Lockers on the Loose

World Trip: Miscellaneous

lockers — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 01:49:00 GMT

Occasions

Watched the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics with a lot of excited Hong Kong Nationals at the harbour front, spent Christmas Day driving along the Ocean Road in Australia, New Year in Sydney, Carnaval in Brazil, my birthday in Nicaragua and Independence Day in Washington.

The Weather

Followed the sun around the world (being in Australia, New Zealand, South America and North America for the summer in each) and absolutely loved feeling its rays on my skin most days of the year. It was also a great joy to have been outside so much and seen the sun rise and set the majority of days on the trip – a simple but satisfying occurrence and one that I realised the majority of people in New York probably miss most days of their hectic lives. That's not to say it was all bright days and blue skies. A typhoon in Hong Kong and downpours throughout Asia and parts of South and Central America meant that I went through three ponchos. I also don't think there was a day that I didn't have my jeans on in New Zealand and Toronto apparently had the worst summer when I was there since the 1970s.

The cheapest bed I slept in (not including the free “couch surfing”): the dollar bed in Phonsavan in Laos.

Things I lost/had stolen but got back: my credit card and camera. Also lost the cap of the petrol tank on the first day of hiring our campervan in New Zealand but managed to pick up another that fitted at a petrol station.

Things I lost/got stolen and didn't get back: my ipod.

Things which broke: My camera (a piece of wiring inside apparently burnt out!), my clothes (once I put a dress on and it just fell to the ground – the straps had finally given way to constant wear), my notebook- on the same day I bought it (had to be returned).

Number of times I was badly sick: twice, Vietnam and Venezuela. Also strangely got food poisoning in Brazil although my sister shared the same dish and was completely fine.

Injuries: Something strange happened to my leg muscles in Port Douglas, Australia (my own fault for running on a beach without shoes on apparently). Three three-hour hikes in the centre of Australia (“The Rock Tour”) turned out to be quite painful.

The best food and drink: Japan for sushi, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia for tasty, although sometimes unrecognizable, street food, Malaysia for wonderful food halls, Argentina for steaks and wine, Brazil for its breakfasts, Colombia for fish, juices, fruit and coffee, New Orleans for cocktails, Guatemala for tortillas with guacamole, Toronto for Jamaican patties.

What I am now ready for: a night in, trashy English TV, my own bed and dressing gown, some home cooking and being stationary for a little while.

The Final Flight

lockers — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 01:16:00 GMT

Thursday July 22nd 2009

So, I'm sat in the gate lounge in Pearson International Airport in Toronto, waiting for my British Airways flight to London Heathrow. It's my fifteenth and final flight of my year travelling. I've just waved goodbye to my aunt who was in tears. I've had to say goodbye to so many wonderful people this past year and it has always been hard. Waving goodbye to my mum at the train station and flying to Tokyo with Robbie, almost a year ago to the day, feels both like yesterday and part of another lifetime all together. I can picture my mum's face, hear her voice and good wishes, feel her pain and excitement and can remember the tears trickling down my own face as clear as the sky on a sunny day as the train pulled out of my hometown towards London.

Since then, however, I've also travelled through parts of 4 continents. I've run and jumped off a cliff, thrown myself out of a plane and have freaked myself out scuba diving. I’ve done canopying, kayaking, river tubing, cave tubing, rock-climbing, jungle treks and volcano hikes. I've seen a mass of stunning waterfalls and breathtaking sunsets, been up many a tower or to the top of a hotel, hill or mountain to see an amazing view and have witnessed beauty I wasn’t even capable of imagining. I've seen dolphins, orangutans, caiman, sloth, snakes, capybara, koala bears, sea lions, kangaroos, wallabies, penguins, albatrosses, bats, various monkeys and reptiles, exotic fish and rare birds … all in their natural environments.

I've slept in wooden huts next to gorgeous beaches for next to nothing but also shared numerous cesspits with cockroaches, rats, enormous spiders and creatures I don't know the names of. I've curled up in an Australian “swag” under the most incredible sky of stars in the centre of Australia, spent a cold night deep inside a cave on top of a tepui at 2727m, have failed to sleep on a floor of insects in one jungle, wriggled in hammocks in others and have waited for lightening to strike all night in the middle of a lake. For the past year I've almost always bunked with at least one other person in the sleeping area ... if not ten. I shared a bed in a motor home for a few weeks, slept head to toe in vans for a couple of months and have ended up in countless cramped, smelly and noisy dorms. Towards the end of my trip I even tried “Couch-Surfing”, crashing in the living rooms of people I didn't know at all. All in all, I haven't slept that much to say I've had no job to get up for. Most days were very long (how many early starts and late nights!) and in a way my time has felt the most fulfilled it ever has. In that way, the train platform I departed from to start this trip seems as it physically has been for most of the journey: half the world away.

A lot of people have asked me which, out of the countries I've visited, has been my favourite. It's almost too difficult to answer that question. Each country had its own unique attractions, be it, for example, Japan and its temples, Australia and its isolated beautiful beaches or Venezuela and its table top mountains. More revealing would be to highlight experiences. Among some of my favourite memories (and there are many) are: an hilarious night in a karaoke booth in Japan (Robbie's Madonna with actions was unforgettable); returning from a day trip to see temples and Buddhas and finding my friend Ciara in the hotel room in Hong Kong (I still wonder how Robbie kept that one a secret); the trip to Halong Bay in Vietnam (rock-climbing, kayaking, sunbathing, snorkelling, drinking and playing games); watching many episodes of Friends, river tubing and spending days/evenings drinking, singing and dressed in banana leaves on the Island of Don Det in Laos; spending a day, from sunrise to sunset, exploring Angkor Wat in Cambodia; being with a great rock-climbing crowd in Hat Ton Sai in Thailand (I really didn't want to leave that place); discovering wonderful food courts in Malaysia; seeing orangutans within metres of me in the jungle and watching the sun go down on top of volcano Merapi (although the ascent was brutal) in Sumatra; having the freedom to drive wherever we wanted in Australia, waking up next to stunning beaches and starting the day with a run followed by a huge breakfast; opening and watching a Christmas DVD (photos and videos of good times) made by friends in Austria; sledging down volcano Ruapehu and sky diving over Lake Taupo in New Zealand; the “Pisco Sour” evening at our hostel in Chile followed by a night at an ‘80s club; watching tango dancers with good friends on a Sunday afternoon in Buenos Aires, a horse-riding trip which finished with sangria and card games and a day of nature-spotting in Argentina's wetlands; laughing with my sister throughout Brazil, dancing on a beach to live music in Salvador and being in the Amazon for four days; reaching the summit of Mount Roraima with a great bunch of people and playing Charades/Pictionary with the same people in one of their flats in Caracas a week later; discovering the beauty of Tayrona National Park, reaching the Lost City and getting massaged inside a mud volcano in Colombia; being on the stunning and isolated island of Sunidup and attempting to surf for the first time (tiring but exhilarating) off the coast of Panama; getting a little merry on rum and coke and singing and dancing to my ipod with a fellow traveller on a beach in Nicaragua; an early-morning yoga class, a 2 hour massage (costing just $25!) and the discovery of a fantastic restaurant in Guatemala; dancing for hours in the middle of the afternoon in a bar and enjoying my first crawfish boil in New Orleans; getting to know great couch surfing hosts and doing things which I would have otherwise not experienced if I'd stayed in hostels - like cycling around Central Park on a Sunday morning in New York and eating a scrumptious brunch with a group of diplomats on a roof terrace in Washington; seeing my aunt and listening to a great Mexican band play in Toronto; spending my last weekend in London catching up with friends.

All in all, considering the amount of things that could go wrong, I think Lady Luck was travelling alongside me for most of the trip. There were, nonetheless, a few low-spirited moments: Christmas Day (it felt so empty and meaningless without my family), being thrown out of a hostel in New Zealand for sneaking in and trying to use the showers in the morning (how tramp-like did we get!), saying goodbye to my sister in Brazil, feeling ill in Venezuela, getting stressed and paying a fortune in phone calls from Colombia to make flight changes, getting asked for money and later the same day being flashed at in Nicaragua, and seeing how gray and rainy London looked as my homecoming flight approached the runway.

The absolute best thing about the trip was meeting dozens of wonderful, fascinating, kind and inspirational people from all over the world. While I'm sad that I'm almost at the end of the journey, I cherish all the memories I have of those people and will be forever grateful for the warm hospitality I received in so many parts of the world. It was the people above all else that made a good trip an unforgettable one.

And now it's time to get excited about meeting up with family and old friends - people with whom I formed relationships with over years and not people I've just met because I was in the shower they wanted or we were the only white people on a crowded bus; people who may not share my passion for travelling or even understand the concept of lugging your life around on your back for a year but people who know my weaknesses and still love me; people whose likes and dislikes I got to know by spending time with them instead of by reading a box on Facebook a day after meeting them; in short, it's time to meet up with the other wonderful people in my life - those who know where I'm from instead of where I'm going to.

***

Am back home now. "Just" have to write up stories for Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, New Orleans, Washington, New York and Toronto and this journal will be finished!

New Orleans: June 26th – July 1st

lockers — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 01:36:00 GMT

It may be as good a depiction as any to describe my time in New Orleans by the food and drink I consumed. So, drinks ranged from the great (although at $4 you'd expect them to be!) smoothies from “King Smoothies”, Garry's home-made brew and margaritas, a Blue Moon beer at the oldest pub in the States, snowballs at the park and many a Daiquiri/hand grenade as we were walking through the French Quarter. On the food front, I was also spoiled with a range of delights: oysters, crawfish, lunch at Margaritaville (Jimmy Buffet's chain restaurant), Chicken Creole Jambalya and a number of delicious dishes made by Garry - guacamole and nachos, homemade beef burgers with macaroni cheese, crawfish pasta and flamed bananas in rum. If meals had been a little bland in the 5 months of travelling through South and Central America (barring some excellent meat in Argentina and some good street food here and there), 5 days in New Orleans was making up for it.

Garry and Krista were great hosts. They took me everywhere they thought a girl new to the Big Easy should go, including to Cafe du Monde to have breakfast, to the French Quarter to get merry and track down Brad Pitt's house, on New Orleans' ghost tour, and to the Maple Leaf Bar to listen to Walter “Wolfman” Washington and experience my first crawfish boil (crawfish cooked in a huge pot along with sausage, corn, boudin, potatoes and barbecued hog's head ... all to be thrown straight onto a long wooden table while jazz was being played. I found it hilarious.)

It was also great to be able to do some “normal” stuff like go and watch Garry play football on Sunday morning (everyone on the team had been at a wedding the night before so I was very impressed that they actually won the game!) and take the adorable Iggy (Garry's dog) on a walk. Iggy and I ended up getting completely lost and when we eventually got back to the house after a detour through one of New Orlean's poorer neighbourhoods, Garry had set off in the car to look to us!

The French Quarter is a particularly special part of New Orleans. You'll start of just walking down Bourbon Street to soak up some of the atmosphere but before you know it you'll have a hand grenade in your hand, a po'boy sandwich in the other and someone will be bringing you a packet of crisps, the accompaniment to your sandwich, on a plate. With bands playing in little bars at all hours of the day and night and cocktails pretty much constantly on promotion, there's always a lively atmosphere. Krista and I had a great afternoon there dancing to songs like “I Love My Tractor” while Garry was at work.

