Chronicles - Volume 2

Drawing the line

2006-01-11T20:45:00.000Z

Sorry for the lack of writing. I don't have an excuse, except laziness. But I thought I should write today, in order to draw a line under this blog and this year. When I first had the idea of taking time off work, I didn't really think I'd spend 9 months in South America, I certainly didn't think that I'd learn to call Buenos Aires home, and I didn't expect to complete 120,000 words worth of novel. So, looking back, despite my overly pessimistic and melancholy nature, the year has been a great success. It's been unforgettable, full of amazing sights and incredible sites - hanging out with Shamans in the Amazon Jungle, standing over the edge of the world's most spectacular waterfalls, seeing mountains, sky and clouds reflected on the filmy surface of Bolivia's salt lakes, meeting a multitude of characters from soulmate travellers to bug-eyed Colombian drug dealers, from Argentinians on the end of an email who have enchanted me with their generosity to curious staring locals in Bolivia and Paraguay. Being drenched by the the most violent of thunderstorms, freezing on luxury air-con buses, baking in deserts and on beaches. There has been too much to write about here, and so many rich experiences. My words can hardly do them justice, but I'd love to tell you about them all sometime. Like the mad waitress who chased me down the street a couple of weeks back, in order to declare her love and shove her tongue into my mouth...like the random conversations about Pink Floyd and Radiohead in the most unlikely of places...like gazing at a distant storm out of a pub window the other day, and welling with some kind of poetic poignancy as Like Spinning Plates (live) serenaded us on the stereo.

So, any conclusions? Any final words, any summation of a year's worth of adventures? Not really, I'm afraid. Just questions, more questions. And searching, more searching. But maybe I'm in a better place to ask and to search than I was a year ago.

Thanks for reading...see you on the other side.

Big Love,
Oliver

New Year's Day

2006-01-01T20:18:00.000Z

It's all over the streets still, 2005. In a hundred thousand torn up bits of paper, home-made ticker-tape, once love letters, yesterday's headlines and an old utility bill. In dried up misshapen plastic straws, in crushed white cups and shrivelled champagne corks. Behind boarded up shops, graffiti fronts and shadowy silent windows. Piled up in the little squares at the base of trees, or in the blues of the bags and the green of the bottles underneath the kerb, right opposite where I live. In the roads, safe for cartwheels and games of football, and in the sky growling with clouds. In the darkness that creeps out from under the locked up doors. 2005 hasn't gone yet, it hasn't been swept away.

But, I suppose 2006 will get it's chance, it just has to wait and see what history has planned.

But for now, in Buenos Aires, it waits and watches. New Year's Day, the in-between time, when nothing seems real.

Christmas, Argentinian style

2005-12-27T18:34:00.000Z

Christmas has been and gone, and you can hardly tell that it even happened. People are back at work - the streets are full of drillers, the flyover's full of traffic and the shops are all open as usual. What minimal city decorations there are still remain, but I can't help but think that Christmas is a small blip here - none of the week's of build up, none of the light-turning on rituals, none of the ludicrous Christmas merchandise in the shops in October. Few baubles in sight. What they lack in baubles, however, they more than make up in bangers. At midnight on Christmas Eve, the city exploded with a cacophony of fireworks, the traffic paused and the sky above was illuminated by a thousand different lights. It was spontaneous and fun, though a little dangerous - with little verminous kids scurrying around under parked cars to let of bangers, with sirens wailing as the emergency services rushed from one dismembered hand to another, with street bins melting under the ferocity of strategically placed fireworks. God bless this chaotic place, I love it. I love the fact that it always seems to be on the verge of melting down - protestors filled the streets this morning, the inernational debt is being paid off (yet there's still massive uncertainty about the economic prospects of this place), even Maradona is planning on making a comeback. Yes, being a visitor is great - it's like standing on the edge of a volcano's crater without ever feeling you might fall in. Could I live here forever, I am not sure? I am beginning to miss certain things about back home. I am beginning to feel like I am ready to resume my life in London again. 2 weeks to go...and in 3 weeks, I expect I'll be itching to be back here again. Such is life...

Christmas Day was decidely un Northern-hemisphere like, spent on my roof terrace in the company of a dozen people I didn't know a few months ago, guzzling barbecued steaks and red wine, lounging around and in my swimming pool. Up above, the southern stars came out, different to the ones above the heads of all my friends back in the UK. It was different, but it was great - it just didn't feel like Christmas, or it didn't feel like the other 30 Christmases I have had...And I liked it.

I had a good taste of home though - speaking to my family and to his Royal Clive-ness - the same banter. Some emails with work too. Lots of things have changed - lots haven't. The best thing was the parcel organised by Steve & Laura. A rude postman awakening, a trek across town, a typically frenetic and disorganised South American post office, and then the collection of a whole pile of cards, pressies, decorations and a Christmas pudding to boot. A tiny quarter of my small flat has been handed over to all things festive, a mini-nod at everything going on back home.

2006 looms now. My last week will be spent doing a few day trips, stocking up on shopping (I am going to buy toothpaste, deodorant and footy trainers, as it's all about a million times cheaper) and perhaps a little bit of reflection upon the year that is and nearly was. Yeah, it's been great, but bring on 2006 - my great job, my great friends, and, touchwood, a brand new album by Radiohead and the Premiership for Utd.

Feliz Navidad amigos!

The yearning

2005-12-14T17:06:00.000Z

I get this feeling sometimes - inexplicable - but it's a deep rooted thing that starts in the pit of my stomach and I can feel it up and down both arms. It's a good thing, because it generally means I am about to enter a short period of being able to write (vomit style) a lot of words. I've been stuck for a few weeks now, tearing my hair out, unable to enjoy writing, instead staring at the computer and then playing Freecell. What a waste of time. But I can feel that it's coming to an end, and I will just need to write for a while. I am excited about the prospect. It's the absolute flipside of darker wobbles that I have. They are just as inexplicable, render me about as useful as Darren Fletcher and they arrive and leave without much warning.

Aside from my current lack of proliference on the writing front, I have little new to report. It's going to be a strange thing having to set an alarm clock again, having to have a daily routine to attend to, having to fit free time around a job and other duties back home. I worked out that in 365 days, I've probably only had to get up for anything about 50 times or so - it's been great, but equally, it will be great to return to some kind of purpose. I could see myself living here, but not as I currently am. I need a structure around me, and I'm looking forward to getting that back in January.

In the meantime, I intend to keep enjoying the freedom here. On Saturday, I am heading to the Delta at Tigre for an overnight festival. On Sunday, I am off to the Boca vs Pumas match (the equivalent of their European Cup Final). And next week will be all about getting ready for Christmas - making sure the swimming pool is full, buying meat for the BBQ. Sure to be a strange experience.

And then, once Christmas and New year has passed, it will be over very quickly. 4 weeks tomorrow, and counting. 4 weeks till the cold, to five quid packs of cigarettes (I am going to try and quit) and to three quid pints of beer (I am going to try and cut down) and, most importantly, 4 weeks to being with my friends again in London.

Back in Bs As

2005-12-12T19:48:00.000Z

Monday afternoon, a little before five, on a break from whatever it that I do with my days, reflecting on the fact that in exactly five weeks time I will be at my desk at Greenbelt again, with the year as it was a thing of the past. I can feel it in my stomach, an anxious knot of something - not having a house to live in yet, going back (will it be the same, will it be better, will it be worse), re-adjusting to lots of things back home. Yes, I confess. I am nervous. Strangely, I am as nervous about going back as I was about leaving in the first place, 47 weeks or so ago. I wonder what I'll be thinking and feeling in a year's time, as 2006 draws to a close.

Anyway, enough of this introspective rubbish. I had enough of that on the 18 hour bus journey back to Buenos Aires yesterday. Faced with the choice of XXX2 - The Next Level (dubbed in Spanish) or introspective out of window gazing I chose the latter, and felt wonderfully at ease. I wrote it down in my book too. I always seem happiest on journeys between places, listening to music, watching the sky go gold, all those things. Maybe it's because I am powerless, I cannot be self-critical about not doing anything. Maybe it's because I am free, my mind is free to go wherever it wants, whilst my body is trapped in a double decker bus.

A double decker bus, which, incidentally, is as close to heaven as one can experience in a form of transport. I have waxed lyrical about Argentinian buses before, and I shall do so again. I love them! The big seats, the food, the way the seats go back into beds and the fact that I kipped far better on the bus than I did in the hostel in Iguazu.

My few days at Iguazu were good fun. I did get mullered by mosquitoes (a blind person would now be able to read off my left arm), forgot my suncream and got roasted and failed to sleep in an unfeasibly hot and itchy hostel dorm bed. Other than these things, and about 7000 border crossings I had to undertake in a few days (Paraguay-Brazil, Brazil-Argentina, Argentina-Brazil, Brazil-Argentina), well 4, all was splendid. Í'd suggest doing a google search for "Iguazu Falls", as my words probably can't do them justice. They're big, spectacular and spread over the border of Argentina and Brazil, surrounded by a beautiful forest and generating a fearsome noise. Needless to say I was amazed and awestruck, easily the most incredible natural phenomenen I have ever seen other than the size of Nick Cave's forehead.

Prior to Iguazu, I finished up in Asuncion and left without hassle, passing through the biggest Catholic holiday day on route, with thousands of pilgrims gathering for the "dia de la virgen". Leaving the country was more strenuous, and involved waiting around for ages for a bus, helping to unload about 60 boxes of Budweiser on the other side of the border, sitting in a stupendous traffic jam suspended above the no-man's river between Paraguay and Brazil, passing on my warmest regards to Brazil and finally getting into Argentina.

All good, my mini-holiday, but it's good, right now, to be back at my home for the next 4 and a bit weeks.

Buenos Aires - Posadas - Encarnacion - Trinidad - Asuncion

2005-12-07T16:10:00.000Z

Sunday evening, and as I prepared to leave Buenos Aires for the first time on this particular trip, I started to think about the first time I left Buenos Aires, in January. Then, Retiro bus station had seemed to be a terrifying South American shambolic, scrubby, shifty place and I remember being scared and bemused by the seemingly incomprehensible PA annoucements, the baffling timetables, the scurrying, shouting urchin-like street vendors. I remember clinging onto my backpack. I remember being incredibly nervous about leaving the city behind and venturing forth into South America.

Well, the rest is history, my Spanish has become adequate, and I've seen so much worse in the continent, that my return trip to Retiro on Sunday was a doddle. I arrived just before my bus was due to set off, managed to understand most of the PA announcements, and chilled. How quickly a strange place can feel like home.

Argentina is rightly acclaimed for its steak (fat and juicy), women (), football (Maradona) and cheapness, but its buses should be added to that illustrious list. My seat was big enough for at least two of me, an elephant, or four anorexic people. The wine flowed. The seat reclined all the way back to make a bed. Outside, I watched as we passed the River Plate, a huge estuary that stretches out to meet Uruguay, invisible, on the other side. The sky was on fire, and a distant hot air balloon hung on the horizon. The city stretches on for a long while - there's something so un-British about cities here - I can't put my finger on it - the way that the white tower blocks seem to have dozens of aerials on top of them, each scraping at the sky. The huge advertising billboards. The city left behind, the sun dipped and we were on our way. The only downside - the in-bus film. Meet the Fockers. Again. Ben Stiller and Robert de Niro have been following me all round South America. This must be the seventeenth time I've seen it here, and it wasn't that funny the first time. It was always on in Cusco, and on every other bus journey. I drifted off into half-sleep before, amazingly, arriving a good hour early in Posadas, at 5.30am.

Posadas is in the north east of Argentina, bordering Paraguay. Blurry eyed and blurry tongued, I staggered out and injected myself with caffeine before finding the bus for the border crossing. It was a typical South American border crossing - getting chucked off a bus that clearly has no intention of waiting for you, being pointed in the direction of at least 8 different windows and queues, being waved away by curt border staff. Anyway, after a bit of queueing and passport waving, I got my exit stamp and waited for the bus to take me to the promised land of Paraguay.

The contrast wasn't as severe as I had been expecting. I'd been expecting real poverty - kids begging, pavement-less unpaved roads, ramshackle stalls bordering the side of the streets. Yes, it was different, but not hugely so. There was even a Lloyds TSB in Encaracion. How nice of my favourite corporation to be greeting me in Paraguay. It was 8, and the sweat was already trickling behind my knees...

I took a bus to Trinidad - a UNESCO world heritage site - featuring haunting ruins from the Jesuit missions of a couple of centuries ago. I think by this stage, I was beginning to understand Paraguay a little bit. No signs, no infrastructure, just a red dirt road and there they were, the shells of these ancient churches and monastaries. Beautiful. Things took a turn for the worse at this stage. It began to rain. It began to more than rain. It began to be windy. It began to be more than windy. I was wandering around the ruins (inconveniently there are no roofs on these ruins), when the sky turned black, and the palm trees started doing tiptoes, and the rain came horizontally at me. And, smugly, I had packed light - i.e only one pair of trousers - my jeans, and they don't do so well in the rain. After sheltering with a couple of old dudes in hats and with spades, I made a charge for the entrance, got ridiculously soaked and then sheltered in the office where I made entertaining banter about Radiohead and Pink Floyd with the guy there, who wanted to be an international DJ. The rain continued to come and the sky continued to throw a tantrum, as the guy explained why he didn't like Argentina.

Eventually, shivering and dripping wet, with soggy cigarettes and sticky soggy 50,000 Guarani notes, I made my way to the bus stop, back to Encarnacion (and a terminal full of in your face vendors offering me watches, necklaces, batteries, coca-cola, bus tickets, empanadas) and then finally onto a bus headed for Asuncion, the capital. With massive relief, I took off half my clothes, and got changed and then fell into a shivery sleep, only occasionally glancing out of the window at the curious red earth that we passed through.

And now, I am here, Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, and possibly the most un-capital like capital I have ever been to. Cars and people crawl along under the palm trees, down narrow 2-laned roads. Yellow mercedes taxis pass by the bizarrely contrasting buildings - old school colonial facades that sit underneath stark white jutting communist-esque tv aerial firebomded ugly tower blocks. The river Parana sits at the edge of the city, a protest of around fifty people banging drums takes place alongside a mirrored bank that reflects a number of shanty tents alongside the river bank. Old men lie on park benches, underneath crumbling swimming pool coloured peeling fountains and bizarre green grey statues of dogs and old kings, queens and generals. An old lady with a green, red and yellow headress tries to sell me a little bag, she practically begs me when I refuse. People openly stare at me. There are just no tourists here, just me, and I stand out like a sore thumb. I buy cigarettes for 45 pence, a litre of beer for 60 pence, wander around sleepy and drunk at 3 in the afternoon. The Christmas lights are just going up, and bizarre renditions of Silent Night eminate from an art shop...eminate not into a snowy night, but a 35 degrees heat. It feels like I am back in South America. Not that Buenos Aires isn't South America, it's just that it's sort of like - home. Here has all the halmarks. People staring at me. Internet connections that barely work. An electric shower in my hotel that has 2 heat settings (freezing and boling), which I dip a toe under, then an armpit then run away before going back for another try. Toilets that don't have loo-roll in them. The people are friendly, chatty, curious. Why on earth am I here?

Well, I love it. This sleepy city, where the most happening thing at 11pm is to sit in a bookshop with a generous gin, with it's contrast of ancient and new, corrupt and clean, with armed guards patroling with machine guns, with overhead hum of electricty and insects mingling. I like it a lot, and I am glad I have come.

Well, sorry for the ramble. There's not much to do here, and that's why I like it. You can just sit, sit in the shade, sit under a palm tree and watch the Paraguayian world - slow, smiley, serene - go by.
Tomorrow, am off to Ciudad del Este on the Paraguyian, Brazilian, Argentinian border before spending a couple of days at Iguazu Falls, before returing to my temporary non-South American kind of home.

Confusion

2005-11-28T00:17:00.000Z

Sunday night, 9.17pm and I've been up about 3 hours after finally hitting the sack around 7.30am. To say my body clock is confused would be an understatement. That said, I am determined to be up early (well by noon) tomorrow to carry on with my novel, to start typing, editing, re-shaping. The heat is stifling, like a bed blanket you can't shake off, it clings to me, stops me breathing and makes me drip with sweat. The promise of December is of more. I expect that disembarking from the plane in January might be a strange experience (35 degrees to minus whatever in a matter of days...). I shall try not to think about that too much now.

I had a 24 hour slump of sadness. It came, like a storm, out of the blue, as it always does, rendering me powerless to do anything but let it consume me. I think, strangely, the George Best thing started it. I never saw him play, but there was something remarkable about the universal sadness, the spontaneous applauding at the matches, that struck me. I dunno. It's not that his life was a waste, it's more like the world has become a little darker, a little duller than it was before. Of course, that got me thinking sad things. That combined with the fact that my friends have left, and the lack of sufficient kip for two weeks, sent me down a bit. My mind drifted, as it usually tends to, to feelings of loss, of nostalgia, of endings, of loneliness, and I let the air conditioning hum away as I watched the TV on mute and smoked too many cigarettes. But, all's not bad, and I find myself tired now, but glowing. Like I've just stepped out of a long, warm bath.

I'm in the process of planning a trip, maybe in a week's time, for 5 days or a week. But the question is - Uruguay or Paraguay or Brazil. I'm attracted to Paraguay - no one goes there. It's the same kind of motivation I have not to read Harry Potter or Dan Brown, because everyone else does. I kind of fancy another slice of real South America, of dusty bumpy roads full of ropey old buses and ancient cadillacs, of kids selling stuff on the streets, of desolate towns full of old sleepy men. We'll see, eh? Another option are the beaches of Uruguay, full of beautiful people, hip bars and flashy hotels. Typically, the Paraguay option seems more enchanting to me. Either way, I'm heading to Iguazu falls, where upon a visit, Hoover (I think) commented "Poor Niagra", because they are so spectacular. That's the great thing about being here in South America. It's so easy just do something really major on whim, just decide one day to go to Paraguay and head off on a bus the same day. Cool, eh? Well, now I'm going to do something else on a whim. I am going to prostrate myself in front of my telly, I'm going to blast the Air con and, for the first time in weeks, I'm hopefully going to get a good and proper night's sleep.

What's going on

2005-11-24T17:45:00.000Z

Apologies for the silence, the result of two friends staying my apartment and all the ensuing fun & games. Andrew and Nik are both mates I met in Bolivia, both from London, and both likely to be friends for life. It's amazing that I had to go to Bolivia in order to meet people who literally live five minutes from my flat in London. I'm going through a bit of re-evaluation process of how I am going to live my life when I get back. There are some givens: I am going back to my job, I need to save money to pay for the year I have just had, and I'll spend time with my friends. However, there are some things that I have thought about. Things that will just have to change, and I'm excited about it. Here in Buenos Aires, I am meeting people literally every day. People in the street (the laundry woman, the bloke in the fruit stall, the old lady who sells amazing sausage sandwiches) wave at me when I walk past. I'm foreign, have been here a matter of weeks, yet already I feel a part of a community in a way that I've never felt in my street in London. Going out to bars is the same. You just sit there and, inevitably, by the end of the night you've met someone new. I don't know if it's because I am foreign, but it's incredible and at times really moving. In London, you just sit there, cocooned with your group of mates, doing the same old things. I love it in London, my friends especially, but I need to use my time differently. I am determined to work on my Spanish and get a language exchange partner. I am determined not to throw 50 quid down the drain on another night out in the same old bar. I am also determined to use my time to do things I like, to say no to things I don't, to even stay at home, to work on my writing. Anyway, we'll see how it all pans out.

The last two weeks have seen little writing, but lots of fun. The temperature is now around 35 degrees, I am considering shorts and t-shirt (but doubt I'll go that far), and the situation is made all the more strange by the fact that a huge Christmas tree has been put up on the main road. The backdrop isn't a black wintery sky. The foreground isn't heavy coated people in a rush. No, the backdrop is a blue sky with an eye watering sun and the foreground is a bunch of scantily clad beautiful girls. Yes, it's pretty surreal. We've found a load of great places to drink (the sort of bars that involve a cab ride, and a ring of a doorbell, followed by entry to a jaw-droppingly cool candlelit bar). I've been to my first Boca Juniors match (constant singing, chanting, arm waving, little kids and women bellowing the worst obscenities, jumping up and down for about fifteen minutes, cheerleaders, ridiculous diving and cheating, bottle throwing, hammering on the tables in the bar afterwards in celebration of victory, grown men hugging and kissing, Diego Maradona getting the whole stadium to sing, like some twsited orchestral conductor waving his shirt around his head and puffing on a fat cigar from his private box, ice cream and coke sellers somehow squeezing through and selling to a sweaty mass of people gathered on the terraces). Amazing, very different to a match in England, an experience (at 2 pounds a ticket) I'm going to repeat very soon. I've eaten some quite incredible steaks. The kind of steaks that they give you s blunter knife to cut with, because they're so tender. Yes, 2 weeks of all the finest things in life - great meat, great mates, great match, great mental parties (you think you've had a quiet night, and you check the time and it's 6am). Need to get back to work and routine soon I think.

I'm planning a trip in a week or so. I think I'll head to Uruguay and then up to Iguazu Falls (on the border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay). Soon it will be Christmas, and a BBQ on my roof terrace.

So all's great. Maybe that's because I know it will end. Maybe living here permanently would bring with it the usual onset of stress and boredom (I looked in the window of an estate agent - FOR SALE, 9 bedroom house, roof terrace, in San Telmo - 100,000 quid). One day...maybe? Who knows. But for now, one eye is on London and the chance to try and change things a bit there, to meet new people, to carry on my Spanish, to save money, to do things I really want to do.

I've also discovered a really good way of learning the lingo too. I met a girl who likes me...

Slowness

2005-11-16T18:50:00.000Z

It's hot now, hot in a sleep affecting, sweaty feet ensuing way. And I'm promised that it's going to get hotter and hotter until I take my leave of Buenos Aires in January. So I sit under my air-con and wait until the night, when it's possible to saunter around. Sauntering, a difficult way of moving, when you're used to the London way of doing things. Queuing as well. And waiting for a bill in a restaurant. But I can understand why life is slower here, it's not possible to move much faster.

The city is exploding with noise and colour. A near-daily protest takes to the streets, drums banging, traffic stumbling, leaflets wafting in the air. The trees have burst into life. In Plaza San Martin, fireworks of purple fizzle above the square, as people take shelter from the sun. On every corner of every street they're digging and drilling - roads, walls, pavements - you name it and it gets dug up in Buenos Aires, and the dull thud of work punctuates my sleep long before sleep has finished with me.

Last night a Porteña friend came out with us to the bar. She didn't know the way, and I took great pride in directing her this way and that, round the perpetual one way system, across mega 12 lane avenues and into narrow dusky calles (streets) that clash violently with the mini chrome canyons of the micro-centro. And as we drive, the city begins to empty of the employed and fill with a ragged collection of drunk tourists, seedy club managers, scavenging bin sifters and sad silent doorway sleepers. I still haven't got to the heart of what's going on here, I love the city, but there's something about it that seems to be desperately sad. An identity crisis perhaps, best exemplified by the all black converse trainer clan sipping their cocktails, whilst outside an industry of poverty and desperation stumbles into gear. Is this place rich, is it cool, is it arrogant, is it pretentious, is it desperate, is it beautiful, is it ugly, is it pleasant, is it seedy? It's all of these things. Like any other city, I suppose, with divides and contrasts and haves and have nots but cloaked in a special kind of sadness. A full moon sadness, the sadness of tango floating with the clouds, of people too proud to admit they're not perfect, of old men reading yesterday's headlines alone into the early hours. 20% of people here classify themselves as "unhappy", or so I read.

I guess that's why I like it. London, for me, is a city to lose yourself in. Your sadness can be washed away in the dirty puddles and lost in a sea of faces on the tube. Your wealth can sparkle amongst the glassy buildings. Your happiness can become one with the cool bars and great parties. But here, in Buenos Aires, you can't help but feel at one with the city, that it has a special personality all of its own. A yearning for change, for transformation, for acceptance. Duende (in Spanish) or Saudade (in Portugese) are good words that sum it up - the people, the place. There's no good English translation - something that encompasses nostalgia, melancholia, homesickness, yearning, lacking something. Good words none the less.

Anyway, I am well. Work has kind of grinded to a halt. Friends staying have seen to that and, guiltily, I have resigned myself to a week without my pen and my computer. But I did take a sneaky peek (at random) at some of the words that I have written. And I was relieved. I was expecting something absymal, but it was all right. It was all right.

And what else. One of my best friends called me today too, from home. And that was really great and very much appreciated. Okay, it's 4.11pm. I am getting out of the habit of eating, and smoking instead. Not really a good plan, so I might try and go and fill that gap. That's easy and cheap to do. The gap in the heart of this city. That's not that easy to fill, I don't think.

And now I will close my eyes

2005-11-13T21:01:00.000Z

It's Sunday, 6pm, and the sky out of this window is mercifully grey, with dabs of white and ash like birds hanging over the big apartment blocks overhead. All's well, really well, and time is rushing by in the way that it always seems to nowadays. I have to think and count the weeks I have been here. It seems like no time and forever all at once. Time definitely didn't used to do this when I was young.

On Friday, I finished. The book that is, well the handwritten, million changes need doing first draft. I tried to write and tell you on Friday. I was gripped by one of my melancholic hazes, and the colour of all the buildings and sky was sepia, and I'd bashed out a moany old entry about the various woes of my existence, the things I lack in life, the dull ache of existence, how I can't cope with 30 years more of feeling like this. And, now, I feel different, and I feel glad that the computer crashed and erased my melancholic meanderings. I don't feel overjoyed or delrious, or anything, I just don't feel desperate and I'm really delighted to have got through this 1st draft. I think it's about 120,000 words long, I got to know the characters as I wrote, I was surprised by what happened, there were days when I sat there and said "YES". I hope I feel the same when, on Monday, I read the whole thing for the first time. I hope I feel the same when I start the laborious process of re-writing and typing. But now, I can say that I am glad that I've done what I set out to do at the beginning of 2005. I've travelled, I've written. I still need to find love and a way out of the pits of melancholia I seem to hurl myself into. But I still have November and I still have December, so you never know.

So, what else. A friend that I met in Bolivia has shown up penniless in Buenos Aires, and is currently residing on my floor. It's fine, he's a mate and I am glad I can help, but I've been getting a bit used to the privacy and the routine that keeps me alive and sane. Still, touchwood, he'll be in gainful employment soon. Last night was Creamfields (dance festival with Prodigy and others). Not exactly my cuppa tea, and not exactly a highlight of my time here, as I managed to lose my friends and subsequently spent the rest of the evening wandering around like a lost sheep. Still, it did give me a buzz of excitment about my job, and that returning to London (though strange, cold, expensive and not here) has a big silver lining. Work that I love, people that I love working with, friends that I want to see. I am expecting things to change. I wrote once that this year hasn't been life-changing. Maybe now, it isn't. Maybe by the end of 2006 I will be able to say that it has been. The way I approach existing and the other human beings I co-exist with.

And, of course, 3-2. All good stuff, and plenty of harmless banter with the locals to boot...

I think they're closing here now. Tonight I might try Manolo's (apparently the cheapest parilla in town), sleep off yesterday, before the reading and notetaking starts tomorrow.

Oh yeah, and I've got a title too. My book is going to be called And now I will close my eyes. I quite like it a lot.
Okay, chau, hasta luego (until later) y escribame (write to me).

They've got brains

2005-11-07T20:43:00.000Z

In my local supermarket - Coto. I was sniffing around for a good lump of steak and there they were, pale pink, squidgy and brain like. Aside from the queues that never end & the impossibility to obtain change from a 100 Peso note it was nice of the supermarket to provide me with a reminder that I am a long way from home.

Keane's on. The band that is. They do like all this crap out here. Duran Duran and Simple Minds are playing in December as well. I've got to write a piece in Spanish for my teacher about music, and what I like. If my Spanish was good enough, I would definitely deliver a lecture on the comparative merits of Kid A and OK Computer plus a detailed analysis of Dylan's 60's trilogy. As my Spanish is not really at that standard, I expect I'll end up writing "me gusta Radiohead y no me gusta Coldplay. Para me, Coldplay es Radiohead para chicas." Or something like that. It was nice to see Keane applauding Fletcher yesterday. That's Darren, probably the greatest midfielder in Europe. Yes that was good, but I sort of felt it's all a bit papering over the cracks like. We'll see, anyway.

Writing continues to go well, though quite often it feels like I'm making really great process on a boat rowing down a river in the bottom of a ravine. I'm not sure if I'm going to end up in a beautiful lake or topple over a waterfall into some perilous rocks. In the meantime, I just keep writing. Four days, and I hope to be done with the first draft, and then it's the weekend - friends from earlier in the year arriving, Argentina vs England in the football and Creamfields Festival (not sure how much I'm gonna like that one).

Let me tell you a bit about San Telmo, where I live. I'm really glad I live here, as opposed to Palermo or Recoleta. The latter 2 barrios feel a little bit too "try hard". People dress to impress, girls look down and into the air, and streets are lined with Western shops and services. Don't get me wrong, it's good fun there, great for a night out. But there's something about San Telmo that I like. It might be the old cobbled streets and crumbling old buildings; the arty graffiti on the walls (anti Bush, pro Diego, sloganeering, pictures); it might be the cheap and cheerful restaurants with ancient whirring fans giant on polystyrene roofs; it might be the bars that play the Rolling Stones and are full of people leaning and chatting and laughing; it might be the kids that play on the street; or the whiff of history that blows in from La Boca, from the place where this place started one day; it might be my little shaded place and my desk and the couch where I read and the tunes I can listen to all the time; I don't know...it might be that not all the people wear black clothes and have mullets; it might be that old bloke at the Kiosk who's probably been sat there since 1956. I don't know what it might be, maybe it's just home. Or maybe it's just the brains...

I predicted a riot

2005-11-05T18:13:00.000Z

Well, the writing was on the wall, so to speak. George Bush in the country for the Summit of the Americas, and the Argentinian people are disgruntled with their economic situation of the country as it is. Result - trashed McDonalds, banks, the odd molotov cocktail and street fires. Most of the action took place in Mar del Plata (about 5 hours south of here), but you could sense it during the day in Buenos Aires. That's when I predicted a riot. The subway was rammed full of banner toting, chanting "Fuere Bush" t-shirt wearers, and I had a sense that something was going to happen. Some friends had decided to take the day off work, to avoid getting caught up in the action. I didn't get directly involved, aside from the crowds choking the subway, and the slow train of marchers heading up from Plaza Consticion to the centre, I caught most of it on tv, watching with the sound low as sirens wailed through my window off in the distance somewhere. When I left the flat about 10.30pm, there was little to see, just hundreds of anti-Bush fliers flitting in the breeze and clinging to the sticky streets. Later, in a bar, my local friends just smiled, raised their eyebrows and do what people in Buenos Aires do best - smoke, drink and shrug their shoulders. People are frustrated and angry here. Most of them take it calmly, I guess some (particularly those that make up the 50% of the population that lives under the poverty line - don't).

So, that was interesting. They love a riot in South America, or a march. I've seen a few - tear gas in Bogota and riot shields, blockades in Bolivia, and I'm going to see Boca Juniors vs Velez on 20th November. Guess I might see another one then. Speaking of football, it's brilliant watching the Premiership on Argentinian telly. Not only do they sing whenever there's a goal (when Henry scored today it was to All you need is love by the Beatles), but they have great nicknames for all the players, including Baby Rooney, Ronaldito (Cristiano Ronaldo, means little Ronaldo), Frankie (Frank Lampard), Jar-Jar Binks (Ronaldinho), Ben Stiller (Darren Huckerby), Lucy Liu (some player from Lille), El Musketeer (Robert Pires) and, if they can't come up with a nickname they go for the tried and tested racist approach (i.e el Negro Campbell, el Koreano Park, el Turco, el Chino etc etc). It's all good entertainment.

What else. They're obsessed with Fix You by Coldplay and that song by Green Day here. It's annoying. Oh yeah, I'm doing Spanish classes now, and upon meeting my 8 year old neighours yesterday, I was humiliated by the infinitely superior English to my Spanish. Oh yeah, and this ugly old couple are snogging next to me now. It's making me twitch. So I'm going to go and do some writing. Yes, byeseebye.

La vida nocturna

2005-11-02T18:37:00.000Z

It's been a great few days, as my number of friends seems to have multiplied since the weekend. With them, comes a social life, and fully embracing the fact that they don't do things like they do back home. Especially at night. I have to restrain myself from eating before 10pm. It's just not done here, as exemplified by the queues outside my favourite restaurant El Desnivel at 11pm. It's a great place, knife wielding blood stained Joe Pesci-esque waiters and the hugest slabs of cows hanging over a gargantuan barbeque. I also have to restrain myself from not getting to the pub before 11pm, time for bed usually. And, when I'm there, and this is a lesson I am painfully and slowly learning, I mustn't drink the drinks at the same speed I do in England. And, finally, at about 3am, you either go to a club, or you drink an espresso before heading home and starting at the ceiling, knowing that a good 49.6% of the day will be lost tomorrow. At night, when walking home (and this is around 2 or 3am) all the cafes are still open and pretty full, and the main thoroughfare throngs (9 de Julio, the one with 16 lanes and a big Obolisk in the middle) with taxis and an army of bin sifters, searching I guess for glass and cardboard that they can sell to the recycling people. Meanwhile, the more monied sit and watch, uneasily I am not sure. So it's a lot different here. The festival with the Strokes and Kings of Leon was cool, but as it was an under 18s event too, there was no alcohol. I found myself twitching slightly at the prospect and the sensation increased as a bloke behind me insisted on sing along (word perfect, but with a very very heavy Argentinian accent) to ever song. I gave up finally, went to the back of the crowd and danced to the last few songs. I did notice that the lead singer chappy - Julian - cannot (a) remember his words and (b) sing them in tune. Nonetheless it was fun, and the Prodigy are playing a week on Saturday too. Andy Warhol's at the museum, and I've discovered a bunch of people who have good books, so I can swap with them.

