TravelStream™ news feed for member tombarker on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/tombarker en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Tue, 13 May 2008 15:41:11 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tombarker/1/1210301340/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tombarker/1/1210301340/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tombarker/1/1210301340/tpod.html Tue, 13 May 2008 15:41:11 -0400 Rio and Beyond-an STA free Latin Adventure

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Boston, Massachusetts, United States

I write this entry at my final destination, New Bedford Massachussetts. A coastal town and the home of Moby Dick. Staying with some wonderful family friends I have enjoyed an insight into this country that I have been unable to enjoy anywhere else on this journey. I like to think to an extent I have been living like an American, attending family retirement parties, First Communion parties and enjoying a day of Mom's Day visits. I have even got into the sport here believe it or not, well the basketball anyway, Baseball is still a concept I can't appreciate. The remarkable thing about the US is that it is so highly saturated by the media it lives completely to expectation and it is by no mean a let down: In Miami, people rollerskate; in Massachussetts, everyone loves their sports and nigh on every house has the stars and stripes flailing proudly in the wind. The people are friendly in a way that for an English gringo can only border upon creepy. It is a shame that I am so genuinely creeped out by being greeted by random strangers, being asked how I am and wished a "super good day" by every shop employee in a seemingly sincere way, not in the uniformed manner I was forced to do myself upon serving every Sainsburys customer at the till back in those dark, dark days. True to expectation I encountered my first religious nut within hours of landing in Miami "Jesus loves you, may God have mercy on your soul" shouted the nut across the road, sat outside 'Dunkin Donuts'.From my experience, you only need to watch the television to get a good insight into America-a method I have exploited to the full when I am surrounded by such humongous HD televisions. What shocks are the 'lawyers 4 u' style adverts, the defining difference between here and America being that such advertising has migrated beyond mere work-related injuries and into the realm of medicine, adverts inviting you to sue your Practitioners if you or your family has suffered any form of mental illness or birth defect. Medical professionals are so scared of such legal threats that-reluctant to put themselves in the firing line-they form collectives. What amuses are the frequent adverts about erectile dysfunction, swollen prostates and other embarassing medical ailments. What they have got right is that it appears simple smallprint in television advertising is against the law and any 'smallprint' has to be broadcast verbally, for me it is very funny to hear (directly after initiating the hard-sell)is the advert (or should I say commercial) then warning about the various side-effects-in the case of the prostate desweller it tells you that it is not for woman and even handling the substance can lead to birth defects in foetuses, tempting stuff! And there are so many adverts! Apparently the NBA has an imposed timeout during certain periods of prolonged play to allow a break for more commericals!What has suprised me is that Americans (generally) don't seem to know a lot about England "does it ever stop raining there?" was the first question that Kayleigh's (my 13 year old surrogate sister) friend asked me when he was told where I was from, I suppose he has a point but the weather here in Boston has not been too dissimilar to the weather back home. In fact it is how I imagine my hometown would look like with American planning. That has a lot to do with the history of this area, the English occupation pre-revolution owing very much to this. On a tour of the town I asked Val (my surrogate mother)about the purpose of the Fort we drove past "that, was to protect us from the English" she said. Its easy to forget that your not in America as you drive around this beautiful area, with the plethora of English town names here but the wood style housing (no bricks and mortar), the porches and the partisan radio soon snaps you out of this illusion.With the exchange rate at the moment shopping is a guilty pleasure and with the extensive mall system around here it is so easy but it does make me wonder what has happened to all the small town clothes and music stores-a dark forecast of things to come for Bury St Edmunds I don't know. Maybe it is more to do with American's dependence on their cars, people have to drive everywhere here as everything is so spaced out, it's what happens when your country is the size of a continent. As a consequence the public transport is pretty bad, I have never experienced such little legroom as I did on the train to Boston (and I've flown with every budget commerical airline!) and I had to wait for a Saturday before I could take the bus to the awesome city of New York, a wait that was so worthwhile.Like a lot of things here New York lived up to its expectation, and it blew me away the feeling-alone-of just being there is sufficient for a great day. The unique thing about the city is that your eyes look neither ahead or down at the ground, they look high into the sky at the skyscrapers and highrises that just decorate the skyline. Unfortunately I only had a day there, having bailed on the Statten Island tour (it was a 4 hour wait for the ferry and i had 7 hours in the city-a small 12 dollar sacrifice) I visited the Ground Zero exhibition instead and then took a tour of the area led by members of the 9/11 families group. This made for a compelling hour. As a historian, the most important and valued sources of information are those primary sources-those personal accounts and it doesn't get more personal than hearing it from people who were integral in the rescue effort and were literally underneath the building when the first of the atrocities of that fateful day took place. It was real lump-in-the-throat stuff and allows you to begin to understand the reasoning behind the controversial events that took place afterwards. The lesson? To our guides it was simply "never forget and always let your loved ones know how much you love them". What dampened it somewhat were the parasites selling 9/11 related paraphenelia around the site but as long as gullible tourists keeping buying them, they'l keep selling them. That and the conspiracy theorists handing out leaflets, it shows how disillusioned people have become that the notion that the attacks were carried out by their own government is a viable alternative explanation of events. Well that is unless the huge jam jar full of dollar notes hanging from one of the 'theorists' necks had more to do with it. After that I don't really know what happened to my time although the volume of shopping bags I brought back to the coach with me probably answers that question. Having been the last person back on the coach all day I was greeted with a round of applause from the other passengers and driver, that was once I realised I was waiting for the coach in the wrong spot-why half the streets are just numbered I don't know, how can a city responsible for some of the greatest artistic creativity in recent history not come up with a set of memorable street names?Even stranger has been the distinct feeling of being a gringo/foreigner remains despite the fact everyone speaks English, well to an extent. People still ask me to repeat myself a lot, shop assistants sometimes still look at me as blankly as indigenous Bolivians did and often I rely on translaters to get the message across. So despite being deceivingly close to England culturally, it still feels very much like an adventure, the length of this entry is a testament to the differences and the experiences. Unfortunately it's an adventure that will be completely finished on Friday.
