katestravelblog

Home, jetlagged ... what's next?!

2011-01-17T14:45:00.002Z

Got home fine, no travel troubles at all (other than the pain of going back to transatlantic cattle class after my lovely first-class experience on the way out). There's a damn good fish restaurant called Papadeux's in Houston Airport (I believe they're a local Texas chain). And the airport sells NASA merchandise, so I'm now the proud owner of an official NASA tshirt. I intend to wear it while doing my postgrad lab work, so I can pretend I'm an astronaut ...

Even though the jetlag hasn't worn off yet, I'm already wondering where to aim for next - and several people have already asked me what's on my list. So, for anyone interested, here are my next set of travel goals:
- Berlin
- Madrid
- a week in Mexico City
- next medium-term (3-4 week) trip: maybe Patagonia
- fantasy long-term (3 months or so) trip: Africa

Back to the start again

2011-01-15T01:19:00.003Z

Back in Oaxaca and about to head out for some food and a beer before getting an early night, in preparation for a day of travelling tomorrow. The ride here was long - 7 hours! - but very scenic, as it wound up and down some very twisty mountain roads to cross the Sierra Madre mountain chain. We stopped for a coffee and to stretch our legs near the top, at around 3,000 metres above sea level. Surrounded by pine forest, the air was beautifully fresh, cool and clean. Apparently there are very good log cabins up in the mountains, with wood-burning stoves to ward off the chill, and the hiking is second to none. But instead of putting my boots on for a tramp around, I´ll be putting them on to board an aircraft (if all goes to plan!) tomorrow. And then it´ll be back to wondering what my next trip will be, once more ...

ABOUT BLOODY TIME!

2011-01-15T01:10:00.000Z

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/15/barack-obama-us-embargo-cuba

Can´t wait to go back and see how things are changing.

Advice for drivers in Mexico on the use of the car horn

2011-01-14T22:04:00.003Z

The horn of your car may be used for the following purposes (among others):

- Gaining the attention of a friend on the street;
- Indicating that your vehicle is available for hire to any pedestrians who may be passing;
- Advising a sleeping dog to move from the middle of the road;
- Celebrating a special event, such as your football team winning or the fact that the weekend has arrived;
- Greeting friends who are driving other vehicles in the vicinity.

Beachlife

2011-01-13T22:09:00.004Z

The last few days have gone by pretty quickly, considering I haven´t been doing much! There is a chain of little beaches running along the coast here, each with its own personality and clientele. I went to Mazunte yesterday, and Zipolite today. Puerto Angel, where I´m based, is the closest thing to a town, and it´s the most popular beach with Mexicans (there are actually two beaches, the town beach where the local fishermen park their boats, and the tourist beach, which is full of thatched-hut restaurants and sun loungers). Mazunte is popular with a young, ´traveller´crowd, so it has some happening nightlife in addition to the usual daytime seafood-and-beer places. Zipolite has had a reputation as a hippy hang-out for years and therefore has more shops (mostly selling tie-dyed beachwear, suncream and snacks) and attracts a more predominantly middle-aged crowd. It´s also one of the few beaches in Mexico where nudism is tolerated. Strangely, most of the people to take advantage of this pleasure are stout middle-aged men. Most of the nubile topless young ladies can be found at Mazunte instead ...

Back to Oaxaca City tomorrow morning, and my flight is early the following day. Can´t believe I´m getting so close to the end, the last week has flown by!

Indigenous religion

2011-01-13T16:06:00.001Z

I was meaning to write something about indigenous Chiapan religion while I was there, but never got round to it. So here it is ...

There is much confusion over what the indigenous peoples of Mexico actually believe in. A number of coincidences and similarities with Christianity have led to the widely-held myth (perpetuated by some guidebooks and tour guides) that they have adopted a customised version of Christianity. This is not the case. In fact the indigenous peoples of Chiapan villages such as San Juan Chamula continue to perpetuate a belief system which is, in most significant respects, pre-Columban. The confusion arises because, after the arrival of the conquistadors, they accepted an overlay or veneer of Catholic tradition, matching traditional beliefs, practices and imagery with those of their new occupiers until the two fused and became indistinguishable.

So, for example, Chamulans worship in a church. They light candles before icons of the saints. They undertake pilgrimages to saints' shrines. So far, so Catholic. However, the saints are usually identified with pre-Columban gods or natural phenomena, the modern church is an analogue of the Mayan pyramid (pyramids were built in non-mountainous regions to bring worshippers closer to the sun, which was of course, as in so many other religions, one of the most important manifestations of divinity), and pilgrimage is more about nature-worship than about the saints per se. For example, caves are used for sacrifices because they bring the worshipper closer to the underworld, the world of death. Central to the understanding of this thinking is the Mayan concept of the 'tree of life', in which the roots are the underworld, the trunk is this world, and the branches (of which there are usually three) are the heavens, the world of the gods. One of the biggest reasons for confusion about the blend of Christianity and Mayan belief practiced by indigenous Chiapan communities is the central importance of this 'tree' imagery, because it looks conveniently like the Catholic cross. After the arrival of the conquistadors, the Maya could therefore continue to worship their gods with only minor, mostly stylistic, adaptations to the visual tokens of their belief system, leaving Catholic missionaries smugly and deludedly confident in their own proselytising abilities.

It's impossible to do justice to the sophistication and complexity of the Mayan belief system, and the modern indigenous religion which it has spawned, but here are a couple of little aspects which amuse me. Firstly, for indigenous people St John the Baptist is more important than Jesus. This is because pictures of John baptising Jesus show him with his hand on Jesus's head. In traditional indigenous culture, less-powerful people bend their heads to those who are more powerful, who confer approval by placing their hand on the other person's head. Therefore St John is clearly more powerful than Jesus, right? It makes complete sense.

Secondly, the saints are seen as actual manifestations of the people or natural processes which we might suppose they merely represent. Therefore if you make offerings to the saint (I'll come back to this in a moment) and the saint fails to deliver for you, it's perfectly normal to seek to punish the saint in some way. People will sometimes turn the saint's icon or figurine to face the wall, or in extreme cases bury it or throw it into the river. These days saints in indigenous churches are often encased in glass boxes to prevent such retribution.

So, offerings - well, one example of the misinterpretation which abounds on the subject of indigenous religion is the well-worn myth that the people of San Juan Chamula 'worship Coca-Cola'. This is of course bollocks. When praying to the gods for their intercession it is unsurprising that one of the main things indigenous people ask for is the right weather conditions. Weather does after all mean the difference between another year's food or starvation. Thus, as in so many religions around the world, the sun and the rain are two of the most important gods/deities/phenomena on which worship focusses. For indigenous Chiapan people, the sun is represented by the lighting of candles and the rain is represented by the offering of some form of liquid. This can be water, alcohol, or these days bottled soft drinks, including Coca-Cola. In fact when I went into the church at San Juan Chamula, Fanta was more in evidence than Coke. Presumably the misinformed tourists and guidebook writers would therefore assume that some kind of battle of the soft-drink deities has occurred in order to effect such a change ...

Hombres

2011-01-11T23:30:00.003Z

Mexican men are stereotyped for three things: machismo, migration* and murder. The ongoing drug war has added a darker edge to their long-standing (and to some degree self-perpetuated) macho image. Many Europeans (and guide-book writers) seem to think that this translates into a threatening atmosphere for visiting single women. However, as in most of central America, this hasn´t been my experience. Mexican men will, I have found, find you a taxi (or camioneta), ensure you don't get ripped off with the fare, make sure you get on the right bus, and that you get off at the right stop. They will offer to carry your bags, check that you´re having a good time, and if all else fails, they´ll take you home to mama, who has a solution for every problem under the sun and makes the best tortillas in the world, to boot.

I have no idea why men in Mexico are generally such gents. Explanations I´ve heard from other female travellers who have shared similar experiences include the aforementioned dragon-eating mama, or (more cynically) that the perpetuation of patriarchal norms includes upsides as well as downsides (which are probably mostly felt by Mexican, not foreign, women).
As far as I can ascertain, Mexican machismo is more about how men relate to each other than to women. An example: today on the snorkelling trip, the boat-boy swum over to a big rock in the middle of one of the bays, climbed it (must have been at least 15 feet) and jumped off in a stylish dive. Every Mexican guy on the boat then had to do the same thing at least twice, just to demonstrate that he too could. Las chicas and the non-Mexican guys on board were not similarly moved to action.

A typical Mexican men's joke pokes fun at Argentinian men, who are percieved here as being vain and effeminate - a little like the British view of Italian men. It goes: ´A Mexican walks up the hill outside town, which is a noted natural beauty spot, and finds an Argentinian guy sitting on the top. "What are you doing up here?" the Mexican asks. ´The Argentinian replies: "I wanted to see what the town looked like without me." ´

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* = Mexico has the highest number of emigrants working in other countries of any nation in the world, a national newspaper here revealed recently. Mexicans are very proud of their overseas brothers and sisters, who they (rightly) see as sustaining the economies of many richer countries through the provision of cheap, hard-working labour. By contrast they´re viewed by many in host countries such as the USA in a dim light, in rather the same way that recent Eastern European immigrants are complained about in Britain.

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NB. I forgot to add that Mexican men in my experience are both devoted and modern fathers, taking a large role in day-to-day childcare and sharing the responsibilities and chores, from babysitting for a large portion of the day through to changing nappies on the back seat of a long-distance bus.

At the beach

2011-01-11T23:17:00.005Z

Got to Puerto Angel yesterday morning , after hitching a breezy ride to the coast from Pochutla in a camioneta (ie. on the back of a pick-up truck) (don't worry mum, I wasn't on my own - I met an Israeli girl on the overnight bus from SC, and we were both heading beachwards). It's a lovely, sleepy little beach town, rather reminiscent of some Greek islands in fact - nice beaches, low-key swimming and snorkelling, lots of good seafood, little houses scattered up the hillsides which rise from the beachfront boulevard, accessed by winding lanes and staircases, and thatched beachfront restaurants and bars to chill at. The main difference is that the vegetation consists of banana trees and palms instead of olive groves. Oh and everyone speaks Spanish, of course.

The town beaches are calm but there's a great variety of conditions in the surrounding area, including some beaches with strong undertows and others with epic surf. I'm staying with two brothers who are among the best surfers in the area, but I don't think I'm going to indulge in any lessons - my efforts in Cornwall were fundamentally hampered by my total lack of balance.

The cold has gone, by the way - I only felt noticeably grotty for a couple of days, fortunately. Now the main ailment I'm trying to avoid is sunburn ...

Today I went out on a snorkelling trip to a few beaches down the coast. Saw a whole pod of dolphins very close to the boat! There are often sightings of whales here at around this time of year, as they are migrating (not sure from where to where), but we didn't spot any unfortunately. I also saw a flying fish *actually* flying out of the water, and lots of sea birds. Oh and plenty of amazing fish along the various reefs we visited, from tiny iridescent blue ones to really quite large ones with dramatic black stripes. And I swam for a while above a shoal of shimmering white fish, at least 50 to 100 of them. It was amazing. The sea here is very clean and, in the more tranquil bays, very clear.

Updated itinerary

2011-01-09T17:37:00.002Z

I caught a cold in San Cristobal, so I wimped out of the Yaxchilan trip and headed back to SC from Palenque after one night. Been here for a couple of days now, and tonight I´m catching the overnight bus to Pochutla, to get to nearby Puerto Angel. Planning to stay there a couple of days, checking out other beaches in the area - Zipolite and Mazunte - then maybe head along the coast to Puerto Escondido before returning to Oaxaca on the 14th.

Food

2011-01-08T22:34:00.010Z

(This is a post which will be appreciated by Nick, if no-one else ...)

Mexico has a vast variety of delicious foods, and the southern states are well-known for certain specialities. Here are just a few of the things I´ve tried since I´ve been here ...

- limonada naturale: a combination of lime juice, sugar syrup, ice and bottled water (either fizzy or still). Very refreshing, and a good alternative to plain water during the day.

- chapulines: fried grasshoppers, flavoured with chilli and salt and sometimes lime. Usually sold on street corners as a snack.

- chilli-coated peanuts: usually served as a bar snack alongside your glass or bottle of beer, you also often get a chunk of lime to squeeze into the beer, supposedly to enhance the flavour. Authorities differ on whether this is a foreign affectation or áuthentic´Mexican practice. It´s certainly the case that Mexicans often drink beer with various additions, such as lime juice, salt, chilli sauce, and sometimes even tomato juice mixed in. This is known as a michelada.

- various ´interesting´ types of alcohol, including mezcal and pox or posh. Both of these are available in myriad flavours, such as hibiscus (aka jamaica) and canela, as well as plain. Mezcal is usually served with slices of orange, dipped in a salt-chilli mixture, which you´re supposed to bite into before taking a drink.

- tamales: maize dough dumplings or parcels, stuffed with a variety of fillings (in Oaxaca, chicken mole is a popular tamale filling), wrapped in banana leaves and steamed.

- mole: a whole variety of sauces in which meat is cooked. The most famous in Britain is the chocolate-based recipe which originated in Pueblo, but in Oaxaca more common ones are ´green´mole and ´almendros´(made with ground almonds).

- gorditas (means ´fatties´): two small tortillas, placed one on top of the other and stuffed with a filling (cochinita pibil is delicious - shredded pork that´s been marinaded in a chilli-tomato sauce) and then lightly fried so that the edges go crispy.

- tacos: tortillas served flat with your choice of meat on top - strips of beef or chicken are common. Served with a set of different and varied salsas and toppings on the side, for you to add as you wish. Eg. salsa verde, fresh tomato salsa, sliced radishes, fried onions, fresh chopped onions, etc.

- chicharron: fried pork rind, similar to roast pork crackling. Eaten as a main course in tacos, gorditas etc by Mexican men who like their food greasy!

- quesedillas: tortillas folded over a filling such as cheese (Mexico has many types of cheese) and then placed on a hot griddle until the cheese melts. You can also add other fillings such as mushrooms or squash blossoms, which are popular in Chiapas.