I went to bed on my last night in New Orleans at 12:30am; a little crazy when I had to be up at 3:15am to get a flight to Washington. Still, I've been travelling like that for eleven months now so I don't know why I even pretend I'm going to get a good night's sleep before a long journey. New Orleans had been a lot of fun and it had been great to catch up with Garry and meet the lovely Krista.

First Day in New Orleans: June 25th 2009

lockers — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 01:32:00 GMT

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I'd fallen into bed at 1am in Antigua, Guatemala, and my alarm went at 3.15am for the taxi minibus to the airport. I couldn't get my rucksack closed so in the end dragged it down onto the street half open and got the taxi man to help me. Monique came down to wave me off, bless her. I've had so much fun with her and hope we keep in touch.

It took about an hour to get to the airport. It was dark, misty and cold and I felt very tired. We passed a terrible crash at one point where smoke was rising from a car smashed to pieces. It made me think if I hadn't messed around trying to get my bag closed, we would have been on the road a couple of minutes earlier and we might have been involved in it. The difference a minute can make sometimes.

The check-in all went smoothly, I paid my $3 departure tax and went to sit in the gate area. I was confused when I read Miami on the computer above the gate so went to ask someone and discovered I would, in fact, be flying to Miami, collecting my bags and then on to New Orleans. Nice to know.

After 5 months of travelling through South and Central America, it was no wonder that Miami airport was a culture shock. The police seemed loud and over-controlling. “Come on”, a guy bellowed, “get your documents ready, move along!”. The food was expensive ($8 for a sandwich, $2.80 for a small bottle of water) and the people walking around all seemed very flashy and fashion-conscious. On the plus side, I got to put my paper in the toilet instead of in the bin next to it. I said goodbye to the Dutch couple I'd been chatting with, grabbed myself some sushi (if I'm going to pay $8, I'd rather get sushi than a sandwich) and tried and failed to get wireless internet (there was a charge; isn't it ironic that the richer the country, the harder it is to get free wifi?) What with long queues at passport control, however, I didn't have long until I was boarding my flight to New Orleans.

We flew over some amazing-looking islands with long stretches of golden beaches and extensive causeways which connected pieces of land way out at sea to the mainland. When we landed in New Orleans and I disembarked, the first thing I noticed was the heat and then that the signs which were all in English and French instead of English and Spanish like in Miami. The atmosphere also seemed a lot more laid back.

As I followed the signs to baggage claim, I suddenly saw Garry leaning on a wall. It took me by surprise as I didn't think the general public were allowed in that part of the airport. We had a big hug and it felt so nice to see a familiar face half way across the world. I quickly entered Garry's world: his car was large and smooth, his house beautiful and stylish and his girlfriend, Krista, tanned and gorgeous. Once I'd be shown my room (what a luxury!), I gave them the presents I had bought (it was a bit disappointing to see Garry already had a hammock but never mind), got changed into a skirt and top and we all headed out for pizza.

We bought a bottle of wine back from the restaurant to enjoy at the house. At some point during the course of the afternoon/evening, Krista told me that Michael Jackson had died. I was shocked. Isn't he the kind of person you just imagine always being around? And how strange to think that if I ever have children, I'll have to tell them, “so there was this singer, called Michael Jackson. He died before you were born.”

Garry's work mate, Anne, came round to help us with the wine and before I knew it, we were heading out to an 80s club. It was a great setting – like an old theatre with a huge video screen and, most importantly, lots of room to dance. Michael Jackson tunes played throughout the night, we drank cuba libres and I danced away until the fact that I'd only had two hours' sleep the night before started to take its toll. I had a rest on the stage behind the curtain until the security man told me I couldn't sit there. We headed to another bar for a change of scene and I managed to pick up a bit more energy although some glass in my toe stopped me from dancing further (when will I learn not to dance barefoot?). Garry's friend, Keith, drove us home around 3am. What a day it had been – from waking up in a Guatemalan house, to a surprise flight to Miami, to dancing in downtown New Orleans.

Guatemala: June 19th to 25th

lockers — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 08:38:00 GMT

On the 18 hour bus ride from Managua in Nicaragua to Guatemala City, I met an Australian girl, Monique, and, after being advised that it wasn't safe to get a public bus on a Sunday evening to Antigua, we shared a 30 dollar taxi (which was painful but sense prevailed.) We went on to spend 5 wonderful days together. We walked up the active volcano Pacaya (very hot underfoot), shopped til we dropped at Antigua and Chichicastenango's artisan markets, spent a couple of nights at Lake Atitilan, participated in yoga, salsa and hip hop lessons, found a wonderful restaurant full of locals at the back of a shop in Antigua where we returned 3 times and heard an ex member of the Buena Vista Social Club sing in a wee bar on my last night (where I also bumped into Tom, the Austrian guy from Isla Ometepe). We had pretty lousy weather for the jam-packed days we shared together but it didn't stop us having a lot of fun. In fact, on our last day together, as I was getting a 2 hour all-body massage for $25, Monique ended up spontaneously skinny dipping with a guy we'd befriended over breakfast! She said that I inspired her to do such things!

True to form, I set off to the airport to fly to New Orleans via Miami (which was a surprise at the boarding gate as I thought it was a direct flight!) on two hours of sleep because Monique and I had been out salsa dancing the night before. As I sat bewilded on my flight to Miami, I pondered on the four great weeks I'd just had in Central America; I'd seen some amazing nature, befriended some more great people and now had dozens more places to put on the "To Return To" list. This trip was meant to be shortening my list of places to visit but as it turns out, it is merely extending it. I was sad to be leaving Spanish-speaking countries (travelling always seems more fun when you're not in an English-speaking country) but excited about seeing Garry in New Orleans.

Nicaragua: Isa Ometepe – San Juan - Granada. June 15th to 18th

lockers — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:50:00 GMT

One evening at the lovely Hacienda Merida on Isla Ometepe, I met a guy from Texas, a guy from England, a German girl and a guy from Austria and we spent a number of hours drinking and playing "pigs" together. Only the Texan, Travis, was going my way after Ometepe so we hooked up to travel a few days together.

Travis persuaded me to deter my plan to go to Granada by one day so that we could check out San Juan beach on the Pacific coast. I was easy to persuade as I knew it would be my last chance to be on a beach for this trip. Travis pointed out to me that as the Lonely Planet has to cover a lot of ground in its travel guides, it has to be extremely economical with its descriptions and a couple of words can be crucial. Thus, argued Travis, if the guide on Nicaragua stated that San Juan was a place where the elite of Nicaragua went on holiday, it must be a pretty nice place. In short, how could I come to Nicaragua and not go there? (I've said something similar to myself so many times on this trip ... but there's only so much you can fit into a world trip!). I'm glad he persuaded me anyway; San Juan is a lovely resort. We had one evening there and went, armed with a bottle of rum and some cokes, in search of sun set views. When we got to the lookout of Christ on the rocks, however, we were too late. We tried to bribe the security man up there with rum but failed so stumbled down in darkness, trying to dodge hundreds of crabs. We settled for a bit of a karaoke session on the beach with my ipod and speakers and continued it, via getting some food, back at the hostel. We paid for it in the morning when the cleaner sang outside our room at 8am. I looked across at Travis to get his reaction and saw him lying with his head torch still on and his light beaming from his forehead. An hilarious sight to wake up to.

The next morning, we got a chicken bus to Granada. Going with Travis' technique of reading INTO the LP, we went for the hostel with “roof top views” and it led us to some nice accommodation (Hospedaje Cocibolca) in a very pleasant area of Granada. Granada was pretty but apart from the food stalls around the plaza at night and a little bar we came across with live music and people salsa dancing, we found it to be a bit souless. We therefore decided to see some of the surrounding area and did a day trip to Mayasa to visit the markets (an artisan one and a local smelly one where we braved lunch). From there we hopped on a bus to Lagoon Apoyo and arrived just as a storm started. It didn't stop us from plunging into the lake though. I've never seen a lake with so many waves!

I spent my 29^th birthday in Granada. I enjoyed a great breakfast with Travis (omelette, scrambled eggs, pancakes, tortillas, coffee) but the rest of the day was a bit dull as I had to sort out an onward bus ticket to Guatemala, it rained and the lakeside walk was a huge disappointment. We went out for a Mexican for dinner but I had to leave at 1am for my 18 hour bus journey to Guatemala City ... so although I didn't get much sleep, it wasn't because of wild celebrations!

Nicaragua: Isla Ometepe, June 13th: The Afternoon Of Incidences

lockers — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 07:38:00 GMT

I absolutely loved Isla Ometepe. It's an incredibly peaceful, unique, fascinating place. I spent 4 nights there. I did, however, have a couple of unfortunate incidences one day when I rented a bike. Looking back, I was foolish to set off on my own to cycle around the southern island but it's easy to say that in hindsight. At the time, I woke to sunshine and a stunning view of Lake Nicaragua and thought riding a bike would be a great way of getting to see the daily going-ons of the island. Apart from not coming across anywhere to buy some food and the roads being about as well cut out for biking as I'd heard, I was having an enjoyable morning. I'd met a local when I stopped to look at my map and he ended up taking me to some neglected petroglyph and then inviting me back to his house to meet his mother and show me a drawing he'd done. Most people had called out “hola” as I cycled by and I felt generally safe and content. After leaving my petroglyph man, however, the road started to lead to a much more isolated part of the island. The number of people I saw decreased as did the dwellings. Occasionally I could see large leaves rustling and figured people were picking fruits from plants and trees which lined the island. I was still in my ahppy-go-lucky state of mind however ...until I spotted a young lad on a bike coming towards me and immediately had a weary feeling about him. He stopped in front of me, turning his bike perpendicular to mine so as to block my path. My heart started to beat faster and I became quickly aware of how stupid I was being so far from my hotel and alone. He signaled that he was after money. I told him I'd left it in the hotel. He then asked for my camera. My camera was in my rucksack but I told him I'd left it at the hotel too. Twice he went to take something out of his back pocket and twice he stopped. This added to my apprehension. What could he have? A gun? No, it wouldn't fit. A knife. He could have a knife. He asked me if I was alone and I told him my friends were up ahead. He would know they weren't though as he had come from that direction. At that moment when I thought he was going to produce a knife, he stopped, smiled and told me not to worry. He wasn't going to do anything. The arrival of a lady with a child on her bike explained his sudden change of tune. I was so relieved to see her! Her appearance made him flee, strangely asking me what my father's profession was before he left. I was trembling and started to cry when the lady told me I shouldn't be in those parts of the island alone. I wanted to ride with her but she was only going a little further to her mother's house. There was no point in turning around as the boy had gone in the direction behind me and by now it was probably further going back than continuing.

I peddled as hard as I could, now a lot more weary of my surroundings and my adrenalin getting me up some pretty rocky and steep hills. It hadn't been but twenty minutes when an old man caught my eye. As I rode by, he flashed me and started calling things out to me. I couldn't believe it. My sense of insecurity was again heightened. I hadn't eaten all day but I peddled and peddled until the road eventually seemed to come to a more inhibited area and when I saw two Western women eating at a little house, I pulled straight in. They informed me the road from there on was safe so I ordered some food and drink and started to calm down at last. I had been a little foolish and been reminded not to get complacent; Nicaragua is sill a very poor and fragile country and I would be seen as very rich tourist, despite my own budget concerns.

