Ah this part was good. Probably a highlight for the book and the trip. I am also close to catching my tail as well, while I sit here writing this in Panama City. I want to be caught up when I fly to Colombia on wednesday as I copnsider South America to be the second half of my trip. Though I seem to have spent too much money this month. Need to reign that in a little. At Panama City we bought our tickets for the end of the Inter-American highway and set off into the unknown. It would literally be the unknown when we realised just how shit, incomplete and innaccurate Lonely Planet's section was. We would have to write our own guidebook for it. The bus down to Yaviza is $14 and the journey takes 7 hours approximately. Unless you want to just say you have been to the end of the road (which we have now) you may as well stop in Meteti. One gripe. You have to pay 5 cents to enter the forecourt of the bus station. How skanky is that? Thats worse than being charged to use the toilet (which I was as well). You buy a bus ticket then you have to pay to get to the bus you just paid for. Ridiculous.
Anyway we arrived in Yaviza after we had had three passport checks on the way down and been asked what we were upto. We had wanted to get a boat up from Yaviza or El Real to La Palma, which the book says you can do. Its not true. Well maybe its true, but the army won't let you do it anyway. We arrived in this end of the road town (seeing two other gringos sadly) and its just a town full of trucks and looks like any other town. So far, so un Darien. We got some lunch and enquired about travelling deeper. Apparently some old man then muttered that we were crazy and so we asked some soldiers about walking to El Real or taking a boat. They instead escorted us to a Panamanian military base. Hmm were these real soldiers? Were we about to be kidnapped? Nope. We were going to be passport checked. What else would you expect in this region. Its all we seemed to do. All day, everyday. It had also been disappointingly unjungly on the way down there. The most dangerous thing being a swerve to avoid some car driver who went at 4mph and swerved in front of any vehicle so they could not pass. He almost took out a petrol tanker. The military interviewed us and were pleased we spoke Spanish (well Dom did). They then escorted us back and made us get a bus back to Meteti. They told us it was too much to travel by boat and would not have let us even if we had wanted to pay. We hoped we were going to get a military truck ride, but they slapped us in a minivan and sent us packing for $5 back to Meteti. From there we got a $1.25 pick up truck ride through the jungle to Puerto Quimba. There we got our sixth passport check in one day. I had presumed they kept marking down your last known position, so that if you went missing they would know where to go to look for you if a search and rescue was needed. The army guy here was cool and knew everything about European football. He even knew Spurs were on 38 points as we had just beaten Chelsea in a great result. The lancha was $3 from here to La Palma and we rocked up into the capital of the Darien expecting to stay for two nights and head back. La Palma is an interesting port town, with the local girls eyeing you curiously and the local guys eyeing you menacingly. I reckoned it would make a good night out but we never found out due to logisical changes. We checked into an ok hotel, whos drainage emptied straight into the sea and went to find a boat skipper to take us to the Rio Sambu. One old man negotiated us a good price and then a young drunk gave us an awful price. We returned to the old man but he ignored us while he played 6 games of dominoes before eventually giving us a higher price than last time. We haggled him down to $75 each and then went back to the hotel. Their our hotel guy informed us there were public transport boats to Garrichine for $10 returning on fridays. So we did the un-English thing of cancelling on an agreement and opted to take a punt into the unknown. We rang the airlines and they told us that they did not fly back until saturday and so we had two options of heading back to Panama City. After we found the only internet cafe that took 1 hour to load up facebook, we turfed in and were excited for some Heart of Darkness unknown travelling.
We were woken up in the morning by some incessant knocking on our door that went unanswered when challenged. It would later transpire that our landlord had knocked at 6am because he was worried we may miss the 9.30am boat going from 15 metres down the road. Thanks. We gathered some cash from the ATM (Its the only one in the Darien so we needed some cash) and headed to the boat. As usual it was late to depart because two guys who had gone to get water, instead decided to stop off for a beer. One of them worked on the Panama Canal and I presume his boat time keeping is better there. Our ragamuffin crew set off for Garrichine passing awesine virgin jungle and some cool beaches and islands. It turned out that the boat can't actually go close to shore and so we had to jump out and wade into town like a bunch of drug smugglers, lugging our luggage on our backs. We crossed over the sand into this small waterside village. Here we were told there was no public transport to Sambu, but that we could hire a trcuk for $40. The local told me it was the going price and when Dom asked him if he was going to pay $40 on his own and he said yes, even the local women laughed at his crap lying. After getting instructions to head through town to the crossroads by the mango tree we eventually managed to get a ride for 3pm that afternoon for $5 each. The locals pay $2 to $3 but oh well. There we got chatting to a local priest and then his drunken uncle from the boat. He was trying to tell Dom his friend has a cheaper ride and we could stay at his place for free. Never trust an alcoholic and I did not trust this man. Fuck it we were in the middle of nowhere and had to wing everything as it turned up. Then the drunk guy took Dom off for some beer and our truck turned up. This was after Dom had already gone missing for 40 minutes and Tom and I were a little afraid we were being picked off predator style and I suggested it was safer to stay together than go searching, especially with random people walking around swinging machetes. Tom ran off to find Dom, while I stalled the driver. There was no real space on the truck and we would not have got a place if we weren't paying gringo prices. Eventually we brought him back and luckily there was no additional space for the drunk, so we shook off his bad influence and headed in the back of a truck over what can only be described as a 4x4 testing track. It was an awesome ride. We were heading into more and more remote jungle, while the truck had to ford rivers, dive down gaps, drive with its right hand side 2m above the left, climb near vertical parts and bump and jump all over. It was truck krypton factor. No wonder they charged a lot for the rides. Vehicles can't last very long out here surely. We arrived in town and were taken to see Juan Loco who put us up in a really cool room for $50 for two nights, though our luggage stayed there when we weren't there and we effectively got it for three nights without having to worry about it. Dom also broke the toilet lid by falling through it turning on the lights and he did not care much about it. Cool guy. Cool town. We took out some traditional Indian bow and arrows to shoot at stuff while we wandered around to negotiate some trip itineraries. We were introduced to lots of member of the town and offered various facilities at reasonable prices. There were semi naked women walking around, a little girl salesperson who wandered into our apartment and unbelievably good, cheap homecooked food. They never ripped you off with prices either. I was paying 15 cents only for chocolate. We did see how bad a runway we would take off from as well but I will leave that for later. We turned down the chance to see some artesanal stuff and dancing, and having discovered we would not be able to get some beer, we designed a compromise plan and decided to go and visit the Embera tribe in the morning for permission to travel in their lands up river.
We grabbed some early breakfast at the place we always ate in town. It was great food and never more than $2.50 a plate. The owners were a really nice old couple. Sometimes they did not always understand us, but they always looked after us food wise. We walked over the bridge into Puerto Indio Indian village and were taken to see the Indian secretary. It was a cool little village and he escorted us to a hut which bats flew out of. It was equipped with a computer that had been set up by an English old man before he dropped dead. There we got our letter of permission and got a deal of $58 each for transportation up the river to Quina (the penultimate town) and back again. We would have to pay seperately for all our meals and accomodation in the village (that amounted to around $15 more per person). We got a stamp in our passport from the Embera-Wunaan nation and headed back to tie up the lose ends back in Sambu. While passing back and forth we got to witness the massacring of a cow with an axe blow and each passing had the cow more skinned and carved up until the final one, where one cow leg was left hanging from a tree. We had been taken to the local community centre that the Indians had set up and one of them had been burnt down. There seemed a degree of hostility or at least lack of warmth between the people in Sambu and those in Puerto Indio. We had been told the Indians would charge us an extortionate amount of money for the trip but it seemed reasonable to me. The night before at dinner we had negotiated an agreement between the three of us to best accomodate everyone's individual desires. Anyway we set off down river with two Indian guides after sliding the boat over polls into the water. Lonely Planet had described it as heart of darkness. I think it was quite pleasant and sunny, but i was definitely remote. We punted and engined up the river. Sometimes when it got tough we would assist the poleman with the punting and sometimes when we were grounded (the river was quite shallow in parts) we had to jump into the river and push the boat upstream for a time. Overall the river trip was around 8 hours, but we stopped off in some villages along the way. The first of which we were treated to Pipa (sweet coconut before it goes brown), which is a really thirst quenching drink and had some food cooked for us. We were also treated to an awkward moment when all the locals (complete with their lack of clothes) laid out all their artesanal goods for us to see and we did not want to buy anything. Tom and I don't anyway and Dom did not see anything he liked. I don't envy Dom the task of using his Spanish to explain that we were not going to buy anything off them, but suffice to say we were spared this embarassing situation in the other villages. We even came across some ants that apparently cure arthritis if they bite you four times, but then again they did tell us sea lions and hippos used to live in a local lake until 200 years ago.
In the second town there was a small man in a loincloth talking to us about his family, a makeshift basketball court and some more naked people. We were running out of time before sunset so we just passed through briskly and set off for Quina where we would spend the night. Arriving in town we were taken to our hut for the night (where the hammocks and mosquito nets were set up). Meanwhile we decided to play football with the local kids, ranging from around 5 to 12 years old. Me and Dom split sides to split the Spanish, Tom on my side and we divided the kids into shirts v skins. It was really good fun and the kids loved it. I managed to cut my feet up as we played barefoot, but Dom ended up with some really nasty blisters. We played until we lost all the light and the score was a respectable 2-2 with Dom scoring the equaliser by actually shooting the crossbar off the top of the goal. It almost landed on my head, but luckily we could put it back together. The kids were asking questions and wanted to play again in the morning, but we knew we had to leave early and did not confirm anything. Then the kids made us head to the river to have a bath and insisted upon carrying our stuff for us. I gave one of the kids my hat to keep and he in the morning gave me one of his marbles in return (Dom had taught the other kids in another village some Spanish games with marbles) and then we went back to eat and sleep. We did sneak down to the river to go wildlife hunting and found a bunch of noisy toads. Tom was barefoot and we were skulking around the river bed. Only later did we find out secretion from these toad's skins was deadly and these were the same toads the Indians used to extract poison for their weapons. That night we slept in a hammock for the first time. It was really uncomfortable and my night's sleep was not great. The other barely got any sleep at all though.
In the morning Dom's feet were in a really bad way and he did not come on the morning hike (which me and Tom paid $5 for). There we were shown hardwoods immune to axes and drank water from bamboo. It turned out that we were the first actual tourists to come down here. Every previous gringo had been a scientist of some kind. That was pretty cool. Indeed three Spanish scientists had trekked out into the mountains for 7 days and only taken 1 gallon of water. They ran out and were told they had to turn back, but they wanted to drink river water instead. The guide then carved up loads of bamboo and they lived off bamboo water for the 7 day hike. We also came across a walking tree. Its roots are out of the ground and it has three like a tripod. One drops off every so often and a new one grows. It apparently moves around 1m in a year. We also managed to chew somw wild peppermint, which is apparently good for strong teeth. With Dom injured I was having to rely on my Spanish for all interaction with the locals on these hikes. Dom had been playing football again meanwhile and said he felt the girls had more sympathy and empathy than the guys. One of the boys had asked him for money, while one of the girls had asked her dad to give Dom some money for some trousers (he had ripped jeans from all of the travelling done so far). We said our goodbyes and it was sad as the village had been good to us and set off downstream.
I fell asleep on the boat for some of the downriver trip, but it did not require as much of an effort with the polling so it was ok. We stopped in one more community, where we were shown how to hunt fish and crabs with a stick catapult. Tom says its commonly called a Hawaiian sling. Then we saw their fishing stocks and raced back downriver to the town. Back in Sambu a cargo ship had crashed into the bank to unload the local supplies. We spoke with the captain about heading back to Panama City via cargo ship, but he was not that friendly and they were not planning on leaving until the tuesday anyway. Damn that scuppered that idea. Dom's feet were really bad at this point so we called off the overnight camping trip in the jungle. Good idea really, because we had no mosquito net and the mosquitos out there are huge and would have eaten us alive. Instead Tom and I went out to see a Harpy Eagle (the most powerful bird of prey in the world and almost extinct) for $10 each. I had wanted to see this bird ever since I saw a stuffed one in Saltillo and thought it was some ancient species. We went and met our guide who took a machete and a rifle with him. Tom wanted me to ask him if the rifle was for the guerillas. Apparently it was for wildlife and the guerillas were far down river away from where we were. Nice to know. We took a tiny boat. Really tiny. Like 6-8 feet long for three of us and it rode only an inch above the water. One small move could easily have sunk us. The guide rowed us downriver in this dingy for twenty minutes or so before we started a gruelling jungle hike. The guide had told me it usually takes 2.5 hours and the slowest was 4 hours by a 60 year old Candian woman. Fair play to her though. This was not your mothers trekking. Unless of course you are the child of that 60 year old woman. In which case you would be the exception. This was brutal, climbing and hacking through jungle, fording rivers, crossing chasms on logs and moving at such a pace that I was liquid sweat. People need to see Tom's photos to do it justice. We blitzed this area in 1.5 hours, including passing the river bed where we would have been eaten alive (slept) and hunted shrimps to cook on an open fire. We would have been food as much as any of the shrimps. At one point I fell through a tree log that had decayed and was lucky not to injure myself. Though it was funny. We saw smaller eagles, a few tarantulas (Tom discovered he has mild arachnophobia), millions of birds and butterflies and we hacked so deep into the jungle you had no idea where you were or any idea how to get out. The guide found us the nest and cut down a tree for a better look (easy as that), while climbing a tree himself. We were the first non naturalists to go out there and the first not to see an eagle (the guide suspects the nest may have been destroyed. I reckon it may just not perform for amateurs). Apparently the Indians used to shoot them as bad omens, it takes three years for a chick to learn to fly (no wonder they don't replenish easily) and there are only about 25 pairs left in the Darien (Its only real habitat). Likely it may be exitinct before I return next time and after 2 hours there it was sad not to catch a glimpse. We did the jungle trek back in the dark, complete with multiple spiders and fireflies. We found our dugout canoe (a slightly larger one) and proceeded to head in the wrong direction on the river. It took me ages to work out from my Spanish that the village was on a bend and we were just going to enter from the other side. I was wondering where he was taking us. There are crocodiles in the river as well and I was worried about being smashed by the big cargo boat as it departed on the river that night. As I said to Tom. We were in a dugout canoe, in the dark, with a flashlight, surrounded by crocodiles. Very different. We then hiked back to the village while he expalined he had first come across the eagles while working on his pig farm and then there was 10 minutes of solid Spanish that I have no idea what was said. All the time we were avoiding these monster mosquitoes that can bite right through your clothes. So there was no protection and Tom and I only had one old Zimbabwean malaria tablet each. Both of us are a little sick now as well. Though I suspect its Dengue Fever if its anything. When we got back we joined two of the locals for some beers outside the apartment with Dom. We ended up in a huge debate about whether a culture dies if a language dies. I argued it does not have to and somehow seemed to caricature myself as a cultural imperialist who wants only a monoculture. Not my finest debating. We also discovered an interesting quirk in English culture. People will ask about food 'Are you full' and about beer 'are you empty'. It kind of implies that you can never have enough beer because noone ever asks you if you've had enough, while food its the opposite.
In the morning I woke up and grabbed breakfast while the others slept. Then Tom and I set off for $10 a piece to the local crocodile lagoon. This was another hike into the middle of a different type of jungle. One huge spider fell on the guide which made Tom jump and then we found a web covered in about 10 huge bastards. The laguna was covered in dense plantlife, but you could still see crocodile heads poking through and at one point we were at an area that Tom described as prime attacking territory on the waters edge. The guide found a baby crocodile on the side of the lake and we took turns to hold it before the guide threw it back, having failed to lure any of the bigger ones out. Was really cool and brutally hot though. You sweat the moment you step out of the shower on this terrain. When we got back the peacefulness of the village was distrubed by an arriving military helicopter that had arrived possibly to take off a sick kid. We then went to the airstrip where another couple of gringos had arrived, but they had only boated downriver to the mouth of the river. Juan said goodbye to us, we were all weighed on old school counter scales so the plane could take us and we went to wait in the wicker hut that was effectively the terminal. So much less hassle than any of the bigger airports. Flying has not been my forte since American Airlines tried to kill me in New York and this diddy plane did not fill me with confidence. The fact that the runway was effectively lots of rectangular concrete slabs glued together with grass growing out of the middles was also not comforting. On the plus side we got to see the plane land (late as usual) and bounce down the runway. It was twin engine small plane and the local kids manually loaded the luggage. It took 20 passengers and because it was so small we got to sit at the front and effectively watch all of the instruments as we were virtually in the cabin. We got to watch progress on the GPS, the flight was actually pretty smooth, but the best thing was the landing. I was sitting half a metre behind the pilot, dead in the centre. Effectively I got to watch a real landing like a flight simulator out of the krypton factor. Awesome stuff. Overall the Darien was phenomenal and most of ours highlights. It was so different to anywhere else. Everyone was so friendly as tourism has yet to kick in. We were the first non scientists to do most of what we did and we effectively went off the guidebooks to construct our own. This must be how cool travelling was for the pioneering 60s and 70s generation. Now just have to write up Panama City and then give another top 10 as its off to Medellin on wednesday and the second half of the trip.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Panama Part 1
We got ripped off at the border by the money exchanger, which was more of a problem for Dom (who had a fair bit of cash) than for me, as I had spent the extra stuff on those books in San Jose. We got to Changuinola for the apparently great canal boat ride to Bocas only to be informed that the canals had been flooded from the storms and no longer worked. We asked many people because we dont trust anyone here but they all seemed to confirm it. Shitty so we had to get another bus to Almacite or something like that where there was a $4 boat to the islands. There were seemingly other really bad bridges along the way, like the one at the border. I had concluded that Panamanians can't build bridges in much the same way that Costa Ricans can't tell left from right, Hondurans can't speak their own language and Guatemalans were incapable of telling the truth. We arrived in town and avoided the hawkers to get to the same hostel that Laura was in. We joined the Finns for Inka's birthday and had some drinks out on our balcony with a bunch of surfers. It seemed that conversation was a little on the light side and massive ego posturing and insecurity were on the heavy side. Also I was dead tired at this point. I managed to make it just past midnight, listening to Israeli surfers consistently calling Laura 'ananas'.
