My Dog Smells Like Coconuts

Slovenia, Romania, Moldova, Transnistria, and Ukraine

2011-10-25T19:59:00.000-07:00

Slovenia, Romania, Moldova, Transnistria, and Ukraine
In this episode, I:
-learn how to pronounce Ljubljana
-explore “Dracula’s castle”
-get drunk after one glass of Moldovan wine
-visit a country that technically doesn’t exist
-discovers that “perogies” are not even Ukrainian
SLOVENIA
Having seen every other country in the former Yugoslavia, I figured I might as well complete the set and so I headed to Slovenia, the first country to split away from Belgrade (and the one that did so with the least amount of violence). As a result, Slovenia never had to suffer through the years of war that plagued its erstwhile fellow Yugoslavians, meaning its gorgeous old town is still intact (in fact, I’m pretty sure it’s looking better than it ever did even in its hey day) and its economy was even strong enough for it to join the EU, which it did.
Coming the more “rustic” parts of the Balkans Slovenia was decidedly easy to travel in, although its prices were starting to approach more what I would expect in Western Europe. I stayed at a place called Hostel Park, which was really just the upper floor of Hotel Park and wasn’t terribly remarkable except that it was clean, in a hard-to-find park, and available (I tried to stay in a recommended former prison hostel, but it was booked solid).
To be honest, Slovenia was a crossroads, my last stop at the Balkans, and when I planned to decide how much longer I would travel in Europe and when I would finally go home. I booked my flight there and away deciding I would pop by the other countries in this chapter and fly out of Kiev, where I found the best deal.
Anyways, I did get out see the city in between looking for work and booking flights. I did the usual “free walking tour”thing to meet people and end ed up hooking up with a group of university students starting at the university in Lubljana (pronounce it if you can) who had just arrived from different countries (Canada, Australia, Poland, and Germany) and had somehow decided to become roommates despite the fact that none of them knew each other before hand and some of them couldn’t speak English that well (that may include the Australian). Anyway, they were an interesting group. The only girl (the Canadian) was from Vancouver and an Improv performer who was hoping to get in on the scene in Slovenia (in Slovenian?). She was also partly deaf and had hearing issues (and apparently permanent ringing in her ears) but being Canadian, I understand what she was saying more than any the others and she (perhaps due to her ability to lip read and study what people are trying to say) could sense of most of us when we couldn’t make sense of each other. The Australian guy was the other outgoing member of the group, always wearing his hipster cap and forgetting to pronounce his Rs, and thus confusing everyone else. The German guy, apparently a DJ back home, looked kinda nerdy actually and spoke with a stereotypical German accent, so much so that when you said something he didn’t understand, he’d say “WHAT!” with far too much authority. I think he understood sarcasm, but he couldn’t speak sarcastically in English, so even the most absurd statements such as “In Australia, the Koalas can come down from trees and kill you at any moment” to which he would respond in thick German-English “Yes, then we must to be very careful.”
Slovenia is a gorgeous city, and apparently a romantic place (so if you’re couple, knock yourself out). Ljubljana means “beloved” in Slovenian. One of the bridges was covered in padlocks, apparently this is a recent European fad (started by some cheesy Italian romance novel) where lovers put their names on a padlock and toss the key into the river (the idea being that they can never be separated or “unlocked” again). As a result you get all these decorative padlocks accumulating on bridges like barnacles. You have to be careful, though, as on some of the bridges, the floor is transparent, so if your lady friend is wearing a skirt, those on the river below might be in for a show.
But yeah, if you’re looking for Austro-Hungarian style classical architecture, complete with canals, bike lanes with traffic lights and angry cyclists with their silly bells, and a bridge guarded by dragons (dragons are the symbol of the city as apparently Jason and the Argonauts—of the Greek myth not the CFL franchise—fought a dragon here), its a great place to cafe away.
BUDAPEST
Last time I was in Hungary (a rather fleeting visit in 2007) I missed Budapest, much to the shock of many as this city is something of a legend on the backpacker circuit. This time though, I made a point of hitting it, between Slovenia and Romania.
Truth be told, while the old parts of town are definitely nice (although comparable to other European cities), its actually a fairly normal city at the end of the day (although a surprisingly big city). It’s a place to party, and certainly there are plenty of those, but i was disappointed to hear that the party in the baths was no longer in season. I did go to the famous Hungarian-Turkish baths, but basically they’re just luke-warm to quasi-warm pools that you share with a bunch of hairy Hungarian old men, although some were playing chess which I found interesting. At one point, my wallet fell out of my pants while I was changing my clothes and I thought it had been stolen, but a Chinese couple had found it and returned once they finished with the bath so I got it back right before I left. Thank God.
Anyways, I also did a walking tour here and I met a few interesting people most notable a Canadian girl who goes by the name of The Hungarian Girl (she’s of Hungarian descent) who works for Reuters and runs a travel blog on Eastern Europe which I’m hoping I might be able to write a piece for (she has offered to pay me a whopping $25 for a piece on the tunnels of Sarajevo. Woot!).
I ended up staying at the original hostel of Budapest (on the Buda side although most everything else is on the Pest side, and nobody from Budapest cares if you’re from Buda or Pest any more), which is basically a converted house. It was interesting place, and definitely famous, although it was average in terms of hostel services (although the staff spoke English fluenty—mostly because they were backpackers themselves—which was a nice change). Bit of problem with neighbours and noise complaints mind you. Anyways, I met a few people here, including a French girl with a rubber arm, (except when it came to referring to “frites francaise” as French cuisine) so i got to practice a bit of French with her, although when she started asking me for dating advice for the friend she loved who was returning from Afghanistan, my phrases about “pamplemouse” and “bibliotheques” were not so useful. Also met an American guy (one of the few) who had strong opinions about various subjects we were not actually discussing, such as things to do in Cincinatti. Anyway, we out “clubbing” one night so I got a sample of the nightlife, but I’m not really any good at a club unless I find someone who appreciates my style of terrible dancing, which is difficult. Anyways, wasn’t my night, but I guess it was for quite a few other folks.
On to Romania.
ROMANIA
Having set my Intern comic in “Dracula’s Castle” in Romania, I thought it appropriate that I actually visit the place while I was in the neighbourhood and so I went on to Transylvania (yes, there actually is a Transylvania, its a province of Romania). And there actually was a Dracula, although he’s more widely known in history as Vlad the Impaler (Bram Stoker named his vampire after the historical figure, although Stoker himself never came to Eastern Europe at all). “Dracula” was a nickname given to Vlad as a child because he was the son of another Vlad who was named “Dracul” (dragon), so “Dracula” literally means “son of the dragon.” Although it also means “son of the devil” in more recent Romanian. While Dracula in Hollywood, even the historical one, is generally depicted as being a mass murdering tyrant, apparently his own people actually like him somewhat (they see him as a man of the people, who fought off the Turkish invasion and interference from the crooked nobility). In any rate, evil or not, Romania’s definitely benefiting now from Vlad’s indirect fame as the entire region is geared towards a “spooky” tourism system.
That said, Transylvania does actually live up to its reputation in some respects. Brasov—the main city—has picturesquely crumbling old town, with tiled roofs, a black tower (not actually black), and a black church (actually black) that evokes the spooky feel you’re looking for. I even did the typical Dracula-story thing and stayed the night with a stranger, although in this case, they were elderly Romanians just offering the extra rooms in their apartment, which—while nicely furnished with antiques—where not actually haunted (although I did have to fumble my through a dark hall way to get there).
The Carpathian mountains, rolling evergreen trees intermixed with trees losing their leaves (I’m glad I visited in October, I couldn’t have picked a better time) make for some gorgeous scenery, and of course there are the castles.
Bran Castle, known as Dracula’s Castle although the link to Vlad the Impaler is tenuous (Lonely Planet says he may have taken a shit here), is still a gorgeously creepy place that doesn’t disappoint. It even has secret passages behind bookcases (that you can go through) and an odd well and towers that seem to rise out of nowhere. I gotta be honest and say the inner NES geek in me felt I was playing Castlevania for realsies.
But I digress, Romania isn’t spooky-spook. While parts of the country are still using old Cold War Dacias to get around (or even horse and wagon), the Banco Transylvania (yes there is such a thing) has a working ATM machine and the country appears to be modernizing fast (Its part of the EU now). Still though, I’d have say it was one of my highlights, even if I had to Skype with my parents from a pub (only place I could find working Wifi) that cranked the Electric Swing music (a genre that I hadn’t experienced before but am now sorta getting into).
MOLDOVA
After taking a circuitous route around the Carpathians, which involved heading south to Bucharest and then north to Chisinau in Moldova, I found myself in the capital of this oft-forgotten country that is so far removed from tourist hotspots like Paris or Amsterdam that even the locals are surprised that anyone would go there. Truth be told, my guidebook said that most Moldovan travel blogs are likely to be written by “melancholy Peace Corps volunteers” rather than travellers and indeed I was on the traveller I met there (although I did meet some melancholy Peace Corps volunteers, although they were still friendly).
Historically linked with Romania (the Moldovans speak a dialect of Romanian), Chisinau sadly lacks the architectural charms of Brasov, espousing more of a Soviet-esque look, but not extreme enough to make it interesting. That said, there are plenty of nice parts of the Moldovan capital, although good luck finding someone who can speak English.
Interestingly, Moldova is something of an upcoming wine destination (or perhaps undiscovered is the word I’m looking for here). There was a wine fest called Moldexpo on while I was in town and I was able to get myself quite a few samples of the red and white stuff (although a bit too many samples, which—considering I had slept in and missed breakfast—meant I got drunk pretty quickly). That said, it was tasty, tasty wine (this from a guy who usually doesn’t rave about wine) and pretty darn cheap at that (you can buy an “expensive” bottle for like $10). Maybe this is because Moldova has no shortage of wine, in fact hold’s the Guiness World Record for largest wine cellar as they took an old quarry and filled all 60 km of its underground tunnels with wine. Now there’s a party waiting to happen.
I also did some other things, mostly museums (history museum is alright, just a collection of old uniforms, coins from the Mongol invasions, and an impressive WW2 diorama, although not as cool as the one in Wroclaw; there was also a surprisingly fun Ethnographic and Natural History Museum, although I’m not sure where they got that combo from). Chisinau is another place that’s said to have a decent nightlife (although traveling alone makes enjoying the nightlife difficult at times), but I heard of this place called Deja Vu which was said to be a cocktail bar, so I thought why not. Turns out it was more of a dance club with few dubious characters, including middle-aged guys hanging out on their own or with women half their age (so either they’re gangsters or they’re creepy, either way, I kept my distance). At one point I found a quieter nook and met a friendly local girl, who spoke a little English. I asked her what she did, and she said she worked here. I asked her if she was a bartender and she said no, but didn’t explain any further (although she did give me a little wink. Figured it best to not ask any more questions at that point. Anyways, she and her “friend” soon left and I finished my drink and left a bit after that.
At the moment, I’m on a train to Ukraine leaving Moldova (hoping I can still spend my leftover Moldovan lei)
TRANSNISTRIA
What you’ve never heard of this country? Perhaps because its not actually a country. Well not really.
Basically, let’s do a crash-course in recent Moldovan history. Moldova, while Romanian in culture and language, was actually a province of the USSR up until its collapse in 1991. At that point, Moldova declared independence, but the local Russian population (based mostly on the east side of the Dneister river, along the border with Ukraine) didn’t want none of this independence business, and so they declared independence from the Moldovan independence. A civil war ensued, ending in semi-autonomy for Transnistria (sometimes called the unpronounceable Transdniester), but Moldova still claims the territory as within its borders. Transnistria is de facto independent though, as it has its own currency, own border officials, own flag (it uses the old Soviet flag with green and orange stripes on the bottom), and all the signs are in Russian (that is to say Cyrillic). It’s something of like Russia’s version of Kosovo, except that not even Russia recognizes Transnistria as independent (although they do have 5000 troups there guaranteeing its existence).
That said while sold as one of the world’s last bastions of communism, it’s about as “communist” as China is these days. Sure there are a couple of Soviet-style border guards and monuments hanging around, but these off-set by the huge number of advertisements in Tiraspol, often for American films (Ice Age appears to have been popular here, although the reference was a bit dated). While Transnistria has a reputation of being a bit out there (as recently as 2007, its tourism website said “Tourists are not welcome in Transnistria” and the Canadian gov’t travel advisory still lists it as “Avoid all Travel” which is a step more dangerous than the designation “Avoid Non-essential Travel” that they use for places like the DRC or Syria). That said, it was fairly normal, functioning place, and if you didn’t know any better (and ignored the occasional hammer and sickle and/or bust of Lenin), you might be in any run-of-the-mill city in the region. There’s even a beach (on the Dneister I presume) where you can swim or paddle a kayak (although I never figured out if you could actually rent the things). Despite being a weekday, there were also at least two separate wedding parties going around getting their pictures taken.
At one point, I crossed over a bridge into a forested island and I saw a lot of Soviet style uniforms so I got a little worried, but then I heard a brass band and I saw that these were members of a brass band that for some reason was playing a little victory song for runners of a marathon as they were coming up on their finish line. Every runner that came down the way would have the music start up for them (and two women would pull the ribbon across, although they eventually got lazy and stopped doing this) and the music would stop abruptly as soon as they crossed the line. Some of the runners (I think it was a charity marathon) appeared to be from Germany or other parts of Europe and looked a tad surprised to see a Soviet-style brass band inexplicably welcoming them to the finish, but there are worse things one could encounter when about to finish a race.
I never even had to bribe a border guard (fingers crossed, as I write this I’m on a train from Chisinau to Kiev which is apparently going through Transnistria, I’ve already passed one guard but there might be another issue on the way as it seems this train has taken me back into Transnistria and we’re sitting at the train station in Tiraspol waiting to move). To get here the first, time I basically had to take a “Maxi Taxi” to and from Chisinau (like the African minibuses, but not quite as crowded although some passengers did have to sit on little fold out stools in the aisles, but at least it was cheap). The first time through there were no problems, and I even met a friendly Transnistrian (although she called herself a “Russian girl”) who helped me get through the border with ease, although the border guards (as in Moldova) all had these big over-sized hats, which matched with their stern expression, made it difficult for me at times not to laugh, but I didn’t want to pay a 200 euro “fine” so I kept my giggles to myself.
I did have a bit more issues second time around entering Transnistria. No Russian girl to help me this time, I was all alone in my cabin in the train when a met in full Soviet get-up knocked on my door and surprised me. He said a few things to me in Russian, which granted could have been asking for a bribe or could have been telling me that the moon had fallen into the Pacific, either way I had no clue what he was saying. He looked at my passport and searched my bag, seemed to be complaining about the mess, and made a point of asking me what each and every pill in my shaving case did and was for (which I answered although I don’t know if he understood my answers). He checked every one of my bags and every one of my pockets, but the only suspicious was a copy of Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 (a computer game where players take control of fancified versions of the militaries of the Soviet Union, Imperial Japan, or basically NATO, and duke it out, its a fun game if you like real-time strategy and is something of a more goofy version of Starcraft). I don’t know if he had ever heard of the game before, but I soon found myself in a surreal situation where a border official, in full Soviet-style get-up complete with hammer and sickle and everything, was holding and staring at a game case he found in my bag, featuring a scantily clad “Soviet” female commando and various other exaggerations of Soviet kitsche. He stared at the game for a minute and then asked “you... journalist?” (he couldn’t speak a lick of English and pronounced my name something like Rouen, so it took me awhile to get that he was reading my name off of my passport). To my relief, he tired of the game, put it back in the bag, and went on to quizzing me about my various over-the-counter meds leftover from ailments past.
Ukraine’s my last stop before home. Kiev, here I come.
UKRAINE
Arriving in Kiev I was once again presented with signs only in Cyrillic, but unlike in Belgrade, I was also in a massive city (and a massively confusing train station). Every time I went out the door in Kiev, I inevitably ended up lost, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing (good way to see the nice old parts of Kiev), although I could used a few more street signs in Roman alphabet (especially ones pointing the way I thought they would). At any rate, I couldn’t find the hostel I intended to stay at, but I found another one instead so it all worked out. The weather was really crappy (torrential rain), but I’d had good weather up until this point, so I can’t complain.
The hostel was actually the top two floors of an old Soviet apartment building with no outside sign (It was just dumb luck that I found it, looking for another hostel that was supposedly at its address). It was mostly empty save for a handful of Peace Corps volunteers, a 48 year old creepy German guy who got annoyed when I closed the door the dormitory (I only did to change when no one else was in there and I thought he was out, but he would inevitably come back at that time). He was the only other guy in the dorm room mostly.
There was also a heartbroken Frenchman (of American descent, his family apparently moved from the States to France, so he speaks English well but with a French accent), who had apparently just been dumped by his fiancé. Eastern European women are apparently (and quite justly) known for their beauty, and while I’d heard of Russian mail-order brides before, I didn’t realize it was so abundant. Apparently, my French friend—who was a muscular, 28-year old Frenchman who enjoyed cooking, so I wouldn’t think he’d normally have need to come all the way to Ukraine to find a bride—had met his ex-fiancé over the Internet a year ago, looking for a traditional girl he could “protect” (I don’t think he had the most political correct attitudes towards women, which may explain the problems he was having, but the guy just broke-up with his fiancé, so who am I to judge?). Unfortunately for him, the wedding was supposed to happen that weekend and his family were still flying in! Oh well, at least they could have a mini-vacation in Kiev.
Yeah meeting Eastern European brides over the Internet seems to be a widespread thing, especially in Kiev, a couple I met on a walking tour had also been courting over the Internet before meeting in person and were the opposite of the French guy—so lovey-dovey that I wanted to push them off a gilded dome. But again there were some major age differences and I don’t know how long term the relationship would be, but whatever. You gotta do what you gotta do.
The walking tours were cool and as always a great way to see the local side of the city. And Kiev is certainly both a gritty and beautiful place (depending on the neighbourhood). A major city in the former Soviet Union, it does have plenty of old Soviet era relics, although most of the classic architecture seems to date back to the Czarist times. While surpressed under the USSR, these days the churches are the highlight of the Kiev architecture, and with their gilded domes and colourful paints, its not hard to see why. St. Andrews, one of the most gorgeous, also a great little craft market on the cobblestone street beside it (called St. Andrews descent) where I bought most of my souvenirs.
While you might find Ukrainian ornate easter eggs, plates, and other goodies you’d expect at the craft market (where every thing is hand-made, and explicity “not from China”), the matrushka dolls are not Ukrainian; they’re Russian. Likewise, perogies, I was surprised to learn, are not Ukrainian (tell that to the Ukrainian Manitobans). Perogies are apparently Polish. The Ukrainians do have a dish that is similar (read the exact same) as perogies, but they call it varashni or something. Still tasty though.
It was rainy most of my days in Kiev, so I didn’t get to see as much as I would like. But I did see the Lavras Monastery (a monastery and church complex dating back to the 11th century and a holy site of pilgrimage filled with the mummies of dead monks in eery candlelit tunnels). It was a park area by the river and with the fall foliage, looked gorgeous.
I also went to the Chernobyl Museum which basically focused on the individual workers who risked (and in many cases lost) their lives trying to mitigate the disaster. I tried to go to Chernobyl itself (they offer tours to it), but unfortunately they seem to have restricted the number of tours these days (apparently its gov’t bureaucracy) and it goes so happened the nearest days available were both outside of my time period in Kiev (and because I had that flight, I couldn’t extend it). Oh well. Guess I don’t get to be radioactive. Maybe that’s a good thing.
Certainly standards, while not as bad as in Africa, are a bit questionable. While I was in Kiev, the Ukrainian government—the same gov’t that had come to power through popular support of the Orange Revolution—made news around the world, for convicted the leader of the opposition on dubious charges and sentencing her to 7 years in Prison. Unfortunately, it appears that the Orange Revolution reformers have become that which they despised, but hopefully fairness and justice will prevail.
I flew out of Kiev on Polish airline called Lot, first to Warsaw and then to Toronto, where I caught an Air Canada flight to Wpg (although I booked all these flights together as part of a cheap deal through Travelocity). Lot has a good reputation and its a Star Alliance airline, so I assumed it would be okay.
The seats were really cramped though, almost as if i got on another cramped bus. It was made worse by the fact that I ended up sitting next to a friendly but drunk-as-a-skunk Norweigan guy (he apparently dealt with his fear of flying by drinking, and also claimed to be a pilot for some reason, but he certainly didn’t help with my fear of flying). Lot is supposed to have a free wine and beer policy, and despite the fact that he was smashed before we even took off (and the flight to Warsaw was only like an hour) he still managed to have 5 glasses of wine before the flight attendants thankfully cut him off (at which point he even tried to get me to get wine for him). He was travelling with his father-in-law. He wasn’t mean or nasty or anything, just annoying. I deal with my fear of flying by meditating, which is difficult when a large Norweigan drunk is elbowing you at randow intervals and asking if you know “Jerry” (which turned out to be a reference to Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead of all things) and repeated statements of “you’re from Canada” as I he was bemused at discovering my citizenship anew every 5 mins (“Yep, I’m still Canadian. Haven’t changed my citizenship mid-flight or anything).
While I was lucky with my transfers (they all went smoothly and easily and were about an hour or three tops), but the flight from Warsaw to Toronto was a bit of a doozy. Once again I was in a cramped seat next to someone I didn’t really want to be next to in this case, a confused Polish senior citizen who seemed like it was his first time on a plane (yet he spoke decent English and claimed to live in Toronto, so I don’t see how that would be possible). Nevertheless, he seemed genuinely surprised at how high the plane was flying and when the landing gear popped out for landing he freaked out and shouted “what the hell was that?” (again, not good for my meditating to deal with my fear of flying). At one point, I went to use the washroom and I couldn’t get back to my seat for 45 minutes as he struggled to buy two bottles of liquor from the flight attendants using Canadian money (I ended up having to use his money, talk to the flight attendants and then give him his change and his bottles, at which he insisted on cramming the two boxes into his carry-on which would not work and was ultimately pointless as someone had arranged for a wheel chair to pick him up on arrival). To make matters worse, the flight not only had no personal tvs, but no entertainment whatsoever for the first half of the flight. We were basically over Canadian waters before they finally started playing the crappy romantic comedies on a camera so old it made modern movies look like they were shot in the 1960s with 16 mm (maybe that’s a cool effect).
Anyways after getting through Canadian customs (which was sterner than usual, perhaps because the flight was from Poland, but my passport is Canadian, so I don’t really have to say how long I’m planning to stay here). At any rate, soon I was seeing hockey on the TV and Tim Hortons so I knew I was back in Canada.
The flight from Toronto to Winnipeg was with Air Canada was actually pretty problem free (although it was slightly delayed), although Air Canada had been scheduled to go on strike so I thought I might have ended up stranded in Toronto. But Harper’s gov’t basically ordered the striking flight attendants back to work, so their loss was my gain and the flight itself was only half full and I got a whole row to myself (which felt like luxury compared to what i was used to) and happily spent the flight watching the personal tv, including the People vs. George Lucas (a doc about fans upset about the new Star Wars movies), some Parks Canada promo involving artists from Toronto in the NWT, and—appropriately enough—Idiot Abroad.
Well that’s it for this trip, probably going to be laying low for the next little while and looking for work. Maybe I’ll find a stable job at home and hang up my traveling shoes for good. Or maybe I’ll find another job overseas. We’ll see.
Thanks for reading.