And, I'm still writing, getting nearer and nearer the end. Getting excited about the end too. I kind of know how it ends, but not exactly how, if you know what I mean. Well I have nothing more to say. Tonight I am going to eat bacon (yes I found some) with Heinz Ketchup (yes I found some) and chill a bit, and watch my absysmal excuse for a football team depress me further...

With no alarms and no surprises.

2005-10-28T19:54:00.000+01:00

Well, on conclusion, yesterday was one of the most useless days of my life. Once more, I fell foul of the liberal measures they pour in bars here and the even more liberal opening hours. A few gins, some good chit-chat, and suddenly it's gone 3 and I'm attempting to walk in a straight line right down the middle of the pavement, conducting my own police test on myself. All rather amusing, until I woke yesterday unable to move, think or do anything of value. So, I didn't, and spent the day in the confines of my flat eating re-heated spag bol and having a staring match with my pad that I write my novel on. It won, I retreated and flicked through the TV channels and lay there hoping the day would end. I'd have felt bad if that had happened back home, but I felt worse here, as if a day wasted in Buenos Aires is somehow a more precious thing than a London day? I concluded that was the wrong attitude and that days are as unprecious or precious wherever they're spent. My next project is to attempt to ascertain just how precious or unprecious days are, or should be. There was one good thing. Amazing, for me at least. I listened to OK Computer (for what I calculate to be between the 250th and 350th time), and I noticed the bass line in No Surprises. I'd never noticed it before, it was like seeing someone you see every day and realising you love them.

Today's been good. I woke with a clear head, I did some scrubbing in my flat, I wrote well, and later I'm off to see the Strokes and Kings of Leon.

I know I'm hardly in a position to talk, being a resident here for a mere two weeks, but... why is it that things like supermarkets and catching buses intrigue and excite me so at the moment? It as if the great moments here occur in finding normality and routine, moments where I can relax my shoulders. At home, it's the opposite. Moments of boring normality need to be avoided, outwitted, conquered, superceded. Maybe I need to embrace the glib more. I like that word. Always I'm trying to attach poetry to these glib things. I might stop. In front of me is my notebook, an ashtray with a half a smoked cigarette, a clunky old PC, a set of headphones and, outside, buses stream past, ordinary old buses carrying ordinary old people off to their ordinary homes, jobs and the other ordinary people they spend their lives with.

100 down

2005-10-25T20:24:00.000+01:00

Just finished my 100th chapter, my 3rd pad's nearly run out, so I'm just having a breather from it, round the corner at one of the several thousand internet cafes that lie a block or so from my flat. It's nearly there, kind of within touching distance of me finishing it and I'm nervous about when that moment will come. Never having written a book before, I don't know whether what I'm doing is right, but the plan is to sit down and write the whole thing again (albeit this time on a computer not with old fashioned pen and paper). What I find weirdest and almost repugnant is that when I look back at things I wrote a few months back - things that I thought were good - I find myself disliking them, as if I'm hearing my own voice. What worries me, I guess, is that I'll never reach a place of being satisfied with it, or maybe anything I do. Maybe that's not a bad thing, I don't know anyway.

I'm in a lull at the moment. Not much going on, and I'm having to generate my own energy to do things, like get up. This is so different to travelling, with its lure of new places to go to; the task of planning a trip, booking a ticket; the daily bombardment of new people (interesting and annoying) yaddda yaddda yadda. Being proactive is different, harder. Sometimes I can't be bothered. I both crave and dislike company. Ditto, being alone. Maybe if I clone myself, I'd be happier. Doubt it. No, I'm not miserable - but this experience is strange - it's like being alone in London with a handful of friends (some of whom you've only met once, others of whom are so busy working that it's hard to see, most of whom don't speak much of your language). All rather strange.

Well, that's mostly it. I went to my first Asado on Sunday - got a real glimpse into non-tourist front Buenos Aires. A district called Vicente Lopez that tourists don't go, a table full of hand-waving Argentinians talking about politics (an important election took place on Sunday, which meant you couldn't get a beer after 11.30pm on Saturday), more meat than the Clapham Grand on a Saturday night, a drive back past banks of Villas (not the nice holiday homes, but BA's shanty towns, the things the tourist doesn't get to see) and ecstatic Argentinians waxing lyrical about their visits to London (Cobent garhen, Leester Skweer etc). A good experience, and hopefully one I can repeat soon.

My tummy's rumbling now, I aint eaten since brekkie...I'll see you later.

Friday afternoon

2005-10-21T20:16:00.000+01:00

Life is well and truly settled, and for an obsessive-compulsive such as myself that's a relief. I'm managing to synchronise my own to-ings and fro-ings with the rhythm of a city that gets up late, eats out late, drinks late, stays out late. It works for me pretty well. Outside, it's too hot to walk at the moment and the stifling heat is only confounded by the cacophony of workman drilling and dust wafting between lanes of black spewing traffic. To counter this I smoke, and I stay sheltered in my apartment and sticking my face in front of the air-con. Work is progressing still. Sometimes I write until my arm falls off; other times I sit there, have a quickie (game of minesweeper), walk around, smoke, listen to music and sit back at my desk where I extract words as if they were bugs in a dirty kid's hair. Socially things are happening slowly, and what time isn't spent looking plaintively out of cafe windows is spent in the company of new friends - a mixture of curious locals (Carlos, Ines), intense foreign traveller types (Ulrike) and a tip of the iceberg peak at the extensive network of ex-pats here (Charlie and Stephanie, 50 something Aussies who were sick of life Down Under and moved across here; an Iranian bloke who I can't figure out, but he got kicked out of Brazil; plus the requisite Yanks, including a psycho-therapist who I decided not to bare my soul to). I'm looking forward to making some indents into the lives of more locals - but it's hard, like London I guess. Still, I've got a few japes planned this weekend, including my first invite to a family Asado (basically a big Sunday gathering of a whole family that involves a BBQ of lots of meat), which I'm excited about. On the downside, despite my considerable efforts, the blokey in the Kiosk down the street says "Thankyou" when I order something in my best Spanish. It's not there yet, but I've got classes coming. It will get there, I guess. I hope.

Right now, I am on the corner of Defensa street and Avenue Brasil - five blocks from my flat, right on the corner near the park that marks the original foundation of the city of Buenos Aires. It's only a stones throw from La Boca, where you're not supposed to go, but it feels safe, comfortable here. It feels a bit like Hackney I guess.

So I was sitting at Plaza Dorrego yesterday, having my afternoon Quilmes (staple Argie beer) and wrote this. Have a good weekend...

He's sat in the square. There's a couple sat at the adjacent table. They don't look like they're from around here. They're American, he guesses. He drinks and smokes in a way that he hopes won't give it away. That he's not from round here either. To his left, an impossibly cute girl sits on the steps with a pink backpack on. She smiles and laughs at the pigeons as they cluster around her, pecking at the bird food that you can buy in that little stall. I don't suppose she realises that pigeons are disgusting vermin, he thinks to himself, whilst blowing his smoke into the sky. I don't suppose she realises that I'm writing about her, he thinks too.

I see him from across the square. I'm alone writing. I guess I could go over and say hello. I finish off my beer, smoke another Malboro. I must give up soon, maybe next year. I get up to leave and fold everything away. I go home. I suppose I should call someone.

My Buenos Aires

2005-10-18T18:51:00.000+01:00

Been here a week, and wondering if the city has started to get to know me yet? Whether it's sussed me out to be the Englishman that I am, or whether I carry off the porteño thing well enough.

Just started to develop a social life to complement my solitude life. The latter I enjoy (especially in the days), got a coffee maker at home so usually get up around 10 and stretch breakfast over a couple of hours of reading, smoking and multiple caffeine hits. My current reading is Raymond Carver - his complete short stories. He might just be the greatest writer I have ever read. On the back of the book Salman Rushdie says "go out and read everything Carver has written". I'm doing my best. A backdrop to my mornings is provided by my Ipod and freshly acquired speakers that give it a bit of oompf. Dylan (current fave Positively 4th street) and Radiohead (I want none of this is the new song on the War Child album) dominate proceedings of course. Around 12 or 1 I try and do writing...that phase lasts anywhere between 30 minutes to 2 or 3 hours, depending on whether it comes or not. Sometimes it's like staring at a painting you just can't get in a gallery. Sometimes it's easy. I try and write at least 1000 words a day, and my first draft is now touching on 80,000 words and near to the end. With any luck I'll have a draft finished in about three weeks, and then it's time to rewrite on the computer...and to do what I haven't done yet, read the thing in its entirity. That fills me with dread, but also a sliver of excitement that it might actually be okay. So that's my day of solitude, nights are harder. I guess they're always harder to be alone in. At least days end...they become nights. Nights rarely end.

But, things are looking up. Thanks to me whoring myself on a couple of travel and ex-pat forums, I've got a few chums to see. I've never done this or needed to do this before. Meeting random people in random places in a random city feeling quite random about the whole thing. Perhaps online dating will be the next stop on my return to London, though the thought of that makes me ill.

What else? Well, bits and bobs. The fun of putting together a city. Adding this street to that one, seeing how it all joins up. Some Spanish lessons up and coming, and the Strokes and Kings of Leon a week on Friday.

I like my nightime walks. Last night I walked from where I went out (Palermo) all the way home (San Telmo). I tried to write a poem about it this morning and got bored and played minesweeper again. But here are some words and, for now, farewell until I write again...

My Buenos Aires, do you know me yet? I ask on my long walk home. It's 1am and my feet do not yet ache. Yet surely they will. Still, I will see this through.

The sky is empty, except for the moon, and the buildings reach up in vain, like little children and kitchen cupboards. I keep a close eye on them, the glass hotels full of sofas, the dim garages full of silver cars, and I am watched too - by janitors that clutch at bars like monkeys and policemen that guard corners with radios and cigarettes and the hawk eyed cats that come out of their dungeons with fistfuls of plastic cards. Gradually, the polished streets and the graceful parks give way to my Buenos Aires. I share it with old ladies on late night walks with their dogs and the silent ones that lie crowded in doorways beneath the glow of the theatres and the Obolisk. This is my Buenos Aires, of cracked pavements, of shabby fond playgrounds, of men sweeping in slowmotion, of two dogs asleep in the middle of the pavement. Of non-stop cars, of half deserted cafes, of the people staring out, of neither rich nor poor but something in between, something combined, something as yet undefined.

My feet ache now. They ache a lot. I decide to write this stuff down, but I fall asleep before I start.

My walk last night

2005-10-14T01:01:00.000+01:00

Wandering the streets alone, whilst Uruguay play Argentina, with cafes and kioskos full of men old or nearly old in blue caps with litre bottles of beer, gazing as if to heaven, the televisions hoisted in the corners full of hope for this evening at least. Girls in packs of twos and threes they make eye contact and withdraw it as hurriedly as they offered their glances. Vendors outside their kiosks, unpegging the day's magazines. Buy some smokes through a hole in a metal grill and some bum sees my change and asks me for cash. Makeshift kids hang off makeshift lampost climbing frames and shout down at me. I shake my head and walk away down the chipped paving stones, glorious perhaps in Borges' day. Was everything better here before, I wonder. Workmen working late on the sidewalks, as shop girls crouch and clamber out of dark shops, next door a 24 hour place with beers and men lined up at the bar, equals. Theatre lights neon over orange policeman smiling waiting at a street's edge watching a camera crew fiddle with the machine and stick down a tattered old red carpet. We (me that is, and one other bloke on the pavement) stop and look. He in Spanish, me in English. My feet are tired now, and I look for something, something anywhere...in faces of the people, in open shop doorways with shelves stacked full of books on both sides, at a befuddling mass of pink plastic magazines, on road signs, in street lights, flickered long since, bright now since the sun has dipped and the traffic dawdles on eight laned boulevards, once grandly lined with trees, now lined by sad facsimilies of former trees. Obolisk glowing white over the thinning traffic, people at home, in bars, with families, I keep thinking of Wordsworth or is it Keats or is it Richard Ashcroft. I also need a wee badly, and I am hungry. I hurry back, 20 blocks at least, good for carbs or abs or something ending in bs is this walking. Occasional people pass with dogs. Occasionally they greet each other, and ignore me. Does that mean that I look like one of them, Argentinian that is. Or, do they just ignore English people. I don't know. Traffic lights taking an eternity to shift, a girl sits in a doorway with an A4 pad and earphones in, as others gather outside a college and smoke at each other. The city's roar subsides, now the city hums. Down the shadow that is my street, an old beard in a roadside bin. Rubbish bins lined up, like in a parade. I pick at my teeth, the fat drips off my cheap burger onto the carboard onto my hands onto the floor via my shirt. I am home now. It is late, and I am going to go to sleep. Nighty night.

Walking the streets

2005-10-13T00:53:00.000+01:00

Forgive me the stream of consciousness, wasn't planning to write, but then I passed this place on my left as I headed out for a stroll. The lights were on, and it looked kind of inviting in a strange internet-cafe type way. As a result, I have nothing planned to say, except that yes, I am here - back in Buenos Aires, here for another three months. A week ago, I was in Derby, sitting in Clive's front room, drinking Stella I believe, watching Jerry Maquire, listening to Howl by the Black Rebel Motor Cycle Club. And here, several thousand miles away, I feel a world away.

I am safely ensconsed in my flat - a cool split level place, my handful of clothes and books don't do much to dent the space that I have, and I've found myself twiddling my thumbs - waiting for a bed to be delivered, discussing a contract that I don't understand with Diego my landlord, flicking through TV channels in a jet lagged fatigue. Nothing too exciting to report. It feels different to before. The language, which I had wrongly assumed I'd gotten on top of, now seems faster and more obscure than it ever had been in the first place. The streets seem more cluttered, full of potential menace with orange garbed coppers and haphazard traffic distracting my senses. Maybe it's because I am alone - no fellow backpackers to talk nonsense with, or to sit in bars or share meals with. It's a different experience - living alone in an strange place - and one that it's a little early to judge how it's going.

Then there's my writing...like anyone who's ever tried to write, it's the blank page that haunts me and I find myself trying to haul the nightime in, kill the minutes. My flat is all set up for writing - coffee and wine aplenty, ashtrays and half finished packets of cigarretes, books and papers stacked, Dylan on the wall and on the stereo, yet, as always I procrastinate. I veer between telling myself that I can't write, and what I do write is crap; and then minutes later, that I am the next Kundera or Carver. The glass isn't usually half empty with me - it's either full or empty - maybe that's my problem. I keep thinking that the next 3 months somehow holds the key to the rest of my life - that at the end of it I would have discovered or achieved or realised or maybe forgotten something, and that I will look back at it and refer to it as pivotal. Yeah, whatever.

Outside it's hot, and the bars and streets are expectant with the imminent Uruguay-Argentina football match. Meanwhile I'm going to walk - up and down these streets that seem familiar, yet strange at the same time.

Oh, admin notice - I have a phone! It's 00 54 11 4361 1062, if you ever get the urge to call me (we're 4 hours behind currently). I have an address too. But I won't tell you that yet. That's because I don't know the postcode. But I'll put that here as soon as I get it...y'know in case you want to write, send presents, visit etc

Last Derby days

2005-10-03T15:31:00.000+01:00

Well, after a 4 month break, I find myself back here on blogger.com, counting down the days as I usually do - days until Christmas, days until Greenbelt, days until I go home and, in this case, the days until I go away again - back to Buenos Aires. I am not sure whether I'll write as much as I did before. The first time, when I travelled up and down South America, from Argentina to Columbia and back, I used the blog as a kind of substitute camera - words instead of pictures. Next time, though, and the plan is stay fairly put - I have a flat lined up in Buenos Aires (nice sounding - roof terrace, swimming pool, cable TV etc) and I am planning on spending as much of the three months as I can writing, and wrenching a completed first draft of a novel out of the experience. Well, I'll try, though I don't want to set myself up for failure.

So, a week today, and I'll be getting ready for Heathrow, the curious joy I feel when I am in a public transport hub will no doubt return, as will a healthy dose of the FEAR - being away for my first Christmas, the prospect of some isolation out there. Sure I'll be fine.

Here in Derby, the trees are still manfully clinging on to their summer colours, but the sunshine has given up the ghost and the sky is white like a nuclear winter. I can't say much about Derby, except that I have had a great time - read more books than I've done in my entire life, written virutally every day (book now stands at around 70,000 words), recorded an EP with my associates in dfg (see www.thedfgcorporation.co.uk), spent time with my best chum Clive, had a great and relaxing Greenbelt no working experience, approached and passed the dreaded 30 in relatively smooth fashion and generally had the best Summer I have had for around about 10 years. A weird experience for me, the season that I normally associate with long hours and stress has been as relaxing as it could get.

But, all things come to an end. Autumn is sweeping in, so I'm about to jump ship - back to Buenos Aires, the emerging Summer, the odd semi-acquaintance, space to myself, time to think and write and maybe have the odd adventure. Should be a good experience.

Hope so, hasta pronto amigos!

and in the end

2005-06-19T21:39:00.000+01:00

the love that you take is equal to the love that you make. Not sure what that has to do with anything, but I like Abbey Road and I'm in a thinking about the end and about love and lots of other things. It's my last full day here in South America, a woman is bellowing her ciaos in a phone kiosk behind me, my head is under attack from a self-induced hangover of epic proportions, I just saw a feisty middle-aged woman smack her hubby as I sat and watched a crowd of locals and tourists browse the Sunday San Telmo market - vintage pin badges, tango dancers, old pocket watches, gramophones, a hot chocolate, leather jackets, a bloke selling George Bush loo roll, breath in the autumn air, clunk of footsteps on cobble, orange glow cafes full to bursting. Yesterday I told myself and people in the hostel that I wasn't sad to be leaving. I said that because I was returning there was no need for sadness, but today I am awash with it. I love this place - the sites, looks, smells, streets, music, sadness, seriousness, smoking, dark eyes, blue and white flags, plazas and parks, antique shops and second hand clothes shops, the new White Stripes CD for a fiver, strong coffee with a free plate of mini-biscuits and a glass of fizzy water, steaks as fat as Jose Mourinho's ego, speaking of egos - confident, arrogant, flawed, longing, melancholic, arty people, black clad hip types in sunglasses standing around in nightclubs, gin tonics with three quarters of a glass of gin, a man being pulled around a park by his handsfree cigarette, another woman being dragged along by a gaggle of kids in designer Stoke Newington garb, yet another being dragged along by 5,6,7 dogs, the philosophy in spanish section of a bookshop in the centre of town that has been converted from an old theatre and a brief daydream about a girl there, racks of designer clothers and young designers with mullets and severe fringes and stripey tops reclining on pool tables with cigarettes, metal chairs on the metro with a packet of stickers on my lap that were placed there by an unemployed sad person doing my best to avoid my guilt conscience by trying to eye up a pretty girl or seventeen that are in the same carriage, 1,2,3 no 16 lanes of yellow topped black cabs in a race across 9 de Julio and I run for it doesn't make much difference they don't seem to observe lights or human beings, water seeping into my shoe tips, a man on the corner of San Juan with a blue beret and a leather coat and a fashion cigarrette hanging, emerging from Callao tube stop as if it's Paris all blue sky and trees and lanterns hanging, rows of tables slabs of meat bottles of red wine stacked, a mother with a two year old in one hand and a cigarette in the other, people chatting on their mobile phones holding the mouthpiece like a walky talky to speak and then putting it to their ear to listen, health conscience don't want cancer I guess, older men like Italian football managers, Jorge Luis Borges graffiti and poetry labyrinths and more than I can take in.

So, it's good here - vibrant, full of music, colour, emotion...the people sing as they speak...they speak differently to everyone else here in South America - pollo (chicken) is pronounced poschzo rather than poyo...it's like Europe in South America. Start and finish of my trip and my favourite place. But now it's time to leave, and I am not sure that I will write anymore - after all my next destinations are Croydon and Derby.

But we'll see, despite bathing in a mud volcano, seeing my reflection in the cloudy salt flats of Bolivia, hanging out with hip-hop crew coke dealers, seeing a million stars in Lake Titicaca, sampling a crazy LSD potion in the Amazon jungle, watching condors soar over my head, driving up and down the Andes, sandboarding on the dunes, seeing the ancient brilliance of Machu Picchu, eating KFC in Miraflores whilst listening to Knives Out, staying in huts, 5 star hotels and squeaky bed dorms, pushing a bus out of the mud at midnight, being nearly killed by cabbies in Columbia and Bolivia, being hassled by bizarre obsessive South American girls, ending up in brothels, waking in a valium haze at some random dusty town in the middle of nowhere, being followed around city centres by large and disturbing men, seeing penguins, sea lions and eating lots of fried eggs, being in a markets with every penis extension tablet, llama foetuses, wriggly bugs, delicacies made out of tree barks, the odd kitchen sink and a dead turtle, being hassled by shoe shine boys, seven year old cigarette sellers at 2am in a La Paz bar, little girls with a hand full of finger puppets, desperados on buses selling potions and their life stories, sitting around in countless bus terminals and on buses next to some of the smelliest, fattest, bizarrely attired-ist, friendliest, coolest, most beautiful, most annoying people ever, having at least 30 cold showers and one severe stomach upset, getting altitude sickness and nearly killing myself climbing the streets of La Paz and Cusco, writing a million and one sad poems, listening to a million and two sad songs, worrying myself sick about my money, my book, my friends, my future, being 30 soon, sharing a bed with six on a beach on Isla del Sol, dancing in a bizarre woolly poncho hat combo with a bunch of native indians on some strange island, having twenty seven thousand conversations about where I am from, where I have been, where I am going and what do I think of George W Bush...well despite all these japes, adventures, coffees, cafes, conversations, thoughts, things...I have learnt, well, kind of not much new. People are the same wherever I think...yeah money and things make a difference, but at the end of the day we are all the same - we all want the same things, need the same things, we just go about it differently. And, for me, importantly, I think I am the same as I left. Maybe a bit more confident, able to hold my own more with strange people. Maybe a bit richer, having made some amazing new friends and learnt about people from other parts of the world and other walks of life. Maybe a bit hairier. Maybe a bit smellier and a bit clothes-holier. It hasn't changed my life, maybe though it will one day in the future. Perhaps it won't. Who knows, and now, who cares?

Tomorrow, at 5.30 I'll be on the plane to Paris and this bit will be behind me. I am excited about seeing friends. I am excited about my sister's wedding. About writing. About dfg stuff over the summer. About the future. I am worried about my money situation. About writing, can I do it. About the future. About love, a lot.

About whether Radiohead's new album will be any good or not, and whether Utd can get their trophies back.

So, maybe I will write some more. Maybe I won't. Thanks for reading...loved having yr company for 5 months, those that have read silently, those that have said hi, those that write my emails. It has meant loads hearing from you and being with you for 5 months. Now I am going to go and do what I do the most here and at home - sit, think, dream...maybe with a cigarette, maybe a coffee, definitely a big slab of cow, hopefully someone too to share my last night with.

Adios y hasta Martes! Gracias amigos!

Autumn in Buenos Aires

2005-06-13T22:19:00.000+01:00

Back here again, just yards from where I wrote my first post from South America. I've just been sat in a cafe on Plaza Dorrego, in San Telmo, watching through the window, watching myself 5 months ago. Then, the sun was shining and I sat amongst the pigeons and drunk a beer and bought a Big Issue type magazine of a blokey there and then completely failed to understand a single word. Now, I look out of the window and see a paler version of myself, nervous and excited all at once, uncreased Lonely Planet guidebook open at the Buenos Aires page, my small rucksack manacled to my legs, my moneybelt fastened to my waist. How things change, I think. How things don't change.

Since then, winter has been and gone in England and summer has been and gone in Argentina. It's 6.30pm and the sun has dipped. Porteñas still glide by, wrapped this time in black overcoats rather than skimpy denim. A pile of Quilmes beer chairs are stacked in the centre of the Plaza, rather than surrounding full tables of boistrous laughing tourists. In the hostel, the friendly owners no longer need to speak in a slow deliberate Spanish or a faltering English, and we understand each other a little better. I stand on the balcony where I spent my first week lounging on a hammock, turning a generous shade of red...this time I wrap myself from the cold. But some things don't change, I think. The melancholic tango floats around the cafe, soundtracking the 1920s. The coffee still small and strong like in Italy. The girls still amazingly beautiful, the city still alluring and seductive. And, me. Not sure if I have changed. I am definitely more confident than I was 5 months ago - but maybe that's because I know 17 words in Spanish now. Maybe it's because I have come through (touchwood) adventures in 6 countries completely unscathed. Maybe it's because I have met more new people in 5 months than I normally would do in 5 years. Not sure, guess time will tell - but I am not sure that travelling here has cast a beacon of discovery on myself, rather a shadow of uncertainty, of questioning, of yearning. (All in a good way, mind)...

Being back here is brilliant in all the ways being back in Lima wasn't. I loved the people in the hostel in Lima - friendly and warm. I liked sitting in the cafes and walking round a corner without having to refer to my Lonely Planet map. I liked the comfort of the familiar. But here feels like a surrogate home in a way Lima with it's pan pipe toting youngsters and glitzy neon casinos and a smog of an ocean never could. Not sure why, I've just taken to Buenos Aires, I love it...

So now. A week here, and hopefully the foundation of some plans for the Autumn (UK, Spring here I guess) and some fruitful writing. The shape of my book is forming nicely in my head, and I am excited about the challenge of writing. I am excited too about the future, knowing that the world is, well not quite my oyster, but possibly my shrimp.

On returning

2005-06-10T18:38:00.000+01:00

There's nothing that wasn't sad about entering Lima in the morning after a long bus journey. The sky masked by the grey in between, the ground silked by morning drizzle and billboards gigantically sadly contrast with the littleness of the people below - people shuffling over yellow concrete and metal footbridges and men in orange overalls sweeping around traffic cones like footballers training. Two lorries stalled and stuffed with old cardboard, for recycling I guess. Half finished or half destroyed roofless windowless houses with washing hanging, limp and without prospect of drying. TEKNO. Red brick blue signs, vota idiota. Bollards and concrete barriers and patches of grass with people sat around under graffitied slogans. Garages and toilet shops and cheap hotels with aerials like broken limbs and names like BUENO and MAJESTIC and all sorts of services proferred all EJECUTIVO the market place tattered like the peruvian flag. A batallion of JCB diggers and a bank of sand. And even the reds and greens and yellows that I see are shrouded by this greyness and there's nothing that isn't sad or is beautiful about this place at 7.30am in the morning.

And I'm here again. Same internet cafe, same hostal, same breakfast place, same kids wanting to shine my shoes, same old lady selling fags on the corner, same cheesy latin pop shit, same. Same, it's strange to be back. No need for the guidebook anymore. Lots of people just starting their trip, feeling slightly self-satisfied I've been to Columbia. I've been here 5 months. Yes, Spanish, I get by. Vota idiota. And, I wonder whether I have left a footprint or a scar or steamy breath on a mirror on this continent and I wonder what mark it has left on me.

So, sightseeing - maybe, but there's not a lot that I haven't seen here in Lima...On Sunday I go to Buenos Aires, I caved in and bought a flight...the bus journey might take up to 5 days the travel agent told me. Worry about money, but what's new. Anyone got any work that needs doing for a week or 2 lemme know when I get back. I've started doing that thing where I work out how many days and hours I have until I get back, and then working out what exactly I was doing the same time in the past. I was still in Columbia, in Popayan wandering around a humid colonial square...in the same distance of time in the future I'll be back home.

In a very hot boring town, on a break of a 22 hour journey with only 14 to go.

2005-06-08T22:39:00.000+01:00

Wednesday, and another step nearer home. The equator is now a distant memory, and I am sat in a cybercafe in Piura, on the north west coast of Peru, 14 hours by bus tonight to Lima. There's not much to note about this place - the town is surrounded by arrid scrublands for miles and miles, littered frequently with all kinds of rubbish - plastic bags, bottles, glasses, boxes - one of South America's least pleasant (though quite commonplace) features. There is a main Plaza de Armas (main square), surrounded by the usual plethora of ice cream, magazine and strange food sellers and sketchy looking characters sat around on park benches mumbling in my general direction. I've got two hours to kill before continuing on my way, I've been on the road for 10 hours already today but feeling fairly fresh and looking forward to a restful weekend in Lima.

I didn't give Ecuador enough time to really do it justice, but it seemed to me to be a beautiful gem of a country. Towards the South, the winding roads continue on, flanked by tree lined hills and immense valleys - to one side lies a vast expanse of jungle, and to the other the Andes loom magestically. Occasionally on the bus journey, we stop off in little towns seemingly plucked from the set of some period-drama. The old man sat next to me looked as I'd hope to in forty years time - a lined face topped by a panama-style hat and wearing a shirt just like the ones I do. Old ladies and old men wrapped in ponchos, little kids skipping by in the indigenous home kit of South Americans - big purple or pink skirts - these are some of my most enduring memories of this place. And here, in the Andean parts of South America, I feel a tourist attraction myself. It may be my stupid hat, my overgrown mop on top of my head, or just sheer good looks, but people stop and stare, some laugh, some smile, some little kids turn around and turn around again.

Outside each town, signs emploring people to vote are sketched on to large stones in red and white, and nearer the towns faded photographs and pledges are plastered on every available bit of concrete. Strange moustachioed characters offering these people the world - the world, I think, that is a different place to the one that we're lucky enough to live in. Again, another enduring and recurring image of this continent. And I ponder what life might be like if I lived in Macara or Chiclayo, Ecuador - tiny little places in the shadows of the Andes, where a Latin beat eminates from the open-fronted cafes, where ladies carry huge baskets full of bread, where the men paint the churches white and where some Señor offers a world that isn't corrupt, that isn't desperately poor, that offers a future. And I am snapped out of it - Passport control (again), a shove and a poke at my bag, filling in another form, another country, another stamp on my passport, another place left behind. I wonder if I will ever come back.

I had ten hours on the bus today, didn't read, write or listen to music. I just watched the world slope by and had the occasional mini power-nap. And again, I thanked my lucky stars for being able to do this trip, for taking a year off my job and taking this chance. It might leave up the financial creek without a paddle, but despite the melancholic moments, it's been brilliant and I've got memories and inspirations and new friends which should last my a lifetime.

So, overnight bus - luxury one I think, seeing how I paid $37 for the privilige. A sleeping tablet later and I'll be in Lima - weirdly, the first place I will have returned to on this trip, and sort of half way back to Buenos Aires. Doubt I'll get up to much tourism this weekend, but I might get lucky again in Lima and hear Radiohead's "Knives Out" in the burger joint. If I do, I'll be sure to let you know...

2 weeks and counting, 4 countries to go

2005-06-07T03:13:00.000+01:00

2 weeks today and I'll be sat on a plane bound for Paris. I can't believe how quickly it's gone, and I can't believe how quickly I have to move across the continent before then. With any luck I'll be on the bus from Lima-Buenos Aires this time next week, fast heading for Santiago Chile, before it climbs up and then skips down the Andes. For now, I am in Ecuador, albeit a lot further south than I was this weekend. Cuenca is the third city in a week that I have arrived at after dark after an epic bus journey, but on first glance it looks gorgeous - the domes of the churches poking up over the market square in a Florence-esque manner, magnificent old colonial streets and grand squares. I've got a few hours to explore tomorrow, and then it's onto another bus and step nearer the Peruvian border.

Quito wasn't as bad as many fellow travellers had warned me - I had fun for three days. The Old Town was full of all the usual South American stereotypes - buses belching, pigs heads stuffed with apples, policemen frantically whistling on traffic, a drunken deranged man beating himself and his partner in the middle of the main square, smudged shoe-shine kids and chewing gums sellers hassling us. Aside from these sights, there was a chaotic market street and street after street full of gorgeous colonial architecture, keeping a stately eye and ear on the cacophony below - a cacophony that gave me a La Paz like buzz again. The New Town was full of all the usual traveller stereotypes - it was strange to be back in a place full of backpackers after so long in Columbia. Israelis haggled over prices in restaurants, Brits staggered drunkenly in football shirts and Americans...Americans, haven't seen hardly any for ages, but there were thousands in Quito, drawn to "Gringolandia" like UN weapons inspectors to Baghdad. I guess it might be the currency, or that Columbia is supposed to be dangerous, but the sound of the American accent round every corner was slighlty concerning especially as none of them made any effort to speak anything other than English. And now, sat in a cafe in Cuenca, a couple of Germans are chatting away to the backdrop of Simply Red. It's strange indeed being back on the beaten traveller track, but despite all that it was pretty nice to sit around and watch some films and play pool and go for drinks with people, particularly after a week on the road.

Saturday saw Ecuador beat Argentina 2-0 in Ecuador, and it was great to be in the city for the game and part of the general hugging, beeping, shouting and drunken air of exuberance. We ended meeting one of the city's most carried away supporters - Enrique - who insisted on giving us a walking tour of the dodgy parts of town at 3am and taking us to the some of the less-wholesome establishments in the city. After making some hasty excuses we ended up in another bar till 7, and then up for the Equator at 12. Maybe it was the hangover, but the theme park at the Equator didn't really do it for me. Reminded me of a poor version of Thorpe Park, minus any good rides and including some truly absymal Latin-pop. What was probably worse was the fact that the whole complex has been sited wrong. The yellow line that we gleefully hopped to and fro across is, in fact, two hundred metres from the real Equator. We did find the real one though, and did a few experiments to prove the point. Not an earth shattering experience, but I thought it would be rude not to say hello to the centre of the world, as the Ecuadorians proudly call it.