In the morning I got up for the free pancake breakfast and realised I had to make it myself. It was naturally really shitty, but happily for me so was Dom's when he attempted it. Those of us who don't eat Yankee pancake breakfasts ever can hardly be expected to make a good fist of making one. Maybe they could just supply us with croissants next time. After this unsatisfying dough mush Tom arrived and we all headed out to some random beach. It was nowhere near as good as the beaches on the islands in the Caribbean (a trait common all through Central America) and was covered in sand flies, so we were massacred by these midget mosquitoes. The beach was also littered with weird crabs and Tom managed to shoot some coconuts out of the trees, which Mika eventually carved open with his knife so we could try some coconut milk. We went to a few bars as we worked our way back to the main island and the Finns departed for an overnight bus to Panama City. It was the first splintering of this good group and it was sad to see them go, but they seem to be having a good time down in Colombia at the moment. Tom went to get some rest as he had not slept on the bus and Dom and I went down to a local beach a Frenchman had recommended the previous day.
This beach was not that pretty, but it did have some psycho dogs and beach volleyball. The dogs were mental as one tried to rape another in the water, they kept stealing stuff to bury and eating each others face and necks. One of them even came crashing through my legs injuring my knee and I thought it had attacked me at first. The other one kept going in the water and then walking next to me and shaking dry. It did this twice. Its hard to describe how retarded these dogs were in words, but trust me they were insane. The locals invited the two of us to play beach volleyball and Dom reinjured himself. He was however a good player from his time on the Barcelona beaches. I on the other hand sucked really badly as it was the first time I had played and the locals kept trying to keep the ball away from me and were explaining I had to hit the ball up and over the next and not down (I think they thought I did not understand the game and did not realise I was just really shit). We got back and grabbed some beers. Had not heard from the Austrian girls but we bumped into them on the way back from the supermarket. We decided to meet them later and set to drinking. On the balcony we had stumbled across some Scousers and Canadians and started playing 'fuck you' and 'fuck the dealer' with some heavyweight rum. Always guaranteed to do you some damage. Anyway you can see where this night was headed. We drank a lot and then headed to another hostel as a ragtag bunch for more drink. There we were told the beer was not free but just cheaper so we took free shots and paid full price for the beer. The Austrians joined us along with a Yankee girl and I don't remember lots from the second bar. Dom informed me I was hammered, but I think I recovered by the end. One of the Canadians disappeared with the Yankee but got nowhere, one of the scousers hooked up with the simple Canadian and Dom, Tom and Regina disappeared. I stopped with Marsha on a wall somewhere in town and talked for ages while my faculties slowly returned. Then Tom passed by. He had left Dom with Regina as he felt like a third wheel and now thought he was interrupting me (which I don't think he was, but you never know for certain). The three of us returned to join Dom and Regina in another bar and drank until about 5 in the morning when they kicked us out. Marsha had told me that Regina had a boyfriend of many years and when i finally got a chance I told Dom that Regina was his Dutch girl in that situation. That didn't cheer him up and he went off for a while. So when Regina returned from the toilet I had to deal with her dagger eyes for wandering into something where I was not welcome, so to clarify (and dig myself a deeper hole) I asked her if she was interested in Dom directly. She said yes but not anything more, so I contented myself that drunk as I was, I was still right. Dom returned and we drank until someone in the bar had to take our chairs so a man who had passed out had somewhere to sleep.
In the morning I struggled to check out, but the others failed completely and lost their key deposits. I met the American girl again and another Canadian girl. We decided to grab lunch with them and Dom while Tom wandered off somewhere. We also met the Austrians again which was a little awkward after the night before but it was good to say adios. Basically we did fuck all that day and wasted the chance to go to Bocas Del Diablo which we had intended. We eventually got a boat across to get the night bus ourselves as we had resolved to shoot for the Darien. An English guy who was one of the wanker surfer crew was in the bus station so we had to tolerate him for the remains of the journey to the capital. Ironically he had said he could easily live without his I-Pod as he was bored of it, then complained when he lost it. Hah that'll learn him I thought, but he found it again on the bus and the irony was lost. I was the only one of the three of us to sleep well on the bus and we rocked into Panama City at 4am in time for the 5am bus to Yaviza in the Darien. Ah coast to coast in 24 hours. Probably a bit stupid, but an achievement nonetheless.
In the morning I got up for the free pancake breakfast and realised I had to make it myself. It was naturally really shitty, but happily for me so was Dom's when he attempted it. Those of us who don't eat Yankee pancake breakfasts ever can hardly be expected to make a good fist of making one. Maybe they could just supply us with croissants next time. After this unsatisfying dough mush Tom arrived and we all headed out to some random beach. It was nowhere near as good as the beaches on the islands in the Caribbean (a trait common all through Central America) and was covered in sand flies, so we were massacred by these midget mosquitoes. The beach was also littered with weird crabs and Tom managed to shoot some coconuts out of the trees, which Mika eventually carved open with his knife so we could try some coconut milk. We went to a few bars as we worked our way back to the main island and the Finns departed for an overnight bus to Panama City. It was the first splintering of this good group and it was sad to see them go, but they seem to be having a good time down in Colombia at the moment. Tom went to get some rest as he had not slept on the bus and Dom and I went down to a local beach a Frenchman had recommended the previous day.
This beach was not that pretty, but it did have some psycho dogs and beach volleyball. The dogs were mental as one tried to rape another in the water, they kept stealing stuff to bury and eating each others face and necks. One of them even came crashing through my legs injuring my knee and I thought it had attacked me at first. The other one kept going in the water and then walking next to me and shaking dry. It did this twice. Its hard to describe how retarded these dogs were in words, but trust me they were insane. The locals invited the two of us to play beach volleyball and Dom reinjured himself. He was however a good player from his time on the Barcelona beaches. I on the other hand sucked really badly as it was the first time I had played and the locals kept trying to keep the ball away from me and were explaining I had to hit the ball up and over the next and not down (I think they thought I did not understand the game and did not realise I was just really shit). We got back and grabbed some beers. Had not heard from the Austrian girls but we bumped into them on the way back from the supermarket. We decided to meet them later and set to drinking. On the balcony we had stumbled across some Scousers and Canadians and started playing 'fuck you' and 'fuck the dealer' with some heavyweight rum. Always guaranteed to do you some damage. Anyway you can see where this night was headed. We drank a lot and then headed to another hostel as a ragtag bunch for more drink. There we were told the beer was not free but just cheaper so we took free shots and paid full price for the beer. The Austrians joined us along with a Yankee girl and I don't remember lots from the second bar. Dom informed me I was hammered, but I think I recovered by the end. One of the Canadians disappeared with the Yankee but got nowhere, one of the scousers hooked up with the simple Canadian and Dom, Tom and Regina disappeared. I stopped with Marsha on a wall somewhere in town and talked for ages while my faculties slowly returned. Then Tom passed by. He had left Dom with Regina as he felt like a third wheel and now thought he was interrupting me (which I don't think he was, but you never know for certain). The three of us returned to join Dom and Regina in another bar and drank until about 5 in the morning when they kicked us out. Marsha had told me that Regina had a boyfriend of many years and when i finally got a chance I told Dom that Regina was his Dutch girl in that situation. That didn't cheer him up and he went off for a while. So when Regina returned from the toilet I had to deal with her dagger eyes for wandering into something where I was not welcome, so to clarify (and dig myself a deeper hole) I asked her if she was interested in Dom directly. She said yes but not anything more, so I contented myself that drunk as I was, I was still right. Dom returned and we drank until someone in the bar had to take our chairs so a man who had passed out had somewhere to sleep.
In the morning I struggled to check out, but the others failed completely and lost their key deposits. I met the American girl again and another Canadian girl. We decided to grab lunch with them and Dom while Tom wandered off somewhere. We also met the Austrians again which was a little awkward after the night before but it was good to say adios. Basically we did fuck all that day and wasted the chance to go to Bocas Del Diablo which we had intended. We eventually got a boat across to get the night bus ourselves as we had resolved to shoot for the Darien. An English guy who was one of the wanker surfer crew was in the bus station so we had to tolerate him for the remains of the journey to the capital. Ironically he had said he could easily live without his I-Pod as he was bored of it, then complained when he lost it. Hah that'll learn him I thought, but he found it again on the bus and the irony was lost. I was the only one of the three of us to sleep well on the bus and we rocked into Panama City at 4am in time for the 5am bus to Yaviza in the Darien. Ah coast to coast in 24 hours. Probably a bit stupid, but an achievement nonetheless.
Costa Rica Part 4
The Finns headed off in the morning and after breakfast I spent a large chunk of the day writing up the blog as far as I got last time. When I met Dom at the correct time to get the bus it turned out the timetable had changed and we had to grab a beer while we waited for the bus. We managed to grab the last bus down to Quepos near Manuel Antonio and bumped into some Austrian girls randomly on the bus. Regina who was rather nice and seemingly interested in Dom and Martha who was apparently 37, but I made her show me her passport to prove it as I did not believe her. We chatted for a bit and made plans to possibly meet up in Bocas Del Toro at the weekend. Once we got to Quepos we spoke with Tom and suggested he come back or meet us in Bocas, but there were problems with the buses and it looked like he would meet us in Bocas and would get there for saturday or sunday. The town had looked quite promising for a night out but we were a bit knackered. We had an eat as much as you like Italian meal (where they seemed annoyed that we had actually decided to eat as much as we liked. A visible sigh accompanying each new plate request) and then went to a few dead bars (managing to avoid giving any money to a gypo drug dealer who refused to believe we had gone on a night out with as little money as I said I had) before settling on an old school blues bar full of old Yankees.
We were staying in Hotel Majestic. Its a bit of a shitty wooden affair and the old man doorman kept following me around to check I turned lights and water off. He was also a little senile. One day he asked me what day it was and other times he just talked gibberish I could not understand. Manuel Antonio is a really cool national park. Its smallish and based around a beach and we saw so much wildlife. We saw sloths immediately upon entering, found a vulture that had shit on a Yankee and even some random black things we could not identify on the waterfall trail. Now the waterfall was dry, which you may think was a disappointment. It was, but the trail is so much remoter and as most of the guests are lazy Yanks the wildlife stays close to the trail. The black things (I was still hoping it was a cat, Dom thinks it was raccoons) made a large crash and we only caught their retreating backs as we chased them. We saw lots of lizards, a few iguanas, some raccoons and some more monkeys down on the beach front. The place is just loaded with wildlife. We even sort of saw a stick owl through someone telescope. The highlight was on the trail up to the mirador though. We suddenly found ourselves surrounded by Capuchin monkeys. We had been advised not to feed them, but they seemed not to obey these orders themselves. They seemingly had us surrounded. Everywhere we looked were monkeys and everytime you turned your back on them they would creep that little bit closer. One stole some food out of Doms hands and one of the others had a very mean face. I put my bag down to take a photo for Dom and one of them whisked off with my bag. It had only a book and a ball in it and once the monkey discovered this he seemed a little disappointed as he abandoned it. Should have got a photo, but its not instinctual for me to reach for a camera now I have not had one for 6 years. Anyway the monkey had no taste. It was Mark Twain after all. Then again maybe the monkey could only read Spanish. On the way back down the same monkey grabbed my carrier bag and after some tug of war, tore open the bag, stuffed in his hand and was again disappointed there was no food. Damn menaces, but kind of cool at the same time. The beach in Manuel Antonio is awesome however and the water really warm. Dom and I decided to vegitate around there for the rest of the afternoon before heading for some drinks in El Avion. This is an old American bomber plane thats been turned into a bar and is a cool place to grab a drink. Afterwards we headed back to town and grabbed some cheap beers to drink out by the rocks while we waited for town to get livelier. It never seemed to and so we decided to go back and sleep for a bit before heading out. In the end neither of us could be arsed to get up and we figured we would save it for the next night.
In the morning we grabbed a bus to San Jose (where I picked up both Roughing It and Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain) and got another bus on to Turrialba. We got there a little late and the others had been waiting out in the park for us. Dom's knee was still giving him trouble, but it turned out that Yoana was heading down to Colombia when we were going to be there so that was some really good news. We ended up back in the old hotel we had stayed in last time. We had let them know we were headed for Panama the next day and while I waited for Dom to get ready, the landlady told me there was a phonecall for me. I could only presume it was Karla but that was strange. I answered the phone and said hello. They said hello and what did I want. I answered I did not know because I was not sure why I had hold of the telephone. It was awkward and my Spanish was not up to it. I think it turned out that the woman had called a friend who could tell me how to get there, but I already knew that. Weird and awkward moment. Somehow the pound had also rallied. Good news all round. We gathered the old crew together when we met randomly in a restaurant which neither knew the other was in. A fate is kind sometimes. We had been joined by another older Dutch lady and did a lot of drinking, philosophising and eating around Turrialba. I had been trying to work over to chatting with Marscha but seemed to keep immersing myself in philosophical discussion. God damn it. Why can't I shut off my brain when I choose to or opt to not debate something. Ingrained stupidity is the only acceptable answer. People dropped off one by one until it was just myself, Marscha and Karla left. Karla had rightly complained that we did not get to spend any time together (and it was true and I apologise for that as always seemed to be at other ends of tables), but she also astutely saw I wanted some one to one time lol. By this point Marscha had turned down an invitation from the friend of her Dutch friend's Costa Rican boyfriend to go back to his and me and her were busy playing with each others hands, while she rejected any advances I made. Probably a good thing. I would have respected her less if she had cheated, even though I would have enjoyed that more in the short term. I tried to persuade Marscha what she really wanted to do was come to Colombia, but to no avail. Karla even tried to persuade her of the same thing and told me to take advantage of Marscha, which is not my usual style unless I am very drunk. Eventually it was just us two and we talked about hypotheticals if she hadn't had a boyfriend. Hmm hypotheticals always seem a good idea at the time, but they really are building houses with smoke clouds. The bar eventually turfed us out and we headed for the bandstand where we lay out of the rain and talked until the security guard unceremoniously threw us out. Git. I hate it when you know time is running out on you, but we headed back to the hotel. Through another random twist of fate, Marscha's family house was directly opposite our hotel. Quite funny. Less funny was the fact I could not get into my hotel. Shit. Luckily for me Marscha agreed to keep me company and we went up to the hospital to watch sunrise, still playing a bit and enjoying each others company without much expectation from either side. I can only really speak for myself, but I really enjoyed my second lack of sleep in Turrialba. She is a smart, gentle, good looking girl with a good bantering personality in a softly enticing way. Rarely for me I could enjoy someones company almost without the need to talk. Always a shame when fate deals you a good hand, but its not really yours to play. I still hope she decides to change her mind on having children. Its a waste if her genes are lost on the next generation. It had felt very comfortable on the night and there was a sort of a glow to the evening. Hmm maybe next time eh lol. Fate will throw stuff back around if something is meant to come from something, but she left a good impression on me and hopefully I at least left some mark on her. I can at least say its the most fun watching a sunrise, playing with hands that I have ever had lol. Eventually Marscha had to leave and get some sleep and I wandered around town before Dom eventually found me skulking outside and let me in. I did not sleep again and on the way to the bus station we bumped into the others. After such a good evening and a good goodbye it felt cheapened by a sudden bus station meeting with one minute until the buses left and I think I handled it really awkwardly and badly by leaving it alone when I should have said something. Oh well you live and learn. If you read this Marscha, then apologies for that ending. I fucked it up a bit, but have fun wherever you are and if you get bored feel free to trek down lol.
Anyway we hopped on a bus to Siqueres where we missed our connection and were forced to spend time in this shit town before getting a bus to Limon. On the way we chatted a lot with the bus driver and I was dead on my feet at this point. My second all nighter in just 6 days was having an effect. From Limon we grabbed a bus to the border and realised that we had not missed much by avoiding the Caribbean coast. The Finns confirmed this when they let us know they had only spent the one night in Puerto Viejo. We randomly bumped into the Austrian girls again on the bus and they said they had just written to me. We would meet them the next night in Bocas Del Toro. I finished off the remainder of Huckleberry Finn despite no sleep and it was even better than I remembered it being. I love Twain. So funny. Witty and yet not up his own arse like Oscar Wilde. If I can write this up eventually even a fraction as good as his stuff I will be very happy. The border itself was a long railway track bridge over a dirty river. Kind of like a derelict run down border (even by border town standards) and we managed to traverse the problem of onward tickets by telling them how we planned to get to Colombia. Woohoo we were in Panama. Country 41.
