decided that I won't finish it, but Gina has faith in me, even if I do occasionally see her look over at me with a look of genuine concern on her face.
I finish the second piece and I'm left with the last part, which on closer inspection is very fatty. I'm quite pleased about this, my reasoning being that it is easier than meat. By now I am sweating from every pore I have, my speech has slowed to that of a punch drunk boxer, and I can't really hear the others talking very well. I think that I might even be hallucinating. I look outside and everyone is walking really slowly, like the Mr Soft guy from the Mentos adverts. I am now so out of the conversation that I simply shout words into the melee of chat, hoping that they have some relevance.
I get down to the last three mouthfuls and Kate keeps saying,
"he's going to do it, I can't believe it, he's going to finish it" she actually texts her boyfriend to tell him. The last time people spoke about me like this was about the marathon, and now I feel like I've just run another one. The last mouthful drops into my mouth and I raise a fist in triumph, the girls clap and Danny just laughs and shakes his head at me.
We walk home and say our final goodbyes to Kate and Gina, and then it's back to the hostel for my last night sleeping on a bunk bed.
In the morning I arrange a late check out so that I can relax and take my time to pack everything for the last time. The next time I unpack this bag most of these clothes will be given to Oxfam or burnt.
My flight leaves at 6pm so the cab collects me at 2pm, leaving me plenty of time for the 1 hour ride and check in. I give Danny a hug and thank him for being such a wicked friend to hang out with over the last week. And then I'm alone for the first time in 2 weeks.
I watch the streets of Buenos Aires fly past me and I can't believe it's over. 5 months have gone quicker than I could ever have imagined, half a year gone in a blink of a eye, Colombia seems so far away now.
I've try really hard to feel that something profound and life changing has happened to me on this trip, something that has changed the person that I was to who I am now.
But it hasn't. What's changed is my understanding of what I am doing on this earth, and how I want to be remembered.
I may not ever be a huge, famous, success in life, I may not earn all the money I 'need' to be happy in this consumer obsessed world, and maybe I won't write the defining album of a generation, but I know what my goal is now, what will make me truly happy on this planet, and that is to leave this life richer for the love of my friends and family, and leave behind a memory of me as a person that made people happy.
Because I've seen men build shrines to earth gods, I've seen how men spent 40 years building a monument to the sun, only for the crusaders to kill them and steal everything they have. All in the name of God. I've seen how believing in something greater than yourself is a false hope, and a painful lie. There is no higher power in your life, you are the greatest power you will ever come across to make your life what it is and what you want it to be.
I've been to places where people really struggle, where daily life is tougher than anything I've ever encountered. I haven't learned anything, I just understand things more.
This life is the only life we have, and the choices we make now we can never get back. In this life or the next. So you have to decide how you will define your life? And I'll define mine by making sure that when people choose to remember me, if anyone actually does, it will be as a great friend, a dedicated family man, and someone who bought happiness to whichever person decided to share their life with him, even if that moment is fleeting.
I get to the airport on time and patiently wait to implement my 'airfare refund plan'
The plan is simple, get yourself seated and pretend that you are in a normal London bar on a Friday night. Then start ordering drinks and calculate in your head the going price for that drink in London. Glass of champagne? £7. Glass of wine with your meal? £6, and so on. As you trot up your total try to drink as much as you can and see how much 'money' it would have cost you had you'd been in a bar, then subtract that from the original cost of the flight and you'll see that you've made it much cheaper!
I get to about £78 before the air hostess refuses to serve me anymore,
"but you forgot to bring my food and then I had to have the left over risotto! Please let me have another 2 cans of stella?" I whined to the tubby, lovely hostess,
"I'm sorry but you've had more than enough, and as this is a night flight, I must ask you to return to your seat and sleep" she replied before she closed the curtain between us.
So I wander back to my seat a reach for my secret weapon, a diazepam! I take it with my last swig of stella and slowly and happily fall into a very deep sleep.
I wake up and we're flying into Paris, I am nearly home. I feel very perky and excited at Paris airport and the next flight is super quick, and before I really register it I look out of the window and see the Thames, and St Pauls,
"I live up that road" I say to nobody in particular. 10 more minutes and we land at the airport.
I love airports, even if I'm coming back from somewhere I still think they're great. I love walking through 'nothing to declare' even though I've got loads to declare, I love it when my bag drops onto the conveyor belt early, I love saying good morning to the passport control people, even if they do just say,
"afternoon I think you'll find Sir" back to me.
And my favorite part is scanning the names on the cards that the chauffeurs and private car hire guys are holding, I know that I haven't booked a car, or that anyone would have booked one for me, but I still have the hope that someone will have decided to come to collect me, and drive me home in comfort. It comes from wanting to see the people you love the most the second you get home I suppose.
I made a card like that once for a girl I loved, and her friend (that I loved too, but in a different, platonic way obviously) when they came home from a holiday. I found the fattest driver I could see and stood behind him, with my homemade card sticking out. And seeing her face turn from confusion, to embarrassment, then finally to happiness, was one of the nicest things I'd ever seen.
They double doors swing open and I need to turn left to go straight to the Heathrow Express, but all the drivers are on the right alongside the barrier. I stop, hesitate, look left and right like I'm crossing the road, then look right again. There's nobody holding my name up, so I turn left and head straight for the Express to get back to a welcome I know I'll have waiting for me. One in Paddington with my housemate, and finally in Cardiff where I'm hugged by two of the best people in the world. And as I sit at their table, listening to their stories over the last 5 months, a small tear comes to my eye, which I hide by charging my phone.
I've been to places that I could only have dreamed of going once, places that I will never ever forget, but sitting here with them, my sister, and mother is better than anything else in the world and makes me understand the final, most important thing,
You are nothing without the people around you.
The End.
I'm not really sure if anyone's actually read any of this, or indeed if anyone actually liked it. The people I thought I was writing it for have since told me that they haven't really been paying attention to it. Which is totally cool. But if you have read this could you please either comment or like on my facebook please? If only so I can get a clear indication of how much a waste of my time this was to do in the first place.
For the people who did or didn't read it, thank you and I love you all very much,
Gareth Potter xx
Monday 15 November 2010
Part 1 - Buenos Aires, Census day, and a death of a president.
Part 1
'Big' Danny Jenkins and I board our 1st class, full cama, it's the last bus journey I'll take in South America so why not go large, top booze and food, executive bus, to Buenos Aires. We've left behind some wonderful people in Mendoza but the Buenos Aires nightlife and women are calling Danny, and on top of those, my plane home is calling me.
Full cama means that the seat will recline to horizontal instead of the normal 3 inches back. Most of the time you'll travel semi cama, which obviously means half way, so you only half sleep. But with full cama? it's like being on a 1st class plane, or a very very small bed, covered in cheap leather. Perhaps a bit like a S+M dungeon bed for midgets.
We immediately start harassing the steward for alcohol but he's refusing to serve drinks until dinner is served, which is of course, not until 10:30pm. Of course it is.
We do manage to get him to give us some aperitifs, so we sit back, adjust the chairs to semi cama, and relax watching Mendoza slip away, and the countryside replace it.
Danny makes the mistake of asking me what my favorite part of my trip was, and so I launch into some tales:
He seems engrossed when I tell him about the crazy, nutjob girl in Brazil, who managed to get herself pregnant by another man, just before she was meant to marry my mate.
He laughs a lot louder and longer than really necessary when I tell him about being drugged by a man in Sao Paulo.
He looks out of the window when I talk about the Inca's in Peru, and how seeing the ruins has altered me as a person.
He is clearly bored when I tell him about the Welsh in Patagonia, and my love of the Welsh culture and language.
He puts his Ipod on when I tell him about the splendors of the Salt plains in Bolivia.
And finally he just pulls a curtain between us when I try to tell him of the amazing people I've met, and how the friendships and relationships I've made will carry on for many years to come,
"Well you asked!" I say before I realize that dinner, and by dinner I mean drinks, are being served. Danny and I enjoy the meal, have a few drinks and laugh and talk until it's time to go full cama and get some sleep.
We wake up in Buenos Aires and I have my last ever breakfast of assorted biscuits. That's all they'll ever serve you on a plane, bus, or train on this continent. A assorted biscuit selection. It's like waking up in the morning for afternoon tea with you granddad.
Buenos Aires, and by the way, I will write Buenos Aires all the way through this because everyone I meet calls it BA, and it sounds so wanky and annoying that I want to kill everyone, for example,
"yah, yah, we hit BA for a few days then left. It was great" or
"Yah, flew into BA and, like, totally took it over! BA is so cool and cosmo, you'll really love it!"
anyway, Buenos Aires is like a ghost town when we arrive, all the shops are shut, nobody is on the streets, there's barely any other cars on the road except for a couple of taxis. Even the McDonalds is closed! I've NEVER seen a McDonalds closed at 9am. Never.
Turns out that today is census day, and everyone has to stay indoors and be censured by people who will knock door to door to get details of who lives where, and what they do! It's totally crazy to see in a country as big as this that people still find the census details by walking door to door! We get to the hostel and ask,
"Can we go to the museum?"
"no"
"the cinema?"
"no"
"the church?"
"no"
"the art gallery?"
"no"
"the zoo?"
"no"
"the shopping mall?"
"no"
"the park?"
"yes. yes, you can go to the park"
We think about it for a while and decide to go to the park. The park is full of rollerskaters, runners, skateboarders, families, 5 a side football, street hockey, but mostly it's full of bemused tourists who don't know what the fuck to do. We've not eaten since the biscuit madness of 8:00am and it's 1pm now. We are starving but every restaurant is closed. We spot an ice cream guy on a bike who looks like he'll retire on his earnings later that day. We buy some ice creams at an outrageous price and wander round the lake in the central park. The women are sensational, and more than twice I nearly lose my ice cream down my front.
The ice cream barely touches the sides and we resort to buying some chorizo burgers from a gypsy who has the health and safety standards of a homeless man. As we queue we marvel at his cross contamination of cooked and raw food, and watch open mouthed at his faultless display of under cooking meat. As we sit down to enjoy this glorious feast I feel like I'm playing Russian roulette with a hot dog.
That night we head out into the Palermo district to meet up with Gina and Kate, 2 amazing girls I met in Igazu Falls. They both guessed correctly that the pasty, white, ginger haired, English speaking guy would have sun block, and they ask me for some. They are both hotties so I asked them what they were up to,
"we live in BA (aaarrrghhhh!) studying and working" they replied,
"I leave from there in a couple of weeks, I'll come and harass you, and you can take me to the best steak places"
Stupidly they actually agreed! so Danny and I put on shirts and head off into the night.
Palermo may as well be the village in New York. It's basically tree lined streets, cool arty shops, posh wine bars, and restaurants. It's amazing but a genuine culture shock as it's so unlike the rest of Argentina. It's nice and everything but I live in London and places like this are on my doorstep, so I find it hard to really get into it. But the company is wicked, and I enjoy yet another steak and malbec, before going to meet up with Gina and Kate's pals in a bar while they watch the world series.
I vowed that I would eat a steak and drink red wine every other day for the month that I stayed in Argentina, and I have kept my vow. However, I didn't really think the plan through and I am now carrying a decent bit of weight. In fact, some shirts are now off limits as my paunch is too visible. Normally I would let this bother me, and maybe even get a little down but not anymore. Life is too short for any negative thoughts, and I make a pact with myself to drop the weight as soon as I get home. A mate is running the marathon next year so I'm going to train with him.
I've done it before and I'll do it again.
The next afternoon I wake up slowly. It's hard to get up early when you only get to bed at 4am, and that's considered early over here! People go to clubs at this time, not go home. It's mental. I eventually get downstairs and hear that the ex president has died, and that because of this, the country will go into 3 days of mourning. 3 days! he's not even the current president, but the current president is his wife so she basically does whatever she likes, which includes making the subway system free, and canceling ALL the league football! which means that my trip to see Boca Juniors is off. Out of the fucking window. Gutted. It was the only thing I wanted to do in Buenos Aires, apart from eat steak, drink wine, go clubbing, and kiss girls. I'm sick of doing anything else.
The next night Danny and I decide to have a change and go to eat sushi. We get in, order some sake, water, beers, and loads of fish. The waiter comes back with some drinks but Danny isn't happy,
"uhm senor, es possible, sake caliente?"
"did you just ask for the sake to be hot? I've already done that" I said,
"yeah but it's cold" replies Danny,
We both look at the table and Danny lifts his wine glass and repeats,
"it's cold"
"yes Danny, it is cold, but that's because it's water" I try to say without laughing.
That night we get really drunk and meet an English fella called Shane in a Irish pub. He'd managed to get himself into a conversation with a mental local guy, but we rescue him. We go downstairs and there's a proper cool nightclub under the Irish pub, it's a massive contrast but it works really well. Then we head to a super club called crowbar, but by that point I don't really have the faculties to really take it in. It's the most drunk I've been in a good couple of months. It's wicked.
We fall out of the club at 7:30am and into bright sunshine, and maybe it's because I'm not full of drugs, as I normally am if I fall out of a club at this hour, but the light is blinding. We hail a cab and sing Michael Jackson all the way home.
'Big' Danny Jenkins and I board our 1st class, full cama, it's the last bus journey I'll take in South America so why not go large, top booze and food, executive bus, to Buenos Aires. We've left behind some wonderful people in Mendoza but the Buenos Aires nightlife and women are calling Danny, and on top of those, my plane home is calling me.
Full cama means that the seat will recline to horizontal instead of the normal 3 inches back. Most of the time you'll travel semi cama, which obviously means half way, so you only half sleep. But with full cama? it's like being on a 1st class plane, or a very very small bed, covered in cheap leather. Perhaps a bit like a S+M dungeon bed for midgets.
We immediately start harassing the steward for alcohol but he's refusing to serve drinks until dinner is served, which is of course, not until 10:30pm. Of course it is.
We do manage to get him to give us some aperitifs, so we sit back, adjust the chairs to semi cama, and relax watching Mendoza slip away, and the countryside replace it.
Danny makes the mistake of asking me what my favorite part of my trip was, and so I launch into some tales:
He seems engrossed when I tell him about the crazy, nutjob girl in Brazil, who managed to get herself pregnant by another man, just before she was meant to marry my mate.
He laughs a lot louder and longer than really necessary when I tell him about being drugged by a man in Sao Paulo.
He looks out of the window when I talk about the Inca's in Peru, and how seeing the ruins has altered me as a person.
He is clearly bored when I tell him about the Welsh in Patagonia, and my love of the Welsh culture and language.
He puts his Ipod on when I tell him about the splendors of the Salt plains in Bolivia.
And finally he just pulls a curtain between us when I try to tell him of the amazing people I've met, and how the friendships and relationships I've made will carry on for many years to come,
"Well you asked!" I say before I realize that dinner, and by dinner I mean drinks, are being served. Danny and I enjoy the meal, have a few drinks and laugh and talk until it's time to go full cama and get some sleep.
We wake up in Buenos Aires and I have my last ever breakfast of assorted biscuits. That's all they'll ever serve you on a plane, bus, or train on this continent. A assorted biscuit selection. It's like waking up in the morning for afternoon tea with you granddad.
Buenos Aires, and by the way, I will write Buenos Aires all the way through this because everyone I meet calls it BA, and it sounds so wanky and annoying that I want to kill everyone, for example,
"yah, yah, we hit BA for a few days then left. It was great" or
"Yah, flew into BA and, like, totally took it over! BA is so cool and cosmo, you'll really love it!"
anyway, Buenos Aires is like a ghost town when we arrive, all the shops are shut, nobody is on the streets, there's barely any other cars on the road except for a couple of taxis. Even the McDonalds is closed! I've NEVER seen a McDonalds closed at 9am. Never.
Turns out that today is census day, and everyone has to stay indoors and be censured by people who will knock door to door to get details of who lives where, and what they do! It's totally crazy to see in a country as big as this that people still find the census details by walking door to door! We get to the hostel and ask,
"Can we go to the museum?"
"no"
"the cinema?"
"no"
"the church?"
"no"
"the art gallery?"
"no"
"the zoo?"
"no"
"the shopping mall?"
"no"
"the park?"
"yes. yes, you can go to the park"
We think about it for a while and decide to go to the park. The park is full of rollerskaters, runners, skateboarders, families, 5 a side football, street hockey, but mostly it's full of bemused tourists who don't know what the fuck to do. We've not eaten since the biscuit madness of 8:00am and it's 1pm now. We are starving but every restaurant is closed. We spot an ice cream guy on a bike who looks like he'll retire on his earnings later that day. We buy some ice creams at an outrageous price and wander round the lake in the central park. The women are sensational, and more than twice I nearly lose my ice cream down my front.
The ice cream barely touches the sides and we resort to buying some chorizo burgers from a gypsy who has the health and safety standards of a homeless man. As we queue we marvel at his cross contamination of cooked and raw food, and watch open mouthed at his faultless display of under cooking meat. As we sit down to enjoy this glorious feast I feel like I'm playing Russian roulette with a hot dog.
That night we head out into the Palermo district to meet up with Gina and Kate, 2 amazing girls I met in Igazu Falls. They both guessed correctly that the pasty, white, ginger haired, English speaking guy would have sun block, and they ask me for some. They are both hotties so I asked them what they were up to,
"we live in BA (aaarrrghhhh!) studying and working" they replied,
"I leave from there in a couple of weeks, I'll come and harass you, and you can take me to the best steak places"
Stupidly they actually agreed! so Danny and I put on shirts and head off into the night.
Palermo may as well be the village in New York. It's basically tree lined streets, cool arty shops, posh wine bars, and restaurants. It's amazing but a genuine culture shock as it's so unlike the rest of Argentina. It's nice and everything but I live in London and places like this are on my doorstep, so I find it hard to really get into it. But the company is wicked, and I enjoy yet another steak and malbec, before going to meet up with Gina and Kate's pals in a bar while they watch the world series.
I vowed that I would eat a steak and drink red wine every other day for the month that I stayed in Argentina, and I have kept my vow. However, I didn't really think the plan through and I am now carrying a decent bit of weight. In fact, some shirts are now off limits as my paunch is too visible. Normally I would let this bother me, and maybe even get a little down but not anymore. Life is too short for any negative thoughts, and I make a pact with myself to drop the weight as soon as I get home. A mate is running the marathon next year so I'm going to train with him.
I've done it before and I'll do it again.
The next afternoon I wake up slowly. It's hard to get up early when you only get to bed at 4am, and that's considered early over here! People go to clubs at this time, not go home. It's mental. I eventually get downstairs and hear that the ex president has died, and that because of this, the country will go into 3 days of mourning. 3 days! he's not even the current president, but the current president is his wife so she basically does whatever she likes, which includes making the subway system free, and canceling ALL the league football! which means that my trip to see Boca Juniors is off. Out of the fucking window. Gutted. It was the only thing I wanted to do in Buenos Aires, apart from eat steak, drink wine, go clubbing, and kiss girls. I'm sick of doing anything else.