Today's been about the bus. 10 hours of it today. Another windy (as in curves not the thing that blows a lot) hilly road in the clouds. Another bus with violent Hollywood garbage on the TV (Fast and the Furious). Another bus with vendors cramming the aisles and people giving their life stories from the front. Another bus with Latin dance music so unfeasibly loud that I had to drown it out with Kevin Tihista's Red Terror's 2004 opus "Wake Up Captain". Another bus when I started thinking about all the CDs I would have bought if I had still been in England, and how much I am looking forward to some new tunes. An elbow battle with the bloke next to me and a screaming child kicking and a two day tiredness hangover not quite shifted. A stale packet of crisps and a plastic cup of 7UP that a lady with a moustache in a pink Indian style dress gave to me. The countryside was very Yorkshire-esque. Rugged hills, miserable looking people and lots of drizzle. At one stage, we were completely covered by cloud, and the trees and roadside looked like they had been painted on to a white theatre set. As darkness descended, getting a glimpse of the Southern Cross for the first time in 6 weeks, just as the Pyramid Song reached its glorious crescendo, and despite being rigid for 10 hours, being moved by the beauty of the setting and the song and my good fortune at being able to be on this trip.

Well tomorrow's about moving too - not sure where I'll end up - probably not quite in Peru, I'll save the border for Wednesday and head down to Lima on Thursday. But for now, I am in a chilled mood - got a nice peaceful hotel, a big bed, an en-suite bathroom with hot water, a balcony overlooking an old market and Cable TV. Big luxuries...good night amigos, see you in a couple of weeks.

PS The German girl next to me has just really badly broken wind. I will skip checking the important news on Edwin Van der Saar for the time being.

Three buses, a minibus, four cabs, a bit of chicken and a night at Hotel Madrid

2005-06-03T22:42:00.000+01:00

Well, I'm here at last. Quito, capital of Ecuador, another city nestled in valley at some ridiculous altitude. All's well, though I am resigned to the fact that much of the rest of my travels will be spent gazing out of bus windows as half the continent rushes by. The plan for now is to chill here for the weekend, give my regards to the Ecuator, and then peg it down to Lima, from where there'll be a 72-90 hour bus journey back to Buenos Aires. I've been investigating flights, but the fiscal situation isn't great so $120 for the bus works out more likely than $450 for a flight. At least I won't ever moan again about the 5 hour National Express trip from London to Leeds. Actually, sod that, I probably will - National Express is crap.

Anyhoooooo. Had an afternoon beer upon arrival here in Quito, and feeling the effects...afternoon ale plus high altitude equals one winning combo. I am staying in Mariscal Sucre, basically another one of those enclaves of trendiness and security in a major South American city. It's all cafes with tables outside, Dido on the stereo and as many Gringos as locals. Nice (ish). Relaxing, definitely. Soulless - possibly. I'm looking forward to checking out the old town later on in the weekend.

The journey here from Popayan was pretty lengthy, and made a mockery of my original plan to do it in a day. Firstly, as my alarm went off at 6.30 on Wednesday, my inherent laziness took control. I rolled over, and drifted into a guilty sleep - amazing how I tell myself off for breaking plans that I have invented myself and have no bearing on anyone except myself. A brisk freezing toe end into a shower, a cup of Columbia's finest black coffee, a cab ride and then onto the south-bound bus. Typically, the journey came to a halt almost as soon as it had started. It seems to be the fashion in South America for buses to leave the terminal only to stop for half an hour two minutes outside. Why? I dunno...Happens all the time. Anyway, this time, aside from a pointless pause, a stern looking soldier then summoned us back to the terminal. Much hand waving ensued, a cigarette was smoked, the driver and the soldier made their peace and we were off. The journey was good, beautiful scenery that I won't bore you with by trying to describe it; friendly locals asking where I was from and a bit of a cram on the backseat as the driver tried to squeeze an extra body on board. All good, all normal. The next stage, from Pasto to Ipiales, was also pleasant enough. The territory is basically out of the government's control, hence the odd buzzing helicopter, different uniformed soldiers (guerillas I guess) and an increasingly desolate frontier feel (concrete houses making way for wooden ones, scruffy looking road-side shacks and the odd insaniac throwing himself across the road in an attempt to be killed by our minibus). Still, as my altitude headache increased so Columbia began to vanish behind me, a jumble of memories. Ecuador began to fill my mind.

A quick taxi, and then we were there. Border crossing was as easy as I have experienced. No interrogations about drugs or bag searches, just a simple stamp stamp, a quick exchange of cash and then I'm in Ecuador. It's here that things begin to change.

The border town, Tulcan, is introduced with a "Welcome to Tulcan - the lucky town" billboard sponsored by the lottery. The cabbie has a screaming match with a fellow passanger, and chucks him out in the middle of a dusty drab street. The whole place feels desolate and hastily put together. I feel lonely. It's worse at the bus terminal. Light is fading, black birds circle and strange stoned tattoed blurry blue men grab at me and my bag. I am bundled onto a bus, my precious backpack stashed at the front out of site and then we're off and I need a pee really badly. The conductor elbows his way up and down the aisle like Alan Shearer. The little kids and I watch one of the most violent and shite films I have ever seen. Luggage is piled high in the aisles, and fellow passangers clamber up and down or simply collapse there. Welcome back to South America, Oliver! Worse though, are the repeated police checks. Maybe it's Karma for such an easy border crossing, but we're stopped by the police three times and people are hauled outside. One time, a copper sniffs at my books in my bag, asks me where I have been in Columbia and looks at my passport like it's a fake that I just made at the border. Back on the bus, a surly man refuses to give up his empty seat, big black ladies get on bearing bigger washing up bowls, the music blares louder each time we stop and I ache for the toilet and I ache to get off.

I didn't make it to Quito, instead I am abandoned on layby in Ibarra, find my way to more surly staff at the Hotel Madrid, stuff down some chicken with plastic gloves and runny ketchup and struggle to sleep on a mattress as hard as Roy Keane.

In the morning, there's an amazingly hot and powerful shower and a nescafe and eggs brekkie (welcome back to South America...) After handing over my dollars for the hotel, I wonder if Ecuadorians are a mite miffed that this is their local currency. It feels weird handing over Abraham Lincoln in the middle of South America. A quick wander around Ibarra and I'm on another bus, this time heading to Quito. Generally all's good, aside from an exploding frozen 7-UP, and the constant interruption by hawkers getting on and off the bus throwing themselveson with all their might, selling ice creams, a plastic spoonful of pasta, a salsa CD, some cream that will apparently solve all the world's ills, a fake plastic bracelet and yabbering local women dressed in all the Indian garb going "Hallo. Hallo???" into their mobile phones.

Now I am here, though. The place feels much more South American than Columbia - more chaos, a bigger mix of people and worse coffee. Two days to chill, sightsee and then it's back on the long road to my surrogate home - Buenos Aires. Will write again after I have popped in to see the Ecuator.

Shower Gel and Lance Armstrong bands

2005-06-01T19:21:00.000+01:00

Ask me what recurring theme might best sum up Columbia and you might expect me to say incredible rich/poor divides, the threat of guerillas or cocaine dealers prowling every nook and cranny of every bar and street corner. Certainly, all the above are prominent, but for me it's shower gel. It just doesn't exist in this country. Every new town I come to and there's a wave of excitement as I head to the nearest pharmacy. Every time my enthusiasm is crushed by a shake of the head and a wave towards racks full of bars of soap and shampoos. I am coming to the conclusion that shower gel may just be the greatest invention on the planet. Soap it is then. In a cold shower. And carrying my bog roll round with me again.

Popayan is great, but it's another no hot water place, and most of the loos don't have paper, so my old habit of carrying it around with me has resurfaced, probably for the first time since my bout of needing it 6 times a day in La Paz. My hotel is great - cable TV - so as Steve mentioned I caught up on Live8 news. As the names were about to be announced I briefly fantasised - Bob Dylan, Nick Cave, Radiohead, Bonnie Prince Billy. But no...Elton chuffing John. Think I'll give it a miss. I also saw England beat Columbia, but there's been no flicker here in Popayan - who cares about these meaningless friendlies? The other thing about my hotel is that I have 6 beds to myself - one for sleeping, one for chucking all my dirty clothes on, one for kind of folding my nearly clean ones on (and then realising I have lost another 2 pairs of socks), one with a pile of coins on (Peruvian and Columbian), random receipts and flyers advertising club nights in Lima last month, a tattered note book, and two I have nicked the pillows off.

Popayan is a colonial town, rebuilt after an earthquake in 1983. Basically it's a bunch of old white churches, pretty squares and quaint little bridges. Nice, and very relaxing after yesterday's journey. The scenery was brill - winding roads, pink pillow clouds on beds of green trees. The usual array of blokes were sat on plastic roadside chairs and Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade was on the telly in Spanish. Cali was a quick in-out job. Noticably more racially mixed than Medellin, it gave off the impression of being your typical big South American city. Appalling sights - belching traffic, people sifting through and sleeping in bags of rubbish, endless parades of neon-lit bars and motels. Then, there's the other side - fenced-off mansions with swimming pools, huge billboards advertising mobile phones, cars and beer and white people in white shirts chatting away on tiny plastic phones. But as I said, it was a quick get bundled into a minibus job and watch the various unread chapters blow past me like an unread book. Then it was 2 hours to Popayan - a dangerous road allegedly. Soldiers patrolled the road, making me both nervous and relieved. The odd helicopter buzzed above and we stopped at various road blocks. But the biggest worry was the insane driver - probably in a rush to get back for the footy, overtaking juggernauts on blind corners, swinging us from left to right as if we had paid for a theme park ride and flooring it all the way.

But, as always (so far) I have made it safe. One day here, a pleasant wander, some sock buying, church scoping, coffee drinking and admin doing. Then tomorrow, another 7 hour journey to the border (where I'm likely to have all my bags exhaustively searched), a stroll across to Ecuador and then another 5 hours to Quito, el capital de Ecuador, a crowded bus terminal then hopefully an easy cab ride to a hostel.

Well, Columbia's been great - I'd recommend it to anyone. But I'd kill for a good bottle of Radox shower gel and not to have to see another kid wearing a Lance Armstrong yellow band - definitely the number one fashion accesory here.

7.05am, a quick splurge of a blog then off on the long road

2005-05-31T13:04:00.000+01:00

You know when you have to get up early, and you're thinking about it as you go to bed and you have one of them night's sleep. Well, just had one of them. The kind of deep dreaming, tossing and turning, waking up every hour type affairs. The kind where you just turn the alarm off half an hour before you get up cos there's no point trying to sleep anymore and you just get up. Half a coffee inside me, next a trip to the bathroom them I'm off. For the 1000th time, just shoved my 7 same pairs of pants and t-shirts and assorted random bits of paper into my backpack and my stomach gnaws at me with nerves and my eyes respond with the dull ache of tiredness.

I am saying goodbye to this place. Saying goodbye to a couple of good friends who I have made here and I'm torn between thinking my trip is over (I'm starting to head home after all) and thinking of all the potential things that might happen on route. I'm going to try and get to Popayan, a quietish colonialish town in South Columbia. It's 12 hours away, but I'm not sure if there are direct buses and I'm stupidly nervous about alleged guerilla activity in the area and being on my own. I'm looking forward to peace and quiet (a week of partying here, lots of British travellers), but I'm also a bit sad about being alone. I'm nervous and worried for the future when I get home. Can I actually write a book? My money situation is about 2K worse than I thought it was, so I'm not sure what I can do. Worried. Then excited again. It hits me that I'm in South America. In Columbia, and this is brilliant stuff.

Someone wrote to me and told me off for my self-introspection. I agree. I do too much I think. I find it hard to let go, relax, enjoy, go with the flow of life whatever that flow might be. But I find it impossible to turn off whatever taps are inside me - fear, questioning, doubts, anxiety...A lot of the guys here are just here for the hedonist ride - I can't do it for some reason...dunno why? So here I am at 7am just wanting to splurge a little again and it's another wave of excitement. The thought of seeing wonderful towns rush by, the buzz of arriving in a new town and taking it in, the privilige of being here and of not knowing where I will be tomorrow. Up down, round and round, that's the way my brain goes.

So, adios Medellin. A few words to sum it up. Safe (in the secure tree-y bits I have seen), expensive (where I am locals pay London prices) and as a result as much a place where the divide between rich and poor and have and have's not is as great as I have seen. I will never forget and never be amazed at the number of fat middle aged men with stunning twenty two year old girls on their arms with fake plastic breasts and overpriced imported beers on their tables. Or shops stuffed with designer trainers costing a month's salary for an average person. Once again South America has showed itself to be a place of real contrasts - desperate poverty and depravity such as in the centre of town, slums full of crime on the outskirts and in little bubbles people living the Western dream - and for a few days, me living it with them. Weird.

Well, I hope I make it all the way to Popayan. Don't want to stop in Cali, because I don't like the idea of turning up in a city full of 2 million people again. I just want somewhere to lay my head and wander around and chill in before I get to Ecuador. So, fingers crossed that's there's a bus to Popayan, that the aircon isn't too freezing and that my Ipod holds up en-route.

So, adios for now amigos. PS, not a hint at all, but love getting comments - especially ones like John's on Radiohead. Yeah, they have completely soundtracked my life and my journey here. The song Let Down still sums up everything about everything for me. Might have to listen to it on the bus...

Hey man slow down

2005-05-27T21:51:00.000+01:00

I like Radiohead. Maybe you knew that. Well, in case you didn't know, I think they're rather good. The last song on OK Computer - "The Tourist", has been a particular fave of mine during my adventures. The title's fairly apt, of course, the lyrics more so.

It barks at no-one else but me, like it's seen a ghost.
I guess it's seen the sparks a-flowin, no-one else would know.
Hey man, slow down, slow down, idiot, slow down, slow down.
Sometimes I get overcharged, that's when you see sparks.
They ask me where the hell I'm going?
At a 1000 feet per second,
hey man, slow down, slow down, idiot, slow down, slow down.
Hey man, slow down, slow down,idiot, slow down, slow down.

I love the imagery, it conjures up Japanese tourists and photo shutters and stunning high cathedrals gothic and mysterious and a dusky sky and they're too busy taking their pictures and rushing to the next place to appreciate anything. So, and I must admit it's not been hard, I am slowing down and chilling here in Medellin.

The hostel is full of all the toys - beers in the fridge, pool table, plasma TV, good stereo. The area is full of little bars and cafes, where I sit and scribble in my book and watch and read. I feel able to relax, breathe and just enjoy the time slipping by. And part of my chilled-ness now is to do with the sinking realisation that (a) this will soon be at an end and (b) I have to undertake a fairly epic journey back to Buenos Aires in a very short space of time. Ecuador will be a blur, a quick hello goodbye to the Ecuator. I'll probably reluctantly end up back in Lima, and then it may well end up being a 3 day bus haul back to BsAs.

Most of the time here has been spent with locals. They are very friendly, especially 19 year old girls who seem to have taken a shine to me, which is, of course, a bonus. Especially as they seem to think I am about their age. We have met one Columbian guy who initally befriended us, joined us for Star Wars and drinks but returned two days later with a sob story about bankruptcy and being stuck in Medellin and could we help. Once again, the darker side of being a traveller here is the $ halo that shrouds us.

So sorry I don't have much to report. Medellin is a wonderful place, but not a postcard city. Boutiques, bars and babes abound not museums, mountains and monastaries. No ruins climbed, no treks undertaken, no real touristy activities, and that suits me fine. Next I head to Cali, maybe on Sunday on Monday. After that I'll be in Quito, capital of Ecuador, and the final new country on this particular epic.

In a cafe on Calle 8 y Carrera 38, Medellin, Columbia.

2005-05-24T19:56:00.000+01:00

It's raining. Oh mercy, blessed relief. My last day in Cartagena featured one melancholic blog, six cups of coffee and three cold showers such was the profusion of sweat clinging to my t-shirt. Don't get me wrong, I do like sunshine, I do like the sea and nature and trees and animals, but I love cities, clouds, shadowy dim cafes and cups of coffee, the sound of traffic and the reflections off glass buildings. If this trip was about self discovery, I guess I've discovered that my melancholy nature and my love of Radiohead and Manchester United are pretty much constant no matter what the location. Additionally, I have discovered (despite, or perhaps in spite of my upbringing) that I am very much a city person not a country bumpkin.

My mood clung to me along with my sweat and my backpack at Cartagena bus terminal on Sunday night. A man showed me to the ticket office (I didn't ask), I paid for my ticket to Medellin and then aforementioned man went into a diatribe about how I should pay him for walking me the twelve feet from the station entrance to the ticket window. My $ sign had clearly superceded my melancholic halo. An hour and a half of plastic window sitting and people watching ensued, and then I was on my tenth night bus of my trip so far. It was okay, despite the aircon that transported my legs to the Arctic, the thirteen hours that transformed themselves into seventeen, the ultra-curvaceous road that conspired to chuck myself and my wee around the stench of a toilet and the lack of any food for the duration. Still, it had its moments. At 8am, the driver prodded me awake and with shaky valium legs and head I stumbled to a roadside table, scolded myself on a plastic cup of coffee and watched a throng of marching school kids stop a street full of lorries. What is it with South Americans and road blockages? No se. After I had shaken off my sleeping pills' advances and attempts to lure me back to the land of nod, I took in the scenery - typically wonderful for this continent. Little colonial towns, sweeping valleys and tree filled hills. A picturesque town saw people sat on balconies at my eye level, and little children gleefully ran at full pelt down the middle of the road, bus driver in cautious pursuit. For a sec, I was transformed and I had an overwhelming desire to be a little ten year old boy again - to charge headlong, to run so fast that I could hear the wind whistling the universe's secrets in my ears. To see every mundane thing as an adventure - the little stone shed in our garden that I wanted to turn into a museum full of artifacts I found in our garden with a room with a photocopier where I would churn out copies of the book I was writing about Bilal and his adventures in strange far off lands. Then I snapped back, and started thinking about Bob Dylan. What if I had a time machine, went back to 1960 and then released all of his songs as my own. Would he still become famous? Would his genius still drive him to write new songs, even though I had already released Like a Rolling Stone and Visions of Johanna. Such inane questions, but at least it curbed my nausea. The driver brought it back though, as he swerved out to evaluate our chances of survival if he overtook another lorry on another blind bend.

Still, I'm here. I made it in the end.

Medellin, again like so many cities on this continent, is spectacularly set. The centre lies in a valley and all around on the surrounding slopes in big red brick clumps lie the poorer areas. A couple of skyscrapers dominate the centre. Following my guide book, I head to Calle 54 in the centre - I need a single room - and it says that the area is cheap. Cheap, yes. Seedy, deranged, pulsating, grotty, noisy, compelling too. The main square is surrounded by Botero's black bulbous statues. There are a couple of protests, at least crowds of shouting Columians. An old man lies in a gutter like a foetus clutching his head. Another sifts through bags and boxes of rubbish. Men outside strip clubs clap their hands to entice us in. An orange plastic bin bag stretches out atop a love hotel. Pink and orange prostitutes line up outside a huge white church opposite a sex cinema next to a gym blaring R.E.M's "Losing my religion". Are they girls are they boys? I am not about to find out. I go for cheap chicken grease, a man waves pencils in my face another asks me if I speak French and follows me around and I have to go back to my hotel, cold shower solid matress, but Cable TV.

This morning, I wake up to the strains of "Yellow" by Coldplay. When you travel the world you know isn't left behind, it follows you around and it sits on your shoulder like a parrot saying the same things all the time. The same music I detest. The same feelings I feel. The same hurts, the same desires, the same questions, the same love, the same dreams, the same nightmares, the same haircut.

I am now in a new place. My associate Andrew arrives shortly. It's more peaceful here, protected. There are avenues instead of streets and shops that sell bread instead of vibrators. I breathe again, I smoke a cigarette and then I don't breathe again.

Sunday bloody Sunday

2005-05-22T16:52:00.000+01:00

It's not the norm for me to namecheck U2, but I couldn't really think of an apt title for this blog. I forgot it was Sunday this morning, day and time forgetting being a fairly common travelling practice of mine. I am on my own again today. I've been travelling with my friend from home and some other people from England, all's been going well apart from the odd bill splitting headache and disagreements over our touring itinerary, but I needed to take myself out of it for a while. Be alone. I thought if I did, I'd feel happier and more comfortable and more relaxed. But I forgot it was Sunday, and I forgot that I don't always like being alone.

My feet ache. It's the sandals I bought in Buenos Aires I think, and they rub against my big toe on my left foot. I've been walking around most of the morning, stomach and mind churning, hugging the edges of the narrow Cartagenan walls seeking out a shadowy solace from the sun that sends sweat dripping down the sides of my faces and down onto the tip of my nose. Shutters are shut up, padlocked to the baking floor, restaurants are closed, cafe chairs stacked and tables piggy back each other on bright tiled floors. In squares, few people sit, the vendors are showing token force, one of them tries to buy my non-existent US dollars but my scowl tells him not to mess no matter how good the exchange rate is at the moment. I peer into the big church, the cathedral I guess but can't confirm because I can't really be bothered to consult with my guidebook. People cross themselves and step from the light into the shadowy candle flickering interior, a ritual that's no doubt been happening in Cartagena for 400 years. I'm not hungry but it's breakfast time and I need to eat or else my malaria tablet will give me dodgy stomach. Everywhere seems to be closed. A large black man bellows from the middle of a square bordered with tree covered white benches. I don't understand what he is saying, but guess it's about Jesus Christ. I walk on, out of the museum like old town, across the now silent main road. I find a cafe, it's okay - 50 pence for eggs, bread and coffee. Not bad. The fans provide scant relief, and I scrawl in my notebook trying to get things out of my head onto the page so that they leave me alone. Two young guys stand at the cafe's entrance. They're hungry and shouting, and one of the men from the cafe pushes one of them back. More shouting, and looks in my direction. I am rich, I suppose. I little girl gets up and hands one of the men half a glass bottle of pink fizzy liquid and the remnants of an arepa (a kind of bread maize oval shaped thing). I feel a wave of desperation and sadness and wish I was with my friends, and I wonder if one day I will ever be totally happy. I think for a while about sitting round the other night in Cartagena or Santa Marta, in bars, reggaeton blasting in the foreground conversation trying in the background. And I notice how I always take myself out of the group, so that there are 2 people talking with each other twice. And I feel really lonely, and I wonder why I always take myself out of situations and why I cause my own loneliness. I pay the bill after eating my malaria tablet. I go to a pharmacy and ask for shower gel, but they don't have it - they rarely have shower gel in South America. Soap it is then I guess. I walk around looking for an internet cafe. The one I usually go to is closed, like virtually everything else. I find one place, but the computer crashes midway through replying to an email from a friend who supports Arsenal Football Club. I head back to the museum like old city and find this place. I am in a cabin, the plastic seat back rubs awkwardly, I swill on a bottle of coke, my notebook that I bought in the shanty town in Belen, Peru lies open and I have scribbled something ridiculous about hedonism vanishing and loneliness. My hair and beard are itching, and I have a few hours to kill now.

Tonight, I plan to head to Medellin, the second city in Columbia, also one of the world's cocaine trafficking cities. My friends are sunning themselves somewhere on an island in the Caribbean. I am a bit worried about taking a Columbian night bus alone and I wonder what I will do for the rest of the day. Whilst I have been here, I have done a few touristy things. On Friday, we went to a mud volcano, 50 km from here. You climb up to the top (it's only 15m high) and you submerge yourself in lukewarm mud, get a massage. The girls amongst us explained that mud was great for the skin, and that in the UK such quality mud and massaging would cost over 100 smackers. Well, it's nice enough, but like moisturiser I don't see the point. The experience, however is amazing - very unique. Later we are bathed by girls in a lake, then we come back here.

Well, that's it. I could write a further essay about the injustices I witnessed in Cardiff yesterday, but I guess those of you who know me and know football will know my feelings anyway. Now I am going to look on google for hotels in Medellin, flights from Quito (Ecuador) back to Argentina or maybe Brazil (maybe I'll go to Rio for a week), apartment costs in Buenos Aires, the Radiohead fan website to see if they're any closer to finishing an album and then I will go and walk and think and read and shower and drink and watch and get in a taxi and then a bus until I fall asleep and it's Monday, the start of another week and 4 weeks exactly before I have to get on a plane and come back to England.

No graçias No graçias No graçias No graçias No graçias No graçias (maybe I should get a T-shirt made up)?

2005-05-19T21:09:00.000+01:00

There's a fine line between deja-vu, and just putting up with the same old thing day in day out. I guess deja-vu is kind of mysterious, fun even. Putting up with the some of the same old South American things is neither mysterious nor fun, though occasionally amusing.

I'm now in Cartagena. Basically it´s York crossed with Seville with the sea chucked in for a laugh. Not done much here yet, but wander around a walled city that might best be described by a guidebook as "charming" or "quaint". Anyway, as I was saying...a few things that have happened here and in previous days remind me of food repeating on itself. For example, because we're back in tourist-ville, the old street hawkers are back in force with their fake Gucci sunglasses, red yellow and blue bracelets, Cartagena t-shirts and hats and ornament related produce which I could never see adorning anyone's mantelpiece. Well, they're pretty much like Mosquitos, except they do eventually go away after you have said "No graçias" 7,000 times.

Other stuff includes the wonderful gift of telling you exactly what you want to hear that South Americans are bestowed with.

"How long does the bus take to Cartagena"

"3 1/2 hours" (correct answer 5 1/2 hours)

"Is it direct"

"Yes, direct to Cartagena amigos" (correct answer change in a lay-by in the middle of some sodden concrete mound of a town somewhere full of soaking budding Faustino Asprillas)

"Is there hot water"

"Yes 24 hours" (correct answer there is water, it is cold, and it only dribbles for 3 hours a day)

"Is there a nice bar here in Cartagena that's still open?"

"Yes, amigo. I will take you there." (ends up taking us to 2 mirror clad neon brothels where I get my arse pinched and we run away from, only to be accosted by two of Columbia's finest soldiers who subject us to an interrogation and thorough search for drugs and a lecture on why we should never leave our hotel without passports, and then later to find ourselves in a dive complete with spitting vomiting man and a sense of impending doom).

Basically, they'll tell you anything to make you part with your Pesos, and the result is (unfortunately) a complete lack of trust or belief in anything anyone ever says to you. My guilt catches up with me as usual, a yarn (or is it) about not eating for days and would I buy a bracelet for 1000 pesos (about 25 pence)...guilt, makes my world go round somedays.

What else...Well I love the English, and wish I had made a note of all the South American attempts to translate Spanish into the Queen's finest. There's "Sandwich of the having jumped" or "Chicken in a basket like manner" or "Hotel Holiday" mispelt on the front to "Hotel Holyday". I could have a great career as an English corrector in restaurants and hotels in this continent. Another great job I came up with was director of tourism of Bolivia. Basically, a poor and underappreciated country. Well, I reckon with a bit of help from Wimpey homes (or Barratt), a few bulldozers in a bit of virgin forest, a ten year gap whilst indigenous folks can make some fake statues and ornaments and then...hey presto "Hairymuntha - the lost Inca city of Bolivia". I reckon Macchu Pichu might be fake, like the moon landing - so this could work. I reckon I'd make a good dictator of a South American country - I'd build good roads, I'd sort out the tourisms, I'd build bus stops so that our intercity bus doesn't have to stop every 2.1 seconds to let someone on or off and let hawkers on selling toothbrushes. Why, why, why would you want to buy a toothbrush on a bus from Santa Marta to Cartagena. Why? I'd also recommend that it would be more sensible to set up your shop on a different street from the identical shop that is currently next door to yours on a street with 12 other identical stores. I'd also make it a rule that all shops have to have change for a 20 when your bill is 15 and suggest that waiters might want to introduce a policy of listening to orders and bringing courses at the same time. Aah, South America...love it really...

Well, might head back to York now. Cup Final in 2 days, Henry's out or is it Wenger trying to be clever? Star Wars tomorrow night if we can beat the queues (apparently Columbia faces a day of great unproductivity because a lot of people are going to skip work to see the film. So I guess the blokes in their open white shirts grabbing their groins won't be hard at the grind on their roadside kerbs and plastic chairs).

Aah, South America. One month to go, it's gone so fast and I've got a long way to get back. Then London...then Derby...then touchwood, back to Buenos Aires before real life, whatever that is, starts up again.

Sorry been on a beach for a week, and there are no internet cafes there unfortunately. Lots of sea, though.

2005-05-17T23:50:00.000+01:00

Sorry for the delay. A combination of crashing computers and computer-less tropical beaches have scuppered my good blogging intentions. Oh well. I'm here now. Here being Santa Marta, on the North Coast of Columbia and probably as far away from my start and end in Buenos Aires that I'll be on this trip (unless I decide to go to Cuba, but that's slightly unlikely seeing as I have to get across the entire continent by the middle of June).

Buenos Aires. Roasting myself in the sea in Taganga, a small fishing village just outside Santa Marta, the thought crossed my mind that I could come back. As I was floating, a red and white skin and bone man on a turquoise sea, pictures came into my head...a third summer, an apartment in Buenos Aires, writing my book, cooking, plugging my Ipod into my stereo, a cold Quilmes, a beautful Argentinian girlfriend...well. I started thinking about the cash, and think I can do it. Damn it, I am coming back...Mid October I reckon, for three months - then back to work and debt repaying.

All, apart from my back and the humid air and my thoughts on Malcolm Glazer, is fairly chilled here. We left Bogota's bustle last Monday, a storm of near Biblical proportions waving us farewell. First stop - Villa de Leyva - plucked out of the 16th century, all white colonial houses and churches, with the odd cobbled street and square sprinkled on top for good measure. Very very chilled, despite the ever-presence of armed soldiers everywhere. Welcome to Columbia. Next day, once we roused ourselves, we started the long journey northwards. Before we did, a quick check to make sure there was a less than 10% chance our overnight bus to Santa Marta would be ambushed by maniacal guerillas. Then, as my last and now deceased blog explained, one of them long long bus journeys. I can't remember it all now - but highlights included the sign at Bucaramanga bus station detailing number of fatalities in March 2005 by each bus company (we decided to go on one with zero deaths), zonking out to a combo of beer, valium and nightol and then staggering around like a zombie at 7 the next morning, Black Hawk Down in Spanish, lots of old blokes in white open-necked shirts sat on street kerbs smoking gawping daydreaming, such is the South American way, a gaggle of giggling schoolkids and menacing black vultures perched atop fences, a bizarre mini-hamlet consisting of three bars with giant naked neon girls painted outside, Coca-Cola signs everwhere, Columbia sponsored by Aguila beer (pretty rank, btw, Club Columbia is better). Well, we got there in the end, and like I said, I was pretty zombie like.

There's nothing like an overnighter in South America on an uncomfortable bus for making me grouchy in the morning. As I squinted at the sun and swallowed my coffee from a plastic cup, I even forgot to thank my stars that we hadn't been kidnapped. It's hot here, up North. Kind of like England, except the opposite and it's not really hot anywhere in England and no one in England really speaks much Spanish. Apart from that, really similar. Not a very pretty place, Santa Marta - or maybe that was my 7am blurry eye sweaty bits grumpy brain furry tongue. Maybe not - yellow cabs blurring and beeping, a collection of yards and carparks and fenced in houses and billboards and a whirl of cycles and schoolkids and the invisible sun beating down. A cabbie who hasn't got a clue where he's taking us...a stop off so he can consult with a man with a moustache...still no clue...then to the Tourist Office, and what's the damage? 10,000. A row ensues. Grabs at Rachel's bag. Lots of gestures like aggreived Italian footballers. Ey up, here's the copper - he'll help. No he won't. Hand over the 10,000. It's 9am. It's hot and I'm on another cigarette, wanting sleep and the toilet with all my heart. And then, another garbled Spanish chat another cab drive and we're there...Taganga, a small fishing village 4km from Santa Marta.

Wednesday - Saturday, we hang out there. We stay in the most expensive hotel (a) because it has air conditioning (b) because the skunk smoking dreadlocked Rasta's place, charming though it might have been, had quite a smelly bog and (c) because we were too lazy and too knackered to go looking anywhere else. Taganga consists of the following activities - swimming, snorkelling, cooking (oneself), eating giant fishes, drinking beer and gin, sitting in deck chairs, applying mozzie-spray to keep the buggers off. It's a great place. One beach we visit is run by a big girl and her Cartel. We get off the boat, she comes waving plastic chairs and beckons us to a tree under which we sit. Later, as I enjoy a Pepsi, she comes running, all rolls of arms and shouty Spanish. We forgot to buy our drinks from her. Oops. No messing, we order a massive fish each from her later. I pretend I am South American and go without sun cream, an error my sagging backpack reminds me everytime I stick it on me back. Reggae blasts out of the beach front cafs, locals and hippie travellers sell their bracelet tat and I run headfirst into the sea, ruining my non-waterproof brand new old vintage wristwatch in the process.

Three days of such japes, and it's time to leave. Cue another argument over a bill and breakfast (we win). Back to Santa Marta, fighting off fruit bearers and meat-on-stick wavers and we're on the bumpy bus to paradise - Parque National Tayrona. All's well. Well, my Ipod started to play up the night before and I leave my favourite shirt on the bus. But all's kind of well. There's a nice boat that will take us from the entrance to Arrecifes, proposed home for the next few days.