- empanadas: tortillas folded over a filling, often meaty, and then baked in a spicy sauce, often with cheese melted on top.

- tostadas / tostaditas: small tortillas, baked until crispy and then topped with a variety of fillings and eaten with your fingers as a bar snack. I particularly liked it with sliced beef or pork, combined with fresh chopped onions and coriander. These will also be served with a variety of salsas and other side-condiments for you to add as you wish.

´Spot The Traveller´

2011-01-08T00:18:00.004Z

Here´s a little game which you can play next time you´re on holiday in a boho environment ... maybe we can call it ´traveller bingo´?

- tie-dye: score 1 point (per item)
- dreadlocks: score 2
- multiple ear piercings: score 1
- nose/eyebrow/lip piercing: score 2
- Palestinian scarf: score 1
- man wearing flipflops: score 1
- anything with the Cuban flag on it: score 3
- local ´craft´item of clothing: score 5
- complete outfit of local ´craft´clothing: score 20
- girl wearing palazzo pants: score 1
- partially-shaved hairdo (on girls): score 2
- starts sentence, ´When I was in Cambodia/Peru/India/Guatemala ...´: score 5
- starts sentence, ´What the locals really eat/drink/think is ...´: score 10
- ´ethnic´tattoo: score 1 (per tattoo)
- carrying bongos: score 10
- sarong draped over shoulders (in non-beach scenario): score 1
- girl wearing bikini top when it´s dark (in non-beach scenario): score 1
- busking or selling cheap jewellery on the street: score 20
- child in tow (´experiencing a liberated upbringing´): score 30
- hand-painted bus/van: score 20

Itinerary update

2011-01-05T13:59:00.002Z

Left Oaxaca on the evening of 31st Dec on an overnight bus, arrived San Cristobal De Las Casas 6am on the 1st. Hung out for a couple of days, then went for the day to Lagos de Montebello (a remote mountainous beauty spot with around 60 lakes, which, due to sediment in the water, are all different colours from indigo to almost white), Grutas de Rancho Nuevo (a big cave system) and Cascada El Chiflon (a really incredible set of waterfalls and popular local hang-out). Yesterday I went to the Canon Del Sumidero (an incredibly deep limestone canyon, with rich biodiversity - we saw lots of birds, iguanas, monkeys, a coatimundi and even some biiiiig crocodiles) and the original capital of Chiapas, Chiapa Del Corzo, which is a beautiful, tranquil little town with a massive church and former monestary which has been turned into a nice little art gallery.
Today I´m going to visit two indigenous villages, San Juan Chamula and Zinacantan, and then go and check out the local crafts market with a friend to pick up some bits and bobs.

Tomorrow is a 6am start to waterfalls Misol Ha and Agua Azul and legendary Mayan jungle kingdom Palenque (it will be interesting to see how it compares to similarly legendary Mayan jungle kingdom Tikal, which some of you may remember I visited in early 2007). I´m hopefully going to stay for a couple of nights at hippie jungle enclave El Panchan, visiting remote archeological sites Bonampak and Yaxchilan (up by the Guatemalan border) on the second day. This involves two hour-long panga rides through crocodile-infested waters!

On the 8th I´m getting a bus from Palenque back to San Cristobal and, the following day, an overnight bus to Pochutla, which is the jumping-off point for the Pacific beaches. I met some people in my dorm who recommended Mazute so I´ll probably check that out for a day or two, then maybe get a bus further along the coast to Puerto Escondido, before getting a bus back to Oaxaca on the 14th. My flight to Houston is early on the morning of the 15th.

Old and new

2011-01-04T23:01:00.004Z

There are two groups of people who are synonymous with Chiapas - in (mostly) the past, the Lacandon Maya, and in the present, the Zapatistas.

The Lacandon Maya are famously the only Maya not to be beaten by the conquistadors - instead they retreated into the remote rainforest in the highlands of Chiapas, where they lived undisturbed, preserving Mayan traditions, beliefs and social structures, until the 1930s-40s, when two Europeans, Franz Blom and Gertrude Duby, encountered them. (Blom was working in the region as an archeologist, and Duby as a journalist and ethnographer - they later married and founded Na Balom in San Cristobal, a restored colonial house which has become a centre for Mayan studies). Since then, the growth of commercial farming and logging in Chiapas has destroyed approximately half of the rainforest, with a concomitant effect on the Lacandon, many of whom became dispossessed. These days two groups of Lacandon Maya continue to preserve their traditions, numbering 180-300 in all. Their last king died about 10 years ago, and their last incense renewal ceremony (a vital part of their beliefs) took place in 1970. Recently, one of the groups converted to Christianity. And controversially, tourism is another major threat to the preservation of what is probably the closest modern culture to that of the 11 previous Mayan civilisations. Adventurous eco-tourists are eager to venture deep into the rainforest to meet and stay with the Lacandon people. The more this happens, the further it infiltrates modern tourist culture into their communities. As ever, some individuals (those who can translate, and offer food and accomodation) are keen to receive tourists, while others are more resistant. The Lacandon currently lack a king - a new one will be chosen at the end of the current calendar cycle in 2012, apparently. A king has 4 spirit guides, while a spiritual leader has only 3. The Lacandons´current spiritual leader is the grandson of the previous king, but monarchy is not hereditary and so he has no natural expectation of inheriting the throne.

Meanwhile, the forces of tourism in Chiapas are also opposed by another, rather more modern grouping. The Zapatistas are indigenous farmers and peasants who seek political autonomy and oppose modern capitalism. They first came to international significance after Mexico ratified the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which controversially laid the groundwork for the escalation of neo-liberal economic policies across central America, and then enacted laws watering down indigenous land rights. The 1990s uprising is ancient history in Chiapas now - it was brutally put down by the Mexican army and right-wing paramilitaries, with more than one massacre taking place. These days, the Zapatistas´presence in San Cristobal is limited to a souvenir shop selling, among other things, knitted Subcommandante Marcos dolls, and a fair amount of anti-capitalist graffiti, probably created by the many young alternative types from Europe, the US, Argentina and other parts of Mexico who hang out in town and try to run ´community projects´for the local people. I´m not sure how appreciative the local people are of this assistance ... The main benefit of increased tourism and ´right-on´types for the Zapatistas is that it restricts the level of physical force which the Mexican army can use while avoiding public outcry. It also creates an economic environment in which it´s not in the government´s interest to decimate the area completely. Therefore apparent calm reigns (the famous quote by Tacitus is perhaps appropriate: ´They make a desert, and call it peace´).
The Zapatistas oppose the increasing level of tourism in Chiapas, particularly eco-tourism in the jungle areas (where they are based), because they argue that it gives the Mexican government an excuse to extend infrastructure such as roads into the region, thus making it easier to control and therefore to erode indigenous communities´autonomy.

It´s important when considering this situation to understand that, for both groups of people, their remote geographical location has until relatively recently enabled them to live very much autonomously, with traditional community structures and decision-making powers and therefore, to all intents and purposes, independence, although they have technically been part of the Mexican state for centuries. In both cases the enormous natural riches (timber, mineral wealth, water - the state provides around 30% of Mexico´s entire water supply!) which Chiapas´s remote location has preserved are now the cause of its problems.

Edit: It´s also worth mentioning that the Lacandon won a substantial award of land from the federal government, a decision which effectively wiped out the rights of other indigenous people farming the land. Some of the small group of Lacandon landholders have apparently sold logging rights on their land allocations to big companies, a controversial move given the government´s stated aim of conservation. Farming communities affected by this decision were among those involved in the Zapatista uprising, which was (unsurprisingly) opposed to the land grant. Therefore the Zapatistas´aims are quite clearly in opposition to those of the Lacandon - these are not two groups of people who are likely to work together in their shared interest.

Chilly nights

2011-01-03T02:53:00.003Z

Up in the highlands (San Cristobal is at around 2,000 metres altitude) it gets very cold at night. Daytime is either warm and cloudy, or baking hot and clear, but when the sun sets at around 7pm, it gets cold very quickly. The hostel beds here are provided with at least two thick blankets (and of course I brought my down sleeping bag, for extra cosy), but the rooms themselves are almost arctic by late evening. Proper pyjamas are a must, and I´ve been making good use of my free pair of airline socks, courtesy of Continental first class.
I had to pack for all weathers though, as after this I´m heading to Palenque which is in the middle of tropical jungle and almost at sea level. So that calls for light clothing, sun screen and insect repellant.

Guacamole

2011-01-03T02:47:00.003Z

Those who know me well might be aware that I´m slightly addicted to guacamole. Supermarket stuff is ok at a pinch, but I prefer home-made - it tastes completely different (Nick will attest to this). Well, as I´m in the home of the avocado, I have of course taken it upon myself to try as many places´guacamole efforts as I possibly can. So far the results have been pleasing - large quantities of very tasty guacamole, in all cases accompanied by a plentiful helping of the house tortilla chips (unsalted, as is ´proper´ - unlike the commercial brands you can buy in the UK), and usually two or three bowls of other types of salsa (usually one mild and green, one hot and red or orange, and one more moderate but with a smoky, barbecue flavour - again, unlike the artificial commercial barbecue flavourings you get at home). It´s hard to single out a particular place as being the winner so far, but I will of course continue my dedicated research ...

Chiapan coffee

2011-01-03T02:43:00.002Z

A large part of Chiapas has been deforested in order to grow coffee - the warm highland climate is ideal. There´s a coffee museum in San Cristobal and I called into its cafe to check out the best beans available. On the menu was listed ´coffee Chiapan´, so I asked what it was. It´s coffee with ´canela´, the barista said (canela is cinnamon, for those of you who don´t speak Spanish). Hmm that could be interesting, I thought, so I tried it. It was yummy. Not artificial flavouring but a big chunk of actual cinnamon bark, brewed in with the coffee grounds. Cinnamon grows throughout central America so it´s probably just as local as the coffee itself. If you´re into coffee, I recommend trying it - just remember not to push the coffee filter plunger down!

Busy busy busy

2010-12-31T15:53:00.003Z

Still in Oaxaca, and managed to pack quite a bit into the last few days - the prehistoric art museum (Rufino Tamayo), the contemporary art museum, the basilica and cultural centre de Santo Domingo, los arquitos (the old acqueduct), some sunbathing, lots of walking around to admire the colonial architecture, and a couple of trips out of town - to the ruins at Monte Alban and Mitla, a tree called El Tule which is (allegedly) the largest living biomass on the planet, a rural mezcal distillery (I´m bringing some back for you, Nick!), the Hierve El Agua mineral springs, and Teotitlan Del Valle - a major weaving village.

The hostel does have hot water, albeit not usually by about 8am as it gets used up very quickly, so afternoon/evening showering is preferable; and I needn´t have worried about the weather, as it hots up very quickly in the mornings. By 11am it´s baking. I had to buy some sun cream after getting a little pink in the space of about an hour on the first day!

Anyway, today I´m trying to finish up all the things I haven´t done yet, and then get ready for a long bus journey - I decided to split the difference in my deliberations about what day to move on, so I´ve booked a bus to San Cristobal for this evening. Yes, that means I´ll be on a bus for New Year! But I´m not particularly bothered, I prefer to get there rather than hang around here for another day just for the sake of it. The main thing I´m slightly worried about is that nobody will be moving on from San Cristobal on New Year´s Day, so accommodation will be packed, probably. I´ve got a reservation at one of the two Hostelling International places (Hostel Mexica), which was confirmed by email, so hopefully I should be ok, but my ´worst case scenario´mindset means that I´m prepared for a bit of hassle if my reservation has been ´lost in the post´. I arrive into SC at 6am, so I´ll have the whole day to sort things out if necessary.
Mexican buses are a bit of a trial - they usually have the air conditioning ramped right up, so they´re freezing, and they play really bad Spanish films very loudly the entire time. I´m very much hoping that they´ll knock that off overnight, at least. Well, either way, it´s an adventure ...

Edit, I forgot to mention - can someone please email me to let me know what happens in the big Archers New Year storyline?!

Back on the road again

2010-12-28T16:17:00.004Z

So, I made it here safely (are you listening, mum?!). It wasn´t nearly as tiring a day of travelling as I remembered from last time I went to Nicaragua - factors which made a difference I think include the fact that I got about 4 hours´sleep on the transatlantic flight, and the fact that the second flight was shorter, just two and a half hours, meaning I was at the hostel shortly after 9pm and asleep by 10.30pm. So no jetlag! (it´s a lot worse going in the other direction though)

Speaking of that 4 hrs´sleep on the plane, the main reason I managed it was because I had a BED. A proper one, which went down completely flat. And the reason for that was because I was in FIRST CLASS. Yes, that´s right - they upgraded me! The snow in New York meant that a lot of people wanted to crowd onto our flight to Houston, and since they had some space in first, they bumped a handful of us lucky proles up in order to cram some last-minute bookings into cattle class. Woo-hoo! It´s really amazing how the other half live - I had a five-course dinner, then four hours´ sleep, then a three-course lunch. And then there´s the goody bag full of trave-sized beauty products, free drinks of all kinds on demand, a proper duvet, and of course the incredible seat-which-turns-into-a-bed. And SO much legroom! If dad flew first class I´m sure he´d be happy to take longer trips ;-)

Anyway, not much to report as yet, as I´ve just had breakfast and am about to venture out for an explore. Currently mulling over whether to try and get to San Cris before New Year, or wait til after as per the original plan. First impression of the weather so far is cool and breezy (the dorm was definitely chilly last night, glad I brought a fleece) but I popped up onto the roof terrace this morning and the sun felt nicely warm, so maybe the temperature will pick up later. Also a bit concerned that there´s no sign of the promised hot water at the hostel so far - showering in cold water in a cold hostel is no fun, as Nick will remember from our time in Morocco! Am hoping that some might materialise later today ...
This sounds like a big moan! Anyway, I´m here ok and I´m about to venture out. Will keep you posted ...