The next night Danny and I decide to have a change and go to eat sushi. We get in, order some sake, water, beers, and loads of fish. The waiter comes back with some drinks but Danny isn't happy,
"uhm senor, es possible, sake caliente?"
"did you just ask for the sake to be hot? I've already done that" I said,
"yeah but it's cold" replies Danny,
We both look at the table and Danny lifts his wine glass and repeats,
"it's cold"
"yes Danny, it is cold, but that's because it's water" I try to say without laughing.
That night we get really drunk and meet an English fella called Shane in a Irish pub. He'd managed to get himself into a conversation with a mental local guy, but we rescue him. We go downstairs and there's a proper cool nightclub under the Irish pub, it's a massive contrast but it works really well. Then we head to a super club called crowbar, but by that point I don't really have the faculties to really take it in. It's the most drunk I've been in a good couple of months. It's wicked.
We fall out of the club at 7:30am and into bright sunshine, and maybe it's because I'm not full of drugs, as I normally am if I fall out of a club at this hour, but the light is blinding. We hail a cab and sing Michael Jackson all the way home.
Wednesday 10 November 2010
Mendoza. God, I love wine and I love life, a Frenchman excels, and I meet someone who knows George Bush.
Having left Bariloche and all its picture postcard beauty I expected Mendoza to look exactly the same, especially as the only thing I know about Mendoza is that it is home to some of the best wineries in the world. For some reason I expected a tiny bus station, surrounded by acres of vine trees, and one hostel.
Not for the first time on this trip I find myself painfully wide of the mark. Mendoza is a big cosmopolitan city, and having been re-built following an earthquake in 1861, its wide streets are majestic and impressive. The town's economy is booming, and it has a lot to do with the popularity if its wine, notably the red malbec.
I get to my hostel, the Damajuana, and get a tour around. Swimming pool, little bar area, TV, clean beds, good bathrooms. The place is also bang in the middle of the most popular bar and eating area of the city. Everything is coming up roses for my penultimate living quarters.
It's been 5 months by now and I've had enough of churches, seen plenty of old things in museums, marveled at too much local architecture, and done enough activities. It's time to really focus all my energy on one main goal: drinking and eating my body weight in red wine and steak. So I retire to the pool with a beer and take in the late afternoon sunshine.
I meet a happy Texan called William O'Neil, he's gregarious and laid back, in a way that only Americans can be, and he's great. Turns out he's in my dorm too so we share some beers and agree to go and see the world famous Mr Hugo.
Mr Hugo has basically got the life we all want, he does nothing, earns a shit load of money, gets pissed every day, and makes about 60 - 80 new best friends every single day. Except Sundays. Which he has off to do something even better than what he does the rest of the week. The lucky old fucker.
And how does he do this I hear all 4 of you ask?
Here's how it works:
For 70 peso Mr Hugo will have you collected from your hostel and driven for 30 miles into the heart of stunning wine making country.
You get dropped off and are met by a big smiling fellow with one of those cheery round stomachs, a bit like a beach ball under a shirt, the sort of stomach that doesn't make you want to be sick straight away, more give him a cuddle.
This man (Mr Hugo himself) will then ply you with good wine, and will get you to happily sign an agreement that completely clears him of any blame, fault, or liability should you get mowed down by a lorry or killed whilst out riding one of his bicycles.
Then he'll give you a map, a red bike, another 2 glasses of wine, and wave you off.
Then he sits there and does whatever he wants and waits for you to crash back into his driveway 6 hours later, whereupon you'll be given yet more wine, before he decides to put you in a taxi and send you on your merry way.
Now this may sound like some small time operation Hugo's got going on but he's got 156 bikes in his garage, and the power of word of mouth at his disposal. I'd heard of his amazingness all the way back in Brazil, long before I'd even got to Mendoza, the man is cleaning up. And good luck to him.
Me and Billy get on our bikes and shakily ride off, I've not ridden in 4 months, Bill in 15 years, so the first few hundred meters are quite nervous. And dangerous. We decide to counteract this with a couple of glasses of absinthe, just to settle the nerves.
After the settler we head off around and explore the local wineries, having tastings, and enjoying the sunshine. We finish the tour back at Hugo's, him with a massive 'money for fuck all' grin on his face, and a big jug of wine in his hand. What a legend.
Back at the hostel Billy and I get chatting to some of the other guests, A Frenchmen (who's identity I have been asked to keep secret), a top bloke called Danny, a heart broken lad called Phil, who's Argentinian wife had just left him, and some other assorted peeps. The atmosphere is great and we all have a laugh and I realize that I don't want to go home anymore. This is way too much fun. We hit the bars and have the banter.
We come back to the cool bar next to the hostel and a Danish girl comes up to us and says,
"you guys are staying in our hostel, would you like to join us?"
she then pointed to a table of 3 other Danish girls. Billy jumps over the barrier onto the terrace, I push the Frenchmen out of the way, and Phil somehow manages to just appear at the girls table.
We all set about drinking and chirping to the ladies but it's quickly clear that the Danish girl who invited us over did so because she was all over the Frenchmen. The rest of us are a trio of wing men.
For us the night comes to an abrupt end when a couple of the girls tease Billy about Americas ex president, and foreign policy in general. Billy simply retorts with,
"He's the Daddy of one of my buddies from college and he's a real good guy. Y'all'd like him if you met him"
I've never seen a room empty so fast, and within a few seconds it was just me, Billy, the Frenchmen, and the Danish who wanted the Frenchmen.
"You'd really like him though" says Billy to the backs of the leaving people.
The Frenchmen takes the Danish upstairs, pulls his mattress off his bed, uses it to barricade himself and the Danish into the communal bathroom and proceeds to have loud sex with her.
The master of seduction will then have sex with an American lady on the grass by the pool not even 24 hours later! The guy is a machine.
The following day I have an appointment at one of the biggest wineries in the area, Septima. This has been arranged by a friend of mine who owns a Argentinian steak house in London. I am to have a private tour around the vineyard, factory, and laboratory. Followed by a hour of tasting their entire collection, finally ending with a lunch on the roof terrace of the winery with the international sales director.
It's the best day of my life.
From the table at lunch I could see the Andes, the company was excellent, the food sublime, and the wine heartbreakingly good.
My car arrives and as we drive through the 150 hectares of vine trees, and out of the winery, I'm struck by a wonderful feeling of tranquility and calm. My time is nearing it's end but I know that I've seen and done some wonderful things and I don't mind that it's going to stop soon.
We have another night out in Mendoza, I make jokes about Danny's possibly massive cock (he's 6,7 for god sake! It must be like a lamppost. I got the chance to have a stare a few days later when we went to the cinema, and we both used the toilet post film. I didn't have the bottle and used the cubical. It's one thing to make jokes about a giant cock the size of a elephant trunk, but it's another to stand next to it while you're holding your own tiny* wedge) and we all have a wicked night.
The next day is football in the park with the locals, then a night bus to Buenos Aires.
The end of the line.
*While my Father assures me, almost fanatically, that size doesn't matter, it does. Just ask ------ -------- (ha. no chance I'm writing those! names down. You know who you are)
And mine's more than fine thank you very much. At least I think so.....although an ex did say she didn't feel the passion anymore......maybe it was the passion of a small penis? oh god! what if she was lying to me? people lie to be nice don't they? But they can't all be lying to be nice? Not every single one of them? Can they? I'm not small, 5,9 isn't midget small height wise. And it's in proportion. I guess it's not baton size when it's not busy, but let me tell you! When there's a job to be done! he'll stand up and be counted! I've been to the public pool, it holds its own against the others. But the water's cold! that means shrinkage! oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god.
Not for the first time on this trip I find myself painfully wide of the mark. Mendoza is a big cosmopolitan city, and having been re-built following an earthquake in 1861, its wide streets are majestic and impressive. The town's economy is booming, and it has a lot to do with the popularity if its wine, notably the red malbec.
I get to my hostel, the Damajuana, and get a tour around. Swimming pool, little bar area, TV, clean beds, good bathrooms. The place is also bang in the middle of the most popular bar and eating area of the city. Everything is coming up roses for my penultimate living quarters.
It's been 5 months by now and I've had enough of churches, seen plenty of old things in museums, marveled at too much local architecture, and done enough activities. It's time to really focus all my energy on one main goal: drinking and eating my body weight in red wine and steak. So I retire to the pool with a beer and take in the late afternoon sunshine.
I meet a happy Texan called William O'Neil, he's gregarious and laid back, in a way that only Americans can be, and he's great. Turns out he's in my dorm too so we share some beers and agree to go and see the world famous Mr Hugo.
Mr Hugo has basically got the life we all want, he does nothing, earns a shit load of money, gets pissed every day, and makes about 60 - 80 new best friends every single day. Except Sundays. Which he has off to do something even better than what he does the rest of the week. The lucky old fucker.
And how does he do this I hear all 4 of you ask?
Here's how it works:
For 70 peso Mr Hugo will have you collected from your hostel and driven for 30 miles into the heart of stunning wine making country.
You get dropped off and are met by a big smiling fellow with one of those cheery round stomachs, a bit like a beach ball under a shirt, the sort of stomach that doesn't make you want to be sick straight away, more give him a cuddle.
This man (Mr Hugo himself) will then ply you with good wine, and will get you to happily sign an agreement that completely clears him of any blame, fault, or liability should you get mowed down by a lorry or killed whilst out riding one of his bicycles.
Then he'll give you a map, a red bike, another 2 glasses of wine, and wave you off.
Then he sits there and does whatever he wants and waits for you to crash back into his driveway 6 hours later, whereupon you'll be given yet more wine, before he decides to put you in a taxi and send you on your merry way.
Now this may sound like some small time operation Hugo's got going on but he's got 156 bikes in his garage, and the power of word of mouth at his disposal. I'd heard of his amazingness all the way back in Brazil, long before I'd even got to Mendoza, the man is cleaning up. And good luck to him.
Me and Billy get on our bikes and shakily ride off, I've not ridden in 4 months, Bill in 15 years, so the first few hundred meters are quite nervous. And dangerous. We decide to counteract this with a couple of glasses of absinthe, just to settle the nerves.
After the settler we head off around and explore the local wineries, having tastings, and enjoying the sunshine. We finish the tour back at Hugo's, him with a massive 'money for fuck all' grin on his face, and a big jug of wine in his hand. What a legend.
Back at the hostel Billy and I get chatting to some of the other guests, A Frenchmen (who's identity I have been asked to keep secret), a top bloke called Danny, a heart broken lad called Phil, who's Argentinian wife had just left him, and some other assorted peeps. The atmosphere is great and we all have a laugh and I realize that I don't want to go home anymore. This is way too much fun. We hit the bars and have the banter.
We come back to the cool bar next to the hostel and a Danish girl comes up to us and says,
"you guys are staying in our hostel, would you like to join us?"
she then pointed to a table of 3 other Danish girls. Billy jumps over the barrier onto the terrace, I push the Frenchmen out of the way, and Phil somehow manages to just appear at the girls table.
We all set about drinking and chirping to the ladies but it's quickly clear that the Danish girl who invited us over did so because she was all over the Frenchmen. The rest of us are a trio of wing men.
For us the night comes to an abrupt end when a couple of the girls tease Billy about Americas ex president, and foreign policy in general. Billy simply retorts with,
"He's the Daddy of one of my buddies from college and he's a real good guy. Y'all'd like him if you met him"
I've never seen a room empty so fast, and within a few seconds it was just me, Billy, the Frenchmen, and the Danish who wanted the Frenchmen.
"You'd really like him though" says Billy to the backs of the leaving people.
The Frenchmen takes the Danish upstairs, pulls his mattress off his bed, uses it to barricade himself and the Danish into the communal bathroom and proceeds to have loud sex with her.
The master of seduction will then have sex with an American lady on the grass by the pool not even 24 hours later! The guy is a machine.
The following day I have an appointment at one of the biggest wineries in the area, Septima. This has been arranged by a friend of mine who owns a Argentinian steak house in London. I am to have a private tour around the vineyard, factory, and laboratory. Followed by a hour of tasting their entire collection, finally ending with a lunch on the roof terrace of the winery with the international sales director.
It's the best day of my life.
From the table at lunch I could see the Andes, the company was excellent, the food sublime, and the wine heartbreakingly good.
My car arrives and as we drive through the 150 hectares of vine trees, and out of the winery, I'm struck by a wonderful feeling of tranquility and calm. My time is nearing it's end but I know that I've seen and done some wonderful things and I don't mind that it's going to stop soon.
We have another night out in Mendoza, I make jokes about Danny's possibly massive cock (he's 6,7 for god sake! It must be like a lamppost. I got the chance to have a stare a few days later when we went to the cinema, and we both used the toilet post film. I didn't have the bottle and used the cubical. It's one thing to make jokes about a giant cock the size of a elephant trunk, but it's another to stand next to it while you're holding your own tiny* wedge) and we all have a wicked night.
The next day is football in the park with the locals, then a night bus to Buenos Aires.
The end of the line.
*While my Father assures me, almost fanatically, that size doesn't matter, it does. Just ask ------ -------- (ha. no chance I'm writing those! names down. You know who you are)
And mine's more than fine thank you very much. At least I think so.....although an ex did say she didn't feel the passion anymore......maybe it was the passion of a small penis? oh god! what if she was lying to me? people lie to be nice don't they? But they can't all be lying to be nice? Not every single one of them? Can they? I'm not small, 5,9 isn't midget small height wise. And it's in proportion. I guess it's not baton size when it's not busy, but let me tell you! When there's a job to be done! he'll stand up and be counted! I've been to the public pool, it holds its own against the others. But the water's cold! that means shrinkage! oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god.
Friday 5 November 2010
Bariloche, Horseriding, wifeswapping, and meat.
Bariloche sits at the foot of the Andes, and the town nestles on the side of the Gutiérrez Lake, and it's surrounded by yet more mountains and lakes. It's also only a few hours away from the Chilean border, so it's a beautiful destination and hub for people moving across to Chile.
For some reason, I'm going to guess the mountains and snow, it reminds me of Austria. The little, wooden houses and chocolatiers finish the look. It a lovely, quaint little town, and I sort of fall in love with the place.
My hostel (hostel 1004) is on the 10th floor of a block of flats that wouldn't look out of place in Hackney. It's right in the middle of the town, overlooking the principal square. I was expecting a quaint, wooden, cottage style hostel, but as I read the easily understandable profanity on the walls of the smelly service lift I realize that my expectations are to be curbed a little.
The guy who owns the hostel has basically bought half of the 10th floor of the block, he's then knocked through 3 apartments at the end to make a reception, kitchen, living area, some bedrooms, and a observation deck. Then he's turned the other flats into dorm rooms. It's amazing and the views across the square and beyond the lake make me feel a little giddy.
There's loads to do and I'm meeting 2 lovely peeps from London that I met in Puerto Madryn, Kat and Adam.
Now sitting on a large animal while it throws you around the countryside is a activity I've always left for jockeys and people making animal porn. There was a incident on a school trip when a horse initially stood on my foot, then bolted for the gate while I was sitting on it. I was only 10 at the time. I still believe to this day that he had a personal problem with me. It could have been the red hair but I don't want to speculate, only to say that since then me and the horses have kept a respectful distance, me in cities, them in fields.
But I am here only once and getting out of your comfort zone is the challenge so I agree to go horse riding round the lake. When we get there and the guy readies the horses I can see that he's paired me up with a ginger horse, I believe that he knows that a ginger would never turn on another ginger, irrespective of species, and I bond with 'caramello' like that fella did with the flying thing in Avatar. But minus the weird hair/tentacles thing. I do try some horse whispering though but Caramello just ignores me.
We trundle along very slowly but the scenery is worth the painfully slow progress, I try kicking Caramello into a trot but he's not bothered, and I acknowledge the unspoken words,
"mate, you're up there because I let you be up there, you kick me again and I'll put you back on the floor, and on your arse"
Animals this big are essentially in charge, and ultimately they are big enough to do it or not do it. They don't even need those whips at the horse racing, I think they're there to make the midget jockeys look a bit more hard.
After a few painful hours we come to an end and have a parrilla, which is just meat bought to you on regular intervals until you're sick, or have the decency to say 'enough'.
That night we all get together and head to the best steakhouse in town, and I get my first taste of supposedly the best meat in Argentina, possibly the continent. The west has always been considered the best area for wines and steak and I am not going to disagree. My filet melts in my mouth like a succulent, beef tasting ice cream, and the wine is so smooth that at one point I slide of my chair. I sit and listen to the banter round the table but the mixture of sublime tastes almost brings a tear to my eye. And I haven't even got to Mendoza yet! or Buenos Aires!
I spend the next couple of days lazing around town and eating the unbelievable chocolate. I am now only 13 days away from going home and the date is so close I'm ready for it. I miss my friends so much that I can't wait to just sit in a pub and listen to my friends speak and jabber rubbish. It's such a strong emotion when I think about my friends and family that I try to fill my mind with anything else, mostly the amazing sites around me, and the podcasts on my Iphone.
There's a 'bring a bottle of wine night' at the hostel, organized by the girls who work there. It's a little odd because the hostel decor is all 70s kaftan and hippy rugs. Then they add some 'mood' lighting and some really bad disco. The girls from the hostel start dancing and it suddenly feels like a early 80s wife swapping party. But you get chatting to the other guests and I meet a amazing Irish couple who have upped sticks and gone traveling for a year and a half, and they've only just started. I am a bit jealous but I just want to get home.
The next day I head to Mendoza. And I've been waiting for this for almost 4 months. The home of malbec wine. This is where things get fat and funny.
For some reason, I'm going to guess the mountains and snow, it reminds me of Austria. The little, wooden houses and chocolatiers finish the look. It a lovely, quaint little town, and I sort of fall in love with the place.
My hostel (hostel 1004) is on the 10th floor of a block of flats that wouldn't look out of place in Hackney. It's right in the middle of the town, overlooking the principal square. I was expecting a quaint, wooden, cottage style hostel, but as I read the easily understandable profanity on the walls of the smelly service lift I realize that my expectations are to be curbed a little.
The guy who owns the hostel has basically bought half of the 10th floor of the block, he's then knocked through 3 apartments at the end to make a reception, kitchen, living area, some bedrooms, and a observation deck. Then he's turned the other flats into dorm rooms. It's amazing and the views across the square and beyond the lake make me feel a little giddy.
There's loads to do and I'm meeting 2 lovely peeps from London that I met in Puerto Madryn, Kat and Adam.
Now sitting on a large animal while it throws you around the countryside is a activity I've always left for jockeys and people making animal porn. There was a incident on a school trip when a horse initially stood on my foot, then bolted for the gate while I was sitting on it. I was only 10 at the time. I still believe to this day that he had a personal problem with me. It could have been the red hair but I don't want to speculate, only to say that since then me and the horses have kept a respectful distance, me in cities, them in fields.