A short walk from the entrance confirms my fears. No boat, therefore 45 minute walk with our weights on our flaming backs. Phew...horses. We bundle the backpacks on the horse and head off on foot. And then. A storm of Koran like proportions. So hard and so damp and so muddy and so much shite in my hole ridden trainer and in my little daypack that it starts to be amusing, well not really but there's nothing else to do but laugh. The downpour, the whole trek through the jungle to the beach is a bit like Indiana Jones without the fun, a bit like Tomb Raider without Angelina. i.e not very good. We arrive soaked to the bone, our passports and money stuck together, my Ipod taking on a sepia cloudy hue. Not promising.

And then then last three days. Apart from the on-off Book of Mormon-like downpour, a profusion of nature (i.e things that are sent to annoy like ants, mosquitoes, toads, moths, flies, sandflies, horses ravaging through rubbish, rats and lots of green stuff), a malfunctioning abode (no toilet flush, no toilet lock, come to think of it not much water except a bit of brown in the afternoon), my de-lousing ceremony (not me being squalid, just a dirty filthy hostel in Iquitos), a restaurant that closed at 8.30pm and served Heinz-esque spagetti, grumpy unhelpful hairy staff, apart from all of these things - I loved Parque Tayrona. The beach was all fine sand, fallen coconuts, palm trees and shallow ponds full of fish. The sea, wild like the wave machine in White City swimming pool, and turquoise like a Man City top. The sun (plus some factor 60) warm not agonising on my back. And a great company of friends, the odd bottle of rum and devouring fish and Wally Lamb's brilliant novel about twins that I have forgotten the title of for the moment.

But still we moan. I like a good whinge, you know me. And my associates love to complain. So, dissatisfied by the general level of service we make our point. No budging. This morn, we get up and leave and ask for the bill. It'll be a work of fiction, I expect. And it is...about four times cheaper than we're told. Roberto hands over a crisp bundles of twenty-thou's, and for the first time in ages, I scarper, we scarper like a bunch of naughty teenagers. We scarper the trek back, backpacks on back barely a concern. We scarper into a taxi with its door hanging off and its boot tied on. The word's out...the horseman stops us and says the owner is coming because we owe money. Well, we did pay the bill we argue. More blurry phone radio chat. Maybe it's those girls. He tells us to go. Up and down and windy holey rickety track and then we're there - home dry. Well, a few nervous glances for an irate grumpy owner, or a roadblock set up by in cahoots soldiers. But none, and now we're here, back in Santa Marta.

Sorry for the long witter. Would have been less if the park had had amenities like an internet cafe, but I guess as it's one of them nature places it probably won't. Really looking fwd to my next week - the old city of Cartagena, reputedly South America's most beautiful, Star Wars, Cup Final, a bit more beach action, the odd beer, and hopefully no further rows with any irate Columbians. Let's hope not anyway...

Sleepy in Bogota

2005-05-08T22:12:00.000+01:00

It's a Sunday afternoon here in Columbia's capital, and aside from the vibrant street market, the city is quiet, like England used to be on Sundays when I was a nipper. I am quiet, tired and fairly sleepy at the moment and if I am being honest fairly unsure what I'm going to write about just now. My friend Rachel arrived for a 3 week holiday on Thursday and, almost immediately, my trip has changed. Aside from the home comforts (NME, Twix, Mojo, Walker's crisps) Rachel has brought energy and enthusiasm with her - wanting to see sights and do things. After four months of travelling, I have little energy for sightseeing, instead preferring to watch the days go by, listen to tunes, wander around aimlessly and drink lots of Columbian coffee. The other major difference with Rachel's arrival is that any enthusiasm for partaking in travellers' chat has completely evaporated. It's a relief to talk about what's been on the telly, what my friends are up to, how my work back home is going rather than engage in the travel oneupmanship of our hostel at the moment. Right now, it feels like this is my real life, whatever real might be. I feel like my homes are hostels, my comforts are a vaguely warm shower and a decent coffee and that I am getting into the usual normal grooves like I do back home. Trouble is, as I have discovered here in Bogota, being on a long trip and talking about it is as boring as people wittering on about their jobs back home. Many people here are slowly metamorphosising into the type of dullards they complain about back home, 'cept here they make their own bracelets, strum out of tune acoustic guitars, talk about bus rides in Venezuala, develop a taste for pan pipe Womad esque musack and where a lot of tie-died tat. My antidote? Wear a brown blazer. Make up lies about how old I am. And retire exhausted to the relative sanctuary of my Ipod and my slightly bug ridden sagging bed.

I love the being away. I love the new cultures and people, but I feel that as I come to the last month of my travels the more important things for me are the things that are important back home. I'd rather meet an interesting person in the street or in the bar over a coffee than go and see a Botanical Garden. I'd rather listen to Amnesiac than talk for hours about bus journeys in Peru. I'd rather sit and watch the colour of the street than climb a mountain or visit a Church. I guess when you're a bit tired and you strip away any bravado and politeness you're left with what you really are and what you really like.

I like the people here a lot. In Peru, it seemed that all I was was a walking $ sign, a target for drug dealers, cigarette sellers, finger puppet wavers and shoe shiners. Here, the local people are amazingly friendly and also amazing interested in who I am, where I am from. They speak slowly and patiently, listening to my terrible Spanish and they enthusiastically talk about where I am from and proudly explain that their country is a magical and undiscovered gem. Our guide at the Salt Cathedral (amazingly set in a working mine, deep underground) chatted about the country and confessed that No Surpises was his favourite Radiohead song. A cabbie gushed about Cali, source of all beautiful women in Columbia apparently. A girl I met in a club told me about her dream to be a filmmaker. It's going to be strange going back to England where I just don't meet anyone...maybe I'll find some South Americans to hang out with.

Bogota is amazingly interesting. Not exactly pretty. For me, after months of travel, its vibrancy is compelling. But for Rachel, I guess it must be a bit odd - hardly a holiday destination - more a place to draw breath, pull up a chair, watch the play begin and then decide if you want to play a part in it. I've done the museums, I've done the insane cab rides (80 miles an hour, rushing through traffic lights with a cursory beep), I've sat in the parks, I've been to the scuzzy market and the superior Zona Rosa, I've laughed at the seriousness with which the Columbian elite dance to Jamiroquai at an upmarket club and I've cursed at having to pay 19,000 pesos for G&T in the same place (4 quid ish), I've grumbled at sitting around in cafes and shops whilst the propreitor goes out to change my 10,000 note or fetch me some tonic water for a gin cos they've run out, I've marvelled at how Irish pubs the world over always seem to be run by a Dave from Manchester and are full of loud mouthed ex-pats, I've been appalled by the streets with homeless cuddling their dogs and glue sniffing kids stumbling around, I've done loads here - mainly just taking it in. Now...I'm up for the sea. The Caribbean will definitely do. A bit of scuba diving perhaps, an apartment on the beach, a cocktail in a hammock, some fresh fish and maybe a bit of Radiohead.

Museo Botero, Bogota

2005-05-04T23:45:00.000+01:00

I went to the art gallery. I had several hours to kill. I did not want to spend that time thinking. That would have been expensive. Costly even. I went to the art gallery. It was an overcast day. It was the afternoon. I had just eaten a cheese and ham sandwich and a malaria tablet. I wanted to use up the daylight hours. I nursed a coffee. I smoked a cigarette. I tried to read Borges. I am not sure why. Not for myself. I tried to write a poem about dreams. I watched a girl. She was pretty. She didn't watch me. I felt melancholic. It was getting costly. I went into the gallery. It had about twelve rooms. The Botero paintings all fat people were interesting. But not brilliant, I thought. In one room a man lingered in front of a painting. It was of colourful lines and shapes. I wondered if he saw something. I didn't. I gave up. I liked some paintings by a German chap. One of a woman crying a dress of fish. One of a possibly smoking man standing in a door. There was nothing outside the door. I wondered what there was outside. I bet he felt sad. I needed the toilet. The toilets there were good. I gazed at the mirror. In one room there was a Picasso. It was in a glass frame. I liked seeing myself in the frame. More than any of the pictures. They left me cold. My feet ached. My favourite are ones in frames. Nothing interests me more than myself. Nothing as beautiful. Nothing as revolting. Nothing as complex. Nothing as simple. I start to think. I sit on a metal chair. It hurts my back a bit. Water trickles down a black marble rectangle. Swimming pool voices echo from the cafe. Chairs clink. I smoke. I write this. The sun makes my eyes half close. I stare at my index finger on my left hand. There is a cut on top. I feel overcome with self pity. I leave the gallery. I wonder if I dreamt the gallery. I wonder if I invented Botero.

Cold in Coventry. Or is it Covent Garden. No it's Bogota.

2005-05-03T18:39:00.000+01:00

I am in a bubble. A 30 minute cab ride from our slightly sketchy neighbourhood (think basebell cap corner hugging teens and slouching sleeping dribbling drunks and throw in a couple of skanky looking dogs) and we find ourselves in the Zona Rosa of Bogota. We're in search of an establishment to watch the Champions League, and I am gobsmacked by the area I am in. Thai restaurants, an American rib diner, little boutiques selling designer clothes, a Cartier shop, fancy looking bars, guards patrolling armed with machine guns outside huge apartments flanked with black fences with security entry phones. Like La Paz, like Lima I am struck by the ridiculous contrasts this continent offers and wonder if the people here are aware of the social, economic and political problems of this city and country. It would be easy to get lost here, live a Western life, and blot out the sounds of sirens and the television news. I feel like I am in Chelsea, or Covent Garden.

The area where we're staying is a combo of Cov, with a bit of Spain thrown in. A fearsome rain has dominated proceedings for the last two days and threating crowds cling to the tree covered hills that rise up above our district. Typically for South America, there is a huge white statue of Christ on the hill above - but we've been warned that to walk there will inevitably result in a mugging. May give it a miss then. Around the hostel there are grey tower blocks, bizarre 60's esque squares with carved channels of water flowing from ugly modern fountains, mirrored hotel windows and an abundance of narrow steps flanking the pavements for no reason other than the designer wanted to build some steps. It's all a bit Coventry, the rain adding to the midlands feel. Still, the girls are prettier and it's more common to hear Spanish spoken that it is a Brummie-heavy English. Yet, just two blocks from our hostel, there is an old town-esque district called La Candeleria - full of pretty narrow streets red tiled roofs and candlelit cafes, which remind me of Spain.

Most notable here, though, is the lack of Gringos. We're a small tight knit community and we bump into each other in the street. Yesterday, we tried to go to the Gold Museum, but instead managed to walk into a sort of metro bus stop, buy a ticket for nowhere and then traipse tail in legs through to the other side of the street. At the other end, another fellow from our hostel who had made the same schoolboy error. The travellers that are here tend to be a bit hardcore - and in the hostel there's a tedious "Who's been to most places" type battle raging. To be honest, it's as dull as sitting around at home talking about a day's work - anything, even exploring fantastic parts of the planet, can be made to sound dull. I find myself having no interest in where people are going, or where they came from. As always, the people I click with are those who I can have a good old fashioned chat about death with, or Radiohead, or Dylan. I guess because I have hooked up again with my mate Andrew, and Mavis/Rachel arrives on Thursday, any will I have to discuss where I've been, what buses I've caught and just how great a traveller I am has sort of evaporated. So I've chilled. Been embroiled in a fascinating chess dual (1-1 currently), just bought some short stories by a genius Argentinian called Jorge-Luis Borges, supped some amazing Columbian coffee (such a chuffing relief after Peru sponsored by Nescafe), wandered around in the rain and got lots of water on my socks through my wounded trainers, tried to read a Columbian newspaper, drunk bizarre blue drinks in a bar round the corner with Paranoid Android and Subterraenean Homesick Blues on the video whilst explaining the nuances of the words w****r and **ck to a couple of bemused Columbianos one of whom worked in an Israeli restaurant in Bogota with a Russian chef who can only speak Russian. I offered my translation services, but I am not sure how much the phrase "Hello my name is Oliver and I like playing football and tennis" is going to assist matters culinary.

Well, been in this internet bubble in this bubble in Bogota for too long. I am going to an Irish Pub now and will no doubt eat bacon and chat in English to a barman called Steve and for an hour or two, just like the people round here, forget just where it is that I happen to be at the moment. This amazing, disgusting, beautiful, ugly, revolting world of contrasts of rich and poor of haves and haven'ts that we all live in.

24 hours in Bogota

2005-05-01T20:50:00.000+01:00

Was going to write a report on Peru, my reflections on my 6 weeks there as a whole - but Bogota has sort of got in the way, such is the electrical energy of the place.

Flight out of Leticia took me over miles and miles of jungle, green dots snaking brown curves cutting a path beneath the cotton wool clouds and if I fell if I fell if we crashed I imagine tigers and lions and parrots and snakes sniffing and swarming around me clouds thicken and the much missed sleep of the night before comes my nose pressed against the minute window and then as we descend a grey metropolis sprawls out below on a bed of green parks and a room bordered by moutains with windy roads. Off the plane queue at the direction of armed police officers and then free to go pick up a ticket for a taxi needs must or I might get killed and then into the taxi windows closed doors locked and off towards the hostel with a broken spanish conversation about girls and dangers and police and tourists and money and aeroplanes and then I am here a narrow steep street a mixture of old and new ugly great blocks of flats and brown tipped spanish houses kids skateboarding. At night to an opening bar night could easily be in europe a DJ with an Ipod bombay sapphires salmon on slips of bread and a buzz not felt since Buenos Aires well dressed good looking trendy Bogotans mix with us Gringos feeling dizzy and in another bar with videos playing candles in the centre of plastic chairs and tables a fistful of beers coffee and cigarrettes a reggae bar and exhaustion is all over like a cold blanket getting stared out by a bug eyed drug dealer with huge white teeth and a sinsiter laugh and his mini spoons and polythene bags touching fists with another guy agreeing about something that we're friends that we're the same that the world is not such a big place. Perhaps. Need to leave can't bare Bob Marley why not the other Bob make my excuses and walk straight and confidentally the two blocks home. Morning and more free coffee in the hostel stuff my wallet into my pants and find the bank machine a fistful of notes 10s of 1000s and a man wanting money I am a blatant liar I say I have none he knows better I make my excuses yet again and leave a square littered with stubbled white shirts scraping buckets looking for something deeper yelling to no one in particular except those demons in his head cute little cafes next to iron grilled ugly shops and banks and suddenly I am in a protest horns and beeps and whistles and red hammer and sickle flags Bogota's Oxford Street lined not with Dixons Currys Selfridges but black suited riot police very real looking machine guns and plastic chest high shields black clothed protesters ladies in cafe dooraways with stained aprons and kids on backs and red capped teens wise of the street knowing the score I smoke behind my shades and walk casually but my hand is firmly attached to my wad in my pocket and my heart tremors for the first time with excitement fear revulsion fascination love music women nervousness exhiliration light up a cig need to to make me blend some more and I am convinced if no one engages me in conversation I could pass for a curly mopped Bogotan I am sure of it I am sure of it street market on either side a multitude of wares laid out by crouching men women children on dirty black plastic sheets as revolting and exhilirating as the protestors old telephones sunglasses pornography music magazine pictures of marley john paul 11 lennon jesus watches on chains shirts wooden carts piled with fruits and litter for the first time in a while staining the street and pavement people don't push slow slow calm air filled with chatter and far off a melancholic jazz number soundtracking old men and young hunched over chess boards with their country's solutions in their hands and men thrusting scraps of paper into my hand and a car park full of stalls with jackets and jeans and jugs and bootleg radiohead and coldplay but still no bob still no bob and I leave the relative quiet of a boarded up street littert gently moving almost elegant. This place teething with life, simmering with tension, danger, revolution, music, sex, god, art, passion and I feel at once revolted exhilirated nervous but most of all blown away and delighted to be here, in Santa Fe de Bogota.

The Amazon river is quite boring

2005-04-29T01:44:00.000+01:00

Got up at 5am this morning after an awful itch-filled sleepless night in the stuffy hostel in Iquitos. Hopefully splashed a bit of water of my face, briefly examined my blotchy legs, shoved my now filthy garments into my now reeking backpack, left the hostel, jumped onto a motocarro and headed for the port. The usual profusion of cigarette coca-cola and water sellers greeted me as if it was 8 at night and I was some long lost best friend, I grunted them away and exchanged nods and the odd mumbled Hola with the other assorted voyagers, assembled with rucksacks, suitcases and huge cardboard boxes bound for Brazil and Columbia.

The boat left on time for Peru (i.e half an hour late) and then spent the first half an hour of the journey coughing and splutting and going back and forward and stopping and starting. The driver (a man who grins all the time as if he has the one answer in life that we're all searching for) stops the boat, grabs a small kitchen knife and heads to the engine at the back of the boat. Moments later his assistant emerges, now topless. The driver returns, knife in hand and grin on face, and then...we're on our way. Don't ask me.

Well the journey itself is long and pretty tedious. I mean once you've seen one tree and one river, then you don't really need all that much more. My brain, my Ipod and the odd interruption keep me amused for the twelve hours (and this is the fast boat). Brekkie is a stale chicken sandwich and a cup of coffee, and I make the occasional escape to the bathroom for a sneaky ciggie and hair stick out of the window the moment. Listening to my Ipod, it occurs to me that maybe I am the only person who has ever listened to Doug Martsch's eponymous debut album on a boat on the river Amazon passing by little wood huts and big green and brown trees. I glance over at my neighbour's paper, and see a headline about that Rice woman from America visiting Columbia and something about the military that could be scary. My brain decides to go for a wander and along the way the scenery includes the odd kidnapping guerillas in khaki and balaclavas and well meaning guides stuffing cocaine into my backpack whilst offering me help at the border. But my brain comes back from its walk because I itch and I need a wee.

Back to the scenery, and more trees and water and I am glad I didn't take the big iron three day-er boat. Dead glad. We pass by one, and dump a couple of our passengers with them and its full of gloomy looking bored people strung up on hammocks frowning cigarette smoke in our general direction. Several hours later, we get lunch, served in a foil plate like object. Some folks peel the foil lid off carefully, others remove the edge. I decide to break through the middle as if I am a surgeon performing a heart operation. Shards of foil stick up like flesh on an operating table, and inside there is a moutain of yellow rice and a shrivelled bony chicken leg like an old lady. To top it off there's a dull looking boiled potato...this lunch is a stomach upset waiting to happen methinks. My neighbour seems to have two wrinkled old lady legs, oh no, I'm wrong, his girlfriend has given him wrong. Amazing what things I can get jealous about.

More music listening, and I decide that a good future career direction might be to be a travelling record reviewer for an obscure indie music magazine. Basically I would travel to weird obscure far off places in the world and listen to weird obscure far out albums made by weird far out obscure artists. Then I would write about them.

I have a plastic cup full of my favourite urine coloured Inca Kola, a tiny siesta, and then the same thought that occured to me about Doug Martsch occured to me about Micah P Hinson. I look at the boat a lot. In front of me is a purple green yellow and peach lifejacket and a seat occupied by a man who insists on reclining his seat so far that I would consider selling the package on cable TV shopping channel as an marketable exercise alternative to the Thighmaster, such is the resultant position of my thighs on my chest. There's a delightful kid on board, who smiles and laughs all the way through the journey. Why, I ask again, are these kids so happy and well behaved.

I had many more profound thoughts - about god, love, football, music, books, work and travel. But I can't remember them. I saw many more trees, but I can't remember them, but I conclude that the Amazon river is very very long and very very big.

So, now, I am here in Columbia. I will write later about my reflections of Peru as a whole, but for now I might just go to Brazil for a quick pint. Hasta luego.

Some men in a boat, a Shaman with a blue baseball cap, 17,678 mosquito bites, lots of green things and a guide called Wilson

2005-04-27T22:45:00.000+01:00

Just back from three days in the jungle, exhausted and mosquito bite ridden. Perhaps due to exhaustion, am feeling particularly irritable, and the crap computer in this internet cafe is feeling the force of most of my irritation. The dash doesn`t work, well it´s where the apostrophe should be, the apostrophe is a weird slanty thing and the internet connection crashes every few minutes. Apart from that, it´s fine! No it´s not, the ! is where the / should be. I shall endeavour to finish this entry - and hope that you forgive any errors in punctuation.

The Amazon jungle was quite a place, and offered quite an experience, in many different ways. We set off first thing Monday morning, perched on the front of zooming speedboat as the vast river widened (so much so it could be a lake or a sea) and rows of trees formed the edge of the banks. It´s difficult to describe, but you only get a sight of the front row of trees - offering little hint of the jungle massive behind. Occasional row boats passed by, and waves and grins were exchanged with young kids, people fishing and others with huge piles of bread, fish, clothes - anything you can imagine. After a brief stop at a river side village (a bit like the Amazon´s equivalent of Newport Pagnell service station) to buy supplies (ridiculously strong filterless cigarrettes, bog roll and huge chunks of frisbee shaped bread), exchange more mutually curious glances with locals and think more curious thoughts about their appalling taste in mid-nineties British house music, it´s time to vamos and we continue on down the M1-esque behemoth of a browny green river. Two hours after we left the city, we head off the Amazon (at junction 21 I think), and down a little B-road of a river, considerably narrower and affording us more of a chance to see and hear a jungle buzzing and vibrating and slithering with life. Ten minutes later we are there, and a brief walk along a muddy path later we come to a clearing, a large wooden lodge - home for the next 3 days.

The lodge has hammocks swimming in a front room cum dining room, the obligatory guitar for all travellers´ needs, mosquito net protected beds and, most importantly a plate of eggs and bread for brekkie. Later, we go for our first jungle stroll - and spy the odd monkey swinging sleepily in a tree, trees which give the jungle a Manhattan-esque vibe - everything towers above you and it´s occasionally hard to spot the sun. I think it´s there though, cos I am ridiculously sweatily smellily hot...

Our guide, all gold toothed grins is called Wilson (Weeelson) but he Wilson speak the English to go with his name, so it´s a wee bit of a struggle to figure everything out but he explains that some trees contain medicines, some water (we have a drink from a branch which he savages with his machate) and some poisonous type horrid foul things. I think I remembered which ones were bad, at least I am currently alive and well so I assume that I did. One special medicine / potion that comes from the jungle is Ayowaska - used by Shaman in the jungle. It has halluciogenic effects, can be used in helping gain insight into personal issues and is generally considered a bit freaky. Scared though I am, I think I should give it a shot.

As darkness begins to fall, we head down the river in our little canoe in search of the Shaman. To find him, we have to head off our river and into an area where the trees have been flooded. We duck under branches, swerve round huge wide trees, swat the occasional mosquito and gape at the array of flowers and plants around us. It´s still light, but the trees make it seem like darkness. Finally, we emerge and come to a tiny village which surround a large piece of grass - the village square I guess, or a footy pitch. We´ve been told that the Shaman is here, that he´s been playing football. I am curious to know what this guy is like - as my expectation is an elderly bloke with a funny costume and head dress perhaps with bone earrings. When I meet him, I don´t catch his name, but he may as well be Ken - he is that unmystical looking. He´s wearing a blue cap, and immediately bums a cigarette as soon as we meet him.

We sit around in a wood house for about an hour, our guide talks with the Shaman and I play with three of the most incredibly beautiful children I have ever met - I teach them loads of cool games, like how to hit my hand, how to tickle your sister and how not to nick my Dylan hat. When it´s time to say adios, I give them some presents - a woolly hat I bought at Lake Titicaca, and my Make Poverty History bracelet and another friendship band. The MPH bracelet seems funny, as these kids are clearly poor - yet, and how do I write this without being patronising - so full of life, joy and happiness. Weird planet this. We sit around a candle for a bit longer, outside an almighty storm rages and completely illuminates the trees, the grass and the sky above. The rain comes down in a torrent, and I feel completely and utterly at the mercy of the awesome jungle, yet completely and utterly secure and safe in the modest hut. Finally, as the rain subsides to a mere minor torrent we say farewell and head back to our now nearly submerged canoe. A bit of plastic later and a few dozen bucket scoops we head back into the sheltered flooded jungle, the noise of insects, birds and animals more than matching the rain´s crescendo. The guide chops his way through to the main river, crashes into the odd tree and finally we´re on our way back home. On either bank, bright lights blink like on an airport runway - fireflys showing us the way home.´

Back at the lodge, we prepare for the Ayowaska ceremony. The room is darkened. I swing nervously on my hammock as the Shaman takes his seat in the corner of the room with three bottles of multi-coloured potions. What will happen? Why am I doing this? Will I go insane? We are handed toilet paper, as vomiting is likely, and we are asked to repeat a mantra in Spanish before we commence. And, the experience? Amazing, intense, at times horrible, at times incredible. The other guy takes the orange drink first, then me. It tastes revolting, even worse than tinned tuna, and then...nothing. Ten minutes or so later, my associate runs off to the bathroom and is violently sick - all I can think of is being ill, taking poison into my body, falling asleep and not waking up. And nothing happens - none of the promised visions of animals, none of the profound discoveries about myself - just the continuous motorcycle hum of mosquitos, and the odd itch of my savaged back. And, then it comes - I start to feel nauseous and run off the toilet, torn between vomiting into the bowl and itching my legs, back, backside and arms off. I am not sick, but become gradually disorientated as the Ayowaska takes hold - and the feelings of terror of death are slowly replaced by an incredible serenity and peace about things in my childhood, the things that rot in my brain day in, day out. The shaman whistles constantly and fans palm leaves to the same rhythm and I continue to think deeply and peacefully, always conscious of my surroundings, the mosquitos and the fact that I have just swallowed a very strange brew; but at the same time immersed in an intense Q and A session with my psyche. It´s an interesting chat - love, death, family, childhood, future...interesting. Gradually, the revelations and deep thinking subside and clear to form a feeling of tranquility and joy and I swing along on a hammock as the Shaman smokes and whistles away. Everyone is in bed, the Shaman heads off, we say our thanks, and head off to bed ourselves. I still haven´t been ill, but in bed everytime I move to the left or the right a wave of nausea engulfs me - twice I get up for the loo, but twice I don´t do the biz. And back in bed, with the mosquito net around me I hear jet planes whooshing through my head and see lights pulsing in my brain. And when I get up, I am delirious and dizzy, seeing like one of those dodgy first person drunk shots in a b-movie. Finally I sleep, finally the next day comes.

The next day, and now, is time to reflect on the whole business. I feel fine physically - and the powerful thoughts I had about myself, future and family have stayed with me and I will dwell on them for ages. I wouldn´t say it was a pleasant experience. The horrible nausea, the shakes and the pulsing lights weren´t great. I have no experience of drugs like LSD, but maybe this was the same or similar. Definitely an intense and unforgettable experience, and one that I had a lot of doubts about having.

Well, the rest of the trip was dominated by the fact that I am simply and honestly not cut out for the jungle. Not in any way shape or form. No way. The mosquitos were all over me in ways that the ladies aren´t and each bite swelled up - on my legs, feet, knees, back, front, hands (particularly painful) and my face. Right now I am nursing a bite just to the left of my eyelid, and my right eye looks like it´s been on the receiving end of someone´s left hook. My mosquito repellant has vanished as quickly as free drinks at a party and my fingers have never itched so much. We walked round the jungle some more, swung like Tarzan on 40 foot high vines, watched as our guide chopped down half the rain forest (but he prays for each and every tree he savages), saw two dead Pumas (trainers), a tarantula the size of my fist, colonies of ants, termites and other bugs, the odd monkey and iguana, lots of birds, waded through flooded sections of jungle that reminded me of Glastonbury on a bad weekend, ate fish with more beaming villagers, provided a floating snack bar for a pack of piranas who must have been wetting themselves at our pathetic fishing attempts which constituted a free feed for them, balanced preceriously on fallen trees and generally saw lots of green things. The jungle is noisy, it teems (I had to get that word in when describing the jungle, because it does) but mostly and most irritatingly it is home to thousands upon thousands of insanity inducing mosquitos.

We left at lunchtime...and I am delighted to be back amongst lights, cars, human beings and air that doesn´t hum and buzz and vibrate with the most evil creatures I have ever encountered in my life, save for followers of Liverpool FC. So. I will sum up and say that the Amazon was an experience, some good, some mindblowing, some itchy, some wet, some muddy, some awful. But definitely an experience.

So. Tonight I am going to have alligator and chips for me tea. I am going to pack my backpack again, carefully separating the clothes that hum from the clothes that don´t and have a damned good kip. Tomorrow, at 5.30am, I´ll be heading downriver - to Columbia and another world of mystery and excitement. Oh, and I think I´ll go to Brazil tomorrow as well.

An incoherent ramble on a Sunday afternoon because today I don't have much else to do.

2005-04-24T22:01:00.000+01:00

4pm Sunday afternoon, Iquitos. Apologies for my second posting of the weekend, hope it's not too dull. I might make some stuff up to make it entertaining. Anyway, wanted to write because (a) I'll be in the jungle for the next three days, and I assume that it won't be replete with cybercafes and (b) I have a big urge to do some writing and typing and (c) I really am too tired now to do anything else.

A message has just popped up on MSN, presumably for someone else, as I don't have the wherewithall to have an account. They're asking if I am in Misissipi. Just realised too that words are weird sometimes, especially if you just type and read them. Misissipi, what a strange word. Iquitos is strange too. I am not sure I can spell, either.

Just been searching for a street vendor. Normally they're like flies buzzing irritatingly and constantly, proferring unwanted wares. Today, it seems that some higher power has sprayed the town and killed off all my selling amigos. Finally spot one, then stand at the side of the road contemplating a dash and then deciding that it may be potentially risky as the 3 wheeled motorcarros are zipping about with extra vigour today. Just re-read the previous paragraph and I think I have spelt Missisipi / Mississippi / Misissipi wrong. Doesn't matter really, I don't suppose.

Today it's hot. Unbearably so. Gerald, a rotundish mid fiftyish something Texan who runs a local restaurant, said it's the hottest day for three months. He wasn't speaking to me, but he's from Texas so he was addressing the whole cafe not just the two other Gringos sat behind me. Gerald seems to be the sort of bloke who asks questions just so that he can loudly correct any answer that he receives - you know, one of those been there, done that sort of fellows. As I try and finish my brekkie of eggs, ham and malaria tab his voice grates more and more. But it gets me thinking - what a cool life - finding a place to settle away from home and running a bar or cafe. I have a mini fantasy about setting up a bar called Dylan, not sure where - some mid sized town somewhere in South America. It would have a little music stage, non stop melancholic rock, little booths so people could write, watch or chat and I'd run it whilst attempting to write third rate fiction. As I wrote in my last blog, increasingly as this trip enters its final third, I am thinking of what I should do with my life. My problem at the mo is cash - I need a job to pay off the debts that this trip has incurred. Well, if anyone has ideas or cash then email me. Anyway, as I said at the beginning of this ramble of a paragraph, today it's hot and the ice cold coke is helping a tad.

My lethargy today is a result of one thing and one thing only. Well two. One going to bed at 7.30am, and the other eating too little and drinking too much. I have to admit that I haven't been the most healthy living on this trip, and last night was a fine example of that. As usual in Iquitos, it only takes 2.1 seconds for locals to come up and chat. Problem is, when they do (particularly the young ladies) it is expected that the tourists buy them drinks and pay for them to get into places. Irritating, a tad, especially as the girl we met last night was a bit boring and not all that pretty. Still, it was a fun night. We took a motorcarro from venue to venue - dusty wind blowing and me grinning from ear to ear at the thought that I was zipping around a town in the middle of the Amazon jungle. One place was a giant outdoor car park-esque edifice with a roof and hundreds of sweaty locals heaving to a 10 piece live band and bikini clad dancers. We stopped off at a "rock" bar, but unfortunately the tunes were more Status Quo than Nirvana. As usual, our presence in this locals only place brought with it a wall of grins. Later, we ended up in yet another Beatles playing establishment. Later still in some club with the neon burning bright a shiny slip of a floor and fag burn ridden carpet. I think the music was Salsa. I think I danced. I can't confirm it, but I assume it was bad. Later, at around 6, we're in Gerald's place for bedtime beer and chips. A guy joins us at our table, he's about 21 I think and by the look on his eyes he's not quite with us. It's not a coherent conversation given the linguistic issues and the varying states of inebriation - but we manage to take in god, drugs, future, heaven, money, love, death and girls in between swigs from his plastic bottle of green medicinal alcoholic poison. His eyes are angry sad and lost - he points out three prostitutes and their pimp all sweaty lurid and poison grins, he tells me about his dead mother, he asks if there is any hope or any point, he asks why I am so rich and he is so poor, he wraps my uneaten chips in a plastic bag to take home, he gives me a high five, he laughs inanely as I sing along with Lennon's "Jealous Guy". And he asks if I have any answers. Maybe five years ago I could have gift wrapped an answer for him and walked away beaming with pride for doing my bit. But I have nothing to give or say, except to nod and agree that this world is messed up, confusing here in Iquitos, in London. Maybe Gerald has the answer, I expect as he is from Texas he will have.

Outside, it's hot and it's only 7.30am. A guy is doing sit ups on a park bench. A crowd is massing outside the yellow church and my eyes are stinging. My back, now a mountain range of red itchy bites, is hurting me. I want my bed and I go.

Tomorrow it's the jungle - there's this weird Shaman's potion that you can take that apparently has cleansing mental halluciogenic effects. I might try it, but then it might make me insane. Well, I will write more when I get back - then I'll be heading off down the river and hopefully be able to take in three countries in one day - Peru, Brazil and Columbia.