We were staying in Hotel Majestic. Its a bit of a shitty wooden affair and the old man doorman kept following me around to check I turned lights and water off. He was also a little senile. One day he asked me what day it was and other times he just talked gibberish I could not understand. Manuel Antonio is a really cool national park. Its smallish and based around a beach and we saw so much wildlife. We saw sloths immediately upon entering, found a vulture that had shit on a Yankee and even some random black things we could not identify on the waterfall trail. Now the waterfall was dry, which you may think was a disappointment. It was, but the trail is so much remoter and as most of the guests are lazy Yanks the wildlife stays close to the trail. The black things (I was still hoping it was a cat, Dom thinks it was raccoons) made a large crash and we only caught their retreating backs as we chased them. We saw lots of lizards, a few iguanas, some raccoons and some more monkeys down on the beach front. The place is just loaded with wildlife. We even sort of saw a stick owl through someone telescope. The highlight was on the trail up to the mirador though. We suddenly found ourselves surrounded by Capuchin monkeys. We had been advised not to feed them, but they seemed not to obey these orders themselves. They seemingly had us surrounded. Everywhere we looked were monkeys and everytime you turned your back on them they would creep that little bit closer. One stole some food out of Doms hands and one of the others had a very mean face. I put my bag down to take a photo for Dom and one of them whisked off with my bag. It had only a book and a ball in it and once the monkey discovered this he seemed a little disappointed as he abandoned it. Should have got a photo, but its not instinctual for me to reach for a camera now I have not had one for 6 years. Anyway the monkey had no taste. It was Mark Twain after all. Then again maybe the monkey could only read Spanish. On the way back down the same monkey grabbed my carrier bag and after some tug of war, tore open the bag, stuffed in his hand and was again disappointed there was no food. Damn menaces, but kind of cool at the same time. The beach in Manuel Antonio is awesome however and the water really warm. Dom and I decided to vegitate around there for the rest of the afternoon before heading for some drinks in El Avion. This is an old American bomber plane thats been turned into a bar and is a cool place to grab a drink. Afterwards we headed back to town and grabbed some cheap beers to drink out by the rocks while we waited for town to get livelier. It never seemed to and so we decided to go back and sleep for a bit before heading out. In the end neither of us could be arsed to get up and we figured we would save it for the next night.
In the morning we grabbed a bus to San Jose (where I picked up both Roughing It and Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain) and got another bus on to Turrialba. We got there a little late and the others had been waiting out in the park for us. Dom's knee was still giving him trouble, but it turned out that Yoana was heading down to Colombia when we were going to be there so that was some really good news. We ended up back in the old hotel we had stayed in last time. We had let them know we were headed for Panama the next day and while I waited for Dom to get ready, the landlady told me there was a phonecall for me. I could only presume it was Karla but that was strange. I answered the phone and said hello. They said hello and what did I want. I answered I did not know because I was not sure why I had hold of the telephone. It was awkward and my Spanish was not up to it. I think it turned out that the woman had called a friend who could tell me how to get there, but I already knew that. Weird and awkward moment. Somehow the pound had also rallied. Good news all round. We gathered the old crew together when we met randomly in a restaurant which neither knew the other was in. A fate is kind sometimes. We had been joined by another older Dutch lady and did a lot of drinking, philosophising and eating around Turrialba. I had been trying to work over to chatting with Marscha but seemed to keep immersing myself in philosophical discussion. God damn it. Why can't I shut off my brain when I choose to or opt to not debate something. Ingrained stupidity is the only acceptable answer. People dropped off one by one until it was just myself, Marscha and Karla left. Karla had rightly complained that we did not get to spend any time together (and it was true and I apologise for that as always seemed to be at other ends of tables), but she also astutely saw I wanted some one to one time lol. By this point Marscha had turned down an invitation from the friend of her Dutch friend's Costa Rican boyfriend to go back to his and me and her were busy playing with each others hands, while she rejected any advances I made. Probably a good thing. I would have respected her less if she had cheated, even though I would have enjoyed that more in the short term. I tried to persuade Marscha what she really wanted to do was come to Colombia, but to no avail. Karla even tried to persuade her of the same thing and told me to take advantage of Marscha, which is not my usual style unless I am very drunk. Eventually it was just us two and we talked about hypotheticals if she hadn't had a boyfriend. Hmm hypotheticals always seem a good idea at the time, but they really are building houses with smoke clouds. The bar eventually turfed us out and we headed for the bandstand where we lay out of the rain and talked until the security guard unceremoniously threw us out. Git. I hate it when you know time is running out on you, but we headed back to the hotel. Through another random twist of fate, Marscha's family house was directly opposite our hotel. Quite funny. Less funny was the fact I could not get into my hotel. Shit. Luckily for me Marscha agreed to keep me company and we went up to the hospital to watch sunrise, still playing a bit and enjoying each others company without much expectation from either side. I can only really speak for myself, but I really enjoyed my second lack of sleep in Turrialba. She is a smart, gentle, good looking girl with a good bantering personality in a softly enticing way. Rarely for me I could enjoy someones company almost without the need to talk. Always a shame when fate deals you a good hand, but its not really yours to play. I still hope she decides to change her mind on having children. Its a waste if her genes are lost on the next generation. It had felt very comfortable on the night and there was a sort of a glow to the evening. Hmm maybe next time eh lol. Fate will throw stuff back around if something is meant to come from something, but she left a good impression on me and hopefully I at least left some mark on her. I can at least say its the most fun watching a sunrise, playing with hands that I have ever had lol. Eventually Marscha had to leave and get some sleep and I wandered around town before Dom eventually found me skulking outside and let me in. I did not sleep again and on the way to the bus station we bumped into the others. After such a good evening and a good goodbye it felt cheapened by a sudden bus station meeting with one minute until the buses left and I think I handled it really awkwardly and badly by leaving it alone when I should have said something. Oh well you live and learn. If you read this Marscha, then apologies for that ending. I fucked it up a bit, but have fun wherever you are and if you get bored feel free to trek down lol.
Anyway we hopped on a bus to Siqueres where we missed our connection and were forced to spend time in this shit town before getting a bus to Limon. On the way we chatted a lot with the bus driver and I was dead on my feet at this point. My second all nighter in just 6 days was having an effect. From Limon we grabbed a bus to the border and realised that we had not missed much by avoiding the Caribbean coast. The Finns confirmed this when they let us know they had only spent the one night in Puerto Viejo. We randomly bumped into the Austrian girls again on the bus and they said they had just written to me. We would meet them the next night in Bocas Del Toro. I finished off the remainder of Huckleberry Finn despite no sleep and it was even better than I remembered it being. I love Twain. So funny. Witty and yet not up his own arse like Oscar Wilde. If I can write this up eventually even a fraction as good as his stuff I will be very happy. The border itself was a long railway track bridge over a dirty river. Kind of like a derelict run down border (even by border town standards) and we managed to traverse the problem of onward tickets by telling them how we planned to get to Colombia. Woohoo we were in Panama. Country 41.
Costa Rica Part3
Ok the computer just fucked with me, telling me it erased my part 2. Lying pile of shit. We set off for Turrialba bus station and while we waited for the bus to San Jose the owner of the hotel Herza turned up. They had been great to us for all of our stay, but Dom was surprised he was so nice as to come and see us off on our journey. Oh whoops. Apparently Mike had just accidentally kept the room key in his pocket and the hotel owner needed it. Ah strange how wrong first impressions can be sometimes. We were all mullered from lack of sleep and I was feeling physically sick. Once we arrived in San Jose we headed across to the bus station to get a bus for San Isidro De General. All of us were milling around waiting for the bus to go when some random guy sat down next to me and started to yammer gibberish to me in Spanish. I called over to Dom to see if he could understand it which distracted the others. Inka was working on something and Laura had noticed a guy come to mop up the spilled coke. Then the gibberish talker walked off. Strange. The next minute there was cry from Inka and the bag with all three guys' passports had been stolen. It must have been a distraction tactic to whip the bag away. Bollocks. Where could it have gone? Worse news for Laura, because she had already lost one passport on this trip up in Guatemala. Shit I tried to say to Mika we should scour the bus station as they may chuck what they dont need, but I did not feel to confident. The man cleaning the tables was nowhere to be seen amongst the staff and Dom was frantically trying to track the guy down. Inka was distraught and we tried to come up with a contingency plan and the mountain was off. We would have to stay in San Jose. Inka phoned home to get the card cancelled and the Finns were down from 3 cards to 1 for their trip now and the rest of the trip was badly damaged. I suggested we stay in our old San Jose hostel and we set off to make arrangements. Just as we were leaving a random guy in black walks up and hands back their bag. He claimed he found it on the side. They had their passports back again. They had lost around $60 and a bank card, but at least they could carry on with their journey. I wish someone had brought mine back in Santo Domingo. I could understand their despair when they lost them, but the relief and the euphoria must have been hard to deal with when they were miraculously returned. Sometimes you just get really lucky. It was suspicious, but we could not accuse the guy of much because it would be harsh if he was actually innocent. So we bought new seats on the next bus (we had got a refund on the old ones) and then proceeded to miss that bus through bad timekeeping. Fate really did not want us on that mountain. When we eventually did get on a bus we were supposed to, it left so late that we were forced to get a taxi onto the hostel in the small town at the base of Chirippo. We paid up the park entrance fee and made the taxi driver wait for 15 minutes before getting him to drive us further than he had expected. That will teach the guy to fleece us a bit. I found out they had no sleeping bags to rent. Fuck. I was going to die up there. I still vividly remembered Yellowstone. I discovered that Spurs had somehow beaten Villa away from home. We had a shot at Europe now. We had bought a load of food in San Jose and we now divided it up between the backpacks to climb to the summit (we were woefully underprepared for good meals but we had enough for subsistence). The hostel even managed to rent me out a sleeping bag and after a luxuriously needed rest that night we were ready to tackle the mountain in the morning.
The mountain is 3820m high (the highest in Central America. There are 3 higher volcanoes in Guatemala, but I am deliberately playing with semantics for my advantage). The trail is 14km to the hostel at the top and another 6km to the summit. The base is at 1500m more or less so we were going to ascend 2300m or so in one day, though originally we set off with the intention to summit it in the morning. Initially it started off brutally steep and I decided to time each of the mile stages to see our progress (they are clearly signposted). We hit the first one in 31 minutes and not including breaks it was the slowest we managed. The trail snakes up through pretty forests, but you don't feel like you are really on a mountain until you make it to around 11km into the trail. There is a hut about 7km into the trail for lunch breaks and it comes just before the brutal ascend between 8km and 10km. Its not too strenuous a trail and the pace at which we took it left me comfortably untired at the top (The mammoth amount of hiking on this trip has left me in great shape). Mika got the worst of it because he carried extra packweight for Laura and Inka. We had met a crazy Yankee old man who yomped this trail every once in a while but the ascent was marked by the veritable lack of people we came across. Only some Yankees at the top, who warned us not to head right at some rocks on the final ascent because it had taken them way off track. We felt duly warned and vowed to watch for this tricky pathway. We managed to reach the hostel for around 1.30pm having started to ascend at 6am. A comfortable time. Dom and I decided we wanted to push for the summit and take in a sunset from the top. We rattled along at a much faster pace of 5km an hour for the first part. We found the rocks the Yankees had mentioned and thought we were going the wrong way because it was too simple a path, but we soon realised the Yankees were the simple ones. They had somewhow gone direct right and forded a river. How can you do that by accident? Oh well. We missed the path off to the left for the lake because the fog was in heavy and the final 200m is a brutal near vertical scramble that would damage Dom's knee and leave me in need of a few breaks. It is the toughest part of the climb. At the top we signed into the book and this was now officially the highest I had ever been by 220m. Cotopaxi is going to piss on that record. I had not suffered at all from altitude sickness and I did not even think the air was any thinner at this altitude. So Inca Trail should be easy enough. We had covered the final 6km in an hour and a half. We rested and admired the fog. Fucking Poas all over again. Then it started to clear. But only in stages. Sort of like a musician toying with your patience. Directing us this way and that to see the lakes, then the valley, then the sea, then another lake. Piece by piece the mountain divulged her beauty to us until finally the grand finale as the fog cleared up and we could see both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Awesome. Dom and I froze a little waiting for the fogs performance and played with a little ball on the mountain top, while I explained my plans for Colombia and he seemed to like the idea. Then we descended as the sun came down and covered the ground back in the dark. We had had to borrow a camping stove and gas to cook dinner and all of us turfed in expecting to get up early to summit again. At least that was the plan.
The others were up at 2am to summit the mountain, but Dom and I decided to lie in and sleep. They made it and back by 8am although Laura had further injured her leg. With her injury and Dom's bad knee we were in serious danger of missing the bus at 2pm from the base back to San Isidro. Damn it. I had no money and there were no ATM's here. I decided we would set a rhythmic march down and time the stages. Its motivational to give a sense of progress and it also fires the competitive spirit when you are attemtping to beat you previous record. We decided to have breakfast quickly first and the gas caught fire as Mika cooked with it. We all ducked expecting a kitchen explosion but it fizzled out, we ate and set off. At the beginning we set off at a rapid clip and averaged 15 minute kilometres. That was more than fast enough and even after lunch we were over half an hour up on where we needed to me. The only dispiriting moment came when we missed the 3km marker and we thought we were slowing down too much. The others were still limping along so Mika and I decided to set off rapidly ahead and get the stuff ready from storage in the hostel. We set the fastest kilometre at 10 minutes and I felt that was a good effort. Back in the hostel we got everything ready for the others and prepared everything. Just then the skies opened fire on us. Laura was going to pack her history book on the outside of the back spine down in a storm. Dom offered to take it to stop the lunacy and we set off. I have no rain coat at this point so I was battered beyond belief and most of my wardrobe got cleaned out. I was fast running out of clothes, but made a fast time to the bus stop where I realised my dry change of clothes were actually wetter than the pair that had got wet on the walk. Fuck. We got the bus back into San Isidro and found a hotel with 5 beds in one room. Nice. Saves logistics. I went out to see if Tom was joining us as planned. Instead he had pushed onto Panama City across the border and because I had received a positive answer from the Dutch girl I was in no mood to cross just yet. I proposed to Dom that in the morning we should head to Manuel Antonio and then push on via Turrialba to Bocas Del Toro. He liked the plan and the Finns made preparations to push the other way to the Caribbean coast in the morning. We would meet up again on saturday for Inka's birthday.
San Isidro de General seems to have an unbelievable number of fit women. Its population is only 40,000, which is half the size of my home town, but it probably has 100 times more good looking women. It may even have been fitter than San Jose (Costa Rican women in general were pretty good looking). We grabbed dinner and then headed for some ice cream. I asked for some ice cream and some coke and they put some ice cream in a coke cup. I was laughing as Dom thought they were going to pour coke on top of this. Not sure what they were doing, but I am not sure they did either. We were still having the same left and right issues. The locals would point right and tell you something was left. I think we met only three Costa Ricans who were able to tell left from right. Now they would say it and any of our group would just burst out laughing from the ridiculousness of it. The Finns had gone back to sleep as they had been up since 2am, but Dom and I went to sit in the square and ended up adopting a cute puppy we named Astoria after our hotel. He had followed us back so we let him stay in the room. Thought in the middle of the night he drank from the toilet bowl and I had to let him outside. Later there were yelps at the door but the owner scared him off so we never found out what happened to him. Indeed Inka and Mika never even saw him. In the morning there were what looked like paw prints in sick down the corridor so I assume he was sick after the toilet water and the owner kicked him out. Was sad as he was a really cool puppy.