But I am here only once and getting out of your comfort zone is the challenge so I agree to go horse riding round the lake. When we get there and the guy readies the horses I can see that he's paired me up with a ginger horse, I believe that he knows that a ginger would never turn on another ginger, irrespective of species, and I bond with 'caramello' like that fella did with the flying thing in Avatar. But minus the weird hair/tentacles thing. I do try some horse whispering though but Caramello just ignores me.
We trundle along very slowly but the scenery is worth the painfully slow progress, I try kicking Caramello into a trot but he's not bothered, and I acknowledge the unspoken words,
"mate, you're up there because I let you be up there, you kick me again and I'll put you back on the floor, and on your arse"
Animals this big are essentially in charge, and ultimately they are big enough to do it or not do it. They don't even need those whips at the horse racing, I think they're there to make the midget jockeys look a bit more hard.
After a few painful hours we come to an end and have a parrilla, which is just meat bought to you on regular intervals until you're sick, or have the decency to say 'enough'.
That night we all get together and head to the best steakhouse in town, and I get my first taste of supposedly the best meat in Argentina, possibly the continent. The west has always been considered the best area for wines and steak and I am not going to disagree. My filet melts in my mouth like a succulent, beef tasting ice cream, and the wine is so smooth that at one point I slide of my chair. I sit and listen to the banter round the table but the mixture of sublime tastes almost brings a tear to my eye. And I haven't even got to Mendoza yet! or Buenos Aires!
I spend the next couple of days lazing around town and eating the unbelievable chocolate. I am now only 13 days away from going home and the date is so close I'm ready for it. I miss my friends so much that I can't wait to just sit in a pub and listen to my friends speak and jabber rubbish. It's such a strong emotion when I think about my friends and family that I try to fill my mind with anything else, mostly the amazing sites around me, and the podcasts on my Iphone.
There's a 'bring a bottle of wine night' at the hostel, organized by the girls who work there. It's a little odd because the hostel decor is all 70s kaftan and hippy rugs. Then they add some 'mood' lighting and some really bad disco. The girls from the hostel start dancing and it suddenly feels like a early 80s wife swapping party. But you get chatting to the other guests and I meet a amazing Irish couple who have upped sticks and gone traveling for a year and a half, and they've only just started. I am a bit jealous but I just want to get home.
The next day I head to Mendoza. And I've been waiting for this for almost 4 months. The home of malbec wine. This is where things get fat and funny.
Friday 29 October 2010
More buses, Puerto Madryn, and the faded light that is Sepultura
After the poolside party with the Yankees, Luke and Jade, and a host of other good people it's time for some more bus travel.
36 hours in a bus seat, with only 1 hour off the bus to buy a second ticket. What worries me is how adebt I am at sitting in a chair and doing absolutley nothing at all. As long as I have a ipod of music, a iphone full of podcasts, the Angry Birds game, and the occasional film that works on the bus telly I can easily sit there for days.
It brings my laziness sharply into focus, I really am very very good at doing nothing at all. I'll happily sit and breathe for long periods, and when that gets tiring I'll have a nap. I might have myself committed when I get home, then I can sit in a chair all day AND get free drugs.
The first leg I do with Luke and Jade, we plum for the best bus we can find from Igazu to Buenos Aires. We are given booze and decent food, much nicer than plane food, and then Luke and I 'liberate' a bottle of champagne from the fridge while the hostess is asleep. I have to smuggle it off 'Great Escape' style in the morning. We go our seperate ways at the bus station, me onto another bus, them to Buenos Aires and beyond to New Zealand. I will miss them a lot for the next few days.
I suppose the reason why I can sit on a bus so readily for such a long time is the pay off when I finally stop.
To see Patagonia? I'd have sat there for 3 weeks. Well not really, you'd have to throw in a few 'gentleman time' stops and very fast WiFi for a 3 weeker.
I'm not sure if it's because I am in Patagonia or it's just that I'm not siiting on a bus, but as I walk along the seafront, with the warm sun loosening my tight, bus cramped muscles, I find myself deliriously happy . Young couples sit together on walls and benches, canoodling their afternoon siesta away, they get 4 hours off over here, from 12pm-4pm.
Lots of people are out walk/jogging, they smile sweetly as they pass the cleary Welsh me on their way. People love it when you say you are from Wales here, and they love you more when you say that you can speak Welsh.
Not so much the English, they don't like the English much here, and it doesn't help that every town has a street called Belgrano somewhere. But here, closer to the island, people have been shouted at and abused while they wander around the town.
I walk for 3 miles along the beach up to the embarkation museum. It's a little white house that sits on the top of a hill, just above the site of where the Mimosa landed full of Welsh settlers in 1865. They have designed the museum in a way to tell the story through the eyes of one of the passengers, a girl called Catherine. It explains the struggle to get to Argentina from Liverpool docks, and the problems they faced when they tried to build a life here. Even if you're not Welsh the history and story is very engaging and the little old lady who works there speaks Welsh, not Welsh as I know it or speak, it's Welsh with a strange lilt to it, with accents on letters very different to how I would say it. Her family were settlers and it's amazing to speak to her for a while and find out that there's a growing interest locally in the Welsh history of the place. I leave and as I walk back to the hostel I realize that I've spoken more Welsh to her in 2 hours than I have to anyone else over the last year. A sobering thought for a first language Welsh speaker.
The loneliness of the lone diner.
Now I've dined alone lots of times, mostly when I have been away for work, and of course whilst doing this trip, as well as those times I've been stood up.
I really don't mind the stares from other diners, or the over attentive staff, it's as though they feel sorry for you because you must be such a loser that nobody will even eat a meal with you, but for me it's never been a problem.
But it's gets bad when you have to eat alone in a empty restaraunt, because over here nobody eats until around 11pm! 11! My Mum needs to be sat down for dinner for 6:30pm, 7pm at the latest, any later and it's,
"Oh my stomach Gareth, I'll toss and turn all night. ooohhh and the wind! No, no, book the table for quarter past six, and we can't have anything with bell peppers, they're agony for me the other way out. I'll not sleep a wink"
I've got to see the penquins at 8am tomorrow so I'd like to be asleep by 11, so I find myself sitting down for dinner as the chef is warming the grill. It's quite the cultural kicker. I bottle it and head out to a bar to waste some time. Eventually I walk back in at 9:30pm and there are some 'early bird' diners in, so I sit down again and order a steak and Malbec.
Only 2 of us are sitting alone, and as I glance across to him I can see that he's ordered strong, a huge cut of loin beef arrives on his table on one of those mini heater thingy's, similar to the ones you see at a showy Chinese, but with loads more class. I got severe meat envy. The Bastard. And he looks good eating it, he looks like a cross between a Chilean miner and a moustached Frenchmen. I feel like a child against him. My meat envy properly kickwhen my food arrives, don't get me wrong, the filet is a work of art, but for volume and girth, the meat on his grill is monsterous. I finish my steak and head for the door, I swear I can hear a snort of derision from the French miner, but I turn round and he's just blowing his nose, then sets about finishing the bead basket and salad!
The penquins are fun to see but yet again television has lied to me. I expected them to all be huddled together in a huge ball like I've seen on the BBC, but they're not, they're all dotted around hiding under bushes in penquins sized divots, sheltering from the massive winds, I wished I'd thought of that because it's brassic out here.
That night I wander around the town and see a poster for Sepultura, they are playing a gig in Puerto Madryn! which is a bit like Coldplay playing a gig in Runcorn, a bit strange. I decide that I have to go and witness this explosion of Brazilian metal, with a massive throng of crazy Argentinians. Except it doesn't really go down like that. The gig has been moved from the local football stadium to a basketball hall. The expected crowd of around 20,000 is slightly less. 800 people. It's a very odd state of affairs and they of course won't serve booze inside so everyone is getting smashed in the car park. I've never understood this sort of policy on drink and drugs. if you don't allow drinking in the venue then everyone will just get smashed before they arrive, and you'll still have the same problem that you're trying to avoid by not serving booze!
The gig is cool but we leave and head to a bar, by now it's about 12:30pm, we sit in the bar and have some cocktails in a booth. In the booth behind me a woman is sitting breastfeeding her quite clearly 4 year old daughter. Now I know which part of that is worse but breast feeding in a bar at 1 in the morning? It's nuts.
We leave and we go back to the hostel.
The following day I head to Gaiman, a tiny village where the Welsh history is at its strongest. They have traditional Welsh tea houses and period buildings. The museum is run by Fabio, and he's a little odd and quirky, but a good laugh to chat to. I eat Welsh cakes and chat to the owners and genrally try to imagine moving somewhere that has nothing, and then you try to build something. It's a wonderful couple of days.
But I need to keep moving, and the next few days promise to be full of excitement and fun-
remedial horseriding
making new friends
watching a Frenchmen at work
visiting some of the best vineyards in the world
and more bus rides.
36 hours in a bus seat, with only 1 hour off the bus to buy a second ticket. What worries me is how adebt I am at sitting in a chair and doing absolutley nothing at all. As long as I have a ipod of music, a iphone full of podcasts, the Angry Birds game, and the occasional film that works on the bus telly I can easily sit there for days.
It brings my laziness sharply into focus, I really am very very good at doing nothing at all. I'll happily sit and breathe for long periods, and when that gets tiring I'll have a nap. I might have myself committed when I get home, then I can sit in a chair all day AND get free drugs.
The first leg I do with Luke and Jade, we plum for the best bus we can find from Igazu to Buenos Aires. We are given booze and decent food, much nicer than plane food, and then Luke and I 'liberate' a bottle of champagne from the fridge while the hostess is asleep. I have to smuggle it off 'Great Escape' style in the morning. We go our seperate ways at the bus station, me onto another bus, them to Buenos Aires and beyond to New Zealand. I will miss them a lot for the next few days.
I suppose the reason why I can sit on a bus so readily for such a long time is the pay off when I finally stop.
To see Patagonia? I'd have sat there for 3 weeks. Well not really, you'd have to throw in a few 'gentleman time' stops and very fast WiFi for a 3 weeker.
I'm not sure if it's because I am in Patagonia or it's just that I'm not siiting on a bus, but as I walk along the seafront, with the warm sun loosening my tight, bus cramped muscles, I find myself deliriously happy . Young couples sit together on walls and benches, canoodling their afternoon siesta away, they get 4 hours off over here, from 12pm-4pm.
Lots of people are out walk/jogging, they smile sweetly as they pass the cleary Welsh me on their way. People love it when you say you are from Wales here, and they love you more when you say that you can speak Welsh.
Not so much the English, they don't like the English much here, and it doesn't help that every town has a street called Belgrano somewhere. But here, closer to the island, people have been shouted at and abused while they wander around the town.
I walk for 3 miles along the beach up to the embarkation museum. It's a little white house that sits on the top of a hill, just above the site of where the Mimosa landed full of Welsh settlers in 1865. They have designed the museum in a way to tell the story through the eyes of one of the passengers, a girl called Catherine. It explains the struggle to get to Argentina from Liverpool docks, and the problems they faced when they tried to build a life here. Even if you're not Welsh the history and story is very engaging and the little old lady who works there speaks Welsh, not Welsh as I know it or speak, it's Welsh with a strange lilt to it, with accents on letters very different to how I would say it. Her family were settlers and it's amazing to speak to her for a while and find out that there's a growing interest locally in the Welsh history of the place. I leave and as I walk back to the hostel I realize that I've spoken more Welsh to her in 2 hours than I have to anyone else over the last year. A sobering thought for a first language Welsh speaker.
The loneliness of the lone diner.
Now I've dined alone lots of times, mostly when I have been away for work, and of course whilst doing this trip, as well as those times I've been stood up.
I really don't mind the stares from other diners, or the over attentive staff, it's as though they feel sorry for you because you must be such a loser that nobody will even eat a meal with you, but for me it's never been a problem.
But it's gets bad when you have to eat alone in a empty restaraunt, because over here nobody eats until around 11pm! 11! My Mum needs to be sat down for dinner for 6:30pm, 7pm at the latest, any later and it's,
"Oh my stomach Gareth, I'll toss and turn all night. ooohhh and the wind! No, no, book the table for quarter past six, and we can't have anything with bell peppers, they're agony for me the other way out. I'll not sleep a wink"
I've got to see the penquins at 8am tomorrow so I'd like to be asleep by 11, so I find myself sitting down for dinner as the chef is warming the grill. It's quite the cultural kicker. I bottle it and head out to a bar to waste some time. Eventually I walk back in at 9:30pm and there are some 'early bird' diners in, so I sit down again and order a steak and Malbec.
Only 2 of us are sitting alone, and as I glance across to him I can see that he's ordered strong, a huge cut of loin beef arrives on his table on one of those mini heater thingy's, similar to the ones you see at a showy Chinese, but with loads more class. I got severe meat envy. The Bastard. And he looks good eating it, he looks like a cross between a Chilean miner and a moustached Frenchmen. I feel like a child against him. My meat envy properly kickwhen my food arrives, don't get me wrong, the filet is a work of art, but for volume and girth, the meat on his grill is monsterous. I finish my steak and head for the door, I swear I can hear a snort of derision from the French miner, but I turn round and he's just blowing his nose, then sets about finishing the bead basket and salad!
The penquins are fun to see but yet again television has lied to me. I expected them to all be huddled together in a huge ball like I've seen on the BBC, but they're not, they're all dotted around hiding under bushes in penquins sized divots, sheltering from the massive winds, I wished I'd thought of that because it's brassic out here.
That night I wander around the town and see a poster for Sepultura, they are playing a gig in Puerto Madryn! which is a bit like Coldplay playing a gig in Runcorn, a bit strange. I decide that I have to go and witness this explosion of Brazilian metal, with a massive throng of crazy Argentinians. Except it doesn't really go down like that. The gig has been moved from the local football stadium to a basketball hall. The expected crowd of around 20,000 is slightly less. 800 people. It's a very odd state of affairs and they of course won't serve booze inside so everyone is getting smashed in the car park. I've never understood this sort of policy on drink and drugs. if you don't allow drinking in the venue then everyone will just get smashed before they arrive, and you'll still have the same problem that you're trying to avoid by not serving booze!
The gig is cool but we leave and head to a bar, by now it's about 12:30pm, we sit in the bar and have some cocktails in a booth. In the booth behind me a woman is sitting breastfeeding her quite clearly 4 year old daughter. Now I know which part of that is worse but breast feeding in a bar at 1 in the morning? It's nuts.
We leave and we go back to the hostel.
The following day I head to Gaiman, a tiny village where the Welsh history is at its strongest. They have traditional Welsh tea houses and period buildings. The museum is run by Fabio, and he's a little odd and quirky, but a good laugh to chat to. I eat Welsh cakes and chat to the owners and genrally try to imagine moving somewhere that has nothing, and then you try to build something. It's a wonderful couple of days.
But I need to keep moving, and the next few days promise to be full of excitement and fun-
remedial horseriding
making new friends
watching a Frenchmen at work
visiting some of the best vineyards in the world
and more bus rides.
Thursday 21 October 2010
Buses, Buses, Waterfalls, and the beauty that is Patagonia
Now, people say that travel broadens the mind, and by and large that's true.
However, getting to the places that broadens your mind can sometimes be, well, mind crushingly tedious.
I leave Bolivia by overnight train. It's 9 bone shaking hours to the border with Argentina but I have a cunning plan. I have taken advantage of Bolivia's wonderfully lax attitude to pharmacy and bought a job lot of Diazepam.
The last time I legally had these wonderful little pills was when a girl called Ymanda gave me a 'neck massage' in University. Long story short, she ruptured the muscles in my neck and I past out from the pain whilst in the shower the following morning. This episode is why nobody is allowed to 'massage' me without a certificate, or some sort of evidence that they've had training in massage therapy.
Of course since then girlfriends have tried to 'massage' me in some sort of foreplay type situation, I dismiss the whole idea, usually by pushing sex on them, which leads to many a row about me not being 'sensitive' or something.
Anyway, 1 Diazepam later and it's the morning! and I'm at the border. I expect the transition from Bolivia to Argentina to be a bit like water to oil, one place is sticky, smelly, and hard work to get around. The other is clear, calm, and healthy.
How wrong I was. The first Argentinian town I come to all the cash machine don't work. All of them. All 4 of them.
I beg and plead with the bus comapany to let me travel ahead to Salta, and that I'd pay there. No dice, they all want cash, but I don't have cash, because ALL of the cash machines don't work in the WHOLE town! all 4 of them!
Eventually I find one company that takes Visa and I'm off. It's 8 hours to Salta so I run out the last of my battery power listening to some 'we're not cool' mixes on my Ipod, and marveling at the progressively more beautiful scenery.
My friend is 'we're not cool' and his mixes are really really good. the tracks fit so well with my mindset and mood that they have soundtracked almost half of my trip. I'd never tell him this though, and luckly he can't read or write, but they have been a saving grace for me on this trip. I never ever realized how big this country was, and what appears close on a map is easily 9 hours away, and I used to think getting from Cardiff to London was a pain of a journey.
I stop overnight at Salta and leave the following day for Igazu. This is another 23 hours away on a bus. When I finally get off the bus the warm humidity of late afternoon Igazu lifts my tired legs.
I checked into my hostel and fall straight into the swimming pool, the fresh, ripe, cold water is a wicked shot to the system.
I get up early and head for the falls, where I have arranged to meet Luke and Jade, and 2 wicked Aussie fellas who were on our bus the day before. Luke and Jade have now become my antidote to all the other twats that I've met on this trip, their positvity and general niceness cheers me up no end. And as we all jump about waiting to buy tickets in the sunshine, it makes me feel like we're on a unsupervised school trip to Alton Towers.
As we wander closer to the falls the noise of the water hums in the background, not really giving us a clue of what we're about to see, and the sight catches me a little off guard.
Massive waterfalls strech out in front of us like a rainbow on it's side, the white clouds of water that jump up from the bottom of the falls rise up to about halfway, making it difficult to see how far down they go, and the falls ark around for what feels like miles.
We all go a bit quiet, then start laughing and smiling like loons. Everyone takes photos and then we get on a boat ride into the jaws of the falls. I get sodden wet but it's the best 20 minutes on a boat I've ever had.
We spend the rest of the day walking around the paths, joking, and bantering. We meet a couple of Yanky ladies who are living in Buenos Aires, and we all arrange to have a drink up at the hotel in the evening.
However, getting to the places that broadens your mind can sometimes be, well, mind crushingly tedious.
I leave Bolivia by overnight train. It's 9 bone shaking hours to the border with Argentina but I have a cunning plan. I have taken advantage of Bolivia's wonderfully lax attitude to pharmacy and bought a job lot of Diazepam.