So, amigos, if anyone has the answer for me or my drunken Peruvian mate, do us a favour and post it here.

The best things in life are free?

2005-04-23T00:01:00.000+01:00

I am hot, and I've been bitten. By some kind of mosquito related creature, no doubt. Other than those two minor physical discomforts, I have probably had one of the best days of my trip so far.

Lima airport turned out to be home for a bit longer than I wanted. My 3pm flight was cancelled, due to there being no plane. Because my Spanish isn't quite at that conversational, good old English sarcy stage yet I was unable to ask them why they hadn't thought of organising a plane for a scheduled flight. I didn't ask, and instead I set about entertaining myself for six hours with two gift shops selling overpriced novelty items, a McDonalds and a fast food chicken shop, a two days old Guardian and an impossible crossword, my trusty Pod, the odd sneaky cigarette which I had to partake in outside (after weaving through a crowd of taxi drivers gathered at the exit like a crowd of cheering friends seeing off the bride and groom at a wedding), an expensive internet cafe and pretty uncomfortable chrome and plastic seats on the beige and white diagonally tiled concourse. Due to boredom, I wondered who had decided on the decor for Lima airport, who came up with the colour scheme and the shapes of the tiles. Fortunately, such tedium was relieved by a fast internet connection, a pair of headphones and a bootleg MP3 of "Glass (or Last) Flowers" an utterly sublime moving wonderful Radiohead song that Thom played at the Trade Justice rally. So beautiful it stayed in my head and carried me through until I finally got on my later plane.

I was gutted I missed out on the daytime flight, as I had wanted to see the jungle and the Amazon unfurl before me. The best I got was a startling view of orange blinking Lima and, later, just visible through the clouds and darkness a fat winding snake of a river. When I got off the plane, it was drizzling and very very warm. I was immediately met by a reception committee of Amigo yelling taxi drivers, got into one and was subsequently joined by two exceedingly strange middle aged women who kept laughing at me and saying things about girls and staying at their house for free. I made the immediate decision to follow my guide book and headed for the hostel - Hobo Hideout - complete with plunge pool and parrot.

I had no real plans for today, aside from the routine toilet and cleansing duties, attending to my laundry, finding a proper coffee and wandering around Iquitos. I did them all, but loads more. As soon as I reached the Plaza with a friend I met in the hostel, we were approached by Pedro - a guy probably in his fifties, zooming around on his motorbike (as everyone does here, as there are no roads out of Iquitos) and saying hello to every young chica in sight. Later, a coffee and papaya juice in front of the Amazon, on a promenade much like at any beach, he took us off to Belen - an experience that I'll never forget.

As a tourist it's been amazing to experience (and pay for) sights such as Machu Picchu, the Colca Canyon and the Salt Lakes - but this topped them all and it cost nothing. We walked along the river side, and below us on the shore music blared out of little huts and teenagers played football on a wisp of a pitch. In front of us, dotted in and out of the water, we could see hundreds of wooden shacks - Belen, a sort of shanty town on the outskirts of Iquitos.

Approaching the town we passed through a vast street market - selling all the usuals (batteries, lots of socks, rip-off Manchester United and Real Madrid shirts, no Chelsea shirts, watches that will probably break after a day etc) plus all the unusuals...frogs spreadeagled and ready to be cooked, strange wriggling worm like bugs about as thick as my thumb some in a bucket still wriggling their lives away, and some being toasted on skewers, slabs of crocodile meat, a couple of dead turtles heads and feet still green, the rest raw meat, every fruit unimaginable in a myriad of yellows, greens and oranges, foul tasting medicinal liquor made from tree barks that we partook in but didn't buy, fishes in all sizes and smells, slabbed onto wooden tables with the market vendors either going at them with knives or having a power nap next to them, tables full of random pills with no labels, a small charcoal fire in the middle of the street between two stalls, dogs sniffing at everything and dozens of black vultures circling overhead or perching on top of the buildings watching and waiting. The noise...the smell...the sight. Like nothing I had seen before.

We walked on. Nearly every person (especially the girls) stared and laughed at us. I mustered the odd embarrassed "Hola" and wondered in this particularly non-touristy corner of Peru were we as much of a novelty as they were to us? We walked down, towards the high-tide river and there the true extent of this mini-metropolis unveiled itself to us. Pedro guided us towards a canoe, we got on and set off down the aptly named Venice Street. A monkey pops his head out of a little alleyway, and we watch him for a while. Normally, you can walk on this street and through the whole city - but as the tide is so high, now it's only possible to get around by boat. As we set off, giggling kids throw footballs over our heads and dive into the browny water to catch them. Others sit in their wooden open fronted houses and wave, smile and give comic salutes. For nearly an hour, we paddle round the town - the only Gringos in sight. Pigs wander around some of the stilted wooden shacks. Little kids grin and wave and grin and wave some more. I have never seen so many people grinning, except at the last Nick Cave concert I attended. We paddle through a submerged football pitch, the posts now doubling as trapeze poles for the children. Some fully clothed sit coyly on the edge of their houses, and then seeing us watch gleefully catapult themselves into the river. We see churches, simple and small. Tiny little buildings with the radio blasting out offer beers and coke. In front of many houses people just swing on hammocks and all the time canoes pass us, full of oranges, bread, fish, toilet rolls...anything you can imagine. For an hour, I was transported. I don't know why. But I live in London, a city of unimaginable culture, enertainment and money and everyone scowls and rushes. Here, everyone...literally everyone is smiling. And I feel really really grateful for the opportunity to be here.

Later, we get back on dry land, below the market. It's boiling. I need a beer. Pedro takes us up a couple of streets, we find beer, I ask for the Beatles (I felt Radiohead might be pushing it a tad) and we sit on the steps listening to Sir John, watching the river Amazon and saying hola to as many grinning people as we can...

Now I am back in the Plaza. The sound of rushing motorbikes and 3 wheeled motorised cabs dominates the internet cafe's radio. I feel, quite literally, that I am on another planet from Miraflores. It feels great - amazing in fact. On Monday I head into the jungle for three days of piranha fishing, alligator spotting, monkey spying, hammock swinging, dolphin swimming etc and then Columbia. An email from home a couple of days got me thinking...do I need to come back? What is real life, or a proper way to live? What is vocation? I don't know...time a plenty to decide. Now, I could really do with that freezing shower in my hostel!

In Lima airport

2005-04-21T18:45:00.000+01:00

This computer is amazing. I popped in here just to check my emails briefly, but so enamored am I by the flat screen, non-stick keyboard and internet connection the speed of home, I have decided to write a little. Additionally, I am at Lima International Airport, with over two hours to terminate before I get on the plane to Iquitos and although I truly love and despise airport terminals, I can delay the experience of overpriced cafes, chrome chairs, undecipherable public address systems and irritating shoving people. Yesterday was exactly three months into my trip, and exactly two months before its end. I think back ruefully to Heathrow Airport - end of January...waiting in airport...bored, twitchy...flight delayed...and the subsequent purchase of nicotine related produce. Given what has occured since, possibly and error of judgement. Still, despite its stupidity, terrible consequences for health, smell and appearance, I actually enjoy it. It's one of the myriad of activities that I know to be wrong / bad that I enjoy.

Since my last post I have participated in a few activities, none of the touristic nature. My primary activity has been sleep. At 6.15pm ish I drifted off to Elliott Smith, woke briefly to find my hair attempting to resemble an art installation at the Tate Modern, popped out for a bottle of water, stumbled my teeth clean and promptly drifted off until 10 this morning. When I woke up, in order to keep my mind at bay I started to count the hotels I had stayed at, and then decided to rate them according to comfortability, friendliness of staff, annoyingness of fellow guests and price. It was rather boring. So I fell asleep, woke with alarm at the impending task of shoving my deshevelled pile of garments into my backpack, swallowed a malaria tab and downed a gallon of coffee. And now I am here.

The journey to/from an airport to me is always an major experience. Obviously, it usually marks the beginning or end of a trip and hence feelings of excitement, nervousness, regret or homesickness abound. But, there is something about the landscape on route to or from the airport that seems specially poignant. Maybe it's because it's a route we all have to take. There are no ways of skirting more unsavoury parts of town - no special upper class way in. Usually, airports are located outside the centre of towns (funny that, eh) so the journey offers snapshot after snapshot of what a city can offer. One exception to this is Stansted, where you get a bit of Essex and a bit of Tottenham. In Lima's case, this is not the exception that proves the rule. We pull out of Miraflores, with it's neatly manicured roundabout lawns, dollar sign and euro attired money changing vendors, Western boutiques selling expensive trainers and ugly expensive bags that for some reason some women like to buy and street cleaners beavering away like dinner party hosts and their vacuums. Later, we pass through San Isidiro with it's mini-Manhattan-esque office blocks and banks, the odd suit and tie and a multitude of coffee shops. We pull into a petrol station. As usual I pay, and the driver hands me change for the journey. Then the roads widen. Newspaper sellers walk up and down the middle of the dual carriageway waving tabloids at the window. Advertising signs like overgrown teenagers sprout up left and right but not centre, promising that you're the one (well if you drink Coca-Cola or Cusqueña beer). Some even revolve. There are casinos, fast food drive in joints, a drive in bank or two, neon signed night clubs and shopping malls after shopping malls. They give way, eventually. A sludge of a river, a dirty dusty bridge and there it is - a cross between a building site and a housing estate. My first site of real collective poverty here in Lima. Clothes hang from windowlesswindows (new word but I like it) and little kids scrap over flat footballs on wisps of grass. The wind is blowing my hair all over the place. I adjust my shades, brush it back. How quick the human mind can find its way out of situations it doesn't like to deal with. The radio announces something about trouble in Ecuador. I look forward to being in my second South American country with a resigning or sacked president. I think about the jungle and Columbia and lots and lots about my job back home and whether I should come back and what if and then I am here. Typical airport. Car parks. Blokes with guns and suits like the police. Nice looking air stewardesses and a big fat sign saying that guns aren't allowed, and if you have one please don't take it on the plane thankyou very very much. I feel relieved.

And now I am in the internet cafe and the air-con is whirring away, and I think I am going to have a wonder around. I got a window seat to look forward to. I hope the jungle will reveal itself before me. I hope the food is good and I get a free glass of wine. I hope I don't ever forget how I feel when I see slums in cities, or seven year old kids trying to sell me cigarettes.

So knives out, catch da mouse, squash him on his head

2005-04-20T23:29:00.000+01:00

Today, perhaps due mainly to a chronic lack of kip, I feel utterly wretched. Utterly useless ridiculous without point on this planet not knowing why I am here (Miraflores, this internet cafe, planet earth) and completely at the end of my tether with my own brain the crap that I feel inside me and see around me and the fact that United again capitulated to opposition that we would have pulverised 4 seasons ago. When wretched some people drink the odd shandy or partake in a sneaky fag or arrow a quick one up to the almighty or go shopping. Me, I usually listen to Radiohead. Anyhow, that isn't currently possible due to my faithful white deck of card shaped toy flat out of battery power. Wracking my feet, I decide to leave the relative comfort of my hostal sofa and I head to Bembo's. I succumb to fast food - chicken, bacon, big portion of chips, a healthy dollop of non-Heinz ketchup, an extra large Sprite, a bit of one-sided beach football match featuring Brazil and America, an incredible advert for Cristal beer with heartstoppingly amazing women in their underwear and the lingering presence of a rather strangely yellow and blue costumed Bembo employee. It's mindless. It's vacuous. But that at times is good. And then. And then...in a fast food joint full of middle income middle aged Limeñons and middle teened teenagers, and then...it comes over the stereo. "Knives Out" by Radiohead, from their allegedly difficult fifth album Amnesiac. "Knives Out", with its obtuse cannabilistic overtones and lyrics about catching mice. "Knives Out". My heart doesn't leap, but it smiles as if there is something deeply ironic and wonderful about this moment. I can't say there is, but suddenly the cavernous bin bags under my eyes become little paper ones full of pear drops. And I ask myself, has this song ever been played in such a mecca of nothingness before. Not sure. Before long my mind wanders to conversations I had years ago about potential first dance wedding songs. You know, like the "Intense humming of evil" by the Manics or "Exit Music" by the mighty aforementioned 'head. Suddenly my mind is off on a little journey of its own taking in pasts and futures and presents with no mind for what's coming round the next corner. I still feel shattered. Maybe a tad on the wretched side, but at least I had a very special moment whilst sat on my plastic chair eating off my plastic tray.

You know yesterday I wrote all about the kindly people offering me the chance to "smoking some grass", well as soon as I finished my blog I walked out onto the street. A man in his fifties at a guess comes up to me and tells me the new Pope is German. Great, I don't get a chance to reply before the mantra is delivered..."you want to smoking some grass." No. No. No thanks. It makes me insane, sick, mental, miserable, paranoid, acutely self-aware and awful company. And that's just the thought of it.

Yesterday, well the rest of it, passed by with many an exciting incident. I bought some deodorant. I watched Bridget Jones II and shamefully liked it. I had a brilliant dinner with a Peruvian family, whose daughter is a friend of a friend. Apparently, they were expecting a fifty something missionary on a circuit of the Methodist scene of Lima. Alas, they got a nearly thirty something misery on a circuit of the mad drug dealer's scene of Lima. Still, I think they took to my feeble attempts at Spanish, my petting of their blind dog, my gulping down of the urine coloured legendary Inka Cola and my over enthusiastic dolloping of spicy sauce on my veg and rice. They picked me up, they drove me home giving me a sightseeing tour of a few areas of Lima no tourist would ever go to. A few squares. The odd thousand Maccy Dees and casino and the sight every ten yards of teenage couples snogging in the middle of dual carriageways.

Tomorrow I am off to the jungle. I hope that I sleep well. I hope that I see a pink dolphin and fish for piranhas and meet a strange shamen from a strange tribe and see big trees and hear Radiohead's "Knives Out" blasting out from a shack somewhere on the banks of the Amazon.

This keyboard is sticky and the keys are in the wrong place. So I will say farewell now from Lima, the City of Kings.

Yesterday in Lima.

2005-04-19T19:51:00.000+01:00

Left the internet cafe. Sun blinding but I go like the locals and stick to my jeans and shirt. No t-shirt and shorts for me. Cab into Lima. Driver bums a smoke concentrates more on his crossword than the wheel. Stop for a second and everyone honks their horns. Dual carriageways. Neon hotels billboards dirty great bridges towering apartment blocks give way to narrow streets flanked by colonial buildings opening into green plazas full. Fountains statues of famous Spaniards revered or hated. Pigeons swarm. As usual stopping at the petrol station for a refill. As usual my fare pays. Driver is a Catholic. I can tell by the crucifix hanging off the rearview mirror. They all seem to be Catholics here. New Pope by the way, I saw that on telly. Dropped off at Plaza Mayor. Scout a free white marble like bench. In front of me the Cathedral dominates with its huge drape poster of John Paul II. He loved the whole world, so we're told in Spanish. Oh no. Not him again. A few days ago, a bizarre man came up to me in the street. Said he wanted to practice his English. Then followed me around and waited as I booked a flight. Dunno, just got a feeling about him. Try and look at the ground. Then the sky. Then Lonely Planet. No avail. "Olivier! Amigo". That woman's with him too. And another one. "You want a beer?" Invent a friend. "You want a museum" Invent being tired. The woman go off. "They hookers. Ha ha ha ha." Smile. You know one of them without the eyes. You a smile that says please go away you are disturbing me a tad but also retains a semblance of polite Britishness. "I no like smoking weed. Well only a joint now and then. You like? Good stuff". I get out my seventeenth thousands "no gracias" of my time in Peru. "You sure. Cerveza. No? Okay we go to museum." Running out of excuses. Get up and reluctantly follow. Life story, I really don't believe. Lawyer from Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Um. Wife and a six year old kid. Just here on vacation. Um. Look for a bus to duck behind. He weaves across the road. I sigh a relieved kind of sigh. Oh, bugger. He's waiting in the middle of the road. Gets his grass out of his pocket. "Is legal here amigo. No problem is smoking grass". No, gracias. "You wan ladeez." Get to the museum. I pretend I need the loo. He follows. I don't go to the loo I splash water on my face as it's stifling outside. "You wan beer? Cusquena negro?" No, it's too early (actually I could murder a pint but really not with you amigo). Then...he goes...one last wave of his plastic bag of weed...then he's gone. Strange museum. Guide speaks in English like a horse racing commentator. Irritating stupid Americans with me. "Gee. Do you think the Ku Klux Klan know their uniforms are like these prisoners?"..."Oh, I'd go mad if I had to stay in one of those cells"..."Wow, I can't believe they used to execute and torture people like that." Words like bay, George Bush, Guantanemo (sp, sorry) and Iraq spring to mind. "I can't go down there. I don't want to get claustrophobia." Ok, don't then. Leave museum. Streets full of cheap chicken joints. Little pope obsessed huts selling newspapers. Another square. Statue of some princess or goddess or something with a Llama stuck on her head. Recline on not quite a seat or a wall. "Hola, Olivier". Oh...him...again..."We go for beer. You want smoking weed. I know cafe. Bob Marley. Good smoking weed". No, thankyou. Is it my hair or something? "Ah John Lennon. Hah hah." Takes my sunglasses and tries them for size. I am going now. Adios I say and walk purposely. Pedestrian street, burger kings, KFCs, ice cream shops, cheap trainers, internet cafes neon bright. Stopped by a kid. "Money?" No. Stopped by a bloke. "Where you from?" Inglaterra. "Ah, Chelsea. Lampard" No me gusta. Manchster. Wayne Rooney. "Ah, Manchester. Paul Showles?" Si. "You want internet? International calls?" No gracias. "You want smoking weed?" Carry on. Stop at another plaza. Sky turning orange. A tiny dirty kid crawls at my feet rolls over and crawls away. Sup a coke. A couple sit next to me. "Where you from" England, I reply (and nearly add no I don't want smoking weed). But no...great conversation...learn a bit of Spanish...they warn me about the thieves...then they walk me around the town centre...I have to go. Few blocks walk. No such thing as bus stops here. Just stick out your hand where you feel like it. A lad leans from the door. "Arequipa. Larco. Arequipa. Larco." Yells every sixteen seconds or so. Dark now. Red white orange yellow. A street full of excel course shops. Men outside with clipboards enticing people inside. Beep beep constant beep. Chaos. Streets full of noise and bustle. Finally home. Miraflores. A square with grass not for smoking and painters and their easels. Cafes with umbrellas and shade and smart shirted tourists and waiters in bow ties and smooth English. Casino lights flashing. Hostel Kill Bill with Dutch subtitles and the grainiest picture. 75 pence for a DVD. Chicken supper. Wander around. End up in a pub with a bunch of Limenos and a girl from Stamford Hill.

This planet really really is quite strange I think as I take a sip from my half pint of beer and light up a cigarette and watch little girls from the window begging for small change or a chocolate if that's all that can be spared and I listen to Creep on the bar stereo in a bar stacked with bottles of Tanqueray gin and I think about love and life and death and Ruud van Nistelrooy's return to form and I chat to a girl about the Vortex jazz bar in Stoke Newington, the threat of being kidnapped or murdered in Columbia or not as the case may be, booking the Polyphonic Spree, how much I love my job, the Safeways (well, now Morrisons) in Stamford Hill and how interesting the political situation in Bolivia really is.

I go to bed. There's a new person in my room. I can hear the sort of semi-sleeping breathing. Elect not to turn on the light. So use my Ipod instead. Then fall asleep and wonder in the morning whether I snored or not and just who my new room mate is.

The futile quest for authenticity when I don't even know what such a thing is.

2005-04-18T19:04:00.000+01:00

Made the error of judgement of accepting some valium from a helpful girl in the hostel I am staying here in Miraflores. You see, I had a rough night's sleep on Friday and took one. Still feel a little strange, but other than strange, well.

Miraflores is in Lima. It's a suburb. But it's not Lima. It's like an overblown American shopping mall tagged on to the end of a sprawling, smoggy, snarling South American city. Personally, I like it and I hate it. I hate the sight of KFCs, McDonalds and Pizza Huts, proud and neon on the corners of neatly trimmed roundabouts. But, I love the fact that as I sit in an outdoor cafe supping a proper strong cup of coffee, that a man comes up to me an offers me not cannabis or cocaine, not a llama finger puppet, not a shine of brown trainers, not an overpriced tour of a third rate Inca ruin - but a Guardian. A Guardian newspaper. I am not really a Guardian snob - I think it's the best paper, but a little too clever for its own good. But here, it's like the best-Christmas gift, a visit from an old friend. The rustle, the impossible folding of the sheets (no tabloid size here), the wind blowing a section away. Fantastic. And I even found out that there is an election going on back home and that maybe we're all going to die of bird flu. I have taken a couple of sightseeing days off, and allowed my brain and feet to slip into neutral in this very soulless and seemingly inauthentic place.

There's a shopping mall about 10 minutes walk from the hostel. It tip-toes precariously on the edge of cliff, over expensive coffee shops having a nervous look at the browny-blue pacific sludge below. On the beach, would be Nolberto Solanos weave magical barefoot patterns in the sand and surfers with industrial strength skin take to the waves. To the left and right, the cliffs drop to the beach below, and above the sun battles gamely against the grey blue smog - a combo of coastal mist and pollution. The mall is full of overpriced (i.e nearly UK priced, so that means very very expensive) novelty gift items, Covent Garden-esque surf and trainer shops, a multiplex cinema and ice cream that costs eight times what it did in Ica. I wonder whether the Limenos like this place? Is that what they aspire to? Is this the Western dream fulfilled - bland, mindless musak, identikit near-anorexic teenage girls and stainless steel windowful shop fronts and tourist meeting points. I feel sick and tired, and look for the nearest Starbucks. But at the same time, I love it. I love the neutrality. The lack of effort. The illusion of choice, but the need to make no decisions save to reach into your pocket. Maybe I am being a patronising git...but Peru is maybe the most amazing country in terms of natural beauty and history yet, as in Cusco, it is tarnished by this plastic western veneer, this aspiration, this dream. But I know that's a crass and simplistic statement. I know little about the economy of this country, except that it's in a mess and I know that tourists are walking wheelbarrows of cash. Um, da di da, di da. Apparently OK Computer is the best album ever according to telly back home. Also United were brill against Newcastle, that's good, eh?

What else? Well, the hostel is lovely but a bit mind numbing. And I feel a wee bit old. There are a few people there who seem hellbent on having experienced or seen more, and telling the whole hostel. One guy- "Oh, I don't really want to play a song to you all." (room responds with silence) "Oh go on then. If you insist". And finally I realise I am fine just sat there saying nothing and waiting for the interesting people to talk and engage with. I guess after 3 months of backpacker conversation, I pick and choose now. When I first started, I took everyone's email address and eagerly participated in the "where have you been" conversation. Now, if truth be told, I simply can't be bothered.

Still having a cracking time though. On Friday (bad sleep night), we went to see DJ Sasha and had a brill night. The people in Lima know how to party, and as my legs gave up at 6.30am, they were still larging it in their hordes. Prior to that, we met a strange man on the street. Typical "where you from amigo" conversations ensued, and then he pulled out the largest pile of postcards from all over the world, handed over his address and asked us all to write. So, I'll dig the address out. Would be great if you could send some Milton Keynes and Derby cards. And on my way home, at 6.30am, in an overpriced but couldn't be bothered to haggle about taxi ride home, I wearily gave an English lesson to an over awake cabbie who took great delight in learning directions in English. Desperately trying to get to my bed, he insisted on me dictating left, right, back and straight to him. He wrote them down, "Lef, roy, stray, bak". I explained the spelling, but he didn't mind and he drove off into the morning with a huge grin on his face and a taxi full of yellow and green balloons he stopped and picked up off the street.

I've gone on too long. Sorry for that. I am going to central Lima now - excited about seeing the centre, something different and maybe something more authentically South American. But I think about that last bit, and I realise I have no idea what authentic means. What is authentic Britian? Is authentic just some banal brochure banter? Maybe authentic changes every second? Maybe it just doesn't matter, and I should just carry on liking what I like, disliking what I dislike and trying to see as much as I possibly can.

I am really going now.

A really bad play (awful script, bad acting, tedious scenes) with an amazing set.

2005-04-14T23:25:00.000+01:00

South Americans, I've noticed, don't need much of an excuse to blockade a road. Be it policitcal protests in La Paz or Easter parades in Arequipa, any chance to interrupt the flow of traffic is taken with much aplomb. Wandering down to the Plaza here in Pisco, I passed the cemetary and two of the adjoining streets were gridlocked with two separate crowds of people. Coffins led the way and at least one hundred people followed slowly, paying their respects. Interestingly, being South America, I expected the usual cacophony of impatient horn-tootings, but, for once, a dignigified silence reigned on the Pisco streets.

The streets are typically South American - chockablock with street vendors, kids selling pencils and pens, blokes yelling unintelligebly from van windows and the usual array of tourist offices who spy a Gringo walking by and start up with a "Hola amigo. Where you from"? Fortunately, I have already been on my tour to the Islas Ballestas, so a brush off is nice and easy.

Today's tour marks the end of quite an exciting week - in sensory overload terms that is. Just over a week ago I was gawping at the beauty of Machu Picchu. Then I had the stomach-churning flight over the Nazca lines. Huancachina (the Oasis I stayed in outside Ica) was pretty good on the overload front. I mean I drank a lot of free Pisco Sour and ate a lot of meat at the BBQ. I sat in front of the bizarre little oasis and enjoyed watching some fully glad sweaty tourists struggle round it on a row boar. I watched the Champions League in a horrible little cafe where I had to concentrate more on batting flies away than I did on the footy. And, I had an amazing time on the sand dunes.

I've never seen a sand dune before, but they're fairly sandy, as one might expect. The tour takes place in a seven seater buggy and the driver is quite literally insane, seemingly hell-bent on trying to throw us from the vehicle as he takes on near vertical dunes at full speed. Brilliant, and far better than any rollercoaster I have ever ventured on. And then the sand boarding. After I manage to work out what foot goes where and one side is greased to the max I find myself staring over a precarious looking precipice. The sort of precipice that would spell doom if it wasn't entirely made out of yellowish grainy stuff. As predicted I am far from an expert, but by the third (and 60 degree plus dune) I could at least stay upright for more than 2.3 seconds. Good progress for a beginner, me thinks. After that, an amazing sunset where I followed the orange sun as it dipped behind a hill and more attempts to kill us in the buggy as we headed off home. It was brilliant - a massive rush.

Today, aside from the 6.30am rise, was excellent too. The Islas Ballestas are better known as the "Poor man's Galapagos" but we got our fair share of sights - sea lions grunting so much that they sounded like a deranged choir - hundreds of them sliming and rolling and fighting and sleeping on a pebble beach. The islands are the home to thousands of birds. I haven't really got a clue what they're all called, but they smell bad. Apparently their excrement is useful for fertilising plants. Anyway, the whiff is awful (but not as bad as the fish factory outside Pisco, mind). In amongst the monochrome site of these birds (think of the distant islands as a head, and the birds are like thousands of freshly shaved hairs spiking out of the scalp), we spied the odd red beaked vulture and a few penguins chilling and laying low. Later, we went to a desert. Wow, I have never been to a desert before and it was all that you might expect: hot, yellow (with some red hills), sandy, big and dry. I kept thinking of films I would like to film there.

So, it's been a good week in terms of what I have seen and done. Still, as is usually the case, the external plays just a role in my whole experience. It's as if it's the magnificent set painting behind some little one-man play starring me. Unfortunately, I am the only audience and the star, and try as I want to fully enjoy the set - I cannot. The one-man play, as tedious as it is, demands most of my attention. I mean it's not all bad, for example there was a great scene today where myself and some chap on the tour had a quite pretensious and ludicrous conversation about Kafka, Dostoevsky and the Israel/Palestine conflict. No resolution to either the conversation or the conflict, but it confirmed my shallow pride in my pretensions. And the tedious part - yeah - me latest love life "un"venture is definitely off the cards now, and my brain is swilling. Swilling with something. Not sure if I am devastated. More perplexed and frustrated by my own capacity to cause myself unnecessary hurt, as if it's the cigarette I know is bad but I cannot help smoke. Yep, maybe it's a good thing 'cos I am pretty bored of this one-man play and I want to rewrite the script if I can, but I wonder about leopards and I wonder about spots...

Anyway speaking of bored, I can't believe the flaming scousers and bloody Chelsea are in the Champions League semi-final. That's definitely a script I'd like to change...if only I could...

Nearly vomiting on three occasions, but avoiding it just. Couple of nightmare bus journeys, a plane ride, a monkey and a hummingbird. And sand dunes.

2005-04-11T20:19:00.000+01:00

I am in Ica, on the Peruvian south coast, probably about 4 hours from the capital Lima. For the first time in what seems an eternity, I have escaped the high altitude cold and breathlessness. In its place, there are no clouds, no exhaustion inducing hills and, to cap it all, a 30 degree sun in a cloudless sky. The old white legs emerged again as did my sandals and my long forgotten tube of suncream. With the jungle and then tropical Columbia next on the list, I am hopeful that sunny days will be pretty much on the agenda until I get back to Buenos Aires, and then home.

My time in Cusco ended in delicate fashion, it must be said. On Friday, after having done not much, I managed to stumble across the locals' market, replete with food I (a) couldn't recognise and (b) couldn't spell and (c) couldn't stomach the smell of and (d) decided not to partake in. The market was typically South American - dogs scampering all over the place, vendors hawking their food at the top of their voices, impossibly young kids working on stalls and an incredible array of smells, sounds and sights. Every fruit imaginable stacked up alongside half gutted chickens, broths of soup, black market wrist watches, John Paul II tribute newspapers, Peruvian ponchos in red, green and yellow, and piles of tins of "Fanny" tuna. All of the above I gave a miss. After the market, and a satisfying wander around the less touristy elements of the city, we found our way to a bar just off the plaza, full of locals in shirts and ties and not a Gringo to be sighted (aside from myself and my two associates). Three quid was shelled out, and the grinning barman, belly spilling from under his white shirt and tie, handed us a bottle of vodka and a coca-cola. The pattern for the evening was set. Postcard boys were haggled with, and 10 postcards were purchased (which I might send if I can find some addresses to send them to), other postcard boys then haggled back as I unsuccesfully tried to sell them back to them. I ended up on my backside in the middle of the square and later, much later I strutted my successful stuff in Mama Amerika, one of Cusco's finer dancing establishments - and my knee held up.

Saturday morning and I felt as rough as old boots. The lukewarm shower assisted matters briefly, but not much. And, after 4 hours sleep, the coffee barely dented the hangover raging above. And then, to make matters even worse, my beloved Manchester United turned in possibly the worse performance I have ever been party to and the thudding in my brain and the rumbling in my belly grew to a painful crescendo. Well, to rectify matters I sat in the square for hours as thousands of school kids bearing flags and John Paul II banners flocked in from all angles. The PA blared out the occasional song, a few priest like figures got up and spoke and I was moved by the mood of celebration for a life.

Then, around 5pm I bade farewell to my current travelling companion Nik. Since the start of my trip I have been travelling with other people for 90% of the time - first Ann-Sophie from Switzerland, and then Nik, who I met in La Paz. The farewell was brief, but as my taxi pulled away the sensation of fear, excitement and nervousness gripped me again. The feeling of travelling alone - the unknown feeling of what might be around the next corner - almost like my trip was starting afresh. The overnight bus journey to Nazca was a nightmare. The only stops on the journey were to allow people off to be sick, an account of the tortuous bends and curves on the mountainous road down. True enough, we stopped a couple of times for folks to chunder, and at one stage as I had managed to drift off to Dylan on shuffle on the Pod, I woke up witha start only to find a trainer and a pile of sick at my feet. Not pleasant. And after that was cleared up, sleep completely alluded me for the rest of the night as each corner navigated at breakneck speed threw me from plastic arm rest to my next door neighbour. And, I'd paid for an "Executive" seat as well... (well at least I got to watch about half of "50 first dates" on the video).

Arriving at Nazca at 6am was a complete culture shock. Prizing my eyes open my first site was an eager man called Jose, all big smiles and "where you from, amigos". I have a travelling rule that I never go with a person I meet at a bus stop - they're usually rip-off merchants trying to get you into their fly-ridden, cold water, hard bed, industrial noise hostels. But, before I had a chance to even so "no gracias" or pick up the Bible-esque Lonely Planet, I found myself in the back of the largest black beaten up Chevrolet I had ever seen, hugging my backpack and squashed against the driver's wife and two kids. And then, a quick toilet stop later, another taxi ride and a itch of my head I found myself crammed into a five seater plane in the middle of a strip of a runway at Nazca aiport.

As it turned out, the bus ride proved to be good practice for the flight over the Nazca lines, as the tiny plane banked left and right and threatened to take the contents of my stomach with it (in this case a quite foul meat and rice combo I had had on the bus the night before). But despite my knackeredness and the possibility of vomit at any time, the experience was incredible and would have been more so if the brilliance of Machu Picchu wasn't still on my mind. We flew over Mars - all reddish mountains and desert and as we did so, our pilot pointed out the mind blowing lines below - created thousands of years ago for what reason people only speculate on. My favourite was the astronaut on the side of one of the red hills, but then the condor, hummingbird and monkey were pretty cool too. After landing, I was eager to find out more about these bizarre, almost alien lines. A video was played, and the theories were expounded - alien landing sites and the halluciogenic visions of ancient Shamens were my fave two. As it turned out, my body was more eager for sleep than my mind was for finding out, and I drifted off just as I was about to learn something profound. Oh well, I went for an American breakfast, chatted to a waiter about Ronaldinho and Wayne Rooney, had a quick wander around the dry nothing of a town and then headed for the bus to Ica.