Nicaragua: Arrival on Isla Ometepe, June 11th

lockers — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 07:25:00 GMT

As the taxi pulled off from the border, I was aware that we'd left the dense, green, jungle landscape of Costa Rica behind us. Nicaragua appeared flat and very dry. It wasn't long, however, until the landscape changed. Lake Nicaragua is Central America's largest lake and I'm sure that anyone's first sight of Concepcion and Maderas (the two volcanoes which form Isla Ometepe) protruding from it is unforgettable. Just when I was beginning to get annoyed at myself for not appreciating waterfalls, jungles and beautiful beaches quite as I much as I should be doing, it was extremely comforting to experience my breath being taken away once again.

As it turned out, the last ferry from San Juan to Isla Ometepe wasn't at 15:30. In fact, we had a good hour to kill before a ferry was to depart over to Isla Ometepe so we tucked into some “tacones de cerdo” (I'm not sure if that is what they were called as that would translate to “high heels of pork” but it was something similar). The slices of crispy, fried bananas piled in a heap with pork and salad on top was very good although our empy stomachs were probably biased judges. When it was time to sail across Lake Nicaragua, sat next to boxes and bags of onions, tomatoes, corn and the like, the volcanoes never seemed to get any closer. Either the lake, the volcanoes or both were bigger than they seemed or my sense of perspective had been distorted by a long journey.

As usual, I didn't really have much of an idea about where I was going to stay on the island but things were soon arranged for me when a local on the ferry, Alvaro, offered to bring our wee backpacking group (the couple I was with, another Italian girl/Swiss guy couple and myself) to Merida, a village about one and a half hours from the port on the more remote side of the island. It was no coincidence that he had a hotel there but it was a free lift and the hotel turned out to be a real winner (former Somoza farm) so we were delighted. The ride in Alvaro's pick up truck around the island was a joy in itself as we caught the final rays of daylight bouncing off rustic island scenes. How nice it was to see cows, pigs, chickens and dogs all share the same road again after a somewhat sterile Costa Rica! I also saw hundreds of wooden huts with thatched roofs and thought about how crazy it was that people live so close to an active volcano. In fact, if you have to sum up the difference between Costa Rica and Nicaragua in one sentence, you might just leave it at this: in La Fortuna, Costa Rica, there is a huge sign near the base of the volcano telling tourists it is an extremely dangerous area and no trespassing is allowed; on Isla Ometepe, in Nicaragua, they advertise guided tours up the active volcano for $10. (After the disappearance and deaths of two tourists in 2004, a guide is now compulsory for climbing the volcanoes, before that you could just wander on up).

I managed to get a 4 bedded room for $8 and none of the other beds were occupied so it was even more of a bargain. That's not to say I had the room to myself. When I entered my digs, I was met with a cricket on the wall, 2 worms crawling across the floor, 2 large beetles in the bathroom, large moths and a couple of gekos. Outside I could hear mosquitoes screeching and frogs croaking. When I returned to my room after dinner, a huge spider had also moved in. I was back on the backpacking track after my bout of American tourism in Costa Rica.

The Border Crossing: Costa Rica to Nicaragua

lockers — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:11:00 GMT

With my final flight home now in the near future as opposed to at some intangible time, my luggage has been gradually increasing in size. I've been carrying my possessions in a rucksack on my back and a day bag on my front for ten months. The thought now goes that if I have to carry an additional cloth bag in my hand, with my water bottle in the other for the last couple of months, so be it. So be it until you get to a border where excess luggage becomes an absolute curse. So I shuffled and kicked my bags forward in the queue for the Costa Rican exit stamp and then convinced the German girls in the queue to splash out a dollar with me to get a man with a cart to take our bags the one mile to the Nicaraguan border offices.

The Nicaraguan side of the border was much worse. First, there was a huge faff about each person having to fill in a health form. These forms were

meant to be doing something to prevent the spread of Swine Flu (would anyone actually tick 'yes' to questions relating to a history of health problems when they are trying to get into a country?). Then there were a number of disorganised and barely-moving queues which we assumed we had to join although there were no signs sharing any information about them and nobody to ask. The amount we would have to pay to enter Nicaragua kept changing depending on who we asked in the queue. We finally paid $7 each and then a mysterious one dollar tax just to walk out of the gate to where the buses were. By that point we would have probably given anything we were asked for just to get out of the chaos.

The two hour border crossing ordeal gave me the opportunity to discover that the couple in front of me, a Brazilian girl and an Australian guy, were also hoping to get to Isla Ometepe that day. We were under the impression that the last ferry over to the island was at 15:30 so we agreed that we'd have to get a taxi to San Juan. Unaware of what the name of the currency even was in Nicaragua never mind any knowledge of a good exchange rate, I'd gone against principles and got some money out at the border. I was thankful that I did as it would be some hours before I'd see a cash machine again.

Costa Rica: June 5th - June 10th

lockers — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 06:52:00 GMT

I spent a couple of days on the Caribbean coast in Costa Rica with a French guy, Eric, who has been living in Puerto Viejo for the last 8 months and who was able to show me around. Nice Jamaican vibe to the place. It rained quite a bit but was warm and tropical so didn't matter too much ... although I did have to move from the beach when my book got too soggy. Thought to myself one morning when showering that you know when you're in the Caribbean when the water in the shower is colder than that in the sea. Oh and bumped into a couple of lovely Israelis, Roei and Hila, whom I'd first met at the airport in Panama and then again on our San Blas Island. Ended up going out with them, an English girl and an Australian girl for a falafel and hummus dinner on my last night and then on to a Reggae/Salsa/Electronic bar on the beach front. Surpassed my self-imposed midnight curfew, getting to bed around 2am, not ideal for leaving on the 7.30am bus to San Jose. My camera broke whilst in Puerto, rather gutting. What's more, I'd asked the security man at the hostel to wake me at 6am (my camera, which I've been using as an alarm clock too, has broken) and, for whatever reason, he ended up waking me at 5:20am! I didn't dare fall back to sleep. On the plus side, the Australian girl gave me her copy of Lonely Planet's Central America as she was at the end of her trip so I've got a guidebook at last. :-)

From Puerto Viejo I travelled inland, with views of dense jungle vegetation on both sides of the bus. I tried to read the Lonely Planet's History sections on Panama and Costa Rica but my head kept falling forward in rather an embarrassing fashion. Getting to grips with these countries' history on three hours of sleep is probably a little optimistic. I met Anthony, a New York magazine layout editor, on his main annual vacation, in the coffee bar at the bus terminal in San Jose where I was connecting to go to Santa Elena. As it turned out, Anthony had the seat next to me on the five hour bus to Santa Elena and, after our bus bonding, we ended up travelling the next 4 days together. He told me about his life in New York, how Americans tend to live to work and not vice versa, and showed me photos of graffiti art he's done. Both having limited time in Costa Rica (myself with just 4 days left by the time I met Anthony), we planned our time well, fitting in a guided walk through the Cloud Forest in Santa Elena (among other things we saw a Quetzal and a Striped Palm Pit Viper), canopying (which included zipping along cables over tree tops, repelling, flying across the jungle in a superman position and the most fantastic Tarzan swing I have ever done), a Jeep-Boat-Jeep journey aka Van-Boat-Van journey to La Fortuna, a walk around the national park below the Arenal volcano, night viewing of lava descending the volcano and a visit to volcanic hot springs (some 20 baths with temperatures ranging from warm to so-hot-surely-your-skin-would-boil-if-you-were-to-dip-in). We parted ways very early one morning as I was to embark on an all-day journey to Isla Ometepe in Nicaragua and Anthony was to head for the Costa Rican Pacific coast to do some surfing.

Luckily I adhered to my “Ask Three People If You Want To know Something When Travelling” rule for working out how to get to Isla Ometepe. If I had gone with the advice from the first person I'd asked, I would have been crossing the border at San Carlos and discovering that the boat to Isla Ometepe no longer leaves on the day stated in the guide book. I would have also gotten to the island around midnight ... that nice and safe hour for a girl with a backpack to be wandering the streets. My research indicated that I'd be better crossing from Costa Rica to Nicaragua at Penas Blancas, although this had its own peculiarities (borders really are unique places).

Crossing from Panama to Costa Rica

lockers — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:15:00 GMT

June 5^th

As I still haven't picked myself up a guidebook on this part of the world, I was lucky to meet a French guy, Eric, while waiting for the boat to take me from Bocas del Toro, on the island of Colon, to mainland Panama. In fact, Eric was the best person I could have met – he was also heading for Puerto Viejo in Costa Rica, where he'd been living for the last 8 months, and was familiar with the border formalities (he has to leave Costa Rica every 3 months to get his visa renewed).

Once on the mainland, we got a collectivo (mini-van) to Changuinola ($1.25) and then jumped in another one to the border (also $1.25). The border was one of the strangest I have seen; an old, rickety wooden bridge, in parts completely lacking in planks, was what separated Panama from Costa Rica. Eric had to make a phone call, so I sat on some steps watching how everyone and thing went across that bridge - huge trucks full of bananas, mothers and children, cyclists, bewildered-looking backpackers, immigration workers, men who looked lost in life. Whilst I was waiting, I also contemplated whether I had hooked up with some crazy guy who may be using me to smuggle drugs or with a potentially new friend who could give me the lowdowns on Costa Rica. ... you never really know, these things can go two ways!

Just when I was thinking I had been deserted in No Man's Land, Eric returned smiling and apologising for taking so long. I released a sigh of relief and we went to get our exit stamp from the office on the Panamanian side before joining every man and his dog to walk across the precarious bridge. As I focused on not stepping in the gaps, I thought about how the border areas are often the most neglected places in a country. The lady in the immigration office on the Costa Rican side told me they had only got air conditioning installed last year. I was absolutely soaked in sweat when she said this so could sympathise with her for having had to work in a sauna box for most of her life.

The same lady asked for my onward flight ticket and I suddenly realised that I had not printed out the latest changes. All I had on me was a piece of paper confirming a flight from Guatemala to Vancouver on May 11^th. Given that it was June 5^th, it was dubious but the lady was nice (maybe my sympathising paid off), said it would do nicely, stamped my passport and waved me on. If that had been Venezuela, I'd probably be writing this from prison now.

Eric lead me to where the buses leave and after a 15 minute wait, we were on one, not heading directly to Puerto Viejo but to somewhere where he said we would be able to get a connecting bus from. The first thing that struck me about Costa Rica was the amount of dust on that bus, covering all the seats and headrests, and the endless banana plantations on either side of us. In fact if countries were allocated colours, Costa Rica's would have to be green as that is just about the only colour I saw during my first hour in the country.

My stomach started to churn on that bus and I concluded that the coffee I'd grabbed at the border must have had some dodgy milk in it (mental note, no more coffees at borders). I prayed that everything would just stay inside me until I got to a bathroom.

I don't know where we were when Eric told me it was time to get off the bus and that we should run to another bus which was just about to pull off. As my rucksacks (front and back) have gradually increased in weight over the past 10 months and I have gained a hand bag too, not to mention the bottle of water I always have in my spare hand, running between buses is getting particularly tricky these days but I'm always aware that the next bus may never come, so run I did and make it we did. It was our fourth bus of the day, cost also just a dollar, so we had managed to change countries and get to where we wanted for about $4 which was satisfying when a taxi driver had asked for $15 just to the border.