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Boston, Massachusetts, United States

As I relax at my family friend's Godfather Part IIesque house taking in the lakeside views I decided to upload some of the best photos from the 2 gig or so of photos I took whilst I ponder a final blog entry. Enjoy
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Lima, Lima, Peru

Ok so I said I wasn´t going to let myself get sucked in by Cusco and I was fully aware of this bold claim even on the fourth consecutive night I found myself sat in the hostel garden at 6am when I decided to book a flight to Lima instead of catching a bus so I could have "just one more night" (a phrase I said approximately 5 mornings on the trot). But hey I´m in Lima and now and in less than 29 hours I will begin an 11 day detox as by then (fingers crossed) I will begin the final leg of my trip in America where-shock horror- being under 21 it is illegal to consume alcohol, at least that was part of my justification.Cusco was good fun, its a great city, geographically huge but as far as any gringo is concerned the main facilities are all concentrated into a small area navigatable on even the least sober of legs. Being an ex-pat hotspot it has no end of home comforts including my long wanted baked beans but after 2 consecutive mornings of fry ups I soon got bored, craving having been quashed. It seemed that I was the only traveller in the city not visiting the Inca stronghold of Machu Picchu, part of the reason why the city sucks you in: Everyone is in such high spirits having either being on the brink of or just finished what for some people is the main reason for such a trip. As a consequence it also has no shortage of those tour groups and mature holiday-goers whom I have grown to not resent so much! Although as I sat in a local restaurant chatting to one of its employees on his lunchbreak (in SPANISH!!! Just thought I would throw that in) I couldnt help but listen to the English buffoon on the table opposite me and considering reverting back to old values. He was attempting to order and the conversation went something like this:Spanish-speaking waitress: Hello, what would you likeEnglish-speaking buffoon: Chicken and chips pleaseS: PardonE: Chicken and ChipsS (having presumed he wants the dish everyone seems to have): Would you like the breast or the leg?E (recognising the language barrier goes for that English Ex-pat favourite solution): JUST(pause)CHICK-(pause)-KEN(pause)AND(pause)CHIPS(pause)PLEASEThis continued a little longer before the waitress gave up and gave him exactly what he deserved, whatever he bloody got! Call me cruel but how much effort and consideration does it take to learn at the least "pollo y papas fritas por favor" when you know you are in a country where education is low and English is not commonly spoken (especially when the words are dotted all over the picture guide walls of the restaurant).There are however plenty of locals in Cusco who can speak English and one particularly unique group that leads me to being unable to resist making comparisons to Thailand... even though I have never visited this Back-gapper fave. I have met many male travellers in Cusco who are absolutely terrorfied of falling foul of a notorious group of girls known as the Mama Afrikas girls. These girls frequent the local bar/nightclub of Mama Afrika hellbent on picking up gringo men in order to either bleed them dry in drink purchases (a bit like the leg cafes of Santiago but without the formalities) or to bed them in order to steal their wallet and whatever else they fancy. As a consequence there is a constant air of paranoia in the mind of the traveller when a local girl seems to take an interest. I bet the hideously overweight guy I saw in Mythology (another notorious one) couldn´t believe his luck as he danced with a local chica dressed in an attire that (if you knew a bit about local customs) screamed prostitute and I bet the chica couldn´t believe her luck when she got hold of his wallet. Cusco was only the second hostel Ive stayed as claiming to be a ´party hostel´something I had tended to avoid prior and I´m glad I didnt avoid them in Cusco in La Paz. The hostel I stayed in in Cusco had a great staff of absolutely mental gringo bar staff living a lifestyle comparable to club reps (but with less sleep). One night it was ninja night and the staff and a few guests dressed up as teenage mutant ninja turtles (green body paint included) and after many drinks took us all suitably face painted (with a few exceptions who got slightly too carried away with writing abuse on their friends foreheads) in what was one of many brilliant nights out. What was unique about this place was that the bar staff working alongside some equally mental locals. In particular a chef  nicknamed Loco who told me that in his sparetime he liked to cook with ketamine-by the end of my stay he had been sacked, the hash brownies he cooked for 2 guests being the last straw I think. The two guests he did this for were two other characters, they had originally booked 4 nights but by the time I was there they had been there for a month. They worked like clockwork, spending most the day watching DvDs in the hostel and then smoking cannabis by the shower at the same time every evening. That is not to say they had a dull stay, one of the guys had managed to drive an off-road buggy off the edge of a 30 foot drop and make the local news. When they finally got round to checking out they could not afford to pay off their bar tab and had to stay another 5 nights before their parents could bail them out, all of this documented on the hostel walls along with hundreds of other marker pen-scribbled warnings/tips/comments, my favourite being "f**k the trek, get the train!" a warning from a weary post-Inca Trailer! These two guys were part of a great party of travellers (included a guy called Thorfinn, great just for the name what sick Londoners call their son Thorfinn?!)who had found themselves stuck in the hostel for a good 3-5 weeks, who made the stay such an interesting/amusing one.Unfortunately not all the characters I met in Cusco were quite as likeable, in particular a gang of insular, rude guys some of which I recognised as extras from a reality television programme dubbed ´the real OC´ following the lives of some spoilt rich kids in Cheshire, one of the main characters was also