Edit, Forgot to mention that my schedule is undergoing further revision as I´m considering looping round from Palenque to Villahermosa and possibly from there to Veracruz, then back to Oaxaca, rather than taking the beaches option. That would be closer to my nascent 2007 plans, and would cover the Chiapas-Tabasco area more thoroughly, leaving the Oaxacan beaches for a future trip based in Mexico City (you can fly from Mexico City to Puerto Escondido, which makes it very do-able).
Anyway, haven´t decided yet. Depends how much I like Oaxaca I guess.
Edit again, There´s also the possibility of switching my return flight from Oaxaca to Villahermosa or Veracruz, both have flights direct to Houston apparently. It´d save me a 7-12 hr bus journey back to Oaxaca. Not sure how do-able this is though, in terms of whether Continental will let me change flights without charging a lot.

Last-minute panic

2010-12-22T13:00:00.003Z

The travel chaos of the last few days has made me very uncertain of whether I was likely to actually make it to Mexico at all. Things are settling down now, though, so it seems to be a fair bet. A work deadline means that I haven't even started to think about packing, so the next couple of days are going to be a big pre-Christmas rush!
My schedule has evolved a bit since my previous post. After considering whether to head to the beach for New Year, and getting discouraged by the length of the bus journeys involved (6 hours each way!), I've gone back to Plan A and decided to spend the first week sticking to Oaxaca City. Then I'll head to Chiapas, before maybe getting a bit of beach time at the end of the holiday, if I'm not sick of buses by then.

27 Dec: fly London-Houston, then Houston-Oaxaca
28 Dec - 1 Jan: Oaxaca, maybe a couple of day trips. Hope to find a good party for New Year. Overnight bus to San Cristobal De Las Casas in Chiapas.
2 - 5 Jan: Check out San Cristobal, and day trips to San Juan Chamula and maybe somewhere else
6 Jan: Travel to Palenque (6 hrs on bus!)
7 Jan: Palenque ruins, maybe Agua Azul if it's been re-opened (I heard it was closed because of paramilitary activity)
8 Jan: Day trip up the Rio Usumacinta to Bonampak & Yaxchilan
9 Jan: back to San Cristobal, then night bus back to Oaxaca
10 Jan: Bus to the beaches (Puerto Angel/Zipolite)
14 Jan: Bus back from the beaches to Oaxaca
15 Jan: Fly from Oaxaca, change at Houston
16 Jan: Arrive home

With all this bus travel, I really wish my old MP3 player was still working, it was a godsend when I was bussing it around the Yucatan. If I can't get it charged up and sorted, then I'll have to stick with ripping a few old albums and loading them onto my mini-MP3 or maybe my iPhone. I dunno, I think I need Nick's help on this one.

The plan evolves

2010-08-23T17:10:00.004Z

Having established that I can get a whopping 20 days away in exchange for 10 days' holiday from work (plus a couple of days in lieu, if I work the weekend after I get back), the Mexico plan is getting closer to becoming reality. I've bought the Moon guidebooks for Oaxaca and Chiapas, and have discovered that Continental (my airline of choice) fly direct from Houston to Oaxaca. This is perfect cos it means I can ditch Mexico City (sorry guys, I'm saving you for next time!) and focus on the two southern regions.

Here's the latest approximation of the plan ...

27 Dec: fly London-Houston, then Houston-Oaxaca
28 Dec - 1 Jan: Oaxaca, maybe a couple of day trips. Hope to find a good party for New Year.
2 Jan: Head to the beach. Maybe Puerto Angel, or Zipolite?
5 Jan: Head to San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, probably via Tuxtla Gutierrez (though preferably by direct bus)
6-7 Jan: San Cristobal
8 Jan: Travel to Palenque (6 hrs on bus!)
9 Jan: Palenque ruins
10 Jan: Day trip up the Rio Usumacinta to Bonampak & Yaxchilan
11 Jan: back to San Cristobal, possibly transfer straight on to Comitan
12-13 Jan: Comitan, plus day trip to Lagunas de Montebello (if I can buy some extra time elsewhere in the schedule (see note about night buses), this could be converted into a trip to Laguna Miramar instead - but it's VERY remote and I'm not sure I could stand all the bumpy bus rides involved)
14 Jan: Back to Oaxaca, via San Cristobal (and probably, annoyingly, Tuxtla Gutierrez)
15 Jan: Fly from Oaxaca, change at Houston
16 Jan: Arrive home

I think there are overnight buses between Oaxaca and San Cristobal, which would be an immense help with my schedule. Need to check all this out, and I'm also daring myself to actually book the flight ... erk!

Hot like Mexico

2010-08-11T22:32:00.003Z

And we're back on the travel blog!

The New Year break worked so well this year that I'm considering doing it again - Nick needs the house, for one thing, and I can get 16 days off for 10 days' work holiday. That's long enough to go somewhere cool.

I want somewhere vaguely warm, and not too challenging, as it'll be my first proper holiday for at least 9 months. So I'm considering Mexico.

I have unfinished business in south-central-north-America, having 'done' the Yucatan and been incredibly tempted to blow off the flight home and get onto a bus to Palenque instead. Of course I didn't, and now I'm incredibly tempted by the thought of Chiapas.

The nascent plan would be: fly to Mexico City, spend a couple of days checking it out (including Teotihuacan), then head to San Cristobal De Las Casas, a trip to the Palenque ruins, then Oaxaca, maybe the hippy beaches, then fly back from Mexico City.

Back to reality

2010-01-21T10:46:00.002Z

Back to Britain and back to work - how depressing! Here are a few final thoughts to round things off:

- Nicaragua is still as lovely as I remembered it; I wasn't disappointed by re-visiting. And Ometepe was as nice as it is reputed to be.

- Various ideas for another trip: Matagalpa and the highlands (possibly the Somoto Canyon); the Corn Islands and Bluefields (possibly including Puerto Cabezas); or Chinandega and Cosiguina.

- Would really like to go back and work on the research project again; it's likely that I'm going to do 'persistently active volcanic degassing' for my final BSc project next year (it's a literature review - a bit like a dissertation), and apparently we can include primary research from the field, such as the volcano project.

- Geophysics isn't as scary as I'd thought, plus there's a reasonable amount of fairly ethical employment in that area that doesn't involve, say, picking something purely at random, petroleum geology for example, ahem.

- I got some really good advice about how to work out what area of geology to specialise in, which I'm definitely going to think about a lot this year.

- This was the first time that I actually felt like a proper geologist in the field, which was pretty cool. And when I got home, what was waiting for me? A hefty tome titled 'The Journal of the Geological Society', for further reading.

'This goes all the way up to 11'

2010-01-21T09:35:00.007Z

Had a bit of a delay in getting the final posts up, due to the need to get back to reality etc etc. Here's a quick explanation of the equipment we were using in the field, and what it can tell us ...

The Gravi-meter: Fairly obvious really, this one measures gravity. Gravitational field strength varies slightly depending on the mass of material around you. Slight variations in gravitational field strength can therefore tell you about the composition of the materials beneath your feet. In other words, on a volcano it can tell you about the position of the magma chamber. Tracked over time, this can be used to tell you about changes in magmatic movements underground, a useful predictor of future activity.

The GPS: Yes, I did say GPS. And no, I don't quite mean a TomTom. Magma movements under the Earth's surface can cause the surface to flex and bend a little. This alters its geographical position slightly. Using an extremely accurate GPS, calibrated with reference to a base station outside the flexture zone, it is possible to track these changes over time. Again, this enables us to understand magma movements over time.

The VLF meter: This one is my favourite. Naval bases communicate with submarines using a Very Low Frequency radio wave (aka electromagnetic radiation) which can travel well through water. This is very convenient for geophysicists, who can tap into the same waves to examine underground features. The reason: Features such as faults and hydrothermal systems contain fluids and clays, both of which conduct electricity. Electrical conductivity will distort an electromagnetic field, causing the alignment of the wave (at right-angles to its direction of travel) to tilt. We can measure this tilt using a VLF meter. The degree of tilt is proportional to the size of the feature. This is extremely useful!

Sulphation plates: These are small, lead-powder-filled plates which we put up around the area in order to collect dry sulphur deposition from the volcanic plume. Subsequent lab analysis will enable the team to draw up distribution maps of plume deposition over time, and thus identify the worst-affected areas.

Spectrometer: This is a ground-based instrument which analyses the constituent elements and compounds in the volcanic gas plume. Each element/compound absorbs a slightly different wavelength of electromagnetic radiation. Examining the plume's absorbtion spectrum using a spectrometer can therefore tell us which materials are present.
Here's an example of an absorbtion spectrum; this one is for the Earth's atmosphere:

This shows the EM radiation spectrum emitted by the Sun and re-emitted by the Earth (top graph), and the Earth's atmospheric absorbtion spectrum, including troughs which releate to the absorbtion peaks of different gases (bottom graph).

(Graphs courtesy of Columbia University, USA)

Housekeeping

2010-01-17T20:34:00.000Z

I arrived this morning, according to plan (despite a stressful half-hour hoof around Houston Airport, due to the first flight running over an hour late). I'm well aware I haven't written much about the second week of the trip, so I'm going to do a couple of posts to round off the blog, one explaining some of the work we were doing and the other reflecting on the experience in general.

I might as well confine housekeeping matters to this post, so I should mention that a panoply of photos are now available on my Facebook profile for perusal at your leisure.

´Proper´ science happens

2010-01-14T02:34:00.002Z

After a couple of frustrating days, today has been really great. It´s a bit hard to explain what exactly we measured, but basically it relates to underground geothermal systems, and we found a potentially major anomaly which could indicate major activity in the area. That´s very exciting!

It´s pretty hot work, being out in the sun all day - and we´re getting very little cloud, so the weather is mostly sunny. There´s a good breeze high up near the top of the volcano, but down on the vegetated slopes where we were working today it´s stiflingly humid. My tan is building up nicely, despite wearing suncream.

Two more days to go and then it´s back to reality (as long as Heathrow Airport and Continental manage to deliver me back home) ...

´Proper´ science is frustrating

2010-01-13T02:36:00.002Z

I´ve been with the project in Masaya for three days now, and it has been very interesting, but also somewhat frustrating. Part of this is the natural annoyances that come with switching from individual travel to group activity - endless waiting around, not knowing what´s going on, and managing to do about half of what could actually be fitted into the time available. The other irritant is that this is the project´s first week, and the staff aren´t nearly as organised as I´d expected. So far most of the time has been taken up with doing basic preparatory work, we´ve managed to do very little actual ´science´as yet.

Don´t get me wrong, it´s still a fascinating opportunity - we´ve trekked to the edge of the volcanic crater twice and I have some great pics - but very little actual science is being done, and in the rest of the time available I know that I could do and see far more by myself. There´s been a lot of sitting around at the hotel and we´ve hardly even seen much of Masaya so far.

I´m hoping that things will pick up and I´ll be able to post something more upbeat later in the week ...

In transition

2010-01-08T23:31:00.004Z

Yesterday - my last day on Ometepe - I basically chilled out in a hammock and took it easy. I did the 2-hour taxi journey again this morning, to get back to Ometepe´s port, Moyogalpa. On the way, I spotted a small eruption from Volcan Concepcion - a large ash cloud emerged from the summit and slowly floated down-slope, with dust and a sulphurous smell reaching as far as the road. Very exciting!
It´s been windy in the last couple of days and the ferry ride back was a bit rough. My main concern was the two heavily-loaded banana trucks which were squeezed onto the lower deck - the boat had listed uncomfortably when they were brought on, because the weight wasn´t balanced. The crew spent a long time tweaking their positioning and strapping them down well before we set off, though.

I´m staying in Rivas tonight, a fairly large town which makes a useful stopping-point for travellers en route to/from Costa Rica, as well as those journeying between Ometepe, San Juan del Sur, Granada and other tourist destinations. It´s not got many attractions but seems perfectly functional.

Today is my last day of free, directionless meandering - tomorrow I´m heading to El Pochote near Masaya to stay with a British work contact, John, and the following day I join the geology project.

Sun, sand and really bad roads

2010-01-07T18:02:00.005Z

I've been on Ometepe for a couple of days now, and it's been surprisingly busy so far.

The journey from Granada went very smoothly, I booked a transfer which made it easy as I was driven all the way to San Jorge. I got the ferry rather than the panga, which it became clear was a good decision when I saw their respective sizes. The lake wasn't as breezy as I'd feared - it seems to tail off a bit around midday - so the boat ride was uneventful. Arriving on Ometepe, I and another girl I'd met on the ferry picked up a taxi over to the Maderas side of the island - and then the fun really began.

The main road around the Concepcion side of the island is paved, but other than that it's all unpaved and in the most part is absolutely appalling. Incredibly stony and rocky underfoot, it slows vehicles down to a crawl and makes anything other than horse transport a lengthy and frustrating affair. It took 2 hours to get from the port to my hostel, Hacienda Merida, which is on the opposite side of the island. For comparison, the hacienda's speedboat can do the journey in 25 minutes.

However it was definitely worth the bumpy ride. It's really peaceful, with beautiful gardens, plenty of hammocks and a pebbly beach and dock, which makes swimming practically mandatory. The weather is very windy, but the prevailing winds come from the north-east so we're about as sheltered as it's possible to be. Mornings start early, between 6 and 7am, and it's cloudy til about 9 when the sun starts to burn. It clouds over again in the early afternoon and the wind builds through the evening and into the night. Sunsets here are incredible. Temperatures are easily in the 30s.