The mountain is 3820m high (the highest in Central America. There are 3 higher volcanoes in Guatemala, but I am deliberately playing with semantics for my advantage). The trail is 14km to the hostel at the top and another 6km to the summit. The base is at 1500m more or less so we were going to ascend 2300m or so in one day, though originally we set off with the intention to summit it in the morning. Initially it started off brutally steep and I decided to time each of the mile stages to see our progress (they are clearly signposted). We hit the first one in 31 minutes and not including breaks it was the slowest we managed. The trail snakes up through pretty forests, but you don't feel like you are really on a mountain until you make it to around 11km into the trail. There is a hut about 7km into the trail for lunch breaks and it comes just before the brutal ascend between 8km and 10km. Its not too strenuous a trail and the pace at which we took it left me comfortably untired at the top (The mammoth amount of hiking on this trip has left me in great shape). Mika got the worst of it because he carried extra packweight for Laura and Inka. We had met a crazy Yankee old man who yomped this trail every once in a while but the ascent was marked by the veritable lack of people we came across. Only some Yankees at the top, who warned us not to head right at some rocks on the final ascent because it had taken them way off track. We felt duly warned and vowed to watch for this tricky pathway. We managed to reach the hostel for around 1.30pm having started to ascend at 6am. A comfortable time. Dom and I decided we wanted to push for the summit and take in a sunset from the top. We rattled along at a much faster pace of 5km an hour for the first part. We found the rocks the Yankees had mentioned and thought we were going the wrong way because it was too simple a path, but we soon realised the Yankees were the simple ones. They had somewhow gone direct right and forded a river. How can you do that by accident? Oh well. We missed the path off to the left for the lake because the fog was in heavy and the final 200m is a brutal near vertical scramble that would damage Dom's knee and leave me in need of a few breaks. It is the toughest part of the climb. At the top we signed into the book and this was now officially the highest I had ever been by 220m. Cotopaxi is going to piss on that record. I had not suffered at all from altitude sickness and I did not even think the air was any thinner at this altitude. So Inca Trail should be easy enough. We had covered the final 6km in an hour and a half. We rested and admired the fog. Fucking Poas all over again. Then it started to clear. But only in stages. Sort of like a musician toying with your patience. Directing us this way and that to see the lakes, then the valley, then the sea, then another lake. Piece by piece the mountain divulged her beauty to us until finally the grand finale as the fog cleared up and we could see both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Awesome. Dom and I froze a little waiting for the fogs performance and played with a little ball on the mountain top, while I explained my plans for Colombia and he seemed to like the idea. Then we descended as the sun came down and covered the ground back in the dark. We had had to borrow a camping stove and gas to cook dinner and all of us turfed in expecting to get up early to summit again. At least that was the plan.
The others were up at 2am to summit the mountain, but Dom and I decided to lie in and sleep. They made it and back by 8am although Laura had further injured her leg. With her injury and Dom's bad knee we were in serious danger of missing the bus at 2pm from the base back to San Isidro. Damn it. I had no money and there were no ATM's here. I decided we would set a rhythmic march down and time the stages. Its motivational to give a sense of progress and it also fires the competitive spirit when you are attemtping to beat you previous record. We decided to have breakfast quickly first and the gas caught fire as Mika cooked with it. We all ducked expecting a kitchen explosion but it fizzled out, we ate and set off. At the beginning we set off at a rapid clip and averaged 15 minute kilometres. That was more than fast enough and even after lunch we were over half an hour up on where we needed to me. The only dispiriting moment came when we missed the 3km marker and we thought we were slowing down too much. The others were still limping along so Mika and I decided to set off rapidly ahead and get the stuff ready from storage in the hostel. We set the fastest kilometre at 10 minutes and I felt that was a good effort. Back in the hostel we got everything ready for the others and prepared everything. Just then the skies opened fire on us. Laura was going to pack her history book on the outside of the back spine down in a storm. Dom offered to take it to stop the lunacy and we set off. I have no rain coat at this point so I was battered beyond belief and most of my wardrobe got cleaned out. I was fast running out of clothes, but made a fast time to the bus stop where I realised my dry change of clothes were actually wetter than the pair that had got wet on the walk. Fuck. We got the bus back into San Isidro and found a hotel with 5 beds in one room. Nice. Saves logistics. I went out to see if Tom was joining us as planned. Instead he had pushed onto Panama City across the border and because I had received a positive answer from the Dutch girl I was in no mood to cross just yet. I proposed to Dom that in the morning we should head to Manuel Antonio and then push on via Turrialba to Bocas Del Toro. He liked the plan and the Finns made preparations to push the other way to the Caribbean coast in the morning. We would meet up again on saturday for Inka's birthday.
San Isidro de General seems to have an unbelievable number of fit women. Its population is only 40,000, which is half the size of my home town, but it probably has 100 times more good looking women. It may even have been fitter than San Jose (Costa Rican women in general were pretty good looking). We grabbed dinner and then headed for some ice cream. I asked for some ice cream and some coke and they put some ice cream in a coke cup. I was laughing as Dom thought they were going to pour coke on top of this. Not sure what they were doing, but I am not sure they did either. We were still having the same left and right issues. The locals would point right and tell you something was left. I think we met only three Costa Ricans who were able to tell left from right. Now they would say it and any of our group would just burst out laughing from the ridiculousness of it. The Finns had gone back to sleep as they had been up since 2am, but Dom and I went to sit in the square and ended up adopting a cute puppy we named Astoria after our hotel. He had followed us back so we let him stay in the room. Thought in the middle of the night he drank from the toilet bowl and I had to let him outside. Later there were yelps at the door but the owner scared him off so we never found out what happened to him. Indeed Inka and Mika never even saw him. In the morning there were what looked like paw prints in sick down the corridor so I assume he was sick after the toilet water and the owner kicked him out. Was sad as he was a really cool puppy.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Costa Rica Part 2
Man I am writing this slightly hungover after a battering late night session in Panama City with some young English kids and a 2 litre bottle of industrial strength rum (at least it said rum on the label). Have to do some serious catching up as in danger of running behind. Last time I left this thing I was heading to San Jose. Well that morning was apparently bitterly cold though I can't say I actually remember it that clearly. The Finns (after our pax Costa Ricana for the rafting and Chirippo) decided to stay in Alajuela (a small town to the north west of San Jose) rather than San Jose itself. I figured I had to complete my record of staying in every capital no matter how shit (shout out to Tegucigalpa). When I got into town I was mobbed by the usual taxi driver scum yapping about how dangerous this and that street was and how I would be murdered at leats 15 times if I decided to cross this street and for merely half my life savings I could have a pointlessly unnecessary taxi ride. I passed on the offer and walked to my hostel. $10 but I did get a stodgy pancake breakfast included. Damn Yankees meant it was pancake breakfasts everywhere and it was at this point that I decided it was impossible to stay on budget in this country and abandoned my frugality. The city itself is not bad, except for the really dodgy red light district area I walked through to the hostel. To be fair to the taxi vultures it probably is a slightly shayd area and a taxi may be a good idea if you are not that street savvy. There are a few museums in town, but I could not be bothered to visit any really. The art gallery would have been fun, but I was not in town for the free day sadly. Its got some moderately pretty parts and is probably worth a day or two. The women here are stunning as well. Costa Rica comfortably has the best looking women in Central America. There is not really a contest there. In the hostel I bumped into Dom and Tom again. I managed to persuade them to join us for the rafting and we now had a group of six (although Dom had injured his leg in a motorcycle accident in Ometepe and was struggling with some injuries). He has been to see the hospital in San Jose and successfully managed to avoid paying a $100 medical bill because his insurance company seemed incapable of actually doing their job. Other than that it was pretty uneventful. My room consisted of an insane man from Colorado who believed Dick Cheney does not possess his own heart and some bitch Austrian Californian. I hate Californians. She ended up bitching me and calling me an idiot because I said New York feels like London to me. Fuckwit. I still stand by my assessment but was so stunned by the attack I did not really give a good defence for myself.
In the morning I set of on a bus to Volcan Poas and was going to join the Finns on the bus. I got there fgractionally early and luckily I can remember what happened on the day because the water seems to have eaten away the majority of this day from my notes. Ironically it has left the phrase 'could not see anything' as all that is left of the day. Ah who says fate has no sense of humour. I got chatting with a Peruvian girl for some time on the way down and then joined the Finns. Volcan Poas looks stunning in photos and David the Costa Rican guy had identified it for me from my book. Its the most visited national park in Costa Rica and it requires no walking (perfect for the Yankees). It also suffers froma lot of cloud cover. We got there early afternoon and got the stunning view of fog. It was one of the prettiest fogs I have ever seen, but probably not worth $16. The fog refused to clear and only gave us the odd teasing glimpse of what might have been and what we could have seen. We never got to see the crater and the lake was completely shrouded for the whole time we were there. The walking trail was closed for refurbishment and we had to wait 2 hours before the bus headed back. It was the only disappointing waste of time I had in Costa Rica, but it was a spectacularly huge waste of time. Afterwards we got the bus back and I arranged to meet the Finns the next day at the bus station to head to Turrialba. It seems odd writing about people you now know quite well as if they were passing acquaintances that they were at the time. I imagine it will seem even weirder when i come to write this thing up properly as a book of some kind.
On the way back I had made up my mind that I would take the boat to Cartagena as it sounded kind of cool. As soon as I arrived back into the hostel Tom mentioned how he had met an English guy who had done to Olbaldia route. Ok it was back on. Fastest u-turn of mind in history. The English guy had said there was a cool hostel on the frontier and the whole thing cost him not much more than 60 pounds. It was going to be the cheapest way to cross the frontier and we now had a group to take it on with. Oh well we got chatting with some English guys in the garden and got some beers in for a drinking session. One of the English guys had been kidnapped and had a hood placed over his head before he was driven to various cashpoints in Nicaragua to withdraw cash before being abandoned in a field somewhere when his usefulness had expired. Interesting experience. We just drank and chatted and survived more conspiracy theories from the Coloradan. He kept insisting he wanted to show me the local prostitutes in the casino down the road but we never went along.
The next day has possibly the shortest bullet points ever. In the morning I got chatting with a Polish girl who Dom had been chatting up the night previously according to Tom. After a while I found out she had stayed with Geli and Sergio in Xalapa as well and was the very Polish girl they had told me about and who they had liked so much. I could see why. She had good energy and I enjoyed the morning chat that made both of us a little late getting out of San Jose. The three of us grabbed some books from a good shop we had found and headed to meet the Finns. From there we grabbed a bus to Turrialba and found a nice hotel in Hotel Herza. We had got a rafting company down to $55 for a group of our size, but the hotel owner's friend had offered us $60. As he was right there and it meant we could be lazy and just head out to meet Karla for drinks we decided to book in with them and head out. Tom got us into Anglo pitcher drinking and we really should not have drunk as much as we did considering the night was a light one, but thats always the way once you start on the pitchers. Ah I forgot one thing. Just as we left San Jose we got stuck in a conversation with a couple of annoying hippies from England who believed we could all live in a lovely peaceful collective. The girl was devastated when I shattered her happy ruleless utopia with the question of what they would do with a murderer. She said they would not lock them up so i pointed out they would probably do it again. Or if I was bigger than someone else why don't I just take their food and get them to work for me. Her argument was that people liked to work and noone would do that. Its really difficult to have an argument with that kind of naivety and ignorance, but sometimes its necessary to get them to think that societal constraints were invented to stop the strong taking advantage of the weak. Ah I hate hippy lefties. They poison the word liberal for the rest of us. Back in Turrialba we met Karla and stayed out for some drinks on a quiet night before turfing in for the rafting.
I had played Mika a few times at chess that night and this morning. He smashed me in the first game (It was kind of embarassingly easy for him). The other two were Somme like trench warfare chess games which we won one each. They were neck and neck for the entire game and both games were won from only one mistake. It did make for some good if a little long games. That morning the guide was late. Shit. Was he even legitimate. Had we just pissed away about $300 between us. All of us were concerned, but abaout half an hour late he rocks up and we headed out to the river. Here we seemingly waited for hours because the other tourists were either late or delayed. Without Dom it was left for me and Inka to try to decipher the Spanish that was being spoken. Tom ended up wandering off to skim some stones and the rest of us just descended into abject boredom. Eventually we were awoken by a huge bunch of Canadians and their assorted allies who had been sailing around the world for 10 months studying on board a yacht. Why did my university never do anything that cool. We got a crash course in white water rafting commands and set off down the river as the first dingy. Both Mika and Tom had done white water kayaking (In fact in New Zealand white water kayaking is a school class as one option instead of languages. Class), but none of us had rafted. National geographic had classified the Pacuare as one of the most beautiful rivers to run on a raft and it was also in the Lonely Planet Adventure Travel Book (Possibly the best investment I ever made). It was stunningly beautiful as we glided through the jungle and wrestled with the rapids. They were not too hardcore with only 4 that were class 4. You can do a class 4 and 5 run on this river, but only if you have class 4 experience. We do now and all of us want to run something tougher. The first feasible chance looks like it will come near Banos in Ecuador. A few people got chucked from the other rafts, but the closest we got was when Mika was bounced at the front end. I did have my foot caught underneath me on a 'get in' command on a class 4 and injured my leg. Nothing too serious though. The class 3's are good as you buck and rumble down them, but the 'get in' commands only really came for the class 4s and they were fun as you get tossed and ricocheted around the boat. We spotted Montezuma birds from the raft and the scenery alone is worth the trip, but all of us loved the rafting (though I think Tom wanted something a bit more hardcore). I did meet a Canadian the other day in Bocas Del Toro though, whos friend had drowned getting trapped under driftwood in the rapids so it can be dangerous. We broke for lunch just as the skies opened up for a downpour. We feasted (Me and Mika more than the others) upon lots of fresh and incredibly sweet pineapple and melon and the downpour eased up just as we were headed back for the boats. Almost as if God wanted to give us a boost of water for the second half of the run. Most of the way down we were turfed out of the boat by the guide and floated downriver part swimming for about 10 to 15 minutes. It was nice and refreshing. I love swimming in outdoor bodies of water now (something I had sadly never done in the UK). Afterwards we headed back got changed and went out with Karla and her friends again for some drinks. We were a little late, but we met up with Karla and two Dutch girls Marscha and Siska. Marscha was very good looking and most of the guys had noticed that from the beginning. I tried to engineer it that I would get to chat with her and we all had a good chat over dinner. Afterwards we decided to bar hop around the backstreets of Turrialba in varous cheaper and less cheaper places. One place had a fussball table. Dom and Siska kicked mine and Lauras arses, but then I suck at that game. I ended up talking deep philosophy with the two Dutch girls and trying to persuade Marscha that she really does want to have kids lol. Eventually after everywhere had shut we had to construct a plan to get more alcohol. Marscha suggested she had a bottle of rum back at the school and me and her would set off to get it. Just then Karla managed to get us into the final bar Charlies. Normally I would be happy, but I was actually a little disappointed because I was looking for some good one to one time. Once we got in the bar everyone seemed to pair up with each other. Inka and Mika had headed back because we had to leave early in the morning to get as far as the base of Mount Chirippo the next day. Not sure how I would structure this as lots happened over the night, but I really want to focus specifically on something else. Think I will take care of the former first. Tom ended up hooking up with Karla and disappearing somewhere at the end of the evening. Dom looked like he may pair up with Laura and Marscha asked me if they were going to. I thought I would not be surprised but could not say for certain. Marscha and me stayed chatting on anything and everything and she never flinched from body contact, but neither did she reciprocate. Tough to read. I also knew she had a boyfriend so did not try anything, but I enjoyed the company and when we departed at the end of the night I figured I wanted to clarify something I had mistakenly not done that night. After I said goodbye to the Dutch girls I ended up running the wrong way to the hotel. I was accosted by some Ticos who told me it was dangerous out (I had suspected they themselves were going to mug me) and sent me in the right direction. Having found the hotel I realised I was locked out and had to knock on our room window. Dom answered the door and informed me he was with Laura. Ah shit. No sleep for me then. I nestled down on the computer and only left when i had to creep past the room for a nighttime shit. The next minute the sun was up and Laura was asking me if I had seen Tom. I figured she was nuts because he was off with Karla (or so I thought), but apparently he had come back and climbed into the room through the bedroom window therefore disturbing Dom somewhat. The three of us ended up chatting on the balcony and I figured I would send Marscha a message hinting at my interest unequivocally and then wait on a reply to see what I would do when I got down from the mountain. I would head back via Turrialba if positive and push on through David and Chiriqui province if it wasn't. Tom decided he would stay to see Karla again the next night (and in my understanding another one afterwards), while Dom decided he would join us despite the injury. Mika and Inka got a brief summary of a night in which 4 of the 6 of us had not slept at all. So those straggling survivors from our group decided to set off for a bus to the mountain. I would go to climb this thing and await my answer when I got back down probably.
In the morning I set of on a bus to Volcan Poas and was going to join the Finns on the bus. I got there fgractionally early and luckily I can remember what happened on the day because the water seems to have eaten away the majority of this day from my notes. Ironically it has left the phrase 'could not see anything' as all that is left of the day. Ah who says fate has no sense of humour. I got chatting with a Peruvian girl for some time on the way down and then joined the Finns. Volcan Poas looks stunning in photos and David the Costa Rican guy had identified it for me from my book. Its the most visited national park in Costa Rica and it requires no walking (perfect for the Yankees). It also suffers froma lot of cloud cover. We got there early afternoon and got the stunning view of fog. It was one of the prettiest fogs I have ever seen, but probably not worth $16. The fog refused to clear and only gave us the odd teasing glimpse of what might have been and what we could have seen. We never got to see the crater and the lake was completely shrouded for the whole time we were there. The walking trail was closed for refurbishment and we had to wait 2 hours before the bus headed back. It was the only disappointing waste of time I had in Costa Rica, but it was a spectacularly huge waste of time. Afterwards we got the bus back and I arranged to meet the Finns the next day at the bus station to head to Turrialba. It seems odd writing about people you now know quite well as if they were passing acquaintances that they were at the time. I imagine it will seem even weirder when i come to write this thing up properly as a book of some kind.