Macedonia, Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, and Bosnia-Hercezgovina

2011-10-25T19:57:00.000-07:00

Macedonia, Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, and Bosnia-Hercezgovina
In this episode, I...
-happen into Macedonia on its 20th birthday
-have fun with Bunkers in Albania
-Go “tunnelling” in formerly war-torn Sarajevo
MACEDONIA
After arriving in Macedonia’s capital Skopje from Kosovo, I assumed things would probably be a fair more developed than in Kosovo but not as developed as Belgrade (a fair assessment), but I was surprised to find getting a taxi driver to take you to your actual destination is quite an undertaking (not only was I taken by two separate taxi drivers to two wrong locations, my actual hotel ended up being only a few blocks from the bus/rail station anyway, so I could have walked). That said, the hostel was very hard to find (tucked away in alleys by the river, and devoid of any sign, or street sign for that matter) but somehow I managed to get to it (granted I think my guidebook had an error on its map which caused some of the confusion).
Skopje is actually a fairly compact city centred around its central river. You can walk most places although most of it seemed under construction, possibly for its 20th anniversary celebration which my visit happened to coincide. Despite the fact that if the country isn’t even old enough to drink in the US, Macedonian pride was on high and the flag—a striking Hellenistic yellow sun on a red background—was visible everywhere. Skopje’s showpiece square (which at the moment I believe is called Macedonian square), features a highly oversized statue of Alexander the Great on a horse on a pedestal above a series of other statues, lights, and fountain show (though at the time, much of this was behind scaffolding).
After hanging out in Skopje for a bit, I took a bus out to Lake Olhrud (Ohlrud? Ohrud? Ohruid? How do spell this blessed thing?) which is said to be the spiritual heart of Macedonia (although its shared with Albania). This is said to be the place where the Cyrillic alphabet (the one used by Russians, Ukrainians, Serbians, Bulgarians, Montenegrins, and of course Macedonians) was invented, apparently to confuse people who read the Latin alphabet. I’m not kidding. The Eastern Roman empire at the time was trying to distance itself from the Western Roman empire (ie. Rome), so it figured if it created a different alphabet (and made it based on local languages instead of Latin) it would be more popular locally and the Western Romans wouldn’t be able to read it (also Easterners wouldn’t be able to read Latin).
Lake Olhrud (let’s just call it that) is certainly a gorgeous setting to create a new alphabet, a scenic medieval town (with twisty cobblestone streets, old churches, and the like), dominated by an old Ottoman fort, overlooking cliffs and a freshwater lake, with café and beaches along the base of the cliff where you can swim and have a drink. Fantastic. It’s like Greece except affordable… and less salty.
Technically I was supposed to move on at that point, but the train appears to have been cancelled between Macedonia and Greece to the ongoing name dispute. In effect, Greece—which has a province called Macedonia with occasional separatist tendencies—has objected to Macedonia calling itself Macedonia for the last 20 years, but Macedonia refuses to budge (I suggested they just change the name to France, but apparently that’s another kettle of fish). I find it a bit odd that Macedonia and Greece’s squabbling over a name has caused more border issues than I had between Serbia and Kosovo (despite the fact that Serbia and Kosovo had legitimate concerns, like a war and genocide, to get all ancy about), but I was able to get a 6 am bus the next day so it was no big deal.
As a result of the layover, I was also hosted by Melka, a local Macedonian woman I met on the bus back from Olhrud who—a heavy metal enthusiast—took me out to party in Skopje. She showed me quite a few places in Skopje, but one thing she didn’t show me—despite its apparent Balkan popularity—is something called Turbofolk, which her (and the Serbian rocker) both were adamant about their absolute distaste for it. Turbofolk as far as I can gather involves twisted souped-up remixes of folk music (probably techno) involving in the words of Melka “a big breasted woman and some stupid people.” Turbofolk is probably as distasteful as its made out to be, but my morbid curiosity is starting to get the better of me.
Anyways, strange pop cultural phenomena aside, Melka showed me a fantastic time and we cooked up a Macedonian storm in her little apartment, including sausages (most of which I can’t pronounce), vegetables, and fun scaring her roommate who would freak out any time I spoke English to her. Sadly though, I don’t have time to linger on this trip so on to Greece I went.
GREECE
Greece, to be frank, was something of a disaster for me. Being a history and mythology buff, I had high hopes for Greece and had heard great things (most people have a great time), but a disappointing introduction to Athens, high prices, and the theft of my digital camera made me wish I’d stayed in Macedonia.
Getting to Greece from Macedonia in the first place was tricky, as Greece had inexplicably cut off rail links with other countries, presumably due to the economic crisis (although I don’t understand how making it more difficult for people to come to your country helps your economy). Having limited time, I decided to base myself in Athens and maybe check out one of the legendary islands of the Aegean.
On my first day in Athens, I tried to do a walking tour (one of the great ways to meet fellow travellers in a new city, well usually anyway) but the tour guide (a cynical American expat who apparently was only in Athens because he married a Greek girl) seemed more interested in pointing out where to find the city’s crack addicts than talking about history and myth (in fact, he complained about tour guides talking about history and mythology, saying “nobody gives a damn about that shit.”) Of course, he made sure to remind us to tip him after the tour (despite the fact that the tour wasn’t even free). Think I’ll stick to the free tours (and if I can’t find one, just go on my own).
The old remaining Greek and Roman ruins are impressive although what remains of them is being not-so-slowly eroded away by the steady march of tourist hordes, often fresh from a cruise boat. And its hard to get an appreciation for what Socrates must have been thinking while you’re being rushed through a mob and trying to defend yourself against pickpockets.
Being told that the islands were what made Greece legendary, I decided to check out one of them—Hydra, relatively close to Athens, but still considered impressive. It was fine, and the old harbor town was quite beautiful (and exactly what you’d expect from a Greek coastal town), but it was quite small, entirely touristy, and you could finish exploring it in about 10 mins. I spent the rest of the day on the island trying to find somewhere to swim (for free). There weren’t beaches per se (at least not sandy ones), but they did have a view ladders built off of rocks into swimming sections. I swam a bit around the rocks as the sea tossed me to and fro (mostly wakes from ferry boats) and was surprised to find that I seemed extremely buoyant (so much so that my head would actually stay above water, and I could breathe, even if I didn’t bother treading water). But swimming on your own is only amusing for so long, so I got back on shore and caught the hydrofoil back to Athens.
It was on arrival back in Athens when I believe disaster struck (I believe, because I didn’t notice them do it, but I had to pass through a notorious square filled with shady characters in order to get back to my hostel, and there were a couple times I got stopped by traffic or someone jumped in front of me and tried to distract me.
Keep in mind I was travelling with all my bags (I had thought I was going to stay on the island for a couple of days, but ended up deciding to come back the same day), so I was mostly trying to guard them and I guess I must have left my pockets unguarded as sure enough next morning I discovered my digital camera—the one I had bought to replace the one that was stolen in South Africa—had once again been stolen (this time with all my pictures of Macedonia, Kosovo, and Greece).
This was a disaster, and losing the pictures broke my heart. To make matters worse, my hostel wouldn’t let me have my bed back (despite the fact no one was using it), because that particular dorm room was empty (yes, not a single other person was even in the room). They reasoned if I got a dorm room to myself, then I should pay a single room rate, even though there were so many empty dorm rooms that that they could have easily scattered everyone they crammed into the one dorm room into separate rooms and given us all a better night’s sleep.
The next day, my last in Greece, was spent trying frantically to determine if by chance my camera had been left in the Metro or the Subway, but it became evidently clear that this was a chronic problem in Greece and nobody cared to do anything about. After hours of futility, I caught the bus to Albania and bid Greece a not-so-fond farewell.
The other countries in the Balkans sometimes refer to Greece as the France of the Balkans, because it strikes a lot, is expensive, and always causes a fuss. The description appears to be apt. Granted many people adore Greece (mostly college students, ladies and couples I find), but I’ll take Eastern Europe over it any day. That and its just way too damn hot.
ALBANIA
After Greece, I was looking forward to getting back into Eastern Europe proper (with its lower prices and smaller tourist hordes). Tirana, Albania’s capital, is practically the anti-thesis of Athens, under-developed, under-rated, and inexpensive. In other words, fantastic! I knew things were going to be different as soon as I bought my bus ticket from an Albanian tour operator, who couldn’t speak a lick of English, and has a big Albanian flag and a stuffed full-size Albanian hawk (yes a real one) overlooking the ticket counter.
While tourist attractions were few and far between there were plenty of cafes, old buildings, and old communist-era relics to amuse, in particular the pyramid built by the late dictator Hoxha as a museum to himself, that has since been re-purposed multiple times and is presently, it seems, being used as a monument to how detested the former authoritarian was (another legacy of the Hoxha era are the thousands of bunkers built along the coast, apparently to stave off a Western Imperialist invasion (because everyone knows Albania was target number one) and which have since been repurposed into parts of houses, restaurants, places to lose ones virginity, and of course public “toilets”)
Incidentally, while some Muslim countries (Albania is technically a Muslim country) maybe had a somewhat different opinion of George W. Bush, Albanians apparently liked him enough to name a street after him.
The nightlife situation in Tirana is perhaps a bit tame, I’m not sure, I didn’t really get to explore it. I tried to, but the street I thought the nightclubs happened to swamped with Albanian police in front of a do not cross line when I arrive and an Albanian newscaster was doing a story on it. Clearly something big (and most probably bad) had happened, but I couldn’t figure out what it was as no one spoke English. Deciding it best to maybe just head back to my hostel, I passed a fast food restaurant that was open on the way and I say they were watching that same reporter on the TV (at the same corner I just was) and I asked the guys hanging out in there if they could speak English (thankfully one could… a little) and he explained that two masked men with guns had tried to rob a casino, the police came, there was a shoot-out with police and a couple officers were wounded (one may have been killed), but they managed to arrest the robbers, of this 20 minutes before I arrived (I’m just glad I wasn’t a little more punctual).
The next day I headed one to Montenegro which was a little strange (Albania’s buses tend to defy regional logic, but they’re cheap) which involved switching a lot, but paying more for the cab to the bus station than for the bus itself. After being dropped off in a town near the border, but not at the border, myself and an Austrian guy ended up sharing a cab with local driver (he talked us into it) who took us to the border itself, and after a bit of a confusing time clearing customs and trying to find transportation onward to Budva (a coastal resort town in Montenegro) we decided we would probably have to hitchhike as the buses that were promised to be on the other side of customs were nowhere in sight. We needn’t have worried though, as before I was even able to stick out my thumb a bus came out of nowhere, picked us up and we happily went on our way, ending up in Budva well ahead of schedule.
MONTENEGRO
A tiny country, Montenegro used to be joined with Serbia until it went its own way just a few years ago. As such, it quickly became the latest Mediterranean ”secret” out of the former Yugoslavia (something Croatia was once upon a time), but it is clear that Montenegro is going the way of the Croatia (in many ways its already there) and adventurous travelers might even have to go as far as Albania to escape the hordes.
That said, Montenegro is still a gorgeous country (and cheap and easy to get around, as its so tiny). Budva was basically in the center of the coast and in between two highlights mentioned in my guidebook, Sveti Stefan and Kotor Bay.
We hit Sveti Stefan first because Kotor Bay was on my way to Croatia (where I was heading next). Sveti Stefan is a small medieval town on a small almost-island barely connected to the mainland. It is very scenic but unfortunately you can’t explore because the whole thing has been turned into an exclusive hotel (and if you’re reading my blog, you probably can’t afford it). Even the beach beside it had a big sign reading 50 euros for a swim (outrageous!). Needless to say, we did take a dip, but we ignored the sign.
While my Austrian buddy Michael sunned it up on the pebble beach that you didn’t have to pay 50 euros for, I hiked around the little park area (very pleased to see hills with trees on them after Greece) and asked a waiter what one does in Sveti Stefan.
“Fish or pick-up Russian women,” he replied. I was never a fan of seafood.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t speak Russian either.
Budva itself was a bit more down to earth (although still very touristy) and had its own summer fair-style theme park (filled with children) and right next to it an open air strip club (great for the kids). It seems in Croatia and Montenegro, the most affordable places to stay are at private guesthouses that you get from the old people who approach you at bus or train stations. At first I was a little suspicious of these (based on my experience in Africa, I always assume someone who’s approaching me at a bus or train station and trying to sell me something is not offering me the best deal), but it turned out okay.
Anyway, the next day I continued along the coast to Dubrovnik, but not before stopping for the better part of the day in Kotor Bay which is a gorgeous little town in a scenic bay with churches built on small islands. I could have easily explored it more, but unfortunately my time and budget are running short.
CROATIA
Dubrovnik may have been a hidden gem in past years, but any place with 14 cruise ships anchored off shore can’t make that claim any more. Gorgeous and picture-esque though it was, Dubrovnik had also become very pricey. I tried to save money by going to the island of Lokram (a nature reserve) for some hiking and swimming and this was a good plan (the island was gorgeous and still fairly natural, at least for Europe). Again you basically had no real beach, you just swam off of rocks (some being very treacherous to jump across while wet and unagile), but it was very scenic and you could usually find a nook or pool somewhere where you could take a dip. There were no change rooms, so changing basically consisted of finding a rock or bush to hide behind and hope no one walks in on you (that’s if you’re modest, that is, I saw a couple of Europeans get naked right out in the open).
Then it’s a mad dash back to the ferry and back to the mainland before 7 pm (otherwise you apparently get stuck on the island and presumably have to sleep under the trees—maybe not so bad).
Unfortunately though my bad luck with cameras continued, as moving my camera into a new pocket (to protect it from thieves) created a new problem. As I was moving my luggage down a series of steps (there’s always a series of steps), one bag hit my pocket, and somehow hit the camera turn on button. The camera turned itself on (and extended its lens) and because it had no where to expand, broke itself.
I stared at my broken camera (only 2 days old!) in disbelief. I’m hoping that I will be able to replace it under warranty (as we speak, I’m heading to Slovenia where apparently my warranty is in effect, because it’s EU, as it wasn’t in effect in Bosnia or Montenegro where I bought the blessed thing). This camera things really starting to get me down.
Anyways, Croatia was too expensive so on to Bosnia!
BOSNIA-HERCEGOVINA
I had originally planned to just stop in Mostar (a mountain town famous for its old bridge) before heading to Split in Croatia to catch a ferry to visit my friend in Italy, but that trip fell through when I couldn’t touch base with my Italian friend, so I decided to go to much cheaper Sarajevo instead (I’ve been to Italy before anyway, and Bosnia seemed more interesting).
First though, I stopped in Mostar, where instead of being greeted by an old person I was met by a stunningly beautiful Bosnian university student, Amina. While usually when beautiful women ask me to purchase something, this turns out to be a disaster, she actually was incredibly honest and very nice (and even helped me try to get my broken camera sorted out in Mostar to no avail). Unfortunately, I don’t think her guesthouse has a name (its basically her family’s apartment, and while you get a room to yourself, she lives with her mother, and two brothers). She was clearly the only one in the family who spoke English (and she spoke it well) and appeared to be the hardest working member of the family (I didn’t see her brothers do too much) as she went to the train station and back trying to recruit more guests as well as her studies and other work and Skype with her boyfriend, a Bosnian soldier in Afghanistan. Definitely speaking with her and her family (mostly her) was a highlight of Mostar as I got an insider’s peek at real Bosnian life.
She explained that while the town was still divided by the river into two ethnic enclaves (Bosnian Muslims and Croatian Catholics I believe), most of the tension today basically just centred around soccer games (while sports are presumably meant to spread world peace, soccer fans appear to have missed that whole thing). The town itself is an interesting mix of old Ottoman shops and cobblestone streets, modern rebuilds, and dilapidated relics from the war years (tragic but fascinating to see). Mostar’s Starimost (Old Bridge), it’s most famous attraction, was destroyed by Croatians during the war (apparently in an attempt to make Mostar part of Croatia) but has been reconstructed… now with steps.
While Dubrovnik was close enough that the bridge was covered in tourists in the day time, the town and bridge were basically empty at night. The bridge was so empty in fact at night that as I was climbing it I felt an ominous crunch beneath my feet.
I was shocked to discover that I had apparently stepped on a dead cat (apparently had been dead for some time) that was inexplicably lying on the bridge. It had crumpled under me like a mummy might if you stepped on its face. Sent a chill down my spine for the rest of the evening.
After Mostar, I headed to Sarajevo (only a couple of hours away). Sarajevo is a city with a reputation, but the war’s been over for a number of years now, so there’s no problem going to it; in fact its emerging status makes it more authentic and definitely adds to the charm.
It’s not like Bosnians have forgotten the war (it only ended in the 1990s). Indeed, the hostel I stayed at (which actually was chosen by accident as I got it mixed up with my intended hostel across the street), happened to be run by this elderly couple who apparently were Bosnian political big whigs during the war (or at least make convincing claims that they were). The husband apparently worked for the Bosnian war ministry and had to dodge sniper fire every day as he walked to and from work (he also apparently participated in the negotiation of the Dayton Accords in 1995 that finally brought the war to an end). The wife was also in the diplomatic service and apparently welcomed foreign dignitaries visiting Sarajevo during the war years, including the French president, the British prime minister, and various Hollywood celebrities. They took us on a driving tour of the Sarajevo Tunnel (which was used to smuggle weapons, supplies, and people in and out of the city during the 3.5 year siege by the Serbian military) and gave us a history of why the tunnel was built and how desperate the besieged city was.
Basically between 1992 and 1995, Sarajevo was almost completely surrounded by the Serbian military, who were attempting to subdue the city by siege to fulfill Slobodan Milosevic’s ominous dream of a “Greater Serbia.” The town, mostly Bosnian Muslims, outnumbered the Serbs, but the Serbs had stronger weapons so what followed was a standoff where Serbian snipers and artillery would pound the city from the surrounding hills and the Bosnians would try to link up with their friendly forces through the tunnel under the International airport (which was controlled by UN forces). You can still see places like the Holiday Inn (where journalists were trapped for months) and bombed out relics of the 1984 winter Olympics (which were held in Sarajevo while Yugoslavia was together and still relatively peaceful).
Of course, Sarajevo has a history before the war, being an important post in the Ottoman empire, the Austro-Hungarian empire, and Yugoslavia, and all three have left their mark on the city (you can definitely tell the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian districts apart, as well as the more modern sectors), but it has long been a city associated with tragedy. This was the place where the Bosnian Serb assassin Gavrilo Princip shot Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, thus setting off the chain reaction that began the First World War (and set the stage for humanity’s bloodiest century). Still though, the Bosnians are very friendly (they have yet to be jaded by tourists coming to visit their city) and Sarajevo is magically place, bullet-holes and all.
I met a Canadian girl, Kat, and an Australian girl, Renee, (they had been roommates in London for the past three years where they had worked as nurses) who were really friendly and great to hang out with (the tunnel tour was their idea). The Canadian girl, like me, was about to head back to Canada and having some misgivings about attempting the “real life” again, something we shared sorrows over. Hopefully see them again, but for now I’m on a train to Slovenia (and its perennially unspellable capital Ljubljana).