Once again, South American bus drivers and conductors excelled in managing to cram more of us onto a creaking bus than Tesco value cram sardines into a blue and white striped tin. I was set next to a sweat-dripping moaning man, with my face hanging out of the window swallowing dust and wind, as the arid landscape of sand and mountains rushed by. Two hours later with an arse in agony, a mouth desperate for una agua (sin gas) and bursting for a pee, we were let off on the side of some street. Ica. Yellow taxis zoomed by, drivers whistling and yelling. The sun beat down mercilessly and I needed a cigarette. After that, I got in a cab and was taken away to my home for the next two or three days - Huacachina - a beautiful oasis 4km from Ica.

The hostel is flanked by the most incredible sand dunes - never seen anything like them before. Remarkable, amazing, brilliant etc. The hostel is packed - a party place. There's a disco, bar, pool and a barbecue every night - great, but the kind of place packed with exuberant people that gives me the fear. Don't know why...it's the same at home at parties or in crowded bars. I feel intimidated by the seeming confidence of everyone else. I try to assure myself that (a) I am a genius (b) I have world-class hair and (c) who cares what anyone thinks. Well, it all rings hollow...there's something about this type of setting that makes me feel really really insecure. In some ways it reminds me of school. Full of tall, brash, confident people and little Ol who would go red at the merest question from a teacher.

Anyway, that's my crap and I've got to try and deal with it. As it turned out, all was okay. I got chatting to some nice people. Drunk too much Pisco Sour and ate a lot of meat. And today so far, I have had a constructive day sitting by a pool, swinging on a hammock and watching sand boarders rush down the dunes above and around. Tomorrow, I am going to go in a buggy and ride on the dunes and maybe try some boarding though I expect I will be terrible at it. Whatever, summer's here (I think it's summer, though I don't understand South American seasons) and I am fairly chilled. Wednesday, I head for Pisco and the Ballestas Islands (the cheapo version of Galapagos I am told) and then Lima for the weekend, and my fourth capital city of South America so far and who knows what, or who else. Bye for now and sorry for the splurgey length of this, just felt like a splurge.

Machu Picchu, et al

2005-04-08T23:10:00.000+01:00

So, I made it, albeit by the means of Peruvian public transport, but nonetheless at about 7am on Wednesday I stood and gazed at the wondrous Machu Picchu and it was so perfect I might as well as been gazing at one of the many pictures you can find on South American tour brochures. Perfect. Stupendous. Amazing. Up there with some of the best things I have seen in my life (lots on this trip) - the sky in Patagonia that goes on for miles and miles and miles, the view of La Paz plopped in the bottom of a canyon, the moonset from the Colca Canyon, the heavenly shimmer of the Salt Lakes in Uyuni, the towering Andes on the pass from Chile to Argentina, the sun setting over Lake Titicaca, the Empire State Building, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Elephant and Castle shopping centre.

The journey from Ollantaytambo was by train - pitch black outside as it happened - so I had no idea of the beauty of the valley we were passing through. We got to Aguas Callientes fairly late, so I pushed through a scrum of hostels touts, clambered up the hill, avoided my amigos offering me free wine with pizza and stumbled into a hotel and slept like a log. I got up at 6am, mercifully found a hot, yes hot, shower, had half a cup of nescafe and then headed for the bus to Machu Picchu. The first of many visual overloads I experienced happened immediately. Night time offered no clue to the beauty of the setting, but this slither of a town is surrounded on virtually all sides by vertical towers of tree lined mountains, cascading streams and dipping clouds. The bus wound its way up a road a bit like the La Paz to Coroico road´s younger tamer sibling. Clouds were at my eye level, and as we journeyed up they dipped below my line of sight. As they did, atop a green mountain, I got my first tantalising glimpse of Machu Picchu with ancient buildings clinging to the hill´s edge. Breathtaking...

The weather, mercifully, was hot and sunny. The clouds didn´t dominate, instead they played their part - gamboling like lambs across the perfect blue background. We disembarked, and my heart sank. In the cafe at the top, there were dozens of backpackers. They looked exhausted, but many were swigging beers and chatting excitedly about their epic 4 day trek, whilst posing for photographs with their guides and mates. I felt a bit alone, and also sad that I had missed out and proceded to curse my twitching knee.

I paid my money, dumped my backpack and headed up a steep path towards the main ruins. As soon as I emerged, any feelings of aloneness, sadness, melancholia and carruthers-esque self pity evaporated like the tiny clouds. The view was incredible, like nothing I have ever seen before and enough to make me gasp and curse my lack of functioning photographic device. The best thing was, at 7.30am, the site was virtually deserted. The Inca trailers had seen it and retired for breakfast beers and the tour groups from Cusco had yet to arrive. I clambered around, found the best view and sat there and just gazed. Later I wondered around the site, occasionally managing to eavesdrop a tour guide and gain some understanding about the temples, buildings and magnificent structures. I watched a flock of Llamas stut around on the green terraces and I stared at the quite stupendous setting of the city - mountains on all sides, the river seemingly miles below and the sky within touching distance.

Within an hour or so, the tour groups started to flock in, and the llamas ran away from them and took their place in the central bowling ball green plaza, as if they were here first, they had always been here and they had the right to be here. Workers in blue caps chiselled moss away from the ancient stones and listened to the radio in Spanish, and I thought about the Incas who valiantly tried to fight off the Spanish conquerors and I wondered what they´d think about us lot clambering around their amazing city, and I wondered what their life was like 600 years ago.

I could go on for ages, tell you about the prison blocks, the sacred stone, the condor temple and the baths, but then you could just read about the history or just visit. A lot of things that get hyped can turn out to be a disappointment (Juan Sebastian Veron´s 28.1 million pound to Manchester United, for example)...but not this, not this. Just go. One day I am going to come back and do the trek - come with me!

Well, back now in Cusco for my last night and even the light of Machu Picchu seems to be shining here. Had a great time last night - watched Motorcycle Diaries again and got completely carried away about the brilliance of this continent. Coincidentally, old Che took the same route as me nearly (or is it the other way round) and I got excited about seeing Buenos Aires, Bariloche, the Lake Distict, Cusco and Machu Picchu - all places I had visited. I was also excited by the fact that he made it to Machu Picchu on 5th April, the day before I did. I also got inspired by his passion for the poor, and started to remember again why I love my job so much back home. I also got excited when I saw him on the Amazon on the boat, because I´ll be doing the same in two or three weeks. And after that...Columbia. Later that night, two friends and I chatted about our experiences here - haggling in markets, broken buses, suicidal cab drivers, beaming street children, chaotic bus stations...and I felt privileged and excited to be here.

And tomorrow I head to Nazca to do some lines. Excited about that, excited about lots of things and for now, melancholia has vanished with my knee ache. I hope it lasts.

Hasta luego, O x

2 ruins down, 1 to go

2005-04-05T22:37:00.000+01:00

Now I am in the ancient Inca town of Ollantanyambo, in an internet cafe with a connection speed possibly dating from Inca times too. The all too familiar sound of Peruvian pan pipes wafts through the window, from which I can see a very large hill, an old white church and the odd passing tourist. I've been here pretty much all day, stopped in at the very impressive hilltop ruins and basically hung around as I wait for my train that will take me up to Aguas Callientes, and Machu Picchu. There's very little to do here, though it's a beautiful place - set in a valley, surrounded by mountains, with lots of cobblestones etc.

"The ruins of Ollantanyambo"
almost young
sat amongst ancient ruins
mountains encircle
and white caps process up steps like pilgrims
with dangling cameras for crucifixes
and shouted questions for prayers
I doubt they'll ever realise
that questions and prayers aren't to be answered,
they're only to be asked.
One day soon
our footprints will float over these steps
never to be visited
having left no mark
but today,
I am almost young
and my footprints do leave a trace
on these ancient Inca steps.
I count up every wondrous thing -
the mountains with their watching briefs,
the grass whistling with the pan pipes,
the white rain on the partial sun,
each and every ancient step,
and an orchestra sounding in my mind,
my mind - almost young,
never hoping to understand,
always wanting to wonder why.

Still enjoying the peace and space away from Cusco, though yesterday I did manage to stumble across a large collection of British people in a bar, and then subsequently managed to lose money equivalent to two night's accommodation in a game of poker. Still I met a fellow Manchester United and Dylan obsessive and several people who had been to Greenbelt, so I stayed chatting long past my proposed early night. The place I stayed in optimistically promised hot water - well it wasn't cold, but then it didn´t exist... So feel a tad smelly today, and have smoked a million cigarettes and drunk a thousand cups of coffee too which probably doesn't aid odour matters. Knee is being surprisingly well behaved, dunno why...last night as I walked back from the bar I could hardly stand on my right leg, so fingers crossed for tomorrow.

As I drifted off to sleep I played a fun game and counted the number of days I have been in S America, and the number of days to go (I couldn't imagine any sheep to count...). Am pretty sure that either yesterday or today marks the exact mid-way point of the trip, and it seems fitting that I'll be marking the occasion by arriving at Machu Picchu - probably the single most anticipated thing I had planned on doing.

So, two days of Inca sites and they've both been impressive. I'll be up at 6am tomorrow to beat the tour groups to the site, and I am excited and hope that it won't be a let down. Really glad I've taken this mini-trip away from Cusco, feeling pretty happy and excited both for tomorrow and the rest of me trip.

On the trail of Incas

2005-04-04T22:48:00.000+01:00

It's Monday, and I have finally left Cusco, temporarily at least. My last couple of days there have been spent resting my knee which, in practice, saw me sat around various squares and coffee shops people watching, listening to music, reading my new book (Dostoevsky, which I mercifully managed to swap for one of the worst books I have ever come across) and having limited banter with the locals.

Banter with the locals in this case did not mean fending off the advances of shoe-shiners and puppet sellers, but meeting some of Cusco's finest drug dealers. The first chap came and sat next to me on a bench, enquired whether I was an artist and then informed me that he worked in the black market. After a lengthy and quite convuluted conversation in Spanglish, he then offered me the best cocaine and cannabis in Cusco. I politely declined, and then he very kindly told me that the most beautiful women in South America lived in Cali, Columbia, which is indeed one of my forthcoming destinations. The second fellow was a lot younger, and came up to me as I was listening to the White Album in front of the Cathedral as the bells tolled and the flags were lowered to half-mast for the Pope. Unfortunately, this wasn't merely a simple offer of drugs but more a life-history. More to the point, a love-life history and he wanted my advice. It transpired that he had met a Belgian girl a week or so before, fallen hopelessly in love and she had now gone off to Puno. She was also under the belief that he was a fairly honest hard working type and was now back in Lima. To make matters worse, her best friend was now in Cusco, and he was paranoid about bumping into her, in case she let her friend know that he was a lying rogue. And to compound the whole affair, she wasn't replying to any of his emails and he was worried that she didn't feel the same. Well, quite clearly, I was the man to dispense some much needed advice to the lovesick lad and I helped him (a) concoct a story that he was a plumber, back in Cusco doing some free work for his brother who he hadn't seen in a while and (b) decide that if she was worth it then he should go off to Puno after her. Probably, bad advice, and probably I didn´t really believe she was interested but then I wasn't about to tell him that. Anyway, fortunately as he was about to divulge some of the more physical details of the relationship, my associate Nik turned up and we went to see Hitch at the cine pub place. Appropriately enough, Hitch is about relationships and how to woo women. I wish I'd brought my drug dealer friend along, and my notebook.

Aside from that, not much else to report from Cusco. I had a good walk around the non-tourist areas, where a coke (a cola that is) is five times cheaper and you don't get Inca merch thrusted into your face all the time. Nice. The town is also mourning the Pope. Bells chime from the Cathedral, and it's open all day for services and reflection. Papers bear the headline "Adios Papa amigo", and the most unlikely people are seen in front of Churches weeping - including one guy who had no Catholic beliefs but felt sufficiently moved to be in front of the Church.

So, now I am in Urubamba, a strictly gringo free zone and half way along the route to Machu Picchu, which I will see on Wednesday and I am very excited about. The journey here comprised a couple of cheap, locals only buses (yes, full to bursting and yes, with an annoying "musician" aboard scrounging for soles playing possibly the worse song since Ocean Colour Scene's "Profit in peace"). I stopped off in Pisac, in the Sacred Valley - a really beautiful little town with a market, mountains all around and a huge Inca site on top of a mountain above. Ducking in and out of clouds, I clambered round the vast site visiting temples, houses, places of work my knee threatening but not quite giving way. As an appetiser course for Machu Picchu it wasn't bad, like a tasty prawn cocktail. Tomorrow I visit Ollyantambo, home of another big temple atop another big hill (that'll be my soup course I think) and then I'll take the train to Machu Picchu ( a big fat juicy Alpaca steak I hope, with lots of fat chips and some nice veg - maybe cauliflower) so I can have a full day there on Wednesday. I'm still gutted I can't do the proper trail, but am enjoying exploring sites and towns on the way there rather than taking a tour from Cusco. I mean, if I was on a tour I wouldn't have been able to explain to three musicians in my cab all about England and the UK. "Que difference?" they asked, and I explained in slow, deliberate and excellent Spanish that they were very similar but England was basically the UK, and the other bits, especially Wales were like little colonies who served the main state...

Temple of Doom

2005-04-02T19:43:00.000+01:00

Had a bit of Inca action yesterday. It wasn't exactly an Indiana Jones-esque adventure of discovery, but enjoyable nonetheless. I boarded a bus from Cusco, again twice as full to bursting as it should have been, with the radio blaring out announcements from Rome which I couldn't quite understand, but got the gist of. My travelling companions didn't seem bothered, but I thought I heard that the Pope was dead. Very ill as it turned out, but it got me thinking lots more about religion and God (more on that later). Anyway, the drive took me up the hill above Cusco, passing through the non tourist zones of the city - less polish, less fancy arches, less little girls selling finger puppets, less non-Peruvians. I got dumped at the top of some hill and took in four Inca ruins on the walk back down into town - a temple, a funny zig-zaggy rock where the Inca's used to sacrifice animals, a ceremonial bath type thing and then a vast set of ruins which I can't spell but can pronounce - "Sexy woman". All fascinating, all very interesting.

I must admit, though, that ruins and museums and old churches don't completely float my boat - but they were worth visiting if only to get an insight into the impressive building techniques these people once had. My walk was great, though possibly an error of judgement given the hobbling nature of my leg today. On the way back down the hill, a thunderstorm passed overhead, and Cusco revealed itself below inch by inch, red roofed building by church dome. Two kids rushed out of a small house on the roadside, start singing some obscure out of tune song and clapping about as rhythmically as I manage with dfg. I felt obliged to hand over a sole to the two little things, though for all I know they might have been singing "Stupid gringo...you can't speak our lingo...you haven't got a clue what we say. Stupid gringo...you can't speak our lingo...hand over some of your hard earned pay." Locals on the roadside also proudly paraded their sodden llamas, attempting to entice me into taking a photo and handing over a bit more dough. Fortunately, my lack of camera made saying no easy.

Still, this saying no and being hassled thing is a bit of a malarky I can do without. The day before I went to a few museums, one of which had a plan of the city in the olden pre-Spanish days. I find it really weird that the jewel in the crown of the Inca empire is now home to showings of "Dodgeball" and "Meet the Fockers", its streets are now full of cheap restaurants and their Menu Turisticos, the main square is now full of finger puppet touters and nightclub employees dragging me into their establishment for a free Pisco Sour and "Toxic" by Britney Spears, and once upon a time I sat there listening to Kid A wondering why on earth I was here. I guess, as with most things I have a naive attachment to things historical, that those times were more important, more spiritual, deeper somehow. Now, all Cusco seems to me is a hollow shell of museums and history containing as many rip-off merchants and as much cheese as you can throw a stick at. I'm looking forward to next week and taking a trip into some of the villages around here, and then the train up to Machu Picchu. I can't do the walk, but I want to have a journey up there.

Well, aside from my various tourist shenanigans I have drunk a bit of booze, smoked a couple of fags, listened to a smattering of music, sat in a few cafes and thought loads. One thing I have been thinking loads about is God. I am here in this quite religious place...visited a few museums with large collections of religious art and felt quite ill. Not sure why, perhaps the same reason why the Easter parades made me uneasy. The images of Christ bloodied and beaten, with angels fluttering and skies heavy, they don't sit easy. I don't know why. Just feeling aloud, really.

Time perhaps, to go. The rain is clearing outside on the square, the tourists are returning to the benches, the postcard and shoeshine boys are back in business and the sun is shining over the church spires once again.

Works in progress

2005-03-30T23:17:00.000+01:00

Wanted to do lots of constructive things today. Was walking up the stairs by the Cathedral and my knee completely gave way. Okay now, but think a visit to Cusco's doctors may be in order - though I hate going to the doctors a lot. First I need to try and understand what my travel insurance means. Dad I might call you later, as I have no competence in matters financial, insurance, pension, mortgage, bank account, savings, ISAs, loans etc. None whatsoever. Been doing lots of writing, which I will post up here because I like seeing my words in type. Bit shoddy I know but there you go. I'll finish them maybe one day or probably not.

Some postcards from Plaza de Armas, Cusco:

eight soldiers glancing around
not quite in formation
not quite in matching uniforms
is it time to raise the flags?

an American can hardly walk
wrapped in cameras and sunglasses
green middle class cap
eighteen stone at least
bearing down on a twig of a stick
give way, give way
if only there was a cable car or a hoist

taxis lap the square
and they're taking a family photo
smile
edge a little closer
hope that I can make it in
to their album

little girl
with a fake barbie satchel
full of secrets
tosses her papers into the wind
by the square in Cusco
they float for a while
assess the situation
before they settle
onto the paving stones
in front of the cathedral
she pauses
she plucks my eye from anonymity
and holds it for half a second
she crosses herself
then moves on
and I wonder why
and if there's such a thing as god

Some other random nonsense:

I had a thought last night
but now I've forgotten it
I know it was profound,
lifechanging, I'm almost sure.
But now I've forgotten it
if only I'd written it down
here in this notebook
but I didn't, I slept instead
I sweated long dreams
of me and you
then I woke
and I hadn't written my thought down
and I couldn't remember my dreams
long of me and you.
So here I am now
filling up this page
killing sunshine
because I cannot remember
and when I cannot remember
I fill these long days
with pages of notebooks
and long walks, waits
for another brief night
that I can forget
but cross off my long list
that I keeped stuffed in a formica drawer
along with forks and knives
and that unwanted fondue set
you gave me for Christmas.

Flicking ash into the bottle
hearing it scream in the waters below
and my mind is a car driving
to those high points
only it can reach
those high points
where the wind is a DJ
and the leaves are angels
dancing in fire.
The waters below
are black now
and we're having a party
me and all my friends
celebrating naked around the freezing flame
an anniversary that I never forget.
Will you take me there one day,
I once emplored
as I threw pebbles on a beach.
They never reached the sea
but even if they did they'd have come back anyway.
All the good things aren't enough,
your love isn't enough
as the cigarette somersaults
into the misty bottle.
Soon I will follow,
follow you home.

I wrote two love poems too,
I won't bore you with them,
I've bored myself with them already,
like overplaying a Coldplay album
or U2
or something
else kind of mediocre.

Bye bye. O x

Funny place

2005-03-29T19:51:00.000+01:00

Cusco, that is. I mean the place is beautiful, cobbled streets, Inca bits and bobs, hills in the background etc but it's all a bit strange. Or maybe I am. I dunno. I guess the difference between here and everywhere else I have been so far is that there are a lot of people here for a holiday, not just travelling around like I'm doing. As a result, the feel of the place is different. I would say that nearly one in every three people I see on the street is a Gringo, with a massive proportion of British people.

At night, around 9pm, we're hungry so we wander around the main square looking for some food related produce. We are literally dragged into places, with menu-touting employees plying us with free wine or pisco sours and accusing their neighbours of being liars. Worse still (or better, I suppose) are the nightclubs and bars. As you walk about, people come up to you practically begging you to come to their establishments. Again, free drinks are offered. However, unlike restaurants it's entirely possible to claim your free drink and then move on to the next place...then the next...the next. Had a 6am-er the other night, and I don't recall paying for a single beverage (or much else for that matter).

The kids around the square are equally pushy. It's great for one thing - I can say "no gracias" perfectly now...Yesterday, as I was taking a time out from busy schedule of reading, thinking, sitting around and drinking coffee, I decided to rest on the steps below the Cathedral and engage in a spot of people-watching. All good fun. Especially as I was able to listen to Dylan on my Ipod at the same time. Anyway, despite my best glazed stare into the distance I was still hassled by the usual multitude of crap painting sellers, cigarette vendors and shoe shine boys. One lad wouldn't get the hint, and even insisted on listening to my music. I must admit I did take great delight in his grin and foot tapping as he listened to "Stuck inside of mobile with the Memphis blues again".

I have done very very little here, I must admit. But I do have the time. The big night did drain my sightseeing willpower a tad, but my knee is more of a concern. My associate that I am currently travelling with reckons I have strained my knee ligaments. It's a complete pain in the knee I must say, as I can't do much apart from sit around on my jackson all day. Of more pressing concern for the world in general, is that my footballing career could be in doubt...

But sitting I do very well, having just sat there for 2 hours eating the largest breakfast this side of the USA this morning. It was a good 2 hours, as I excitedly began to scrawl out a rough plan for the second half of my trip. I'll wind my way up the coast to Lima at the back end of next week, taking in some beaches and the Nazca lines on the way. After that, I'll head back to Cusco -hopefully do the Inca Trail, then head to Iquitos and the jungle. After that a boat to Columbia. A month or so there, a couple of weeks in Ecuador and then motor back south via Peru and Chile to Iguazu Falls (Arg, Brazil, Paraguay border) before a final flourish in Buenos Aires. Well that's the plan, but you never know...

Other notables in Cusco - there are great bars that show DVDS in the early evenings. So after a hard day, it's nice to see a film. So far I've seen Constantine (truly truly awful) and the Incredibles (splendid indeed). Well I need to go buy a knee strap pad thing, some deodorant and then later I pick up my tourist pass that gets me into lots of museums and churches, so I can engage in a spot of cultural something or the other.

Cusco for Easter

2005-03-26T19:57:00.000Z

Well, I'm here. For many, Cusco is the jewel in the tourist's crown of this continent. I must admit, my first impressions were good, great even. Descending from the hostel to the Plaza de Armas I caught site of the cathedral, illuminated under the night sky. Below the lights, hundreds of people milled - waiting for the Good Friday procession around the square. It's hard to put into words, but there's something about crowds of people watching that always inspires me. At gigs, at football matches you can often catch me crowd watching - there is something about a mass of united people that always gets to me and send tingles down my spine.

The journey was fine too - great scenery, a massive hail storm, much standing around in dusty Peruvian bus terminals smoking with my shades on whilst making half-hearted conversation with locals, considering using a toilet with neither a seat lid or a seat, plus a musical soundtrack that by my own standards was genius - Cat Power, Elbow, Wilco, Amnesiac by Radiohead, plus Catch 22 to read.

Done not much here yet. Trying to recuperate after lots of very early mornings. Trying to rest my knee. Watched Rooney inspire England this morning, and then found myself annoyed by the drunken Brits in the bar. And when they try and make banter I realise I can't be bothered and smile an eyeless smile and go for a wee. Guess I kind of forgot that this was gringo central too. And being a gringo, I have a $ sign over my head. So far, I have had to ward off a shoe shine lad called Ernesto - hard to convince him that my trainers didn't need a polish but I think he got the message in the end despite reducing his price to 1/2 sole per shoe. (Sole is the Peruvian currency, that isn't a clever word play thing). Add to him the multitude of bracelet selling ladies (to whom I waved my arm which now has three bracelets on it, and it's not really my thing) plus the cigarette touting chaps, and I have had enough of saying "no gracias and no lo necessito and no lo quiero" etc...

And, it's nearly Easter and it's over two months into my trip and it's nearly half-way over. And I worry and I reflect. I am worried that nothing life changing has happened yet, then I worry that I worry - for who by worrying can ever affect a change in his life. If worry worked, I'd definitely not be the same as I was now. Three months to go, and then there's a blank page to be written and sometimes I want someone to write it for me. I dream of the next chapter, the endings and sometimes it's great, sometimes it's a nightmare. But by the time I have finished with a dream another day has passed me by. To decide is difficult. As a wise friend once pointed out, it contains "cide", like "homicide" -i.e death - that's why it's tough I guess.

I worry about everything, and then I close my eyes, open them again, look out at this magnificent plaza and reflect on the fact that I am here and I did make a decision and I feel better.

Done me chuffing knee in

2005-03-24T23:04:00.000Z

In an internet cafe in Arequipa, just off the main Plaza where we witnessed a quite extraordinary Easter procession on Tuesday complete with candles, lots of Christ-efigies and Ku Klux clan like red robed marchers. All very interesting, and to be honest I found it strange - almost alien.

Anyway, that was Tuesday night at about 9pm. We got up 4 1/2 hours later for our visit to the Colca Canyon, one of the world's deepest. After a tortuous 6 hour bus journey complete with windows that refused to shut, old ladies sleeping at our feet and the worst and loudest radio station in the history of radio - we finally arrived at a dusty old town at the top of the canyon. After brekkie, we set off down the canyon. As you know I have no camera, but the views were amazing. Problem is, the trek down did my chuffing knee in. Well after lots of hours walking we arrived at the lush bottom of the canyon Oasis, and beautiful it was too - swimming pools, wooden huts for bedrooms, fire etc.

There were also lots of pretty Norweigan women there too which wasn't a major problem. We had tinned tuna pasta for tea - that was a major issue.

Passed out at 8pm ish, and rudely awoken at 2.45am for the ascent up the other side. Apart from the knee related agony, and the lung sapping steepness it was okay. Well apart from my terrible wind all the way up and the fact that you could barely see when you rounded the canyon's corner away from the moonlight. Let's face it, this is me - there's usually something wrong...

The moon was amazing, bright enough to read in if you fancied climbing up a ridiculous hill at 3am to do so. And when the moon disappeared - I saw my first ever "moon-set" then the stars came to life, Southern Cross et al. Splendid. And then, as the night began to fade twinkling stars in their thousands were replaced by tweeting birds in their thousands. We reached the top about 5.30am, and then watched the morning curtain being drawn over the snowy Andes - a line of pinky orange stretching from left to right as far as the eye could see. It was a tough climb, but fortunately German rockers Can got me through it.

After that I was rewarded with 2 eggs, a mug of steaming water and a jar of nescafe. As usual I thought hard about my principles, but failed badly and had my much needed caffeine. Then back on a bus, which seemed full when we got on but managed to accommodate at least the same amount of people again including a lady with one of the world's largest backsides who insisted on sitting on my arm. Once again the ear shattering radio was close to intolerable, and with tiredness sapping I acted fast and got the Radiohead on to act as an antidote.

The we got to Cruz del Condor. I enjoyed watching the tourists gaping and taking pictures like a flock of paparazzi as much as seeing two massive condors glide majestically by without even so much as a flap of a wing with the awesome, terrifying canyon gaping deep below.

So it was all good. Aside from the next 4 hour bus journey (yep, more terrible music, ear popping ascents and descents and the odd larger lady sat on my arm) and my poor knee. Cusco is next, and the Inca Trail to Macchu Pichu so I hope my knee holds out.

Well, Happy Easter, off to see some more strange people marching about the square...

Which is Bob Dylan's greatest album? I think it's Blonde on Blonde, run close by Oh Mercy, Bringing it all Back Home and Blood on the Tracks.

2005-03-22T18:40:00.000Z

I looked in the mirror today and thought, damn I look like a rock star. Hair is beginning to resemble its former glorious self, which I am delighted with. I cannot wait to take it to Cusco, home of Macchu Pichu and also the place where John Peel sadly died last year. I'm going to be there on Friday, so hopefully will be able to catch a procession or two. Apparently here in Arequipa, they'll be setting fire to Judas on Thursday. Should be fun. Looking forward to the next two days, 1.30am rise, 3 hour trek to the bottom of a canyon, night at an oasis, up at 3am to spy condors, hot springs at 4800 metres and then back, no doubt nearly dead.

Peru is great, much different to neighbouring Bolivia. I had expected it to be nearly as poor and chaotic, but the opposite seems true. People all seem have a smattering of English, particularly the little seven year old girls who chase me down the streets with a fistful of finger puppets shouting "Please mister. Promise. Later. Only one soles. Please. Caramelo." The ladies outside the cafes lining the Plaza de Armas here are no different either, attempting to entice into their overpriced tourist cafes. I'd like to say I was deeper and went to a more "local" establishment, but the temptation of a non-Nescafe coffee and a bacon and egg sandwich was too much for my hungover and tired mind and body and a stomach still rumbling with dodginess and Swiss lovesickness.

Well, that's a short one for me today. I need to go an see a mummy of a little girl frozen in ice, have a cigarette and eat either some alpaca, llama or guinea pig. Can´t decide yet. Might just have a pizza. Okay, vamos, ciao etc.

Being spun around a hut on an island on Lake Titicaca by a lady wearing an odd costume whilst I wear a poncho

2005-03-22T00:00:00.000Z

That's what I did at the weekend. Went to some islands made out of reeds. Ate lots of rice and soup. Stayed with a family on an island in the middle of the lake. Climbed a hill with a temple and drunk some Pisco Sour and smoked a little. Then went to this strange party. Sat on a boat for several hours and went pink. It was good. I am now in Arequipa. There are lots of white colonial buildings, a volcano and an imminent trip to the world's deepest canyon to spot condors. I got here on the most tedious stop-starty bus I have ever sat on. Still feel a little unwell. Anyway, as you know my camera is poorly, so here's a "word photograph" of my bedroom in Copacabana:

a bottle of stoli and two bottles of coke
a screw top plastic lid for an ashtray
and three people I hardly know
but have given my life history to
some avant-garde german rock on my headphones
and a hacking cough
a handful of coins worth not a lot
a fistful of notes worth a bit more
(but we're in Bolivia so let's face it not all that much)
two open eyes blinded by oranges
a box of a room with four beds
and a flooded toilet
a pink toilet roll a top another pink toilet roll
both purchased from a man with a limp at La Paz cemetary
two plastic bottles of water, sin gas,
one half empty the other definitely not full
laughing girls outside the door
they're having fun, they must be young
at least five layers of my bed
one with a floral motif
but still I'm cold
a useless pile of camera instructions for a useless camera
some useless poetry scrawled on the back
a packet of derby suaves half smoked
piles of books, clothes, shoes, plastic full bags
a guitar in a yellow inca design case
a can of axe deodorant topless
a black and white TV with knobs to twist to change channels
a coat stand with a coat and three towels
one white and stolen from the ritz
a vase with fake plastic red, white and yellow flowers
and some fake plastic green plant things
(ten years since the Bends, y'know)
a rucksack slouched on a chair
as bored of being dragged to the next city as I am tired of carrying it
a light shade made out of fake crystal
some crystals missing, presumed dead
an empty wastebasket
zadie smith's autograph man unread on the floor
like the victoria line like monica ali's brick lane or dan brown's da vinci code
albert's smug in my hand
a door with a blind and no one knocking
a mirror with a notice next to it in a language I can't read
spanish I think
pages of blank in this book
face full of mind, mind full of face
itchy nose, legs and other parts of me
vaguely bad breath, I think, but I can't confirm that right now
three red chairs covered in fleeces and ipods
a stain on the ceiling red brown above my head
that I try and mystify and turn into a dragon or unicorn like a cloud
another bag and another inca motif
that contains an address book
a lonely planet guide
and some nutrogena lip balm
an alarm clock showing quarter to nine
a box with three used ear plugs
a watch with a broken strap
a brown bag wearing a towel like a head scarf like a bolivian lady
a head full of cold and words
more words like raindrops soon forgotten
and running down into city drains
where the rats and used up condoms
swim with all the good things gone bad.

In an internet cafe with a very slow connection and rancid yellow walls in Puno, Peru.

2005-03-19T00:06:00.000Z

Am currently sat in a booth with an allegedly "high speed" connection. Am currently bored because I have just waited 5 minutes for said window to open to allow me to type my words of wisdom for you. As I was sat waiting, I thought about a few things. Granted, most of them were about myself, girls and football but it also occured to me how different my travelling experience would be without the internet, email, cheap international phone calls and my Ipod. I also started thinking about what it would be like in 20 years and what gadgets would be indisposable on such a trip. But I did think more about myself, girls and football.

I did also briefly think about Bolivia, the country I just left, and I have compiled the following list of interesting observations / tips for anyone planning to come to Bolivia, or anyone interested or anyone not interested:

1. Don´t complain about National Express buses ever again. After digging one bus out at midnight in the middle of nowhere, after holding in my bad bowels for three hours on one journey on a toilet-less bus, after my cheek being squeezed against a window in the hottest imaginable micro with fifteen other people, after standing around on some desolate bridge whilst the police do their best not to move a blockade out of our way, after a 10 hour journey to La Paz takes 22 hours, after traversing a deadly precipice and surviving...after all these experiences and more I shall never complain about the people at Victoria coach station or the 4 hour ride up north.