Eric advised me on a good hostel and I managed to get a private room, wooden cabin style, for $8. He then said he could be with me in about an hour if I wanted to grab some lunch with him and be taken on a tour of Puerto. Things in Costa Rica were working out very nicely indeed ...

Panama: Bocas del Toro

lockers — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 06:23:00 GMT

June 1^st - 5^th

The night bus from Panama to Almirante came with the usual side-effects: a constant repositioning of my legs to try and get more comfortable, back ache and a stiff neck. The fact that I couldn't sleep did mean, however, that I saw a beautiful sun rise over the coast and jungle. There was a strip of mist across the horizon, a crisp morning ambiance and shades of yellow and orange emerged from the night sky. I often want to be able to click my fingers and have my family and friends with me at such times so they can share in such magical moments - I know that no words of mine nor any photos can do justice to what my eyes saw.

Having no guide book on Central America, I arrived in Almirante a little confused, thinking it was a port town but seeing no water anywhere. Luckily, I had met a couple of Germans, Ernesto and Julian, and a Swedish girl, Anne, en route who were more clued up than I on the logistics of getting to Isla Colon, the island on which my destination, the town Bocas del Toro, stands. We jumped in a minibus together for the short ride to the shore and then boarded a water taxi for a 45 minute ride over to the island.

We headed straight for the hostel “Mondu Taitu”, a partner hostel of “Castle Lunar Hostel” in Panama City but were disappointed on arrival as it didn't live up to its sister's standards: a small, noisy, wooden shack substitute for accommodation. We were, however, too hot and tired by that point to look for a more decent place so entered our names in the guestbook, thankful at least that we each only had to pay a dollar more for private double rooms.

Bocas del Toro was not the place to catch up on the sleep I was lacking (due to travelling straight from the San Blas islands to Panama City on 2 hours of sleep and then to Bocas on a night bus). The town is mainly made up of one road along which numerous bars, restaurants and tour operators stand – ie a road of temptation. There are Happy Hours in just about every bar so if you were to plan your drinking schedule well, you could drink at half price throughout the night. One bar each evening also has a “Ladies Night” which entitles girls to drink absolutely for free, usually vodka, rum or gin with a mixer. The constant challenge was trying to exploit the promotion to get drinks for the guys as well and I think the bar tender in the Iguana Bar in particular must have turned a blind eye – surely she didn't really think Anne and I were the type of girls to be downing rum and cokes every 5 minutes?

On Wednesday night, we got a water taxi over to the opposite island, Isla Bastimentos, to visit the much talked about, among the backpacking community at least, Aqua Lounge. This is a bar/hostel built on wooden posts coming out of the water. A wooden deck encloses an area of the sea producing a cut-out ocean swimming pool. There are platforms from which you can hurl yourself into the water if that takes your fancy and a couple of swings on which you can either swing out towards the sea or inwards towards the bar (and if you're brave enough, let go and land in the pool). As the night went on, the amount of exposed skin increased, the floor got wetter and more slippery and the jumps into the pool looked more and more painful. Possibly because Anne, Julian and Ernesto are all a number of years younger than me, I felt a little bit old that night; it was fun watching the others get wet but I was more content dancing than swimming. One the way home, we were all pretty ravenous from the island-hopping adventure but didn't want to join the long queues at the sandwich stand. That's when Anne had the idea of breaking into the hostel's kitchen store cupboard to find the pancake mixture which is usually provided at 8am for make-your-own breakfasts. We applauded her in her inspiration, figuring there was nothing really wrong with helping ourselves to breakfast just a few hours earlier than normal, and ate and chatted 'til about 4am. The following morning, Anne also brought me pancakes in bed so I guess I got my money's worth on that “pancake breakfast included” hostel deal.

The candle was burned at both ends during our stay in Bocas as Anne and I were eager to make the most out of both the “Ladies Nights” and the days in a place surrounded by Caribbean waters. We joined the boys for a surfing lesson our first morning there. The theory must have taken five minutes maximum to be explained and then there was nothing for it but to get into the water. It took most of my energy just getting out to where the waves broke, I spent the majority of my time lying on the board or scraping my stomach on rocks and coral beneath it and was repeatedly slapped in the face and dragged under the waves. The few seconds of adrenalin I had when I managed to stand on the board for all of possibly 2 seconds, however, made it all worth while. What an exhilarating and exhausting experience!

On our second morning, we once again dragged our bodies out of bed, this time to go scuba diving. Memories of struggling to clear my mask of water in Thailand came “flooding” back to me (apologies, a cringeworthy pun) and I felt nervous on our first descent. My ears hurt quite a bit too but I focused on my breathing and tried to convince myself that what Anne had said on the boat - “Diving is so relaxing, it's like doing yoga” - was true. The sites (and sights) were fantastic – one to a shipwreck (excluding the toilet, a fascinating dive) and another along a coral reef. As thoughts other than whether my last breaths on earth would be under water started to drift in and out of my mind, I knew that I had at last managed to relax a little and could enjoy the incredible fish and coral around us.

On our last afternoon, we rented bikes and got to see beyond the one street in Bocas at last. We cycled to a beautiful beach, Playa Bluff, where we'd been told that turtles lay their eggs. We weren't lucky enough to see the turtles but did have a gorgeous stretch of sand all to ourselves and witnessed the immense power of the ocean as enormous waves crashed just metres in front of our toes. Moreover, the ride there and back allowed us to see glimpses of everyday island life beyond the backpacking strip which was a joy in itself – children playing baseball, teenagers surfing on desolate beaches, a man cutting grass using a machete, another man sorting through the island's rubbish dump overwatched by vultures, women sweeping their dirt porches ... those kind of scenes.

I find that I could always stay longer where there are islands to be explored and sporting activities on offer but four nights in Bocas had pushed my total length of stay in Panama to ten which already exceeded what I had planned. It was time to leave, to say goodbye to Anne, Ernesto and Julian and to figure out how to cross the border into Costa Rica.

Panama: Sunidup Island, San Blas

lockers — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 15:48:00 GMT

May 29th-30th

I have seen many gorgeous beaches and numerous islands on this trip but I think Sunidup in the San Blas archipelago off the eastern coast of Panama has to top them all: a small desert island in the rawest of forms; an island you can walk around in about ten minutes (going slowly), carpeted in yellow, soft sand and covered with palm trees between which the odd hammock hangs. Crystal clear shallow water with coral reefs and other idyllic-looking islands surround Sunidup (I think “Sun and Dip”, after the island's main attractions, would be a more appropriate name) and its backdrop is the Caribbean framed by mountains on the shore of mainland Panama. Accommodation is in the form of wooden huts with sand floors and there are no other man-made features apart from a volley ball net, a rubber dingy and a couple of overturned canoe boats for that picture postcard, “Bounty” advert, image of perfection. Electricity is by generator only and switches off at 10pm leaving the island to be lit by candlelight, if tourists remember to bring candles, or illuminated by the the moon. On top of this natural beauty, there is also history and culture connected to Sunidup as, like most islands in the San Blas archipelago, it is run by Kuna Indians whose ancestors were driven off mainland Panama during the Spanish invasion. So how much does it cost to stay there I hear you cry? Well, the grand sum of $17.50, price including breakfast, lunch and dinner. I think I have come across the Seychelles all-inclusive of the backpacking world.

As is usually the case with isolated, tranquil, unique places, it takes a little effort to get to the San Blas Islands. Some travellers arrive by boat from Cartagena in Colombia (takes about 3 days). I had heard mix reviews about the journey but most of them involved a large number of passengers being sick for many days so, knowing how my body reacts when there's motion in the ocean, I chose to fly to Panama ($210) and then booked a trip from the Lunar Castle Hostel. Consequently I found myself dragging my body out of bed at 4.15am (after going to bed at 12:30am) to join other people with bags, under their eyes and on their backs, waiting for a jeep to arrive and take us to paradise. There was still no sign of Mily, my new Panamanian friend who I'd persuaded to do the trip with me, by the time the jeep was loaded at 5am so I got the driver to phone her and discovered she had slept through her alarm. The poor thing must have had quite a shock but the driver was a friendly guy and told her we could pick her up from her home en route out of the city. Despite the early hour and sleep-in stress, Mily still looked about five times more stylish than I did and was wearing a wonderful smile.

It was a muddy and bumpy three hour ride across to the other side of Panama as we ascended and descended dirt tracks with jungle on either side. Once on the eastern coast, we boarded a motorised canoe and were transported along a river and then out into the Caribbean Sea. As soon as we were into the open water, the images of dense vegetation were replaced with ones of wide expanses of water with dozens of small islands dotted all around. I have never seen so many islands at once like that. One of the islands we passed was only big enough for one wooden hut. I asked the boatman who would possibly live there and he told me that was where they kept chickens. Fancy that! Chickens having their own desert island in the Caribbean!

Activity wise, there is not much to report on my stay on Sunidup Island. On the first morning I swam around the island, scratching my stomach on the rocky corals as I went. The rest of my time was spent snorkelling, paddling in the dingy, reading in hammocks, eating (mainly chicken, beans and rice), drinking, playing cards and chatting to other travellers. As it was, we were on the island with some 20 Israelis, a couple of Americans and a girl from England, Anita, who has been living in the States the last ten years. When I found out on the first night that Anita had studied singing, I suggested we all move from the dining hut to the beach and have a bit of a sing along. She sang beautifully, a juke box on legs, and the night only ended when our inspiration for songs did.

The second night I chatted a bit with one of the chefs on the island and then with an Israeli guy, Tal. We swapped riddles and then got onto talking about the history of Israel so it was little wonder that we ended up going to bed at 4.00am, just as a mighty storm started to kick in. The following morning, Mily and I were meant to be leaving on an 8am boat back to the mainland. It was therefore somewhat disconcerting when I was tugged at 6am, after just a couple of hours' sleep, and told that we had to leave straight away ... apparently the boatman was worried about the storm getting worse. I grunted, quickly packed my things and before my eyelids were fully open, found myself sat on a motorised canoe in the rain. Out of a boat of about 10 people, I was the only one without a rain jacket, I guess the booby prize for being the last on board. As we zoomed off, I looked back at Sunidup sitting under thick black clouds and realised the bad weather was really a blessing – it would have been much more difficult to leave an island basked in sunshine. The Weather Gods were helping me keep to schedule: I still had to see Panama Canal (Mily and I had never quite made it during our three days together in the city) and leave that night on a bus to Bocas del Toro, another island off the north eastern coast of Panama. San Blas had been an incredible experience, a real “blast”, but it was time to move on if I want to make my flight from Guatemala to New Orleans in three weeks' time - there are still four countries to pass through by then!

Panama City

lockers — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:37:00 GMT

Wednesday, May 27th

Nice start to the day when, without having to move an inch, I opened my eyes and saw Panama's skyline coming out of the morning mist across the Bay of Panama from the huge ceiling-to-floor window next to my bed. I then very much appreciated not having to queue for a shower and had fun making my own pancakes for breakfast (apparently this make-your-own pancake breakfast, mixture provided, is quite typical in Central American hostels).

Took a ride amongst the staring but friendly locals in one of the whacky, colourful, American-style buses (the so-called “diablo rojo”, “red devil”) to Panama Viejo where I met Melitza (Panamanian girl I met at Cartagena airport yesterday). The visitor's centre there was a good starting point for filling in the many gaps in my knowledge about Panama's history. I discovered it was founded in 1519 and during the 1520s and 1530s became a base for expeditions to Central and South America. In January 1671, it was attacked by the Welsh pirate Henry Morgan (it's interesting where Britain's aggressive foreign policy has popped up on this trip!). As a fire destroyed large parts of the city after Henry Morgan's looting of it, it was rebuilt in a new location in 1673, five miles from the original Panama site. That's why the city now has two "old towns" - Panama la Vieja (ruins from the Panama pre-Henry Morgan attack) and Casco Viejo, where the government buildings now are and where my hostel is.