So what have I been doing in this hot climate and tricky transport situation? Undertaking physically demanding exploration, of course. I met a group of 4 Americans staying here, which has made it much easier (and more cost-effective) to get trips organised. On Tuesday we hired bikes and cycled round to San Ramon, then trekked 2 hours uphill through the forest to the San Ramon waterfall. The cold dip was very welcome after the incredibly hot and humid trek.
Yesterday we packed a lot in, thanks to the hire of a truck and driver. He dropped us and our bikes off at Finca Magdalena (on the north side of Maderas), where we split up for a couple of tours - the guys did a tour of the finca's coffee farm (which operates as a co-operative, providing employment for a large number of local families), and I went on a tour of the petroglyphs on their property. Several groups of monkeys shrieked in the trees as we tramped through the forest.
We then rode our bikes downhill to hit the main road at Balgue, then along to the island's isthmus beach, Playa Santo Domingo, where we had lunch. After that we split up again - 3 of us cycled to a lovely swimming pool called the Ojo de Agua, while the others headed to see the petroglyphs at another hostel, called El Porvenir.
Swimming was definitely the best decision, as the pool was gorgeous - in a rural setting, a short walk through quiet farmland, yet equipped with a bar/comedor. There were 2 pools - the water comes from a natural mineral hotspring. We got there late afternoon so it wasn't very busy, and it was a real pleasure to wash off the dust from the day's cycling.
Thanks to our foresight, we'd booked the driver to pick us up again at 5.45pm, and we got back to the hostel about an hour later. The ride back was incredibly dusty, but the view of the night sky from the back of the pick-up truck was crystal-clear, with a blanket of stars lying over the twin volcanic peaks.

Deja vu

2010-01-03T17:46:00.002Z

It´s strange being back here, it´s almost as if I never left. I can even remember the street layout!

Yesterday I went to the Covenento San Francisco (they have a good collection of petroglyphs), then on the tour of Las Isletas. These are hundreds of little islands in the lake which were formed from the rubble of Volcan Mombacho when it erupted 10-20,000 years ago. Historically they were inhabited by very poor subsistence farmers and fishermen, but more recently they´ve been bought up by gringos and Nica´s rich, who have built a variety of gorgeous and hideous summer houses on them. There´s plenty of wildlife, particularly birds, and a couple of islands have fairly basic bars and restaurants!
In the evening I went for a couple of beers with two girls from the islands tour. They´re from Minnesota, and are here learning Spanish and volunteering in a school.

Today is fairly chilled, being Sunday. This morning I had a good chat with the hostel owner, Boris, who is French and sometimes runs tours to Volcan Masaya. He wanted to understand some of the geology involved.
After that, I had a wander around the mercado (market), then walked out to Fortaleza La Povera. After completing my postcard duties, I´m off for some lunch and then maybe a siesta. Today is hotter than yesterday!

Tomorrow I´m being picked up at 10am to head to Ometepe. It´s fairly breezy, so I´m hoping that the boats will be able to run - they sometimes have to stop if the wind on the lake is too great.

Es caliente

2010-01-02T17:20:00.003Z

So, after all my travel worries I got here ok and it feels nostalgic to be back in Nica. The gradual creep of tourism is visible - more people speak English, there's far more technology (most places offer free Wifi now, which suggests a lot of travellers bring laptops these days - bizarre), and - the clearest and most universal sign of a city's developing tourist industry - there's now an Irish pub on La Calzada.

The flights were fine, left Heathrow over an hour late but made up the time in the air and landed early. I was seriously impressed with the quality and range of Continental's in-flight entertainment: over 300 films and 200 TV programmes available on seat-back TV screens, on demand! So I watched 500 Days of Summer, Dr Strangelove, the first half of Bringing Up Baby, and a couple of episodes of Gossip Girl. Incredible.

Houston immigration was as slow as I'd anticipated, but the queues were small so I made my connection with just enough time to spare to buy a Spanish-English dictionary. The second flight was unremarkable - I slept for most of it, and chatted with the neighbouring couple who were from Oregon and were travelling to their beach house near San Juan Del Sur.
Nicaraguan customs and immigration was very prompt and efficient, and my pre-booked lift worked perfectly - I and 4 others (a Canadian couple and 2 girls from New York) were in Granada within 2 hours of landing.

I'm staying at La Siesta, which isn't in the guidebooks yet but is very nice, run by a French-Nicaraguan couple. It's basically just a handful of rooms around a Moorish-style courtyard (I remember writing about how common this layout was in Cuba last time I was writing this blog), but it means I've got my own room and a shared bathroom, which is far better than I'd expected, as I'd thought it was a dorm. Plus the courtyard is nice for sunbathing and having breakfast.

Another token of the increased level of tourism here is the ease of making arrangements - last time it was a bit of a struggle to find day-trips and transfers to book. This is because it's not economical to go alone if you're a solo traveller, so you have to schlep around the local tour companies trying to find trips which already have sufficient critical mass to be a confirmed definite, and then book onto them. Last time I was here, this was a bit constraining.
However today, within an hour of leaving the hostel, I've managed to book both a transfer to San Jorge (the departure port for Ometepe Island) for Monday, and a tour of Las Isletas for this afternoon. Plus I got postcards! It was really hard to find postcards last time.

So all in all, things have got off to a very smooth start. My plan now is to try and photograph plenty of stuff, since I didn't have my camera last time, and also to get some Spanish practice. Amazingly, I can already feel it all coming back to me and managed to have a reasonably respectable conversation with the hostel owner last night despite being totally knackered.

Land of lakes and fire

2009-09-03T13:43:00.008Z

Remember how I said that Nicaragua was my favourite country in the world?
Well, I wasn't lying.

While I was out there two and a half years ago, I spent some quality time with volcanoes including Cerro Negro, Mombacho and Masaya. Afterwards my nascent interest in geology led me to study for a BSc in geosciences at the Open University. I'm now two-thirds through the course (another two years' spare-time study to go).

It was a nice little self-aggrandising thought to dream of going back to Nica's volcanoes as a 'proper scientist'. And now, amazingly, that chance has arrived. I'm going to spend a week measuring volcanic gas emissions from Volcan de Masaya, one of the largest emitters of sulphur dioxide on the planet.

But of course I couldn't pop over to Nica without taking a little time to fill in a few gaps which I missed last time. So my plans also include Granada's Las Isletas and, most importantly, Ometepe island. I've got just over a week before starting work on the project in Masaya, which should be enough to have a nice chilled-out time.

I'm back!

2009-09-03T13:38:00.000Z

Dear oh dear, this blog has been mouldering away at the back of the cupboard for two whole years - oh, the guilt!

And in all that time, not much has changed. I still haven't managed to arrange any longterm travelling, mainly due to work commitments - it's not possible to take more than 2-3 weeks off at a time.

But never mind, because I've got something planned for January which definitely makes it worth reviving this blog for ...

[drumroll]

Full details in next post!

... +++ ...

2007-08-23T22:35:00.000Z

Haven't forgotten this blog, but the saving-up isn't going too well so far. Been sailing in Greece for a week though, so I can't complain! At the moment, I'm thinking Jamaica and Puerto Rico. Oh and Argentina perhaps. Peru. The list goes on. Anyone got a few spare £k?

really good Nicaragua pics

2007-04-03T22:47:00.001Z

here.

yes, I travelled downriver in one of these.

Lago de Nicaragua -

some cave-tubing pics

2007-04-03T21:34:00.000Z

I'm the one on the far side ...

(many thanks to Canadian Adam for the pics!)

It's been a while

2007-04-02T22:24:00.000Z

The first step on the long road back to the departure gate ... I've got a permanent job. No more scraping to get by (though commissions have been pouring in over the past week. I think I've broken that elusive 'breaking even' barrier every freelancer fears - ironically, just as I sign back up with The Man!). So my freelance cash should pay off my debts (when it finally comes through - it takes weeks to get paid) and now I can start laying some money by. There's no way I can make it this winter so the plan is to stash a good quantity of cash and take off the following year (Autumn/winter 2008).

In the meantime, to keep the place ticking over, here are some lyrics from a tune that perhaps more than any other (even the reggaeton!) came to summarise my travels for me - and it makes me smile every time.

Mine is a generation that circles the globe
In search of something we haven't tried before
So never refuse an invitation
Never resist the unfamiliar
Never fail to be polite
And never outstay your welcome
Just keep your mind open and
Suck in the experience
And if it hurts
You know what...
It's probably worth it
You hope, and you dream
But you never believe that
Something is going to happen for you
Not like it does in the movies
And when it actually does
You expect it to feel different ...

(Orbital)

i just can't shut up

2007-03-06T22:13:00.000Z

so i've started a non-travelling blog. it's not for deep and meaningful stuff, just an online diary really. but thought i'd link it to here, just in case anyone's interested. now i've got used to blogging, i keep thinking of things to write!

my version of an Oscars acceptance speech

2007-02-18T16:33:00.000Z

well, i've now been back home for a week. i've spent the past seven days applying for jobs, catching up with friends, sorting out the house, battling a nasty cold and generally settling back in. it feels like i've never been away in some respects, which is rather weird.
i've also been reflecting on my trip, and what a great time i had. it has really come home to me how much support i had from you all both before and during the trip, and i wanted to say a proper thank you for that. it might not have seemed to make a difference at the time, but believe me it really did. sometimes people's kind words and thoughts kept me going when i was in a low place, whether it was being soaked and freezing in a havana rainstorm or battling an upset stomach in 38 degree heat in nicaragua.
this probably sounds cheesy but being on the other side of the world has given me a new appreciation of the importance of family, in the widest sense of the word. coming home has been difficult - and not particularly enjoyable - in lots of ways, but i'm very glad that i'm back, simply because it's a joy to see you all again.

i'd like to thank my mum, and my director, and my co-stars, and my agent .... [sob]

PS. I'll be posting a slightly more light-hearted summary of some of the highs and lows of my trip in the next few days, as i thought it would be a nice way to round things off. i don't quite know what to do with this blog now, as i don't think a diary of my life in London would be particularly readable, yet i've become rather fond of it and so i don't want to abandon it to the cold, unvisited outer reaches of the internet, where unloved webpages go to die.

i'm back!

2007-02-12T16:35:00.000Z

no the flights weren't too bad and yes i'm back in rainy old london. i seem to have picked up some kind of bug on the plane, because i've got a raging cold. not the best welcome home i could get! my first impressions of being back in england ...

- it's so cold!
- everything is grey
- i can't get over being surrounded by people speaking english. and no american accents!
- tomasina has definitely turned into a little lard-arse now she's on tins of wet food
- did i mention how cold it was?!

hitting the ground

2007-02-08T15:16:00.000Z

today is my last full day and the weather looks sunny. i'm going to hit up a couple of the museums in merida (archeological and modern art) and do some shopping (the crafts in merida are amazing). tomorrow i've got a really long journey - a 4 hour bus ride to cancun, then another to the airport, then lots of waiting around before an overnight flight to munich and (hopefully, if the weather doesn't sabotage the best-laid plans) a saturday afternoon flight to london. home! a bizarre thought.

yesterday i went snorkeling in two cenotes, which are deep water-filled underground sink holes eroded into the limestone rock due to fractures caused by the impact of the chixulub meteor (the one that wiped out the dinosaurs). geologically very interesting.
the water in them is so clear that when the sun shines through it from a hole at the top of the cave, you can see tens or hundreds of metres down. the sensation is rather like floating above a mountainous landscape. i nearly got vertigo at times. when perched on a rock just out of the water at the edge, you can freak yourself out really easily just by pushing yourself away from the side and launching out across the great expanse. it feels like the first moments of slow-motion falling. in a way it reminded me a little of how i felt when this trip started, which is an appropriate way to end this travel blog. i just hope that the impact of coming back down to earth won't be too painful ...

left one two three, right one two three

2007-02-07T14:16:00.000Z

yesterday i had my first ever salsa class and now i have a newfound respect for latino men. they sure can move. (yes, to the jokers among you, of course i let my partner lead. i won't deny it felt a little strange being 'led', but i did it ...)

there's a bar down the road from my hostel which is full of mexican boys trying to look as though they've just stepped out of a london squat party. they've probably all been salsa-ing since they could walk, yet now they're desperately trying to forget everything they know and learn to mosh.
meanwhile the town's salsa classes are full of concrete-hipped europeans trying to dance latino. strange world!

great brand names

2007-02-07T14:11:00.000Z

there are some unintentionally hilarious brand names here in mexico. for example, there's a line of ready made meals called 'fud'. and a type of furniture called 'ma-be'. but the best has to be the bread brand 'bimbo'. they sponsor one of the yucatecan football teams so there are lots of guys walking round in football shirts with 'bimbo' emblazoned across the front.

mayan movie

2007-02-06T23:21:00.000Z

before i left the uk, i saw trailers for the new mel gibson film Apocalypto (sorry if this has been out for ages in the uk and is old news to you all, i´ve completely lost touch with european release schedules) and thought ´god, what a load of cack that looks like. i bet it´s totally historically inaccurate too´.
but when i was in tikal i met someone who had looked into it and said that actually, mayan experts said it was pretty well researched. so i thought maybe it would be interesting to see, after visiting all these different mayan sites.

today on the bus, on the way back from uxmal (which is definitely the second best site i´ve visited, after tikal - worth seeing just to marvel at the breathtakingly huge quantities of stone involved ...) guess what movie was playing?
and it wasn´t half bad.
so, if anyone´s vaguely interested in mayan stuff and wants to get a taste of the culture that i´ve been talking about for the last few weeks, i reccommend you watch Apocalypto. but don´t tell me the ending - we got back to merida just as the captives reach the sacrificial arena. yes i know, i know the real ending, the spaniards turn up and spoil everyone´s party, but you know what i mean.

my baby's all grown up!