staying at the hostel although he was a nice chap maybe because it seemed I was the only person sad enough to have recognised him. They are part of a general group of travellers out here who-for monetary reasons-are probably in the majority for people my age, mostly travelling on the back of Mummy and Daddy´s credit cards, incrdibly frustrating for someone like me who earnt every penny that got me out here, but I like to think it has made it a more enjoyable/appreciable experience because of it not that I would turn down someone paying for my trip (Russian Oligarchs take note). I knew I´d met the archetypal example of such people one night in Cusco when I got talking to a couple out on a balcony at Mama Afrikas. This is how the conversation deterioated and swiftly ended:Idiot: Where are you from?Me: A place near CambridgeI: Oooo then you must know " "Me: Cant say I doI: He´s like 23rd in line to the throneAshamedly, I didn´t do a lot in Cusco other than party and buy a hell of a lot of souvenirs but after all these months on buses navigating a whole continent I have become a bit tired of the practice especially as home is so imminent. I can´t wait to get home and see my family and friends, can´t wait to have cereal for breakfast instead of flippin´bread and jam, can´t wait to be on a continent where the Petshop boys, Aerosmith and Bon Jovi infest the musical atmosphere of every shop/restaurant/internet cafe and cant wait to not have to endure another excruciating conversation with some spoilt, daddy-sponging idiot . On the other hand I am going to miss travelling through some of the most spectactular scenerey in the world, paying 2 pound for a bed and breakfast, all the amazing local cuisines that simply do not exist in England, all the crazy local music you can hear out here and all the amazing, unique characters I have met out here. The choice is a tough one. Fortunately it has already been made.
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Cusco, Cusco, Peru

I write this on the day of St Georges Day. Im in Cusco which as far as South America goes is Ex-pat heaven and as a consquence I haven´t been particularly cultural. There are several English bars here and one in particular has a promotion today for free drinks if you dress up like an Englishmen. This left me bemoaning my decision not to bring a football shirt out with me. However my reasoning at the time was the stereotype associated with English people wearing English football shirts and at the time of reading the banner I kicked myself. Shortly after reading this I went to watch the Champions League in a bar and as Didier Drogba took a tumble near the penalty box I heard the awful phrase "get up you f##king c##n" shocked I turned around to find that the person uttering this disgusting phrase was the only guy in the bar wearing an England football shirt. Reasoning justified. If I wasn´t so lacking in stature and so English I would have said something as once again some idiot had managed to shame my country and give me another reason not to wear an English football shirt out here!Being in Cusco again has been a nostalgic experience for me having walked these beautiful, colonial/inca paths a mere 2 1/2 years ago and I still love the place. Not all that much has changed although most noticeably it has become apparent that I am not the only Bury St Edmunds export out here. In the time I have been away Cusquena (the dangerously good local lager) has made it across the Atlantic to every major supermarket and in some kind of weird exchange, Greene King IPA, Abbot Ale, Ruddles and a Southworld based bitter has made it to Cusco! During my last visit we took many photos in the Cross Keys bar here because they had Greene King IPA and Abbot Ale beer mats, I walked into the bar yesterday to find they now have the stuff on tap! Which means as long as I am in Cusco I don´t have to tell people I´m from Cambridge (to save confusion) I just have to point at a tap!Before I left Bolivia there was time for one more classic example of Bolivian logic. Having made a visit to the home of the Inca religion, the Isla Del Sol we made our back on a couple of boats and each time having pulledout of the harbour and journeyed along the glorious Lake Titicaca for a good 5-10 minutes the boat stopped and turned around to pick up some late comers! Putting us dangerously close to missing our coach to Cusco, which  lead to some evil glances being dealt out by various passengers to the 3 gappers who hopped aboard, one of which I proudly (and correctly) predicted was called Guy, simply because he looked, behaved and spoke like a Guy. Being the spiritual homeland of the Incas the area didn´t half attract a fair few hippies, one of which joined us for dinner one evening. He was a bo staff wielding californian martial arts addict who was going to take San Pedro powder (a natural hallucinogenic) the next day and do martial arts and watch the Inca civilisation erupt from rocks in a drug induced vision. He did indeed live up to his Peruvian nickname "the king of the crazies" although he was a nice guy, he gave us each a bit of string to tie round our wrists that he had swapped his sunglasses for the previousday!Not to be left out, Peru also possesses its own brand of logic. Whole streets are full of shops selling exactly the same products. The main square at night time took me back to what I can actually remember of a Summer visit to Faliraki as locals chase you to persuade you to go into their bar/club. Late at night young kids attempt (and mostly succeed) to capitalise on the drunkness of gringos by selling finger puppets, stealing them back and then selling them again (one guy i was with bought the same spiderman finger puppet 6 times) and getting away with it all because they´re all so damn adorable and speak a little English very cutely, one kid assured me that he took cards or travellers cheques if I didnt have any cash.I finish this blog entry, extremely hungover and distinctly aware of the lack of time ahead before I leave this wonderful continent and I sincerely hope that Cusco does not fulfill its reputation for its ability to suck you in. 2 guys at the hostel have been here a month and they literally cannot leave because they are unable to pay off their bar tab. Thankfully a clear sense of budget and a distinct lack of time means I am immune to this, well I hope so anyway.