Turkey, Bulgaria, and Serbia-Kosovo

2011-10-25T19:54:00.000-07:00

Turkey, Bulgaria, and Serbia-Kosovo
In this episode, I...
-get my facial burnt off by a Turkish barber
-inadvertently tell a Bulgarian border guard that I am not Ryan Clement
-go to Serbia
TURKEY
After arriving from Africa with my broken shaving case conveniently packaged in a taped-up beaten up cardboard fruit box (see Kenya “international incident”), I wasn’t terribly surprised to see an inexplicably hole punched into it when I picked it up from the airport at Istanbul, but none of my stuff inside was damaged, so I just shrugged it off. Unfortunately, in a both fatigued (from traveling through 3 continents in 2 days) and anxious (to get to my hostel) state, I inadvertently left my box unattended at a bank machine when I had to put it down to draw some money. Realizing my mistake a few minutes later (thankfully before I jumped into a taxi), I hurried back to the ATM to find my box still there and a small crowd of Turkish airport police and concerned citizens gathered around the box, which they clearly thought might be some sort of explosive (the bizarre taping job and weird African symbols on the box probably didn’t help matters).

Sheepishly, I announced that the box was mine and gingerly walked towards it, the police watching me like I was approaching a hostage situation. I shook the box to demonstrate its harmlessness and explained my tendency to forget things (this is the first time I’ve left something unattended in an airport though). The Turkish airport security gave me a good talking to and then let me wander off with my box.
My hostel was an old townhouse type place in Sultanahamnet, easily within stumbling distance of the Blue Mosque and the Aya Sofya (I know this because I stumbled into them on the first day). It was a decent enough place, although the staff were sometimes helpful sometimes moody (at one point I mentioned that the Wifi wasn’t working and was literally told “that’s your problem.”) and there a few too many sales pitches, but at least they had a great rooftop patio with views of the Bhosphorus ( the sea link between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean and Istanbul’s reason for being.
Just to give a crash history course, Istanbul first sprung to life as Constantinople, the Eastern Roman capital built by the Roman Emperor Constantine (the same guy who converted the empire to Christianity) on the east side of empire so they could move things away from Rome (which at the point was already starting to tear itself apart). After Rome split into two empires—one East and one West—Constantinople became the capital of the Eastern empire (later known as the Byzantine Empire) which persisted for 1000 years after Rome itself fell.
But fall it did to—guess who? That’s right, the Turks, whence why its called Turkey, although at that time they were known as Ottomans, apparently because they enjoyed padded foot stools. Constantinople was renamed Istanbul setting the stage for that song “Istanbul... Constantinople” many centuries later, which I thought was by They Might Be Giants, but apparently they were covering 50s version, at least according to a Bulgarian man who stopped me when I arrived in Bulgaria from Istanbul so I could—in honour of my arriving from Istanbul—hear his entire rendition of Istanbul-Constantinople.
Anyways, back to Turkey, I spent the first day or two just wandering around the fantastic old neighbourhood I was in. Granted it was touristy, but so what, the Aya Sofya was built as a church (later converted to a mosque) that was meant to rival those of Rome and many of the other ancient structures including the Blue Mosque, the Topkapi Palace (the Sultan’s old digs), and the Archaelogy Museum were equally as impressive. I also took in a Turkish traditional dance show that eschewed whirling dervishes for belly dancers (not a bad trade in my opinion) and covered the various regional dances in perhaps not the most conservative manner.
Walking to the dance hall, I slipped on a wet piece of sidewalk (to save socks, I was wearing flip-flops) and nearly took out a toe on a piece of cobblestone, but luckily it was just a touch bruised. Really smarted though.
I was visiting Turkey during Ramadan, but despite it being an overwhelmingly Muslim country compared to Tanzania which is only half Muslim, I had no problems finding food to eat at any time of the day. Granted, Turks are none for their love of the kebab and I doubt they’d close up shop for the Muslim rapture (if there is such a thing) nevermind Ramadan.
Having just arrived from weeks on the road in Africa, I was a pretty shaggy, unshaven, and generally suspicion-looking character upon my arrival in Istanbul. But I was planning to meet my friend Peri (a Turkish girl I knew from Rio) and planning to Skype with my folks, so it seemed an apt moment to pursue some grooming. There was a Turkish barber not far my hostel, so I thought “why not?” He didn’t really speak English, but its pretty easy to communicate “hair cut” to a barber with your hands (as a man, haircuts aren't normally a complicated maneuver for me). At first, things seemed to be going fine (I didn’t even have to wash my hair, as I’d just washed it). Soon, though, it became clear that my hair might be cut a tad shorter than I was expecting, but oh well—hair grows back and if it was longer until my next one all the better economically. Next, however, the barber swapped the modern electric razor for an old-fashioned flip knife—the kind cowboys used to shave with. Suddenly, I had a man who couldn’t speak anything but Turkish scraping a sharp knife along the side of my jugular. This made me a tad nervous, but so far wasn’t anything outside of what you’d expect a barber might do (at least an old-timey barber, the kind with the blood-soaked red rags wrapped around white poles). But this barber had a finale up his sleeve, and when I saw a flame shoot out about an inch away from my face—I flinched a tad. The Turkish barber explained why it was necessary—or at least that I had no choice in the matter—and then proceeded to lick my cheeks with the flames from his cigarette lighter. The feeling was something like running your finger quickly through a candle flame (except doing it with your face), and I will say he was a professional—I never got burnt, although feel strong sudden bursts of heat on my face and could smell the burnt hair smell of my stubble (a bit eerie to smell your own burning hair). All in all, though, it was my closest shave ever.