The last time I legally had these wonderful little pills was when a girl called Ymanda gave me a 'neck massage' in University. Long story short, she ruptured the muscles in my neck and I past out from the pain whilst in the shower the following morning. This episode is why nobody is allowed to 'massage' me without a certificate, or some sort of evidence that they've had training in massage therapy.
Of course since then girlfriends have tried to 'massage' me in some sort of foreplay type situation, I dismiss the whole idea, usually by pushing sex on them, which leads to many a row about me not being 'sensitive' or something.
Anyway, 1 Diazepam later and it's the morning! and I'm at the border. I expect the transition from Bolivia to Argentina to be a bit like water to oil, one place is sticky, smelly, and hard work to get around. The other is clear, calm, and healthy.
How wrong I was. The first Argentinian town I come to all the cash machine don't work. All of them. All 4 of them.
I beg and plead with the bus comapany to let me travel ahead to Salta, and that I'd pay there. No dice, they all want cash, but I don't have cash, because ALL of the cash machines don't work in the WHOLE town! all 4 of them!
Eventually I find one company that takes Visa and I'm off. It's 8 hours to Salta so I run out the last of my battery power listening to some 'we're not cool' mixes on my Ipod, and marveling at the progressively more beautiful scenery.
My friend is 'we're not cool' and his mixes are really really good. the tracks fit so well with my mindset and mood that they have soundtracked almost half of my trip. I'd never tell him this though, and luckly he can't read or write, but they have been a saving grace for me on this trip. I never ever realized how big this country was, and what appears close on a map is easily 9 hours away, and I used to think getting from Cardiff to London was a pain of a journey.
I stop overnight at Salta and leave the following day for Igazu. This is another 23 hours away on a bus. When I finally get off the bus the warm humidity of late afternoon Igazu lifts my tired legs.
I checked into my hostel and fall straight into the swimming pool, the fresh, ripe, cold water is a wicked shot to the system.
I get up early and head for the falls, where I have arranged to meet Luke and Jade, and 2 wicked Aussie fellas who were on our bus the day before. Luke and Jade have now become my antidote to all the other twats that I've met on this trip, their positvity and general niceness cheers me up no end. And as we all jump about waiting to buy tickets in the sunshine, it makes me feel like we're on a unsupervised school trip to Alton Towers.
As we wander closer to the falls the noise of the water hums in the background, not really giving us a clue of what we're about to see, and the sight catches me a little off guard.
Massive waterfalls strech out in front of us like a rainbow on it's side, the white clouds of water that jump up from the bottom of the falls rise up to about halfway, making it difficult to see how far down they go, and the falls ark around for what feels like miles.
We all go a bit quiet, then start laughing and smiling like loons. Everyone takes photos and then we get on a boat ride into the jaws of the falls. I get sodden wet but it's the best 20 minutes on a boat I've ever had.
We spend the rest of the day walking around the paths, joking, and bantering. We meet a couple of Yanky ladies who are living in Buenos Aires, and we all arrange to have a drink up at the hotel in the evening.
Tuesday 5 October 2010
Salt flats, finding friends, I get a bit deep, and am I on Mars?n
The Salt Flat tour. 3 days and 2 nights driving in a massive circle round the south west of Bolivia. We are a group of six in a 4x4, an Irish couple, a couple from London, me, and a Aussie. Aussies!
The trip starts by us visting a train graveyard, where all the unused British steam trains have been left to rust. It's quite a sight but you get the feeling that we're filling in time, then a lot of other 4x4s begin to turn up, and I am again reminded that tourism drives this part of Bolivia, and that I am not the first person to see or do this.
We hang about and I start to hear a loud wonky cockney accent drift across the plain, it turns out to be the voice of the one and only English bloke I met in Machu Pichu, Luke, closely followed by his lovely girl Jade.
A nicer pair of people you couldn't wish to meet, especially when you've only had a bunch of French, Swiss, Belgian, and Spanish to not talk to for 3 days. Their accents and cries of 'fack me' and 'ave a look at that' were music to my ears. My group had stopped for lunch during the trek to Machu Pichu and they arrived at the same lunch spot. He started singing loudly to 'it's raining men' and Jade had this amazing sunglasses white batch on her face from her wrap around D&Gs. I knew straight away that they were going to be my sort of people.
I run over, jump on Luke's back and shout,
"where's my friend request you mug?"
they both turn and it's all shouts of,
"oh my gawd! Facking ell! we couldn't find ya!" we hug and have a bit of banter but their group starts getting a bit pissy, so I take their names for the facebook and promise to meet them in Argentina in a few days for beers.
The salt flats used to be a salt water lake 10,000km wide, the water evaporated, leaving a desert of salt as far as you can possibly see. The views are awesome, with miles of whiteness, surrounded by imposing mountains.
Before I'd left my hostel in the morning I'd seen on Facebook that it's been 15 years since 'what's the story (morning glory)' was released. 15 years is a very scary number when it's in years past, I think about things I've done and seen in those 15 years, and I get whistful.
I was 17 when that album was released, and the world was on it's knees to me, I could be whoever I wanted, and do whatever I wanted, and I never imagined then that my life would angle and contrive the way it has. As the salt flats fade away behind me I reach for my Ipod. I listen to music from 15 years ago, Oasis, Ocean Colour Scene, Menswear, Shed Seven, Gene, Elastica, Blur, music that meant everything to me then, and I get nostalgic.
I think about the friends I had then, and the things we did, the gigs we saw, and the jokes we repeated and repeated. The clothes we'd obsess over, and the girls we didn't sleep with. The memories pass through me as fast as the landscape around me does.
Memories are what you have left to remind you that you've lived, and I love my memories more as each year passes, but you have to create new memories as you go, because if you don't, or can't, the memories turn and become reminders, reminders of when you were happier, and that's not how to live a life. You have to fill your life with new experiences to pile on top of the others, filling your mind with more memories than you can cope with, otherwise you're wasted.
Day 2
We drive further into the Bolivian countryside and it's other worldly, lakes of red water, still lakes of crystal blue, flamingos standing in freezing cold lagoons, mountains as far as the eye can see, some with snow on top, some in different colours, others that seem to have animal faces etched on their sides, bright blue skies but freezing gale storm winds, rocks that seem to be from Mars, where hundreds of years of nature have made them beautiful and splendid. I've never seen anything like it in my life. I am so small in the face of this nature, so unnecessary and insignificant, and it's a beautiful emotion, because you understand that to experience it and feel it makes you something, something greater than what you are seeing, it makes you concious that you are. And I feel inside me that I know this feeling, I get it when I cross the Thames, and see London bow to me. I just don't recognize it most of the time.
It's fucking freezing though, so I run back to the 4x4 and tell the drive to turn the heating up.
Day 3
We get up at 4:30am and it's -20 outside. I have stomach cramps from eating too fast the night before, and this is not the perfect way to start the day. It's pitch black as we head to the volcanic geysers. I'm in no mood for this but once we get to a hot spring and I have a coca tea, and about 5 shits, my stomach finally settles.
We have to drop Conor and Jean at the Chile border, and I am sad to see them go. 3 days on a trip with people you don't know is the make or break of a tour and these people are lovely. But we're all swapping details, and I'm making outrageous claims that I'll take them to see Wales play Ireland at the rugby so it's all good.
We spend the rest of the day driving back to Uyuni, talking, joking around, and trying to sleep in a 4x4 that's bouncing across the badlands of Bolivia. my legs and back ache but to see what we've seen, it's worth every stab of pain.
The trip starts by us visting a train graveyard, where all the unused British steam trains have been left to rust. It's quite a sight but you get the feeling that we're filling in time, then a lot of other 4x4s begin to turn up, and I am again reminded that tourism drives this part of Bolivia, and that I am not the first person to see or do this.
We hang about and I start to hear a loud wonky cockney accent drift across the plain, it turns out to be the voice of the one and only English bloke I met in Machu Pichu, Luke, closely followed by his lovely girl Jade.
A nicer pair of people you couldn't wish to meet, especially when you've only had a bunch of French, Swiss, Belgian, and Spanish to not talk to for 3 days. Their accents and cries of 'fack me' and 'ave a look at that' were music to my ears. My group had stopped for lunch during the trek to Machu Pichu and they arrived at the same lunch spot. He started singing loudly to 'it's raining men' and Jade had this amazing sunglasses white batch on her face from her wrap around D&Gs. I knew straight away that they were going to be my sort of people.
I run over, jump on Luke's back and shout,
"where's my friend request you mug?"
they both turn and it's all shouts of,
"oh my gawd! Facking ell! we couldn't find ya!" we hug and have a bit of banter but their group starts getting a bit pissy, so I take their names for the facebook and promise to meet them in Argentina in a few days for beers.
The salt flats used to be a salt water lake 10,000km wide, the water evaporated, leaving a desert of salt as far as you can possibly see. The views are awesome, with miles of whiteness, surrounded by imposing mountains.
Before I'd left my hostel in the morning I'd seen on Facebook that it's been 15 years since 'what's the story (morning glory)' was released. 15 years is a very scary number when it's in years past, I think about things I've done and seen in those 15 years, and I get whistful.
I was 17 when that album was released, and the world was on it's knees to me, I could be whoever I wanted, and do whatever I wanted, and I never imagined then that my life would angle and contrive the way it has. As the salt flats fade away behind me I reach for my Ipod. I listen to music from 15 years ago, Oasis, Ocean Colour Scene, Menswear, Shed Seven, Gene, Elastica, Blur, music that meant everything to me then, and I get nostalgic.
I think about the friends I had then, and the things we did, the gigs we saw, and the jokes we repeated and repeated. The clothes we'd obsess over, and the girls we didn't sleep with. The memories pass through me as fast as the landscape around me does.
Memories are what you have left to remind you that you've lived, and I love my memories more as each year passes, but you have to create new memories as you go, because if you don't, or can't, the memories turn and become reminders, reminders of when you were happier, and that's not how to live a life. You have to fill your life with new experiences to pile on top of the others, filling your mind with more memories than you can cope with, otherwise you're wasted.
Day 2
We drive further into the Bolivian countryside and it's other worldly, lakes of red water, still lakes of crystal blue, flamingos standing in freezing cold lagoons, mountains as far as the eye can see, some with snow on top, some in different colours, others that seem to have animal faces etched on their sides, bright blue skies but freezing gale storm winds, rocks that seem to be from Mars, where hundreds of years of nature have made them beautiful and splendid. I've never seen anything like it in my life. I am so small in the face of this nature, so unnecessary and insignificant, and it's a beautiful emotion, because you understand that to experience it and feel it makes you something, something greater than what you are seeing, it makes you concious that you are. And I feel inside me that I know this feeling, I get it when I cross the Thames, and see London bow to me. I just don't recognize it most of the time.
It's fucking freezing though, so I run back to the 4x4 and tell the drive to turn the heating up.
Day 3
We get up at 4:30am and it's -20 outside. I have stomach cramps from eating too fast the night before, and this is not the perfect way to start the day. It's pitch black as we head to the volcanic geysers. I'm in no mood for this but once we get to a hot spring and I have a coca tea, and about 5 shits, my stomach finally settles.
We have to drop Conor and Jean at the Chile border, and I am sad to see them go. 3 days on a trip with people you don't know is the make or break of a tour and these people are lovely. But we're all swapping details, and I'm making outrageous claims that I'll take them to see Wales play Ireland at the rugby so it's all good.
We spend the rest of the day driving back to Uyuni, talking, joking around, and trying to sleep in a 4x4 that's bouncing across the badlands of Bolivia. my legs and back ache but to see what we've seen, it's worth every stab of pain.
A damsel in distress, but me in more. Luxury trains, floating towns, and a frozen bus
The Salkantay and Machu Pichu trek is finished, and so am I. My leg muscles throb and the infected bites look like the melting Nazis face in Indiana Jones, and to top those, the blisters on the balls of my feet spasm pain at every touch.
I bribe the bus driver to drop me at the door of my hostel, we get to the road and the only bin men in Peru are collecting the rubbish on the road of my hostel. We can't go any further so I have to walk.
I fall off the bus at around midnight, and I hobble up the cobbled street like Keyser Söze, the pain reaching biblical levels. Up ahead I see a girl standing in the road and looking around. She's got her hood tightened up like Kenny from South Park, she's wearing a backpack and seems a bit lost.
So as to not unecessarily scare her I cross to the opposite pavement, the last thing a women needs is me slowly lurching up behind her on a dark street late at night. I've done that before and it's not ended well.
I get alongside her and she really does seem lost,
"are you lost" is my genius opening line,
"noaw, I kinda know where I'm going, thanks heaps though"
The Aussie accent shrills through the night air like a defective rape alarm.
'oh god, a Aussie' my kneejerk reaction kicks in before I can even think of the word tolerance.
I've never liked the Aussie, but I know why I don't like them, it's obvious. Jealousy.
They're good at sports, look good naked, due to always being in swimwear as the weather is amazing there, win a at stuff a lot, are annoyingly happy and cheery, even when they're pulling pints in a wetherspoons in Watford. They're consistently really good looking and I hate them for it, and their cricket team makes me want to shoot them all in the head. All the time.
But, as usual, the ones I've actually met I really like. That means you Brooke, and now Anita. Oh, and you AJ.
Anyway, the civility has already started so I have to see it through,
"are you looking for a hostel?" I ask,
"noaw, my hotel is up here but I'm thinking that they might be full so I'm going to check"
"well my hostel has been empty the last 2 nights I've stayed there so if it's full you can try there"
Her hotel is locked up so we head up the street to my hostel, which sits at the top of the hill,
"are you ok?" the aussie asks, as my sharp intakes of breath and staggered steps become a little obvious,
"I did the Salkantay trek, got some blisters and infected mosquito bites"
"I did a trek too, but I came off alright, I'm a little tired though"
She looks like she's been to the corner shop and back, and I mutter cusses under my breath.
At my hostel the predictable happens,
"we are full" says the night watchmen,
"where's the next nearest hostel then please?" asks the aussie,
"down the hill, turn left, up the steep staircase to the top, turn right, walk down and it's there"
The aussie grabs her bag and heads for the door, suddenly, from nowhere I hear my own voice,
"you can't go on your own, I'll walk you there"
the aussie points out that I can't actually walk, bizarrely, I hear myself again,
"well you can't go on your own so we're going"
I am practically in tears as we head out again onto the cobbles, and I curse my Dad for teaching me manners and the inportance of respecting a lady.
Even an Austrailain one.
We find the hostel, they have a room, and I say my goodbyes. In the 10 minutes we've been walking she semms a nice enough person so I mention that I'll be drinking beer and eating a fry up in a cafe tomorrow if she's bored, she says that she'll pop by.
I crawl back up the hill and into my hostel, the night watchmen takes pity on me and carries my bag up the stairs to my dorm,
'that's it' I think to myself, 'I'm seconds away from a bed'
The dorm door opes and the final joke of the night is played on me, I'm seeping on the top bunk.
It takes about 5 minutes for me to climb the 4 steps of the ladder, and the woman in the bottom bunk barely notices the wheezing, tearful, pathetic figure wrestling above her. I get to the top, bash my head on the roof and lie down. I'm breathing as hard as Huntley must have been when Hollie hit her head on the bath.
I get under the covers and let the pain flow from my feet to my head and back again. And then I pass out.
Anita swings by the Real McCoy bar to say thanks for walking her home, I'd been there for 2 hours by this point, drinking beers and eating, with my wounded legs resting on some bean bags. We have a couple of pisco sours and she turns out to be wonderful company, and an all round amazing, lovely person. Yet again my sterotyping has been exposed as a pointless and fruitless exercise.
Peru is on strike so I'm going nowhere until they're ready. I'm stranded in Cusco, surrounded by people selling massages, and a thousand people selling their artwork, artwork which oddly all looks exactly the same, as if it had all been mass produced in a factory somewhere.
I finally leave for Puno on my posh train on the Monday. The train is operated by the company who own the orient express, so it's all big chairs, waiters in waistcoats, and carpets. It's brilliant. The toilet on board is the nicest I've sat on in Peru. I've been sat with a lovely couple of ramblers from Peckham, and the chap used to be in Blake 7, and plays the vicar in Eastenders everytime someone dies. We chat and get on like a house on fire, they're backpacking around Peru too, and their enthusiasum and happiness is contagious, I hope I'm like them when I'm in my fifties.
Mike the vicar orders drinks by mistake and they insist I drink them, and on top of the drinks I have correctly been ordering for myself I get a bit drunk, while the beautiful countryside trundles by.
In Puno I go to visit the floating towns built by the local people made from the reeds in the titikaka lake. They started building these floating towns to escape the Spanish, and it's very interesting to see but it has become very tourist driven, and I get a bit uncomfortable when the women of the island start to sing 'twinkle twinkle little star' at me in 4 languages. Japanese being the most cringe worthy.
From there we travel to the island of Amalanti, and spend the night living with a local family. They live of the their on produce, grown around their little house. The lady of the house explains that over the last few years the rains have been less and less, so they are now forced to travel to Puno to sell tat to tourists like me to buy food.
Global warming has a slow burning effect, which is maybe why people find it hard to believe, but when you see it in this context and you see the impact for yourself it's hard to ignore.
They have some Inca ruins on the island, as usual at the very fucking top of a steep hill so we all head up there to see the sunset. The guide has told us that the best view is from Pachatata but I want to head to Pachamama, because I've given offerings to her a few times during this trip, and end up on my own up there.
The view across the lake is stunning and I sit in silence and think. I try to be all spiritual and that, but all I think about is my infected bites, and whether or not I could deal with having my legs amputated, exes, and sex. In that order.
The sun sets and I head back down the hill to the village to meet the rest of the group. As I get to the main square a group of kids are hanging around outside the corner shop playing music out of their mobile phones. I'm 3,000m above sea level, on a island with a population of 2,000 people, with electricity only between 7pm - 2am, and the kids are basically the same as in London. I wonder if it will be like Hackney, and will some of these kids stab me up when I go past? they don't.
In the morning I head out of Puno and out of Peru, and into Bolivia. We get into La Paz at around 5:30pm, but I'm not stopping and get straight onto a night bus heading to Uyuni, so I can visit the amazing salt flats and general wilderness. On the bus I'm given a blanket and we head off. At the next stop a very large Peruvian man gets on and sits next to me. He's bought his own blanket, and he's wearing a massive winter coat,
'it's not that cold' I assure myself and the bus pulls off.
I wake up at 3:30am and my lips have frozen together, and I can't feel my feet. The condensation on the windows has frozen solid, it's unbelievably cold. I'm really badly prepared for this level of cold so I slowly lean in towards the large Peruvian fella to try and share his body heat. I pretend to be asleep when he wakes up and finds my face inches from his.
I bribe the bus driver to drop me at the door of my hostel, we get to the road and the only bin men in Peru are collecting the rubbish on the road of my hostel. We can't go any further so I have to walk.