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La Paz, Bolivia

It happened, it finally happened. Months of South American exposure and I finally got food poisoning, it was long overdue but my stay in Sucre had to be extended furthermore due to eating something dodgy! I feel it is almost a rite of passage in this continent given the risks that confront you every day but if you didnt take risks, i.e. eating salads, trying local cuisine you would be stuck in Mcdonalds the whole time or some other gringo joint. At least I thought so anyway because I´m pretty sure it was a pizza place that gave me the damn bug. It wasn´t so bad-being an NHS employee i´ve had worse-it only lasted a day but it did have some serious effects on my lager tolerance and I had to reduce myself to a night of whiskeys. Anyway it meant another few days in Sucre which didn´t seem so bad until an American guy of at least 40 (who has been travelling round SA with a Brazilian 26 year old he picked up in Brazil) made me realise I had spent over a quarter of my whole tenure in this continent, in Sucre! So after one more crazy weekend in Sucre I am now in the (other) capital city of Bolivia, La Paz. I have been here for 4 nights now and am on my way towards Peru tomorrow as the deadline of Lima in May looms closer. La Paz is nothing like Sucre, it runs at 100 miles an hour despite being a kilometre higher, its skyline is dominated by high-rise metropolis style buildings and it just generally feels more like a capital city. It is far more gringofied which is what brings me to my confession and I hope you can forgive me: Yesterday I had the most uncultural day I have had out here but it was necessary! I went to a bar that was so un-Bolivian it was proud of it in fact Lonely Planet regards it as "the worst cultural experience in La Paz" however Lonely Planet forgot to mention that Oliver´s Travels holds a special secret, it has hidden in its kitchen a secret booty of treasure that is so scarce on this continent some say it can be exchanged for gold, so secret that the owner blind-lies to other establishments about its rumoured treat. Ok the gold bit is probably not true but Olivers Travels has something I have been craving for for 3 months but have been unable to find on this whole continent, not even Wal Mart could satisfy this craving. For Olivers Travels serves the scarce commodity that is baked beans and what a joy it was because I had it with a full fry, ok the sausages were a bit dry but the fried bread, tomatoes, bacon and fried eggs more than made up for it! So that was my first (justifiable) sin, my second was that back at the hostel I had burger and chips for dinner, not so bad and then I finished the evening with a pub quiz at my hostel, it is strange how simple deprivation of English  food can lead to you selling yourself to the devil and dining in all these gringofied places. It probably seems even stranger to non-English travellers and this has become a new pet hate of mine. The amount of travellers from other countries that I meet who slate English food! Amusingly when I ask them where they have been in England I always get the same answer, just London and then when I ask them if they have had a roast dinner (boy I miss those) I also always get the same answer, no. One thing I have found is that La Paz breeds corruption the top activities for travellers here is to try cocaine and to bribe drug dealers and corrupt prison guards into visiting the notorious San Pedro Prison. A visit to the coca museum is one good way to find out more about this plant. I think it is easy to summarise and the Museum's message is clear that Coca and Cocaine are importantly 2 completely different things, coca being the toast of this country and Cocaine being the scourge. It is perhaps the ultimate example of negative western interference. Coca here is as integral to society some might argue tea and beer is to England! Its importance to the people here (in particular the campesino indigenous people) is unrivalled but add a bit of western chemistry and profiteering and you have a product that is destroying society all over the world and recently causing wars. Fascinating stuff. The San Pedro prison is an instituation where the foreigner prisoners (usually on drug charges) live a life of typical splendor whilst locals live one of squander. This is because San Pedro prison is both a testament to Capitalism and a place of irony: Capitalism because inmates pay for their cells as a consquence international drug traffickers have multi-storey annexes whilst those without money share cells with dozens of people, Irony because the drug traffickers spend their entire tenure carrying out the activity that they are isolated from society for in the first place, producing and selling drugs. All this is made possible thanks to the depressed economy of Bolivia where being a prison guard is one of the most sought-after jobs in Bolivia because of all the money to be made in bribes and turning a blind eye. As a consequence San Pedro prison is one of the top tourist destinations for backpackers and it had left me with a major ethical dilemma. Should I let my curiosity get the better of me and visit the place or should i hold onto those last remaining morals I do have left and not plough money indirectly into drug trafficking and Bolivian corruption. Thankfully that choice has been made for me as there has been a clampdown on this illegal tourist operation and it has been shut for the week. This has been the only situation I can ever think of where I have heard people complain that a prison is closed off from the general public.One popular tourist trip I have done is the "world's most dangerous road" and I am sure my mother is very greatful that I refrained from mentioning it until I had completed it. Yesterday I mounted a $2,500 mountain bike at nearly 5,000 metres altitude and descended down a mountain on a track (mainly gravel) reaching speeds of up 60kph steering my way over landslides, under waterfalls and through river streams until I reached the jungle 60kms later and o what a thrill it was. The roads reptuation is caused by the number of vehicilsts flying off the edge of this narrow road often down vertical drops of up to 400ms over the past 30 years and recently a dozen or so cyclists who out of the nigh on 50,000 others had the misfortune of falling off themselves. Scores more have injured themselves often as a result of over-confidence or testosterone overload. Our guide said they called the road a digit safety factor as in it was only 1 or 0 you came out unscathed or you come out severely injured. There is one guy at the hostel who has broken several bones doing the ride the other day and another guy (notice a trend here) who as our guide delicately put it "carved a second arsehole" when he fell off onto a sharp rock. I know all this because the guide informs you of the various injuries achieved at each check point to improve caution and safetly levels, there's nothing like speeding down steep inclines with no sound but the gushing wind whizzing by your ear all this with a strong feeling of impeding death and danger at every ledge and pebble pool. Anyway I'm still alive and still proudly possessing just a single arsehole.