2007-02-05T19:44:00.000Z

isn't this just the most beautiful picture in the world .... can't wait to get home and see her!

el mundo maya

2007-02-04T21:37:00.000Z

the majority of people in the yucatan are ethnically and culturally distinct from the rest of mexico, being direct descendants of the mayan tribes who built the region´s staggering monuments. there are also mayan minority populations in belize and guatemala, but the yucatan is the place where this heritage is most visible. you can literally see it in people´s faces - the reddish-chocolate skin colouring, flat faces, oval eyes and rectangular head shapes are on every street corner. the ancient maya used boards and rope to shape childrens´heads into what they considered the ideal of beauty - flat foreheads and backs of heads, with crossed eyes. young childrens´eyes were even trained to cross by hanging a small ball in front of their noses!

the colonial architecture motherlode

2007-02-04T02:27:00.000Z

i'm in campeche, a beautiful little city on the gulf of mexico. it's unesco listed for its stunning colonial architecture, including rows of single storeuy candy coloured houses, porticoed government buildings, stone cobbled streets, an airy seafront boulevard and an absolute peach of a central park, with a white stone cathedral towering above. the weather clearly heard my complaint, as today was boiling hot and i spent a couple of hours on a sunbed on the roof of the hostel. however this evening it chucked down, just as the saturday evening festivities were getting underway in the central park, live music and dancing being the gist. so who knows what the weather will be like tomorrow, for my visit to edzna, another massive mayan site. i went to chichen itza a couple of days ago, which wasn't as crowded as i'd feared (it helps to arrive at 9am ...) but was nowhere near as massive as tikal or caracol, or as picturesque as xanantunich. and it was absolutely thronged with tat sellers, you couldn't look at a monument without looking at a hideous reproduction jade mask first. edzna is pretty remote, though, so hopefully it'll be quiet.

colourful christianity

2007-02-02T18:40:00.000Z

right outside my hostel in valladolid is a church, fronting onto a public square. since i´ve arrived the square has been festooned with multicoloured bunting and the number of stands selling tacos, rosaries, candles, neon-coloured candyfloss, sticky coconut sweets and second hand clothing has increased daily. the reason became apparent last night- the church´s virgin mary statue was wheeled outside, elaborately dressed in a richly embroidered white dress and veil and draped with garlands of fresh flowers. hundreds of chairs appeared in the square and an outdoor evening church service took place, complete with a 15-piece mariachi band playing hymns. it´s the festival of the local saint and celebrations went on into the night and began again at 7am this morning. as i type, yet another mass is being said outside, to an ever growing audience. every couple of hours little boys race around, letting off a brace of fireworks that consist mainly of gunpowder and are intended more to make an incredibly loud noise than to create pretty visuals.

why does it always rain on me?

2007-01-31T23:01:00.000Z

i hear that the weather in britain is ridiculously warm for january.

here in mexico it´s cold and rainy.

bah!

tourist town

2007-01-30T21:57:00.000Z

tulum beach is just beautiful, a perfect curve of white sand, bordered by turquoise sea and with clifftop mayan ruins towering above. unfortunately the weather is rainy and the ruins are the most tour bus-ridden place i´ve been so far. and from what i´ve heard from other people at the hostel, it only gets worse as you move northwards up the coast towards cancun. tomorrow i´m heading inland, to valladolid, so hopefully i´ll shake off some of the package tour groups and see a bit of ´real´ yucatan.

forgetting things

2007-01-29T21:04:00.000Z

you know you've been out of london for too long when you can't remember where green park tube station is, or even what line it's on!

no, don't tell me, i'm enjoying the idea of being lost in london.

me-he-co!

2007-01-29T18:28:00.000Z

arriba! finally arrived in mexico yesterday from caye caulker, after an unscheduled delay due to a holiday romance - well it had to happen somewhere along the way, right?! further details, for the gossip-mongers among you, will only be forthcoming over a bottle of wine, on my return .... now there's an incentive to come and catch up with me!

anyway, pressing on ... my first mexican stop was the border town of chetumal, a fairly unattractive place. the central market is a big concrete affair that reminds me in an odd way of a miniature version of Elephant and Castle - impersonal and bleak. the sole reason for visiting the place is the museo de cultura maya which is possibly the best resource on mayan life, culture and architecture that i've found so far. completely accidentally, i timed my arrival perfectly, getting into town after a 5 hour journey from belize in time to check out the museum and grab some food, then caught the first bus out of town in the morning. am now (after another long journey) in tulum, which seems to be a bit more lively and has a clear traveller 'scene' due in part to the unbeatable combination of hilltop mayan ruins overlooking the sea, and a long swathe of sunny beach complete with cabanas and bars for low-key nightlife. not sure how long i'll stay here, but my plans for the rest of the time i have left (only 11 days! how time has flown!) include valladolid, merida, possibly campeche, and then maybe playa del carmen, which i've heard it better than cancun (in a relative rather than absolute sense) and has direct airport buses, making it a convenient last stop. will keep you all posted though!

castaway

2007-01-23T15:52:00.000Z

apologies for the silence but i've been on a desert island for three days. no, seriously.

from caye caulker i picked up a sailing tour down the belizian coast to the little beach town of placencia and back. 17 of us, plus 3 crew, took out a beautiful wooden yacht, stopping off each night to camp on tiny little uninhabited sandy islands along the belizian reef system. we woke to see the sun turning the sky pink and golden over the turquoise carribbean sea, with no sound but the rustling of palm trees in the wind, and nothing to do but swim, snorkel the reef and catch fish for supper. the sailing was great too, just enough wind but also lots of sun, and we were followed for part of the way by about 5 dolphins, which rode alongside and in front of the boat as though they were escorting us. needless to say, some rum punch was drunk in the evenings too ...

most people got off the boat last night in placencia and will stay there for a few days but a handful of us sailed the boat back up to caye caulker overnight last night. it took 13 hours and was an experience in itself, with a crescent moon and a blanket of stars hanging over us and absolutely no other water traffic whatsoever. i had such a great time that i'd gladly get straight back on the boat and do it all over again - in fact, i think i could stay put in caye caulker for a fair while! but mexico is calling, so i'm going to be heading over the border in the next day or two. only 17 days til i leave for home - time is flying!

pineapple and coconut cocktails

2007-01-19T17:41:00.000Z

... yes, i've made it to the beach. caye caulker to be exact, a tiny little island perched on belize's carribean seaboard and part of its massive reef system. there are three streets on the island - front street, middle street and back street (i love the place names in belize - near san ignacio there's a place called teakettle. seriously.) which should give you some idea of how small it is.
there's not much to do on the island except sit around in one of the waterfront bars, drinking beer (or one of the aforementioned tropical cocktail concoctions, which are lovely but i suspect wouldn't taste quite as nice in London) and watching the sailboats coming in and out, perhaps making the odd 'you don't want to do the rigging like that' type of comment now and then - this has made me realise that i'm turning into my father ...
if you're looking for action, there are lots of day trips to snorkel and dive sites on the reef, and there's a small beach for swimming and sunbathing. but it's quite possible to do absolutely nothing all day - this is possibly the most laidback place in the world. bars have signs saying 'no shirt, no shoes, no problem', and it's true that most people here don't bother wearing shoes at all (the streets are made of sand, you see). the only traffic is bicycles and the odd golf buggy. the only slightly depressing element is the almost constant presence of several massive cruise ships on the horizon - belize's territorial waters probably contain more cruise ship tourists than the population of the capital city. if any of them start to run day trips to somewhere like this, it'll crush the place completely.

finding fellow brits in the strangest places

2007-01-19T17:25:00.000Z

a few days ago i travelled from san ignacio into a remote and nearly uninhabited forest nature reserve near the guatemalan border. the trip took three hours down incredibly muddy potholed roads, to reach a massive Mayan site called Caracol which archaeologists believe may rival Tikal in its importance.
after a number of armed robberies on this route, the Belizian police force have roadblocks there and you have to be driven in and out in a convoy, complete with guards toting massive M16 rifles (yes mum, this is another thing i deliberately didn't mention before i did it ....)
you really do feel like you're in the back of beyond. so, of course this was an obvious place to come across some fellow brits; 10 of them to be exact. carrying guns and wearing camoflage gear. yes, you've guessed it - the british army are using the belizian border area to do their jungle training. apparently sometimes up to 800 of them sometimes descend on the place at once. i stopped to have a quick chat with them and they seemed as puzzled about what i was doing there as i was at their presence.

happy birthday rachel and nick!

2007-01-17T21:07:00.000Z

hope you both have a great day ....
(hey, better late than never - it's not my fault there's a time difference!)

in a hole

2007-01-16T00:18:00.000Z

today i went cave tubing. 'what on earth is cave tubing?' i hear you ask. well basically, it involves hiking for an hour into the jungle carrying a big tyre inner tube (including fording a river up to my waist!), then hiking through a really cool cave, after which you jump into a big river and float down it while sitting on the tube.
the river flows into another cave, where you float along in the darkness using a caving headlamp to look at all the rock formations overhead. then you reach an underground beach where you de-tube and hike over very slippery rocks about 100ft up into the back of the cave, to find an ancient mayan worship site, where they used to conduct ritual sacrifices. you can see a big pile of shards of pottery from the hallucinogenic potions they used to drink before making blood offerings to the gods of the underworld.
after that, all that's left is to hop back on your tube again and follow the river downstream, floating along looking at the sun sparkling through the thick jungle lining the banks, til you hit the trail and hike back for some much needed lunch.

congratulations helen and julian!

2007-01-16T00:12:00.000Z

many congratulations and best wishes to helen and julian, whose second son, owen, was born today. i'm thrilled to hear it and can't wait to catch up with you all when i get home!

borders and boundaries

2007-01-15T01:37:00.000Z

(a bonus point to anyone who can name the title reference without googling)

so i went to guatemala today.

no, it wasn't another airport delay - in fact my flights went perfectly smoothly. i arrived in belize before 10am and caught a bus up into the hills to the west of belize, to a little town called san ignacio (everywhere is little in belize, as the country is hilariously small, with only 260,000 inhabitants). it's only 10 miles from the guatemalan border, and so it's possible to do a day trip to one of the best mayan sites in the region - tikal. it's truly spectacular, with massive limestone pyramids towering over the jungle canopy that has grown around them. it's so large that you could easily spend two or three days seeing everything, but i got a good look in the 5 hours i had. my legs are killing after hoiking myself up 3 pyramids, all incredibly steep (at about a 60 degree angle to the ground). guatemala isn't the safest place in the world, and tikal and the belizean border road aren't the safest places in guatemala - a tourist was shot at tikal recently, and quite a few vehicle hold-ups and highway robberies have happened on the road. (see, mum, this is why i didn't tell you i was going to guatemala before i went ...) But anyway, i got there and back fine and it was totally worth it. and now i have lots of new stamps in my passport.

from the sublime to the ridiculous

2007-01-13T01:28:00.000Z

Managua airport Best Western hotel. nuff said. i have to check in at 4.45am tomorrow, ok?! that's my justification.

on the plus side, the pool is nice. and i got to wash in hot water for the first time in two months ... oh and i have about 100 tv channels, including BBC World. hearing the trademark BBC bleeps made me feel very homesick - for about a nanosecond. then Tony Blair came on the screen, and the moment passed.

cowboy country

2007-01-11T20:00:00.000Z

After Masaya I travelled up to Esteli, a little northern town on the high plains near the border with Honduras. It's a dust-swept little place, surrounded by a ring of misty blue mountains and populated by farmers who wouldn't look out of place in a Marlboro ad. Cowboy boots and hats are much in evidence. Yesterday I got an extremely early bus one and a half hours up into the hills, past sleepy little hamlets where people live in wood and tin shacks and cook as they have for centuries over wood fires. After a day's hiking in some of the most beautiful (and peaceful) countryside I've ever seen, I spent the night with a local family. The small solar panel on the roof was just about up to the job of powering the ancient and tiny black and white TV as all 15 people in the house sat glued to the broadcast of Daniel Ortega's inauguration. Hugo Chavez's speech got particularly beady-eyed attention. By 8pm I was tucked up under a big heap of blankets, listening to the wind whistling past my nose - it's quite normal for there to be a big gap of a foot or so between the top of the wall and the roof, which can get quite draughty when you're up in the hills at high altitude, and the nights are cold. I slept in all my clothes, though, and my sleeping bag proved its value for money, as I was extremely cosy. And beauties such as the incredibly clear view of the night sky that I admired while cleaning my teeth in the garden more than made up for mundane privations like the outdoor pit toilet and washing in a bucket.

shopping

2007-01-09T22:10:00.000Z

so some of you now have presents awaiting you in the corners of my rucksack. masaya´s crafts market is beautiful, and based in an old colonial building that looks like a child´s sand-castle cast in stone. i spent a pleasant afternoon browsing and ended up buying more than i´d planned, but it´s all small stuff so, since i´m shedding guidebooks as i go, my rucksack is still lighter than it was when i arrived in nica.
and it´s shortly to get lighter still, because in just 3 days´ time i´m heading to belize for the next stage of my adventures. i love nicaragua so much, it´s definitely my favourite country in the world, and i could easily spend another month here. but the air ticket is already bought and so i have to tear myself away. not sure how i´ll adjust to a country where everyone speaks english and it´s all about partying on the beach, but i´ll give it a go ...

nightswimming

2007-01-09T22:01:00.000Z

the laguna de apoyo is absolutely stunning, an incredibly deep, round lake (nobody knows how deep it is, but it´s the lowest point below sea level in central america) surrounded by a steep-sided hill that is the remains of a volcanic crater. lots of wildlife lives on the wooded slopes, and new species of fish have evolved in the warm, clear blue waters.
the place i stayed at has a floating platform moored out in the lake which is fun to swim out to and sunbathe on. but when i was there, a group of us put it to another use - yes, as you probably guessed from the title, we drunk rather a large quantity of flor de cana and then went skinny-dipping. the only thing better than swimming in the laguna de apoyo is swimming in the laguna de apoyo naked with a full moon overhead ...

peace and quiet

2007-01-02T18:31:00.000Z

the laguna de apoyo was so nice that i've arranged to go back there to stay for a couple of days (there's a dorm), just to chill out and detox. then after that i'm going to masaya, the capital of nica's arts and crafts scene, to stay with someone some of you will know - john perry from the Chartered Institute of Housing, who lives in masaya. not sure when i'll have computer access to post again, so in the meantime hope you've all recovered from your new year hangovers and have made some good resolutions!

happy new year!