The next day I met up with Peri, who took me on a tour of the real Istanbul (where actual Turkish people live) including some shoreside parks, some tea gardens, and of course Beyoglu (which I’ve no doubt spelt wrong as I was hopeless at pronouncing it) which is like the Turkish version of Times Square/shopping mecca.
Capping off my visit with a tour of the Bhosphorus using a public ferry (rather than one of the tourist ferries) I caught a glimpse of the Black Sea before heading back to Sultanahamnet to catch my train to Bulgaria.
BULGARIA
The train ride from Istanbul was a tad stuffy (apparently Eastern European trains don’t have AC and they generally only open the windows to smoke), but it was quite decent compared to some of the transportation options I’d seen in Africa. I even had a sleeper bunk on which I could actually sleep while I traveled. I shared my cabin with a Ukrainian guy who couldn’t speak English but was quite talkative in French so I had to bring out my French (which was really rusty). Nice enough guy though.
After arriving in Bulgaria, I had a bit of difficulty getting cash as the train station ATMs didn’t seem to accept my card. Anyway, I managed to get a bus to old town and found a taxi and an ATM there was surprised to find things much cheaper than I was expecting (a lovely surprise!).
I stayed at the Hiker’s Hostel in Plovdiv (I was going to go direct to Sofia, but I was told it wasn’t terribly interesting and that I was better off going to Plovdiv instead). The Bulgarian staff here were great and very friendly (and could speak English). One guy even helped me do my laundry.
While waiting for my clothes to dry, I went out to get lost in Plovdiv’s Old Town, and get lost i did, at least 3 times, or perhaps it would be better to say I was just continuously lost.
I did find the old Roman theatre which was tucked away in a hard to find nook (I shadowed some Bulgarians to find it) and offers a great view of the neighbourhood. Apparently the Romans not only held shows here, but concerts and gladiator battles and its still used to this day (for plays and concerts, not so much gladiatorial battles). Unfortunately, there wasn’t any show on while I was there, as that would have been very cool.
My next target was a traditional Bulgarian restaurant called Diana’s which was much more difficult to find—mainly because it doesnt’have a sign that says Diana’s (its signs say something else). The waitresses dressed in the traditional garb and also wore the traditional Eastern European lack of a smile. The food was okay.
While waundering—lost—around Plovdiv, I stumbledinto a small exhibition by a famous Bulgarian artist (whom I naturally had never heard of). Now Bulgaria has a history of being pushed around by great powers: the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Ottomans, the Russians, the Germans, the Soviets, the European Union, etc (apparently it even at one point offered to join the USSR but was refused, the ultimate rejection), but I didn’t expect its own citizens to be quite as meek. The exhibit curator—who either snuck up on me or was so timid I was unaware of her presence—came up to me and said “дравей” (hello in Bulgarian), which startled me, so I said “hello” in English back as a gut reaction, at which point she said “hello,” and I asked what she had said before, and she had said “hello.” After a brief Abbot and Costellian exchange, I explained I wanted to know how to say “hello” in Bulgarian (so I didn’t look like a dumb North American tourist in every conversation who only speaks English). But she refused, saying “you don’t need to learn Bulgarian, don’t waste your time, its not worth it.” Granted I will probably forget any and all Bulgarian I learn a week after I leave, but that doesn’t mean the language has no worth whatsoever. I tried to be encouraging, or at least help her feel better about herself, country, and language, and so I asked what the admission charge was to the exhibition. She said it was 2 levas (Bulgarian currency, about $1 CDN), then it became 1 leva before I had a chance to respond and then it became whatever coins I had on me which totaled about 45 cents (in Levas, not dollars, so I really had about a quarter). She humbly accepted this as if it were a great gift (which it wasn’t) and showed me the exhibit, which she tried to explain was good for Bulgaria. The art was perfectly fine—maybe a bit impressionistic, abstract, and vaguely pornographic at times—but nothing less than what you’d find at many Canadian galleries. The only thing Bulgarian artists appear to need to work on is their self-esteem. It’s okay guys, you can do it too!
Speaking of language miscues, I love language miscommunications that work to my benefit. While at a café on one of the streets of Plovdiv, I tried—being thirsty after a day of getting lost walking around town—to order a “Fanta with ice.” The waitress didn’t speak English that well—but she was enthusiastic—and said that they couldn’t do Fanta with ice, but they could do a Coke with ice or just a Fanta. Why they could serve Coke with ice, but not Fanta was a mystery that piqued my curiosity—and it was really hot that day, so I wanted the ice—so I ordered the Coke with ice. I soon received a Coke with a scoop of chocolate ice cream floating in it—effectively a coke float for cheaper than what a coke would have cost me back home. This was even better than Coke with ice, and Lord only knows what Fanta with chocolate ice cream in it would have tasted like (will have to try that some time, I’ll call it the Bulgarian float).
That evening I participated in a bbq with a couple other people from the hostel, including a Bulgarian hostel worker who talked at length about the Bulgarian way of life: mainly Bulgarian history (did you know they invented the alphabet book and put the guy who invented it on their money) why Plovdiv was so much better than Sofia (in the same sense that LA folks talk of New York, or non-Torontonians feel towards Toronto), and their problem with stray dogs (which I hadn’t really noticed) which she wanted to solve using SWAT teams. Unfortunately I got in a bit of argument with a fellow Canadian from Quebec who seemed to think that Quebeckers only voted for Jack Layton because he had a moustache and that the French did nothing bad during their colonial history which makes me wonder about history books in Quebec. He also felt the suffering of the Quebecois under the English was equivalent to the Bulgarians under the Ottomans which got the Bulgarian girl a tad irate. Gotta love people who can’t look at themselves critically.
Having seen most of what I came to Bulgaria to see, and being anxious to stay on schedule, I decided the next day to catch a train to Belgrade (which I’m on now), so we’ll soon see what Serbia’s all about.
SERBIA
When you hear the word Serbia back home, it tends to bring up images of war, bloodshed, and the rocky ethnic tensions that the Balkans have been generally known for. As a teenager in the 1990s, I remember seeing the Kosovo War on the news (back in the days before our wars moved to the Middle East full-time) and in this instance, NATO forces (including Canada) were fighting on behalf of a primarily Muslim population (the Kosovo-Albanians) against a primarily Christian population (the Serbs). Belgrade, once the capital of mighty Yugoslavia under Tito, had become the center of a disintegrating empire after Slobodan Milosevic took over and the politics became increasing defined along ethnic lines. Slovenia, Macedonia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina all declared independence from Belgrade some not so peacefully (notably Bosnia) (Montenegro would also secede in the early 2000s). A movement in Kosovo (at that time a region of Serbia that had its autonomous status taken away by Milosevic) to gain independence from Serbia was met with what many called a genocide accusing Milosevic’s government of trying to “ethnically cleanse” Kosovo of its Albanian majority. 1999 saw a NATO intervention, and many cities in Serbia were bombed (including Belgrade itself). I remember many Afghanistan-like news stories about American soldiers being captured and held hostage, planes being shot down, schools being bombed, civilian casualties, and the Chinese embassy being bombed which led to icy relations with Beijing. In the end, Serbia was defeated, Milosevic was overthrown by his own people and handed over to the International Criminal Court, and a United Nations peacekeeping mission was established. Nearly ten years later, Kosovo would officially declare independence and is a partially recognized state today (yet remains unrecognized by many important nations, especially Serbia).
With all this history in mind, I wasn’t sure how well I’d be received in Serbia. The war wasn’t that long ago (I’m not that old) and most young people in Serbia have vivid memories of growing up during the war times (the kids then are now young adults). That said, I’d heard that Serbia’s new government was much more open to the rest of Europe (and the West) and that Belgrade had even gained a reputation as a party destination (One of the drunk Serbian guys on my train, of which there were numerous, referred to Belgrade as “number one place for fun... in world,” a far cry from its war-time reputation).
Speaking of the Serbian train, I could tell right away that traveling in Serbia is a tad different than the rest of the Europe. While I was promised a sleeper bed on the overnight jaunt, this was soon changed to “my own cabin,” and then just a seat in a crowded cabin. Air Conditioning seems to be nonexistent and in the late summer heat, trains can be stifling hot, yet oddly people keep closing the windows (maybe I just have a low heat tolerance). Luckily, East European smoking addicts usually have them open again in no time. Serbia, by the way, seems to have got the wrong memo on that whole no-smoking in public thing—instead of getting rid of their smoking sections, they’ve seemingly eliminated their non-smoking sections (presuming they even had them to begin with). Serbians (and most Balkanites it seems) of all shapes and sizes seem to smoke like Pittsburgh as my Dad would say. I literally saw a few guys bust out a fresh cigarette every 15 minutes on an overnight train ride (how their lungs have not merely collapsed is a mystery to medical science).
I arrived in Belgrade in the middle of the night 4 am, and not wanting to brave this unfamiliar city in the dark (some habits picked up in Africa are hard to lose) I opted to take a cab to my hostel, thinking—foolishly—that this would be easiest solution. While my cab driver claimed he knew where he was going, he clearly did not as he dropped me off in a park in the middle of nowhere, nowhere near any hostel. Wandering around with all my bags in the dark some first-light-of-dawn-joggers tried to assist me but after passing where the Arka Barka floating hostel was supposed to be 3 or 4 times, I finally gave up and caught another taxi back down to another hostel (which turned out to have been turned into a high-end hotel) and wandered the early morning traffic of Belgrade to yet another hostel recommended in my book, which inexplicably didn’t open to 9. While waiting for this place to open, I found another hostel (Belgrade Eye) a block away that was nice, open, and available, so I booked in grabbed a bed, and slept.
Eventually I managed to wake up enough to meet my only other roommate a friendly girl who seemed to only speak a language that was unfamiliar to me. After doing my usual thing with languages I don’t understand, mimick and repeat what I’m hearing so at the very least I can get used to the pronunciation of things, I finally broke down and asked her in English where she was from. It turns out she was Australian.
My Aussie roommate had a bizarre obsession with conspiracy theories; at least I gathered that from her tendency to ask out of the blue questions like “Who do you think really killed Princess Diana” even when weren’t even talking about her (or anything related to British royalty) or “Why did the US stage 9/11?” After explaining some issue about a firewall on the Internet access on the computer, I was declared to be a “smart-ish person,” which I suppose is a complement.
After recovering my energy, I wandered out into the city (this time in daylight) and was surprised to see that Belgrade is a fairly clean, modern, and cosmopolitan town (I felt much safer walking its streets at night—or Kosovo’s for that matter—than any place in Africa) filled with cafes, pubs, cinemas, you name it, and more importantly people. The city was practically abuzz with folks around the main pedestrian mall leading up to the old fortress. This could be any city in Europe. You’d never have known that NATO had bombed it—especially considering all the KFCs and McDonald’s.
It was weird thinking that my country had bombed this country not that long ago, and here I was casually strolling around struggling to speak the language. That said, the Serbians themselves were overwhelmingly open and friendly to me, one of the hostel employees, who was about the same age as me, was apparently something of a Serbian punk rock star (she was recording albums and had made appearances on the Serbian MTV) and was quite open about her life here, her aspirations, and her extreme disdain for something called Turbofolk, which is a genre of music I’m not aware of, but as far she was concerned seemed to be the biggest current problem in Serbia.
My walking tour guide was equally friendly and welcoming, a plucky young—and gorgeous, like one of those Serbian tennis players—university student, she led a large group of us (suggesting that Belgrade is quickly losing its one-time pariah status) on a very interesting jaunt thru some of the key sights. While she touched on the war, it was quite clear that it was a sensitive topic for her (and for most Serbians, who generally don’t talk much about it), although of course for Western tourists (especially those from NATO countries) it’s never far from our thoughts. The city has long since rebuilt, so only a few destroyed buildings and landmarks—like the Hotel Yugoslavia and Miloseviç’s “Eternal Flame” (no longer lit)—stand as reminders. Our guide explained that while Milosevic (who died while on trial at the ICC) still had his supporters, about 60 percent of Serbians preferred to establish closer relations with Western Europe and even hoped to join the EU (no word on Serbia joining NATO).
I hooked up with a Canadian girl, an English girl, and an Australian guy on the tour and we ended up hanging most of the day, trying Serbian foods including Rakia (a strong Ouzu-like liquour), something called Muckalicka (some sort of stew), and of course Moussaka. Later on we strolled through the town and made arrangements to meet for drinks in the park by the giant statue of the naked guy with the sword (don’t ask). At the time, I thought the park would be quiet at night but it was actually buzzing, mostly with teenagers looking for places to lose their virginity. I made my own rum and cokes using a mickey of rum and whatever coke I could find, and then the plan was to hit up one of the floating nightclubs on the Danube that Belgrade is so famous for. Unfortunately, as more and more people started to get added to the group and we got more and more disorganized, and by the time we hit the Danube barges it was already past 2 am and people were still having their pre-drinks. Realizing I had an hour to walk back, I had to be lame and leave early (getting to sleep @ 3), but the barge parties were pretty quiet anyway (apparently the more raucous barges were on the other side of the bridge).
The next day I visited the Military Museum, which had a wide assortment of weapons and what have you, but surprisingly little on the Kosovo War, except a comparison of force numbers (which suggested Serbia faced overwhelming odds), made it clear that Serbian history books considered this to be the “war of NATO aggression,” much like modern-day Carolinians with Confederate sympathies refer to the American Civil War as the very objective War of Northern Aggression.
Having learned the Serb perspective, it was time to look at things from the Kosovan side, so I grabbed a bus to Pristina, Kosovo’s capital (yes there are direct buses from Belgrade, Serbia to Pristina, Kosovo). It was surprisingly easy to travel between these once mortal enemies and even festive (during one of our bathroom stops, we had to crash and navigate a Serbian wedding celebration, 2 ways, in order to use the toilets. Not sure what town that was, but there plenty of folk costumes and happy dancing people of varying ages)
The border itself was nothing out the ordinary, even though Serbia doesn’t recognize Kosovo as an independent nation (it considers Kosovo to be an autonomous region within Serbia due to its being the ancient birthplace of the Serb culture) going from Kosovo to Serbia is said to be tricky (as it means entering Serbia without an entry permit and therefore entering Serbia illegally), going the Serbia to Kosovo way is fine.
KOSOVO
On the bus from Belgrade, I could tell already this wasn’t a typical travel destination, as the only other English-speakers on the bus where three Irish documentary filmmakers hired to due to a Couch Surfing adventure through Europe (lucky bastards) and one Mexican UN worker (well he could speak English fluently, even if it wasn’t his first language) who referred to Kosovo as one of the coziest UN assignments as far as UN assignments go.
After we reached Prishtina (again in the middle of the night), the bus stopped inexplicably on an expressway. It had stopped previously for a break (despite being a half hour away from its destination) now it appeared it wanted to let us off here (and not, you know, at the bus station as I had kinda been expecting). The Mexican guy seemed to be sure this was where we got off (though none of the locals did) and when the Irish crew got off, I figured I’d better tag along as well, figuring there was only one cab around, and sharing a taxi with two pretty Irish filmmakers and that guy who tagged along with them and kept confusing me for an American was better than walking.
In the end, we all got to our required destinations and my hostel this time was basically in an old apartment building in a hilly residential neighbourhood, with a single room and TV for what i was paying for a dorm bed elsewhere. Eastern Europe—especially compared to Western Europe—is super cheap as it is, but in Kosovo you can actually buy a meal for a few cents—granted in this case, the meal consisted of three peaches and the cents were from euros, but they were awesome peaches.
Anyway, I digress. Also that night, I noticed every Kosovan person I encountered to be watching TV (the old hotel clerk, the late night grocer, even the guy in the pizza restaurant I ordered a late night movie). In fact, they were all watching the same movie, an old Hong Kong classic featuring a young Jackie Chan taking on an army of Western terrorists in inexplicably bright red jump suits. It was corny and dubbed poorly (which made it that much more corny) and included a scene where Jackie Chan and one of his enemies crashes into a Street Fighter II console and get magically transformed into various Street Fighter characters including Ken, E. Honda, Guile, Dhalsim, and finally Jackie Chan as Chun Li.
Unfortunately wandering in Kosovo on a Sunday (the next day) meant everything was closed, so I didn’t really get to see what their historical (or at least museum) perspective was on the recent conflict, although I did visit the Memorial Centre (no, not a hockey arena) near my hostel which includes a series of graves of Kosovan fighters I believe (all the signs were in Albanian and no one was around to translate for me) and a monument to Kosovo’s founding father, referred to as the Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi of Kosovo.
Compared to Belgrade, Kosovo’s capital was considerably quieter, smaller, and more rough around the edges (tourism had yet to really sinks its teeth in here, although you could definitely tell there were a few exploratory bites), but were once there was “mission creep” now there was “cafe creep” as Prishtina’s main downtown street corners sprouted cafes and patios (this is still Europe after all).
Hardly dangerous, my biggest issue in Kosovo was finding something to do, but I didn’t mind taking things lazily after weeks of hard slogging traveling (who’d have thought I’d go to Kosovo to take it easy) and enjoy having my own cable TV for a change. Taking advantage of cheap prices for a couple nights, I then headed on to Macedonia.
One last thing, when I was in Africa, there were a lot of concerns over Balkanization (ie. the splintering of a large nation into many smaller nations a la what happened in the Balkans), but judging from the fact that the Balkans have apparently gone from a place where war seemed inevitable to peaceful co-existence, perhaps its not such a bad arrangement after all (I’m looking at you Somalia). Its not like the borders in Africa were designed by African anyway.