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Sucre, Bolivia

Well it has certainly been a while since the last entry I posted on the Internet, I say Internet because I have made an entry recently but due to the reliability of Internet and computers out here a humongous blog entry was completely lost and I have been to frustrated since to bring myself to writing it!I am still in Sucre and this morning notched up my 19th hour of Spanish tutorage, it has been very strange to settled down in a city for this long but it has been interesting. Every other city I have stayed in I have only been able to observe how each city works, it has only been here in Sucre that I have been able to appreciate what makes this city in particular work and (as is often also the case) what makes it not work!Sucre is an interesting city, interesting because Bolivia the country itself is a little confused. Sucre is technically the capital (constitutional and judicial capital) city but every book will tell you that La Paz (my next destination) is and the people of Sucre don´t like that. They especially don´t like it when the President is reforming the constitution and is trying to end Sucre´s multi-century reign as the capital. As a consequence demonstrations are rife although nothing (at least during my stay here) will replicate the scenes that took place just before Christmas in the city which I have neither the time or tact to explain. Anyway this is all stuff I have learnt from all these hours of Spanish lessons which I finally got round to taking. It is always amusing trying to explain English concepts to foreigners, even funnier when you have to do them in their foreign language. For example Bolivia isn´t akin to the trade union movement so my Dad´s job title is -when translated across and back into English- is ´defender of the workers´. In one conversation I also learnt how to say that "Stephen Hawking cannot have children because he is disabled and his wife beats him", don´t ask but I promise you it was wholly appropriate. So what have I been up to since.Since Uruyuni I regrettably said farewell to my Cambridge travel buddies, it has been weird reverting back to normal, appropriate and sensical conversation that wasn´t after having one more great night out which amusing led to the introduction of another great character who I can´t wait to see the back of nonetheless. Enter Pedro, I feel he deserves a paragraph to do him justicte.Pedro is not Pedro´s real name, in fact it is Peter. However Peter-from California- has spent four months in Sucre, apparently four months in Sucre is enough time to decide that you are in fact Bolivian and as a consequence worth of a Bolivian name such as Pedro. Pedro is so adamant of his Bolivian-ness that he drinks the rancid Bolivian tap water. Pedro, surprisingly has proved to be a very appropriate name for the fella, this will only become clear when you see him in a dancing establishment. We were in the bar/club/restaurant Locots one night and the dancefloor was bare and the booze was flowing, that was until the holy dancefloor of Locots was graced by the amazing feet of Pedro. Pedro using the 4 months of Spanish he had learnt had manage to lure an unsuspecting Boliviarna (Bolivian woman) onto the dance floor before he began to engage in a performance of dance that can only be described as Napoleon Dynamite (get the Pedro link now?) doing an African mating ritual. He skipped, leaped, jockeyed and star-jumped his way around the poor girl and wowed every drinker in the bar with such a mesmerising array of tacky dance moves and this was before Jamiroquai came on. Unsuprisingly, the African mating ritual was an unsuccessful one.When I have found spare time when I´m not learning Spanish, eating, drinking or laughing at those (such as Pedro) less fortunate I have been helping out at a couple of institutions through an Irish guy I met in Buenos Aires. For the past 2 Saturdays I have visited an all-boys orphanage in the hills and taken them to see their sisters or to the park. It has been good fun just mucking around with the younger ones who mostly crave the sort of physical contact that being parent-less they are deprived but make no mistake they can be michievious buggers! Last week one of them was pouring my mineral water discreetly down the path towards my shorts, it was far too late before I realised. The weekend culminates in a Sunday night fixture between us volunteers (FC gringo and yes we are getting shirts) and the older orphans (those ranging from 14-18) which was a great laugh until I managed to break my sandel and then play for an hour on a gravel, stone-laden pitch in bare feet. Nonetheless we have so far amassed an unbeaten record against the lads which I suspect will to come to an end this coming weekend when they must surely suss out our route one tactics.The tragic thing about Sucre is that these lads are the lucky ones. Poverty is unavoidable here and you find yourself constantly having to refuse beggars (unless you have left overs from dinner and the God-awfully repetitive ´contintental breakfasts´endured over here) and young kids selling chewing gum. Children here are economic commodities to their parents here and often find themselves being the breadwinners for their families either by using them to sell goods or by relying on the horrible sight of their dirtied, poorly clothed children sleeping on the hard stone pavings of Sucre City Central to command cash. The most tragic example I have heard of, is there are two young boys whose parents have died and they live in a car (donating to them by a traveller) on their Aunt´s front garden, from the hour they finish school to the hour they go to bed they trawl the central plaza boot cleaning and selling chewing gum in order to muster together enough cash to eat.The other highlight of the weekend is the Sunday visit to El Parke. For the duration of our stays we use hostel conversations and bar/restaurant chats to recruit other travellers to come with us to the hospital for disabled children and take them to the Park De Bolivar, a park of fairground proportions. The idea is that the more people we muster the more of the kids we can take out but it is a harrowing sight at first, especially when (like me before last week) you have never even pushed a wheelchair before. Upon entering the hospital it becomes clear that this is the highlight of their week with chants of El Parke a constant theme until we finally get them there. From then on it´s a great excuse to pretend your 6 again and go on the ferris wheel etc although I have had to deal with a few tantrums but nothing that a steady stream of young cousins can´t prepare you for! The only thing that concerns me is that within two months we will all be gone and at the moment we are all racking our brains as to a way in which we can maintain this tradition. Suggestions on a postcard please!