2007-01-01T16:00:00.000Z

i thought new year's eve would be a wash out, so i was having a lowkey evening hanging out at the hostel with a few people, but we decided to go to the central square for midnight to see what was going on. at midnight lots of people let fireworks off (by holding them in their hand and lighting the fuse) and then about 100 people (gringos) arrived, all in fancy dress, with a big truck with a sound system. there were stilt walkers, people juggling with fire, and lots more fireworks, it was crazy, like a cross between a squat party and performance art. i later found out that it was a wedding reception! the people who got married are veterans of the burning man festival in america, and a lot of the people they had invited are performers there.
so that went on til about 1am, and then i and the people from the hostel went to a bar for another couple of hours. so i'm feeling quite knackered today but it was really good fun.
today i'm going to the laguna de apoyo, a volcanic caldera lake where you can swim, sail, kayak and generally hang out and recuperate. it's so hot though, and that makes hangovers even worse ...!

paranoia

2006-12-31T03:35:00.000Z

three people in the last 24 hours have asked me whereabouts in the USA i'm from.
so it seems that when i'm really tanned, i look like a yankee. eurgh.

'white lobster'

2006-12-31T01:31:00.000Z

when writing about the rio san juan, i forgot to mention one of the area's most interesting current issues. the river ends at the carribbean sea, where the end-of-the-earth town of san juan del norte is located. this part of nica is extremely close to the northern part of colombia, and locals say they earn their living by fishing for 'brown lobster' and 'white lobster'.
the brown lobster is the area's traditional money-earner, fishing. the white lobster is the barrels of cocaine thrown overboard by colombian drug-runners. these guys don't stop at boats however. they use planes and even da vinci-esque home-made wooden submarines. an ongoing frontpage story here is the crash of a chartered plane loaded with drugs near san juan del norte: the pilot recieved 65% burns and died yesterday, about 5 days after the crash, dashing the nica police's hopes of getting info from him. locals on the rio san juan report regularly hearing motor launches travelling very fast upriver, late at night, often in groups of two or three. the cocaine bundles are brought ashore somewhere along lake nicaragua, and the speedboats scuttled. the drugs are then shipped - sometimes overland, sometimes via the pacific - up to honduras and from there north to the USA.
all this means that even though nica's tourism industry is growing, there are still some constraints on the potential popularity of this large biological reserve. after all, if you were an extremely rich international drugs cartel, you'd do whatever you could to prevent one of your key routes from becoming flooded with tourists, and the police presence that usually brings ....

a tale of two cities

2006-12-29T00:35:00.000Z

unusually, nicaragua is a country whose capital really doesn´t matter very much. managua is one long endless suburb, it literally has no centre as its historic district was destroyed by the 72 earthquake and hasn´t been rebuilt. if you ask a taxi driver to take you to the centre of managua, you´ll arrive in a large, dust-swept field surrounded by incredibly poor people living in shacks under tarpaulins. in the distance you´ll see the wreckage of the city´s colonial cathedral, which was left to decay as a monument to the earthquake´s victims.
historically too, managua is reputedly only the capital because it´s halfway between rabidly liberal leon and equally rabidly conservative granada. it´s these two cities which have historically called the shots - even, at one point in the past, both announcing that they were the capital, and declaring independence from each other - and visiting these two cities is the easiest way to get a glimpse into nicaraguan history and politics.
i spent my first week in nicaragua in leon, and perhaps that combined with my personal political sentiments mean that it was inevitable i'd choose to take the leonese side. now i´m in granada and it´s definitely different. the style of colonial architecture varies noticeably, for a start - granada has many more two-storey buildings, grand facades and bright paint jobs, while leon feels older and more sleepy, dominated by its cathedral, the largest in central america and totally outsized in such a small place.
but there´s also a difference in atmosphere - leon is hotter, quieter, slower, and lses touristed. granada is busy and bustling, its historic centre smartly renovated and full of americans. it´s on the pan-american highway which runs from mexico to panama and is the main backpacker route; that means it´s been ón the map´ for a long time. it has far more bars and restaurants, far more posh hotels, and far more commercialisation - not that i´m condemning this necessarily, mind; it brings benefits such as day tours out of the city and organised hikes, which makes life much easier if you´re travelling alone because these are things that are hard or expensive (or both) to arrange from scratch. transport links are good too - there´s an airport shuttle from granada, for example, and in addition to the very regular bus services there are fast and cheap minibuses plying the popular routes. all this makes it possible to spend weeks in nicaragua without ever needing to see managua other than from a taxi or minibus window.

dr livingston, i presume

2006-12-29T00:11:00.000Z

so i spent christmas day in the largest expanse of primary rainforest in central america. it was amazing. i had my own little wooden hut on the banks of the rio san juan (which has caiman and sharks in it, so no swimming for me!), so i could sit in my hammock on my deck and look out at the river and the opposite bank, lined with gallery forest, and watch one of the local iguana family run past. and i could lie in bed at night (a properly comfortable double bed, loaded with pillows, under fancy mosquito netting) and listen to howler monkeys shrieking to each other. i saw lots of monkeys, both howlers and white-faced, mostly in packs which included a couple of babies that were just so cute.
i also visited el castillo, a very pretty settlement far down the rio san juan which is named after its spanish-constructed fort which nelson captured early in his naval career (the spanish wisely left him to it and within two years the british had to retreat, decimated by jungle diseases).
one thing i hadn´t realised before my visit was the extent to which the river was a frontline in both the sandinista revolution and the fight against the contras afterwards. the guy who runs the lodge i stayed at spent nine years fighting for the sandinistas in nicaragua´s northern mountains and after the revolution he was in charge of all military operations on the rio san juan throughout the 80s. the usa used costa rica (which owns the southern bank of the river, and contentiously has tried to take the river itself in the past) to move arms for the contras into nicaragua, and the contras themselves used it as a transit route, so there was a lot of fighting in the area and much of it was a no-go zone even for locals, who retreated to the towns of san carlos and el castillo and had to leave their fields unfarmed. this solitude ironically protected the wildlife, and it´s only now that the area´s astonishing biodiversity is being discovered - there are many species deep in the indio-maiz reserve that haven´t been catalogued yet. there are even jaguars in there - sadly i didn´t see any though.

the jungle

2006-12-22T21:56:00.000Z

so tomorrow i´m off to the jungle, via a tiny little cessna plane, which should be, uhm, interesting (those of you who´ve sat next to me on normal-sized planes will know what i´m talking about!).
i´m going to be staying on the rio san juan, an area of pristine rainforest to the east of lake nicaragua. it´s pretty remote, and hopefully i´ll see lots of wildlife. not so many computers though, probably, so there will probably be radio silence for about a week, til i make it (via a 15-hour ferry ride across lake nicaragua, which is apparently very rough) to granada for new year.
in the meantime, have a merry christmas everyone!

(PS. i know some of you are having problems posting a comment, sorry about this. i have no idea why this is, all i can suggest is that blogger seems to be more reliable in the mornings in the UK, i think because the yanks haven´t woken up yet so the server is less busy .... i´ve asked my technical support team (aka rachel) to take a look at it too, in case there´s any buttons that could be pressed behind the scenes to make things easier.)

[Edit: from tech support... the comment settings should be fine, but as Kate says, blogger can be weird. Anyone having problems, email me with a description of what's happening and I'll try and figure out what's going wrong!]

post-birthday hangover (yesterday, that is)

2006-12-22T02:08:00.000Z

so i spent my birthday hiking up a volcano then down into the active cone, right into the main sulphur gas plume, then boarding down the ash-flow to the bottom of the slope (yes you can actually ´snow´board on a volcano in nicaragua), followed by drinking rum and coke in a sandinista bar while listening to the band (and the audience) belt out leftwing latin american classics such as ´hasta siempre che guevara´, with plenty of clenched fists waving. probably the most memorable day i´ll have for a while!

guidebook highlights

2006-12-19T17:04:00.000Z

the author of the Footprint guidebook i´ve got clearly believes in priming his readers for all eventualities. here´s a selection of some of the best bits ...

- ´carry a stick or small stones to frighten off dogs´

- íf camping, mark the boundary of your campsite with your urine to discourage jaguars´

- ´be careful about swimming in piranha-infested waters´

- ´electric showers are common and if poorly wired decidedly more effective than the Nicaraguan coffee to get the blood pumping in the morning. the shocks are not fatal though´

- ´buses are manned by some of the most aggressive men on earth. the crazed and ruthless driver mounts his challenge, horn wailing, sharpened metal spikes spinning from chrome wheels. the driver will never slow down, yield or even acknowledge anyone except a boarding or disembarking passenger. that poor paying customer will be lifted onto or tossed off the still-moving bus by a hyperactive screaming assistant whose task it is to collect money as he hangs out of the open door, his flailing arms and legs signalling the next lane change´

birthday greetings

2006-12-19T16:56:00.000Z

thanks to everyone who´s been in touch to say happy birthday. i don´t think i´ve ever been so darn hot on my birthday! it´s 32 degrees here at the moment, and this afternoon i´m going to be hiking up an active volcano. don´t worry, i´m taking a sunhat ...

yesterday i watched the sun set over the Pacific ocean on an almost deserted beach about 20km from Leon. it was really beautiful.

tonight i´m going out with a couple of guys i´ve met here to some kind of Latin American music night, no idea what it´ll turn out like, but i´ve got to do something to celebrate my birthday, right?!

getting around isn´t quite as bad as i´d expected given the problems with lack of street names and house numbers etc; Leon is a small place and the cathedral is conveniently central and visible nearly everywhere so as long as you navigate based on that, then it´s not too bad, during the day at least. and it´s a beautiful place to just wander around aimlessly, lovely architecture and a very relaxed feel, i haven´t been hassled at all which is a novelty after Cuba.

panama

2006-12-18T17:22:00.000Z

so yesterday i went to panama city. yes, i know, i was supposed to be in leon - in a completely different country - but Copa Air thought differently.

yesterday was an incredibly long day. got up at 4.45am to get the early flight to nicaragua, changing planes in panama city. but the flight out of havana was delayed by about 2 hours (this after i panicked on arriving at the airport and discovering they´d moved the flight half an hour forward without telling me!) so i and a handful of others missed the connection. the airline got us hotel rooms in a posh place in downtown panama city, including a big tasty buffet lunch, and so after a shower i hit the streets to check out as much of panama as i could in about 4 hours! from the air i´d seen the famous canal itself and down on the waterfront i could see the queue of massive ships waiting to travel through the canal. the city was a big change after cuba - skyscrapers and shops everywhere. ended up in a columbian cafe in the downtown area, and decided i just had to order the only thing appropriate in the circumstances - a Coke ...

anyway, Copa put us on the evening flight to Managua, and i arrived at about 8pm. i would have given up all hope of getting to Leon at this time of night if it hadn´t been for a really nice Nicaraguan guy i met during the delay (who used to work as a diplomat in Cuba and Panama during the Sandinista years, and had some great stories about the Americans renting an apartment over the street from the Nicaraguan embassy in Panama City, to spy on them, and being incredibly unsubtle about it). he lives in Chinandega, which is about 40km further on from Leon, and undertook to deliver me to the door of my hotel, which was incredibly kind of him. his daughters turned up at the airport to pick him up so i had a merry 2 hour drive out to Leon late last night with them, including driving round Leon town centre for about 20 minutes trying to track down the hotel; more difficult than it sounds because nowhere in Nicaragua uses 'proper' addresses, preferring instead to describe things in a roundabout way involving landmarks (which may or may not still exist, depending on whether they have been destroyed in one of the frequent earthquakes that have devastated parts of Nicaragua several times in the past), compass points, and metres or yards. so for example, my hotel is 'on the central street with the cathedral, then go one and a half blocks west of the reuben dario museum'. none of which is very helpful if the place then doesn´t have a sign outside and nobody on the street has heard of the hotel, so we had to resort to asking for the name of the guy who replied to my email when i booked the place ...

anyway, i finally made it to bed and a very comfortable bed it is too (no sign of cockroaches dropping from the wall onto my head in the middle of the night as yet - this is just one of the highlights of the guidebook i´ve got, i´ll post a list of some of the others soon as they´re fairly liable to freak out anyone like me who´s new to central america ...).

un pais nuevo

2006-12-14T19:31:00.000Z

this will probably be my last entry before i leave cuba for nicaragua on sunday. i can't believe i've been on the road for a month now, and i also can't believe that i'm leaving cuba - i could easily spend another few weeks here. i expect that i'll go into major culture shock as soon as i arrive in panama airport (where i change planes for managua), at the sight of the shops - the food - people with money! nicaragua will feel strange, both the differences and, especially, the similarities i expect. but i shall try to post early next week to let you know what i think. internet access should be easier there, as it sounds like cybercafes are fairly easy to find in most large towns and cities. when i arrive i'm getting straight on a bus to leon, a small and pretty city to the west of managua, where i'll be for about 4 days before heading back to managua to catch the plane to san carlos, and from there a boat to the ecolodge i'll be staying at over christmas.
i expect that christmas is in full swing in england, which is an odd thought. there are some decorations up in people's homes here, and most hotels have a christmas tree in the lobby, but other than that there's little sign of the time of year and i've managed to block it out completely so it's something i'm fairly oblivious to (or was, til i recieved rachel's dancing penguins e-card today - thanks rach!).
anyway, i'll take this opportunity to wish you all an early merry christmas, as i expect the chances of having internet access in the jungle are slim to nil. i'll be having my christmas when i get home in february, so perhaps i shall spam you all with christmas cards then ...

a metaphor

2006-12-14T19:01:00.000Z

there are two big internet access centres on the main shopping street in havana, obispo. one has about 10 terminals, the other about 30. to access the net, you simply buy a scratchcard which has a code on, which you then input to the terminal to log in.

at the moment, one of these net places has no cards and the other has no connection. so the whole city is queueing in hotel lobbies for hours to access the internet on the handful of other terminals accessible in the city. it's been like that for several days now and nobody seems inclined to take the simple step of moving the box of cards from one place to the other.

that pretty much sums things up here.

that´s my Christmas break paid for ...