On the way back I had made up my mind that I would take the boat to Cartagena as it sounded kind of cool. As soon as I arrived back into the hostel Tom mentioned how he had met an English guy who had done to Olbaldia route. Ok it was back on. Fastest u-turn of mind in history. The English guy had said there was a cool hostel on the frontier and the whole thing cost him not much more than 60 pounds. It was going to be the cheapest way to cross the frontier and we now had a group to take it on with. Oh well we got chatting with some English guys in the garden and got some beers in for a drinking session. One of the English guys had been kidnapped and had a hood placed over his head before he was driven to various cashpoints in Nicaragua to withdraw cash before being abandoned in a field somewhere when his usefulness had expired. Interesting experience. We just drank and chatted and survived more conspiracy theories from the Coloradan. He kept insisting he wanted to show me the local prostitutes in the casino down the road but we never went along.
The next day has possibly the shortest bullet points ever. In the morning I got chatting with a Polish girl who Dom had been chatting up the night previously according to Tom. After a while I found out she had stayed with Geli and Sergio in Xalapa as well and was the very Polish girl they had told me about and who they had liked so much. I could see why. She had good energy and I enjoyed the morning chat that made both of us a little late getting out of San Jose. The three of us grabbed some books from a good shop we had found and headed to meet the Finns. From there we grabbed a bus to Turrialba and found a nice hotel in Hotel Herza. We had got a rafting company down to $55 for a group of our size, but the hotel owner's friend had offered us $60. As he was right there and it meant we could be lazy and just head out to meet Karla for drinks we decided to book in with them and head out. Tom got us into Anglo pitcher drinking and we really should not have drunk as much as we did considering the night was a light one, but thats always the way once you start on the pitchers. Ah I forgot one thing. Just as we left San Jose we got stuck in a conversation with a couple of annoying hippies from England who believed we could all live in a lovely peaceful collective. The girl was devastated when I shattered her happy ruleless utopia with the question of what they would do with a murderer. She said they would not lock them up so i pointed out they would probably do it again. Or if I was bigger than someone else why don't I just take their food and get them to work for me. Her argument was that people liked to work and noone would do that. Its really difficult to have an argument with that kind of naivety and ignorance, but sometimes its necessary to get them to think that societal constraints were invented to stop the strong taking advantage of the weak. Ah I hate hippy lefties. They poison the word liberal for the rest of us. Back in Turrialba we met Karla and stayed out for some drinks on a quiet night before turfing in for the rafting.
I had played Mika a few times at chess that night and this morning. He smashed me in the first game (It was kind of embarassingly easy for him). The other two were Somme like trench warfare chess games which we won one each. They were neck and neck for the entire game and both games were won from only one mistake. It did make for some good if a little long games. That morning the guide was late. Shit. Was he even legitimate. Had we just pissed away about $300 between us. All of us were concerned, but abaout half an hour late he rocks up and we headed out to the river. Here we seemingly waited for hours because the other tourists were either late or delayed. Without Dom it was left for me and Inka to try to decipher the Spanish that was being spoken. Tom ended up wandering off to skim some stones and the rest of us just descended into abject boredom. Eventually we were awoken by a huge bunch of Canadians and their assorted allies who had been sailing around the world for 10 months studying on board a yacht. Why did my university never do anything that cool. We got a crash course in white water rafting commands and set off down the river as the first dingy. Both Mika and Tom had done white water kayaking (In fact in New Zealand white water kayaking is a school class as one option instead of languages. Class), but none of us had rafted. National geographic had classified the Pacuare as one of the most beautiful rivers to run on a raft and it was also in the Lonely Planet Adventure Travel Book (Possibly the best investment I ever made). It was stunningly beautiful as we glided through the jungle and wrestled with the rapids. They were not too hardcore with only 4 that were class 4. You can do a class 4 and 5 run on this river, but only if you have class 4 experience. We do now and all of us want to run something tougher. The first feasible chance looks like it will come near Banos in Ecuador. A few people got chucked from the other rafts, but the closest we got was when Mika was bounced at the front end. I did have my foot caught underneath me on a 'get in' command on a class 4 and injured my leg. Nothing too serious though. The class 3's are good as you buck and rumble down them, but the 'get in' commands only really came for the class 4s and they were fun as you get tossed and ricocheted around the boat. We spotted Montezuma birds from the raft and the scenery alone is worth the trip, but all of us loved the rafting (though I think Tom wanted something a bit more hardcore). I did meet a Canadian the other day in Bocas Del Toro though, whos friend had drowned getting trapped under driftwood in the rapids so it can be dangerous. We broke for lunch just as the skies opened up for a downpour. We feasted (Me and Mika more than the others) upon lots of fresh and incredibly sweet pineapple and melon and the downpour eased up just as we were headed back for the boats. Almost as if God wanted to give us a boost of water for the second half of the run. Most of the way down we were turfed out of the boat by the guide and floated downriver part swimming for about 10 to 15 minutes. It was nice and refreshing. I love swimming in outdoor bodies of water now (something I had sadly never done in the UK). Afterwards we headed back got changed and went out with Karla and her friends again for some drinks. We were a little late, but we met up with Karla and two Dutch girls Marscha and Siska. Marscha was very good looking and most of the guys had noticed that from the beginning. I tried to engineer it that I would get to chat with her and we all had a good chat over dinner. Afterwards we decided to bar hop around the backstreets of Turrialba in varous cheaper and less cheaper places. One place had a fussball table. Dom and Siska kicked mine and Lauras arses, but then I suck at that game. I ended up talking deep philosophy with the two Dutch girls and trying to persuade Marscha that she really does want to have kids lol. Eventually after everywhere had shut we had to construct a plan to get more alcohol. Marscha suggested she had a bottle of rum back at the school and me and her would set off to get it. Just then Karla managed to get us into the final bar Charlies. Normally I would be happy, but I was actually a little disappointed because I was looking for some good one to one time. Once we got in the bar everyone seemed to pair up with each other. Inka and Mika had headed back because we had to leave early in the morning to get as far as the base of Mount Chirippo the next day. Not sure how I would structure this as lots happened over the night, but I really want to focus specifically on something else. Think I will take care of the former first. Tom ended up hooking up with Karla and disappearing somewhere at the end of the evening. Dom looked like he may pair up with Laura and Marscha asked me if they were going to. I thought I would not be surprised but could not say for certain. Marscha and me stayed chatting on anything and everything and she never flinched from body contact, but neither did she reciprocate. Tough to read. I also knew she had a boyfriend so did not try anything, but I enjoyed the company and when we departed at the end of the night I figured I wanted to clarify something I had mistakenly not done that night. After I said goodbye to the Dutch girls I ended up running the wrong way to the hotel. I was accosted by some Ticos who told me it was dangerous out (I had suspected they themselves were going to mug me) and sent me in the right direction. Having found the hotel I realised I was locked out and had to knock on our room window. Dom answered the door and informed me he was with Laura. Ah shit. No sleep for me then. I nestled down on the computer and only left when i had to creep past the room for a nighttime shit. The next minute the sun was up and Laura was asking me if I had seen Tom. I figured she was nuts because he was off with Karla (or so I thought), but apparently he had come back and climbed into the room through the bedroom window therefore disturbing Dom somewhat. The three of us ended up chatting on the balcony and I figured I would send Marscha a message hinting at my interest unequivocally and then wait on a reply to see what I would do when I got down from the mountain. I would head back via Turrialba if positive and push on through David and Chiriqui province if it wasn't. Tom decided he would stay to see Karla again the next night (and in my understanding another one afterwards), while Dom decided he would join us despite the injury. Mika and Inka got a brief summary of a night in which 4 of the 6 of us had not slept at all. So those straggling survivors from our group decided to set off for a bus to the mountain. I would go to climb this thing and await my answer when I got back down probably.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Costa Rica Part 1
Well the lying bus drivers dropped us off in the middle of nowhere. I think he began to develop a conscience when he realised that there really was no bus up to Monteverde from this junction and that we were in the middle of nowhere. I reckoned we had the town within 5km that was doable and hopefully we could luck into some transport, but then again if we died then it would all be his fault and I hope his conscience eats him up. After the taxi tried to charge us $45 between 7 we decided we would try and hitchhike it. We had one wanker stop and offer us a ride. While me and the Aussie girl worked out who should take it the fucker drove off again. Then we stumbled into an Armadillo though only Mika and I saw it before it scuttled off. Eventually after every driver had passed us (scared off by 7 tourists no doubt) one guy stopped in his pick up and took all 7 of us in the back up to Las Juntas. This village is not even really on many maps but it is a blisteringly pretty place. A random discovery like Port Gibson in Mississippi. I would have liked to stay the night and see the town, but the others had time constraints and we ended up getting a taxi for $42 up to Monteverde. It was barely worth the hike for less than 50 cents each. Myself and the Aussies leapt in the back, while the others took the cabin. It got dark and cold very fast as we ascended into the cloud forests, but the scenery was fucking amazing. This is an awesome country. Just jaw droppingly beautiful. Take your breath away scenery. This is why people come. This is why this country is so famous. We ascended through a cloud forest in the mist with a perfect Pacific sunrise over the Nicoya Peninsula and the Pacific laid out like a vista infront of us. The country is so green. The Aussies said that apparently if you look at a sunrise there is always a flash of green at the last second once the sun drops, but neither me nor them could see this. The cloud forest has the same misty wetness as England and it was getting cold on the back of this truck, but I would not have forsaken that view for anything. Awesome stuff. We eventually arrived in Santa Elena and stayed in Hostel Jireh. A great place. The owners were two young friends who had only just set it up and its down the back but I paid only $6 for a private room. You get the use of the kitchen etc and the dorms upstairs need candlelight which is cool. It feels like a student house and you can easily become friends with the owners. One of my favourite places I have stayed so I decided to stay on for 3 nights for the first time since I stayed with Ana. We got some vegetarian food in and I would not eat meat for 3 days, which I believe is a personal record of mine. We signed up for a zip line tour and I managed to speak to Ana in the evening which was cool and the first time we had spoken properly since I wrote the letter. Did not have enough time to finish what I wanted to say, but it was something.
In the morning the Finns went and did the zip lining tour that the other four of us were doing in the afternoon, while the Antipodeans headed off to Monteverde cloud forest for the morning. I did not want to pay the $12 entrance fee so I slept in and decided to climb the highest mountain in the area (Cerro de Amigos) on a free trail. Its not that high and the trail is not that long. It is howevere steep, the path is made of clay and it is always raining, so its a very tough slippery climb. It took me a while of two steps up, one step back down to make it to the top. It also passes the northern boundary of Monteverde, so I could look down into the cloud forests and I think you may even be able to enter there for free. I did not try it though. Was thinking of it on the way down. When I got to the top it was covered in cloud so I could not see anything off the side of the mountain and only got to find the radio masts and towers. On the way down I was passed by a quad biker who had been delivering supplies to the top. He offered me to hop on and I found out he was a national quad bike racer. We flew down the clay slippery mud path to the bottom of the mountain and it was awesome. Sliding, skidding, jumping and powering at full speed all the way down the mountain. Awesome adrenaline rush. Possibly one of the best things I have done for free and people would pà y lots of money for that experience. It must be like when Yoana went down the Swiss Alps on the back of the Swiss national ski instructor. Like one of those space shuttle simulators only real. I was very lucky, fired up on adrenaline and back from the boredom of Nicaragua in one run. I was also covered in flecks of mud.
I got back and read a bit before the others got back. They had not seen much so I think my morning was better. We headed off for the zipline tour. This is a canopy zip line tour and consists of lost of long wires strung out over canyons and gaps over which you slide on a pulley system. The longest on this tour was 1km over the valleys and we had at least 4 that were 700m plus. You can get up some serious speed on these things and it was great fun doing about 20 runs, although the quad biking was honestly more thrilling anf slightly more dangerous. It was a really enjoyable 3 hours though and well worth the money to be zipping through Costa Rica's amazing scenery. Everywhere you turn in this country is phenomenal natural scenery and so much wildlife that we even had a sloth living in the tree right outside of out hotel. On top of the zipping along there was also a stage where we rappelled down a steep drop. That bit concerned me because my vertigo flared a little, but once I realised the instructors were in charge of the rappel it became fairly easy. After that we did a tarzan swing. We were harnessed up and leapt of a gap to swing many metres across and up into the canopies. Was awesome even if the drop was a little daunting. Once you come back after 3 swings the guys catch you and reel you in. This they did for everyone and it looked fine. Then came my turn. I flung myself and sailed high into the trees due to my weight. On the third one they said legs down, but I had to jump to miss the net and then they failed to catch me on the way down and just winged me to take away all my speed. Crap. I failed to get back to the platform and the guy with vertigo was left hanging in the middle of the air out in the forest in just a harness. Strangely I was not too worried about this as it was quite pherapeutic out there. They had to put into action a back up plan and fling a hook rope out to me. This I had to hook onto my harness at the second attempt and they hauled me in. Then came the scary part. They had to starp me to one strap while taking off all my harnesses. I had to lean way back and could not touch the platform. I relied on only one bit of strap to save my life but luckily it held and they reeled me in. At the end they even ended up playing the video of the event, but because I was hanging out there so long I had 8 photos to everyone elses 2. Quite funny. I'd met two Yankees out on the trail. One guy was saying why would anyone stop doing what I was doing if they could and I agreed with that. Another girl from Florida invited me out for drinks that night but we never caught up with her. Once we got back the others went out on a night tour for $22 and this seemed better value for money. They got tarantulas, sloths, coatapis and a porcupine that took a shit off the tree in front of them. I finished off 'The Scarlet Letter' while the others were out. Its an awesome book and so much better than what I was expecting. I thought it was a love story, but its much better than that and he's a very good writer. Might have to try some more of his stuff. Wish I had read it before I had visited Salem as I skipped his house out there when I went in 2004. Me and Simon headed out to the bar after some vegetarian food, but it was pretty dead and we only stayed for one.
In the morning the Antipodeans left and the Finns headed out to the butterfly farm nearby. Grabbed some more leftover vegetarian food for breakfast. They all cooked such good stuff I did not actually miss meat as much as normal. I decided to do some more free things (I was naively at this stage thinking that it was possible to stick to my measly budget in Costa Rica. I have since given up) and hiked 8km out to the town of San Luis for a waterfall. It was a really pretty walk uphill and then a very steep 3km descent to the town. This passed a lookout point where you can see all the way to the Nicoya peninsula and I lay on a table for a while just enjoying the spectacular views. I think as it is all downhill it would be amazing to hike down from Santa Elena all the way to the Interamericana when you leave town. The clouds kept rolling in and moved so fast, but you could always descent just a little more and get under them for a great view again. I asked some thumbless road worker where the waterfall was and he sent me off on a trek. UGA have their own campus down here in San Luis for the biology students and it must be a great place to study. I had to ford rivers and streams (my shoes are actually legitimately waterproof. Nice to know) and walk past beautiful scenery and flowers of all blooms. Even the trees are like a painters palette of colours. Every imaginable colour you could possibly associate with vitality and life was on display like God's own masterpiece. I got to see the famous huge blue butterflies, whose name escapes me now. The waterfall had an $8 entrance charge so I skipped it and caught some Yankees with binoculars on the way back. They had just seen some Capuchin monkeys and I could see two of them on either side of the pathway. This place is like a living breathing zoo. So cool. I took the free looped trail called the Sendero Camino Real in front of the UGA campus and it loops up and down over 4km past the cascading river and through amazing foliage full of plants and leaf cutter ants. On the way back, after the evil incredibly steep climb, I bumped into an old couple from Washington State and we chatted for a long time. They gave me some small bananas (I love Americans from the cool states) and I got back home to eat some biscuits for dinner. The Finns and I discussed going rafting and they wanted to climb Mount Chirippo, so we decided to join forces for a while for weight in numbers. I started up reading Huck Finn again by Mark Twain and I had forgotten how good he is as a writer. I will need to pick up some new books in Panama City and hope I dont regret not picking up some classics in San Jose by Twain. So we retired and in the morning at 6am would get a bus to San Jose and leave behind this spectacular part of the country. I was reinvigorated and I can't emphasise how much Costa Rica kicks the arse of the rest of Central America. I definitely want to come back here again. So much to see, you need at least a month I reckon, though 3 weeks might be enough if you motor.
In the morning the Finns went and did the zip lining tour that the other four of us were doing in the afternoon, while the Antipodeans headed off to Monteverde cloud forest for the morning. I did not want to pay the $12 entrance fee so I slept in and decided to climb the highest mountain in the area (Cerro de Amigos) on a free trail. Its not that high and the trail is not that long. It is howevere steep, the path is made of clay and it is always raining, so its a very tough slippery climb. It took me a while of two steps up, one step back down to make it to the top. It also passes the northern boundary of Monteverde, so I could look down into the cloud forests and I think you may even be able to enter there for free. I did not try it though. Was thinking of it on the way down. When I got to the top it was covered in cloud so I could not see anything off the side of the mountain and only got to find the radio masts and towers. On the way down I was passed by a quad biker who had been delivering supplies to the top. He offered me to hop on and I found out he was a national quad bike racer. We flew down the clay slippery mud path to the bottom of the mountain and it was awesome. Sliding, skidding, jumping and powering at full speed all the way down the mountain. Awesome adrenaline rush. Possibly one of the best things I have done for free and people would pà y lots of money for that experience. It must be like when Yoana went down the Swiss Alps on the back of the Swiss national ski instructor. Like one of those space shuttle simulators only real. I was very lucky, fired up on adrenaline and back from the boredom of Nicaragua in one run. I was also covered in flecks of mud.