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Sucre, Bolivia

So to the final part of my trilogy of updates, having woken up at stupid-o´clock this morning, the hunger is beginning to set in and to sum up how early I woke up, breakfast has not even started being served in the hostel. After Atacama we spent a mind-blowing, breath-taking every possible-superlativeing 3 days in the desert in a convoy of jeeps making their way across the barren lands of the massive desert back to civilisation in Bolivia. Our jeep consisted of the four of us and 2 Germans one of which possessed a wicked Irish accent.To give you an idea of how extreme this journey was the first hour (the bus ride to the Bolivian border) consisted of a journey that took us 2km higher up to an altitude of 4.8km, the medical world adivses that for appropriate acclimitasation you travel upwards at rate of 500m per a day so we had done the recommended equivalent of 5 days in the space of an hour. The first stop of the trip was at a lake called Laguna Verde which was a huge green lake in the middle of the desert providing amazing reflections of the mountanous Andes in the water itself, as I look at the photographs I stare in disbelief that I was there, and rightly so, the panoramics blow your mind.The next stop was at a hot springs where the most surreal thing happened. As we pulled up I looked out of my dust stained window to see 2 familar faces, my Mancunian friends Alex and Katie who I had met in RIo and had gave up all hope of seeing again later on making their way away from the springs. My utterance of Oh My God! This is Ridiculous! Confounded everyone else in the jeep, "does he like hot springs that much?" "They´re only girls in bikinis, Christ!" the reunion was short but sweet but seemed to be repeated at nearly every stop on the flats. The next stop was a series of Geysers that stood at an altitude of 5.2km they reeked of sulphur and only an egg-lover like myself could bare to stand in the path of the gaseous heat they expired. I keep referring to altitude in this entry because my last experience of altitude at a mere 3km was a bad one but my self-medication left me astonished to find I was suffering from nothing more than a shortness of breath, it is bizarre to feel like you have sprinted 400 metres when really all you have done is got out of a jeep or hoisted your rucksack up into the air, I guess that´s what it must feel like to be morbidly obese. Unforunately this wasn´t the case for my friend Robbo and the Israeli girl in another of our convoy who suffered the epic headaches, fatigue and (in the Israeli´s case) physical sickness that seemed fresh in my memory from before. Thankfully the first day´s altitude problems were non-existent the next day when we carried on in anticipation of the salt flats that awaited the next day. It was a bit of a drag as the journey last ages but yet covered very little distance as we were traversing the mountain range that surrounded this vast area of nothingness. Excitement soon occurred when firstly our jeep suffered a puncture and a motor failure however these were acute problems and it was the Israeli-English-Morrocan (I will call it IsEngcan to save on characters) jeep that suffered the worst damage.Our legend of a driver (a short Andean man who seemed to enjoy nothing more than throwing the jeep into steep pot holes that nearly left me concussed on several occasions as my head smacked against the hard and low ceiling) was a relative novice. This was clear when he went the wrong way round a lake, had to cut across 6 desert lanes to get back on route and when he had to stop on numerous occasions to look to see where the rest of the convoy had gone because of this when we pulled up to the stalled IsEngcan the occupants of the jeep had been waiting for half an hour. It turned out that their axel had broken and as a consquence the 6 of them had to cram into the other 2 jeeps making for an amusing finally leg to our accommodation that night. The English couple and the Israeli in ours were amused by the Juvenility and randomness of our conversations as they had spent the past 48 hours discussing Palestine and cultural nuances but it was our jeep and our rules! That night at the gueshouse it was enlightening to finally speak to some Israelis (they have a notorious reputation out here for being inclusive, abrupt and large in number due them all travelling having finished military service) and see where all the stereotypes I had heard emerged from, the negative ones I feel are more of a consequence of their culture rather than themselves. Their attitudes about Palestine and drugs was particularly interesting although I can´t really say I agree with them. It was also nice to finally dispell my uncomfortableness with German company as we joked about WWI + II and the various stereotypes, before I had always possessed that English attitude of "don´t mention the war".The culmination of our trip (and what we were all most looking forward to) of visiting the salt flats was delayed significantly because of the broken down jeep, it was miles away full of people´s rucksacks and the journey could not continue until it had arrived. To compound problems one of the Germans in our group was seriously ill (suspected food poisoning) luckily his travel partner (the Irish twinged German) was a medicine graduate