I fall off the bus at around midnight, and I hobble up the cobbled street like Keyser Söze, the pain reaching biblical levels. Up ahead I see a girl standing in the road and looking around. She's got her hood tightened up like Kenny from South Park, she's wearing a backpack and seems a bit lost.
So as to not unecessarily scare her I cross to the opposite pavement, the last thing a women needs is me slowly lurching up behind her on a dark street late at night. I've done that before and it's not ended well.
I get alongside her and she really does seem lost,
"are you lost" is my genius opening line,
"noaw, I kinda know where I'm going, thanks heaps though"
The Aussie accent shrills through the night air like a defective rape alarm.
'oh god, a Aussie' my kneejerk reaction kicks in before I can even think of the word tolerance.
I've never liked the Aussie, but I know why I don't like them, it's obvious. Jealousy.
They're good at sports, look good naked, due to always being in swimwear as the weather is amazing there, win a at stuff a lot, are annoyingly happy and cheery, even when they're pulling pints in a wetherspoons in Watford. They're consistently really good looking and I hate them for it, and their cricket team makes me want to shoot them all in the head. All the time.
But, as usual, the ones I've actually met I really like. That means you Brooke, and now Anita. Oh, and you AJ.
Anyway, the civility has already started so I have to see it through,
"are you looking for a hostel?" I ask,
"noaw, my hotel is up here but I'm thinking that they might be full so I'm going to check"
"well my hostel has been empty the last 2 nights I've stayed there so if it's full you can try there"
Her hotel is locked up so we head up the street to my hostel, which sits at the top of the hill,
"are you ok?" the aussie asks, as my sharp intakes of breath and staggered steps become a little obvious,
"I did the Salkantay trek, got some blisters and infected mosquito bites"
"I did a trek too, but I came off alright, I'm a little tired though"
She looks like she's been to the corner shop and back, and I mutter cusses under my breath.
At my hostel the predictable happens,
"we are full" says the night watchmen,
"where's the next nearest hostel then please?" asks the aussie,
"down the hill, turn left, up the steep staircase to the top, turn right, walk down and it's there"
The aussie grabs her bag and heads for the door, suddenly, from nowhere I hear my own voice,
"you can't go on your own, I'll walk you there"
the aussie points out that I can't actually walk, bizarrely, I hear myself again,
"well you can't go on your own so we're going"
I am practically in tears as we head out again onto the cobbles, and I curse my Dad for teaching me manners and the inportance of respecting a lady.
Even an Austrailain one.
We find the hostel, they have a room, and I say my goodbyes. In the 10 minutes we've been walking she semms a nice enough person so I mention that I'll be drinking beer and eating a fry up in a cafe tomorrow if she's bored, she says that she'll pop by.
I crawl back up the hill and into my hostel, the night watchmen takes pity on me and carries my bag up the stairs to my dorm,
'that's it' I think to myself, 'I'm seconds away from a bed'
The dorm door opes and the final joke of the night is played on me, I'm seeping on the top bunk.
It takes about 5 minutes for me to climb the 4 steps of the ladder, and the woman in the bottom bunk barely notices the wheezing, tearful, pathetic figure wrestling above her. I get to the top, bash my head on the roof and lie down. I'm breathing as hard as Huntley must have been when Hollie hit her head on the bath.
I get under the covers and let the pain flow from my feet to my head and back again. And then I pass out.
Anita swings by the Real McCoy bar to say thanks for walking her home, I'd been there for 2 hours by this point, drinking beers and eating, with my wounded legs resting on some bean bags. We have a couple of pisco sours and she turns out to be wonderful company, and an all round amazing, lovely person. Yet again my sterotyping has been exposed as a pointless and fruitless exercise.
Peru is on strike so I'm going nowhere until they're ready. I'm stranded in Cusco, surrounded by people selling massages, and a thousand people selling their artwork, artwork which oddly all looks exactly the same, as if it had all been mass produced in a factory somewhere.
I finally leave for Puno on my posh train on the Monday. The train is operated by the company who own the orient express, so it's all big chairs, waiters in waistcoats, and carpets. It's brilliant. The toilet on board is the nicest I've sat on in Peru. I've been sat with a lovely couple of ramblers from Peckham, and the chap used to be in Blake 7, and plays the vicar in Eastenders everytime someone dies. We chat and get on like a house on fire, they're backpacking around Peru too, and their enthusiasum and happiness is contagious, I hope I'm like them when I'm in my fifties.
Mike the vicar orders drinks by mistake and they insist I drink them, and on top of the drinks I have correctly been ordering for myself I get a bit drunk, while the beautiful countryside trundles by.
In Puno I go to visit the floating towns built by the local people made from the reeds in the titikaka lake. They started building these floating towns to escape the Spanish, and it's very interesting to see but it has become very tourist driven, and I get a bit uncomfortable when the women of the island start to sing 'twinkle twinkle little star' at me in 4 languages. Japanese being the most cringe worthy.
From there we travel to the island of Amalanti, and spend the night living with a local family. They live of the their on produce, grown around their little house. The lady of the house explains that over the last few years the rains have been less and less, so they are now forced to travel to Puno to sell tat to tourists like me to buy food.
Global warming has a slow burning effect, which is maybe why people find it hard to believe, but when you see it in this context and you see the impact for yourself it's hard to ignore.
They have some Inca ruins on the island, as usual at the very fucking top of a steep hill so we all head up there to see the sunset. The guide has told us that the best view is from Pachatata but I want to head to Pachamama, because I've given offerings to her a few times during this trip, and end up on my own up there.
The view across the lake is stunning and I sit in silence and think. I try to be all spiritual and that, but all I think about is my infected bites, and whether or not I could deal with having my legs amputated, exes, and sex. In that order.
The sun sets and I head back down the hill to the village to meet the rest of the group. As I get to the main square a group of kids are hanging around outside the corner shop playing music out of their mobile phones. I'm 3,000m above sea level, on a island with a population of 2,000 people, with electricity only between 7pm - 2am, and the kids are basically the same as in London. I wonder if it will be like Hackney, and will some of these kids stab me up when I go past? they don't.
In the morning I head out of Puno and out of Peru, and into Bolivia. We get into La Paz at around 5:30pm, but I'm not stopping and get straight onto a night bus heading to Uyuni, so I can visit the amazing salt flats and general wilderness. On the bus I'm given a blanket and we head off. At the next stop a very large Peruvian man gets on and sits next to me. He's bought his own blanket, and he's wearing a massive winter coat,
'it's not that cold' I assure myself and the bus pulls off.
I wake up at 3:30am and my lips have frozen together, and I can't feel my feet. The condensation on the windows has frozen solid, it's unbelievably cold. I'm really badly prepared for this level of cold so I slowly lean in towards the large Peruvian fella to try and share his body heat. I pretend to be asleep when he wakes up and finds my face inches from his.
Sunday 26 September 2010
Cusco, Salkantay, Machu Pichu, and a Frenchman saves the day!
I leave Arequipa on a luxury night bus heading to Cusco. I go luxury because my legs have not taken well to my competitiveness on the Colca Canyon the day before, in fact the pain in my legs reminds me of the marathon. It really really hurts.
The only luxury is that the chair will recline to almost horizontal, but not quite. Which means that you almost get to sleep, but not quite.
On these journeys you have to have your Ipod quitely playing to drown out the engine and the poor quality DVD they happen to be playing, but tonight I have a different issue.
A woman in the seat behind me is trying to sing herself to sleep, and I can hear her singing over the soothing sounds of my Ipod. At first I don't quite understand what's happening, but sure enough, she's singing. The American couple alongside her eventually snap and shout,
"Por Favor, SSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHH, Por Favor SSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHH!"
The woman goes quiet, but I do not sleep.
Get into Cusco at 5am and head straight to my hostel and sleep. At around 1pm I head out to explore the city, and to buy a trek to Machu Pichu.
Trek's are around 70% of the business here, which is why there is about 400 people on the street trying to sell you a massage. It's so unrelenting that you find yourself actually thinking,
"I could do with a rub down as it goes"
So after I buy my Salkantay trek, hire a sleeping bag, and eat pie and mash at the local English bar, I agree to a massage. Well it's 6 pounds for an hour, even if she does it with Jeremy Beadle style hands, it'll still be worth it.
The street tout shows me to the 'spa' and I am ushered upstairs, the faint sounds of pan pipe music fills the staircase and I shudder, I can tell it's the pan pipe version of 'my heart will go on'
"Jesus, this is going to be a long hour" I say to nobody.
My slim, vain hope of a happy finish goes straight out of the window when I am shown to my table. The table is around 8" from another table, a bit like when you go to little restaraunts and they cram in the tables, so you may as well be having dinner with the people next to you, and you can hear them eat.
The tables are then seperated by a curtain, like in hospital. And lying on the next table is the silhouette of a fat German woman getting a rub down. I sit on my table watching the mountain like shape being rubbed like you marinade a chicken. A really big, fat, German chicken.
3 minutes of this I know that even if the masseuse does try to squeeze a wank out of me my knob will never come out of hiding.
I awake the next day with a cold but I still go on a bus tour of the local Inca ruins, Pisac and Ollaytamtambo. Again I am faced with these huge structures of brilliance that seem almost impossible to build, but they did, and they spent years doing it.
And for what? You spend nearly 10 years building a great big temple for the Earth Mother, and then some greasy Spaniard turns up, knocks it down, and rips out the gold you used to build it. Surely you must be thinking,
"right then Earth Mother, can you sort this please? and why all of a sudden do I feel a cold coming on?"
In the evening I head out with the guy who works in the hostel for beers, I tell him to take me where he goes, so I can immerse myself in the way the locals like to party. Ten minutes later I am sat in 'Paddy's Irish Pub', not quite what I'd hoped but he seems happy. I don't stay out too long as my trek starts at 4:30am the next day.
We get invited to see a local band play in a club nearby, they are all wearing poncho and native dress up, and the dread locks are flowing. They light a bowl of wood and start the sort of intro the Orb would be proud of, and finally, after 15 minutes of bongos and didgeridoo, the 'frontman' plays a recorder and starts wailing a bit.
I actually like it and the music is quite intoxicating, but that might just be the burning wood. But I can't relax because I look around and see maybe 6 Gringos, all dressed in native garb, with dreadlocked, dirty hair, smoking weed. They sway from side to side with looks on their faces like their so special and important for witnessing this sacred event......it's fucking 7 blokes playing 4 bongos, 2 recorders, a didgeridoo, and a couple of guitars! But this lot act like it's changing the face of music forever, it's fucking normal!
The Salkantay trek is a 5 day 4 night trek, walking at high altitude alongside the Salkantay mountain, then another days trek through the jungle to Machu Pichu, finishing with a day at Machu Pichu.
I get in the car and everyone is speaking French, and in total we are 13:
8 French
2 Spanish (one of whom speaks French)
1 Belgium (speaks French)
1 Swiss (speaks French)
1 Me
I am actually glad of this, it gives me time just to sit and listen to people, and not really speak unless spoken to. really quite refreshing.
The first day we walk solidly upwards, getting colder all the time, by the time we get to the campsite everyone is wearing all their clothes. Everyone's knackered and can't wait to get into their sleeping bags and go to bed.
I wander up to the guide and politely enquire about the sleeping bag I'd hired,
"What sleeping bag?" is the reply,
"the one I paid for, the one I have written on this reciept, just where it says 'sleeping bag'"
"right, let me look"
10 minutes of pointless looking around later and it's very clear, I have no sleeping bag.
"It can get down to -4/5 degrees this time of year" the warm looking Swiss informs me.
Now at this point I'm not sure which way to go, it's only the first night, so punching the guide and calling him a prick might hinder me for the next 4 days, however, I may very well freeze to death out here tonight. As I sit at the table swaying backwards and forwards like a bear in a Eastern European Zoo, a Frenchmen walks towards me and hands me his sleeping bag,
"it is no problem, I will sleep in with Anais, so you can take mine, better we sleep a little uncomfortable than you freeze"
Now, as I've mentioned before I've never disliked the French, in fact, bar the surrender monkey stuff in the 40s before I was born I've actually always liked them, and they made some of my favourite films. And I'd met 2 wonderful French in Brazil on this trip too.
But this was an act of kindness that stumps me. I stop swaying and give Alex a hug, then Anais, and then I give them my Mars Bar I was saving. Alex seems pretty happy, but I think that's because he's going to be in very close proximity to Anais for 4 nights.
Day 2
We climb to 4,800m above sea level over a 5 hour period, all around us are snowcapped mountains and bright sunshine. Eventually we reach the top of the ridge and get alongside the colossal and stunning Salkantay mountain. It's beauty and size humbles me and I feel very inadequate in the presence of its power.
Day 3
My cold has blocked my nose with concrete style bogey, and I can't breath, which makes it impossible to sleep. I am sharing a very small 2 man tent with a young guy called Jonas from Belgium. He's super nice, and fun, and good to be around. But after 2 days of sleeping in a tent with me his attitude has cooled,
"you snore Gareth, but you said that you don't. I do not sleep well when you snore" he tells me as we start walking at 5am
"I am sorry Jonas, it's the cold, I can't breath"
"then don't" says Jonas, but I don't know if he means just don't breath or something else.
Day 4
It turns out that only 3 of us are doing the trek in 5 days, myself and 2 wonderful Spanish girls called Marta and Veronica. We are all in the wars with blisters and bites but we all keep walking. When you walk with people for 8/9 hours a day you either really get along, or try to walk with someone else, with these two lovely people I could have walked for another 3 days.
That's not true by the way, my legs and feet were ruined, but I'd take a long car journey with them anytime.
We walk along the traintracks towards Machu Pichu and after a couple of hours we see it, high above us on the crest of a mountain, what looks like a small brick house,
"the guards observation room" the guide informs us.
We'd made it, and the next day we would be up there to see it all.
Day 5
Marta and I set off at 4am to climb the Inca steps up to Machu Pichu, we'd been told that you needed to be in the first 400 people to be allowed to climb Wanu Pichu, another mountain on the other side of the ruins. It's quite competitive and when we get to the locked bridge there's around 70 - 80 people waiting.
The man comes to open the bridge and a bottle necks starts, we all walk/jog across and get to the road, most people follow the road to the left, but I know that the stairs start a little to the right, I scamper past and get to the stairs first. And so my race begins, I am being tracked by a guy called Julien, and he's Swiss. The Swiss love all the outdoor stuff way too much and it quickly becomes a 2 man race. In the dark. We jostle up the 1,900 steps to the top, not steps like normal steps, these things are sometimes 2 feet high, it's a killer. But we get there in the end.
The doors open to Machu Pichu and I run to a vantage point to take pictures before it's fills with people. They let between 2,000 to 5,500 people in per day, so by about 10am it's like the first day of sales at Bluewater. But I have about 15 minutes on my own to take the place in.
I've fucked my legs and feet so badly that when the 3 paracetamol, 1 Diazapam, and adrenaline wear off I can't walk. But I battle on and get around as much of Machu Pichu as I can, it truly is a wonderful place. Breathtaking. Such a shame that I'm in so much pain that I have tears in my eyes, and people mistake me for being really spiritual.
I get back to Cusco a broken man and can't wait to get onto my posh Andean Explorer train to Puno. But there's a problem, everyone's on strike, and they've blocked the roads and tracks with boulders. And if you try to move the boulders the strikers throw stones at you.
I am stuck here.
Lately I've been missing home quite a bit, but I've only been missing the things that I know I'll be able to do a thousand more times in my life like see my friends, have a Sunday roast, eat a busaba, have a drink in a real pub, go raving. God, I am dying for a rave, have a laugh, watch English TV, and hang out with people, see some football, and stuff like that.
But this week I am missing something that I won't be able to do again, I'm missing the birthday of one of the most amazing women I know. A person that I have so much respect and admiration for, not to mention a genuine fear of, that missing her birthday has made me really sad.
She's raised 2 boys in very difficult circumstances, living in Torquay being the main one. She's also fought back from serious illness and now lives a perfect life, which is drinking booze and playing golf every day.
And while she still only refers to me as,
"that little Welsh twat"
and that's to my face, I love her loads.
Another reason I'm gutted I'm missing her birthday is because her idiot son has planned a massive surprise party with all her lunatic northern family, so I'm missing a party that will basically be a drunken punch up, and Jeremy Kyle style slanging match.
Gutted.
The only luxury is that the chair will recline to almost horizontal, but not quite. Which means that you almost get to sleep, but not quite.
On these journeys you have to have your Ipod quitely playing to drown out the engine and the poor quality DVD they happen to be playing, but tonight I have a different issue.
A woman in the seat behind me is trying to sing herself to sleep, and I can hear her singing over the soothing sounds of my Ipod. At first I don't quite understand what's happening, but sure enough, she's singing. The American couple alongside her eventually snap and shout,
"Por Favor, SSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHH, Por Favor SSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHH!"
The woman goes quiet, but I do not sleep.
Get into Cusco at 5am and head straight to my hostel and sleep. At around 1pm I head out to explore the city, and to buy a trek to Machu Pichu.
Trek's are around 70% of the business here, which is why there is about 400 people on the street trying to sell you a massage. It's so unrelenting that you find yourself actually thinking,
"I could do with a rub down as it goes"
So after I buy my Salkantay trek, hire a sleeping bag, and eat pie and mash at the local English bar, I agree to a massage. Well it's 6 pounds for an hour, even if she does it with Jeremy Beadle style hands, it'll still be worth it.
The street tout shows me to the 'spa' and I am ushered upstairs, the faint sounds of pan pipe music fills the staircase and I shudder, I can tell it's the pan pipe version of 'my heart will go on'
"Jesus, this is going to be a long hour" I say to nobody.
My slim, vain hope of a happy finish goes straight out of the window when I am shown to my table. The table is around 8" from another table, a bit like when you go to little restaraunts and they cram in the tables, so you may as well be having dinner with the people next to you, and you can hear them eat.
The tables are then seperated by a curtain, like in hospital. And lying on the next table is the silhouette of a fat German woman getting a rub down. I sit on my table watching the mountain like shape being rubbed like you marinade a chicken. A really big, fat, German chicken.
3 minutes of this I know that even if the masseuse does try to squeeze a wank out of me my knob will never come out of hiding.
I awake the next day with a cold but I still go on a bus tour of the local Inca ruins, Pisac and Ollaytamtambo. Again I am faced with these huge structures of brilliance that seem almost impossible to build, but they did, and they spent years doing it.
And for what? You spend nearly 10 years building a great big temple for the Earth Mother, and then some greasy Spaniard turns up, knocks it down, and rips out the gold you used to build it. Surely you must be thinking,
"right then Earth Mother, can you sort this please? and why all of a sudden do I feel a cold coming on?"
In the evening I head out with the guy who works in the hostel for beers, I tell him to take me where he goes, so I can immerse myself in the way the locals like to party. Ten minutes later I am sat in 'Paddy's Irish Pub', not quite what I'd hoped but he seems happy. I don't stay out too long as my trek starts at 4:30am the next day.