2. This one might sound incredibly shallow and rude, but if I am being truthful it´s something I have thought about and feel it´s important to share. Women in Bolivia are not pretty. The kids are the most gorgeous smiley lovable entities I could imagine, but honestly truthfully something happens...I am sorry, really I am. I know that personality is more important BUT (point 3)

3. Everyone in Bolivia speaks so quietly it's pretty hard to understand them, let alone get to know their personalities.

4. If you want a coffee for breakfast, then order it the night before. Service is slow, to say the least.

5. If you want to pay for your breakfast, but only have a 50 or 100 Boliviano note, then expect a slightly annoyed reaction from the waiter before he scurries off to the local pharmacy of other establishment to fetch your change.

6. There are lots of unfinished houses in Bolivia. In La Paz especially, brick structures abound, perched perilously on some canyon's edge. I couldn´t figure out if they were habitable, to be finished, abandoned or what.

7. Expect to become very unfit here. Anywhere above 3000 metres altitude I have realised makes even a fitness guru such as myself look like an un-fitness guru of the highest proportions. Other side effects of altitude - headaches and beer that froths quite a lot (Bolivian beer isn´t that great either).

8. They like pink loo roll here. It costs about 7 pence a roll from a wrinkly old lady sat on the pavement with her multicoloured shawl and some cigarettes, coke and sweets. On a related matter, don´t put the loo roll down the loo or the person after you will pay the price. On another related matter, if you expect a good shower think again. It's either cold, about as strong as Sahara rain or usually both. (nb exception is Ritz Hotel).

9. If you´re in La Paz and want a drink don't go to Oliver's Travels. It's a good name for a bar, I agree but the owner, Oliver supports Sheffield Wednesday. Better drinking hole is Sol y Luna (over the road, plays Dylan on request).

10. Related point. They like the name Sol y Luna, lots of bars, cafes, hotels etc. Also a couple of islands on Titicaca.

11. And finally. Bolivia has some of the most beautiful things in the world (ladies excepted). The most beautiful lake, the most beautiful salt lakes, the most beautiful city plonked in the middle of a canyon, the most beautiful little Eden and the most beautiful trout I have ever eaten. It´s also got lots of big things like mountains, and lakes. The zoo, though, is neither big, beautiful or clever.

Yes, I have finally left Bolivia and am now sat in Puno, Peru, on the otherside of Lake Titicaca. I´ve only been here a wee while, but already the differences are obvious - the place definitely feels slightly more affluent than it´s neighbour.

Tomorrow, we travel onto the lake to visit the floating reed islands. We will also stay on another island (this one´s real I think and made out of rocks and stuff and mud). We will be staying with a family and apparently one of the traditions is to get us gringos dressed up in the local garb and then go and have it large on the island. Will keep you posted. I will write again on Monday, by which time I will be in Arequipa.

So, before we go just wanted to tell you about Isla del Sol and Lake Titicaca. Honestly one of the most amazing places I have ever been. Copacabana itself is a nice enough place, full of weed smoking hippies and bracelet sellers etc (I do now own three I have to confess). However it is what it borders on that makes it remarkable. The lake is beautiful, calm and acts as a companion piece to the spectacular sky that stretches forever in the day, glows orange at dusk and sparkles with thousands of stars at night. We took a boat over to Isla del Sol (beautiful enough in itself), disembarked, clambered up lung busting Inca steps and then walked for three hours across the island. Occasionally a donkey would pass by, a helpful local would point us on our way and now and then I´d look to my right, catch my breath and see the Andes in a line at eye level several hundred miles away. Amazing. After the exhausting and burning walk we descended to our destination, a tiny little beach on the lake and a couple of buildings that were to be our home for the night. Six of us crammed into 3 matresses for the night. Our hosts cooked us an amazing meal. I sat on the jetty under the stars, smoked a ciggie and listened to some melancholic rock. We drank Chuflay (local tipple).We walked barefoot in the sand. It was amazing, paradise, beautiful - muy tranquillo as the Bolivians would no doubt say. The next day a very kind bloke rowed us to the island´s port, we travelled back, got frazelled by the sun and popped into Moon Island (Isla del Luna).
Well, I thought it was splendid.

Been here too long. Got to get ready for night and free drinks in some dodgy Peruvian bar. I wouldn´t go as far as saying I was happy. In fact, I am struggling with lots of the same rubbish that dogs my brain and heart back home. Having said that, this is a very very very pleasant place to yearn, ache, dream, reflect and think...and I am glad I am here.

Yes I have left La Paz

2005-03-15T17:34:00.000Z

It was Thursday when one of us came up with the idea. Sat around our slightly crummy hostel we were getting bored of chasing hot water drops around the showers and being serenaded by snoring all night. So, we came up with a plan. A few guidebooks and google searches later and our suspicions were confirmed. Yes, 5 star hotels in La Paz are cheap. Very cheap.

Friday came, and we set out at 5pm and strolled to the la Presidencia hotel. Looks a bit uptight, let's give that a miss. 5 cab rides across town later, visits to Europa (nice enough, no suites), Plaza (bit too pricey) and Radisson (great sauna, but no rooms to suit); and we arrive at the Ritz La Paz. Yes sir, a Master Suite. Four people. Saturday night. That would be $118. Would you like to see the suite? etc. Room booked, 15 quid each in the Master Suite at the Ritz in La Paz for Saturday night. To celebrate we took ourselves off to Restaurant Vienna, allegedly the finest in town, and we indulged in a meal for four pounds each, whilst a young girl tinkled on the ivory and an over attentive waiter replenished the ashtray every 2.2 seconds. And then Saturday came...room service, champagne, a bath...yes a bath...., a robe, Ritz slippers, stereo full of rock n roll, convincing the hotel staff that I was a rock star, getting my backpack carried from the taxi, having doors opened for me, cable TV...etc...Then Sunday came, and we had to drag ourselves away, back to the hostel for our last night in La Paz.

Well, it was fun. I tried to figure out what similar activities would have cost in London and reckoned on hundreds of pounds. And it was fun and such a relief just for one night to escape the hostel routine and to use a towel that wasn't my smelly itchy green yellow and red checked number. But, knowing me...I still feel kind of guilty, that I have somehow exchanged a very materialistic experience for something more worthwhile. I dunno, like visiting some slums in La Paz and not exploiting my rich global status here in one of the world's poorest countries. But then I argue with myself, you paid the going rate, you did nothing wrong and you're entitled to stay where you please. Anyway, anyway. Sod it. It was fun...

And now. Well I have my first dodgy bowel issues of my trip and I am at the astoundingly amazingly beautiful Lake Titicaca in a town called Copacabana. It's got it all, a brilliant blue lake, delicious aromas from the trout restaurants, spectacular sunsets and skyfulls of stars. It's also a place of pilgrimage with a gigantic cathedral and thousands of twinkling candles. On the other side of the religious spectrum, it's also where the Incas believed that the sun and moon were born. I'll report back if I can get some proof on that one. Will write more after I've been to Isla del Sol tomorrow.

Can't believe I've left La Paz. And in a few days I will be in Peru, and I'm excited.

Still here

2005-03-11T19:13:00.000Z

Well, still here in La Paz, seemingly unable to rustle up the energy or willpower to move. The political situation seems to have been resolved, and there's light at the end of the tunnel. I expect I'll be resuming my travels on Sunday. Having met, and made friends with, some fabulous new people, we're all waiting for each other. It's a good phase of the trip...almost like a respite from the backpacking and tedious "how long have you been travelling for" type conversations. It almost feels like my life has taken on some kind of homely routine...coffee with the same people, dinner out plus the odd cultural visit.

It's Friday now. On Wednesday this happened:

Look around, what do you see
twos and threes, and then there's me
skylight counting sleepy corners
green words floating
caught by my tongue
and chewed like coca leaves,
like names some of them stick.
My heart grows numb,
my voice less dumb
peeling beermats
because there's always hope
that there's something underneath.
I go upstairs, poltergeist head
and screaming feet
follow me, follow me
will I live to seventy-three
how can I make myself happy?
Returning your eyes are panicked
cold porcelain kisses
ATM receipt straws
three hundred, that's all we need for a great time
no need to convince me
I'm convinced, honestly.
Sharing bottles, threesomes filing
and grabbing at gin,
talking duende, defining saudade
and skylight gazing
then we're dancing
naked round a cold fire
there's no heat, there's no danger
but I'm scared - rescue me.
Oh I make you safe, great
stab with a blunt knife, super
and I cough up your name
like cigarette smoke.
I wake with your face
imprinted like a headache.
So, look around,
what do you see?
Twos are gone, threes have left,
gas light tables
open books
half a coffee
and still there's me.

And, yesterday I did cultural things. Well, kind of. I woke with a head full of exhaustion and cold, but was persuaded to take a bus downtown La Paz. The city unfolds from left to right. Poor half-finished looking houses make way for bigger properties surrounded by fences, housing BMWs and perched security cameras. Still to both sides the canyon looms, red hills under black skies, and through the middle of town a river gushes, red brown definitely not swimmable in. We arrive at Valle de la Luna, a bizarre collection of muddy pinnacles, cacti and winding paths. Otherwordly, particulary as we're only as far out of the centre of this capital city as Brixton is from Oxford Street. Dogs are lying and barking and the people, as always, say little but smile lots.

Next we hop on a micro to the zoo. I hate zoos, but we're here now. Entry is only 25 pence. What a sad place. Animals too sad to even move off the concrete roofs of their huts. Fences rust and grass sprouts through the cracks in the pathways and I labour round from cage to cage thinking how universally foul zoos are. Don't want to say more really.

Hop back on the bus. Eat a cold cheese empanada from the market.

Self-centred in La Paz

2005-03-09T18:48:00.000Z

There's something happening in La Paz at the moment. The President resigned, and the city's encirlced by blockades, making leaving virtually impossible. In the morning there's banging in the streets - I imagine gunshots, I guess firecrackers. People gather in the square and mill like Japanese tourists, but instead of cameras, dangling placards are hoisted and songs are sung. Despite all this, and despite my best intentions, I somehow manage to avoid most of the excitement. Somehow I don't need to try in order not to care. Sorry. I shift coffee around my mug in my favourite coffee shop. I edit and re-edit my poem. I shuffle sorrily to watch a depressing night of Champions League action and I argue with barkeep when he refuses to play Radiohead. Too depressing he says...

Well, yes I am still here. After 3 weeks of chasing about through Argentina and Bolivia, I feel rested and rested for me leads naturally to introspection and inactivity. Yesterday I showed Andrew and Sophie around the neighbourhood as if it was my town. Best coffee there. Nice bar there (shame about the barman's anti-head stance). Cheap phone calls there. Llama foeti there. Yes, I felt a swell of pride and satisfaction. Despite the constant huffing and puffing, this place feels a little like home. I no longer flinch at the beeping collectivos, the 26 minute wait for a coffee or the aggressive hair cutters. I feel comfortable, and I don't want my comfort zone to be disrupted by some Bolivian politics. Selfish, eh? But strange too. I wonder what external crisis or event might be enough to shake me. I mean I do care genuinely about the world and what's going on but it's like an echo to the screaming shout of my brain. I try to do something about it and attempt a Dylan-esque rant about placards, buses, police in green and sunglasses and a President on a balcony. Instead it turns into this thing about me being sat around in a cafe. Oh well. Oh well. Not too worried, just curious about why or why not.

Well, I am rambling now. There´s not much to tell.

Oh yeah one thing. Once upon a time I would have believed that it was divine provision, but now I refuse to believe in that...but it's amazing who I am meeting here. In Buenos Aires, I met a bloke called Darren. Welsh, into his music and a good chap. I met him again coincidentally in Bariloche, hang out and there I met Ann-Sophie (and you know the boring story about her). Then she leaves, I then meet a chap here called Nik. He´s from London, and we talk about Dylan and Donovan. Then in Coroico I meet Andrew and Sophie. Andrew knows Darren well, and Radiohead B-sides better. We all end up back here in La Paz and we're all going to the lake together when we eventually move. And each one of those meetings, and potential friends for life, and potential love has just come about due to a chance, a quick decision, a random moment. It's a small continent South America.

I'm off now. I wrote this poem a few weeks back and would like to post it.

Never seen such a night sky,
gigantic with banks of clouds
unmoved by a full moon.
One is a ram's head to be slaughtered,
I ask can there be anything more complete than this moment
the moment before death?
I spy a cloud,
maybe god
face down in his own vomit
this human race
this curve chipped and cracked
and I never felt more alive
than in this blasphemous broken moment
under a gigantic night sky
with your reflection asleep by my side.

Thoughts before, during and after the death road journey a La Paz plus other random things

2005-03-07T22:46:00.000Z

Thinking about death before I get on the bus.

"A la Paz, a la Paz" and she has a catch. She runs off shouting for Lydia. Lydia exits the shaded doorway, clipboard in hand and signs up another passenger. I am waiting in the Plaza in Coroico. The sun forms beads of sweat on my forehead, and though it tries, the wind fails to provide relief. Flies are dotted on my jeans, but right now I'm past caring, I'm thinking about the bus journey - and death. To those of you who know me well, it may come as no surprise that the subject of death is on my mind...right now it's dominating my mind.

Minutes ago, in broken Spanish, I had persuaded the effervescent Lydia that neither la Ventana (window) or la Precipia (precipice) really appealled to me. In the aisle, Ipod on, eyes manacled shut - that's how I want to travel to La Paz. My friends Andrew and Sophie (met them in Coroico, Andrew is six foot two of curls, Radiohead obsessive, resident of Finsbury Park and planned co-traveller to the mysteries of Columbia) had offered me some valium as I left the hostel, but I declined. I think I know why. I think. The fear of falling, of death was generating a real passion for living. Wow, to be passionate about existence. I decided then to grab that passion with both metaphorical hands, and hold on tight too.

So here I am, in a rare mini-ephiphinal state of being alive. Dreams are still to be realised, things are still to be learnt, questions are still to remain unanswered, mistakes are to be rectified, loves to be won, lost and go to penalities after extra time. Right now I am scared of losing these opportunities and I silently vow to "carpe" the proverbial "diem".

I look at my arms, dotted with reminders that Coroico's mosquitos had a good luncheon; I take a swig of Coca-Cola; I notice that this is indeed one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to and I let out a slow sigh. Aaaah. It will be good to be back in La Paz, I think...I have had the sorbet course of Coroico, it's cleansed the pallete of sad memories of goodbyes and what ifs. I think of my tunes, what shall I listen to on the bus?

Music

Being the particular type of chap that I am, I have a particular fondness for lists. So, if you can't join me or grow stupid hair or fall in love with beautiful Swiss girls, try listening to the following tunes for an insight into my brain at the moment:

(in no particular order) -
Nick Cave - O Children (Lyre of Orpheus). Reminds of Amazing Grace without being bored at Church.
Wilco - Muzzle of Bees (A Ghost is Born). Great bass line, builds to amazing climax. Has the great line "I'm assuming you love me, and you know what that means".
Faust - Picnic on a Frozen Lake (Faust IV). This is just groovy.
Radiohead - I will, La Version (B-side of Go to Sleep). Song about killing people who attack your family, but extremely funky version. Dark and light all at once. Love it.
Mercury Rev - Vermillion (The Secret Migration). Weird spiders forests other worldliness. Jude gave me this as a pressie before Christmas and I love it a lot.
Bob Dylan - You're a big girl now (unreleased, on Biograph). Magnificent magnificent magnificent. The pain and anguish drips from every line. Plus honourable mentions for Sara, Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands and Girl from the North Country (with Mr J Cash).
Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah (Grace). The best lyricist sung by the best singer. Full stop.Regular staple on all compilation tapes for girls from me.
The Beatles - In my life (Rubber Soul). Sums it up for me at the mo.
Elliott Smith - Pretty ugly before (From a Basement on a Hill). Pain can be so beautiful it doesn't hurt. What a waste of a genius.
Jim O'Rourke - Therefore I am (Insignificance). This man is mean, selfish and unpleasant. But writes a rocking tune though...
John Lennon - God (Plastic Ono Band). Don't believe in Jesus...don't believe in Zimmerman...don't believe in Beatles...
Modest Mouse - Float On (Good news for people who like bad news). In my alternative universe this would be number one. Brilliant pop song.
Scott Walker - On your own again (Scott IV). The greatest song ever written for sitting alone in a hotel room gazing out the window.
Super Furry Animals -Do or Die (Guerilla). More of that "carpe the diem" nonsense...
Tom Waits - Tom Traubert's Blues (Small Change). Throw a lot of whisky at Nick Cave and Bobby D and you get the idea.

On the bus

We breakdown, only once. I sleep a lot. There are lots of sheer drops that I don't look at. My back aches a lot from being squashed into a minute chair. We don't crash or die and I get to La Paz. Apparently the President has just resigned or something and the country is in chaos. I may be stuck in La Paz for a few more days...

Now

Back at the hostel typing this...now I am going to try and put a couple of piccies from my bike ride on. Hold on a sec.....no I'm not, this computer doesn't have a CD drive. Will try later. Oh I need the loo too. But I don't have any bog roll. I'm going to try and scrounge some.

In Coroico

2005-03-05T20:29:00.000Z

I see one sweatshirted man in blue, ignoring the view.
I see one sky blue house facade cracking under the strain of a fistful of black wires shoved into hole in its side.
I see seven green hills, with one dotted with houses and I am like a child or like god and I want to pick them up between my thumb and first finger. I don`t though.
I see four black background mountains watching over their smaller green friends, like older bigger brothers in a playground school fight.
I see rolls of clouds, some sitting arms folded, some rising and falling like childish plooms of smoke.
I see one hot sun trying to push them out of the way, "it´s my show, you know...out of the way"!
I see one road winding like a river and another snaking like a snake.
I see at night four dots of light, climbing the snaking, winding road. I follow them twinkling in and out of view as the sky light says goodnight, and I think of the drivers and the passengers too.
I see a makeshift market beneath the vista with an iron corrogated roof.
I see a lady shuffling with a grey bucket, I see other ladies with purple red yellow bags tied around their shoulders, topped with the odd bowler hat.
I see a procession of ants with leaves on their back - red, green and yellow. They remind me of the Bolivian ladies and a particularly bad Olympic opening ceremony.
I see two pigeons perching and pecking their breasts.
I see four dogs fighting, and wonder why human beings look different here but dogs don´t. Guess that´s why I organise a festival instead of lecture internationally on veterinary matters of import.
(same observation goes for the pigeons, by the way)
I see two other men on the same platform, again neither taking in the view.
I see one four storey house to my left with washing still on the line.
I see lots of hills and I picture a bus and a plane and a similar mountain somewhere far from here.
I see one football rising above the market stands with the invisible players laughing below.
I see two birds mirroring each other as they cross the view. Do they see the view, are they moved. Do they see me, and squwark to each other.
I see the two men behind me wave their arms in animated conversation.
I see one sign by a market stall offering leche, cafe te and other beverages that I can´t be bothered to get up to identify.
I see three kids pushing each other along on skateboards.
I see one crowd gathering around a street side TV watching football.
I see two old ladies who smile at me.
I see one, two, three...ah **** it can`t be bothered...lots of stars in the night sky, so many in fact that the sky is more white than black.
I ask myself what is happiness.
I ask myself why the man in blue ignored the view.

Attempting to write Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands for the BBC3 generation whilst sitting around in a sub-tropical paradise.

2005-03-03T20:53:00.000Z

Got up this morning, opened my curtains and took in the most breathtaking view of absolutely nothing whatsover...These white clouds that seem to be born in Bolivia were nestled in the vast valley in front of my window and as if all the trees were breathing smoke into the air. Astonishingly beautiful. I'm kind of glad I've been let down by my camera, as it means I have to watch things more, remember them, write about them.

Am really appreciating Coroico. After staving off the tears for most of yesterday, I went for the beer after emailing and blogging and decided I would try and be positive. Looking around at where I was rather than constantly looking inwards was a big help. The town is based on a tiny little Plaza, with bars and cafes circling it. In the background hills full of trees dominate, and the air is tropical but not unbearable. Crickets constantly chirp, hummingbirds erm hum and cockroaches and other bugs abound. This morning I shared a surprisingly warm outdoor shower with a cockroach, me and her kind of dancing round each other like nervous partners too embarrassed to touch each other. As seems to be the norm in Bolivia, this town features a ridiculously steep hill with cobbles, and I've laboured up it a couple of times. The road to the hostel is one of the worse I've seen yet, so much so when I asked for a taxi home last night the driver looked at me, laughed and said no. Also the norm are the wonderful smiles of the people - in cafes, streets etc. Maybe it's cos I am such a gringo sporting a stupid hat and pathetic beard, but my presence in a room always guarantees a warm smile. That's really nice indeed.

I'm still thinking a lot, but managed to get most of it down onto paper. I'm currently attempting to write "Sad eyed lady of the lowlands" for the BBC3 generation. The plan is to send it to me Swiss friend, and then have it as the centrepiece of dfg's up and coming album "We are they, who do you say we are"? (if Clive and Keith will allow). I also managed to hear (over a crackly phone line to Clive) some of the demos of aforementioned album, and it's going to be great I tell you.

So, all in all a little better. She flies back to Europe today...the world seems a huge place. But I know I can't fight it or beat it. I know that if it spins in the right direction it will drop me off in a beautiful place. I just have to keep walking in the direction I want to go in. Which for now is staying here in Karaoke as Mike calls it. I leave Saturday I think, back up the death road on a bus. Hopefully, I'll survive that...

I didn´t die

2005-03-02T23:34:00.000Z

I'm in Coroico, Bolivia. A town I described hopefully as being like a Bolivian Eden. Well, it´s definitely very beautiful. I am staying in a retreat like hostel with swimming pool, outdoor wood cabins, every green insect you can imagine plus no one else. It´s deserted. I´m about to wander in to town for una cerveza and the chance of contact with another human. And I just read yesterday´s post and I just realised I´m a hypocrite. One minute I want to be surrounded with under members of the human race, the next I want to be alone. And it all bottles down to one thing and one thing only, and I´m not going to bore you with the details. I just feel very lonely right now.

Earlier I was in a great mood. After a slightly lovelorn and death obsessed night´s sleep (I kept seeing myself tumble over a cliff), the bike ride was a great adventure. We left at 7.30am, drove up and away from La Paz where we could see snow close by, could trace our breaths in the sky, and had to wear gloves and lots of layers. The road started paved, but descended steeply, there wasn´t much to see because the day was fairly grey. As we progressed and the road became steeper and more bumpy it was obvious that there was a fairly perilous drop on one side. Trouble (or maybe good thing) is that all I could see where white clouds seemingly billowing from the bottom of the canyon. Later they cleared and when I could take a second off clutching onto the brakes and avoiding incoming lorries I caught a sight of huge hillsides completely dressed in trees, multi-coloured butterflies dancing in the damp air and dozens of waterfalls cascading to the bottom. Cool. Not so cool were the number of crosses perched on the precipice´s edge, a testament to the many 100s who have tumbled off this particular road. Anyway, I managed to not die which was pretty good all in all, and it for a cowardly type like me it was a pretty amazing experience.

Now I am 3500 metres below where we started the bike ride. It´s almost tropical and mozzies are in evidence, I can´t believe how diverse and exciting the landscape and environment is here. Awe inspiring.

Tomorrow I need to try and shake myself out of my melancholic slumbers. She´s gone and that´s it. I´m alone and that´s what I chose by coming here for 5 months. There´s a lot more worse stuff going on on this planet right now than the contents of my cranium.

Right I´m going for a beer.

Leaving La Paz

2005-03-02T01:01:00.001Z

Well I´m sick and tired of La Paz.

I actually like the place, it´s unique - a clap of thunder followed by torrents of water gushing down narrow cobbled streets; market vendors selling everything from Llama foetuses (for luck) to bootleg MUFC shirts to slabs of un-appealing looking meat; teenagers hanging out of collectivos with neon green and red signs hawking for more passengers to destinations I can´t understand; young girls staring at me in the street and then wolf whistling; going for a walk to a park using the Lonely Planet map only to find it doesn´t exist before nearly collapsing of altitude related exhaustion; sitting on the pavement smoking a 1 pence cigarette with head in hands watching old ladies stumbling up the hill with purple and red and yellow sacks tied to their backs; my favourite cafe with a view of Plaza San Francisco that kind of makes me feel at home sitting there with unread Sysphus and half a miserable poem and a cafe americano not nescafe; Bar Sol y Una with Fake Plastic Trees and Day in a Life plus quadruple measures of G&T; a Burger King with a server called Darren, or was it Wayne; cigarette advertising still legal and everywhere; bartering with a market man for a pair of shades and winning (I think); feel I´m getting somewhere with the lingo when I make an international phone call, say thanks to the shop keeper and say "Ciao, Ciao" instead of just "Ciao"; green jacketed tourist police with guns hanging around banks and the bus station; sixties skyscrapers amidst a backdrop of sheer cliffs and horizontal trees; ladies with pink toilet paper everywhere; repeatedly getting asked by hairdressers whether I need a haircut (and now a shave, impressive, eh...); constantly hearing Robbie Williams and Sting in cafes. There´s more. This place is intense, in your face and this is tripled at least by the amount of energy one needs to muster just to move about. I´ll never forget it, but I need to leave.

Whereas the rest of my trip has seen me escape from the realities of my existence, it seems that now everything about me, about my life, about home and about what I want is being brought into sharp damning focus. And tonight, for the first time in weeks I have spent an evening entirely alone. Not normally a problem, in fact, often a bonus...but right now I crave for somewhere less anonymous than this city, less draining than these streets and just the presence of a close friend.

Tomorrow I ride the death road. If I make it, then I´ll be spending 3 days at the bottom in a Bolivian Eden. I´m pretty excited about the thought of a swimming pool, a book exchange, a hot tub, massages, tranquility. I really hope that this place calms my mind.

2005-03-02T01:01:00.000Z

King Zimmerman

2005-02-28T01:09:00.000Z

I just realised today why I love Bob Dylan so much. Feeling a bit low I turned my Ipod onto Dylan, onto random and worked my way through Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, Idiot Wind, Visions of Johanna and Up to me. The man is the king. Such poetry, passion, anger, love, humour, tragedy and brilliance. The man inspires me in lots of ways. In quite shallow ways - my ever blossoming barnet, the Dylan-esque cap I bought from a street market for 15 Bolivianos (a quid), but mainly in making me excited about what I want to do most with my life - create, write, feel, inspire. So, following the burst of excitement I think I have the beginning and end of my novel kind of sorted in my head, and I am working on an epic poem at the moment - a kind of love thing. I´m planning on leaving La Paz on Wednesday (by bike, down the "world´s most dangerous world"), and then staying in the town at the bottom of the road, which has been described as a kind of Bolivian Eden. Hopefully there I´ll find the time and space to think, write and read. Just trying to wade through Albert Camus´ Myth of Sysphus at the moment. Worringly after that I´ll have to start swapping books, which I´m worried about given the quality of some of my fellow travellers´ libraries. After that, I´ll be travelling up to Lake Titicaca with a friend from England, and I´ll hopefully see just where the sun and moon were born. Allegedly.

So what´s new? Well, not much. Still feel a little blue, but managed to speak to Viktor - it was great to spend 5 minutes talking from someone back home. My camera is completely up the spout - dunno why, another 60 photos self-deleted today. I wish Dave and Leon were here to assist! Today we headed to some Inca ruins out of La Paz, had a cracking argument with a minibus driver who refused at first to drive us back to town (for a minute I was genuinely scared he was going to drive us off the side of the canyon into the city).

Other important updates of note. I have a beard. Well a smattering of hair on my upper lip and a scrubland below my chin. My Spanish is becoming nearly acceptable, I think I might take a course in Cusco when I get there as well. I´ve been trying to teach the little kid in my hostel some English, but so far have only succeeded with "Hello", "Goodbye" and "My favourite Dylan album is Bringing it all Back Home, simply because I believe the songs therein best marry Dylan´s early acoustic phase with his latter day more experimental so-called electric phase." I´ve also made friends with the Dutch owner of a cool bar round the corner, and given him a list of required albums to improve his establishment - Wilco, Flaming Lips etc.

It´s 9.30pm here. I´m really tired. All the late night deep and meaningfuls with my Swiss friend have finally taken their toll. Am going to retire, try and read my Camus and definitely listen again to "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands". Buenos noche, O x

I'm so high

2005-02-26T21:32:00.000Z

Well, over 4000 metres I think. La Paz, the world's highest capital, is one of the most ridiculously remarkable cities I have ever been to. Yes, even more so than Derby. The city centre is at the foot of a huge canyon / valley thing, and the rest of the city sprawls up the sides of the canyon, clinging on for dear life. It's breathtaking wandering up a street at night, with shops either side of you and in front of you thousands upon thousands of glimmering lights from the sheer hillside. It's a bit like being in the middle of a gigantic football stadium. So it's breathtaking..literally. I can't walk up a hill here without being completely exhausted after about 28 seconds.

Had quite an "interesting" journey here on Wednesday / Thursday. The bus (complete with nude girl calendars like every other establishment in Bolivia it seems) pulled out of Uyuni at 8pm. The road soon became what can only be described as a dirt track. A dirt track in Bolivian rainy season. A dirt track with a lot of holes in it. A dirt track that occasionally turned into a river. Well, the inevitable happened about midnight. The kids at the front of the bus were charged with getting out, running ahead with flashlights and then signalling to the driver that it was safe to proceed. So after kicking a few rocks about and checking some holes, they signalled all clear. The driver set off, it got very bumpy, the bus rocked to and fro and then it just stopped. For two hours. We all had to push and dig ourselves out. Let's say that this authentic South American experience was great. At least for the first 10 minutes or so. Then we broke down again and nearly died of the cold, and when we got to Oruro we were informed our connection had gone 4 hours ago. We managed to get a bus to La Paz in the end, not after one guy had his bag nicked and locals protesting had managed to block our two main routes out of town. All good fun...

Like I said this place is very interesting. Woman who crouch to go to the toilet in the middle of the street, 10 year old kids peddling cigarettes at 2am in a bar and menacing looking boys in balaclavas offering to shine my trainers.

But I'd be lying if I said I really cared, and that's annoying me. My friend from Switzerland has left today and I've been staggering around this town on the brink of tears. I hate feeling like this, yet it happens so often. And I'm trying to get my head round why I'm here and what I'm supposed to do and feel and experience and all I want to do today is bury my head somewhere in the sand. Still, the one good thing is that I am managing to churn out some fairly decent third rate poetry and ideas for my novel, but like everything - money, travel, art, music...I'd trade it all for love.

Sorry for the cheese. I did vow when I started this thing it wouldn't be some kind of confessional thing and I apologise if that's what it becomes sometimes. But I guess when I write I can't separate my heart, mind and soul from where I am, what I see and what I do. I am sure I'll perk up soon. I am genuinely having a splendid splendid time, just that my skin is so so thin...

Another planet

2005-02-23T22:14:00.000Z

Sorry for the delay in writing, I know you have all been waiting with

baited breaths. Well United have just lost to Milan and I am Uyuni, 3500 metres above sea level a sort of wild west town without the sherriffs and cowboys and desert. Instead just lots of lashing rain, salt lakes, abandoned train cemeteries etc.

Welcome to Bolivia. Welcome to no hot showers, holes in floors for toilets, trains that breakdown half way through a ten hour journey with a bemused couple of Bolivians grinning at us whilst we teach them cards and a fat old bolivian lady with coca leaves stuck to her cheeks tutting at us and pointing and saying Gringos, with children and women selling everything on the street and with hostels that cost a little over a quid a night. Welcome to Bolivia, welcome to South America proper!!!

I'm off to La Paz tonight, so my proposed schedule is well up the spout. La Paz is the world's highest city so I look forward to walking 3 steps and then collapsing with exhaustion. I've had a busy old week, wine in Mendoza, horse riding with Gauchos in Salta (yes family can you believe that) and a tour Salar de Uyuni, 12,000sq KM salt lakes and quite probably the most amazing geographical nature type thing I have ever seen this side of Thorpe Park. I managed to get my camera to work so I can put some piccies up maybe if I can figure it out.

I'll write more about the details when I have time this weekend in La Paz. My travelling companion and unrequited love interest leaves for Switzerland on Friday and then I face a return to solo travelling and solo thinking and no doubt a smattering of melancholia.

Anyway, this is what I have done since I last wrote, briefly.

Friday - arrive in Salta (north Argentina) after bus journey with bingo, the Day after Tomorrow and Dodgeball. Reunited with my Swiss friends.
Saturday - excel at horse riding, I mean really excel...impress virtually everyone. Chew coco leaves, drink mate, then evening out with typical seventeen hour wait for a drink. Service here in S America is a tad relaxed, shall we say!!! Then impress further with dancing to the Strokes and White Stripes.
Sunday - after about 6 minutes sleep sit in a cafe write a morbid poem see myself across the room in 30 years walk around the town in a daze.
Monday - 5.30am bus to La Quica (border town), headache from the altitude, welcome to Bolivia, attempt (without much success) to buy clean food and then a 11 hour train journey to Uyuni. Cramped in popular class tired tired tired.
Tuesday - in Uyuni. Thunderstorms and lashing winds, trip to a train cemetery and then late night deep and meaningfuls.
Today - to the amazing Salt Lakes. A bizzare town selling souvenirs made out of salt, little ornaments etc. Plus a massive selection of pirated horror dvds.

and all the time...lots more. But I can't write now, she's sat next to me.

So Vamos...I will write with some profundity at the weekend. Adios amigos. Oliver x y z

PS thanks for comments...Jude my music is the one thing that keeps me linked to my "real" life, but it seems more important here. Dunno why? And Steve, yeah I am fine...where's me goody bag :)

The routine

2005-02-17T14:29:00.000Z

Generally I am finding my days here devoid of the usual structures that define my life back home. I mean I am anally retentively bound by routine in London. My alarm goes off at 8.15am, I make myself a coffee (black one sugar) and 2 slices of toast, I shower etc, I leave the house at 9.25am I go to work I have my next cup of coffee around 11am. etcetera. I have long thought that I had a bit of a problem with such detail, some kind of obsessive compulsive thing going on...