Militza and I walked around the ruins and then popped into a little artisan market where my new Panamanian friend made an essential purchase for me ... a must-have, apparently, for any girl in South and Central America: dangly, hoop earrings. I'm sure I'll blend in now.

The day took one of those unexpected, with-a-local-anything-could-happen turns when Mily announced around lunchtime that she had actually just purchased a car (her first ever) and needed to go and collect it. And get this ... she wanted me to drive the car out of the car house as she hasn't had an automatic before (like I have!). I told her that would be crazy; Harrogate and Panama City driving environments couldn't be more different: organised, one-way street traffic, busy but respectful in a northern England town versus, well, pure chaos. I just wasn't sure I could drive and beep constantly, ignore red lights and forget to use my indicator. The Panamanians would have me for dinner; I would end up being the jam in the traffic, if you like.

So after a bit of an uproar because one of the documents wasn't ready (the girl has more balls than a snooker player), Mily eventually sat behind the wheel and unashamedly asked one of the garage men to drive her to the petrol station, fill and wash the car and then tell her how to drive it. Given her gorgeous Latin looks, she generally gets men eating out of the palm of her hand and today was no exception. Once the briefing was over, the keys were placed in Mily's hand and we jolted out of the car park giggling away. What is it with girls and garages, Mily and men!

Mily had the great idea of heading straight for The Amador Causeway, a narrow stretch of land which connects mainland Panama to four islands (as an aside, it was made by rocks excavated from the building of the Panama Canal). Lunch was a fantastic meal on the terrace of a restaurant overlooking a harbour full of yachts at the end of The Causeway whilst watching small boats making deliveries to the ships waiting to enter the Canal. It was all quite perfect and wonderfully unplanned.

On the way back to the mainland, I decided to take Mily up on her offer and drove her new Honda Civic back down The Causeway – probably the safest road in Panama to drive down given that there is water on both sides reducing the frequency of manic over-taking. At the end we stopped to take photos of the Bridge of Americas - an arched road bridge which spans the Pacific entrance to the Canal.

We wanted to watch the sun go down from the top of Cerro Ancon (a hill with supposed great views of the city) but the security man at the bottom warned us it was not advisable at dusk so we quickly checked out "Mi Pueblito" at its base (a number of artisan shops in an artificial village setting) before driving on to the convention centre where there was an artisan fair on (what an artisan day we were having!). It was great being with Mily because she took me to local hangouts and the fair was exactly one of these places. It was an enormous array of stalls selling traditional clothes, jewellery and food and it was buzzing with smiling Panamanians carrying new purchases. A band and dancers in traditional dress provided great background entertainment to the shopping frenzy. Mily bought me some sandals and I bought her a sunflower plant and a little accessory she'd said she'd liked so we too joined the masses leaving with smiles and bags.

It was late by the time Mily dropped me off at my hostel but she came in with me to check out information on trips to the San Blas Islands (an archipelago off the eastern coast of Panama). Mily has never been and I'm delighted that she's decided to join me on a trip there ... firstly because I think all Panamanians should see the paradise which lies on their doorsteps and secondly because she's a lot of fun and it feels like she's an old school friend despite having only met her a couple of days ago. We booked up for leaving on Friday ... at the shocking hour of 5am. That gives us one day to see the Canal, hike in Parque Metropolitano, walk to the top of Cerro Ancon, go salsa dancing and get some sleep. Why do I always want to do everything?

Thursday May 28^th

Well not surprisingly, the overly-ambitious goals for today, bar one (the salsa dancing), were not achieved. As it was, I spent most of the morning and early afternoon just trying to get to the post office, conscious of the fact that I couldn't let another day pass without posting my sister's birthday card. The confusion came about when I asked a passerby what the name of the road I was on was called. According to my map it should have been the Central Avenue. I was told, however, that I was on Calidonia Road. As I had just walked through what looked quite a dodgy area, I wasn't too pleased about having to walk back through it but I did, half an hour back, in the rain. I then asked another passerby and was told that the road I had just come from, was, in fact, Central Avenue (as well as being Calidonia Road). So it was back past the same men calling out the same lines, ranging from hisses to almost marriage proposals.

I did eventually get to the post office and realised then why few people had been able to give me clear directions to it: the city famous for being a logistical hub, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, has a post office the size of small corner shop; in fact that's generous, it's maybe just a bit bigger than a newspaper stand, drab and archaic-looking without any sign outside to indicate it was a post office, nevermind the capital's central one. Anyway, to get to the point of this really not so interesting but at the time frustrating and therefore necessary-to-tell -to-clear-my-head adventure, my mail wasn't accepted because I had put celotape on the envelopes. The lady must have felt a wee bit sorry for me as I stood there wet and tired-looking and after a little pleading on my part, she got someone to make some new, larger envelopes for me into which I could slide my dangerous celotape envelopes.

As I was walking down the street wondering whether my sister would ever get her birthday card, Mily phoned me (she's lent me a mobile, how strange does it feel to be called after 10 months of not being contactable!) and told me she could meet me for a late lunch in an hour or so. I decided to kill some time by heading to Via Espana, one of the main streets in Panama, to try and change my Colombian pesos into dollars. It wasn't a particularly pleasant walk there, along busy, congested streets and passed more men who felt the urge to hiss and refer to me as their amor but I managed to complete my mission and was entertained in the queue in the process by three Israeli guys who were making out to an elderly Panamanian woman that they were musicians from Cuba. Upon leaving money exchange place, Mily phoned again and told me to head to Via Argentina. Unfortunately, she failed to tell me where on Via Argentina and, in the Panamanian style of hanging up without saying goodbye, I didn't get the chance to ask her for that small detail. I had no credit on the phone to call back so just headed to the street and hoped she'd phone back soon. Given that by now it was going on 4pm, I had practically walked across the whole of Panama City, had had nothing to eat since breakfast and knew that we had no chance of getting to see Panama Canal the same day, the 45 minute wait in the rain was somewhat soul destroying. All was forgiven, however, when she came around the corner smmiling and started telling me she was going to take me to a salsa class after our late lunch.

The class was the highlight of the day, three hours of instruction and practice with whoever asked us to dance. We left around 9.30pm, conscious that we had to be up at 4am to leave on our trip to the San Blas islands. After driving back to the hostel, packing my bags for the trip, and checking my e-mails, it was actually gone midnight by the time I sneaked through the dorm into bed. I guess I'll be able to rest on the desert island ... no electricity after 10pm, just huts and sand ... what could possibly keep us up so late there?

Arrival in Panama

lockers — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:01:00 GMT

Tuesday, May 26h

Here's the thing. I'm way behind with this journal so figure I'd be best just jumping to today and writing up the end of Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia (!) at a later date.

So, I was happy to creep out my dingy guest house in Cartagena, Colombia, this morning where I'd been constantly paranoid that people were spying on me through the numerous holes in my bedroom's ceiling and where I'd sat listening to the owners having a shouting match last night. I was also proud of myself for resisting the temptation of taking a taxi to the airport and for buying all my breakfast from street stalls, including one wonderful last jugo de zapote.

I was in the check-in queue two hours before the 9.30am departure time and it was a good job as the airline, Aires, was opening every piece of luggage and going through its contents thoroughly. This made me a little anxious as it took me a good 15 minutes this morning to get my rucksack closed as, due to restrictions on the number of pieces of luggage, I couldn't do my usual trick of cramming everything in and putting any items which don't fit into a plastic bag. I warned the police guy that he was free to go through all my stuff but he'd better help me get it all back in. When I unzipped my rucksack, he started muttering something in Spanish about I should have bought a bigger bag, poked at one thing and then just told me to go straight to the check-in desk. Thank goodness - packing my rucksack for a flight is now a work of art! The searches weren't over then though as when I went through to the gate, my hand luggage and person were both checked ... twice. Maybe the customs staff know that visits to a “secret” cocaine production site are now, unbelievably, part of the trek to The Lost City in Colombia.

I got talking to a colourfully-dressed, African-styled girl from Panama, called Militza, in the check-in queue in Cartagena and on arriving in Panama City (an hour's flight), she offered me a lift into town with her husband, Chinese-born Enrique. This was fantastic as there were no direct buses to my hostel. As we left the airport, I commented to Militza that she looked beautiful in what she was wearing (she'd bought a mulit-coloured headscarf in Colombia and had it across her forehead and going down her back) and she replied that she doesn't always dress up but “today I'm travelling”. The difference between myself and her, the backpacker and the short term holiday-er, suddenly dawned on me; Militza saw travelling as the day when she was on show; I saw it as the day that I had to try and blend in with the crowds so as to try and appear less foreign; the day I have to wear trainers instead of dainty shoes so as to free up space in my rucksack and wear dark colours so not to get prettier light clothes dirty as I drag them onto different modes of transport.

One of the nice things about travelling is the surprises it entails. Little did I know, when I was getting into the car with Militza and Enrique, that within a few minutes I would actually be standing not under the shower in my hostel but in a Panamanian girl's flat, watching her face drop in horror as she discovered that a cockroach had taken a plunge into her fish bowl while she'd been away. It was a bloody scene but miraculously the fish had survived, unlike the cockroach (which apparently can live up to 9 days after losing their heads ... but evidently not if they lose their heads to water). The detour was a result of Militza suggesting we all go for lunch together via picking her mother up and dropping her luggage off. Enrique insisted on paying for my meal. I was touched by the friendliness and generosity. What a welcome to Panama!

A number of things always strike you when you get to a new country and it's good to note them down before you get used to them and forget that they were ever interesting. For Panama it would be the following:

Panama's currency is US Dollars for notes and its own currency, Palboas, for coins, although US cents can also be used so there is, in effect, two dual currencies.
Militza's mother, Betty, came to lunch with her hair curlers in. Apparently this is quite common practice (I also saw women with curlers in on the streets in Colombia). She explained that she didn't like to use a hair drier and apparently needs to leave them in for 3-4 days and nights (!) for them to have the desired affect.
The traffic in Panama City is horrendous and there is no metro system.
From what I've heard so far, English is more widely spoken than in South America.
Men still hiss in the streets to try and get your attention, like in South America.
It's another country where you are led to think things are cheaper than they are as tax is only added on to the price tags at the checkout.

Castle Luna Hostel

Situated in the old town, it has just about everything a good hostel should have: it provides you with a handy pocket-sized map on arrival indicating loads of useful things for backpackers (like where to get buses from, where there are cheap eateries and fruit stalls, which areas you shouldn't walk in after dark, the main sites and activities, etc.); it serves a breakfast of pancakes, bananas and coffee each morning (three of my favourite breakfast items!); it has info files made up detailing anything from which takeaways will deliver to the hostel to what the bus timetables are for getting to Costa Rica; the dorms have wonderful views looking out to the skyline of Panama's new town across Panama Bay; towels are provided (huge bonus); there are lockers in the rooms and you can purchase padlocks from reception (let's hope I don't lose the key for this one); there is a ping pong table, free wifi, 2 book exchanges, an assortment of board games and friendly staff!