We get invited to see a local band play in a club nearby, they are all wearing poncho and native dress up, and the dread locks are flowing. They light a bowl of wood and start the sort of intro the Orb would be proud of, and finally, after 15 minutes of bongos and didgeridoo, the 'frontman' plays a recorder and starts wailing a bit.
I actually like it and the music is quite intoxicating, but that might just be the burning wood. But I can't relax because I look around and see maybe 6 Gringos, all dressed in native garb, with dreadlocked, dirty hair, smoking weed. They sway from side to side with looks on their faces like their so special and important for witnessing this sacred event......it's fucking 7 blokes playing 4 bongos, 2 recorders, a didgeridoo, and a couple of guitars! But this lot act like it's changing the face of music forever, it's fucking normal!
The Salkantay trek is a 5 day 4 night trek, walking at high altitude alongside the Salkantay mountain, then another days trek through the jungle to Machu Pichu, finishing with a day at Machu Pichu.
I get in the car and everyone is speaking French, and in total we are 13:
8 French
2 Spanish (one of whom speaks French)
1 Belgium (speaks French)
1 Swiss (speaks French)
1 Me
I am actually glad of this, it gives me time just to sit and listen to people, and not really speak unless spoken to. really quite refreshing.
The first day we walk solidly upwards, getting colder all the time, by the time we get to the campsite everyone is wearing all their clothes. Everyone's knackered and can't wait to get into their sleeping bags and go to bed.
I wander up to the guide and politely enquire about the sleeping bag I'd hired,
"What sleeping bag?" is the reply,
"the one I paid for, the one I have written on this reciept, just where it says 'sleeping bag'"
"right, let me look"
10 minutes of pointless looking around later and it's very clear, I have no sleeping bag.
"It can get down to -4/5 degrees this time of year" the warm looking Swiss informs me.
Now at this point I'm not sure which way to go, it's only the first night, so punching the guide and calling him a prick might hinder me for the next 4 days, however, I may very well freeze to death out here tonight. As I sit at the table swaying backwards and forwards like a bear in a Eastern European Zoo, a Frenchmen walks towards me and hands me his sleeping bag,
"it is no problem, I will sleep in with Anais, so you can take mine, better we sleep a little uncomfortable than you freeze"
Now, as I've mentioned before I've never disliked the French, in fact, bar the surrender monkey stuff in the 40s before I was born I've actually always liked them, and they made some of my favourite films. And I'd met 2 wonderful French in Brazil on this trip too.
But this was an act of kindness that stumps me. I stop swaying and give Alex a hug, then Anais, and then I give them my Mars Bar I was saving. Alex seems pretty happy, but I think that's because he's going to be in very close proximity to Anais for 4 nights.
Day 2
We climb to 4,800m above sea level over a 5 hour period, all around us are snowcapped mountains and bright sunshine. Eventually we reach the top of the ridge and get alongside the colossal and stunning Salkantay mountain. It's beauty and size humbles me and I feel very inadequate in the presence of its power.
Day 3
My cold has blocked my nose with concrete style bogey, and I can't breath, which makes it impossible to sleep. I am sharing a very small 2 man tent with a young guy called Jonas from Belgium. He's super nice, and fun, and good to be around. But after 2 days of sleeping in a tent with me his attitude has cooled,
"you snore Gareth, but you said that you don't. I do not sleep well when you snore" he tells me as we start walking at 5am
"I am sorry Jonas, it's the cold, I can't breath"
"then don't" says Jonas, but I don't know if he means just don't breath or something else.
Day 4
It turns out that only 3 of us are doing the trek in 5 days, myself and 2 wonderful Spanish girls called Marta and Veronica. We are all in the wars with blisters and bites but we all keep walking. When you walk with people for 8/9 hours a day you either really get along, or try to walk with someone else, with these two lovely people I could have walked for another 3 days.
That's not true by the way, my legs and feet were ruined, but I'd take a long car journey with them anytime.
We walk along the traintracks towards Machu Pichu and after a couple of hours we see it, high above us on the crest of a mountain, what looks like a small brick house,
"the guards observation room" the guide informs us.
We'd made it, and the next day we would be up there to see it all.
Day 5
Marta and I set off at 4am to climb the Inca steps up to Machu Pichu, we'd been told that you needed to be in the first 400 people to be allowed to climb Wanu Pichu, another mountain on the other side of the ruins. It's quite competitive and when we get to the locked bridge there's around 70 - 80 people waiting.
The man comes to open the bridge and a bottle necks starts, we all walk/jog across and get to the road, most people follow the road to the left, but I know that the stairs start a little to the right, I scamper past and get to the stairs first. And so my race begins, I am being tracked by a guy called Julien, and he's Swiss. The Swiss love all the outdoor stuff way too much and it quickly becomes a 2 man race. In the dark. We jostle up the 1,900 steps to the top, not steps like normal steps, these things are sometimes 2 feet high, it's a killer. But we get there in the end.
The doors open to Machu Pichu and I run to a vantage point to take pictures before it's fills with people. They let between 2,000 to 5,500 people in per day, so by about 10am it's like the first day of sales at Bluewater. But I have about 15 minutes on my own to take the place in.
I've fucked my legs and feet so badly that when the 3 paracetamol, 1 Diazapam, and adrenaline wear off I can't walk. But I battle on and get around as much of Machu Pichu as I can, it truly is a wonderful place. Breathtaking. Such a shame that I'm in so much pain that I have tears in my eyes, and people mistake me for being really spiritual.
I get back to Cusco a broken man and can't wait to get onto my posh Andean Explorer train to Puno. But there's a problem, everyone's on strike, and they've blocked the roads and tracks with boulders. And if you try to move the boulders the strikers throw stones at you.
I am stuck here.
Lately I've been missing home quite a bit, but I've only been missing the things that I know I'll be able to do a thousand more times in my life like see my friends, have a Sunday roast, eat a busaba, have a drink in a real pub, go raving. God, I am dying for a rave, have a laugh, watch English TV, and hang out with people, see some football, and stuff like that.
But this week I am missing something that I won't be able to do again, I'm missing the birthday of one of the most amazing women I know. A person that I have so much respect and admiration for, not to mention a genuine fear of, that missing her birthday has made me really sad.
She's raised 2 boys in very difficult circumstances, living in Torquay being the main one. She's also fought back from serious illness and now lives a perfect life, which is drinking booze and playing golf every day.
And while she still only refers to me as,
"that little Welsh twat"
and that's to my face, I love her loads.
Another reason I'm gutted I'm missing her birthday is because her idiot son has planned a massive surprise party with all her lunatic northern family, so I'm missing a party that will basically be a drunken punch up, and Jeremy Kyle style slanging match.
Gutted.
Friday 24 September 2010
ancient ruins, man's need to conquer, and I trek again.
From the jungle I head inland to Trujillo, a town filled with the history of the area, most notably the Moche and Chimu people. I'm here to see what is left of their civilizations and to marvel at their immense buildings.
Pre Spanish cultures used to live in Peru and South America for hundreds of years, building their own towns, spiritual cities, and cultivating the land. Not being the greatest historian I'd assumed that it was all Inca people in Peru until the dirty Spanish waiters arrived, but how wrong I was.
The Chimu were the big dogs in the Trujillo area, building a huge city by the sea now named Chan Chan. The place is huge and you can see why the elders and governers used to have people carry them around, which is also why you don't see many staircases, only ramps, so that 5 or 6 men could carry the noble about the place.
And like many countries around the world today the power and riches lay in the hands of the few, while the many toiled and worked for the nobility and for their gods, usually the sky, mountain, and sea.
Not that the nobility had it all their own way of course, if the head governer died then he was to be buried with all his belongings, the Chimu beleving that you moved onto the next world, and obviously you'd want to take all your bits with you wouldn't you?
But it wasn't just his belongings mind: his wife, his cabinet, his collection of Silver Surfer comics, his friends, and his concubines were all killed and buried with him! I can picture the scene at the concubines penthouse apartment,
"Wake up Chantelle, I've got terrible news"
"leave me alone Destiny, I was up most of the night with the Gov, I'm knackered, he's got the stamina of a man half his age"
" you're knackered? Well he's dead"
"dead! oh fuck Destiny, I'm his number 1 tart, they'll bury me next to his wife!"
The following day I head to see the Sun and Moon temple of the Moche people. The Moche turned up and basically wiped out the Chimu.
The Moche built a huge temple at the foot of the mountain to appease and pray to the Mountain god. They would regularly sacrifice a lama to the Mountain god, but sometimes, if they thought he was particulary moody, they would sacrfice a young male from the tribe, but not before they'd got him ripped off his tits on crazy juice, making it easier for them to smash his skull in and pour his blood onto the mountain!
Lovely people.
And whenever the spiritual head died, or if they'd been a earthquake, they would fill the whole temple (it's bloody massive) in with bricks, and build a bigger temple around it. So far they have uncovered 4 layers of the temple on top of each other, the work must have been back breaking. And you have to wonder why bother? The mountains not that bothered.
As I wander around I wonder about mans seemingly ceaseless need to occupy and conquer other people and things around it. I'd always assumed it was the nasty western cultures that would come to other peaceful countries then rape and pillage them until there was nothing left, but no. People were killing each other and stealing their land and property in Peru well before the Spanish waiters arrived with their diseases and paella.
And it makes me wonder that if God created man in his own image, then why is man such a selfish, violent, controlling, power mad, and nasty piece of work?
From Trujillo I head along the coast to Arequipa. I should be on a night bus, but I get the 24 hour clock wrong and miss it by 2 hours. Which then reminds me of a happy childhood holiday memory. When I say happy, I mean harrowing. My Dad thought we were late for the ferry home, causing him to drive through France at around 140 MPH, swerving traffic like Dempsey and Makepeace, whilst simultaneously screaming at the rest of us to be quiet.
It was only when I pointed out that the ticket was written in a 24 hour clock, and that we were in fact 6 hours early for the ferry that he stopped shouting, slowly slowed down, and put a Van Morrison tape in the machine. Mum started giggling, and then my sister and I started chuckling, and eventually Dad cracked a smile.
Anyway, I'm glad I got the day bus because the rolling mountains of Nascar and the coast of Peru was beautiful to watch slide by. I'd also been downloading loads of Kevin Smith podcasts, so the 17 hour bus ride was a pleasure.
I sign up to do a 2 day trek of the Colca Canyon, the deepest canyon in the world, it's only the deepest because they choose to messure the canyon from the tip of the mountain that it sits below, it's cheating but the canyon is still stunning.
It's on this trek that I meet the biggest twat of my trip so far, a man so annoying that I cringe whenever he opens his mouth. Everything he says ends with him saying,
"nailed it"
He nailed the walk, the dinner, breakfast, 2 girls from Ireland, a german girl, Argentina, the sleep. everything. He jumps on the back of peoples jokes and then stamps it into the ground. He's loud and brash but without any content to what he's actually saying. I hate him. and he swears unnecessarily, which I fucking can't fucking stand.
The 3 French guys seem to tolerate him, I suspect because they don't quite understand him, but me? I get every word, every lie, every none existent girl he's 'nailed'. I understand everything, and why do I understand him so well?
Because he's Welsh. and he's from Cardiff. And his name's Gareth. The last time I was this ashamed to be Welsh was when Maureen from driving school was big on the telly.
The canyon is amazing, we walk for 5 hours down into the canyon, then have a lunch, before walking across the canyon to a spot known as the Oasis.
Owned by 3 families this area at the bottom of the canyon has around 4 tiny hotels or hostels. They have a fresh water swimming pools and amazing little mud bricked rooms to sleep in. It's beautiful but I'm too tired to sit around and enjoy it so I collapse into bed.
We get up at 5am, and start walking at 5:30am, the guide has noticed that I like to walk ahead of the group, he's assumed that I am a fast walker, rather than the fact that I can't stand to listen to other Gareth,
"you want to try to beat my record to go up?" he asks me,
"what time did you do it in?"
"It's meant to be 3 hours, but I did it in 1hr 35 minutes"
"you'll never do it Potter" pipes up twatface,
I shrug my shoulders and walk off, and I quicken my pace, put some music in my ears and dart up the canyon.
It's steep and the path basically zig zags across the side of the canyon, I start moving past the walkers in front of me and try using the local short cuts to shorten the walk.
The lack of oxygen makes my heart burn but I like the pace and keep going, I remember my father once said to me,
"Son, the quicker it's done, the quicker it's over"
He was talking about sex with my Mum at the time, but I like to think that the meaning is still the same.
I get up to the top at a couple of minutes before 7am, with lungs on fire. I sit in silence and stare at the incredible view in front of me, the only sound is my heavy breaths, but I savour the moment of tranquility and solitude, until of course, quite normally for a tip of a Peruvian canyon, I hear a Ludacris tune booming from somewhere.
Then round the corner 2 local farmer boys with a transistor radio rudeboy bounce towards me, we exchange hello's, they ask if I've just walked up, and what time I left, they seem impressed, and then they pimp walk it down the canyon, with Ludacris swearing in the background.
A strange way for my hike to end.
Pre Spanish cultures used to live in Peru and South America for hundreds of years, building their own towns, spiritual cities, and cultivating the land. Not being the greatest historian I'd assumed that it was all Inca people in Peru until the dirty Spanish waiters arrived, but how wrong I was.
The Chimu were the big dogs in the Trujillo area, building a huge city by the sea now named Chan Chan. The place is huge and you can see why the elders and governers used to have people carry them around, which is also why you don't see many staircases, only ramps, so that 5 or 6 men could carry the noble about the place.
And like many countries around the world today the power and riches lay in the hands of the few, while the many toiled and worked for the nobility and for their gods, usually the sky, mountain, and sea.
Not that the nobility had it all their own way of course, if the head governer died then he was to be buried with all his belongings, the Chimu beleving that you moved onto the next world, and obviously you'd want to take all your bits with you wouldn't you?
But it wasn't just his belongings mind: his wife, his cabinet, his collection of Silver Surfer comics, his friends, and his concubines were all killed and buried with him! I can picture the scene at the concubines penthouse apartment,
"Wake up Chantelle, I've got terrible news"
"leave me alone Destiny, I was up most of the night with the Gov, I'm knackered, he's got the stamina of a man half his age"
" you're knackered? Well he's dead"
"dead! oh fuck Destiny, I'm his number 1 tart, they'll bury me next to his wife!"
The following day I head to see the Sun and Moon temple of the Moche people. The Moche turned up and basically wiped out the Chimu.
The Moche built a huge temple at the foot of the mountain to appease and pray to the Mountain god. They would regularly sacrifice a lama to the Mountain god, but sometimes, if they thought he was particulary moody, they would sacrfice a young male from the tribe, but not before they'd got him ripped off his tits on crazy juice, making it easier for them to smash his skull in and pour his blood onto the mountain!
Lovely people.
And whenever the spiritual head died, or if they'd been a earthquake, they would fill the whole temple (it's bloody massive) in with bricks, and build a bigger temple around it. So far they have uncovered 4 layers of the temple on top of each other, the work must have been back breaking. And you have to wonder why bother? The mountains not that bothered.
As I wander around I wonder about mans seemingly ceaseless need to occupy and conquer other people and things around it. I'd always assumed it was the nasty western cultures that would come to other peaceful countries then rape and pillage them until there was nothing left, but no. People were killing each other and stealing their land and property in Peru well before the Spanish waiters arrived with their diseases and paella.
And it makes me wonder that if God created man in his own image, then why is man such a selfish, violent, controlling, power mad, and nasty piece of work?
From Trujillo I head along the coast to Arequipa. I should be on a night bus, but I get the 24 hour clock wrong and miss it by 2 hours. Which then reminds me of a happy childhood holiday memory. When I say happy, I mean harrowing. My Dad thought we were late for the ferry home, causing him to drive through France at around 140 MPH, swerving traffic like Dempsey and Makepeace, whilst simultaneously screaming at the rest of us to be quiet.
It was only when I pointed out that the ticket was written in a 24 hour clock, and that we were in fact 6 hours early for the ferry that he stopped shouting, slowly slowed down, and put a Van Morrison tape in the machine. Mum started giggling, and then my sister and I started chuckling, and eventually Dad cracked a smile.
Anyway, I'm glad I got the day bus because the rolling mountains of Nascar and the coast of Peru was beautiful to watch slide by. I'd also been downloading loads of Kevin Smith podcasts, so the 17 hour bus ride was a pleasure.
I sign up to do a 2 day trek of the Colca Canyon, the deepest canyon in the world, it's only the deepest because they choose to messure the canyon from the tip of the mountain that it sits below, it's cheating but the canyon is still stunning.
It's on this trek that I meet the biggest twat of my trip so far, a man so annoying that I cringe whenever he opens his mouth. Everything he says ends with him saying,
"nailed it"
He nailed the walk, the dinner, breakfast, 2 girls from Ireland, a german girl, Argentina, the sleep. everything. He jumps on the back of peoples jokes and then stamps it into the ground. He's loud and brash but without any content to what he's actually saying. I hate him. and he swears unnecessarily, which I fucking can't fucking stand.
The 3 French guys seem to tolerate him, I suspect because they don't quite understand him, but me? I get every word, every lie, every none existent girl he's 'nailed'. I understand everything, and why do I understand him so well?
Because he's Welsh. and he's from Cardiff. And his name's Gareth. The last time I was this ashamed to be Welsh was when Maureen from driving school was big on the telly.
The canyon is amazing, we walk for 5 hours down into the canyon, then have a lunch, before walking across the canyon to a spot known as the Oasis.
Owned by 3 families this area at the bottom of the canyon has around 4 tiny hotels or hostels. They have a fresh water swimming pools and amazing little mud bricked rooms to sleep in. It's beautiful but I'm too tired to sit around and enjoy it so I collapse into bed.
We get up at 5am, and start walking at 5:30am, the guide has noticed that I like to walk ahead of the group, he's assumed that I am a fast walker, rather than the fact that I can't stand to listen to other Gareth,
"you want to try to beat my record to go up?" he asks me,
"what time did you do it in?"
"It's meant to be 3 hours, but I did it in 1hr 35 minutes"
"you'll never do it Potter" pipes up twatface,
I shrug my shoulders and walk off, and I quicken my pace, put some music in my ears and dart up the canyon.
It's steep and the path basically zig zags across the side of the canyon, I start moving past the walkers in front of me and try using the local short cuts to shorten the walk.
The lack of oxygen makes my heart burn but I like the pace and keep going, I remember my father once said to me,
"Son, the quicker it's done, the quicker it's over"
He was talking about sex with my Mum at the time, but I like to think that the meaning is still the same.