2006-12-13T21:59:00.000Z

IN YOUR FACE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE POLICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/gloucestershire/6174801.stm

rationing

2006-12-11T20:06:00.000Z

whoever created the rationing system was clearly male, as it includes such random things. cubans recieve a tobacco and rum ration, but no soap. pork and lard, but no vegetables or milk (children under 7 get powdered milk, children under 2 get 'proper' milk twice a week). rice and salt, but no clothes or shoes. i'm betting that if you got together several of the women who run the casas particulares i've stayed in across cuba, over a pot of coffee, they could sort out something far better within a couple of hours.

stuff on your ration card still has to be paid for, at government stores called bodegas, but it's priced really cheaply. anything that you want to buy in addition to your rations costs about 20 times more, and that's if it's available to buy in national (non-convertible) pesos, which a lot of things aren't.

initially the ration was supposed to cover all of a cuban's basic needs, but over the years it's been whittled away until now nobody can get buy off their rations alone.

some observations, in no particular order

2006-12-11T20:02:00.000Z

#1 - a white minivan started to reverse in the street, and instead of the familiar 'beep beep beep' that signals reversing in england, it started to play the lambada.

#2 - an old guy sitting on a doorstep in a residential street, clutching two large dead cockroaches. he then pulled the antenna off one of them and began to eat it.

paranoia

2006-12-11T19:54:00.000Z

hello again. yesterday i had a taste of how cubans feel for most of their lives, when all the internet in havana was down at the same time. i instantaneously became suspicious, and was dreaming up conspiracy theories aplenty. (today is better, as the big hotels seem to have access, though there are long queues - i just waited an hour, and i think i'm at the quietest place.)
this reaction is symptomatic of living in a society in which people have no control over aspects of their lives we in britain take for granted - what they eat, for example, or even where they work. it's most readily observed in relation to castro - everyone has a theory about what's going on behind closed doors, and nobody takes any state proclamations or government news reports at face value. several people have looked down the street both ways, closed every door and window, and asked me in a whisper what they say in Europe about castro's health. 'is it stomach cancer? is he already dead?'
so when the whole city's internet connection goes down on the same day, it's only natural to conclude that something exciting is going on!

working backwards

2006-12-09T18:20:00.000Z

sorry about getting my blog entries back to front, but i did some cool stuff in vinales which i thought i should post about, so here it is, albeit a little late ....

so, vinales valley is really pretty, surrounded by these fascinating limestone formations which are called mogotes in cuba, and similar to the steep sided hills of south east asia, which are called karst formations. when i get back i definitely want to do some reading up on how they're formed because it's intriguing and i haven't come across a satisfactorily detailed geological explanation yet! i did ask my OU tutor before i left but he couldn't refer me to any detailed sources.

on my first day there i got a local minibus (which runs between all the main sights in the valley hourly, and is cheap too, a really useful service) to the cuevas del indio, a beautiful cave complete with underground river which you travel along for a short distance by boat. then i walked back the 6km to vinales village, passing mogotes, farms and campesino homes. it's a prosperous area, because it's high up so it recieves a lot of rainfall and is extremely verdant. the farmers in this area grow a lot of tobacco, and also sugar cane and vegetables. many still use oxen yoked to a wooden plough to till the fields.

the following day i met up with the aforementioned british tour group again for a countryside walk where we visited a tobacco farmer, saw the barn where the leaves are dried and were talked through the process from seeding the plants to rolling the cigar. later i went to the cuevas santo tomas, which is the 3rd largest cave system in latin america with 46km of caverns. it was absolutely incredible. to reach the cave we hiked up the steep slope of a mogote, which was a scramble at times, then spent about an hour and a half inside the cave system, which was again physically challenging, using ropes to half'slide, half'abseil down some levels. deep inside the mogote we saw an amazing cascade of stalegtites that looked like they were flowing, and were covered in little sparkling flecks of calcite, so it looked like a mountain of glitter. our guide joked that 'this is the only snow in cuba'. further on, there was a half eroded bed of fossilised snail shells, and beautiful frilly edges around pools of water, deposited over millennia. quite close by, sitting still on a rock, there was also (and i'm not sure whether to write this for fear of causing mum to hyperventilate) a great big TARANTULA! at first the guide teased us by saying it was plastic and put there to wind up tourists, but then he poked it and it ran towards us!!! i was very careful where i put my hands after that ...

after a day of activity, i spent yesterday chilling at a beach, cayo levisa, on the north coast of the island about a hour from vinales. the weather wasn't particularly great unfortunately, but it's an absolutely jaw'dropping spot, a 20 minute boat ride from the mainland and really secluded with just a few beach cabanas dotted along the shore, azure blue waters and fine white sand, backed by mangroves. there's also a coral reef where it's possible to dive and see lots of fish etc.

and now i´m in havana, which won't be as tranquil but is fascinating, as everyone i've met across cuba has had an opinion on which neighbourhood of havana is best, where i should stay and what i should do here! if i can fix up some more spanish lessons i should be here for a week, til i leave for nicaragua, but if i can't then i might get bored of havana so i might pop off to somewhere else for a couple of days.

it feels strange to be thinking about nicaragua already, as i feel like i've only just got the hang of cuba and could easily spend another month here! there are so many places i'd like to see but have had to cross off my list for this visit, i really hope i can come back someday (perhaps with one of you, dear readers!), and see even more.

catching up!

2006-12-09T18:05:00.000Z

ok i back online, sorry for the radio silence but the internet in vinales was incredibly slow and oversubscribed so i haven't been able to get online for a few days. arrived in havana earlier today, via a collectivo taxi again. had a very cuban arrival to the city; the taxi broke down when it stopped to drop off the other passengers, and the driver spent about 20 minutes taking the engine and steering column apart to try to fix it. this attracted the interest of several guys who had been hanging out on the street, and one headed off to fetch his tools. after much discussion (everyone in cuba has an opinion on everything so when anything is going on, everyone will gather round to chip in their 2 cents' worth, and anything involving a foreigner usually turns out to be the most entertaining part of most people's days) this guy dove into the engine and after numerous false starts, we were running again. i gave him a tip to say thanks, of course, and he was so thrilled that he unplugged some piece of the engine or other (while the engine was still running) and held it to his tongue, making electric sparks jump from the engine part to his tongue!!! totally loco.

first impressions of havana is that it's big and crumbling, with rubbish in the streets and uneven pavements, but the atmosphere is more relaxed and less oppressive than santiago, because the streets are wider and perhaps because people are far more used to tourists. i haven't been hassled or ripped off at all yet, and i think speaking some spanish, looking like i know where i'm going and not staring at everything all the time all helps.

tomorrow i'm heading to the museo de beaux artes, which should be spectacular given the very high standard of cuban art i've seen so far in other cities. irritatingly, neither of my guidebooks have a section on fine arts and painting within their chapters on cuban culture, so when i get back home i want to do some reading up.

a museum piece

2006-12-05T21:05:00.000Z

so, i´ve headed out of trinidad to vinales, where i´ve just arrived after a 7 hour taxi trip. not as expensive at it sounds, and comparable to having to go via havana and change buses, but without the stress. trinidad was certainly very pretty and there was lots to do outside the town too, with the mountains and the beach, on which i spent a very pleasant day yesterday. but the town itself feels shut off from day to day cuban life, because the centre, the unesco protected part, is all pedestrianised. streets are gated off and with security guards on each gate, the atmosphere inside the ´historical zone´is decidedly tourist focussed. picturesque certainly, but once the tour buses depart the absence of normal cuban hustle and bustle is immediately obvious.
on a positive note, it does make for a pleasant break from the fume belching traffic, all night noise and constant hassle that you encounter in other cities. but after a few days it begins to feel a bit fake.

another thing that didn´t particularly endear trinidad to me is the way they treat their animals. this is the best off cuban city i´ve visited by FAR, because of its popularity with tourists, and yet nowhere else have i seen horses with their ribs sticking out like concentration camp victims, and dogs that are literally starving. it´s only a small place and most families in the city benefit from the tourist trade. in comparison with somewhere like santiago it´s positively middle class. and yet in other places i´ve been they seem to give at least a little bit of a shit about the animals that live around them, feeding stray dogs on the street for example. not so in trinidad. it made me incredibly angry.

felicidades!

2006-12-02T19:13:00.001Z

today the entire country is celebrating fidel castro's 80th birthday - except the man himself, that is, who hasn't put in an appearance or released any kind of statement to the cuban people, as he was expected to. yesterday there was a rumour he'd appear at this morning's 3-hour parade in havana, but no show.
it's impossible not to notice that every time his name is mentioned in the celebrations, the name of his brother raul follows on straight away. for example, at the parade this morning (the whole country was glued to it on tv!) the constant refrain was 'viva fidel, viva la revolucion, viva raul'. the impression is being created of the fusion of the two people into one, a cunning way of transferring fidel's aura of power on to the man who's already succeeded him in everything but name. there are rumours here that fidel is dead already, and the sense of a power vacuum is growing; exactly the kind of thing raul is trying to avoid through the conflation of his and fidel's identities.
the younger generation of cubans seem positive and optimistic about fidel's passing, as they believe that things will change and much greater opportunities will open up for them. just about everyone under the age of about 35 seems to be studying english, either at school/university or in their spare time, in an attempt to get into the tourist business, where their best chance of earning lies. the older generation however seems much more ambivalent, for a start there's still a sense of disbelief that the castro era could be ending - i've heard several people say 'IF fidel dies' rather than 'when'. and they fear raul; he has a reputation for being much more vicious and ruthless than his brother. that coupled with the power vacuum created by fidel's long absence from the public stage lead some people to believe cuba will become quite a dangerous and unstable place for a while, in the fairly near future.

on the other hand, depending what it is that ails fidel he could quite possibly live for quite a long time yet, albeit while remaining incapable of publically governing. some people think this is a good thing, as it gives raul more time to consolidate his position and manage the hand-over, while others think it gives different factions within the government time to manouvre, thus storing up trouble for later on.

tagging along

2006-12-02T19:13:00.000Z

manged to fulfil my ambition to get out to see some countryside today, courtesy of a guided tour group of about 10 people (brits) and their cuban guide, who invited me along. it was a 30-min drive into the sierra del escambray, where we hiked for about an hour up the course of a river into densely-forested hills. our destination was a beautiful waterfall, where we swam. most people got into the water sedately via some gently sloping rocks further downstream, but the tour guide, one of the blokes in the group and i all jumped in from the top of one of the rocks around the deepest part of the pool. it was scary standing at the top looking down (and i was worried my contact lenses would come out!) but it was a great adreneline rush. i also swam right into the cave behind the falls - there were stalectites hanging down, and bats nesting in its roof.

after about an hour's swiming, we hiked back down again. it was a really good outing and i only wish i could manage to do more things like that, but it's impossible to arrange on my own, as all the tours require a certain minimum number of people before they'll run - usually between 4 and 8.
here in trinidad is a bit better than most places though, simply because it's closer to the mountains and the beach than most cities. there's an hourly bus that runs from the centre of town down to the beach and it's pretty cheap, so tomorrow i'll probably head down there for the day for more swimming. the weather is so hot and sunny that being in town is quite oppressive in the afternoons. but i've found a luxurious swimming pool which takes the edge off the heat - it's at the 5-star hotel in the hills above the town, about half an hour's uphill hike from the central square. i headed there yesterday afternoon, expecting as a non-guest to be charged a fee to use it (as my guidebook says), but the receptionist said it was free! bargain.
i'm heading back there later this afternoon with a couple of the people from the tour group to have a pre-dinner swim. they have a bar up there too so we'll probably also get a beer.

the tour group are going on to vinales tomorrow, and their guide is going to email me their schedule and his mobile number in case i want to join them for further day trips once i arrive there next week. it's a great opportunity - he seems very kind and hospitable, like most of the cubans i've met so far.

Moorish links

2006-11-30T16:12:00.000Z

i was very surprised, on arriving in Camaguey, to find that it reminds me of Morocco quite a lot. the architectural style is very similar - blank-faced external house walls lining the streets, and as you walk past a half-open door you catch a glimpse of cool, tiled rooms with a large courtyard filled with plants beyond. apparently this is because the spaniards who settled cuba were mostly from andalucia, and so brought the Moorish style of architecture with them. it's well suited to the hot sun here as the central courtyards remain cool and shady even when it's roasting out on the street. it doesn't make for private family life though, as everyone's bedrooms open onto the courtyard and none of the windows are glazed or shuttered, with simple patterned straw mats hung over the elaborate iron grillwork that features on each window.
a lot of the older houses also have roof terraces stretching the length and breadth of their building; these days, with food quite scarce and unreliable, many people keep animals up there. in santiago several families had pigs and chickens on their roofs, and here the family i'm staying with keep pigeons. they're also a useful space for drying washing - and for visiting tourists to sun themselves! this provokes bafflement among cuban women, for whom the ideal is milky white 'european' skin. my casa owner in santiago was very proud of being pale, but said with regret that the hot climate in cuba made it impossible for her to achieve the properly white skin that she should have because she was one of the few people in santiago who is wholly european in descent. there's a definite class element to this; about 50 per cent of the cuban population is 'mulatto'as they call it here, another 25 per cent black, leaving 25 per cent white european descent, mostly settled in the west of the island - santiago has a large black population because many people moved there as refugees from haiti in the 19th century and established coffee and sugar plantations.

el sol

2006-11-28T19:05:00.000Z

i got to camaguey fine, and the bus was quiet so i could spread out across two seats which was nice. it was interesting to watch the scenery change as we travelled, becoming much lusher, greener and more fertile, and the homes looking much better-constructed and less shanty-town like. it definitely confirmed my impressions of a wealth and influence divide.