I was eager to go and explore my new surroundings before dark so quickly showered and headed out. This old area of Panama, the so-called casco viejo, is beautiful; it contains the presidential palace, pretty squares, crumbling old buildings with real character and a cathedral. What really got me buzzing, however, was the walk along the water's edge with fantastic views of The Causeway on one side, ships out at sea in front of me, sky rises of the new town on the other side and pelicans flying over head. Moments like those – the exciting first views of a place which was only a name in the air to me before and the curiosity those sights inspire about where I have landed – is one of the absolute joys of travelling.

Dinner was probably the lowlight of my afternoon with a packet of noodles made in a kitchen surrounded by groups of people who already know each other. I'm too tired to be social tonight but hope to get a good night's sleep so that I can “make friends” tomorrow (oh that recurring first-day -at-school feeling!).

It's amazing how many things can happen to you in one day ... breakfast from street stalls in Colombia, a flight over the Caribbean, lunch with new friends in a restaurant in Panama, a murder scene in a flat, a walk through an historical quarter and a rendez-vous with the Pacific Ocean. Oh, and at 1am, I've just finished chatting to my dad on Skype where he could see me on his computer screen. What an amazing world.

Brazil: Four Days In The Amazon

lockers — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:18:00 GMT

March 27th – April 1st

Jungle Trip (Iguana Tours), Day One

I stupidly forgot to change the time on my camera, which was also serving as my alarm clock, when we arrived in Manaus from Belem so it sounded at 5.30am, frustratingly early for an 8am collection (you'd think I would have learned by now).

We were collected from our hostel and brought to the edge of the Rio Negro where we met our guide's son, Gerry Junior. Gerry Junior studies in Manaus but returns to his family in the jungle on some weekends to help out. We boarded a speed boat with him and shot across the river, stopping briefly to see the point where the Negro River and the Solimoes River converge (red-brown water meets light-brown water,) to create The Amazon River. Once across, a car drove us about 45 minutes to another river where, after a brief stop for coconut juice, we boarded a motorised canoe for the final hour which brought us to our jungle lodge. It was a fantastic journey and as we sat on that final low canoe, so close to the water and in touch with our surroundings, I lost myself in several over-flowing thoughts as my eyes gazed at flooded trees (the water in the Amazon can raise by 10m in the rainy season), birds flying overhead, riverbank dwellings and a vast expanse of water.

Our jungle lodge consisted of a wooden house tied to the banks of the river with a deck out in front. Behind these stood individual huts, one of which Helen and I were allocated. We were welcomed with a caipirinha and were then served up a lunch of fish, rice and salad. We had a couple of hours free time after eating so took a dip into the river, nearly getting taken downstream with the current, and relaxed on the deck.

At 3pm we left with a French guy, Jerome, who had arrived at the lodge the previous day, Gerry and Pedro (Gerry's helping hand) to go into the jungle for the night. When we reached our base, Gerry worked on putting our hammocks up and Jerome, Helen and I tried to start a fire. Most of the wood in the area was damp so it took a while but with Pedro's supply of harder, dry wood we managed to get a nice flame going. Chickens were then put on spears to roast and Jerome, Helen and I went to explore the surrounding area. I wasn't aware at the time but Helen told me in retrospect that that first walk through the jungle was one of the scariest moments of her life. She had images in her head that everything around her was poisonous and felt extremely unsafe. The poor lamb!

Over dinner around the fire, I asked Gerry to tell us his life story. He recounted that in his youth he had helped some Dutchmen smuggle diamonds out of Brazil. As a native of Guyana and having been brought up in the area, he was the ideal candidate for the job: he spoke perfect English and had in-depth knowledge about the mining region and surrounding jungle. During early adulthood he worked for five star travel companies and then in the 1980s he realised there was a gap in the market for backpackers and established his own business.

Once we had digested our dinner and Gerry's stories, Helen, Gerome and I set off on a night excursion with Pedro in a paddle boat to go spear fishing. It was quite something to be weaving in and out of flooded tree areas, the fishes' favourite hangouts apparently, in the darkness. We knocked branches overhead as we passed through tight gaps and, much to my horror, knocked whatever was on the branches into the canoe. After passing a tarantula on one tree, I asked Pedro to shine the torch into the boat and we discovered that in addition to the two fish, which Pedro had speared with great skill, we had also caught a number of large spiders, although thankfully no tarantulas. I stood up straight away but then realised that I jeopardised tipping the canoe so swiftly sat back down again. Once we were back out on the open river, under a sky full of stars, my heart rate began to return to normal. I had a go at paddling but kept making us go in circles so gave the oar back to Pedro who could paddle with one hand, hold the torch in the other and look for fish all at same time.

I was pleased to see that mosquito nets accompanied our hammocks that night and fell asleep counting how many noises I could hear in the jungle.

Jungle Trip, Day Two

I woke a few times during the night with the sound of mosquitoes but think they were on the outside of the net, least I didn't get bitten which was a relief.

Pedro and Gerry got up with the light of day to make the fire. Helen and I followed shortly afterwards as we couldn't sleep any longer. We were not the only creatures waking up of course. As coffee was being made, we could hear Howler monkeys in the distance crying out. It was the first time I heard these monkeys and I found the noise fascinating and penetrating; almost an eerie sound like some kind of background noise to a horror film. I think they are actually the loudest land animal. What a wonderful reminder that we were visitors on their territory.

After a breakfast of bread, boiled eggs, jam and butter we went in the canoe to visit an indigenous family. When we arrived, however, we discovered that the parents and most of children were out; they had gone to Manaus for the day – a twice yearly occasion! Luckily, we were still able to look around the grounds and meet a couple of the older children who had remained behind. A variety of trees the family had planted meant they were self-sufficient in limes, lemons, wild passion fruit, cashew nuts, Brazil nuts, and coffee beans. They also cultivated a manioc plantation. Manioc (cassava) is one of the staple accompaniments in Brazilian dishes. Other crops, such as corn and rice, are not successful in the jungle as they get eaten by animals. Manioc is actually very poisonous but over the years the native Indians have developed a way of extracting the poison. This family still used traditional methods for preparing the root for consumption.

Back at the lodge, I fancied seeing how far up the river I could swim. It was extremely hard work against the current but a lot of fun drifting back down the river to our lodge.

In the afternoon we went monkey spotting with Pedro in a traditional paddle boat. We entered a flooded wood area, paddled through large areas of floating grass and dodged several branches. We saw 4 toucans, different groups of black and brown monkeys, an eagle, a sloth, yellow finches, dark blue birds (let's not get too technical here) and lots of termite nests. We then returned to the lodge to watch the sun going down from the deck with a beer in hand and we glimpsed a dolphin heading downstream (which had to be pointed out to us by Gerry as Helen and I were so engrossed in conversation we nearly missed it!). What a wonderful afternoon.

Gerry's friend, Mathias (a Swiss guy living in Chile), and his French girlfriend arrived at the jungle lodge that evening. We headed out with them on a canoe for that night's activity: caiman catching. Pedro stood at the front of the canoe with a torch and indicated where the caiman were with flashes of the torch to his brother at the back. His brother then directed the canoe to the right spot and turned off the engine. We held our breaths as Pedro stealthily crouched, plunged his hands into the water and, in one swift movement, extracted a caiman from the water. When he had caught two, he handed me one so that his hands were free to go again. With the the first slightest wriggle, my heart rate increased about three fold and I almost dropped the boy which Helen thought was hilarious.

Back at the lodge, Gerry explained the difference between caiman and alligators to us (in short, all caiman are alligators but not all alligators are caiman!). We polished off some fish that had been caught earlier in the day for dinner and finished the day puffing on cigars which Matthias had bought for Gerry.

Jungle Trip, Day Three

I must have slept well as I didn't hear the downpour nor even the Howler monkeys which the others commented on over breakfast.

Gerry took us on a very informative walk through the jungle in the morning. We learned that the soil in the jungle is infertile so the roots of the trees tend to grow horizontally across the ground. The variety of vegetation was astonishing and over generations native Indians have found a use for most plants and animals in their habitat, be it for medicine, food or material. We were shown the trees where hard wood, soft wood and red wood come from; barks with drinking water inside; paraffin trees which, when lit, produce a flame; a bark from which Indians can make threads and rope; and a walking tree where the main part of the tree abandons its trunk and over time it consequently moves across the ground.

Gerry had a vast amount of knowledge about the jungle. He showed us how to make a roof from palm leaves (waterproof), demonstrated that it is OK to eat the worms that live in the shell of one of the nuts (we all had a nibble on what was to be quite a sweet, coconut-flavoured worm) and pointed out the so-called “Prostitute Lips” which is a flower whose petals turn into leaves. It rained quite heavily for most of the time, our ponchos ripped almost straight away and Helen and I (well, more me actually) got a little bit obsessed with trying to make a David Attenborough style video (several takes of the sentence “so here we are, deep in the Amazon rain forest.”). We rode back to our lodge under extremely dark clouds and, soaked to the skin and with torn ponchos that made us look a bit tramp-like, were introduced to a whole new bunch of people who had just arrived at the lodge.

The afternoon then started with piranha fishing. The boys among the group started to develop a rather hilarious (for us not the fish) technique of getting a fish on a line and throwing it back over their heads onto the roof. By so doing, the fishes were knocked out and would then slide down off the roof into a bucket giving the effect that it was raining piranhas. Helen let out a shriek when she caught one and screamed at me, “Get the camera!”. I failed to catch one single piranha but had immense fun trying and provided enough entertainment for the others as I wildly flung back my line, repeatedly losing any fish I did manage to catch.

Before dinner, we set out with Gerry again, this time in search of dolphins, monkeys and birds. Unfortunately the rain seemed to keep all the animals at bay; even the birds and insects seemed quiet. The only thing which we could really hear were frogs. Just as the rain came to stop, we did manage to spot gray river dolphins and caught a glimpse of a pink dolphin which suddenly made the boat excursion very worthwhile. The boys from the new group of tourists also appeared in a boat alongside ours and showed us a sloth they had knocked down from a tree. It was very wet and looked sedated and apathetic but apparently they are like this, whether they have been knocked down from a tree in the rain or not!

It was piranha soup, omelet and rice for dinner. Sami, an Indian from Guyana, showed us one card trick after another and then the new group went out to catch caiman. One was brought back to the lodge and it was demonstrated to us all how sensitive caimans are – they can be paralysed by just stroking their stomachs. I think it's the closest we got to seeing a caiman at the height of sexual arousal!

Our last evening in the jungle was spent drinking beer and playing silly games with the other backpackers. At some point in the middle of blowing cards off a wine bottle and trying to guess how many brothers and sisters each person at the table had, Gerry invited Helen and I for one extra night excursion. We were taken in a canoe into the middle of the nearby lake with Gerry, Mathias and their girlfriends. Gerry had his guitar and could play just about any song on request. So there we sat, under a sky full of stars, drinking beer and singing songs in the middle of a lake in the Amazon. The only other noise which could be heard above the music was that of some crocodiles. Gerry was able to make the same sound so there was a fascinating moment when Gerry and the crocodiles seemed to be having a conversation. When we got back to the lodge, the generator had gone off so the others had been forced to go to bed. The party in the jungle was over.