Zambia, Malawi, and Tanzania: My tour of "real" Africa

2011-08-27T02:14:00.001-07:00

Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania (and brief glimpses of Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Qatar)
In this episode, I...
-get attacked by a baboon
-jump off a cliff
-accidentally pee on someone’s tent
-witness an overturned bus accident
-solicit some Malawian witchcraft
-catch pneumonia (actually happened before the witchcraft thing).
-find myself in a luxury hotel in Qatar
Finishing up my work in South Africa, it was time to head back to Canada. That said, there was no reason not to take the “scenic route.” After all, South Africa is said by some—based on its high incomes, level of development, and white population—to not be the “real Africa.” So I figured I’d see what some of other countries were like and try a bit of the Cape Town to Cairo route (although I quickly revised this to Cape Town to Nairobi owing ongoing political strife north of Kenya including: East African famine, independence of South Sudan, Libyan war and Arab Spring, etc.). I was originally going to do an overland tour, but when that didn’t work out, I decided to fall back on my independent ways (and hopefully hook up with something en route). Here’s what happened instead.
ZAMBIA (and a bit of Zimbabwe)
Due to visa requirements for my South African volunteer visa (normal Canadian tourists don’t even need one) I had to book an onward flight to prove I didn’t intend to take up permanent residence in South Africa. Being fairly inexperienced in Africa at the time (and thinking I could easily change the flight if I changed my mind) I booked a cheap flight to Livingstone in Zambia, a town next to Victoria Falls (which was a must-see on my list, so I figured even if I couldn’t weasel my way out of the flight later, it would still be alright). Naturally of course, I couldn’t get out of the flight or change it to Windhoek (so I could see Namibia’s sand dunes and Botswana’s Okavango Delta en route to the falls as was one of my plans), but I thought whatever and flew direct to Livingstone from Johannesburg (after a couple of delays including a screw-up where British Airways changed the gate and forgot to inform me, so I ended up waiting at the wrong gate and for the very first time missed a flight, had to wrangle my bags back from Joburg’s O.R. Tambo airport, fork out for a night’s accommodation, and try the same thing again the next day. Fun times.
The arrival in Livingstone by air is surreal—the bends and twists in steep turns over the falls so you can see them from above (provided you’re not curled up in the brace position) and the airport itself (basically a landing strip carved out of a red-mud dry forest) is barely visible until you touch the ground.
Getting through Zambian customs is less fun. Not only do you probably require a visa (which consists of a card with vague lettering that must be kept separately and will likely be lost forcing to pay for another one) but you will have to stand in line, inexplicably, for 3 hours to get it. Not sure what the border guard was doing as we were all waiting there and not moving. Perhaps he didn’t realize a plane was landing today. I mean, it’s not like its a freakin’ daily occurrence or anything.
Anyway, I eventually got out of the airport and got a ride in a pick-up truck from my hostel from a Zambian guy who spoke English surprisingly well compared to his South African compatriots. Zambia itself was super dry and consisted mainly of the small bush-like trees I’d seen in Kruger, dotted with a cow here and there. Livingstone itself is named after David Livingstone, the British explorer/missionary who led expeditions all over Africa in the 1800s looking for the source of the Nile and stuff. He may have been here at one point. Despite a charming history, the town itself ain’t nothing special to look at. It’s a basically a series of ramshackle buildings, shacks, and dusty road Wild West-style roads. Sure beats Lusaka mind you.
The hostel, a place called Fawlty Towers and run by folks with a John Cleese sense of humour, was a nice enough joint, complete with (unheated) pool, free rides to the Falls, free pancakes at 3 (yum), and even an Irish pub (or the African version of one) that specialized in Mexican food (yep, African version). It might sound strange that an Irish pub would specialize in Mexican food, but keep in mind I was constantly being mistaken for being English just cause I spoke English (and in one strange case, was somehow assumed to be Korean) so some Africans share the same geography skills as those Americans and Canadians who think Africa is a country. Ah crazy world.
Following the “hit the highlights first” mantra, I took the free shuttle (basically a minibus filled with tourists) to Victoria Falls (the Zambian side) and proceeded to wander around. Zambia is really dry this time of the year, and everywhere else I looked the trees were brown and dead, except around Victoria falls, where the spray from the falls kicks up a constant supply of water, and bingo suddenly you have rainforest or at least a very thin stretch of it. The Victoria Falls are the world’s widest waterfalls (I think... or at least I’m pretty sure) and you can easily see how they carved out the downstream zig-zagginess of the gorges. An impressive sight to say the least—all it’s basically impossible to see all the falls at once (unless you’re looking at them from the sky), and it’s interesting to compare them to Iguazu Falls, the world’s largest waterfalls. Victoria Falls are definitely not as high as Iguazu, but their width is far more continuous, and the land is formed in a strange way so that you can easily walk along in front of the falls and get a great view of them (although you will likely get wet. I shrugged off purchasing raincoats from the hawkers, assuming them to be unnecessary... that was probably a bad move).
I got so thoroughly soaked from the Falls that I decided to carry my camera, passport (the falls form the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe and I was going to try and see them from the Zimbabwean side) and other valuables I didn’t want to get drenched in a cheap plastic bag I found somewhere. Unfortunately, carrying things in a plastic bag soon opened up another problem.
While reading an inscription on a WW1 memorial at the Falls, I wasn’t terribly worried about pickpockets as there were only a couple of people milling around. That as I walked away from the statue I soon felt an unmistakable tug on my bag. An enemy hand had grabbed my bag—although peculiarly, it seemed to be pulling the bag down not out—and I wasn’t going to give it up without a fight. I whirled on the perpetrator and to my shock it was a baboon! I didn’t even know baboons were in the area.
I let out a manly yell at the primate as the cheap plastic bag tore in half (since neither of us let go). The baboon quickly fled grabbing my empty glasses case (apparently the only item it deemed to have value) as I gathered up my much more valuable items and continued glaring at it. It held up my glasses case in its hands, giving it a ponderous examination—you could tell by its facial expression that it was trying to figure out just what the hell this object was it had obtained—but ultimately dropped it (probably because it realized it couldn’t eat it) and ran off as some nearby African women came to my rescue. In the end, I lost nothing... except my pride.
I spent the next couple of hours hiking around Victoria Falls some more (keeping a watchful eye on those sneaky and dastardly baboons) including hiking to the base of the Falls and to the rocky outcroppings on top of the Falls. There are enough rocks and shallows there, that you could probably safe hop your way across the top of the falls in low season, but I wouldn’t recommend trying it.
Finished with the Zambian side of the Falls, I decided I’d see how things looked from Zimbabwe’s perspective. The two countries are connected by an old 1905 iron bridge, that ironically might be in the best shape of all the bridges in Zambia. There are bungee jumps operators on the bridge and its a popular pastime for tourists, certainly attempting to cross the bridge by foot will solicit endless harassment from overly aggressive touts who can’t fanthom why else you would come to the bridge. But considering I inherited my fear of heights from my Dad and my susceptibility to motion sickness from my Mom, bungee jumping wasn’t terribly high on my to-do list; and if I was going to try such a thing for the first time, I don’t think I’d choose an ancient bridge (that probably hasn’t seen a rivet repair in 100 years) over rocky churning rapids in a sketchy no-man’s land between two poor African nations not exactly known for their safety records. The touts were insistent though, with one even calling my refusal to bungee jump “racist.”
While walking across the bridge was “fun,” Zimbabwe wanted me to fork out for a $75 visa plus park entry fees to see pretty much the same thing I saw from the Zambia side (although I do have lovely exit and re-entry stamps on my Zambian visa), so I ended up getting a taxi back to the hostel (the free shuttle was only one way).
I’m glad I saw the falls on my first day, as the next day things went bad. I woke up with a nasty cold—which I probably caught off my boss Anriette before I left Joburg—and while I had paid for a canoe trip that day, I spent most of the time just trying to not feel like shit, so I didn’t really get to enjoy the whole preventing crocs and hippos from attacking your canoe thing. I laid low hoping for a few days hoping the cold would go away and switched to a private room as I developed nasty and very loud coughing fits. As things got worse, and I got anxious that I was spending way too much time in Livingstone (and was becoming known as “that sick guy” by other people at the hostel), I finally opted to see a Zambian doctor (recommended by the hostel staff) who promptly diagnosed me with pneumonia (whether I actually had pneumonia or not, I’m not sure, but I wasn’t in the mood to press my luck). He said that pneumonia was the 3rd or 4th highest killer in Africa and if I had waited another day, I would have had to be admitted to hospital (which naturally made me gulp a bit) and started an aggressive antibiotic treatment that involved leaving a needle jammed into my hand for 24 hours so I could receive four regular doses of antibiotics straight into my blood stream. This resulted in me being taxied back and forth at weird hours (it was unsafe to walk) from the hospital for treatment which had only one magazine in their waiting room (a 1989 edition of National Geographic). The treatment seemed to work, but the regular and weird hours of the doses left me groggy and after the final dose, as the nurse struggle to remove the bandages holding the syringe in place (ripping out my hand hairs in the process) I offered to do it myself (thinking it would be less painful if I just removed the bandages myself since I knew where my hand hair was). Unfortunately I got a little too energetic with one bandage and the whole thing, needle and all, came out, and a little geyser of red blood began spouting from my left hand (I asked them to put it in my left hand as I’m right-handed and I didn’t want to incapacitate my right hand). Confused as to what I was seeing I stared at my hand as the nurse quickly grabbed another bandaid and some cotton swabs as my fountain of blood made a mess of her floor. “Don’t be so hard on yourself” she scolded me. In the end, it seemed the antibiotics worked as I soon felt better (although my usual coughing fits would plague me for weeks to come and my hands felt tender from having a needle ripped out of them including the one that never even had a needle in it, which I never quite understood, perhaps some form of phantom pain) and I decided I could continue on my journey would had really just begun.
The next stop was Lusaka, Zambia’s capital, but don’t let that make you think its grand, as it ain’t. Livingstone was a bastion of development by comparison. Not that I usually like calling any country’s capital a dump, but when you ask local residents (including my hostel staff who make their living off of people staying here) “whats the best thing to do in Lusaka” and they uniformly answer “leave,” you got a problem. I knew I had a problem as soon as my bus arrived (in the dark) and a mob had already crowded around the bus yelling “Taxi! Taxi! You want taxi! I give you good price! Good Price!” You literally couldn’t look out the window without someone trying to get in your face and get you into his cab for a “good price.” I literally had to shove my way through them to retrieve my bag from under the bus, run a few feet to the other side of the station to get away from them, to try to find a more official cab (a lot of the people aggressively shouting at you, are go figure, con artists). I spent two days waiting for my bus and then I took my hostel’s advice and left for Malawi. Not that Lusaka doesn’t have its nice bits, I’m sure if... ah who am I kidding, let’s just move on.
MALAWI
Arriving in Lilongwe from Lusaka seemed like a breath of fresh air. Sure Malawi’s capital had all the trademarks of the other non-South African African major cities: chaotic streets, run-down buildings, heart-breaking poverty, but it also had green areas—and yes I mean park areas as well as plants and other things that were actually alive and not fungal growths—even some of the buildings weren’t all that run down. That said, I soon learned I had arrived in Malawi amidst a period of political upheaval. A couple of weeks earlier, police forces loyal to the president had opened fire on a group of protesters (never a good sign) and this had led to riots and looting and calls for the president to step down by Aug 16th or face a forced removal by the military (who sided with the protestors) which I’m sure was going to be peaceful. I promptly decided to get the hell out of the country by the 16th.
First though, I would stop by Lake Malawi, my main reason for being here anyway—one of the African Great Lakes, a large tropical fresh water lake, beautiful, clear, warm, and complete with unique species found nowhere else including a fish called a coalecanth that was thought to have gone extinct before the dinosaurs and yet still lives in the lake (Bjorn, a South African expat who went by the local nickname Banana and worked in Nkhata Bay as a tour guide, said that the lake had been under explored by scientists, especially at its incredible depths, and any scientist up to the challenge stood a real chance of hitting thezoological jackpot as it were. So all you marine biologists out there who are no doubt reading my blog, get it goin’ on. Just put the mini-sub in your backpack or as a carry on. Although you might have trouble getting it on the bus.
Speaking of buses in Africa, they are legends unto themselves. You’ve heard about the minibuses in South Africa, well they predominate elsewhere as well (although in other countries, there are absolutely no qualms about shoving in as many people and chickens that will physically fit or not). Even the regular buses (which usually are used relics from some Asian country where people sizes are not large to begin with) often had the original sizes ripped out so they could have more narrow seats installed (often at the expense of the aisle). Even so, the buses often won’t leave until they cram more people per room than there are seats (so you get actually half a seat and some stranger who probably has never seen a shower gets the other half and its... cozy). Some fill the aisles with standing passengers and maybe throw a few on the roof while they’re at it. The bus from Lusaka to Lilongwe wasn’t quite that bad, although thanks to their re-design of the seating plan and poor upholstery, I had to keep one foot down on the floor board to keep it from flying up and exposing the wheel axle below. Two Irish girls and a French dude I met on that bus, who were also headed to Nkhata Bay, decided to just catch the next bus, at night in a strange city in the cesspool of humanity that is a Zambian/Malawian/Tanzanian bus station (more like a patch rough gravelly terrain surrounded by shanties where buses and touts congregate), but I opted to stay in Lilongwe not in the mood for another super long bus ride (African bus drivers might think they’re race car drivers, but despite their use of speed bumps as ramp jumps they still generally arrive 3 hours late).
That decision turned out to be fortuitous. After three failed attempts to catch a bus from Lilongwe to Nkhata Bay on the coast of Lake Malawi, including one “luxury bus” (read closest equivalent to a Western bus, but someone will still try to stow a live chicken, without any sort of container or even a cloth, in the luggage compartment by shoving it between other people’s suitcases that the chicken will then proceed to shit all over). As I met up with Richard and Linda, a British (English-Scottish) couple that had also failed to get on the last bus and we decided to split a cab fare to Nkhata Bay. While certainly more expensive than the bus, you get what you pay for, and splitting it 3 ways meant I didn’t have to pay too much. Also, we didn’t have to transfer in Msuzu (which I would have had had to, had I taken the bus, in all likelihood) and got taken straight to Richard and Linda’s hostel, which I quickly decided to adopt as my hostel as well (despite making a reservation elsewhere). Mayuga resorts I believe it was called and it was a picture-esque series of little cabins and dorm facilities built (and built well) into the side of the rocky hills of a peninsula on Lake Malawi overlooking Nkhata Bay. It was run by a white South African expat named Gary (not Bjorn, but he also worked there) and his no doubt long suffering wife. Gary, a 40ish fellow and a skilled builder was rumoured to be a South African veteran of the Angolan War and in Malawi in a self-imposed exile as he avoided South African prosecution for some illicit, nefarious, and undisclosed act. My first impression of Gary was quite pleasant, despite the fact he was plastered out of his mind when I arrived and asked if he any dorms available. He responded by saying “Nah, we don’t have any fucking dorms available, but I like you, so you can have a room for a dorm rate. Fuck it, you can have the room for free.” To which, I replied sure, thus began a relatively lengthy stay in Nkhata Bay (if they were giving me a private room for free, can’t beat that, although I did make an arrangement with Gary’s wife the next morning to pay the dorm rate in the spirit of fairness and keeping them in business). I couldn’t really work it out with Gary as he was still hammered the next day and disappeared to pass out, re-surfaced the next day sober and apologetic for his behaviour, promptly got drunk again and started co-ercing people into doing shots in the middle of the day (I quickly snuck away), and ended up down for the count again. If there’s an AA in Nkhata Bay, I think this guy’s textbook.
That said, the resort he and his Malawi friends built was gorgeous, with little cabins everywhere and terraces for tents. Of course, the decision to tear down the washrooms before they built new ones was a bit of a sore spot amongst the guests who all had to share one measly composting toilet. Considering the toilet issues, and not realizing the purpose of the terraces on my first night (it was dark what can I say) I went out on the deck of my little cabin, decided it was reasonably private and since the lake was just below me, I might as well just take a leak right here. I took a big long whiz (it’d been a long drive up from Lilongwe) out into the night, aiming in the general direction of the lake (which I thought to be right below me) not unlike many shoreside whizzes I’d done at Pelican Lake back home. I did my business and went to bed.