I got back and read a bit before the others got back. They had not seen much so I think my morning was better. We headed off for the zipline tour. This is a canopy zip line tour and consists of lost of long wires strung out over canyons and gaps over which you slide on a pulley system. The longest on this tour was 1km over the valleys and we had at least 4 that were 700m plus. You can get up some serious speed on these things and it was great fun doing about 20 runs, although the quad biking was honestly more thrilling anf slightly more dangerous. It was a really enjoyable 3 hours though and well worth the money to be zipping through Costa Rica's amazing scenery. Everywhere you turn in this country is phenomenal natural scenery and so much wildlife that we even had a sloth living in the tree right outside of out hotel. On top of the zipping along there was also a stage where we rappelled down a steep drop. That bit concerned me because my vertigo flared a little, but once I realised the instructors were in charge of the rappel it became fairly easy. After that we did a tarzan swing. We were harnessed up and leapt of a gap to swing many metres across and up into the canopies. Was awesome even if the drop was a little daunting. Once you come back after 3 swings the guys catch you and reel you in. This they did for everyone and it looked fine. Then came my turn. I flung myself and sailed high into the trees due to my weight. On the third one they said legs down, but I had to jump to miss the net and then they failed to catch me on the way down and just winged me to take away all my speed. Crap. I failed to get back to the platform and the guy with vertigo was left hanging in the middle of the air out in the forest in just a harness. Strangely I was not too worried about this as it was quite pherapeutic out there. They had to put into action a back up plan and fling a hook rope out to me. This I had to hook onto my harness at the second attempt and they hauled me in. Then came the scary part. They had to starp me to one strap while taking off all my harnesses. I had to lean way back and could not touch the platform. I relied on only one bit of strap to save my life but luckily it held and they reeled me in. At the end they even ended up playing the video of the event, but because I was hanging out there so long I had 8 photos to everyone elses 2. Quite funny. I'd met two Yankees out on the trail. One guy was saying why would anyone stop doing what I was doing if they could and I agreed with that. Another girl from Florida invited me out for drinks that night but we never caught up with her. Once we got back the others went out on a night tour for $22 and this seemed better value for money. They got tarantulas, sloths, coatapis and a porcupine that took a shit off the tree in front of them. I finished off 'The Scarlet Letter' while the others were out. Its an awesome book and so much better than what I was expecting. I thought it was a love story, but its much better than that and he's a very good writer. Might have to try some more of his stuff. Wish I had read it before I had visited Salem as I skipped his house out there when I went in 2004. Me and Simon headed out to the bar after some vegetarian food, but it was pretty dead and we only stayed for one.
In the morning the Antipodeans left and the Finns headed out to the butterfly farm nearby. Grabbed some more leftover vegetarian food for breakfast. They all cooked such good stuff I did not actually miss meat as much as normal. I decided to do some more free things (I was naively at this stage thinking that it was possible to stick to my measly budget in Costa Rica. I have since given up) and hiked 8km out to the town of San Luis for a waterfall. It was a really pretty walk uphill and then a very steep 3km descent to the town. This passed a lookout point where you can see all the way to the Nicoya peninsula and I lay on a table for a while just enjoying the spectacular views. I think as it is all downhill it would be amazing to hike down from Santa Elena all the way to the Interamericana when you leave town. The clouds kept rolling in and moved so fast, but you could always descent just a little more and get under them for a great view again. I asked some thumbless road worker where the waterfall was and he sent me off on a trek. UGA have their own campus down here in San Luis for the biology students and it must be a great place to study. I had to ford rivers and streams (my shoes are actually legitimately waterproof. Nice to know) and walk past beautiful scenery and flowers of all blooms. Even the trees are like a painters palette of colours. Every imaginable colour you could possibly associate with vitality and life was on display like God's own masterpiece. I got to see the famous huge blue butterflies, whose name escapes me now. The waterfall had an $8 entrance charge so I skipped it and caught some Yankees with binoculars on the way back. They had just seen some Capuchin monkeys and I could see two of them on either side of the pathway. This place is like a living breathing zoo. So cool. I took the free looped trail called the Sendero Camino Real in front of the UGA campus and it loops up and down over 4km past the cascading river and through amazing foliage full of plants and leaf cutter ants. On the way back, after the evil incredibly steep climb, I bumped into an old couple from Washington State and we chatted for a long time. They gave me some small bananas (I love Americans from the cool states) and I got back home to eat some biscuits for dinner. The Finns and I discussed going rafting and they wanted to climb Mount Chirippo, so we decided to join forces for a while for weight in numbers. I started up reading Huck Finn again by Mark Twain and I had forgotten how good he is as a writer. I will need to pick up some new books in Panama City and hope I dont regret not picking up some classics in San Jose by Twain. So we retired and in the morning at 6am would get a bus to San Jose and leave behind this spectacular part of the country. I was reinvigorated and I can't emphasise how much Costa Rica kicks the arse of the rest of Central America. I definitely want to come back here again. So much to see, you need at least a month I reckon, though 3 weeks might be enough if you motor.
Nicaragua Part 2
Ah where was I. Leaving modern Tikal I think. Been awhile. Drinking really kills the writing process. Anyway I missed Ariana in the morning. She came to Managua, but I had not bothered checking my e-mail, because she had told me she would not make it and so I had plowed straight on to Granada. The bus man kept poking me and pointing out things I should see along the way. I had already seen the lake and I don't have buttons on my arms to make my eyes zoom in, so I was not going to see it any better. Grenada itself is a really pretty colonial town. I think its the best of the colonial towns in Central America, but Guanajuato would still piss all over it. It reminds me of a Central American Charleston (like Campeche) with a sprinkling of Florence. Its a little too clean cut (too perfectly manicured), but it has a few rougher edges around town (and not really rough like Leon). People say Leon has more character than Grenada. I think thats bollocks. Yeah Grenada is a little more touristy on the locals front, but its nowhere near as bad as Antigua and Leon has only tourists in the middle and shady neighbourhoods round the outside of it. There is also one park in Grenada which contains old relic ruins that looks like a kind of Druidic monastery thats collapsed. That place is awesome and deserves to push Grenada ahead of Leon alone.
When I arrived into town I headed for the bearded monkey but bumped into David (Costa Rican guy) and a German girl he was travelling with and they whisked me off somewhere else. She had had her passport and everything stolen by a drive by mugging in Managua. Lonely Planet should be sued for advising people to stay in that shithole of a neighbourhood. They had to go off and sort stuff out and the hostel turned out to be not that friendly a place. I had to put all my clothes in the wash so was walking around in just my swimming trunks again. Afterwards I wandered around town and saw the lake. The general conclusion on Nicragua is that it is a nice place, but there is fuck all to do in the day anywhere. You just walk around bored looking at pretty things and then go and drink on cheap beer in the evening. Its ok, but now I am in Costa Rica I realise that I was getting dangerously bored by Nicaragua and needed a shot in the arm. Its like one of those black holes of boredom. As I never get depressed, extreme bordom is the worst thing that happens to me and I was dangerously close. The washing came back and was quite expensive as well. I need to shed some of my pointless clothes and slim down the wardrobe and also replace those accursed shorts that lose everything I own like some clothing black hole. That evening I just grabbed a couple of beers, saw that Spurs drew with Sunderland although the internet broke right as the equaliser went in. Started reading Scarlet Letter and turfed in for the night.
In the morning I got up and went and got a haircut. There is so little to do that even the mundane day to day stuff takes a special importance in breaking up complete tedium. I phoned my bank and found out they were still complete tossers. They had lost my letter and still failed to change my address. I can't pick up the bills and so they fined me. Cocks. I got the fine reinstated and my dad resent the letters so will ring them in Panama City and check they have done what I have instucted them to do at last. Still at least they don't charge me for wirhdrawals. The pound is still in the toilet as well. 1.4 at the moment. I gave Franny a ring as I had said I would and was good to hear a familiar voice (even if he did not recognise mine! But then people say I have lost my English accent) and that pepped me up when I went back to the hotel. Then met Jo (an English girl working on a construction project for a school nearby) for lunch and we had a decent time. Heading back to the hostel I got chatting with a random bunch of people and we drank long into the night. The usual Nicaraguan pasttime. There was a Swiss guy who was randomly wandering all over the continent, an old American sailor who had spent time in a Mexican prison for carrying 13 sudafeds (not sure how thats spelt). He had got in a fight and the police arrested him on trumped up charges and dumped him in a prison in Baja California for 7 years. He was the sole gringo and had to knock out the biggest guy in there to get some respect and then became the black market supplier for the other inmates. He is writing a book on it and should be good. He claims he prayed to an angel for release and the judge and prosecutor started having nightmares about what they had done and released him after half a year. There was another Yankee guy who had studied medicine in Tijuana where my friend had studied. He was working as a freelance medical translator and had just bought a house on the lake front. Really good debator, especially for a socialist and I enjoyed the conversations. He had a house party for the saturday but sadly I was moving out of town before I could get a chance to go. There were two really fit Israeli girls there as well and they joined us for a bit. Almost every Israeli I have met in Central America has been pretty fit, so it might be worth swinging through there on my Middle Eastern tour.
In the morning I was awoken and passed through some local girls milling in the courtyard to head down to the beach town of San Juan Del Sur. On the bus to Rivas I had met the Canadian girl from Leon again and we chatted for the journey. Most people were pushing onto Isla de Ometepe (I had planned to go there and El Castillo, but strong winds meant boats were unreliable and I never made it there. A lot of people say it was nice but nothing special). San Juan Del Sur is a pretty little beach town and I had finally decided I could face sand again after being stranded out in the Caribbean for a while. The first place tried to charge me $20 for the night. Damn gringos have a hold of this town. I eventually got a private room for $7. Its a town in a bay with a really gorgeous beach in an arch underneath some cliffs. I walked all around the beach and got accosted by some random guy. I thought he was one of the Israeli guys but it turns out he was just a bum after some money. Again there was nothing much to do and all the really good beaches south are hard to get to because all the hillside in that direction has been taken over by property developers and turned into private land. A bit like San Miguel de Allende. In my hostel was a sexy but very odd woman from Barcelona so we hung out for a while. There was also a girl from Colorado and an Austrian girl that were sharing a room. In the evening I went out for drinks with a local American girl called Sara and we talked about Nicaragua and the town in general. Was a good evening and then I turfed in.
In the morning I pottered around town. At one point I was using the internet and I lost my phone. Fuck. Those damn shorts again. Bugger. I rushed around and could not find it anywhere, but I bumped into Dom from Honduras and we grabbed breakfast. I got back to the hotel and found my phone. Stupid man. I had left it on the side. The hotel had no water for the 2 days I was there and so all of the toilets were full of pooh. My sister would have loved it. Also the taxi drivers in town are always asking if you want a taxi. This town is the size of a pea. How could you possibly need a taxi. I think you can tell again that there is not much to actually do but wandering and looking. I went with the two girls down to the beach, but the wind was so strong we were being sandpapered by the flying sand on the beach. When we eventually found a spot we were buried by sand within about 10 minutes. Was quite funny, but not the most comfortable of beachside experiences. When the wind is not there I reckon the beach would be really nice there. The three of us headed back and I fell asleep in the day like an old man and we spent the evening just chatting and sitting in rocking chairs out on the front porch. At this point I concocted the idea of doing a southern festivals tour in the US when I finish in Argentina. Maybe see Mardi Gras, SWSX, New Orleans Jazz Fest and whatever other ones we can come up with. Hmm there were seemingly no ferries to the island so I abandoned the idea of going to Olmetepe and decided to push for Costa Rica in the morning.
I told the Coloradan girl I was going to skip going cycling with her (The Austrian had left at 5am that morning) and got a bus to the border. During this trip into Costa Rica I made friends with an Australian couple and a Kiwi that had lived in London for a few years, as well as three guys from Finland. We formed a cool little group as we were the only seven not heading for Costa Rica's beaches but up into Monteverde and the cloud forests instead. We got charged double for the border as we paid full price for two half journeys and when we got to the border we were ushered onto a bus with a $10 charge for Monteverde. We refused to pay until after we had cleared customs because we knew that Costa Rica and Panama sometimes turn people away for not having onward tickets. Also we found out the bus was actually going to San Jose and was going to drop us in the middle of nowhere. So we forced them down to $6 for this blatant thievery. This was not a good start for Costa Rica, but these guys seemed to be the exception. We crossed the border with no problems and went through 3 police checks (two stupid tourists had not got entrance stamps at the border. Ah I hope they enjoy their $300 fines) and we were off into Costa Rica.
When I arrived into town I headed for the bearded monkey but bumped into David (Costa Rican guy) and a German girl he was travelling with and they whisked me off somewhere else. She had had her passport and everything stolen by a drive by mugging in Managua. Lonely Planet should be sued for advising people to stay in that shithole of a neighbourhood. They had to go off and sort stuff out and the hostel turned out to be not that friendly a place. I had to put all my clothes in the wash so was walking around in just my swimming trunks again. Afterwards I wandered around town and saw the lake. The general conclusion on Nicragua is that it is a nice place, but there is fuck all to do in the day anywhere. You just walk around bored looking at pretty things and then go and drink on cheap beer in the evening. Its ok, but now I am in Costa Rica I realise that I was getting dangerously bored by Nicaragua and needed a shot in the arm. Its like one of those black holes of boredom. As I never get depressed, extreme bordom is the worst thing that happens to me and I was dangerously close. The washing came back and was quite expensive as well. I need to shed some of my pointless clothes and slim down the wardrobe and also replace those accursed shorts that lose everything I own like some clothing black hole. That evening I just grabbed a couple of beers, saw that Spurs drew with Sunderland although the internet broke right as the equaliser went in. Started reading Scarlet Letter and turfed in for the night.
In the morning I got up and went and got a haircut. There is so little to do that even the mundane day to day stuff takes a special importance in breaking up complete tedium. I phoned my bank and found out they were still complete tossers. They had lost my letter and still failed to change my address. I can't pick up the bills and so they fined me. Cocks. I got the fine reinstated and my dad resent the letters so will ring them in Panama City and check they have done what I have instucted them to do at last. Still at least they don't charge me for wirhdrawals. The pound is still in the toilet as well. 1.4 at the moment. I gave Franny a ring as I had said I would and was good to hear a familiar voice (even if he did not recognise mine! But then people say I have lost my English accent) and that pepped me up when I went back to the hotel. Then met Jo (an English girl working on a construction project for a school nearby) for lunch and we had a decent time. Heading back to the hostel I got chatting with a random bunch of people and we drank long into the night. The usual Nicaraguan pasttime. There was a Swiss guy who was randomly wandering all over the continent, an old American sailor who had spent time in a Mexican prison for carrying 13 sudafeds (not sure how thats spelt). He had got in a fight and the police arrested him on trumped up charges and dumped him in a prison in Baja California for 7 years. He was the sole gringo and had to knock out the biggest guy in there to get some respect and then became the black market supplier for the other inmates. He is writing a book on it and should be good. He claims he prayed to an angel for release and the judge and prosecutor started having nightmares about what they had done and released him after half a year. There was another Yankee guy who had studied medicine in Tijuana where my friend had studied. He was working as a freelance medical translator and had just bought a house on the lake front. Really good debator, especially for a socialist and I enjoyed the conversations. He had a house party for the saturday but sadly I was moving out of town before I could get a chance to go. There were two really fit Israeli girls there as well and they joined us for a bit. Almost every Israeli I have met in Central America has been pretty fit, so it might be worth swinging through there on my Middle Eastern tour.
In the morning I was awoken and passed through some local girls milling in the courtyard to head down to the beach town of San Juan Del Sur. On the bus to Rivas I had met the Canadian girl from Leon again and we chatted for the journey. Most people were pushing onto Isla de Ometepe (I had planned to go there and El Castillo, but strong winds meant boats were unreliable and I never made it there. A lot of people say it was nice but nothing special). San Juan Del Sur is a pretty little beach town and I had finally decided I could face sand again after being stranded out in the Caribbean for a while. The first place tried to charge me $20 for the night. Damn gringos have a hold of this town. I eventually got a private room for $7. Its a town in a bay with a really gorgeous beach in an arch underneath some cliffs. I walked all around the beach and got accosted by some random guy. I thought he was one of the Israeli guys but it turns out he was just a bum after some money. Again there was nothing much to do and all the really good beaches south are hard to get to because all the hillside in that direction has been taken over by property developers and turned into private land. A bit like San Miguel de Allende. In my hostel was a sexy but very odd woman from Barcelona so we hung out for a while. There was also a girl from Colorado and an Austrian girl that were sharing a room. In the evening I went out for drinks with a local American girl called Sara and we talked about Nicaragua and the town in general. Was a good evening and then I turfed in.