I get up to the top at a couple of minutes before 7am, with lungs on fire. I sit in silence and stare at the incredible view in front of me, the only sound is my heavy breaths, but I savour the moment of tranquility and solitude, until of course, quite normally for a tip of a Peruvian canyon, I hear a Ludacris tune booming from somewhere.
Then round the corner 2 local farmer boys with a transistor radio rudeboy bounce towards me, we exchange hello's, they ask if I've just walked up, and what time I left, they seem impressed, and then they pimp walk it down the canyon, with Ludacris swearing in the background.
A strange way for my hike to end.
Thursday 23 September 2010
Iquitos, pollution, jungle trips, and the Peruvian mindset
The first thing that hits you in Iquitos is the smell: a mixture of human faeces, stale water, sweat, and motorbike fumes. The river is a sinister colour, and I mutter allowed that I won't be eating fish while I'm here.
The town lies on the bank of the River Amazon, and is one the biggest cities in the world that you can't get to by road. It's a boat or plane.
A long time bolthole for hippies, ex-pat fisherman, and about a million people trying to sell you a jungle tour. Imagine 100 of those charity people you see on the high street, being paid 10 pounds an hour to get you to give 10 pounds a month to charity, well imagine that on every corner of every street, and you have a small idea about jungle tour people. And they're all called Carlos, or have a Uncle called Carlos, who's brother Carlos has a jungle lodge.
I am here to get into Peru, but to also try the jungle brew ayahuasca, a collection of different plants and shrubs mixed together to make a drink that people use to seek answers, cure illness, and find enlightment. It's also been used more commanly as a hallucinogenic trip for people to see inside themselves, to gain a better understanding of themselves.
I find a tour operator (called Carlos) who will take me to his lodge in the jungle, where I will take the ceremony with his local Shaman, stay overnight, and return to Iquitos.
We leave and take a 1hr boat ride, then a 40 minute walk, then another 30 minute canoe ride, finally ending at a lodge in the jungle.
All you can hear are the cries of birds, the whistling of trees, and the occasional animal sound that I don't recognise. I eat a very light meal and wait for the Shaman.
At around 9pm he arrives, it's pitch black by now and we all sit around candle light or torch light. The shaman reminds me of a Peruvian version of the little old Chinese man with the shop in Gremlins. He doesn't speak much, and will only look at me in quick motions, but we shake hands and sit down.
He starts chanting and we imbibe the brown liquid, it tastes woody but is not unpleasant. We sit and the Shaman chants continuiously, and then it begins.
Now a girl once told me, not any girl actually, an amazing girl. A girl who I'd always hoped that when we grew older she would choose to start a life with me. Well, we grew up and she didn't, then moved abroad, and I moved on. Anyway, she once said to me,
"Gareth, nobody wants to hear about other peoples dreams, and I don't want to hear about yours"
I know I've made her sound like a right bitch there, but she wasn't, she was incredible.
And because my trip was a very dream like thing for me, if you want to know more you'll have to ask me in person.
I awake the next morning and make my way back to Iquitos, on the way I take a service ferry, carrying chickens, pigs, fruit, veg, and people. The people on their way to sell their goods in the city. I get talking to the boatman, who incredibly can understand my shitty Spanish enough for us to converse. I ask about the river, and all the waste that seems to pour out of 3 giant pipes from Iquitos into the Amazon, his reply is quick,
"That part of the river is dead. and there is a law prohibiting people from fishing there"
"A law! everything's dead! why bother with the law?"
He gets my drift and we sail slowly on in a subdued silence. I find it hard to understand the mindset of the people especially as I watch a girl throw her empty bottle and plastic wrappers overboard. I know that we have had 20 or so years to move towards a recycling society but surely the people and their goverment here must know enough by now to try to slow down the pollution?
Back in the town I'm surrounded by hippies, seemingly all living here and 'being at one with themselves and nature'. I am acutely aware that we are the main reason for the majority of the pollution and waste in this town and it's river, but these people walk around in their sandels and baggy trousers, acting as if they are doing good being there. My already very negatvie opinion of hippies takes a violent jump up a few levels, and I vow to get the fuck out of here as quickly as a plane can.
I leave the next day but not before I give away some 'summer clothes' to a homeless guy. 2 tee's and a pair of trainers are in a carrier bag, and I take a walk to find someone to give them to. I wander into the central Plaza and a man beckons me for my bag, I give it to him. He's really grateful, I wander away feeling all good about myself and wallowing in how amazing and different I am to all the other gringo hippy traveler dicks round here.
But there's a problem.
He saw me leave a restaraunt with the bag, he actually thinks the bag is left over food from my meal. I turn to see the guy hungerly wrestle the back open, he pauses, and slowly pulls out two white sunblocked stained tee shirts, and a pair of battered white trainers. He looks at them, then around, then shakes his head, and puts them all back in the bag, and starts looking for someone who can actually help him.
At the airport I get a very clear example of why the country isn't so bothered about recycling.
A small boy drinks Inca Kola from a normal sized bottle (like a plastic coke bottle at home, bigger than a can, smaller than the litre ones) he lifts the bottle over his head, and slowly pours all of it out onto the floor in front of me, he has no grasp of what he's doing, but as the bottle gets lighter he works it out.
I move my bag, the Mum, sitting opposite me, finally notices the sticky green puddle her offspring has made, and in a swift movement, slaps him round the face. The kid erupts into screams, she then cuddles him, and he calms down and all is forgotten.
The puddle turns into a river, a river that snakes through the departure lounge, all the way to the desk at the gate.
The mum doesn't bat an eyelid. She doesn't even get out of her seat. Now I know that my mum would have got up, tried to clean it herself, then found an orderly, told them the problem, borrowed their mop, and mopped it up. And if I was old enough, made me do it.
And that's the problem.
The town lies on the bank of the River Amazon, and is one the biggest cities in the world that you can't get to by road. It's a boat or plane.
A long time bolthole for hippies, ex-pat fisherman, and about a million people trying to sell you a jungle tour. Imagine 100 of those charity people you see on the high street, being paid 10 pounds an hour to get you to give 10 pounds a month to charity, well imagine that on every corner of every street, and you have a small idea about jungle tour people. And they're all called Carlos, or have a Uncle called Carlos, who's brother Carlos has a jungle lodge.
I am here to get into Peru, but to also try the jungle brew ayahuasca, a collection of different plants and shrubs mixed together to make a drink that people use to seek answers, cure illness, and find enlightment. It's also been used more commanly as a hallucinogenic trip for people to see inside themselves, to gain a better understanding of themselves.
I find a tour operator (called Carlos) who will take me to his lodge in the jungle, where I will take the ceremony with his local Shaman, stay overnight, and return to Iquitos.
We leave and take a 1hr boat ride, then a 40 minute walk, then another 30 minute canoe ride, finally ending at a lodge in the jungle.
All you can hear are the cries of birds, the whistling of trees, and the occasional animal sound that I don't recognise. I eat a very light meal and wait for the Shaman.
At around 9pm he arrives, it's pitch black by now and we all sit around candle light or torch light. The shaman reminds me of a Peruvian version of the little old Chinese man with the shop in Gremlins. He doesn't speak much, and will only look at me in quick motions, but we shake hands and sit down.
He starts chanting and we imbibe the brown liquid, it tastes woody but is not unpleasant. We sit and the Shaman chants continuiously, and then it begins.
Now a girl once told me, not any girl actually, an amazing girl. A girl who I'd always hoped that when we grew older she would choose to start a life with me. Well, we grew up and she didn't, then moved abroad, and I moved on. Anyway, she once said to me,
"Gareth, nobody wants to hear about other peoples dreams, and I don't want to hear about yours"
I know I've made her sound like a right bitch there, but she wasn't, she was incredible.
And because my trip was a very dream like thing for me, if you want to know more you'll have to ask me in person.
I awake the next morning and make my way back to Iquitos, on the way I take a service ferry, carrying chickens, pigs, fruit, veg, and people. The people on their way to sell their goods in the city. I get talking to the boatman, who incredibly can understand my shitty Spanish enough for us to converse. I ask about the river, and all the waste that seems to pour out of 3 giant pipes from Iquitos into the Amazon, his reply is quick,
"That part of the river is dead. and there is a law prohibiting people from fishing there"
"A law! everything's dead! why bother with the law?"
He gets my drift and we sail slowly on in a subdued silence. I find it hard to understand the mindset of the people especially as I watch a girl throw her empty bottle and plastic wrappers overboard. I know that we have had 20 or so years to move towards a recycling society but surely the people and their goverment here must know enough by now to try to slow down the pollution?
Back in the town I'm surrounded by hippies, seemingly all living here and 'being at one with themselves and nature'. I am acutely aware that we are the main reason for the majority of the pollution and waste in this town and it's river, but these people walk around in their sandels and baggy trousers, acting as if they are doing good being there. My already very negatvie opinion of hippies takes a violent jump up a few levels, and I vow to get the fuck out of here as quickly as a plane can.
I leave the next day but not before I give away some 'summer clothes' to a homeless guy. 2 tee's and a pair of trainers are in a carrier bag, and I take a walk to find someone to give them to. I wander into the central Plaza and a man beckons me for my bag, I give it to him. He's really grateful, I wander away feeling all good about myself and wallowing in how amazing and different I am to all the other gringo hippy traveler dicks round here.
But there's a problem.
He saw me leave a restaraunt with the bag, he actually thinks the bag is left over food from my meal. I turn to see the guy hungerly wrestle the back open, he pauses, and slowly pulls out two white sunblocked stained tee shirts, and a pair of battered white trainers. He looks at them, then around, then shakes his head, and puts them all back in the bag, and starts looking for someone who can actually help him.
At the airport I get a very clear example of why the country isn't so bothered about recycling.
A small boy drinks Inca Kola from a normal sized bottle (like a plastic coke bottle at home, bigger than a can, smaller than the litre ones) he lifts the bottle over his head, and slowly pours all of it out onto the floor in front of me, he has no grasp of what he's doing, but as the bottle gets lighter he works it out.
I move my bag, the Mum, sitting opposite me, finally notices the sticky green puddle her offspring has made, and in a swift movement, slaps him round the face. The kid erupts into screams, she then cuddles him, and he calms down and all is forgotten.
The puddle turns into a river, a river that snakes through the departure lounge, all the way to the desk at the gate.
The mum doesn't bat an eyelid. She doesn't even get out of her seat. Now I know that my mum would have got up, tried to clean it herself, then found an orderly, told them the problem, borrowed their mop, and mopped it up. And if I was old enough, made me do it.
And that's the problem.
Saturday 4 September 2010
boat, jungle, and bites
I cooly try to ignore the large amazonian man that I have angered, due to a poor hammock hanging action by the crewman. I reach for my book and settle in, trying as hard as possible not to actually move an inch. He grabs some things and heads upstairs to the bar.
To my right a family are sitting around waiting for the boat to leave. A grandmother, her daughter, her husband, and their 2 sons. They are around 3 and 5 years old. The siren goes to announce our departure and the Dad gets up to leave, it seems that he works in Manaus and that the family had come to visit.
He leaves and the boys start to cry for their father, and I sit and watch the mum settle the children, she soothes them, and eventually manages to quiet them and get them off to sleep.
It is only then, when they are sound asleep, that the mum starts to quietly weep. I lie in my hammock and try not to stare at this incredible woman, and I begin to think about a mothers strength, and the power it takes to raise children, and in turn I begin to think about my parents and the sacrifices they've made for me over the years. I feel a knot in my stomach, which inexplicably moves to my throat, and it is then that I realize that I am about to cry. I raise myself out of the hammock and go to sit on deck to gather my thoughts.
The next few days are spent eating the same meal twice a day, reading, and sleeping when the feeling takes me. Which is about every 2 hours. Doing nothing is really tiring
I make some friends along the way, and we while away the days.
We arrive in Tabatinga and make our way to Brazilian immigration to get stamped out, and at this point I realize that I might be in a bit of bother. My visa ran out 2 weeks ago, and I refused to extend it because they wanted to charge me for the pleasure. I had hoped that there would be a fairly lax system to leave Brazil via the jungle, but there wasn't.
I decide to change the 3 from '30 days' to a 8 to make it '80 days' on the visa slip.
I get to the Policia Federal and hand over my slip and passport, the guy is quite young and looks chilled so I'm quite hopeful, and he looks at the visa, then my passport, and reaches for the exit stamp, it's only then that I realize that there's also a entry stamp already in my passport with '30 days' written inside.
Balls.
He looks once, then looks twice, shows his work mate, and stamps the exit stamp,
"Yes" I think,
"He's going to let my amateur forgery slip and forget about it, nice one fella"
But he doesn't, and I need to think fast now as he's starting to ask questions to various people walking behind him. His work mate also says,
"Why you change the date" to me in sporadic English.
I decide to lie and say that the immigration guy made a mistake, and that I always wanted 80 days, and that it was him who changed the visa not me. I also say that I'm flying home tomorrow, and that I don't have anymore money. My ability to speak anything other than English suddenly disappears
After about 20 minutes of me saying 'no comprende' over and over they start to get a little bored. My case is also helped when another traveller gets his exit stamp and his entry stamp doesn't even have any date written in at all! I point this out to the guy, and he gets my point.
Eventually we all agree that if I ever come back I've got to pay 95 raels, or I get arrested. I agree, sign the paper, and run off sharpish.
We spend the night in Tabatinga before getting a fast boat to Iquitos, Peru. Fast meaning 11 hours mind, but I fill the time by running my Ipod party out.
I get to Iquitos and start looking around for somewhere that can take me into the jungle to do ayawashka with a shamen.
To my right a family are sitting around waiting for the boat to leave. A grandmother, her daughter, her husband, and their 2 sons. They are around 3 and 5 years old. The siren goes to announce our departure and the Dad gets up to leave, it seems that he works in Manaus and that the family had come to visit.
He leaves and the boys start to cry for their father, and I sit and watch the mum settle the children, she soothes them, and eventually manages to quiet them and get them off to sleep.
It is only then, when they are sound asleep, that the mum starts to quietly weep. I lie in my hammock and try not to stare at this incredible woman, and I begin to think about a mothers strength, and the power it takes to raise children, and in turn I begin to think about my parents and the sacrifices they've made for me over the years. I feel a knot in my stomach, which inexplicably moves to my throat, and it is then that I realize that I am about to cry. I raise myself out of the hammock and go to sit on deck to gather my thoughts.
The next few days are spent eating the same meal twice a day, reading, and sleeping when the feeling takes me. Which is about every 2 hours. Doing nothing is really tiring
I make some friends along the way, and we while away the days.
We arrive in Tabatinga and make our way to Brazilian immigration to get stamped out, and at this point I realize that I might be in a bit of bother. My visa ran out 2 weeks ago, and I refused to extend it because they wanted to charge me for the pleasure. I had hoped that there would be a fairly lax system to leave Brazil via the jungle, but there wasn't.
I decide to change the 3 from '30 days' to a 8 to make it '80 days' on the visa slip.
I get to the Policia Federal and hand over my slip and passport, the guy is quite young and looks chilled so I'm quite hopeful, and he looks at the visa, then my passport, and reaches for the exit stamp, it's only then that I realize that there's also a entry stamp already in my passport with '30 days' written inside.
Balls.
He looks once, then looks twice, shows his work mate, and stamps the exit stamp,
"Yes" I think,
"He's going to let my amateur forgery slip and forget about it, nice one fella"
But he doesn't, and I need to think fast now as he's starting to ask questions to various people walking behind him. His work mate also says,
"Why you change the date" to me in sporadic English.
I decide to lie and say that the immigration guy made a mistake, and that I always wanted 80 days, and that it was him who changed the visa not me. I also say that I'm flying home tomorrow, and that I don't have anymore money. My ability to speak anything other than English suddenly disappears
After about 20 minutes of me saying 'no comprende' over and over they start to get a little bored. My case is also helped when another traveller gets his exit stamp and his entry stamp doesn't even have any date written in at all! I point this out to the guy, and he gets my point.
Eventually we all agree that if I ever come back I've got to pay 95 raels, or I get arrested. I agree, sign the paper, and run off sharpish.
We spend the night in Tabatinga before getting a fast boat to Iquitos, Peru. Fast meaning 11 hours mind, but I fill the time by running my Ipod party out.
I get to Iquitos and start looking around for somewhere that can take me into the jungle to do ayawashka with a shamen.
Thursday 2 September 2010
Sao Paulo. Another proud moment for me, and I take in a game of football
I arrive in Sao Paulo and the speed of city life almost takes me by suprise. The place is a mass of traffic, people, noise, and excitement. It has the feel of London and New York, mixed into a weird hybrid.
I am here for 3 reasons:
1. my flight has to come through here, so why not take a moment and look around the sprawling metropolis?
2. if you have a chance in life take it.
3. my dear friend is flying in from the states to DJ there on the same weekend so surely that's fate or something? And we get the chance to hang out in Brazil.
But first I get back into hostel life: dorm rooms, new people, fun, and drinking.
I look around the city and go to a few museums notebly the football museum in the 'Estadio Municipal Paulo machado de carvalho'
it's a impressive ground and through a stroke of luck there's a game being played there tonight, I ask the lady for the ticket and intimate to her that I'd like a seat in the stands, away from 'fanaticos' that fill the areas behind the goal.
Back at the hostel I meet 2 wicked Scotsmen who are up for the football and a drink after.
I get to the stadium for the 10pm kick off and walk around the ground twice because the stewards keep sending me the wrong way, eventually I find my gate.......right behind the goal mouth.
I am in the lions den of the 'fanaticos' and the atmosphere is immense. the sound is constant and pulsating, with drummers keeping the tempo on a constant high. It's the first time that I've been to a game where the singing has not stopped, they even have guys standing in front of different sections to orchestrate the fans, and to choose the songs and the waves. Yes, they have different waves that they do depending on what the rest of the crowd are doing.
The game goes well and 'we' win, me and the Scots (Rich and Ally) boys meet and head for a beers. It's agreed that will go to a nightclub called 'Vegas' recommended by the hostel.
We eventually find it on a boozy street lined with bars, sex shows/brothels, and nightclubs. And it is here where things got a little weird.
Firstly the nightclubs here have a very odd paying system for drinks, basically you give them your ID and then they give you a card. Then whenever you go to the bar you give them the card, they scan the barcode on the back, and you get your drinks.
It's a dangerous system that leads to bad things.
Rich, Ally, and myself get the drinks flowing, but in true South American fashion nobody goes out until 1am and we are a little early. By the time the crowd arrive we are fairly healthy drinkwise, but by no means legless. The boys keep going for smoking breaks so I start chatting to the Dj about 60s rock and soul.
And this is when it gets weird, the next thing I remember is trying to find the boys with the DJ, we can't find them and I feel really wasted, like proper body mashed. Not drunk, just a loss of coordination.
And then I don't remember anything.
The next thing I remember is standing in a street that is vaguely recognizable, in front of me is a chubby man wearing a tight white vest and bad jeans.