So, here it´s been weird. Each day, each hostel, each new person, each new city, each bus ride offers something different, open, full of emptiness and possibility. I am trying to write a poem about what a terrible thing a blank page to be filled is or a blank canvas to be painted on, and I think of my days like that...endless fear inducing things that need to be filled.

Well, as a result I´ve started to develop little routines, little rituals. I don´t know why but they offer me comfort. Emailing and blogging are important. My morning coffee is essential. Time spent reading and listening to tunes is also a big one. Also the way I pack and unpack my backpack keeps my mind at rest! For me, underpinning my days with a spine of routine enables me to relax more and see and enjoy everything and everyone around me. At home, without my routine I succumb to a major sense of unease...here I feel comforted by the stupid little ways I do things.

Today I´m going to lounge in the hostel (it has a swimming pool, beer fridge, table tennis etc) before heading north to Salta. I´ve had a great, and easy few weeks. Argentina and Chile could easily enough be Spain or Italy. I have had a great time, it´s been a real holiday. But tonight Bolivia, and perhaps the more chaotic edgy part of Latin America, looms large and I am scared and excited about what I might find and encounter.

Here in Argentina the real poverty seems to be hidden. People dress well, eat well, look great...but this is a poor country with lots of people living in poverty. But it seems to be a proud, nearly arrogant place - flashy, showy, unable to show weakness. Yesterday, in the main square of Mendoza, as we chewed on our fat steaks I had my first major encounter with poverty and illness. Lots of people came up to our table, nearly crying begging for money. One lady had cancers on her legs. With me I have the usual reaction of immense pity, immense powerlessness, immense ignorance, immense good fortune to be as I am and immense anger at the inbalances of the world. We gave money to one, two, three people...but we didn´t give it to others later and we chewed our steaks and supped our Quilmes in silence. And I´m still thinking about it, determined to find out what the situation in these countries is, why things happen and what might be done.

Apologies again for this ramble. Most blogs seem short and sweet, mine apart from football gloating (hello Stuart) go on for hours. But I find it really important to keep these, especially as my camera is malfunctioning...it will be good to come back to as time progresses.

Well, I will really go now! Might not blog for a few days. I am excited and nervous about meeting up with my Swiss friend again and might be more busy in Salta.

Mas tarde...Oliver

Yesterday

2005-02-16T15:34:00.000Z

I walked round Mendoza in 30 degree heat with my Ipod on listening to obscure Radiohead B-Sides (I Will La Version, Pearly*, Paperbag Writer and Palo Alto being my faves). I sat in cafes and elegant squares. I read some more of Atomised by Michel Houellbecq (sp) - marvellous and inspiring. I got repeatedly thrashed at table tennis by French, German and Spanish people. I smoked a few cigarettes and enjoyed a 50p per litre Quilmes beer. I booked my bus to Salta. I ate a steak.

Most of all I just thought. Incessantly to the point of irritation. I wish there was a switch to turn it off. Ah well. That´s why sleep is good. I also thought of back home and the Angels weekend, and has Karen had a baby, and how´s Dave´s love life, and has Viktor quit smoking, and what´s the weather like, and are my dfg associates doing anything useful, and how is Gill´s gravy, and I hope my Granddad is okay. And lots of other people and things. And then I realised I miss my friends maybe now for the first time in a big way. Not in a tear jerking sobbing wretched way, just in a "it would be really nice to see you this evening" kind of way. Maybe it´s because the first people that I´ve got really close to here have now gone...

Anyway, I had better go. I am going to a winery to sample lots of what Mendoza is famous for.

Keep it significant

OJx

The journey from Santiago (Chile) to Mendoza (Argentina) on a hot sunny day

2005-02-15T17:05:00.000Z

people watching from tower blocks / to them this is normal / diseased penguins a cat with no tail and two english tourists / a barren football pitch and the andes somewhere above / a pylon not unlike home roadworks abandoned / at least for today / signs and workers all in fluorescent orange / tibetan monks and fly posters / a beautiful girl walks past not smiling / a tyre forced into a pavement crack / orange blue yellow metal swings and see-saws / a dusty yard blows across graffiti in spanish / and your face zoomed in my face in my mind / a man on a cellphone on a doorstep / dogs asleep or dead diseased maybe just hot / palm trees show up the ugly concrete yards / girls with bizarrely unattractive partners / wood and corrugated doors and cars slumped on pavements / a crushed plastic water bottle / wires make me look at the sky / can´t describe the colour maybe it doesn´t have one / not blue white or grey just hanging / a axe waiting to fall / stomach aches pen is chewed / pretend I´m a native so I don´t have to engage / think about you walking away / you on another bus taking another path / a crossroad with more stalled works / catch the eye of a boy with a dirty t-shirt with an english slogan / speed bumps flanked by an abandoned pushchair / vendors in a petrol forecourt just stood around smoking / small brown sickly trees next to arrogant palms / like peacocks upright elegant superior / a flyover people cycling slowly rhythmically just keeping going / a brown park then a reminder in my head / taken to Prague to a metro station / people milling announcements I don´t understand / but I heed them anyway / the beauty that you can´t help is more powerful / a horse strolling around a motorway / a naked baby advert piles of tyres like roadside shrines / washing hanging red and blue off apartment blocks / posters advertising lenny kravitz / feel sick to the core / workers actually working digging something up / standing to urinate on the bus possibly an error of judgement / a bus toilet with paper and hot water / a man shouting empanandas not at me or anyone / is that like praying words tossed at wind / people who I think should be sad looking happy / people who are beautiful looking miserable / a truck full of crystal beer / bic razor adverts suspended above first green grass / a swig of water try to follow it all the way down / fail / a service station sign nostalgic yearning for newport pagnell / contemplate coffee and windows and banked grass / a motorway toll booth people on the next bus / we all join in the staring hoping for a glimpse of something precious / we are sorely disappointed I am at least / a stale and dry cheese sandwich / I exchanged for all my pesos / a man with questions asks for my passport / he doesn´t smile but I think he is capable of it / the scenery doesn´t move me / their guide book says it does / try again and I am moved by your face / no one next to me good / I want no one to ever sit next to me ever ever ever / coca-cola adverts on flags / untattered like the chiean ones / people like dots crouched in fields / working simply I dream of being them / but I know I´d hate it / but in dreams I erase those thoughts / we touched glasses and I gasped at your eyes / the greatest twenty seconds of contemporary rock music in my head / think about Jesus and write it down / read what I wrote about Jesus gaze out of the window / think some more about Jesus and then think about spots / shake my head to the music / makes me look confident and therefore a local / question are most men just more honest than me / think about camus´ outsider and truth / if I´m being honest this journey is irrelevant / so is this it´s about you / between songs the tourist says the phrase “panoramic views” from his book / feel smugly superior but have a look / he´s right feel wretched / the cheese sandwich offers little assistance / do they have housing estates here / a bunch of houses wrapped around a mountain leg / a fence with no wire / big pylons on top of mountains / maybe waiting for missiles from argentina / or broadcasting the english premiership / mountains that look like clouds and clouds that look like mountains / shaped like mythical creatures / well not really I just made that up / a man who is old and swearing in his shorts socks sandals / a dry valley with dust flowing not water / blue shiny rubbish congregating / I admire their gall feel elated / then feel sick again because I stopped stopping thinking / again horses like poor children´s toys / three chilean flags for no reason / a lot of trees for no reason / feeling like this for no reason / no reasons I can think of and I do try hard / a plastic bags rubbing a tree like a cat / makes this one tree in a million radiate / cactus plants framed by metal blocks which I guess have a purpose / someone put them there one day / I wonder silently who / I call him juan and then change my mind to jose / want to be alone so much / but I don´t really do I who does really / green low trees that hurt my eyes / water sprinkling outside a box factory / maybe making weapons or hiding waste / who cares the sprinklers are pretty and make me think of parks in london / moon in the day sky a scene from a bad star trek episode / through a mountain tunnel but keep on my shades / drift to sleep drift to wake / still thinking about you mainly with my stomach / tummy thinking is best it is the most true / cutting through the andes / think of yellow diggers and men with hats and lights / spaceship clouds land amongst the mountains / sorry about the overuse the word mountain / hill doesn´t do them justice / copper red or brown rivers and a severe headache / I´d like to think I have altitude sickness / next door the tourists chat / he doesn´t make conversation he makes observations and statements / imagine living like that but it´s not my place to judge / journey is fizzling out / i come to a profound conclusion about what my entire life´s purpose is / but I forget it and write this sentence instead / i withdraw in the hope that love is manifested / road flooded people out of cars smoking chatting / they are taking pictures too i didn´t know that locals could / broken cars groan smoke and litter the roads / working cars slides everywhere / everyone is trying to get away / a mist hangs over rows of vineyards / a mist like I´d imagine in the morning / on the somme in 1916 / a damp spider´s web a car covered in leaves / some fruit tomatoes and apples roll across the road / we arrive / i get off and am relieved i have no accommodation / some challenge may distract my mind

Ciao Chile

2005-02-14T14:20:00.000Z

Monday morning in Santiago, and for once the smog has cleared and you can make out the Andes surrounding the city...it´s impressive to say the least. I wouldn´t say that I have loved Santiago, but it´s been a great place to stay. It might be the quietest capital city I have ever been in, the subway glides silently from pristine station to the next and the streets haven´t been as crowded as the hustle of Buenos Aires.

We had a day in Valparaiso on Saturday, beautiful port town with colourful houses banked on the hills overlooking the sea. The sea, my first ever glimpse of the Pacific Ocean. It looked a bit like the Atlantic Ocean, you know...watery...

My companions from Switzerland have departed, in some ways really sad, I´ll miss them - but in some ways a relief. So many blokes kept coming up to me and asking about my friend Ann-Sophie and was she with me, is she single, how beautiful she is etc. By about the sixth time, it began to get wearing and a tad painful.

Met some more fabulous people. A bloke called Malcolm who I had down as a drunken womanising type (he is kind of) is also a poet, so we got on. There´s a bloke from Germany who looks the spitting image of the greatest living Australian, Nick Cave. And a Dutch guy gave a startling rendition of a Tom Waits song called Alice. The rate I am going I should be able to make a round the world trip staying in people´s houses.

I leave Chile today for Mendoza and wine. I´ve liked it here, the people are warmer than in Argentina I think. Travelling to Chile from Argentina is like leaving London for Yorkshire, it´s relaxing and friendly, but the big city keeps calling. I´m looking fwd also to taking further advantage of Argentina´s weak economy. Well time to go...got streets to wander round, got a book to read, got Dylan to listen to and got a bus to catch (short journey today, only 8 hours).

Santiago de Chile

2005-02-11T22:44:00.000Z

Friday eve, and preparing for a BBQ in the hostel in Barrio Brasil, a district of Santiago. As I type I realise that in the past few weeks my use of language has altered considerably. I was about to say that we're 10 blocks from Downtown Santiago, but I guess after mixing with Americans, Swiss, Canadians, Germans and a few natives, you begin to talk, and type somewhat differently.

Pucon was an amazing place. Based on the blueist of lakes, surrounded by mountains and dominated by an active volcano that glowed orange at night - it was an ideal setting for well, doing lots of activities and um, nigh on nothing...

I met up with my friends from Bariloche which was cool, and we have travelled on to Santiago together which is enjoyable, because conversations and relationships have transcended the "where in South America have you travelled to?" to more deep and personal stuff. I have also managed to fall in love, unsurpisingly, with an attached unattainable woman. You can change the continent, you can't change this fool and the patterns he weaves himself...oh well.

I found Heinz ketchup in a supermarket, that was exciting. I bought 17 bottles. In Pucon I cycled 50 km and then nearly died under the blistering 35 degrees unshaded sun. I had to take the next two days of to read, sit, play cards, write, listen to Radiohead and scratch my ever increasing barnet. My legs have become dark white...it's amazing. I've delighted in teaching fellow travellers certain aspects of our Queen's English and have left people with a veritable treasure trove of postmodern phraseology such as "splendid" and "squire". All well, all good - but feel a bit uneasy today not sure why, might be the Albert Camus. Maybe it's cos I haven't drunk any beer today yet.

Santiago, first impressions - hot, smoggy and big. We climbed a Sacre Coeur-esque hill and looked out and with a squint could make out the faint outlines of the Andes outside the city - impressive. We also fought off a barrage of young children trying to sell us useful gifts at a cafe, you get pretty used to that here...

One downer is the malfunctioning state of my "new" camera. Keeps deleting photos (it gets to 60 and then deletes back to 30). So I have lost all my photos except those of my leaving do in London. Not sure what to do, but I've stopped taking them. Instead I stop and stare and stare and stop and stop and stare some more. It's good. Like chewing your food, I guess.

Am staying here for the weekend. To Valpairso (port town) for the day tomorrow, then back to Argentina on Monday / Tuesday. Have decided to alter my route to take in Mendoza before heading north to Salta and then into Bolivia. It's relatively expensive here in Chile (5 quid for a bed as opposed to 3.50)!

Well it will Bolivia in a week to 10 days, Peru after that, then Ecuador then Columbia. Not sure at this rate I am going to be able to loop back to Brazil, but I'll do what I am doing now and take every day as it comes.

I have much more to say but I expect, dear reader, that you might be bored or at work feeling secretly guilty about abusing your employer's internet connection.

Peace Out.

O x

Linda

2005-02-07T19:42:00.000Z

Third day in Chile, and all well. I am now in Pucon, which is notable because it has an active volcano, so I´m going to attempt my first form of strenous physical exertion for a while. There are also hot springs a lake and also lots of bars here. So I could go for the 2nd option.

Just had 2 excellent days in Puerto Montt. Met more new friends, quickly initiated a conversation about death, life, love and god and bagged myself another place top stay in Canada if I choose to go there.

Chile´s v different to Argentina, in my opinion. It´s definitely less European. Argentina could easily be Spain or Italy, but there´s something more authentically South American about this place. Maybe it´s the fact that the people clearly look different (more Indian features), maybe it´s because of the chaotic ramshackle markets of Puerto Montt, maybe it´s because of the incredible kindness and hospitality of the people I stayed with in P Montt. While we were there we had a superb fish dinner and chose the fish from the market and the people couldn´t do enough to help.

Another cool thing that happened in Isla Chiloe is a bunch of girls came up to my Canadian friend of ours and were pointing, laughing and shouting "Bonito, bonito" which I think means they think we were handsome. I mean it happens all the time to me in Hackney, but it was nice for my mate.

I´m here on my own, but already some friends from Bariloche have said they´re here, so I´m going to meet up with them later. Including the lovely Swiss girl I met before...!

PS cool word of the week "Linda". Pronounced "Leeenda". Means foxy chick apparently.

Last day in Arg for a while

2005-02-04T13:46:00.000Z

Sat in an internet cafe in Bariloche. Last day here, and it´s been amazing. Yesterday took a maniac bus to Llao Llao, scrambled up a mini-mountain, sat on a boulder, cooked in the sun and enjoyed the most spectacular view of forests, snow capped mountains, still lakes and birds circling. This place is spectacular and I´m sad to be leaving.

The weird thing about travelling so far are the sheer amount of snapshots you get of people´s lives. You arrive in a place, you chat to some people and then you or they leave. Usually the conversations are pretty intense, more accelerated maybe than back home and just as you feel a closeness you leave. Strange. And sad. I took my melancholy this morning to a cafe...if I get into these moods the best thing to do is find a window to look out of. Trains are best, but cafes do the trick as well. I´m sure I´ll shake it off...it´s just that weird leaving a place feeling again. Or maybe it´s just that I´ve met a great girl and she´s gone...but I hope to see her in Chile.

Also weird is why people travel. One guy is just here to kayak for 5 months. One friend is having a mid-life crisis. One wants to go on epic 4 day treks across Patagonian wildernesses. And me, I still don´t know. I don´t really like trekking (I mean the odd walk is okay). Sightseeing is okay, but in strictly limited doses. I feel like I wil drift around this continent, grabbing moments of insight, excitement, beauty and sadness, and that feels okay.

I´m pretty excited because my mood means that I´m feeling creative, and I´m desperate to do some writing. I have an option to climb another hill today, but I reckon I might just sit on the balcony and write and see what comes.

So tomorrow at 7.30am I will take the bus to Puerto Montt in Chile for my first different country and my first change of currency. As usual, I have no idea what, or who waits for me there...

Another day, another town

2005-02-02T01:32:00.000Z

Sorry ´bout my ecstatic post below, but sometimes you´ve just gotta. It´s great watching the footy here, when there´s a goal the commentators start singing to a pre-chosen tune. So when Giggsy bagged his, the commentator started singing a song in Spanish to the tune of Dancing Queen. Not sure of the relevance of that tune, but anyway. It´s bizarre watching an evening game in a dark pub with the blistering heat outside, but that´s part of the disorientation. There doesn´t seem to be such a thing as a weekend. I get up in the morning, evening and afternoon it seems to change every day. I don´t carry a watch. I have no idea what time it is and I only just have an idea of what town I´m in.

I´m in Bariloche, in the Argentinian Lake District. Think Switzerland with more sun and you´ve got it. Chocolate shops, snow tipped mountains, wooden log cabin type shops and a quite ridiculously beautiful lake are some of the Swiss like features here.

The bus journey from East was weird. Leaving Puerto Madryn, all you could see is nothing except the biggest sky in the world...but a rough night´s sleep later (complete with confusing bus drivers, whingeing nappy soiling kids and one of the worst cheese sandwiches I have ever consumed) and I find myself amongst winding roads, trees, lakes and mountains. Very very beautiful.

The hostel is on the top floor of an apartment block and looks out over the lake, and is worth if for the view alone. Unlike the last place in Madryn, with its surly owner and list of rules and general dislike of anything (though he did remind me of me at Greenbelt a bit), this place seems great. As usual I´ve met a load of people - this time Germans so having to brush up on the old A Levels.

Highlight of the week so far...walking along the beach at Madryn and Dylan´s "Oh Mercy" coming from a beach front bar. Naturally I had to stay for a while and pay homage to the Zimmster. Well, new highlight of the week 4-2 4-2 4-2 4-2 4-2. Sorry couldn´t resist, love a bit of it.

Ecstatic

2005-02-02T01:30:00.000Z

4-2 4-2 4-2 4-2 4-2 4-2

Meeting people is easy

2005-01-31T15:13:00.000Z

So sez Thom Yorke, ironically of course, but so far here it´s been a doddle. I´ve met at least thirty people, had nights in bars with all sorts virtually every night and lived it large. It´s weird, but at home I´d never make the effort. (a) I am too shy and (b) I can´t usually be bothered - but here the art of small-talk seems to take on an importance for above it´s station back in England.

I guess it´s easy to strike up a conversation here. There´s a book of well thumbed topics - where have you been, why are you travelling, where are you from, what do you think of Eric Djemba-Djemba´s proposed switch to Aston Villa and is Dylan´s 60´s trilogy of albums better than his 70´s trilogy. I´ve had the cliched chats, and found myself resorting to some of the worst lines about wanting to get away, needing space blah blah blah yawn zzzzzzzzzzz but generally it´s been good. Most people are pretty open minded. I´ve chatted loads about the Make Poverty History campaign because of my wristband thingy, there´s lots of good chat about politcs, art and footy and it´s genuinely interesting to meet a friend or two, share some beers and stories, swap emails and then move on again.

People are here for all sorts of reasons. Some have had breakups and wanted to get away. Some are having mid-life crises. Some don´t see the point in having a plan in life and some are just sort of here. They just ended up here on some ebb and flow and they´ll bob about and end up somewhere else, maybe never settling. Not sure that´s bad thing or a good thing. I´m thinking right now that most things are just things...neither good nor bad, just the way that you see them. Sorry for rambling.

What have I been up to? Staggered out of bed at 6 yesterday for a day trip to Peninsula Valdes - saw sea elephants, sea lions, armadillos, llamas and lots of birds, sea and sand. Like all of Patagonia it was bleak, exposed and vast. But brilliant to see nature close up. I´m leaving at 9 tonight for the overnight bus to Bariloche which is close to the Chilean border, which should be good...so today I´m just going to succumb to the sea, sun shine and cerveza. I´m looking fwd to the bus journey because it means I get to bed, well seat, before 3am for once.

Life is good at the moment. My faux-philosophising and introspection haven´t been too melancholy and I´m excited about the next stop, the nervousness of getting off the bus and finding my bag and a place to stay and the possibility genuinely that I could meet anyone at the next place, I could have any adventure (or none) and United could give Arsenal a good beating.

Bye for now.

Ps current listening Wilco A Ghost is Born. Current reading, Art of Travel by Alain de Botton. Current drink of choice - un gintonic (v v v generous measures). Current food of choice - lomo con papas fritas (steak and chips). Current favourite things - las chicas argentinas (lovely argentinian ladies).

PPS Spanish coming along well. Am learning about 10 new words a day.

Welsh love spoons

2005-01-29T21:54:00.000Z

What is a Welsh love spoon? Frankly I don´t have a clue, but clearly Patagonia is the place to find out...

Second day here. After a day and night lounging in Puerto Madryn I successfully dragged myself onto the local transport system and found myself in Trelew, a smallish town, pretty unremarkable except for a statue of some bloke called Evans or Jones or something. The place reminded me of Hill Valley in the Back to the Future films.

Anyway, after that I jumped on a bus to Gaiman, apparently a mecca for those wanting an Argentinian Welsh experience. Apart from the lack of sheep, rain and rugby, Gaiwan is pretty Welsh. It´s also a completely different planet to Buenos Aires. I get off the bus and the dogs are sleeping in the road. An odd car trundles past and greying men snooze in the park. I wander around, stumble across Juan Evans road and follow my nose and stomach to a Welsh tea house. For 10 pesos (about 2 quid) I get a plate piled with scones, apple pie, bread, cakes, tart plus tea. The place is one of the many six traditional welsh tea houses in Gaiman, complete with Charles & Di tea towels and yep, you guessed it - Welsh love spoons. Maybe someone could explain that to me.

I chatted to the waitress in my usual spanglish, and managed to establish that lots of Welsh people still live there, and in fact, she is learning to speak Welsh. A weird little outpost in a very foreign place...though it still has all the same road names as every town in Argentina (well the 4 or so I have seen so far) - 25 de Mayo, 9 de Julio, Belgrano etc.

The bus journey back is hot and between snoozes I look out of the window. For the hour or so it takes to get back via Trelew all I see is sky and vast expanses of shrub land and the odd horse. It´s a featureless and vast place Patagonia, and I think I´m beginning to understand the phrase "airbrushed sky".

I´m very tired, not yet recovered from the long bus ride from Bs As, or maybe the extra generous G&Ts last night. Perhaps a quiet one tonight, though I have met some Canadians and they all seem to like a drink. But I´ve got to be up early tomorrow ´cos I´m off to see penguins, orcas, sea-elephants (?) and have a snorkel and a boat ride. Should be fun. And then late on Monday I begin my long trek West towards Chile, heading to the town of Bariloche - the Andes and the Lake District.

Gutted I missed the footy. They show the premiership but not the FA Cup. Heard Wayne did the biz again. Lovely, now let´s give Arsenal what they deserve on Tuesday...!

The long and unwinding road

2005-01-28T20:03:00.000Z

That´s the one from Bs As to Puerto Madryn where I am now. 20 hours of flatness, shrubs, big skies, one lane, the odd roadside cafe and not even a sheep.

I think I started to get an idea of the vastness of this place as the bus pulled out of the city. Bustling Retiro bus station gave way to the city´s sparkling financial district, then over a gigantic flyover past where I was staying in San Telmo and then on and on and on through a myriad of white apartment blocks and satellite dishes towards a huge orange sun dipping low in the sky. As we left the city I had a sudden wave of euphoria about the size of the earth and my journey and if it wasn´t for the seat that reclined to a bed, the free drinks and food and the English DVDs on board, I might have thought I was Che and my double decker coach was a motorcycle.

I was glad of the distraction of euphoria because earlier I had been feeling an array of negative emotions. Mainly sadness about leaving...an emotion that has pursued me since I was a kid...fear of being alone maybe, dislike of goodbyes, expectation that the next place won´t be as good as the one I have left behind. It´s a horrible feeling, mainly in the stomach and one that I´d love to ditch for good one day. The other emotion was slight panic. There´s nothing better at inducing a bit of panic than a bustling bus station with incomprehendable spanish annoucements, a dead dog outside, sixteen thousand kids juggling for pesos plus a backpack that contains my life and weighs about a ton. Still...still. My bus showed up. A nice girl chatted with me in spanglish and aside from holding my bowels for 20 hours all went well.

Now I´m in Puerto Madryn, Patagonia. Patagonia´s a place I´ve always wanted to go because it sounds so alien, vast, far away. It´s definitely the latter two, but today it´s not the 1st. I´ve found my way to the beach, I have enjoyed a cerveza. I´ve smoked my roll ups (yes I found some in Bs As!!!!) and I´ve sent the odd email. It definitely feels quieter here, but that´s fine as the city was one big party. Hopefully I´ll meet some people later to hang out with and tomorrow I go in search of penguins, welsh people and utd vs middlesborough.

See it must be relaxing cos I don´t have to be somewhere I can just write this at leisure. I´ll shut it now though. Having a great time. Have already met new friends to stay with in Santiago and Lima and people I´ll see back in England. I´ve absorbed fellow travellers´ advice about the likelihood that I will get mugged at least once and I´ve arranged to meet up next week with a friend in Bariloche, which is to the west of Argentina in the Lake District near to Chile.

Ciao. Oliver.

Last day in Tango city

2005-01-27T14:46:00.000Z

Not that I need much invitation to feel a swathe of melancholia - but I'm going to miss this place. I leave for Patagonia this evening, where I'll try and locate Welsh people and penguins and expose my milk white torso on the beach. I think it will be a slower pace there. Last night we went out at 3am for cervezas, that after we had been serenaded by an Argentinian singing "xgey prooodence, wownt you come out to play", and I attempted the 3 guitar chords I have kind of mastered to generally universal acclaim. Kind of.

Have abandoned my first beard growing attempt, after deciding it's unwise to try and compete with this extremely stubbly species.

Yesterday I visited a shopping centre - Alto Palermo - complete with McDonalds and all that the ex-pat wants to get away from. Except that this place is populated by an army of goddesses. I've never seen anything like it, and I fell in love every 2.2 seconds. Later today, before my bus we're heading off to La Boca - the rough end of town, full of pickpockets apparently and also home to Boca Juniors football club. And then I'm going to eat a steak the size of me head.

So will write from the South. Bye for now...

Columbia

2005-01-25T20:58:00.000Z

Everyone says Columbia is the best. I wasn't planning on going as being kidnapped or murdered weren't high on my priority lists, but apparently it's the best place to travel. Anyway, that won´t be for a couple of months yet...

All well here. Going brown and managing to successfully hold my own speaking Spanish now and then.

there's a queue for the 'puta so better go, will write more later.

PS they're really bitter about the Faklands Islands. I think someone had a go at me in the street for being English, and there was a big anti-Britain demo a day or two ago. This is the 1st time in my life that I'm considering pretending to be American...

Slow

2005-01-23T22:29:00.000Z

Okay, this is my third try to write another entry. The last 2 times for some reason it just kept crashing. I choose to blame it on the internet or this weird keyboard, not my limited grasp of things technical.

As we were walking down the street a minute ago I commented to my friends about how slow things are here. I mean it's a frentic busy city...but within just a few days my London rush everywhere mindset has been evaporated by the burning Buenos Aires sun. Yesterday and today were supposed to be sightseeing days - Evita Peron's grave, La Boca district, maybe a gallery..but instead I find myself languishing in front of the premiership (loads of matches mercifully on Fox sports), heading out for a leisurely afternoon stroll and Quilmes (local beer) and, of course, watching millions of beautiful Portenos wandering by.

I don't know whether to feel bad, but I have only a limited interest in seeing the sights and much more of an interest in just living in another place. If I was in London I'd have avoided Big Ben and the Tower of London, and would probably be spending my time idling in a bar in Brick Lane or strolling through the park. Again, keeps bringing back the question of why I am travelling. I mean I could have taken a year off and gone to Keighley and sat in the caff and watched United on the telly...

Funny things I've seen in the last day or 2. Little kids come on to the tube and put packets of tissues or plastic torches on your knee to try and sell them. They must be less than 8 years old. In Palermo there's a wicked square with loads of bars that become clothes stores by day. The Islas Malvivas badges that proudly claim they belong to Argentina. The Tango show in San Telmo with all you can eat pizzas and drink, but we only get 4 slices and then feel incredibly ripped off and then feel incredibly guilty when you realise it only costs 15 quid.

I miss people back home, but I don't feel quite as far away as in reality I am...I sneaked a peak at the Greenbelt website today, and felt a surge of melancholia and then an even greater surge of relief and freedom. Am trying to write some poems and short stories...so will post l8r. But right now am off into town...

Second impressions

2005-01-21T21:07:00.000Z

Here are some second impressions of BA and some of the things I did last night and today...

Cheap & hot spring most to mind.

Everyone here smokes. Everyone. Desperate attempts by me to procure rolling tobacco fail, so I resort to a pack of 70p Malboro just to fit in y'see. My friend Andrea and some other English people I met laugh at my blazer...v English...Hugh Grant apparently springs to mind she says, but I think that's the way I speak.

Had my stereotypical conversations - Falklands Islands (lots of sheep, pointless war - sorry), Hand of GodMAradona etc (they´re not sorry). Ate more steak and had about a quintruple gin for 1 quid I think, and that was an expensive bar.

fell asleep with exhaustion at 8pm then out and about at 9pm till 4am...warned incessantly about not going to certain areas (San Telmo where I'm staying and the bus station). Argentininas are a mixture of proud and paranoid.

Discovered the secret to sorting traffic congestion - just have 7 lanes for cars. Drove round the city at 3am...weird can get from one end (Palermo, think Chelsea) to the port (with ladies of the night everywhere and kids juggling at 4am and people dashing across the road) in about 10 mins...

Today more wandering. Survived the bus station and managed to order my ticket to Puerto Madryn in Patagonia next Thursday...20 hr bus journey awaits. Decided to avoid the beach resorts and Fatboy Slim...

first blisters already on the way...also toilet confusion, can you put the loo roll in the bog or not. The eternal questions...

yeah, all going well. Just need to locate a pub that shows the Premiership then I'll be happy as larry. Tonight, well it's now 6.18pm so I have about 5 hours before it's time to go out, so maybe ´'ll head for a power nap.

lots of love...

Here at Last

2005-01-20T18:37:00.000Z

Well just spent about 10 mins typing an essay out, then managed to delete it, so lucky you - you are spared.

Well the gist of it is as follows:
I am here in BA. It is v hot, sunny and the beer costs less than a quid. I am excited, tired and nervous as to what lies ahead...

Yesterday in Paris I started to think about why I was doing this. On the train back to the airport I realised that Gard du Nord was the same as Liverpool Street - same people, same phones and conversations, same Zimmerman on my stereo. There I was trying my best to assymilate and be one of the locals...which made me think why dont I try harder at home? Blah Blah. Then I started thinking about expectations of my trip - why I am travelling, what to expect. And I came to the conclusion that it wont all be great, but I am glad Im doing it.

Sorry about the rush, the appalling punctuation (blame the spanish keyboard)! Am running out of time fast.

Well, am safe, sound and excited albeit pretty tired.

Will write more soon.

love
O x

2005-01-19T16:17:00.000Z

Well.

Not quite the start I'd anticipated. After a great send off from Steve, Sykes, Joe (plus David and Eden from Australia), things went a bit pear shaped.

First up my flight kept getting later and later, so I decided that the only remedy was to resurrect my smoking habit in the airport lounge. After much spluttering I got through a couple and then got the Paris bound plane now running 90 minutes late. My French associates on the plane were pretty chilled, assuring me that I'd make the connection and they still maintained that despite us arriving in Paris 5 mins before the flight.

Anyway... I missed it and have had to spend the last day in Paris. Not much of a hardship despite my lack of deodorising produce, ability to speak French (plus subsequent attempts to speak a hybrid of Spanish and English), plus it is chucking it down here. It's been fun really, I saw Eddie Izzard on the tube, ate one of the greatest (and free steaks) I've ever had, visited Sacre Coeur, one of my favourite places, listened to Mercury Rev's genius new album and generally wandered around this great place.

So attempt 2 to get to Argentina begins in a few hours...

thanks for everyone posting, currently still alive and all well despite the cold rain and smoking issues

l8rs

Joy-ometer

2005-01-18T13:33:00.000Z

Well, it's 12.30 on Tuesday and the trip I've been talking and thinking about now for months has finally arrived.

This is just to say hello really - this is where I'll post up missives about my trip - about the really great Australians I met in a hostel in Brazil and how the cheap the beers are and how sunny it is and how I miss everyone and how great it is to have no responsibilities and be free travelling.

I promise not to put any updates like that up - instead I'd guess it'll be full of my usual introspective wonderings, student-esque writings and an update on my "joy-ometer" - anyway, more on that later.

Right now, I'm fully packed. Got 7,000 mainly melancholic rock songs on my Ipod and a couple of tomes to keep me going. I've also got a digitial camera so once I figure out how (a) to take pictures and (b) to put them on the internet I shall show you some pictures of my barnet.

Oh, this is where I'm off now, by the way. Right better get ready for my flight.