It was only the next day, in the brightness of daylight, that I noticed there was some shoreline and a terrace below my balcony and pitched right in the path of my late night urination was a lonely nylon tent. Oops.
Later on, at breakfast, I overheard some of the camping guests talking about the “rain” last night. One couple was certain that they had heard some rain at some point, while the others didn’t notice any. I quickly added that “yes, I had seen a quick sprinkling of rain” at one point. That seemed to satisfy most, and I quickly changed the topic to the deliciousness of the pancakes.
The resort restaurant turned into a happening place at night. All the travellers congregated there as did many of the local boys with names like Gift, Troubles, and Coconuts, which caused them to burst into hysterics when I asked if they could translate “My Dog Smells Like Coconuts.” It has to be said that many of these boys (though clearly not all) were clearly only hoping to charm their way into the pants and/or pockets of the female tourists (for the male tourists, they were usually just satisfied with our pockets). Apparently they’d had some success at this as quite a few claimed to have had a friend with an Australian girlfriend or an American girlfriend or a Canadian girlfriend or whatever (all in all, if you’re a dude from Nkhata Bay, hitting on Western chicks travelling through might actually be your best chance at life advancement sadly). The girls often complained the guys were a tad too aggressive in their flirtations (and they certainly had no compulsions about interrupting you mid-sentence to launch into it), although some certainly didn’t seem to mind.
It was only local boys who came too by the way, not local girls. Malawi’s a very “conservative” (some would say “backwards”) country when it comes to gender relations, and its assumed generally that any woman you meet in a bar (unless she’s a tourist) is probably a prostitute. You did see Malawi women over the course of the day usually doing work, be it caring for children (many had children from as early as age 13), running restaurants and ticket counters, and balancing inordinately large objects on their heads over obscene distances (imagine walking from Winnipeg to Regina with a large sack of potatoes on your head. Now imagine doing it with hills in the way, potholes and swerving drivers trying to avoid them, and other people also on the road, and that’s life for Malawian women, not an easy one). As a possible consequence of all the political strife in Malawi, the president’s resignation might mean that a woman, the vice-president, would come to power. The local boys at the bar weren’t terribly excited about this possibility saying “Malawi isn’t ready for a woman president” although I’m not sure what one has to be ready for. Frankly, I’m opposed to voting for or against someone based on gender (the best person for the job, male, female, or whatever, should be the criteria), but considering how badly male power-mongers have run some of these very patriarchal countries, giving the reins to a woman for a change might not be such a bad idea.
It was good to meet the locals but I much preferred it when the conversation got past the “tomorrow you go to my shop” shit (sorry man, but there’s no way I’m fitting that elaborate wood carving of a tribesman in my backpack) and started talking about things all of us were interested in. My favourite local resident was the old man nicknamed the Chocolate Man (I can’t remember how to say or spell his real name) who was an 80 year-old (he celebrated his 80th birthday with us while I was there) vendor with a shelf of chocolate bars that he brought every night (and despite the fact that he was the only salesmen there with any goods to sell, he made no attempt to hound you to purchase anything and in fact usually fell asleep a couple hours after his arrival). I liked Chocolate Man, and usually bought a chocolate off him every night although we never really worked out a mutual understanding of the word Snickers so I could tell him what I wanted and he could tell me how much it was. One Aussie tourist had been told that Chocolate Man was actually the village the chief and proudly spread this news to each and everyone until it came out that in may in fact not be true. Saving the Aussie from embarrassment we asked Bjorn who confirmed that Chocolate Man was a village chief (or at least a village elder) and was well respected in the community for being the first successful commercial fisherman on Lake Malawi. He even apparently played suitor to one of the local boy’s mother when his father had fled the country for years in political exile (which made things a tad awkward when the father, believed to be dead, returned).
One of the most interesting topics to discuss with the Malawi locals was witchcraft, which in Malawi is no whimsical subject of fantasy but a real (or at least perceived to be real) concern and major issue (so much so that newspaper actually report witchcraft cases as factual and the government has even outlawed witchcraft and punishes people for being witches). In South Africa, I was used to stories of sangomas (South African witch doctors) whose special “healing” methods often did more harm than good to their patients and yet still had greater trust of certain segment of the population than medical professionals. This though was something different.
People told tales of western doctors coming to Malawi, disbelieving in witchcraft and trying to disprove it, only to fall victim to it themselves. One story involved a western doctor asking for proof of witchcraft from a man who claimed to be a witch and so every night the witch would change something on the western doctor while he slept, first shaving his armpits and then his pubic hair. I pointed out that the same kind of thing happens back home, but it’s not called witchcraft so much as fun with drunk friends, but the guy at the bar said it happened to “a friend of a friend” so you knew it had to be true. Of course.
It quickly became clear that my burden of proof and the general Malawi one were somewhat distinct as the stories got increasingly weirder. Our storyteller began: “You Westerners, you may have created jet airplane to travel the world, but we Malawians, we created flying basket.” He said a local witch could (and apparently did) travel every night to collect all the village children unbeknownst to their parents and fly Santa Claus-like through the sky with all the village children in a giant basket on a world tour (stopping to see the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Great Wall of China, you name it). At the end of the night, the magic basket returns to the village and all the children return to their homes, their parents never knowing they were even gone (and presumably the children don’t mention it, don’t remember it, or aren’t believed). Being not a fan of Malawian bus options, and concerned about how I was going to get to Tanzania, I asked if I could be put in touch with this basket man, as it seemed like a much better way to do it. If it could travel the whole world in a night, it could get to Mt. Kilimanjaro in like 10 mins, and imagine the travelers cred you’d get if you managed to do the journey in a magic Malawian basket.
Naturally the storyteller got a tad reticient when I actually showed interest in riding the basket. He quickly said something along the lines of the basket was only for kids or Malawians, and that two Catholic cardinals from the Vatican had attempted it and ended up with broken bones. And so my magic flying basket dreams were dashed, but I wondered if we could ship souvenirs home at least by flying basket or watch one of my Malawi friends go for a ride for them (a transportation mechanism like this just oozed untapped economic potential for a region that could use some), but no proof of the basket was forthcoming, I would just have to trust his word on it and that the basket could not be used for any other purpose than kidnapping village children and taking them on world tours. A pity, though at least the kids get to travel a bit.
Perhaps I’m playing a bit too much of the skeptic here when it comes this witchcraft (I do have six years of university education so its hard not to play devil’s advocate when someone’s talking about magically flying baskets), people do have a right to their beliefs. But in South Africa I read about a couple of very real tragedies resulting from belief in witchcraft, including the belief spread by a few prominent sangomas that having unprotected sex with a virgin would cure you of HIV, which led directly to some young girls getting raped and infected. Not cool. In one news story I read, villagers rose up and killed a man and his wife as punishment for being witches. The man apparently used witchcraft to make his penis invisible (and presumably also detachable and flying, as if just the penis was invisible you’d still see the rest of him coming a mile away) and used this invisible penis to sleep all of the village men’s wives (yes an invisible penis). His wife was also known to transform into an evil snail, although I’m not sure how much harm a snail, evil or not, can do, as they are generally fairly easy to run away from one would think (can a snail even attack... anything?). Anyway these two were effectively executed by the village elders for their supposed crimes in a very Salem-esque fashion (Trial? What trial?). So while witchcraft stories, like vampire or werewolf stories, are very interesting, if people take them seriously—and make decisions that affect lives and deaths of innocent people based on them—that’s not so funny. In many cases, witchcraft appears to be used as a scapegoat to hide the real problems in the community that perhaps the community doesn’t want to face. Lack of education is also a key driving force.
I actually inadvertently stumbled onto a Malawi classroom of sorts when I went to check my email at the Butterfly Center (a local NGO next door to Mayuga). The local fellow who worked there didn’t speak English that well and would generally reply to any question you asked, by repeating what you just said but with greater enthusiasm:
“Hi there.”
“Hi there! How are you, I’m fine!”
“I... um, okay... Is the Internet working today?”
“The Internet is working today!”
“Is it slow?”
“It is slow!”
Anyways eventually I got online and slowing waited for my email back home to inform my parents that I wasn’t dead eventually got through and the small center began to fill with a few local villagers and Western NGO workers who began teaching them how to use computers. Despite the fact that most of the students were teenagers or young adults, the lessons were incredibly basic (like what you might give to an elementary schooler back home) and I realized how valuable and lucky I was to have had a good education.
I ended up in Nkhata Bay for about a week, enjoying the lazy lakeside life (it reminded me a bit of home), swimming in the lake, trying to canoe on one of the local canoes (basically a hollowed out giant bean that are incredibly difficult to balance), losing at pool tournaments, and going on a boat tour to see fish eagles, play soccer with local villagers, snorkel (Lake Malawi’s got some gorgeous snorkelling even right out in front of the resort), and worrying about catching Bilzaharia, the Malawi equivalent of Swimmer’s Itch (it also goes after ducks and snails normally) except the parasite is far more potent and can in some cases cause death (although it’s easily treated by a one time dose of toxic medicine that knocks you out. Bjorn had it while I was there, though he claimed he got it at Cape Maclear (another beach resort further south on the lake) and that it didn’t exist at Nkhata Bay and assuming the same rules as swimmers itch apply: avoid marshy grassy areas (snail and duck habitat) and stick to open, moving water. (as I write this its been a few weeks and I haven’t got it, so I’m pretty sure I’m in the clear). Observing Bjorn the treatment just seemed like a bad hangover and he was back at it pretty quickly. Of course Bjorn seemed like a tough kinda guy. His parents were seafaring nomads who lived on a houseboat and traveled Africa and India and he apparently served in the Swiss Army for 2 years because his Mom was Swiss and all Swiss male citizens are required to give 2 years (conscription) and he wanted “something to do” (he even got a battle scar from the experience when during a training exercise against an imaginary enemy—the Swiss don’t have actual enemies—someone accidentally lost a live grenade and his unit was told to hit the deck and he landed on the still hot barrel of his gun and singed his arm creating an actual battle scar from a war against an enemy that never existed). He told stories from his uncle’s redneck farm in South Africa where for fun his uncle would take kids for a drive in his pick-up truck and have them sit in the back saying “whoever stays on the longest wins” and would try to knock them off by driving rapidly over rough terrain and getting them to hand him beer, and considered “welfare-states” to be “nanny-states” (or perhaps “pussies” is the more appropriate term).
He was our tour guide on lake Malawi (see the snorkelling, games with local villagers, private beaches, fish eagles, etc.) and was very knowledgeable about the lake (apparently the water level used to be a lot lower but rose suddenly one year, possibly due to a volcanic eruption under the surface, and he showed us the underwater remains of a village and its white rock, which the chief would climb and speak from, as the only thing left still extending above the present water line. The tour was great but it held one attraction which I particularly dreaded: the cliff jump (due to my aforementioned fear of heights). There’s the cliff you see, and if you climb to the top of it you can jump off and land in the water below entirely unscathed (the cliff goes down a long way under water). The cliff was about 5-10 m high (about the height of a high diving board) and didn’t look too scary from its base, but from the top it was a different story. Nevermind you had to climb up there over sharp slippery rocks without climbing gear (or shoes for that matter) wearing nothing but your soaking wet swimming trunk (you have to swim to the cliff from the boat as the non-jumpers stay on the boat). I struggled mightily just getting on the blessed rock and out of the water (I’m not climber, I can’t even climb trees), but after multiple tries (and considerable assistance from Bjorn and others) I got on to the rock and and climbed to the top and the specified jumping point (I wanted to jump from lower, but didn’t knew if there would be rocks there or not, so decided it was best to jump from where I had just seen people jump and not die). Having fought my way to this point, not excited about the prospect of climbing down (probably more dangerous than jumping), and not wanting to wuss out, I pushed myself forward before I had too much time to think and leapt into the air—cannonball formation. At first it felt just a normal swimming pool diving board jump, something my body had done numerous times, but when I didn’t hit the water at the usual time and there seemed to be more air (and my mass, ever more evident when I’m shirtless and in a swimsuit gathered speed) I began to feel a tinge of terror as I seemed to rocket uncontrollably downward through the air.
I hit the water with a large bang and went deep as water rushed up my nostrils, an unpleasant feeling I remembered from childhood (probably jumping off the high diving board at the Sportsplex for the first and only time). But my velocity slowed and I found myself back in control.
I returned to the surface amidst applause, breathed air, and felt exuberance that I had faced my fear and conquered it, and now never had to do that bloody thing again.
At another point in the tour, we went snorkelling around some rock outcrops in a sheltered bay (although I seem to not quite have mastered the “keep water out of your snorkel” technique—at least it was fresh water). One Israeli girl who apparently fell out of her raft while white-water rafting in Uganda (and was promptly abandoned by her guide and nearly drowned) was clearly anxious about being in the water again and wanted to get back in the boat, but since this was a wooden jalopy with high walls, hastily constructed floorboards, and one flea-bitten dog, this was easier said than done. Bjorn and the boys on the boat tried to pull her up while I tried to offer my hands as a foot rest. When that didn’t work, I dove under the water, stood on a rock coming up from the lake floor (it wasn’t that deep although it was still over my head) and tried to push the girl up. Unfortunate I forgot I had a snorkel and soon saw my snorkel (now filled with water) sinking to the lake floor. I desperately tried to keep the girl up, with one foot on the rock and the other trying to wrangle my runaway snorkel. Eventually one of the Swiss girls came by and picked up for me and we got the Israeli girl back into the boat with one big shove. Then it was my turn to board the boat which was far from glorious. The Africans don’t call me “big man” for nothing.
Later on, as I left Nkhata Bay, I joined with some Swiss girls from the resort and the boat trip on a tour with a local guide who promised to drop me off at the Tanzanian border (so I could avoid another bus ride and see part of northern Malawi in the process). Also, since there was no ATM with cash in it in Nkhata bay all week (the two ATMs had not been serviced) I had to go to Msuzu to get money, so I just paid my guide who was connected to Mayuga so I wouldn’t have to go back and pay them (needlessly complicated African style).
The tour itself was something of a disappointment, beginning with my guides attempt to hike the price by $100 after it had already began (despite the fact that we had agreed on a price days beforehand) and I couldn’t exactly back out (I’d be stranded). The Swiss girls were friendly but they spoke mostly in German and kept changing their plans, with each change making the guides anxious to hike the price (the guides also spent a fair amount of time picking up supplies which they hadn’t bothered to pick up beforehand and various “friends” along the way). We saw a couple of Malawi’s national parks, the first of which had an elephant and some buffalo and was no Kruger, but fine for Malawi, but the second one was for me a heartbreaker as it was filled with clear-cut forests and scorched landscapes. There was some wildlife here (mainly antelope), but with such habitat loss it was unclear how the poor things could survive long term.
Also I had some sleeping issues. I’m a light sleeper at the best of times and with no pillow except my own rolled up jacket and the thinnest of mats on what felt like a gravel road beneath my tent, I just couldn’t get any sleep so I ended up dozing off in the truck. When one of the Swiss girls tried to wake me the next day, she apparently shook the hell out of my tent and they were quite surprised when I didn’t emerge from it.
The next night’s campsite had grass and cement pads yet everyone else insisted on putting the tents on the cement pads as it was a high altitude and they worried it would get cold (you see, they saw frost on the grass in the mornings so they assumed it meant the grass was cold). I tried to point out that morning dew/frost actually comes out of the air and collects on everything (its just more visible on grass) and if you put your tent on grass, it will actually block the frost from forming on it (not to mention provide natural insulation and cushion), but this was dismissed as ludicrous (apparently flying baskets are believable in Malawi, but not water condensing out of air particles) and the tents were put on the cement pads and I put myself back in the truck. The next morning, people complained about a cold night. Go figure.