camaguey is slap-bang in the middle of cuba's most fertile farming lowlands (hence why it accummulated the riches that the pirates were so keen on). i haven't found navigation as difficult as predicted, partly because this place really is small, just 3 or 4 main streets containing shops, bars etc, though there's plenty of residential streets surrounding them to wander around. i've seen most of the sights already, and i have another 2 days here, so i'm trying to take it easy. the casa i'm staying at is noisy in the evenings, due to being a Moorish-style home arranged around a large central patio, and the owner's extended family like to hang about with the tv on full blast. but the rest of the time it's peaceful and it has a large roof terrace with good views over the town, so i've taken to retiring there in the afternoons to practice my spanish. am considering seeing if i can pick up another week of tuition in havana; apparently the university there can organise it, so i'll email them.

while i hablare espanol, i manage to fit in a bit of sun-worshipping as the weather here has picked up, finally. nice and warm, but with a refreshing breeze. it's a bit too hot really, i didn't bring a short pair of shorts (for fear of attracting even more male attention than a single female traveller usually does), and i'm rather regretting it now. once i get to trinidad there's a good beach within easy distance though, so i can retire there for a couple of days hopefully! and i can pick up clothes there or in havana.

on the subject of male attention, so far there's been a LOT, though thankfully it's mostly non-persistent, and a simple 'no gracias' does the trick - i've only had to say 'no me moleste' a couple of times so far. the constant 'psst psst psst' and kissing noises as you walk past does get a bit wearing though. i never thought i'd miss the confusingly retiring ways of the british male, but i'm getting close to it ...

the post'castro era

2006-11-25T21:07:00.000Z

i forgot to mention, in my post on thursday, that another reason santiago is interesting and politically important is that there are rumours that fidel will be buried in the cemetaria santa ifigenia here, where there is already a massive monument to the ´founder of the nation´jose marti. marti´s monument has a 24'hour honour guard, which changes with great splendour, including martial music and goosestepping, every half'hour. it´s very soviet in atmosphere.
anyway, so fidel fancies a slice of this, or so it´s rumoured, and will have a similarly grandiose mausoleum constructed here for himself.
which would be rather ironic, given that since launching his bid to overthrow batista here by attacking the moncada barracks, which was incidentally a complete fuck up, he´s rather forgotten his santiaguerro links, as evidenced by its lack of political weight.

hitting the road

2006-11-25T20:55:00.000Z

well, i´ve been here a week and acclimatised a fair bit i think. santiago is certainly an interesting place and although it´s a cliche, people here all seem very friendly and welcoming. it´ll be interesting to see how it contrasts with places further west, which are more used to tourism and which, from what i´ve heard, recieve more government attention and funding.
tomorrow i´m off to camaguey, courtesy of a 7 hour bus ride. it´s a small and pretty city with winding streets that were designed to deter pirates, which should be an interesting experience given that i get lost on a daily basis walking around santiago´s grid system!

i´m not sure if there´ll be internet there, so radio silence might follow for 4 or 5 days, til i get to trinidad, which will be my next stop and from what i hear rather more touristed, since it´s a unesco world heritage site.

i hope you´re all doing ok, keep me updated on gossip by email please! all postcard requests will be fulfilled, though it takes a month for mail to reach the UK from here, if you email me your address. if you don´t have my email address, ask someone who does: i think most of you know either rachel, hannah or mum, so ask one of them and they can pass it on!

habla espanol?

2006-11-23T21:34:00.000Z

well, here i am in santiago and still feeling a little culture shocked. i´ve got used to the endless queueing and surly service in all government outlets, it´s much like trying to shop on oxford street in fact. but what´s really sad is the decay. countless beautiful pieces of architecture literally crumbling away. it´s been rainy since i arrived and yesterday i passed some large chunks of masonry that had fallen from the top of one of the old buildings in the centre of town. it´s actually quite dangerous to walk on the pavements because so many of the buildings are becoming unstable and pitching into the street below.
santiago is the cradle of La Revolucion, and people here feel hard done by, as all the political power upped and moved to havana, leaving santiago woefully under funded and neglected. they have a phrase for it here, La Revolucion is ´the child of santiago but it has grown up and left to go to havana´. it´s a shame because there´s so much potential for tourism here, but some investment would be needed and it´s just not forthcoming.
still, santiaguerros are all very warm, welcoming and kind, and universally forgive my abysmal spanish. my spanish teacher is very interesting, her husband is one of the thousands who´ve fled since La Trionphe de la Revolucion, he now lives in Puerto Rico ´with another wife´, she told me with a slightly bitter smile on her face. then she waved her hand and said in a sarcastic tone, ´bye bye´.
she was a latin professor, but the double economy that´s developed as a result of the tourist currency, the convertible peso, combined with continual cutbacks in the government allocated rations, means that absolutely everyone wants to get their hands on convertible pesos, called dollars here. it buys you stuff that´s simply not available in peso shops, not just luxuries but many essentials these days too. so there´s always a large number of well educated volunteers keen to drive you to see the sights or habla espanol in return for a little convertible currency.
the american dollar stopped being accepted here a while ago, and changing dollars attracts a 10 percent surcharge, as a result of one of fidel´s periodic crackdowns, probably as a response to some of bush´s measures that have made it harder for americans to travel here and communicate with relatives based here. many cubanos do wear american clothes and have american merchandise, which is sent over by friends and relations who´ve made it to ´la yuma´. it´s hotly coveted.
it´s very difficult now for cubans to communicate with their relatives in america, however, to the extent that they have to ask foreigners to take letters abroad to be posted in another country. one of the teachers at the spanish school i´m attending has asked a fellow pupil to post a cd of cuban music to a friend of his in america, for example.

PS. sorry if my typing is erratic, but none of the symbols on the keyboard relate to what they produce on the screen, so punctuation is rather difficult! plus i´m trying to work out the blogger tools in spanish, as that´s the default setting on this computer. gah!

Santiago

2006-11-21T09:44:00.000Z

Rachel, in webmaster mode, says:

Kate's arrived in Santiago (after a looong day of travelling), but as Blogger was down last night she couldn't post. Oh, and prepare for some interesting spelling as she gets to grips with keyboards configurated for Spanish...

oh i forgot!

2006-11-18T14:22:00.000Z

guess what the first living thing to go over niagara falls in a barrel was?

a cat.

how cruel is that!

apparently it happened because the woman who later became the first person to go over niagara in a barrel and survive was testing out the design and needed something she could send over in the prototype, so she used her cat. grrrnmpfh!

a reccommendation

2006-11-18T14:13:00.000Z

i don't know if a film called 'the prestige' has come out in england yet, but it's really good, and i totally reccommend it.

made it to niagara yesterday - there's an amazing amount of tack built up nearby, which is a shame, but the immediate area around the falls is parkland and so it's a fairly nice setting (the american side of the falls looks grim and mostly industrial though - rach i don't know why you thought that there wouldn't be a good view from the canadian side, it's way better than what the yanks have got!).
i went behind the falls (in some tunnels) as well as going out onto a viewing platform (where i got v wet). one of the girls on the tour with me took a pic of me looking silly in a plastic mac, which i shall try to upload if i get the chance.
we also went to the v picturesque village of niagara by the lake, which was really pretty, and stopped off to taste some local wines at a vineyard on the way back - i didn't know canada made wines, but apparently it's a growing industry! i had a v nice pinot grigio, so i suggest you all go to the vinopolis wine warehouse and see if they have any canadian wines you can try! i also fulfilled an ambition by trying eiswein, which is just amazing - apparently the climate here is perfect for making it, because you have to leave the grapes out on the vine until january, when temperatures reach -8 deg C! anyway, eiswein is absolutely mindblowingly gorgeous (and sugary!) and i strongly reccommend it to anyone who likes dessert wines (nick!).

today is housekeeping day - doing laundry, rearranging my rucksack, and picking up all the little odds and sods i need before i depart for cuba tomorrow morning. it's going to be an early start, and then a long day of travelling. on monday i start my spanish lessons, so not sure when i'll have a chance to check out what the internet facilities in cuba are like, but will try to post early next week.
in the meantime, everyone take care - miss you all!

forgetting stuff

2006-11-16T14:27:00.000Z

whenever i go anywhere, i ALWAYS forget something, and i get this nagging feeling at the back of my mind until i work out what it is. so i had this on the plane on the way over, until i saw an ad in the in-flight magazine for some beach resort, which included a pic of a woman in a bikini, and thought- SWIMMING COSTUME!
doh.
then when i got to the hostel and headed into the shower i thought of something else - PYJAMAS!
doh #2.

i whizzed round some of the shops yesterday and picked up a nice comfy pair of baggy pj bottoms for $21 (about ten quid) . practically no cossies around though, probably because it's winter, so that'll require some more searching or a compromise on style, i think! the shops here are amazing in general though, so much choice, and very reasonable prices. and the shopping malls are really posh and glitzy. you could quite easily come here just for a couple of days' shopping - even if you don't like to shop that much!

toronto in general is great in fact. i got loads done yesterday - headed out for an early walk and was the first person at the CN tower when it opened. i was a bit sceptical about whether it was worth the $21 admission,but the view is amazing and it was a really beautiful morning, clear and sunny but with a kind of pearlescent misty effect that i think was due to it being quite cold. from the top of the tower lake ontario looked just amazing. i took a pic but it didn't really capture the effect sadly. there's a glass floor in the tower which is really scary to walk across. i never thought i had a problem with heights, but i really couldn't bring myself to step on it for more than a moment.

as recommended by rachel, later i went to the cinema - the cinemas here put ours to shame, the screens are MASSIVE and really plush. saw The Queen with helen mirren, which was ok, a bit predictable and so not particularly interesting if you're english, i think it was aimed at the foerign market; it's been a big hit here apparently.
canada is weirdly monarchist, the queen is on all the currency and there are lots of other british things here like pubs and certain words they use and things, it's kind of like being in an alternate universe version of britain in some ways, but then all the signs have french on them too and there are obvious similarities with america too - so kind of like a cross between britain, france and america - very odd, but surprisingly it works!

today i was going to go to niagara but the weather is dreadful, heavy rain and zero visibility at the falls apparently, so we're doing it tomorrow instead, and today i shall go to the art gallery of ontario, which is the main gallery here. plus there's an inuit gallery i'd like to see too.

prices of everything are pretty much the same as in london, which is good. it takes a while to get used to everything being 2ce the price, though, but once you remind yourself that the number is dollars, not pounds, it's fine.

sorry for the stream of consciousness, hope this all makes some sense!

toronto!

2006-11-15T12:20:00.000Z

so i got here ok - i only have a few minutes cos someone else at the hostel gave me the remainder of their internet time, but just wanted to let everyone know i'm ok!

i always thought it was a joke, but canadians really DO say 'aboot' rather than 'about' ...

and i'm on the wrong side of the language divide. people don't understand me unless i do a liz hurley impression. it's freaking me out.

goodbye everyone!

2006-11-13T13:07:00.000Z

i'm just taking a break from last-minute packing, and wanted to say thanks to everyone who has made time to see me before i leave tomorrow. i will really miss you all, but i look forward to catching up with you when i get back!
i'm about 2/3rds of the way through my packing now. when i saw the small pile of clothes i'm taking, i was really pleased, thinking my baggage would be nice and light - but that was before i started packing the cosmetics! i've filled three spongebags ... oh dear! (though to be fair, one of those is a medical kit)
my flight is at 1.30pm tomorrow, so i guess the next time i update the blog will be from toronto - i hope so anyway. the anticipation of actually, finally hitting the road is killing me!

hello, new readers!

2006-11-05T21:04:00.000Z

i've given this blog address to some people at work so i thought i should probably post an update!
i finished work on friday - had a lovely leaving drinks and was given some cool presents and a hilarious front page. my last week was quite a whirl, with three features to finish, as well as other loose ends to tie up, so i haven't had much time to think about all the organisational stuff i still have to do in the remaining week or so i have left. it all hit me yesterday and i spent a lot of time running round panicking! i think i've begun to get my head round it, but the days are passing so quickly now that i don't think it'll hit me at all til i'm actually at the airport.

packing

2006-10-23T11:22:00.000Z

this weekend i got my vaccinations (my arm is still sore!) and tried out three rucksacks owned by various members of my family to see if any of them suited me. two were rapidly rejected, leaving one possibility which will now be tested against some posh new packs in a specialist shop before i make my final decision. this rucksack is going to be my constant companion, so it needs to be as comfortable and convenient as possible.

i've also started writing lists of things i need to remember and things i need to do and things i need to pack, so the house is full of little bits of paper with scribblings all over them.

and i'm seeking out advice and suggestions about what to take - and what not to take - from people who've been there and got the t-shirt. the best tips i've had so far are:
- get together all the clothes you think you'll need, then discard half of them and that'll leave you with what you should actually take
- take a length of string to use as a makeshift washing line
- apparently there's a useful little gadget that acts very much like a kettle's heating element, you plug it into the mains and can use it to boil your own water. this saves you from having to drink water with unpleasant-tasting purification tablets in it - plus you can have a hot drink whenever you fancy!

me-heee-co

2006-10-19T14:42:00.000Z

flights are now booked from cancun (mexico) to london (via munich) for 9th february.

i'm planning to spend nearly a month in nicaragua and then fly (via san salvador) to belize city, from where i'll pick up a water taxi to the northern cays and maybe do some scuba diving lessons.
then i'll head northwards into the yucatan (mexico), checking out some mayan ruins en route, before fetching up in cancun (a big touristy international resort) and heading back to rainy old britain.

here's a pic of the Tulum ruins ...

nice huh?!

more arrangements

2006-10-08T17:43:00.000Z

so i've booked my lodgings for toronto - i'll be here. looks nice and central, and cosy too.

and i've heard back from the spanish language school i was keen to visit in nicaragua - they're a collective based on the shores of the laguna de apoyo, which lies in the caldera of a big volcano. how cool is that!! AND they're open over christmas, so hopefully i will be spending my christmas there. here is their website.

Nicaragua

2006-10-05T16:03:00.000Z

... is now definite. I've just booked the onward flight from Havana (change planes in Panama City) for December 17th. Couplea days before my birthday.
Am trying to find out what the deal is with Christmas and New Year in Nicaragua - presumably a lot of places will be closed.