Jungle Trip, Day Four

On our last day in the jungle, we woke up to find that our riverside lodge had been swamped by an enormous piece of floating grass. This had to be removed before we could set off on the morning excursion ... but easier said than done. Rather than moving the grass, the whole lodge itself was to be moved. It was quite spectacular to watch. All hands were on board as various men, who I'd never seen before, appeared to help untie the house from the bank. When the lodge, Gerry's home and business, started to drift into the middle of the river, Gerry's arms seem to flap more wildly. My words of advice to him, “Gerry, don't worry, just go with the flow” (bu bum) were probably not really appreciated. The grass was eventually dislodged and Gerry shouted instructions at men in canoes to coordinate maneuvering his home slowly back to its original position on the bank.

Our last excursion was to see a rubber plantation. As rubber can now be made synthetically, the business of extracting rubber from trees, pouring it into a mold and heating it over a fire is somewhat obsolete. Still, it's good to know the origins of the condom business and we got to see a monkey with her baby scurry over our heads which was a bonus.

Following our last lunch at the lodge, there was a bit of a guitar session which was a perfect end to a wonderful stay. After “Leaving on a Jet Plane” was sung with the appropriately substituted “canoe boat”, it was alas time to go. The backpackers who remained came out on to the deck to wave us off as Helen and I got into a canoe and set off up river. A capybara also popped out from the river bank a few seconds later as if it had also come out to say good bye on behalf of the animal world. What a truly great few days.

Manaus

Manaus was really just a base to return to after the jungle trek. Helen was soon to fly back home via Rio and I had to organise where I was going from there. One of the first things I did was to pile all my dirty clothes into a big bag and hand them over at the hostel. Frustratingly, I was told that each item of clothing had to be listed individually ... down to the exact number of socks.

We spent our first night back in “civilization” at a great Italian restaurant, delighting in being able to eat something other than rice, chicken and fish. The following day we had a trip to the bus station so that I could buy an onward ticket to Venezuela (in the usual fashion of not making bus terminals easy to get to, it was an hour's journey). There I discovered that as well as my passport, I needed proof of a yellow fever vaccination which I'd left back at the hostel. With an over-dramatic plea to both the ticket man and his boss, I managed to get the ticket in the end. All I can say is sometimes it does help to be a girl when travelling.

That night, Helen left at 2am to go to the airport for her flight down to Rio. It was sad saying goodbye. We'd had a great month travelling together. When I returned to the room, I was very much aware of the fact that I was on my own again ... in rather a big continent. As I sorted through my clean laundry in the morning, I found the dress that Helen had bought in Olinda with the following note:

Gabi

Hope you get more use out of this than I did! Thanks for such a wonderful time with you. I will never forget this experience.

Love, little sis. xxx

Tears poured down my face when I read it.

On my last day in Manaus I felt very unmotivated about meeting people so ate breakfast without hardly speaking to anyone. I went to change Reais into dollars as I'd been told you get a better rate with cash on the black market in Venezuela than you do when withdrawing money from ATMs. The money exchange place seemed a little dodgy – I had to enter a small room which was then locked behind me. My heart thumped; there was actually no way out of that room if things turned nasty and I had no idea if the dollars I had been handed were real. My greater fear, however, was of not having enough cash to get through Venezuela so I put the dollars up to the light as if to look like I knew what I was looking for, was relieved to see the door open and raced back to the hostel to store them away.

With some $900 in my pocket, clean clothes and no sister, it was time to leave the jungle, cross another border and face what was probably to be the most corrupt country of my trip to date: Venezuela (“Little Venice” in Spanish). I was also about to get the sickest I have been since leaving home.

Brazil: Belem to Manaus

lockers — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:05:00 GMT

March 26th-7th 2009

Leaving Belem

After just a night in Belem, Helen and I left out hotel, running with items from the breakfast table stuffed into a plastic bag and a man's arm flapping at us from the window, and hopped on a bus to the airport. A two hour flight took us to Manaus and another hot and cramped bus took us from the airport to the centre with locals telling us where to get off for our hostel (Brazilians have always been very friendly and helpful on buses).

Manaus

Manaus is the capital of the state of Amazonas with a population of some 1.7 million. It lies deep within the Amazon rain forest, two hours by plane form Belem (about 3 ½ days by boat on the Amazon) and an hour behind in time. Our purpose in going there was to organise a jungle trek about which we started to get very excited when we saw masses of trees and brown-coloured rivers from the plane window.

Preparation

We spent a good part of our arrival day researching different jungle trips and ended up booking a four day excursion with Iguana Tours who seemed to go deeper into the rain forest than other agencies and who organised visits to indigenous families. We then went and bought ponchos (cheaply made but at $13 a piece, not really a cheap price considering they were like bin liners) and reorganised our bags so as to have only the essentials for the tour with us.

Brazil: Belém

lockers — Tue, 26 May 2009 09:28:00 GMT

March 25^th - 26^th Belem

I must have forgotten what it's like to stay in a hotel as I was surprised when the receptionist in “Hotel Unidos” in Belém (Portuguese for "Bethlehem") insisted that we didn't need to pay on arrival and a porter proceeded to take our bags to our room.

We only had one night in the town which lies as the gateway to the Amazon so after showering, we headed straight out for a walk along the banks of the Amazon estuary. The markets were closing for the day but I could imagine the hive of activity they must have been earlier on. I bought some running shorts (from C&A of all places!) and then as the rain started, we searched for a place for dinner. As is so often the case when you are tired, hungry, wet and your flip flops are like a hangman's noose, we struggled to find anywhere. An Italian restaurant with a special 2 for 1 on pasta dishes eventually saved the day.

We were up at 5.30am the following day for our morning flight to Manaus. Compensation for the early start was the best breakfast buffet we had seen in Brazil - cakes, fruit, pastries, ham, cheeses, bread, juices, coffee. As any true backpacker would, we seized the opportunity to pack up pastries and make ourselves sandwiches for later. As we were so doing, an employee of the hotel came over to inform us we were not allowed to take food out of the room. I was embarrassed but on the other hand didn't think what we were doing was too wrong – we had, after all, paid for the breakfast and only had fifteen minutes for eating it as we had to take a bus to the airport. I asked the man what the difference was if we ate the breakfast in front of him or on the bus but he continued to say we weren't allowed to leave with the food. At that point I started to wonder what we were going to do - eat all the pastries to prove a point or hand them over blushing. I looked at Helen and she took the lead. Encouraged by her experience with children in her policing area who were caught with cannibis and knew that a Police Community Support Officer has no powers of arrest, she turned to the employee and simply said, “What are you going to do about it?” And with that she added, “Come on Gabi,” clutched the plastic bag full of food and set off out of the hotel. I followed sheepishly. On the street, a hand started flapping madly from one of the hotel's windows and we heard a hissing noise (the South American equivalent of whistling). A passerby came up to us to tell us he thought someone was trying to get our attention. We just giggled and ran off to catch our bus.

To get to the airport, we had to take two local buses. The second one was absolutely packed with people and it was a real struggle getting even a space for our feet let alone our bags. As we stood like sardines in a tin, not taking our eyes off our belongings, I asked myself whether the discomfort and stress was worth the 20 Reais we had saved by taking a bus instead of a taxi. As soon as we were in the air-conditioned airport, however, the sweat having dried off and our bags checked in, I started to feel the sense of achievement of surviving Brazil's public bus system once again. How easy is it to forget such trying moments when your body temperature has returned to normal and you are safe, fed and watered once more!

Brazil: Jericoacoara to Belém

lockers — Mon, 25 May 2009 05:44:00 GMT

March 20^th – 23^rd: Jericoacoara

The Journey There

Initially, Helen and I weren't able to get seats next to each other on the night bus from Recife to Fortaleza. We smiled as Helen's neighbour was quite a good-looking guy and a man of larger proportions came to sit next to me. We did, however, swap and it was a relief ... as soon as the bus pulled away, Helen's ex-neighbour put a coat over his head and started singing out loud. He was quite a loop! Otherwise, apart from people cracking up now and again over someone's mobile ringtone, which itself was the sound of someone in hysterics, the rest of the first part of this journey was uneventful; just painfully uncomfortable so no sleep was to be had.

After the 11 hour coach journey to Fortaleza, we then had a 7 hour journey to Jericoacoara, the last 1 ½ hours of which was spent riding along the beach in a mode of transport possibly comparable to a sturdier version of a bus at Disneyland which might take you from the car park to the park's entrance; a cross between a beach buggy and a truck, with no sides and rows of wooden benches, each accessible from the outside. As other motorbikes passed us by in the opposite direction, it became clear that the beach was, in fact, the main road, the motorway if you like, leading into and out of Jericoacoara.

The Location

Needless to say then, Jericoacoara is in quite a remote place. Originally just a surfing spot, restaurants, pousadas, craft shops, bars and kite-surfing schools have sprung up out of the sand in recent years to create a unique village with a great vibe, set by huge yellow dunes to one side and green hills on the other.

Our Arrival

The sun was setting over the sand dunes as we neared Jeri and a number of men in beach buggies were waiting for us, all hoping to take us to the guest house they worked for. We favoured the guy who showed us a photo of a lovely-looking private room with wooden walls and ensuite bathroom and shot off in his buggy along the sandy streets, now under a night sky of stars with the wind in our hair. I remember thinking to myself right then that we had arrived in quite a special place.

Setbacks

Unfortunately, we couldn't make the most out of being in such a unique place. Firstly, the persistent rainfall meant our beach buggy trip to nearby lagoons (THE thing you should apparently do there) was cancelled two days running. Secondly, I spent the early hours of one morning in the bathroom surrounded by a half-digested form of the “stingray in coconut sauce” dish I had so adventurously tried the evenening before! I felt quite weak the following day and was very lucky to have Helen, who strangely shared the dish with me but felt fine, to look after me.

It Could Only Happen in Jeri ...

You would be pushed not to enjoy Jeri even in the rain and with a bout of food poisoning. We took pleasure in wading through sandy streets which had turned into rivers (the flow of rain water was so strong that it ripped Helen's flip flop), got merry on cocktails from mobile carts down at the beach, found immense satisfaction in discovering a place to eat where we could get a huge portion of chicken, rice, beans and manioc flour for 6 Reais, (about 2 GBP) and laughed about the added entertainment value of drops dripping through the ceiling and water gushing out of a pipe whilst we ate.

At Last, A Nice Place To Stay

For the first time since Helen's arrival in Brazil, we had a room to ourselves. We were able to enjoy the freedom of listening to our ipods on loudspeakers, video-Skype mum on Mothers' Day from bed (which delighted her but concerned Helen because she would be seen without make-up on) and we woke each morning to a wonderful breakfast buffet. No queues for the shower, no worrying about our stuff being stolen by other people in the room, nobody waking us up in the middle of the night coming in drunk, no having to whisper and feel awful about rustling plastic bags when we came in merry, no having to read in bed using a headlamp. A backpacker rar

Walks in the Rain

One afternoon we hooked up with a Swiss guy, Matteo, who was travelling on his own and had a walk in the rain over the dunes, our clothes and the sand sticking to us nicely. A limping stray dog followed us for a while and I had to laugh when it tried to take on a whole herd of cows which was crossing over the dunes at the same time (a bit random, but true!). As the rain cleared, we decided to walk on and made it up to the lighthouse, which itself was highly unspectacular, but the views of Jeri, the neighbouring beach and the surrounding, well ... nothingness, were great.