At the campfire one night, we sat around while I occasionally scanned the bush with my flashlight for hyenas (unlike the parks in South Africa, these parks weren’t fenced, so there was nothing stopping a hyena or lion or whatever from just walking into your camp, although our guide was convinced that hyenas weren’t actually predators so much as scavengers). One of the Swiss girls, who had a clear interest in DRC marijuana and other African narcotics (she was training to be a nurse) apparently decided that I was not scanning the bush “right” and snatched my flashlight out of the hand and promptly dropping it clumsily in the fire. In a region where consistent electricity is a luxury (not just while you’re camping) losing your only flashlight was bound to make you a little annoyed, but luckily the guides managed to fish it out of the fire before it got totally destroyed (it still works, all its covered in ash marks and various other battle scars) while the Swiss girl assumed the duck and cover position, which apparently is her standard manoeuvre after doing something stupid (she also said that when she got between a mother zebra and her foal to take a picture—clearly a bright thing to do—and noticed that the mother zebra was not surprisingly upset she went into the same position, and the mother zebra—not surprisingly—kicked her).
The next place we stayed was another beach resort where overland tours stopped and seemed to be having a lot of fun. I gladly took a dorm here in lieu of the stinky old truck (which I was also spending all day in due to all our driving around) and then next day we had one last dip in lake Malawi before the girls and the guides had disagreement over our agreed departure (and since no one had consulted me when the decision was made, I had no idea what the actual arrangement had been) but we were all hustled up perhaps the worst road I’ve seen my life (basically tire ruts through worn sharp rocks zig-zagging up a mountain cliff) just to see the fairly non-descript town of Livingstonia. At this point we dropped off the girls and I insisted on being driven to the Tanzanian border before daylight ended, which we did.
At the border itself the money exchange desks wouldn’t accept my Malawi Kwacha (despite the fact they were literally on the Malawi border, so I don’t know what currency they were expecting) so I had to do black market trades to get rid of it. A border guard gave me a hassle because apparently upon entering Malawi, the Malawi-Zambia border official gave me a one week visa to Malawi not the two week one I had asked for, so techinically I’d been in Malawi illegally for two days. I pointed out that their own border people made the screw-up and my two days were spent spending tourist dollars into the local economy, and besides I was leaving the country so if they didn’t want me all they had to do was give me back my passport and I would go. The border official gave me a bit of a lecture but handed back my passport and I was cleared to move on to Tanzania.
TANZANIA
After crossing the border to Tanzania from Malawi I needed to get to the nearest major Tanzanian city, a non-descript place called Mbeya (in fact the only description I’d had of it was Bjorn’s description of it as a “shit-hole.”) While there were minibuses, it was close enough and I was tired enough that I thought a taxi might be a better idea. I ended being befriended by a local pastor—also crossing the border at the same time. At first, I thought he was yet another tout, offering false friendship in the hopes of getting your attention so he could launch into a sales pitch, but he soon turned out to be genuine and helped me negotiate a better price on the taxi, arranged a better bus transportation the next day to Dar as Salaam (Tanzania’s biggest city and my next stop). He had arranged someone to meet me at the notorious Dar bus station called Ubungu—a bastion of scum and villainy if ever there was one, but there was apparently a mix-up and his friend never appeared so I ended up having to get a taxi.
I spent the next couple of days struggling to get my bearings in a city that spoke Swahili which I couldn’t, but eventually I got on the Kilimanjaro express bus to Moshi, the town at the foot of Kilimanjaro. Moshi itself seemed pleasant enough a town, although I never saw the bloody mountain as it was covered in fog each day I was there (apparently a lot of hikers pay a lot of money to climb it and still never see it because of the fog, so at least I didn’t do that).
Realizing I was running out of time in Africa, I decided to give up on Kilimanjaro and focus on my remaining must sees before getting the hell off the continent. I tried to find a Serengeti/Ngorongoro crater tour (difficult as there are a ton of scam artists, and its hard to tell the legit companies from the illegit companies, but I eventually chose to join a tour based on the advice of a Finnish woman). After a day of paying for minutes on a store clerk’s cellphone as that was apparently the only phone I could use and no one responded to emails (due to an ongoing Tanzanian energy crisis—thanks to “a gov’t that didn’t bother investing in its power grid” according to a local coffeeshop barista—you were lucky if you had electricity nevermind Internet access. The power literally went out every day, usually at inopportune times like when you were about to watch TV or trying to use a squat toilet in a room with no windows. Many of the businesses had generators, but acquiring fuel was expensive and tricky at times and burning it just to keep the lights on can’t have been a great solution.)
Anyways, my tour operators said I could join a tour tomorrow, but that I would have to get to Moshi tonight—not to worry, though, as they could provide transportation. I figured this meant minibus (in Tanzania, they’re called “dalla-dallas”) and said 3 times I didn’t want to go on one at night (they’re not exactly safe during the day) and would rather wait until the next day and catch the early morning bus bus (you know the kind where all the passengers sit down and the chickens are stowaway luggage not squished against you with their sharp beaks protruding). Each time I was assured “Don’t worry, don’t worry,” but remained unconvinced.
Sure enough, as we waited in the dark for the bus to come, longer than the “10 minutes” was no surprise, someone grabbed my bag and (after a discussion in Swahili) all my stuff was uniformly chucked onto a dalla-dalla (the buses had broken down and another one wouldn’t be coming for hours, my guide said, so we had no choice). Naturally it was crammed as usual, and a bus designed for 15 people soon had 40 on it, we myself and my guides crammed in at the back, all of us jostling painfully as we went over speed bump and speed bump. At one point, a fight broke out amongst the crowd up and one drunken idiot had to be thrown off the bus. Fun times.
And we were passed en route to Arusha by the bus I was supposed to take. Twice.
At this point I was beginning to doubt my wisdom in joining this tour, but it was the only possible to see the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater by tour or car rental (and I wasn’t about to rent a car) and I watched far too much Discovery Channel to come this close and not go in. The hotel they put me up in that night was alright, but the power went out again soon after I arrived so I didn’t see much of it.
Woken up at 5 am for my transfer to join the other group of travellers, it was still dark and without lights I had trouble finding all my stuff in the pitch black. This meant I was a few minutes late for my transfer driver and boy did he let me hear about it. Apparently, the Swahili expressions Polé Polé (slowly slowly), Hakuna Matata (don’t worry), T.I.A. (this is Africa) etc. only apply when a Tanzanian is keeping you waiting. If you keep a Tanzanian waiting, surprise, its suddenly a different story.
Anyways, we made it out to the Tarangire campsite where my fellow tourists were waiting for me to join the tour and having breakfast. At first they seemed kinda cold towards me and I thought perhaps they were just an uncharismatic bunch, but it later turned out that they had been promised that the tour would only have 4 people on it and were incensed when the tour operators had broken the arrangement and sold space to another tourist (ie. me) and forced two of them to share a tent although they later confessed that they didn’t blame me for the deception as they realized I had no idea about any of this. I was just a dude who wanted to see the Serengeti.
After a long drive we made it to the park (you have to go through Ngorongoro to get to Serengeti, apparently so the Tanzanian parks board can collect extra entry fees). Despite the expensive park fees and high number of visitors, they don’t seem to be investing anything in the roads which were some of the worst I’d seen in Africa (I could have sprinkled gravel over open terrain and made a better road in some cases). I can’t imagine getting a rental car through there unscathed. I counted around 15 break-downs (and these were hard 4x4 land cruisers and land rovers we’re talking about here) and one overturned bus. The overturned bus happened shortly before we arrived on the scene and there were still passengers milling around in shock and being treated for injuries. Unsure of what to do, we gave some of the people our water bottles, but when these appeared to be snatched up by able-bodied men who didn’t necessarily need them, I made a point of hand delivering my remaining cookies and water to a little girl. Our truck itself, a beaten up old land cruiser, held itself together for most of the trip (although my door handle came off at one point so I had to roll down my window and open it from the outside). Gap, my old nemesis and former employer, had plenty of its shiny new trucks around, although I was quite pleased to see one if its Discovery trucks (the most expensive line) broken-down by the side of the road as we rambled past.
We did see plenty of wildlife which made the trip worthwhile, including the most sightings of lions I’ve ever experienced (as well as plenty of zebras, gazelles, wildebeest, hyenas, and even a couple of leopards). The highlight was a male lion sleeping in the sun by the side of the road who seemed only mildly interested in our presence. We had ample time to photograph him up close (unlike my Kalahari guides, my Tanzanian guides didn’t panic and hit the gas, although they may have also had less concern over our personal safety). Truly an amazing wildlife experience (although if you only see one park in Africa, I’d still say go to Kruger for the better roads).
After the safari, and some awkward arguing between the tourists and the operators (who seemed incapable of taking responsibility for their guides and own company’s false promises), I was supposed to be taken back to Moshi, it became clear that I wasn’t going to get a straight answer about how to get back (at first we were promised a ride then a bus, then it was supposed to take an hour and then it was supposed to arrive at 2 am). Eventually, I just said screw it, and walked away from the shady operation and booked myself into an Arusha hotel, and caught the next morning’s “luxury” (by luxury they mean follows international automotive standards) bus straight to Dar.
It turns out I stumbled back into Dar in the middle of Ramadan and in this highly Muslim region (Tanzania’s about half Muslim and half Christian), and all the restaurants were closed (except oddly the Lebanese place). Ironically, in both Qatar and Turkey (which are more overwhelmingly Muslim and which I also visited during Ramadan) finding food was never an issue. After scrounging up some food and I managed to sneak my away past about 48 touts to get to the legitimate counter for the legitimate ferry to Zanzibar, my last African must-see.
While I had heard reports that the crossing to Zanzibar could often be through rough seas (and my experiences in Mozambique and South Africa taught me that African seas were rough indeed), it ended up not being as bad as I thought it would be (although it was no Pelican Lake). Zanzibar town (often called Stone Town) is a network of Arabic style twisting streets (it used to be the capital for the sultanate of Zanzibar, back in the days of the British Empire) and the island itself has a bounty of gorgeous beaches and spice plantations and was the highlight of Tanzania for me. I did a spice tour where you could see where all those things going stale in your spice cupboard come from including turmeric, cinnamon, cocoa, vanilla, etc. and even some peppercorns (still green) and the strongest pepper flavour I’ve ever bitten into. After a couple days of lounging around Zanzibar, I caught the ferry back to Dar, to get my plane to Istanbul with Qatar Airways.
Now my shaving case had broken a hole out the bottom early in the trip which I had makeshiftily repaired with duct tape, but naturally the duct tape came off en route to the airport. After some negotiating with the airport staff I managed to get it put into bag and the bag put into a box that was taped so I could check it in (I couldn’t exactly take my shaving case on to the plane for security reasons).
After that, all I had to do was catch my plane to Doha, Qatar and then on to Istanbul.
KENYA
Now I had earlier planned on going to Kenya, being one of the premier East African destinations, but the main thing I wanted to see in Kenya was the Masai Mara reserve which was effectively the same park as the Serengeti, so after I saw the Serengeti, I didn’t see the point in forking out for another visa (the only other place I heard of from Kenya was Nairobi and all reports were that it was God-awful). I was hoping I could count hiking around Mt. Kilimanjaro’s base (which I had planned to do if my safari tour operators had taken me back to Moshi as originally agreed upon) as being close enough (even though Kili’s entirely in Tanzania, its close to the Kenyan border), but no dice. So I was content to leave Kenya for another trip. Besides there was a famine going on there and stuff.
Qatar Airways had other plans however, as my flight to Doha inexplicably got re-routed through Nairobi. I wasn’t allowed to leave the plane, but I guess I inadvertently got a sneak peak of Kenya (or at least their airport in Nairobi).
QATAR
If you’re wondering where the hell Qatar is, its a tiny peninsular country shooting out from Saudi Arabia into the Persian Gulf, not far from Dubai and the U.A.E. (they’re very similar countries in fact). After landing in Doha, Qatar’s capital, from Nairobi, I immediately realized I wasn’t in the third world any more. The airport was actually clean and relatively shiny and new, and people seemed to be organized.
Of course that wasn’t the only surprise Qatar had in store for me. I had a lengthy layover (12 hours overnight) before my next flight to Istanbul, and I had reconciled myself to the fact I would likely be spending the night spread out on a set of airport chairs, clutching my laptop carry on like a teddy bear (it would have better than some of the places I slept in Africa). When I asked a Qatar airways staffer about where I could best find a quiet area to grab some shut eye, he looked at my ticket and said “oh we have a hotel booked for you...”
“You do?” (Keep in mind, I bought this ticket cause it was the cheapest)
“Yes. Please check with transfer services.” What followed was a bit of a zig zag across Qatar’s scattered airport (mixed-up as it is currently undergoing renovations and expansion), but to make a long story short and I ended up getting a free 24 hour visa to enter Qatar itself, a free transfer, and a free dinner, breakfast, and nights accommodation at luxury hotel in Downtown Doha called Movenpick (something like a Swiss Hilton). The food was a Qatari buffet feast, the room was big enough to fit all the places I stayed in Africa combined inside, and there was a swimming pool, massage parlour, and my room even had a big flat screen television set (with more than 1 channel!). No, I don’t usually stay at places like this, so this felt like some pretty luxurious treatment. After Africa, it felt like I was staying at the Qatari Sultan’s palace. Best damn layover I ever had (wish it had been longer). Of course I didn’t have much need for the sauna, as if you wanted the sauna experience just step out into the Qatari summer night (35 degrees Celsius at night, it felt sauna like enough. Lord knows what it would be like during the day. How did people survive here without AC?)
At any rate, far too soon I had leave Qatar (I wasn’t really intending to spend a lot of time there) and contine on my way to Istanbul where I am now as I write this.
GOOD-BYE AFRICA
So what was my experience in Africa overall? I’m definitely glad I went and glad I had the opportunity to live in South Africa (still my favourite African country) and at least see life in neighbouring countries (although considering I got culture shock just traveling through these areas, I can’t imagine what would have happened had I tried to live in one). Africa’s definitely the hardest place I’ve ever traveled mainly due to bad transportation networks and infrastructure, chaotic approaches to everything, and shady characters at every turn who see you as a giant dollar sign. Still it’s an incredibly different, eye-opening part of the world. Sometimes called the “hopeless continent” there’s some truth to the description, as many countries have been spinning their wheels for decades thanks to poor selfish leadership and lack of basic necessities like infrastructure and education. Africa’s got its work cut out for it, but Chfirst and foremost, its leadership needs to take responsibility for their own screw-ups (and taking responsibility for your own actions needs to become a social norm) instead of trying to shift the blame onto witchcraft and western “imperialists” (Neo-colonial arguments don’t hold as much weight for me any more, sorry grad school friends, but colonialism ended in Africa decades ago). Most of the westerners I encountered in Africa were either tourists or NGO workers who were volunteering their time out of the goodness of their heart for dubious if any financial gain). While I’m sure there are still plenty of Western companies exploiting African labour and resources, the Chinese seem to be taking this over and now have a greater percentage and influence (and more colonial relationship) with Africa these days (during the Malawi unrest, Chinese businesses were attacked and not Western ones, because people felt the president was a puppet of the Chinese). Africans aren’t that different from Canadians or anyone else (it wasn’t that long ago that my ancestors were burning people at the stake for witchcraft), but years of poverty, disease, and neglect have left that at a perennial disadvantage. It will take great leadership, great personal sacrifice, and great diplomacy to bring Africa up and put it on its feet, and the change must come from within. Africa is certainly capable of producing great leaders—look at Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tutu, and Rwanda’s miraculous recovery from a nation devastated by genocide to a popular tourist destination to go look for mountain gorillas. Africa needs more leadership like that, and less like Robert Mugabe and Moammar Gaddafi (a rule of thumb: the more shops that feel compelled to display your country’s leader’s face in a visible place, the more autocratic they are).
It will get there. It may take decades, or centuries, but it will get there.