but that is no substitute for the realtiy that nothing can help apart from playing the waiting game. This dampened affairs as we all felt so bad for the poor guy who had to watch the highlight of the trip conked out in the back of the jeep. The journey to the salt flats was amazing the first couple of miles out towards them consisted of driving through a terrain that can only be described as a half a foot deep ocean it was weird to feel at sea (technically the salt flats are a sea or lake of some sort but they are so incredibly saturated with salt that they are almost completely solid)  in a jeep with nothing to see for miles but mirages on the horizon. The Salt flats consisted of a visit to a coral based cactus park in the middle of nowhere and then a quick walk throught he tourist trap and ecological disaster that is the Salt Hotel. We then took the classic photos where all perspective is lost on the empty landscap allowing you to seemingly hold other people in your hand, emerge from giant vaseline tubs and look like you are levitating.Some things you should do and only do once to maintain their uniqueness and this was one of them, simply awesome.
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Sucre, Bolivia

The next stop after Valpo was the Atacama desert and having navigated our way to the bus station walking past the hordes (literally hordes) of Chilean schoolgirls giggling at us whispering "gringo" (we like to think its a good thing) we started the nightmarish 28 hour bus journey to the desert. Upon arrival we were bundled into a van and taken to a hostel by a guy who insisted he was neither Chilean nor Bolivian but Indian, an indication of how indigenous it gets in this area. San Pedro De Atacama is a town that depends entirely on tourism and it was funny to walk round this backpacker/tourist Mecca. Funny because the irony of backpacking is that unless a backpacker is in a hostel he looks upon any other backpacker with disgust, an obstacle ruining their search for the non-existent "off-beaten track" and something constituting "real travelling". That is not to say there are no locals there is an indigenous population which we came to realise when our hostel owner took us out each night. One night we found ourselves sat in a bar when an endless stream of gorgeous Chilean adolescents started walking past our window after locating them in a nearby bar with the conversation flowing and the English charm/gringo appeal working it seemed too good to be true, and it was because nearly all of them were just short of 18 and were kicked out for being underage. Because all bars have to close at 1am in Atacama there is a thriving local private party culture which are hostel owner blagged us into and myself and Felix (one of the guys from Cambridge) felt like Chippendales as we posed for numerous photos with 30-40 something mischeivous Chilean women behaving in a manner typical of English women of that age on a weekend away from the nest.The remainder of our stay there consisted of desert haircut and more night activity, Felix unhappy with the length of his hair put himself at the mercy of the rest of us in a surreal situation that saw him seated literally in the middle of a valley with the only sound being the whizzing of the clippers and snipping of a Swiss army knife´s scissors. That evening the hostel had an international feel and we all chipped in to put together a great Anglo-German-Bulgarian-Chilean bargain steak dinner before heading out to a peña (a folk venue where live Andean music is played). It was refreshing to go to a dance venue that consisted firstly of live music and secondly something that was electronic, with the dancing being as contrasting to western nightclubs as the music was. It seemed to all be about just letting yourself go and noone would bat an eyelid whether you were swaying nervously from side to side or throwing your every extremity about like a raving loon. Its a general Andean attitude that we have so far only scratched the surface of.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tombarker/1/1205929440/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tombarker/1/1205929440/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/tombarker/1/1205929440/tpod.html Wed, 19 Mar 2008 09:13:24 -0400 Rio and Beyond-an STA free Latin Adventure

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Sucre, Bolivia

Well, well, well, where do I start? It has been a jam-packed past week and now I must attempt to cram it all into a blog entry, the lack of high-speed internet (unsuprisingly) in the barren Chilean/Bolivian desert has meant that frustration has prevented me from keeping it up to date. It seems as though the internet suffers the same altitude problems that us gringoes have when we are propelled 2km up into the mountains in the space of an hour but before that there was Valparaiso.Having had a great couple of nights in the capital city of Chile it was time for me and my newly acquired travel-buddies from Cambridge to start making our way north, starting with Valparaiso. Valpo is a strange city, strange because the elevated areas around the main city-which in most other Latin cities would consist of the slum areas-are the homes of the residents of Valpo. The locals tend to ride Funeculars (grounded cablecars) down to the centre, rickety structures that backdate the Boer War! We decided to give it a go ourselves and it was a great way to explore the real city and take in the magnificent panoramics, after the intital scare that we might have been freefalling back down the track.Due to me being turfed out of my hostel in Santiago I had to make my way separately picking up on the way a solo traveller from Chicago, little did I know the consequences of my soft spot for solo travellers such as myself. It turned out the polite Chicago (due to my inability to remember names I tend to resort to calling them by their hometown/country) was a constantly drunk, trash-talking (appropriate American-ism I think) character who provided endless amusement. He danced away in bars where noone else was dancing, he´d tell jokes to various