In the morning I pottered around town. At one point I was using the internet and I lost my phone. Fuck. Those damn shorts again. Bugger. I rushed around and could not find it anywhere, but I bumped into Dom from Honduras and we grabbed breakfast. I got back to the hotel and found my phone. Stupid man. I had left it on the side. The hotel had no water for the 2 days I was there and so all of the toilets were full of pooh. My sister would have loved it. Also the taxi drivers in town are always asking if you want a taxi. This town is the size of a pea. How could you possibly need a taxi. I think you can tell again that there is not much to actually do but wandering and looking. I went with the two girls down to the beach, but the wind was so strong we were being sandpapered by the flying sand on the beach. When we eventually found a spot we were buried by sand within about 10 minutes. Was quite funny, but not the most comfortable of beachside experiences. When the wind is not there I reckon the beach would be really nice there. The three of us headed back and I fell asleep in the day like an old man and we spent the evening just chatting and sitting in rocking chairs out on the front porch. At this point I concocted the idea of doing a southern festivals tour in the US when I finish in Argentina. Maybe see Mardi Gras, SWSX, New Orleans Jazz Fest and whatever other ones we can come up with. Hmm there were seemingly no ferries to the island so I abandoned the idea of going to Olmetepe and decided to push for Costa Rica in the morning.
I told the Coloradan girl I was going to skip going cycling with her (The Austrian had left at 5am that morning) and got a bus to the border. During this trip into Costa Rica I made friends with an Australian couple and a Kiwi that had lived in London for a few years, as well as three guys from Finland. We formed a cool little group as we were the only seven not heading for Costa Rica's beaches but up into Monteverde and the cloud forests instead. We got charged double for the border as we paid full price for two half journeys and when we got to the border we were ushered onto a bus with a $10 charge for Monteverde. We refused to pay until after we had cleared customs because we knew that Costa Rica and Panama sometimes turn people away for not having onward tickets. Also we found out the bus was actually going to San Jose and was going to drop us in the middle of nowhere. So we forced them down to $6 for this blatant thievery. This was not a good start for Costa Rica, but these guys seemed to be the exception. We crossed the border with no problems and went through 3 police checks (two stupid tourists had not got entrance stamps at the border. Ah I hope they enjoy their $300 fines) and we were off into Costa Rica.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Top 10 America/Canada
I figured I would redo this with reasons behind it so some of them may have shifted in my memory:
1. Denver (I include Fort Collins and Boulder in this. Fucking class city. Right size, in the middle of the Rockies, beautiful people, friendly people, seems European, has a microbrewery. And such crisp air. Towns dont come this cool)
2. New York (A slightly poorer London, but considering London is the best city in the world, that still makes it great)
3. New Orleans (Has its own vibe. The blues wafting along the Mississippi, great parties and oh that music, that food and those accents)
4. Austin (Best music scene in the world. Probably even better than Londons. I love Texas)
5. Seattle (Funky place with its own vibe. Seriously quirky, downright cool)
6. San Francisco (Despite the fact that I say this place is like the 40 year old man in a club who still thinks hes got it, it is still beautiful just stuck in the past)
7. Charleston (Beautiful colonial city, dripping with Southern charm. Though if we had couchsurfed in Savannah instead they'd probably switch places. See them both. Charleston for the architecture, Savannah for the trees)
8. Philadelhpia (Mini, prettier New York with history)
9. San Antonio (Another gem in Texas. All the places between them are cool as well. Great people, cool city)
10. Memphis (Like a smaller New Orleans with less of a vibe, but lots to see and do)
1. Denver (I include Fort Collins and Boulder in this. Fucking class city. Right size, in the middle of the Rockies, beautiful people, friendly people, seems European, has a microbrewery. And such crisp air. Towns dont come this cool)
2. New York (A slightly poorer London, but considering London is the best city in the world, that still makes it great)
3. New Orleans (Has its own vibe. The blues wafting along the Mississippi, great parties and oh that music, that food and those accents)
4. Austin (Best music scene in the world. Probably even better than Londons. I love Texas)
5. Seattle (Funky place with its own vibe. Seriously quirky, downright cool)
6. San Francisco (Despite the fact that I say this place is like the 40 year old man in a club who still thinks hes got it, it is still beautiful just stuck in the past)
7. Charleston (Beautiful colonial city, dripping with Southern charm. Though if we had couchsurfed in Savannah instead they'd probably switch places. See them both. Charleston for the architecture, Savannah for the trees)
8. Philadelhpia (Mini, prettier New York with history)
9. San Antonio (Another gem in Texas. All the places between them are cool as well. Great people, cool city)
10. Memphis (Like a smaller New Orleans with less of a vibe, but lots to see and do)
Nicaragua Part 1
We arrived in Estel Li and I got a room sharing with the Israelis. We were told 40 Cordobas per person but were actually made to pay 50 each. This ended with an argument between me and landlady where we both ended up calling the other one liars. It wasn't pretty and when I needed my room on my own the next night I figured she would have prevented me from getting it. I wanted to move places on principle, but my need for cheap accomodation overode my righteous indignation. Anyway the five of us headed out for dinner after I had to wrangle with some American hippy who was telling me how to master negotiation. Fuck him. I know its not much money, but I have a real real problem with being lied to. It sticks in my craw and can get me very angry. It pisses me off more than anything else. I can take any truth more than I can take one tiny lie anytime. Do what you want to me and I may forgive you, but never for a lie. Anyway I am wandering off topic again. We had dinner and then the others went for a drink while I confirmed that Spurs had indeed been knocked out of the UEFA Cup. Fuck it. Now we had to win sunday. I joined them for what I thought would be a few drinks. Many many litres later we staggered back to the hotel. I had talked about the Israeli-Lebanon war that one of the guys had fought in for his military service, we had talked all sorts, I now knew that the English girl dealt Ketamin (apologies for spelling. Horse tranq to the uninitiated) for her trip, but her boyfriend did not know. She had a dark side. Israeli girls were cool. Don't actually remember going home that much. The bar was called Bar Titanic and had a wicked jukebox. The owner had lived 7 years in Russia in the 80s (must be Sandinista, after all this is their home territory). The English guys had been stung by a tingray, stung in the arse by a scorpion, seen a dead body in San Salvador and had the owner of their hotel gunned down dead in Antigua. Far be it from me to suggest they are a modern day Bonnie and Clyde but the evidence is there for all. Anyway their luck is as much bad as mine is good. We limped in late around 2am (late for this side of the pond anyway) and at 6am our neighbours hammered out really loud music. One of the Israeli guys complained (brave man) and they turned it down a bit.
In the morning I grabbed breakfast with the Israelis and then they headed off to Leon. I met up with Ariana one of the local couchsurfers and we headed out to a waterfall near where she lives. There was a lot of flirting all day long between us, but she kept me guessing with her odd four facial expressions for one emotion. Later she said she'd been toying, but it was hard to fathom none the less. I was almost certain she liked me but not 100%. In the evening I took a punt and just went for it anyway and we spent the rest of the night and the next day enjoying each others company and laughing about the back and forth fencing the day before. We had started the day with her being unable to swim, so we'd done some sub par water support, but she panicked and almost drowned me while I held her up in the waterfall. Then we had walked around some more, played odd games, had drama with a tree and she sprained her ankle. It was a funny and odd day of countryside flirting. In the evening we grabbed dinner, then headed for drinks where I made an awful lunge on my "sod it lets see how it goes" stint. I made up for that later on lol. We had joined one of her friends (a cool ex party drug taker from the coast but had lived in LA). Another friend of theirs came in with two cross dressers (never witnessed that before in Central America) and a third friend showed us a video of him having sex with a woman who was bleeding over his penis. Interesting choice of entertainment. Ariana failed to rescue her friend from the corss dressers (with his heels one of them was actually the first person taller than me in Central America that I had met). Me and Ariana skipped for some fun and I got to sleep at gone 2am after waking the hotel staff again. I had to get up at 6am to meet her again, but some fuckwits woke me up at 4am. I felt like I had only just closed my eyes. I was going to need to regain this sleep somewhere. Oh yeah one of the stupid bars kept running out of beer. Stupid fucks. What kind of bar has no beer.
The lack of sleep took its toll as I limped over to Ariana's house. We went up to the lookout points and got some breakfast before sitting and chatting in the hills surrounding Estel Li. The one thing I have learnt in Central America from friends of mine is that a lot of Central American guys are complete wankers and the lack of respect for women is almost mindboggling. For us anyway. A woman has no self defence rights from an abusive husband, has no recourse for sexual harassment and sexual abuse is commonplace especially against children. Fuck that. Makes me furious when people abuse the power of their situation. I always say you should treat everyone equally as a person. There is no hierarchy at all in the world. Peoples actions and the contents of their character dictate what happens. Everyone starts equal. And it should stay equal. Some people will give up their power to others because they are weaker, but the person who is given the power over someone should not abuse it. Some people will try to take power from those that are weaker than them and assume a dominant position. Both those people are dangerous because they take and abuse because they can. And they can. And they will. Fuck them. Its the imperative duty of all those who have strength but choose not to abuse it to absolutely use everything they have to stop and crush those who would abuse it. Its like the Von Klausewitz line "If you do not stoop to the level of your enemy you are destined to lose". Now lefties will oppose this as being as bad as your opponent. But that wrong. They go there out of choice, you go there out of necessity and for a sense of protection of those who cant or wont defend themselves. As Jose Marti says "It is a sin not to do what one is capable of doing". And we are all capable of great things. We need to summon the moral courage that Bobby Kennedy speaks of and end this shit. Sorry another rant, but it frustrates me when good people get shit on by people solely because they can. Its another reason why I say you dont get the respect you deserve (as so many good people can say) but that which you demand (but then in a society where the law protects the strong rather than the weak it is easier said than done). Hence why its very well for people to protest in out countries where you will be ignored and quite another to do so in Myanmar or places like that, when you know standing up for your fellow citizens is surefire death. Thats why the west needs to protect those peoples right to protest. Not only because it is right, but because we can. We can and we must. Anyway we had spent 27 hours together and it felt like a lifetime because I knew her well. As I grow into my own personality more so than ever before (though I have comfortably known who I am for 2 years now), I feel when I get back from this trip I fancy doing politics of some kind, but very different to whats been seen before. The dad from Idaho also reckons I should throw myself into it, though I once had a Brazilian guy in Guanabara disagree with me while I was waiting for a date. He said I had a beautiful sole and would destroy it in politics. Hmm well if noone good ever goes into politics why is everyone surprised when most politicians are wankers. If you want to change something you have to actually get up off your arse and not just wish it so. Thats something Obama knows and hopefully can kick into the American people.
Anyway after yet another shitty goodbye (I am getting a little sick of these. You hope you get indifferent but no not really. Especially after the goodbye with Ana, which sucked more than any of the others). Right now I am in the mood for doing something stupid or weird just to fuck about with my mood. I got a message from Ana. It was a good one and I still get electrified before I read her mails. Kind of like a weird fear of what I may find combined with some sort of apprehension. Still want to know exactly what she's thinking if she knows it herself. I am lucky in being able to clearly articulate whatever nonsense is in my head. I also just got a message from Steph in Athens while writing this. She said she missed me and I should go back to Georgia. Thats weird and pleasantly surprising as I had been certain she had not liked me (Ollie had reinforced this belief in me). Geli thinks this piece has improved since I met Ana. Maybe she works as my muse, but I have taken to leaving my thoughts unedited upon the page. Its quite liberating. Anyway back to the bus. I handed my bag to some guy and halfway through the journey realised I did not know where it was and it has all my important documents. Bugger. Fuck where was it. Had to zen myself down with the old adage there was nothing I could do about it. But there was. I could stop the bus and force them to find it. But then thats a bit mental so I resolved to wait. Then a watermelon fell on some womans head. Funny, but I should not laugh really. There was a polystyrene coffee cup spinning on the door. Why was this road so bumpy. Why when I turn to my right is the woman sleeping holding a flannel over her face. There are a lot of good looking people on this bus, but they are never in the towns. Must have hideaways in the hills. Hmm a blood orange sun. Impressive. Makes the whole sky pink. Leon is meant to be pretty. They turfed me off in the middle of the market, I ignored the usual buzzing flies of the taxi drivers and then some moron sent me 3 blocks the wrong way. I found internet to check on the Israelis but nada. Ana had left me a reference. If you read our references to each other we seem deranged, but I think there is not a bad bone in the bodies of either of us and if anything ever did happen we'd probably make everyone else feel really sick with actions lol. I love total honesty. I now feel completely naked both inside and out through my writing, but I also feel that I can really cut loose. Its a good feeling now the shackles are off. Maybe in Buenos Aires I will write a politics and philosophy piece on the world in general and what my take is on it. Will be interesting to see what I still hold as truth when I finish my long exodus.
Well Leon is apparently well signposted. Yes and Gordon Brown is a good prime minister. Could not find anything and had to navigate from locals alone. This city really did not feel that safe. All the cool hostels were full and all my recent travel companions seemed to be scattered amongst them. There was an all night beach rave that night with free beer. Damn I was too knackered (I heard later it was ok at best so that was good news) and so I chatted with some Canadians, bought some cheap street food and settled in for the night. In the morning I had to find an internet cafe for the Lague Cup final. It was good to see that Spurs took it to extra time and penalties to cost me the maximum amount of money, before losing anyway and costing us Europe next year (barring a miracle league run). I walked around the town centre and the huge decrpid cathedral (prettyish and small. Seen so many colonial cities now and nothing comes even close to Guanajuato. I think I could walk and write in that place for a year and still love it). It was hot and muggy. Managua is the same. Both places it feels like the air is sucking the life out of you, like some weather system vampire sucking out your liquid. Only New Orleans has been this bad for me before. So naturally I decide to do a 2.5km hike to a fort south of the city. Lonely Planets map was traditionally shit (because the lazy fucks walk nowhere).
Ok this El Fortin place is 2.5km south west. So I just walk south and right a bit surely. I descended through some cool derelict ruined suburbs (legacies of the war) and into cobbled streets. So far, so pretty in a gritty way. I am starting to appreciate Leon a bit more and then I round some graveyards. Bugger my GPS says there is a hill a little way from here. I can see it through the graves so I work my way that way into some rather shabby dirt tracks. Now the locals really must think I am out of the gringo zone. There are people making makeshift shanty towns and one guy is using cardboard boxes to construct the walls of his house. I dont think I should be here and I take the wrong fork and end up in someones garden. The guy starts yelling threateningly at me (I can understand that it looks very bad for a ´wealthy´tourist to trek into his neighbourhood like on some safari). Luckily the guy behind me asks where I was going and gives me the directions to get out of there. If I spoke no Spanish I could have been in very very serious trouble there. I sped along the river track past a heavily polluted river where people were bathing in tepid water. Man the situation is bad out here. I reach the track to the fort that is covered in litter and am assaulted all the way up by flies. At the top the fort is decrepid and behind it are huge fields filled with burning rubbish. A huge smoking pile of garbage on fire. Like some napalmed slum. Shifty characters move at the top. A man with a scythe strikes up a conversation. I don't understand him so I nod and climb the fort walls. Its a beautiful view overlooking the city, but in the foreground is that eyesore of a slum and circling over my head are a huge flock of birds of prey, like some portent to a bad end. Descending back down I see a lone calender on the wall in the office. Approaching this only sign of life (including the people) I am assaulted by a pestilential swarm of flies, like those released from the death of something they feast on. A horse feeds in the rubbish. A dog flees his master on the off chance of food. I descend quickly catching a man with a log on his shoulders. We follow each other silently back past the bathing children in the fetid water until he strikes up a conversation in Spanish. Its awkward but he seems nice enough. He points me a safe way back and as I shake his hand I realise he has only a stump where one finger should be. In that one walk a lot of the horrors of the El Salvadorean war and its aftermath were revealed to me much clearer than in any museum. That left a mark and I saw a different, maybe more real side of Leon.
In the evening I got chatting with one of the Canadians and discovered she used to do crystal meth for 2 years. Its often remarkable what people will tell me. I think I talk so much I inadvertantly always tap everyones secrets and weak spots. Hmm no wonder some people are scared of me, although some others just get bored lol. Eventually I got sucked into a conversation with a Yankee hippy (ooh my favourites) who tried to convince me the forest has more good things than a city. Fuckwit stoner. Then I had a Yankee having a go at me because I thought Guatemalans lie. Apparently they are the most beautiful people on earth because of their native dress and their savvy. After about 30 minutes of arguing I crushed her points, changed her opinion of me and made her realise that it was a beautiful country and some bits still are, but that tourism has really done bad things for the people and the places. Hmm tough work. Once I broke the back of the hippies we all had a good time till about 2am and then I turfed in for the night as last man standing (and without even any alcohol). There were a lot of very cute Israeli girls in town, the city is ok but not that great and I was pissed I could not see the Mexican film. It said dubbed so I presume that meant it was in English, but it was in Spanish. Surely as its a Spanish film that makes it normal and not dubbed. Oh well.