Figuring Out How to Leave

On researching how to get out of Jeri, we were told there would be no other way but to get the Disneyland-style truck and then a coach back to Fortaleza. We were reluctant to do this as it would mean back-tracking, going south when we needed to go north. It then just so happened that we bumped into a girl we had met in Olinda, Ganine, who told us that there was, in fact, a pick-up truck arriving at 3am on the next Tuesday morning which could take people to a town called Sobral, from where we could get a bus to Belém without having to go back to Fortaleza. It was all a bit random, as these things often are in South America (our names weren't taken, we didn't have to pay in advance, just to be at the right place at 3am), but we decided to risk it.

The Departure

We left our guest house around 2am, not having gone to bed to save on a night's accommodation, and splurged through puddles in the darkness to Ganine's guest house which was the collection point. There was nobody else around, not even Ganine, so Helen started to get a little nervous (we had a flight booked from Belém so it was important that we weren't delayed too much). I figured that the time to get nervous should be at about 4am if there was still no sign of anyone as an hour in South America is not actually much of a delay. As we sat on old, damp sofas in the lobby, we tried to stay awake by chatting and drifted onto reminiscing about babysitting when we were younger and the amount of money we made on an evening for doing relatively little work. I joked that I should tell Mum that I was going to become a professional babysitter on returning from my trip. (The search for career inspiration, however, goes on.)

It was going on 4am by the time the pick-up truck arrived ie. just verging on the moment of disillusionment, although Ganine had shown up at 3am which had comforted Helen a lot - how numbers ease distress! There were already another 3 passengers on board who all looked shattered and hardly said a word. We squashed into the back with them, rucksacks and bags all around us. It was raining and the truck was open-sided so it was damp. It was still pitch black outside as we pulled off along the sandy roads and then onto the bumpy beach. It was the start of what was to be a very long and uncomfortable journey; the longest we were to endure together in Brazil and I think the longest bus journey of my entire trip so far.

March 24^th: Journey Sobral to Belem

It's alright visiting these wonderfully isolated places but it's usually a pain in the back(side) trying to get to and from them, especially when you are dragging your yearly belongings around with you . The ride in the pick-up truck from Jericoacoara was very bumpy, cold and wet. Several times the truck had to be put into reverse and another route tried as the heavy rainfall had created enormous puddles on the beach aka. road. I felt incredibly tired and tried to rest my head on my arm which was holding on to a bar above my head. Helen and Ganine laughed when my arm came crushing down and my body jerked forward – incredibly I must have nodded off and my arm had given way to the weight of my head.

Darkness turned to light but with no spectacular sunrise. We stopped off at a roadside place for a breakfast of coffee and cake at around 7am and arrived in Sobral around 8am. There we discovered that the first bus to Belém wasn't until 15:30 – in fact, it was the same bus coming from Fortaleza, so we hadn't actually saved ourselves any time getting the pick-up truck in the middle of the night, we just lost a night's sleep in the process. We stored our luggage at the station and went outside to try and find a spot where we could sleep. We found a stretch of grass not too far from the station, plonked down but struggled to snooze as it was too hot and ants were running all over us. We therefore returned to the air conditioned VIP room in the bus station, pretending to be important people (with backpacks!). Trying to sleep there also proved futile so we decided to have a wander around Sobral with Ganine. It isn't the most attractive of towns but we were able to find a supermarket to stock up on supplies for the next bus journey and a chemist which sold some cheap malaria tablets so the walk served a purpose.

We spent the rest of that day, night and most of the following day on the bus to Belém. I noticed that the further north we drove, the greener and wetter it became. There were lots of people at the side of the road, mainly men, and most, like I have seen from so many bus windows on this trip, just sitting around. The areas looked poorer. The roads leading off the road we were on were almost all dirt tracks, leading to shacks and huts, homes and businesses for the people who lived there.

We arrived in Belém at around 15:30 and got a bus into town with the accustomed struggle of trying to stay on our feet, pay, go through the turnstile and sit down whilst the bus jolted off. After the 30 hour plus journey, we decided we deserved a cheap hotel rather than a hostel and found one not too far from the banks of The Amazon. We had made it!

Brazil, The Coast: Arraial d'Ajuda - Salvador - Olinda

lockers — Sun, 24 May 2009 10:19:00 GMT

March 9^th - 13th: Arraial d'Ajuda

The Journey

An 18 hour coach journey took Helen and I from the mountain town of Ouro Preto via Belo Horizonte (of which we saw only sky scrapers and the busy bus station) to Porto Seguro on the coast of Brazil. From there we jumped on a local bus to the ferry terminal, got a boat over to Arraial d'Ajuda and then another local bus to an IH hostel. If there is one thing that I am not going to miss about Brazil, it's the local buses. As soon as you get on them, you are confronted with a turnstile which, with a rucksack on your back, another on your front and a bag in your hands, is like facing a 6ft wall. Sometimes if you smile very sweetly, the person taking the money at the turnstile will let you stay at the front of the bus. More often than not, however, you are forced to go through as the bus pulls off (they never seem to wait for you to sit down) and face the possibility of either getting stuck in the middle of the turnstile or falling flat on your face in front of fellow passengers as someone from behind gives you a mighty shove to get you through. They really become draining, especially as these buses normally follow a night journey during which you have had no sleep because you are not used to sleeping in an upright position, it was freezing, music was playing, your hands and feet went numb, some disturbing video was on, the man near you was snoring, there was a stop for dinner just as you managed to drop off or, more than likely, all of the above.

The Town

Arrial d'Ajuda is a pretty enough place but with almost every building being a restaurant or tour operator it felt a little superficial. Still, it has a beach on its doorstep and is home to South America's largest water park (according to our edition of the Lonely Planet ... maybe there is only one on the continet?) so we were happy to be there.

Memorable Moments

Watching the moon coming out over the beach from a bar on our first night (with Queen blasting out of some speakers – there are few quiet moments in South America), getting washed over by a wave as we dozed on the sand with our heads towards the shore (ipod and camera luckily dried out!), trying to save money by cooking at the hostel but going mad on the accompaniments of beer, wine and chocolates in the supermarket and flashing the queue when we plunged into the pool from the zip line ride at the water park.

A Surreal Incident

Bumping into Nick and Sam, with whom Robbie and I had travelled with for a week in Sumatra some 4 months ago, at the water park. I had no idea that they were even in Brazil so was in complete shock when I heard my name being called out as I was climbing the steps to the slides. Brazil is a pretty huge country (about the size of continental United States); to have actually arranged to meet Nick and Sam would probably have been very difficult; to be in the same small town on the same day is therefore a little coincidental and to have chosen the same day to go to the water park really got me thinking about how funny life can be. I wonder how many other people I know are currently travelling around South America? What about all the people I could have nearly bumped in to? I wonder if we'd be surprised at how few coincidences there actually are if we knew how many possible coincidences there could be? Am side-tracking a bit now but I was just very surprised and happy to see them. Naturally, there were drinks to be had that night and the mobile cocktail bar in the main square was the ideal location.

Food

As always, we didn't go hungry in Arraial: some culinary highlights were burgers on arrival (yes, fast food can be a highlight - after a 23 hour journey you don't have the patience to wait long for a meal), tapioca pancakes on the way back from the beach filled with banana, coconut, cinnamon and condensed milk; and our final lunch at a “pay per kilo” place (typical of Brazil) where I piled my plate high for 14 Reais (just over 4 GBP) And our mum worries if we are eating enough ...

March 14^th - 16^th: Salvador

I was very much looking forward to seeing Salvador; the first colonial capital of Brazil (until 1763 and now its third most populous city), where over 80 % of the population of the metropolitan region has Black African ancestry and whose people I imagined to have rhythm and rum running through their body and souls (its carnaval is said to be en par if not better than Rio's.)

As it was, however, we arrived in Salvador feeling very tired, ill, hungry and irritated. The night bus from Porto Seguro had once again been freezing and my sense of excitement at having arrived in the mysterious, enticing, raved-about Salvador soon drained away as we struggled for over an hour to get a minibus to take us to Barra, the coastal area of Salvador where we'd booked a hostel.

All in all, we didn't have a great first morning. The street our hostel was on seemed dodgy, our dorm was small and already occupied by a few girls whose cosmetics and clothes were sprawled everywhere and we struggled to find anywhere decent for breakfast. When we eventually found a coffee bar place at noon, the muesli and fruit I believed I had ordered (by pointing to a picture on the wall), turned out to be a large bowl of ice-cream, what the Brazilians call acia – not the most satisfying of breakfasts!

Everything seemed to get better, however, when we got to the beach, which was becoming the customary first stop in a place after a night journey. When I went for a swim I was very much aware that I was not merely the only foreign looking person in the water but also the only woman. I didn't particularly feel unsafe, just very conscious of how much I probably stood out. We hadn't been there long when a Brazilian man asked us to keep an eye on his things when he went for a swim. Soon thereafter, Helen and the guy, Cleiton, were playing bat and ball together and we had found a friend and guide for the next couple of days.

Cleiton gave us a wonderful tour of his city: he brought us to a restaurant in his neighbourhood where we ate a delicious prawn dish whilst watching the sun go down; took us around the historical centre, Pelourinho; showed us the market where the African slaves had been kept in the basement, and proved he was really Brazilian by dancing amazingly at an open air beach concert/party which nicely coincided with our stay. We wanted to stay longer in Salvador – we would have liked to have tried surfing, seen the turtles on Praia do Forte, sample some more of the nightlife – but we were conscious that we had to get to the Amazon by the last week in March. In the two weeks since Helen's arrival, we had come quite far - we were about half way up Brazil's coast - but that still meant we had to travel about 1700 Km to Belem and fly to Manaus ... all within one week!

March 17^th - 19^th: Olinda

Arrival

Another night bus with seats at the back opposite the toilet brought us from Salvador to a bus station on the outskirts of Recife from where we took the metro into the centre and a local bus to Olinda. In the usual fashion of dripping in sweat and verging on grumpiness, we then tracked down a hostel and were delighted to find one with a swimming pool. After a good night's sleep in a bed (how you come to appreciate the horizontal position after a string of night buses), we woke to a wonderful breakfast of fruit, scrambled eggs, biscuits, fresh juice and coffee and the world was right again.

Finding Our Feet

Our hostel was on the main road next to the coast. It was busy, noisy and Recife's industry and sky scrapers could be seen in the distance making us wonder if we were really in one of Brazil's best-preserved colonial cities. Luckily we ventured further afield than the swimming pool, nearby square and supermarket on our second day and discovered the justification for Olinda's admiration: colourful colonial buildings, cobbled streets brought alive with carnaval decorations, ice cream parlours, art galleries, artesan stalls and numerous churches overlooking the sea. It was a pleasure just strolling around, popping into shops and taking in the atmosphere.

Food

Always keen to try out the local street food, we pointed and bought. Unfortunately this time we weren't so impressed – greasy deep fried potato balls filled with tomatoes, onions and prawns still in their shells – maybe the shell taste has to be acquired. We were more successful at shopping for dresses. Oh the excitement of a having something pretty after spending most of the past 7 months in scruffy travelling gear!

Tests of Patience

The usual small incidences, which could occur in any place ... for example, walking around on empty stomachs in the midday heat trying to find a decent place to eat, spending hours in an internet cafe trying to upload photos and only hearing the comforting rotation of the cash machine at HSBC after about ten attempts with different cards.

Overall impression

"Linda!” ;-) (linda is the Spanish word for lovely/beautiful).