"where's my hostel from here? it's on 13 de maia" are the first words I say,
"No, no, we go to my casa, it's closer" says the guy,
"I'm not going to your house mate, where's the lime time hostel from here?" by this point I'm not even trying to speak slowly, or in patchy Spanish, I just sound like a vexed Londoner.
"Ok, I walk you there..........you very beautiful man" he replies while he tries to stroke the side of my face, I take a step back, and very quickly become very alert.
"Mate, thank you, but I want to get back to my hostel, how far is it? where can I get a taxi?"
"It's ok, it's this way, come, come"
And we walk down the street. After about 5 minutes of walking and him trying to chat me up I lose my temper,
"Mate, where the fuck is my fucking hostel? where the fuck are we going, and where the fuck are we? And who the fuck are you anyway? Where did you find me?" I must have lost it a little because he seemed quite taken aback,
"ok, we go into this hotel, call you a cab yes?"
We get into this hotel and the reception call me a cab, it arrives and vest man tries to hug me goodbye, I lightly push him away. He seems really hurt and walks off into the night.
I get back to the hostel at 6:40am, I wake the Ally and he says that they left at 4am, so I must have left the club before then becasue they looked high and low for me before they left.
Then they got into a fight with a midget doorman.
Later that weekend I will be told that it's very very common for men to put drugs into other mens drinks in order to 'get dealings'. They also say that it was lucky for me that I had a strong tolerance to drugs otherwise it would have been a lot worse. So at least my misspent youth has one thing going for it, it's saved me from getting 'intervered' with that night.
Brilliant.
My friend arrives and we head to dinner and drinks with a guy called Diego. He's wicked company and a really good guy. We get to the club which is considered one of the best in the world. The place is compact but looks amazing with giant LED EQs pulsating behind the bar and the decks
There I meet the other DJ playing, a guy called Benjamin. In the next couple of days I will quickly learn that Benny is possibly one of the sweetest and most wonderful people in Brazil.
I meet loads of people that night and they are all superb people, and I'm blessed that I've met so many nice people, and it cements my idea that good people know good people all around the world.
We drink and part the night away, sleep, eat, and sleep some more and very quickly the weekend comes to a end. My friend heads to the states, and me? I head towards Manaus for another 6 day trip through the amazon.
I get to the boat an hour before we leave and I relaize I've made a huge mistake, and that this time the trip is not going to be a picnic.
60% more people, all tough looking amazonians, lots more moody young fellas, drinking hard and staring at me and my stuff.
Obviously being a regular at this 'service boat through the amazon' malarkey I've rocked up an hour before we sail and there's nowhere to hang my new, bigger, softer, wider, more comfortable hammock. I glimpse a tiny spot and the second regret of the day hurtels through my brain,
"Why did I drop out of Cubs before we did knots?"
I stand there holding bits of rope like I've never seen rope before, looking at my hammock as if it was a crystal maze puzzle. Just before I start shouting 'get me out, get me out' a crew memeber literally pushes me out of the, whilst openly mocking me to the other passengers. He starts to hoist my hammock in about 4 inches of space between 2 other hammocks, the female owners sit aghast at the closeness of space, and all the crewman does is gesticulate that I'm next to some lovely ladies, and that I should get 'stuck in'. He then pats me on the back and wanders off whistling.
About a minute before we pull away one of my new neighbours gets up, hugs the other one, and gets off the boat.
2 minutes later a large, swarthy, battle scarred, gentleman rocks up and stares at his hammock, then my hammock, then the tiny distance between them, then at the girl, and finally at me. His face is clouded with the very cealr notion that I am invading his personal space, and that I will pay for this intrusion.
Will I get thrown overboard? Will I get physical with the lady? Will my hammock stay up? Will I ever get to a place in the world where they don't play Lady Ga Ga and David Guetta?
I'll let you know as soon as I get more time............
I am here for 3 reasons:
1. my flight has to come through here, so why not take a moment and look around the sprawling metropolis?
2. if you have a chance in life take it.
3. my dear friend is flying in from the states to DJ there on the same weekend so surely that's fate or something? And we get the chance to hang out in Brazil.
But first I get back into hostel life: dorm rooms, new people, fun, and drinking.
I look around the city and go to a few museums notebly the football museum in the 'Estadio Municipal Paulo machado de carvalho'
it's a impressive ground and through a stroke of luck there's a game being played there tonight, I ask the lady for the ticket and intimate to her that I'd like a seat in the stands, away from 'fanaticos' that fill the areas behind the goal.
Back at the hostel I meet 2 wicked Scotsmen who are up for the football and a drink after.
I get to the stadium for the 10pm kick off and walk around the ground twice because the stewards keep sending me the wrong way, eventually I find my gate.......right behind the goal mouth.
I am in the lions den of the 'fanaticos' and the atmosphere is immense. the sound is constant and pulsating, with drummers keeping the tempo on a constant high. It's the first time that I've been to a game where the singing has not stopped, they even have guys standing in front of different sections to orchestrate the fans, and to choose the songs and the waves. Yes, they have different waves that they do depending on what the rest of the crowd are doing.
The game goes well and 'we' win, me and the Scots (Rich and Ally) boys meet and head for a beers. It's agreed that will go to a nightclub called 'Vegas' recommended by the hostel.
We eventually find it on a boozy street lined with bars, sex shows/brothels, and nightclubs. And it is here where things got a little weird.
Firstly the nightclubs here have a very odd paying system for drinks, basically you give them your ID and then they give you a card. Then whenever you go to the bar you give them the card, they scan the barcode on the back, and you get your drinks.
It's a dangerous system that leads to bad things.
Rich, Ally, and myself get the drinks flowing, but in true South American fashion nobody goes out until 1am and we are a little early. By the time the crowd arrive we are fairly healthy drinkwise, but by no means legless. The boys keep going for smoking breaks so I start chatting to the Dj about 60s rock and soul.
And this is when it gets weird, the next thing I remember is trying to find the boys with the DJ, we can't find them and I feel really wasted, like proper body mashed. Not drunk, just a loss of coordination.
And then I don't remember anything.
The next thing I remember is standing in a street that is vaguely recognizable, in front of me is a chubby man wearing a tight white vest and bad jeans.
"where's my hostel from here? it's on 13 de maia" are the first words I say,
"No, no, we go to my casa, it's closer" says the guy,
"I'm not going to your house mate, where's the lime time hostel from here?" by this point I'm not even trying to speak slowly, or in patchy Spanish, I just sound like a vexed Londoner.
"Ok, I walk you there..........you very beautiful man" he replies while he tries to stroke the side of my face, I take a step back, and very quickly become very alert.
"Mate, thank you, but I want to get back to my hostel, how far is it? where can I get a taxi?"
"It's ok, it's this way, come, come"
And we walk down the street. After about 5 minutes of walking and him trying to chat me up I lose my temper,
"Mate, where the fuck is my fucking hostel? where the fuck are we going, and where the fuck are we? And who the fuck are you anyway? Where did you find me?" I must have lost it a little because he seemed quite taken aback,
"ok, we go into this hotel, call you a cab yes?"
We get into this hotel and the reception call me a cab, it arrives and vest man tries to hug me goodbye, I lightly push him away. He seems really hurt and walks off into the night.
I get back to the hostel at 6:40am, I wake the Ally and he says that they left at 4am, so I must have left the club before then becasue they looked high and low for me before they left.
Then they got into a fight with a midget doorman.
Later that weekend I will be told that it's very very common for men to put drugs into other mens drinks in order to 'get dealings'. They also say that it was lucky for me that I had a strong tolerance to drugs otherwise it would have been a lot worse. So at least my misspent youth has one thing going for it, it's saved me from getting 'intervered' with that night.
Brilliant.
My friend arrives and we head to dinner and drinks with a guy called Diego. He's wicked company and a really good guy. We get to the club which is considered one of the best in the world. The place is compact but looks amazing with giant LED EQs pulsating behind the bar and the decks
There I meet the other DJ playing, a guy called Benjamin. In the next couple of days I will quickly learn that Benny is possibly one of the sweetest and most wonderful people in Brazil.
I meet loads of people that night and they are all superb people, and I'm blessed that I've met so many nice people, and it cements my idea that good people know good people all around the world.
We drink and part the night away, sleep, eat, and sleep some more and very quickly the weekend comes to a end. My friend heads to the states, and me? I head towards Manaus for another 6 day trip through the amazon.
I get to the boat an hour before we leave and I relaize I've made a huge mistake, and that this time the trip is not going to be a picnic.
60% more people, all tough looking amazonians, lots more moody young fellas, drinking hard and staring at me and my stuff.
Obviously being a regular at this 'service boat through the amazon' malarkey I've rocked up an hour before we sail and there's nowhere to hang my new, bigger, softer, wider, more comfortable hammock. I glimpse a tiny spot and the second regret of the day hurtels through my brain,
"Why did I drop out of Cubs before we did knots?"
I stand there holding bits of rope like I've never seen rope before, looking at my hammock as if it was a crystal maze puzzle. Just before I start shouting 'get me out, get me out' a crew memeber literally pushes me out of the, whilst openly mocking me to the other passengers. He starts to hoist my hammock in about 4 inches of space between 2 other hammocks, the female owners sit aghast at the closeness of space, and all the crewman does is gesticulate that I'm next to some lovely ladies, and that I should get 'stuck in'. He then pats me on the back and wanders off whistling.
About a minute before we pull away one of my new neighbours gets up, hugs the other one, and gets off the boat.
2 minutes later a large, swarthy, battle scarred, gentleman rocks up and stares at his hammock, then my hammock, then the tiny distance between them, then at the girl, and finally at me. His face is clouded with the very cealr notion that I am invading his personal space, and that I will pay for this intrusion.
Will I get thrown overboard? Will I get physical with the lady? Will my hammock stay up? Will I ever get to a place in the world where they don't play Lady Ga Ga and David Guetta?
I'll let you know as soon as I get more time............
Brazil: Alpha male food ordering, food, family, and life.
It is common practice in Brazil, no, not common practice, it is near enough a law that when men take ladies out for dinner or drinks they pay. For everything. This is applicable to if you're seeing each other, dating, having an affair, married, first date, last date, blind date, family, or just friends.
Now I consider myself to be a very chivalrous gentleman, and I am happy to put my hand in my pocket when I take a lady to dinner, but in these modern times, when couples go for dinner, as a foursome, more than once, there should be a fairer more equal footing when it comes to the bill. Not here though
the most interesting thing to come from this is the way Brazilian men then act at the dinner table, this acceptance of the unsaid law that you'll have to pay brings out the very worst and basic alpha male traits of needing to dominate, show control, to show the ladies present that they're in charge, and ultimatley to show authority over the other alpha males present, i.e me.
It starts before we've even sat down, the other guy had already ordered for me and my guest, I hadn't even looked at the menu and was told what I'd be eating.
The next time I've managed to look at the menu but this time we're sharing pizza so he chooses 2 other pizza and we eat those together. Then he starts picking the wine for us to drink, orders 3 bottles over the course of the meal, 2 of which myself and my friend weren't bothered about drinking, then the bill comes and it's over to me for the 50% of it!
At times it felt like the other guy was going leap onto the table, smash his fists against it in a drumming motion, make loud, threatening noises, then bite me into submission before he started rutting my friend in front of his date.
Another day I am taken to a traditional Brazilian barbecue or churrasco, these incredible places where you sit and people just keep bringing you freshly seared meat to your plate from several different animals, not to mention about 16 different cuts of beef. It is heaven if you like meat.
All the meat and beer produces a strange counter struggle within your bowels, you need to wee all the time but the other procedure is a little, err, shall we say, haltering? I leave the table and decide to treat myself to a upgrade for this movement so I turn left into the disabled toilets: more space, cleaner, and hardly ever used.
Everyone knows the joy of a overdue wee, and as I sat down on the loo (in case I'd have something else coming through, you never can tell with all the meat!) I'm not ashamed to admit that I closed my eyes to savour the moment, and after a short while but quite a long wee I looked down and realized that the front of the toilet had been cut out, leaving a gap of about 6" by 3" across the front of it. I have no idea why disabled people need this gap, but a gap it was. A gap that I had happily pissed through. For about 40 seconds. Now I don't know exactly how much piss you can piss in 40 seconds but this time I had just created a lake of piss on the floor of the disableds.
I was sitting in a way that if I tried to move my shorts up onto me then they would swim in the piss, so I kicked them across the room to the corner, leaving me in just a pair of trainers and a ill fitting tee shirt (all the meat and beer has 'filled' me out a little) straddling a lake of piss.
I stood up over the lake and took stock of the situation, there's no mop or bigger hand towels, so I'm going to have to use the toilet paper.
Now in Brazil the napkins and toilet tissue are a bit like small bits of plastic sheeting, and they absorb liquid in a very similar way, or they don't absorb at all. So I am now standing in a disabled toilet with no shorts on, pushing a lake of piss around the room.
About 10 minutes later I have emptied the toilet tissue dispenser, and managed to get the lake down to a small puddle, maybe about the size of a 7" record. I have nothing else to mop with so I am left with a difficult decision, leave the piss on the floor, or tell someone?
I walk back to my table knowing that at some point later that day a disabled person is going to get the blame for emptying the toilet of paper, and pissing on the floor.
As I chew my steak I am not a proud man. The meat tasted good though.
We are driving back from a day on the beach with my friends and her whole family, it has been a beautiful day walking the beaches, eating food, and enjoying the simple pleasure of being close to nature and the sea.
On the way home the smallest one in our group, a lovely little 6 year old, has fallen asleep across our laps in the back seat. I am a little jealous and wish that I could still sleep like a child: anywhere and straight away.
As she sleeps I watch the traffic speed passed and consider the previous 2 weeks, and I think about life and how unpredictable it can be. 3 weeks ago my friend in Cardiff seemingly had his life mapped out for the next 15 years: a new wife, a new home, business plans, and all sorts were all in place. And now? Gone. All change. Finshed. And why? because of a silly mistake, one quick moment in time and a life changed completely.
And I thought about being in this car and another driver could make a mistake, have a accident, or just a lapse of concentration for a slpit second that leads them into our path, and our lives would change forever. And this precious little life, that has so much ahead of it, asleep in front of me, would never be the same again.
These tiny moments, that we would then rename tragedies, happen around us constantly, and that's why we have to live our lives, to fight for everything we want, as long as it doesn't harm or hurt another human being, every single day, to make ourselves and everyone around us happy, to experience LIFE! because one day, the tiniest thing might mean that you don't have that life anymore.
Now I consider myself to be a very chivalrous gentleman, and I am happy to put my hand in my pocket when I take a lady to dinner, but in these modern times, when couples go for dinner, as a foursome, more than once, there should be a fairer more equal footing when it comes to the bill. Not here though
the most interesting thing to come from this is the way Brazilian men then act at the dinner table, this acceptance of the unsaid law that you'll have to pay brings out the very worst and basic alpha male traits of needing to dominate, show control, to show the ladies present that they're in charge, and ultimatley to show authority over the other alpha males present, i.e me.
It starts before we've even sat down, the other guy had already ordered for me and my guest, I hadn't even looked at the menu and was told what I'd be eating.
The next time I've managed to look at the menu but this time we're sharing pizza so he chooses 2 other pizza and we eat those together. Then he starts picking the wine for us to drink, orders 3 bottles over the course of the meal, 2 of which myself and my friend weren't bothered about drinking, then the bill comes and it's over to me for the 50% of it!
At times it felt like the other guy was going leap onto the table, smash his fists against it in a drumming motion, make loud, threatening noises, then bite me into submission before he started rutting my friend in front of his date.
Another day I am taken to a traditional Brazilian barbecue or churrasco, these incredible places where you sit and people just keep bringing you freshly seared meat to your plate from several different animals, not to mention about 16 different cuts of beef. It is heaven if you like meat.
All the meat and beer produces a strange counter struggle within your bowels, you need to wee all the time but the other procedure is a little, err, shall we say, haltering? I leave the table and decide to treat myself to a upgrade for this movement so I turn left into the disabled toilets: more space, cleaner, and hardly ever used.
Everyone knows the joy of a overdue wee, and as I sat down on the loo (in case I'd have something else coming through, you never can tell with all the meat!) I'm not ashamed to admit that I closed my eyes to savour the moment, and after a short while but quite a long wee I looked down and realized that the front of the toilet had been cut out, leaving a gap of about 6" by 3" across the front of it. I have no idea why disabled people need this gap, but a gap it was. A gap that I had happily pissed through. For about 40 seconds. Now I don't know exactly how much piss you can piss in 40 seconds but this time I had just created a lake of piss on the floor of the disableds.
I was sitting in a way that if I tried to move my shorts up onto me then they would swim in the piss, so I kicked them across the room to the corner, leaving me in just a pair of trainers and a ill fitting tee shirt (all the meat and beer has 'filled' me out a little) straddling a lake of piss.
I stood up over the lake and took stock of the situation, there's no mop or bigger hand towels, so I'm going to have to use the toilet paper.
Now in Brazil the napkins and toilet tissue are a bit like small bits of plastic sheeting, and they absorb liquid in a very similar way, or they don't absorb at all. So I am now standing in a disabled toilet with no shorts on, pushing a lake of piss around the room.
About 10 minutes later I have emptied the toilet tissue dispenser, and managed to get the lake down to a small puddle, maybe about the size of a 7" record. I have nothing else to mop with so I am left with a difficult decision, leave the piss on the floor, or tell someone?
I walk back to my table knowing that at some point later that day a disabled person is going to get the blame for emptying the toilet of paper, and pissing on the floor.
As I chew my steak I am not a proud man. The meat tasted good though.
We are driving back from a day on the beach with my friends and her whole family, it has been a beautiful day walking the beaches, eating food, and enjoying the simple pleasure of being close to nature and the sea.
On the way home the smallest one in our group, a lovely little 6 year old, has fallen asleep across our laps in the back seat. I am a little jealous and wish that I could still sleep like a child: anywhere and straight away.
As she sleeps I watch the traffic speed passed and consider the previous 2 weeks, and I think about life and how unpredictable it can be. 3 weeks ago my friend in Cardiff seemingly had his life mapped out for the next 15 years: a new wife, a new home, business plans, and all sorts were all in place. And now? Gone. All change. Finshed. And why? because of a silly mistake, one quick moment in time and a life changed completely.
And I thought about being in this car and another driver could make a mistake, have a accident, or just a lapse of concentration for a slpit second that leads them into our path, and our lives would change forever. And this precious little life, that has so much ahead of it, asleep in front of me, would never be the same again.
These tiny moments, that we would then rename tragedies, happen around us constantly, and that's why we have to live our lives, to fight for everything we want, as long as it doesn't harm or hurt another human being, every single day, to make ourselves and everyone around us happy, to experience LIFE! because one day, the tiniest thing might mean that you don't have that life anymore.
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