In the morning I got up and grabbed a bus to Managua still a little knackered. Now I was apprehensive because even locals had told me this city was dangerous. I arrived in town and walked towards the place lonely planet says to stay. Got some indifferent answers but most people were friendly. Bit like London. Looked nice enough so far. Why do all these hippy twats hate places where people actually live as opposed to tourist towns. The map was shit again and I have so far concluded that the only bad area of town that does not feel safe is the area Lonely Planet says to stay. I am suspicious that the guy who wrote this section never left the Tica Bus station and has no idea where anything is as the whole map thing is very badly put together, like it was copied from an ordnance survey map. I dropped my stuff in a dodgy but nice hotel and headed to the 'dangerous' monumental district. Its not dangerous. In the day anyway. There is a cool giant statue of a soldier with a flag, a bombed out cathedral that looks serene, a monumental area with a burnt out flag and concrete encased guns. The president buried them all in concrete when both sides of the civil war handed their weaponry in. Kind of funky. Its like a skeletal concrete gun ribcage. A whole wall of concrete with twisted gun barrels rusting out of it like some awesome modern art exhibitin. Very peaceful and quite funky. The rest of the area is pleasant and almost deserted. It was the old centre of town before an earthquake knocked it out. I was enjoying Managua but not sure if I liked it. It sits right on a lake so you can see this huge lakefront when you go down there, but the wind was up and tossing dust in my eyes. I went and watched Tropic Thunder as I would chill here. Decent but nothing special. Then on my way back I was stalked by some man. If anyone approaches you at night on the streets its never for a good reason. I quickened, he quickened, I went top speed (I walk very fast, he would need to run now and then I would know and outrun him as well). He laughed and turned off. Hmm. First time I have been street stalked but made me confident they would have to want to shoot me for them to have any chance of mugging me because I am faster and bigger than them. I read some on Ecuador due to the new change of plan. Looks like lots of cool things to do. Will need at least 2 weeks. Lots of Colombian offers now.
In the morning I slept long and would spend the day finishing up the blog mainly. I also wanted to see the tall place with the great view, but it looks like Ortega has taken it over again as a guard whistled at me and told me I had no chance of climbing it. So I walked around the lake. How cool is this city. They have loads of volcanic crater lakes scattered all throughout it. I headed to Zona Rosa and through some vast expanses of space and grassland. To my left was a new cathedral that looked like an aircraft hanger with giant concrete boulders on it. What the hell was that. What the hell is this place. Zona Rosa is kind of cool, but again I could not find any sort of urban sense of a city. I walked back to the lake and the other side mounts the hill. I looked around and in every direction was no urban cluster. Just buildings seemingly sticking out of a jungle. What the hell sort of city was this. Then I realised. Managua is Tikal. A modern Tikal. No urban areas, almost no tall buildings. Just clumps of 2 or 3 tallish buildings spiking up out of the urban jungle of trees and forests. It is so like Tikal. Spread out and weird. Then looking the other way you see the lake and volcanoes on the edge of this jungle hideaway. It all makes sense. Well it makes sense because it makes no sense. Like Tikal. This place will baffle archaeologists in 1000 years time. Its a non entity like Belmopan, but a great non entity. Funky. I think I like it now I understand it. And because I understand Managua I think I understand the chaos that is Nicaragua. If you miss this place and that hill, I dont think you can understand the country. Every capital speaks for its people. On to Granada in the morning and maybe figure out what Stephanie is thinking.
In the morning I grabbed breakfast with the Israelis and then they headed off to Leon. I met up with Ariana one of the local couchsurfers and we headed out to a waterfall near where she lives. There was a lot of flirting all day long between us, but she kept me guessing with her odd four facial expressions for one emotion. Later she said she'd been toying, but it was hard to fathom none the less. I was almost certain she liked me but not 100%. In the evening I took a punt and just went for it anyway and we spent the rest of the night and the next day enjoying each others company and laughing about the back and forth fencing the day before. We had started the day with her being unable to swim, so we'd done some sub par water support, but she panicked and almost drowned me while I held her up in the waterfall. Then we had walked around some more, played odd games, had drama with a tree and she sprained her ankle. It was a funny and odd day of countryside flirting. In the evening we grabbed dinner, then headed for drinks where I made an awful lunge on my "sod it lets see how it goes" stint. I made up for that later on lol. We had joined one of her friends (a cool ex party drug taker from the coast but had lived in LA). Another friend of theirs came in with two cross dressers (never witnessed that before in Central America) and a third friend showed us a video of him having sex with a woman who was bleeding over his penis. Interesting choice of entertainment. Ariana failed to rescue her friend from the corss dressers (with his heels one of them was actually the first person taller than me in Central America that I had met). Me and Ariana skipped for some fun and I got to sleep at gone 2am after waking the hotel staff again. I had to get up at 6am to meet her again, but some fuckwits woke me up at 4am. I felt like I had only just closed my eyes. I was going to need to regain this sleep somewhere. Oh yeah one of the stupid bars kept running out of beer. Stupid fucks. What kind of bar has no beer.
The lack of sleep took its toll as I limped over to Ariana's house. We went up to the lookout points and got some breakfast before sitting and chatting in the hills surrounding Estel Li. The one thing I have learnt in Central America from friends of mine is that a lot of Central American guys are complete wankers and the lack of respect for women is almost mindboggling. For us anyway. A woman has no self defence rights from an abusive husband, has no recourse for sexual harassment and sexual abuse is commonplace especially against children. Fuck that. Makes me furious when people abuse the power of their situation. I always say you should treat everyone equally as a person. There is no hierarchy at all in the world. Peoples actions and the contents of their character dictate what happens. Everyone starts equal. And it should stay equal. Some people will give up their power to others because they are weaker, but the person who is given the power over someone should not abuse it. Some people will try to take power from those that are weaker than them and assume a dominant position. Both those people are dangerous because they take and abuse because they can. And they can. And they will. Fuck them. Its the imperative duty of all those who have strength but choose not to abuse it to absolutely use everything they have to stop and crush those who would abuse it. Its like the Von Klausewitz line "If you do not stoop to the level of your enemy you are destined to lose". Now lefties will oppose this as being as bad as your opponent. But that wrong. They go there out of choice, you go there out of necessity and for a sense of protection of those who cant or wont defend themselves. As Jose Marti says "It is a sin not to do what one is capable of doing". And we are all capable of great things. We need to summon the moral courage that Bobby Kennedy speaks of and end this shit. Sorry another rant, but it frustrates me when good people get shit on by people solely because they can. Its another reason why I say you dont get the respect you deserve (as so many good people can say) but that which you demand (but then in a society where the law protects the strong rather than the weak it is easier said than done). Hence why its very well for people to protest in out countries where you will be ignored and quite another to do so in Myanmar or places like that, when you know standing up for your fellow citizens is surefire death. Thats why the west needs to protect those peoples right to protest. Not only because it is right, but because we can. We can and we must. Anyway we had spent 27 hours together and it felt like a lifetime because I knew her well. As I grow into my own personality more so than ever before (though I have comfortably known who I am for 2 years now), I feel when I get back from this trip I fancy doing politics of some kind, but very different to whats been seen before. The dad from Idaho also reckons I should throw myself into it, though I once had a Brazilian guy in Guanabara disagree with me while I was waiting for a date. He said I had a beautiful sole and would destroy it in politics. Hmm well if noone good ever goes into politics why is everyone surprised when most politicians are wankers. If you want to change something you have to actually get up off your arse and not just wish it so. Thats something Obama knows and hopefully can kick into the American people.
Anyway after yet another shitty goodbye (I am getting a little sick of these. You hope you get indifferent but no not really. Especially after the goodbye with Ana, which sucked more than any of the others). Right now I am in the mood for doing something stupid or weird just to fuck about with my mood. I got a message from Ana. It was a good one and I still get electrified before I read her mails. Kind of like a weird fear of what I may find combined with some sort of apprehension. Still want to know exactly what she's thinking if she knows it herself. I am lucky in being able to clearly articulate whatever nonsense is in my head. I also just got a message from Steph in Athens while writing this. She said she missed me and I should go back to Georgia. Thats weird and pleasantly surprising as I had been certain she had not liked me (Ollie had reinforced this belief in me). Geli thinks this piece has improved since I met Ana. Maybe she works as my muse, but I have taken to leaving my thoughts unedited upon the page. Its quite liberating. Anyway back to the bus. I handed my bag to some guy and halfway through the journey realised I did not know where it was and it has all my important documents. Bugger. Fuck where was it. Had to zen myself down with the old adage there was nothing I could do about it. But there was. I could stop the bus and force them to find it. But then thats a bit mental so I resolved to wait. Then a watermelon fell on some womans head. Funny, but I should not laugh really. There was a polystyrene coffee cup spinning on the door. Why was this road so bumpy. Why when I turn to my right is the woman sleeping holding a flannel over her face. There are a lot of good looking people on this bus, but they are never in the towns. Must have hideaways in the hills. Hmm a blood orange sun. Impressive. Makes the whole sky pink. Leon is meant to be pretty. They turfed me off in the middle of the market, I ignored the usual buzzing flies of the taxi drivers and then some moron sent me 3 blocks the wrong way. I found internet to check on the Israelis but nada. Ana had left me a reference. If you read our references to each other we seem deranged, but I think there is not a bad bone in the bodies of either of us and if anything ever did happen we'd probably make everyone else feel really sick with actions lol. I love total honesty. I now feel completely naked both inside and out through my writing, but I also feel that I can really cut loose. Its a good feeling now the shackles are off. Maybe in Buenos Aires I will write a politics and philosophy piece on the world in general and what my take is on it. Will be interesting to see what I still hold as truth when I finish my long exodus.
Well Leon is apparently well signposted. Yes and Gordon Brown is a good prime minister. Could not find anything and had to navigate from locals alone. This city really did not feel that safe. All the cool hostels were full and all my recent travel companions seemed to be scattered amongst them. There was an all night beach rave that night with free beer. Damn I was too knackered (I heard later it was ok at best so that was good news) and so I chatted with some Canadians, bought some cheap street food and settled in for the night. In the morning I had to find an internet cafe for the Lague Cup final. It was good to see that Spurs took it to extra time and penalties to cost me the maximum amount of money, before losing anyway and costing us Europe next year (barring a miracle league run). I walked around the town centre and the huge decrpid cathedral (prettyish and small. Seen so many colonial cities now and nothing comes even close to Guanajuato. I think I could walk and write in that place for a year and still love it). It was hot and muggy. Managua is the same. Both places it feels like the air is sucking the life out of you, like some weather system vampire sucking out your liquid. Only New Orleans has been this bad for me before. So naturally I decide to do a 2.5km hike to a fort south of the city. Lonely Planets map was traditionally shit (because the lazy fucks walk nowhere).
Ok this El Fortin place is 2.5km south west. So I just walk south and right a bit surely. I descended through some cool derelict ruined suburbs (legacies of the war) and into cobbled streets. So far, so pretty in a gritty way. I am starting to appreciate Leon a bit more and then I round some graveyards. Bugger my GPS says there is a hill a little way from here. I can see it through the graves so I work my way that way into some rather shabby dirt tracks. Now the locals really must think I am out of the gringo zone. There are people making makeshift shanty towns and one guy is using cardboard boxes to construct the walls of his house. I dont think I should be here and I take the wrong fork and end up in someones garden. The guy starts yelling threateningly at me (I can understand that it looks very bad for a ´wealthy´tourist to trek into his neighbourhood like on some safari). Luckily the guy behind me asks where I was going and gives me the directions to get out of there. If I spoke no Spanish I could have been in very very serious trouble there. I sped along the river track past a heavily polluted river where people were bathing in tepid water. Man the situation is bad out here. I reach the track to the fort that is covered in litter and am assaulted all the way up by flies. At the top the fort is decrepid and behind it are huge fields filled with burning rubbish. A huge smoking pile of garbage on fire. Like some napalmed slum. Shifty characters move at the top. A man with a scythe strikes up a conversation. I don't understand him so I nod and climb the fort walls. Its a beautiful view overlooking the city, but in the foreground is that eyesore of a slum and circling over my head are a huge flock of birds of prey, like some portent to a bad end. Descending back down I see a lone calender on the wall in the office. Approaching this only sign of life (including the people) I am assaulted by a pestilential swarm of flies, like those released from the death of something they feast on. A horse feeds in the rubbish. A dog flees his master on the off chance of food. I descend quickly catching a man with a log on his shoulders. We follow each other silently back past the bathing children in the fetid water until he strikes up a conversation in Spanish. Its awkward but he seems nice enough. He points me a safe way back and as I shake his hand I realise he has only a stump where one finger should be. In that one walk a lot of the horrors of the El Salvadorean war and its aftermath were revealed to me much clearer than in any museum. That left a mark and I saw a different, maybe more real side of Leon.
In the evening I got chatting with one of the Canadians and discovered she used to do crystal meth for 2 years. Its often remarkable what people will tell me. I think I talk so much I inadvertantly always tap everyones secrets and weak spots. Hmm no wonder some people are scared of me, although some others just get bored lol. Eventually I got sucked into a conversation with a Yankee hippy (ooh my favourites) who tried to convince me the forest has more good things than a city. Fuckwit stoner. Then I had a Yankee having a go at me because I thought Guatemalans lie. Apparently they are the most beautiful people on earth because of their native dress and their savvy. After about 30 minutes of arguing I crushed her points, changed her opinion of me and made her realise that it was a beautiful country and some bits still are, but that tourism has really done bad things for the people and the places. Hmm tough work. Once I broke the back of the hippies we all had a good time till about 2am and then I turfed in for the night as last man standing (and without even any alcohol). There were a lot of very cute Israeli girls in town, the city is ok but not that great and I was pissed I could not see the Mexican film. It said dubbed so I presume that meant it was in English, but it was in Spanish. Surely as its a Spanish film that makes it normal and not dubbed. Oh well.
In the morning I got up and grabbed a bus to Managua still a little knackered. Now I was apprehensive because even locals had told me this city was dangerous. I arrived in town and walked towards the place lonely planet says to stay. Got some indifferent answers but most people were friendly. Bit like London. Looked nice enough so far. Why do all these hippy twats hate places where people actually live as opposed to tourist towns. The map was shit again and I have so far concluded that the only bad area of town that does not feel safe is the area Lonely Planet says to stay. I am suspicious that the guy who wrote this section never left the Tica Bus station and has no idea where anything is as the whole map thing is very badly put together, like it was copied from an ordnance survey map. I dropped my stuff in a dodgy but nice hotel and headed to the 'dangerous' monumental district. Its not dangerous. In the day anyway. There is a cool giant statue of a soldier with a flag, a bombed out cathedral that looks serene, a monumental area with a burnt out flag and concrete encased guns. The president buried them all in concrete when both sides of the civil war handed their weaponry in. Kind of funky. Its like a skeletal concrete gun ribcage. A whole wall of concrete with twisted gun barrels rusting out of it like some awesome modern art exhibitin. Very peaceful and quite funky. The rest of the area is pleasant and almost deserted. It was the old centre of town before an earthquake knocked it out. I was enjoying Managua but not sure if I liked it. It sits right on a lake so you can see this huge lakefront when you go down there, but the wind was up and tossing dust in my eyes. I went and watched Tropic Thunder as I would chill here. Decent but nothing special. Then on my way back I was stalked by some man. If anyone approaches you at night on the streets its never for a good reason. I quickened, he quickened, I went top speed (I walk very fast, he would need to run now and then I would know and outrun him as well). He laughed and turned off. Hmm. First time I have been street stalked but made me confident they would have to want to shoot me for them to have any chance of mugging me because I am faster and bigger than them. I read some on Ecuador due to the new change of plan. Looks like lots of cool things to do. Will need at least 2 weeks. Lots of Colombian offers now.
In the morning I slept long and would spend the day finishing up the blog mainly. I also wanted to see the tall place with the great view, but it looks like Ortega has taken it over again as a guard whistled at me and told me I had no chance of climbing it. So I walked around the lake. How cool is this city. They have loads of volcanic crater lakes scattered all throughout it. I headed to Zona Rosa and through some vast expanses of space and grassland. To my left was a new cathedral that looked like an aircraft hanger with giant concrete boulders on it. What the hell was that. What the hell is this place. Zona Rosa is kind of cool, but again I could not find any sort of urban sense of a city. I walked back to the lake and the other side mounts the hill. I looked around and in every direction was no urban cluster. Just buildings seemingly sticking out of a jungle. What the hell sort of city was this. Then I realised. Managua is Tikal. A modern Tikal. No urban areas, almost no tall buildings. Just clumps of 2 or 3 tallish buildings spiking up out of the urban jungle of trees and forests. It is so like Tikal. Spread out and weird. Then looking the other way you see the lake and volcanoes on the edge of this jungle hideaway. It all makes sense. Well it makes sense because it makes no sense. Like Tikal. This place will baffle archaeologists in 1000 years time. Its a non entity like Belmopan, but a great non entity. Funky. I think I like it now I understand it. And because I understand Managua I think I understand the chaos that is Nicaragua. If you miss this place and that hill, I dont think you can understand the country. Every capital speaks for its people. On to Granada in the morning and maybe figure out what Stephanie is thinking.
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