people until he found someone who actually found it funny (he never did), he´d wake up drunk and gossip about people to the people he was gossiping about and he´d just generally make everyone feel hillariously uncomfortable. This is a regular amusing theme of travelling, the traveller who does your head in but provides endless retrospective amusement. THe particular bit of gossip was he went up to the 4 of us and said "if this hostel is full of douchebags, does this make this place a frat house?", with my limited grasp of American Colloquial English I will attempt to translate "if this hostel has four gap year students who have the initiative to get up and grab the limited servings of all you can eat pizza (a douchebag is an insult by the way and that is why we are douchebags) does this make this place a secret society house of loud-mouth, inconsiderate society members." Chicago-a character we are probably glad to see the back of!Valparaiso was good fun. On the first night we were promised as much pizza as we can eat and as much beer as we can drink although the first promise was sufficiently fulfilled the four of us were left slightly disappointed when the "unlimited" keg ran dry, Allowing us to reinforce the two classic English stereotypes that are constantly brought up out here: Firstly our taste for beer secondly our love of tea when we nursed our heads the morning after. The hostel was ran by an eccentric guy from Chicago who went out of his way to keep everyone busy, we narrowly missed out on what would have been an amusing night-international night. Everyone who was staying when we left were invited to cook something or create a drink to do with their country. It would have been amusing as at least 90% of the guests were either American or English.
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Santiago, Chile

Today has been an interesting day and it started with a slightly unorthodox wake up call. Having had a heavy night out I was woken at 1130 this morning by the female Chilean equivalent of Manuel (I will call her Manuella) and literally turfed out! It turned out that the staff at the hostel were so incompetent that they forgot to extend my stay and that I didn´t have a bed. The same thing also happened to another guy in the hostel and now we are situated literally on the main plaza of Santiago, where processions and protests are lucidly organised, a testament to Chilean planning was the way the transition that took place when the square, half occupied with Catholic preaching dispersed minutes before a Hare Krishna (as I write I think the Krishnas are outside again singing, its either that or I am becoming spiritually converted and its all in my head) parade spilled onto the same plaza, being all set for a classic clash of the religions I was disappointed to find a rare moment of genuine South American organisation.The journey here was the worst so far. With Poland (confused? see previous entry) determined to cut every single corner we were on the cheapest night minibus to Santiago. Having reconvened at the hostel in Santiago we were told that there was no space. This took a long time to establish as Manuella could not speak English but could speak French and I made the mistake of saying that I had studied it (A LONG TIME AGO) so a terrible Sitcom-esque 10 minute exchange of Spanglish, Frenglish and Sprench continued but after a bit of Polish persistence, two beds magically became available.Since then I have done a bit of culture-vulturing involving a visit to the tremendous Japanese gardens (now there is much chanting going on outside, if a revolution is taking place, I love you all very much and will try and make it to the embassy safely) where I was accustomed by two very friendly Chilean ´students´ who told me a lot about Chile that I already knew (talked about England: "best music in the world amigo, Coldplay" "Coldplay mate? you mean The Beatles?" "O Si the Beegees they are great too") and then wanted donations for their endeavours, being on my own and suspecting a potential mugging I gave them both 30p and they were very chuffed I was under no illusion that the money was going to a good cause when the last thing they said to me was if I smoked weed! Santiago has also proved to be the first place where I have actually met other gappers since Rio but the first place where we have formed a majority, refreshing given that I have spent the past month and a half generally being the token gap year kid. It turned out that 2 of the gappers went to Hills Road in Cambridge and their mate is from Devon however he went to a certain Primary School called St Edmunds and used to be best friends with a mate and work colleague of mine (we had 4 friends in common facebook) and then to top it off one of the other girls is going to Kent University in September! On the subject of firsts last night was also the first time since Rio that I went clubbing and it was good fun. We went to an "Indie" club where one room played the likes of Joy Division, The Clash and The Smiths to name a few whilst the other room played an eclectic mix ranging from the Spice Girls to modern dance. There was what appeared to be a Britney Spears tribute act (I like to think it was THE Britney Spears on a desperate PR drive) and a live singer. What was most noticeable was the fact it appeared to be an integrated club, gay and straight alike and it was genuinely not too hard to distinguish, the first sign being that Homosexual men can generally dance. So far I have loved the city of Santiago. The architecture throughoutthe city is stunning high rise corporate buildings etch over the top ofgems of Spanish Colonialism and the people here (in comparison toArgentina) are far more Gringo friendly. They also seem to be a lotmore enthusiastic about Salut-ing (cheers-ing) each other but I am notsure whether theis a genuine cultural thing or if it is just the factthey drink a lot. The only catch has been the cost of living here, damntheir booming economic situation! I hope that this stays the same way, well a recession wouldn´t go amiss.
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