So in the end, I'm glad I decided to do my trek through sub-saharan Africa, although doing it independently allowed me to interact more with locals it was also incredibly frustrating... making it a bit like the cliff jump in Malawi (I'm glad I did it, but I don't need to do it again). I think next time I travel in Africa I might take tour.:)

Cheers
Ryan

South Africa Month 5-The Big Push!

2011-07-01T07:07:00.001-07:00

South Africa Month 5-The Big Push!
In this episode, I...
-get nearly trampled by a herd of wild elephants
-tries to photograph Namibian border guards doing something illegal
-get some in-your-face time in the wild with a full-maned Kalahari Lion and throws up on a Great White Shark (3 days apart).
This month was a big one. I’m just warning you now.
Work was the same as before, but I finally got to use most of my leave and use it I did to hit-up some South African wonders.
KRUGER NATIONAL PARK
First up, Kruger National Park. South Africa’s most famous national park (and possibly one of the most famous on the continent) and with good reason. This park is one of the best places in the world to view wildlife and I would go so far as to say it might rank up there as the best (I can’t think of a strong other competitor). Why? Let me put it this way...
In Canada, if you go to a national park (and we have many fantastic ones), you’re lucky if you spend a week there and see one deer (this is considered cause for celebration). In Kruger, we saw hundreds of deer (“antelope” technically) and many of various different species. Impala are so common (not the Chevrolet kind, but I’m sure there were a few of those too), that if you see a car stopped to look at Impala, it’s assumed they are Kruger newbies.
Nevermind that though, the antelope are really the side attractions. This is Big-5 country (the Big-5 being the five most difficult and dangerous animals to hunt in Africa: elephants, rhinos, buffaloes, lions, and leopards, although we just stuck to photo-hunting). The Big 5 is only the icing on the cake though, as you can also find (and we did) giraffes, zebras, hippopotamuses, crocodiles, hyenas, monitor lizards, leopard turtles, fish eagles, ground hornbills, regular hornbills, wildebeast and more. Basically all those zoo animals you learned how to pronounce when you were five years old—and a few you didn’t—they’re all here, but in their wild non-caged (unless you count the massive fence that surrounds Kruger, which I don’t as the park is the size of Wales or Israel).
Elephants, for one, were almost ridiculously easy to find (we saw one eating a tree within 5 mins of getting into the park). In fact, Kruger is facing an overpopulation of elephants (they used to cull them, but this practice was controversial and it has since ceased, although there have been calls, often by the rangers themselves, to reinstate it less the elephants eat everything else out of house and home). At least for the time being though, the result is that we saw more elephants than antelope (and considering how many antelope we saw, that’s saying a lot) on our first day, and throughout the trip saw such wondrous sights as elephants drinking from the river like quiet monoliths, elephants hiding behind bushes (which like my Dad’s old joke suggested, they can do fairly well), for us wide-eyed Canadians and Europeans that was an unbelievable experience.
I went the first weekend with Henrik and Kristina, driving in their awesome 4X4 Safari machine. We camped the first night beside Blyde River Canyon (the world’s largest green canyon, and third largest overall) which is an amazing sight and not for the faint of heart (or for those scared of heights like me). Henrik and Kristina were more daring, dangling their feet over the edge and trying to sneak off the trail to alternative lookout points, but I wasn’t having any of that. That said, I did have my usual close encounters with wildlife (and we hadn’t even entered Kruger properly) when a troop of baboons invaded the campground. They may be considered pests by many South Africans, but this was my first encounter with these ape-like monkeys, and my interest in creatures, human biology and ancestry, and adventure; caused me to draw closer. Watching a group of them interact was amazing. Just like the similarities between African Wild Dogs and your pooch back home (or a Cheetah and your household cat), there were obvious similarities in behaviour between humans and baboons: the way a mother cradles her young, the use of facial expressions (and similar facial expressions) to convey emotions, and their penchant for mischief.
The baboons were not in the campground by accident. They had clearly hoped to gain access to someone’s vehicle or camper, left improperly sealed. I followed them through various empty camps, watching them as they tried locked door knobs and pulled on bars. At one point, I came with a few feet of a female baboon cradling her young, who gave me a stern worried look (while baboons aren’t small, humans are the tallest primates and we dwarf them in height). That said, baboons are much stronger than humans, like the apes, so I didn’t want to aggravate her and I backed away. Baboons are also quite clever creatures, capable of opening doors, throwing leopards off of cliffs (leopards hunt them), and telling the difference between tourists (which often feed them though they shouldn’t) and uniformed rangers (which often have to shoot them because of tourists that feed them).
Henrik and Kristina had to drop me off for a wilderness hike I managed to get myself on. Being without a car I was looking for options to enjoy Kruger without one, and the hugely popular Wilderness trails seemed like a likely candidate. These trips are so popular they book up a year in advance, and I only managed to luck into being one person (and hitting on a cancellation).
We hiked deep into the Kruger bushlands, near the Olifants river, close to the Mozambican border and far from civilization. With no electricity, it was just us and the Kruger wilderness, although we did have a nice fenced chalet site overlooking the river (filled to the brim with crocs and hippos which you could hear all night, no to mention the lions, leopards, and impalas). During the day we hiked on foot through the park led by our two armed guards Steve and Sambuca (a local Shangane guide).
Steve spoke better English than Sambuco, so he dealt with us while Sambuco tried to scout ahead for game. Both were very good at following tracks (recognizing not only the animal, but the gender, age, age of the track, and direction went, and probable destination) and while we were surrounded by lions moaning at one point, we didn’t actually see any (which goes to show you, that the scariest animal in the bush is usually you). We did see some animals (namely giraffe, impala, a leopard turtle, and of course, hippos and crocs), and the scenery was wild and amazing (all bushwacking in the heat, which meant by the end of the mornings, I was pretty beat, but the old farts were still going strong). We didn’t much in the way of animals as compared to driving (apparently, when you’re outside of a car, the animals can smell and sense you more and therefore are more afraid of you. While inside a car, they can still tell you’re there, but the car confuses them, and in Kruger is a familiar sight, and since people don’t normally hunt from cars, the animals have learned not to fear cars as much as a person on foot). Steve said the decline in sightings was due to poaching in the area, but I also think one particularly noisy woman (who didn’t understand indoor voices and loudly proclaimed any noise) may have scared more than a couple creatures off.
After the tour, we went back to Letaba. While they told me I could get out of the park without a car, this turned out to be false, and I ended up stranded in Letaba. Steve took pity on me, and I ended up accompanying him on a sorta “take your kids to work day.” I got to seethe other side of the Kruger ranger life-style including buying lunch at the Phalaborwa KFC, filing papers, and stacking wood (“look out for scorpions”). Since there was only bus from Phalaborwa (the nearest town) to Joburg, and it had already left early that morning, I had to crash at Steve’s place in the staff village that night and we had a braai with a couple of his fellow rangers, including rookie ranger Rianna, who was keeping wild genets in her house (she had apparently rescued them and was rehabilitating them for the wild). Not sure I even heard of a genet prior to this evening, I soon had a close encounter with them. Small ferrit-like carnivores, they are quite timid but playful once you get them used to you, and you could even get them to pounce on toys much like a pet cat. She had two different species of genet which had to be kept separate in the two rooms of her apartment, the kitchen and the bedroom. At one point, one of the genets got comfortable enough to perch himself on my head where it promptly marked its territory. They’re quite lovely creatures, very energetic and playful, but one look at Rianna’s hands (covered in scratch marks) told you that these were wild animals and not domestic pets. The genets have since been released back into the wild and are apparently doing well.
The next day, as Steve was driving me to the bus pickup at dawn, we encountered possibly the best sighting of my entire park experience; a leopard stalking across the road after some impala. We were able to watch for quite some time as the leopard, a female apparently, crawled carefully towards the impala hidden in the bush. Fortunately, for the impala, they sensed something was up, and eventually the leopard was spotted, leaving the impalas to give out a strange growl-like hiss bleat. Realizing her operation was blown, the leopardess glared back at us as if we screwed up her hunt (which we may have, as the impala may have wondered why we stopped) but Steve argued with her, claiming that she should have been in the bushes long before we got there. The leopardess shrugged and went off into the bush, probably to make another attack from a different angle.
KALAHARI
Wanting to stop somewhere interesting on my way to Cape Town, I got my heart set on the Kalahari, namely the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park (basically in that little piece of South Africa that juts up between the borders of Namibia and Botswana). It was fairly expensive getting a tour there (more expensive that I thought it was going to be, and more difficult as well), but it is gorgeous country.
It’s not really a desert per-se, but a semi-desert (the Namib desert is the nearest true desert, but that’s in its namesake country Namibia). While there are hills upon hills of sand dunes, most of the sand dunes are actually grass-covered, which explains the profusion of wildlife (they have to eat something, and they can’t just eat sand). This was a much more rough and ready wilderness experience than Kruger, the roads were not only not paved but mostly washboard gravel (every 2/3 comments in the guest book was on how crappy the roads were) and you weren’t getting anywhere without a 4WD. There are basically only two main roads in the park, both in the South Africa portion, and one of which was closed.
Interestingly the gates to the park are all also border crossings, with Botswana and South Africa sharing a mutual gate and park office (the mens room is in Botswana, the womens in South Africa) and roads leading to both sides of the border (at one point there are two roads, one on either side, running parallel). We actually ended up camping on the Botswana side the first night (much less developed than the South African side). The first night was a bit of a rough one for me. Despite being the only person on the tour, they gave me a very uncomfortable cot in my tent that I could barely fit in. It was so uncomfortable that I considered sleeping on the ground (couldn’t it was cement) or in the car (it was locked). Sleeping outside was out of the question as this was nasty scorpion and snake country (shake out your boot before you step in), not to mention it was bloody cold (at least cold enough to form ice bergs floating in the left over coke bottles, which made for a refreshing late night snack). While it can get up to +40 in summer in the Kalahari, I was there in winter, and the desert soil just doesn’t retain the heat.
Also, compared to Kruger, the park is mostly savannah like grasslands, which means great wildlife viewing, but also strong winds.
The next day we drove to Mata Mata on the Namibian border, along the route we saw plenty of gemsbok (pronounced hemsbok), springbok, wildebeest, hartebeest, and other creatures, although Iw as half asleep from a poor nights rest. (They usually do night tours, but for dubious reasons they didn’t, so I didn’t get to do one) We did however have a hyena come pay us a visit (attracted by the smell of braais) although a fence separated us, you could still get a very close view of the spotted hyena (a jackal came by at one point too, but he made sure the hyena was already gone).
While I was the only one on the tour, my guide was sadly not quite up to the same calibre as Steve. While he knew a fair amount about the wildlife, he took some prodding to get going (on the first day, he wanted to do nothing, and I said that wasn’t cool and on the second I had to get him out of bed) and had a habit of spouting Afrikaan redneck opinions including starting far too many sentences with “I’m not a racist, but...” and a bizarre perspective derived from watching some very Afrikaans history channel. He would proudly boast that South Africa never lost a war, claiming that the last Boer War was a victory for the Boers (I asked him to clarify this, as my history books had clearly suggested it had been a British victory, but his big argument was “well is South Africa a republic now or what” to which I would respond, yes, but it became a republic 50 years after the end of the war and had more to do with British Post-WW2 decolonization than anything else). He also believed the first World War was fought against Napoleon (I’m not kidding) and that Namibia didn’t win its independence, South Africa’s apartheid just gave them independence as a “gift” but the South African Apartheid government was so noble and generous of course. Needless to say this was the type of guy who couldn’t understand that just because Queen Elisabeth was the Queen of both Canada and Britain, didn’t mean Canada was part of Britain. At first, I just tried to ignore his diatribes, but being stuck in a car with him, and just him, for a few days, I eventually had to give him a history lesson (I do have a degree in the subject). He also had the stereotypical South African obsession with braai, and strong unsolicited opinions about what means should be barbequed (basically any fatty meats) and what shouldn’t (lean meats and hamburger), couldn’t fathom why I couldn’t completely agree with him. He also mentioned on a couple of occasions, hinting obviously, that some American had previously given him a couple hundred dollars a tip, “but don’t worry, you don’t need to tip.” So I didn’t (the trip was expensive anyway).
That said, we did have some great sightings on the way back including a puff adder snake (highly poisonous), bat-eared foxes, a cheetah calling for its lost cubs (you could see it standing on the hill and hear its shrill cries), but the highlight by far was the Kalahari lion, which actually blocked the road so there was no way we would miss it.
We saw the bat-eared foxes at the same time as the lion, although they hadn’t seen each other. When the foxes did notice the lion, they all hunched down in the bush as if on queue, you could literally smell their fear.
He was a big male lion, but he didn’t seem too interested in the foxes, or in hunting in general, mostly just patrolling his kingdom as it were, and using the road as an easier way to get from point A to B (as it is for both humans and animals). He ignored the cars for the most part too, although they were all stopping to take a picture of him and his unique Kalahari mane (brown with a black tinge, unique to the region were the lack of bush to push through means it grows much fuller than usual). Since there were no female lions around, and he seemed like a young male in no rush to be hunting, my guess is that he was “on the prowl” for something else. At any rate, he was my first and so far only wild lion sighting, so I naturally took as many photos as I could of him up close as I could.
He headed off the road so we drove ahead of him, but then he wandered back on to the road, and I got to see his face close-up. So close in fact that my driver began to worry about me with my open window, and the car suddenly sped off (you could the shock on the lion’s face, confused as to what was just happening, as a still object was suddenly taking off at great speed). I don’t think the lion chased us, I don’t think he meant us any harm, but I suppose it was best to be on the safe side.
Afterwards we stopped at a bushman selling his crafts and then headed back to Upington where I came off the bus originally from Joburg and where I would catch my bus to Cape Town
CAPE TOWN
Arriving in CapeTown on a long uncomfortable overnight bus ride with only religious movies and comments from Focus on the Family as the “intertainment” I was a bit groggy when I arrived in foggy Cape Town. Since it was too early to check into my hostel, though, I decided to drop off my bags and make the most of my day, so I hopped a bus to Table Mountain, the famous geological landmark of the city.
Shrouded by fog initially, I perhaps didn’t fully grasp the height of the mountain, but its one impressive plateau. While there was a gondola that went to the top, I wanted to save some money and so, taking the advice of my buddy Henrik, I decided to climb it (as it turns out, he hadn’t climbed it, but its sister mountain, the smaller Lion’s Head).
Needless to say, I quickly learned I needed to get into shape, as while it didn’t seem that far from the bottom, a 2.5 hour hike can easily turn into a 4 hour one when its uphill all the way. The path (basically natural rock steps that have been cleared of vegetation) is a fairly rugged one, and zig-zagging its way up to and then through a narrow gorge. It’s popular route, and I certainly had plenty of seniors and children passing me on the way, but at least when you stop for a break the view is incredibly (the fog lifted while I was climbing the mountain, making for a spectacular sight).
Once on top of the mountain, you feel like you’re in a different world. For one, its a plateau, so the ground is actually reasonably flat on top and easy to get around, although you do have to look out for rocks and potholes that can sneak up on you. Because the plateau is at a higher altitude and separated from the land below by sheer cliffs on all sides, the vegetation forms a different ecosystem up here, and in some cases the species are found nowhere else in the world (very exotic, almost like a mini-version of Roraima in Venezuela). What’s unique about Table Mountain is that you have this majestic wilderness area (and it is considerably wild) right in the middle of a very major city. The local tourism board is campaigning to get it listed as one of the new seven natural wonders of the world, and I think they stand a pretty good shot.
Exhausted from the hike up, I did some minor exploring of the top and decided I would take the gondola down. Not a fan of cliff edges (which Table Mountain has in abundance), the thought of descending rapidly over sheer drops clinging to nothing but a tiny cable didn’t sit too well with me, but it seemed easier than walking down. The car itself, clearly sponsored by visa (which was good as I hadn’t had a chance to hit an ATM) climbs to the tallest part of the mountain and you board it as it sits precariously over the edge, the cable running near vertically to the bottom. I found myself a camping spot near the back of the gondola, where at least the ground seemed somewhat closer (not that it would matter if the cable gave way), but I soon found another unforeseen challenge for a height-fearing fellow such as myself, the cable car inexplicably had a rotating floor so I had to constantly move to keep myself in the same position and avoid getting dizzy on the way down. Great for the people to enjoy the scenery I suppose.
After getting off the mountain, I decided to take advantage of the rare Cape Town “winter” sunlight, and headed to the Camps Bay beach where I was immediately accosted by up to six hawkers and beggars. I attempted to evade these chasers, by walking into the ocean (or at least close to the ocean), but then a wave snuck up on me and my feet got wet. It worked at least in scaring those guys away. I walked along the beach some more, played catch with someone’s dog who came out of nowhere and dropped a chewed-up tennis ball in front of me (beach was full of dog walkers), and watched some South African dudes try to surf in the wave-wet sand (I forget what they call this). Also a sand rugby game, which was pretty cool. To cap things off, on the bus ride back to the hostel, I saw a Southern Right Whale breaching in the water off of Cape Town.
The next day was not as successful. Since we had another sunny day, and forecast of bad weather was coming, I decided to take Henrik’s other major suggestion, shark cage diving. Sure enough, we drove out to a bay near Cape Agulhas (the southernmost point of Africa, and no, its not the Cape of Good Hope) and you can actually see Great Whites pretty easily, and the cage wasn’t that scary, but I still couldn’t get into it, mainly because I couldn’t stand due to sea-sickness. The southern ocean waters are some of the roughest in the world, and while I knew that, I didn’t know we were going far enough out to experience the full brunt of them. The boat started heaving mightily as soon as we left the harbour (I was at the front of it, frozen like a barnacle to the side as we bounced off of giant wave after giant wave), I was probably white at this point, and could barely walk to the back when we entered Shark Alley, a reasonably calm stretch of water between two islands, one filled with over 40 000 seals (whence why the sharks are often found here).
For reasons unknown to me, however, they drove right through shark alley and anchored the boat out in the rough stuff (and anchored in such a way that all the waves hit us broadside instead of straight on). I quickly started getting sick, and sat down at the bank in a near windward position (they had blocked the true windward position in case people got cold) and tried to summon the will not to hurl. I had really been looking forward to diving with the sharks and didn’t want to give up, but when my lunch paid three return visits out the same way in came in, I knew my gig was up. At least I saw a couple of fins from the boat and one large great white circling in the waters below me as I leaned over the boat edge to empty the ballast as it were. The buggers didn’t give me a refund mind you, and in fact wanted to charge for a taxi back to shore (which I was ultimately denied). Surprisingly they didn’t even have seasickness meds on board (a big oversight) and all they could offer me was a breath mint, the thought of which just made me feel even sicker (mint doesn’t appeal to me at the best of times). To make matters worse, I got some of the vomit on my shoes and so I tried to get them cleaned, and ended up losing them altogether, which wasn’t cool as they were custom ordered shoes designed to fit my big feet and big insoles.
The next day, I decided I wanted to stick to land (the weather was starting to get bad anyway), so I did the Cape Penisula tour (this is the tour that goes to the Cape of Good Hope, the most famous of South Africa’s capes, even if it isn’t the southernmost point). Actually, they refer to the Cape of Good Hope as the “southwestern” most point of Africa, which is one of those terms that means nothing at all (there are many points in Africa further west, ie West Africa, and Cape Agulhas is further south although its less impressive and shaped more like a potbelly). The Cape landscape however, windswept, barren, rocky, and rugged, makes you feel like you’re walking along the edge of the Earth and the scenery is just phenomenal. There’s a few points where you can climb up to get a better view, and we biked down one section (although my bike didn’t work so well, the gears jammed, so I had to walk it uphill in sections, but the downhill I got enough speed to pass people).
The weather turned downright awful the next day (it wasn’t so so bad on the cape tour), and so I declared a “Museum day” and went to the Heart Transplant museum (Cape Town was apparently where the first successful human heart transplant took place, and so they explained how it happend, why it happened here, the who and the consequences). Apparently, Dr. Christian Barnard (the surgeon who performed it) was quite the celebrity back in the 60s as a result (some loved him, some thought he was evil), although his celebrity status seems to have led him to three failed marriages with younger spouses. Still though, a remarkable operation, remarkable “guts” so to speak in doing it. I was interested in this museum as a rather peculiar attraction in a city full of attractions but it turned out to be worth the visit. I was less impressed by the highly celebrated District Six museum. While the museum dedicated to a neighbourhood of mostly black and coloured residents that were forcibly removed by the Apartheid government in the 60s, 70s, and 80s does cover a historical event in Cape Town in South Africa and the displays about the neighbourhood were quite nice, it was hard as an outsider to really get a feel for the place (a lot of it seemed like information overload, and the staff weren’t terribly helpful in explaining anything, and I actually ended up walking out after 20 mins, as I’d run out of stuff to explore on my own). I did however end up wandering the neighbourhood itself (or whatever it is now) and found a great little corner shop selling these fried half moon Islamic perogies (it was an old Muslim couple running the shop) which were so delicious I started with 1 and ended up getting 3.
I wandered the city for a little bit more, and ended up walking past the old star fort Castle of Good Hope (built by the Dutch, but conquered and held by the Brits) as well stumbling into their Parliament building by taking the wrong street (a security guard was quick to redirect me). The Parliament area has a nice park section (called the Company Gardens) complete with many major art galleries, museums, schools, etc, and a statue of Cecil Rhodes which seems, in modern contexts, to be somewhat out of place. From there, I walked back to the hostel via Long Street (the party street filled with night clubs and restaurants), stopping for some Indian food. We went out a couple of nights on this street and partied it up at places called the Assembly (a techno joint), the Joburg next to Pretoria (hip-hop dives), the Waiting Room, and the Dubliners (Irish pub-style place).
On my final two days in Cape Town, I did a wine tour, where we say many of the great local wineries, my favourite being a small ma and pa operation called Boer & Brit as it was run by the great-grandchildren of both the main British and the main Boer general during the last Boer war, and enjoyed gorgeous wineland scenery and the colonial town of Stellenbosch while we got thoroughly plastered. The last day, the weather finally improved enough for me to brave the ferry out to Robben Island (which was a much shorter trip on a much larger boat, but the seas were just as rough as my shark escapade). While it was interesting from a historical perspective—Robben Island is where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for much of his 27 years along with other political prisoners and forced to due hard labour which left him with lasting health defects—the prison itself is just an abandoned prison. The highlight for me, aside from the great views of Table Mountain and Cape Town from across the bay (although considering the roughness of the seas in-between, Robben Island feels like a very isolated place), was meeting our tour guide, a former political prisoner at Robben Island (he had been arrested for supplying the ANC armed wing with weapons) who talked at length about this life there and even admitted after the tour that he did not want to come back to live on Robben Island and work as a tour guide but was forced to by poor economic conditions (although he seemed relatively at peace with the fact that he was effectively stuck on the very island on which he was once imprisoned). Unfortunately due to camera theft, I lost my pictures from both Robben Island and the wine tour.
Through these tours and the hostel I met some interesting characters including a dude from Sea Shephard (those guys who chase after Japanese whaling ships in the Antarctic, needless to say he wasn’t impressed by seasickness episode), finnish sports journalist proudly ranked #86 in pro table hockey, his Finnish friend/colleague who didn’t say much but liked to play this classic Scandinavian board game called the Star of Africa in which you race other players around Africa trying to find lost jewels (I added a rule called “the Joburg rule” where you could steal money and jewels from other players), a know-it-all American grad student from New York who kept blathering about the Star of Africa game was politically incorrect (it didn’t stop him from playing it) and assuming I was American like him, and a couple of friendly Norweigan beauties who were often found in the pub, and then had a house party on the last night (where my camera was stolen, ironically, at a club called “Joburg”).

South Africa-Month 4-ish

2011-06-04T11:08:00.001-07:00

South Africa Month 4-ish (whose counting?)
In this episode, I...
-get lost in the Drakensberg mountains
-have a wild African predator sit on my head in Kruger National Park
-nearly drive off of a bridge in the Cradle of Humankind
Work was pretty normal this past month, most of the time I spent working on logistics for an upcoming conference in July (basically I need to get people here from all over the world) and so I made up fancy multi-coloured spreadsheet to keep things, and as exciting as that is, I’m sure there’s other things you’d rather read about, so let’s move on.
This past month I basically had three big trips: 1st to the Drakensberg mountains, than to Pretoria and the De Wildt Cheetah Sanctuary, and finally to the epic Kruger National Park.
DRAKENSBERG
The Drakensberg was kind of a spur of the moment thing. Originally I had planned to see the Cradle of Humankind that weekend, but when one of my meet-up groups said they were trying to organize a trip to the Drakensberg, I smelt free ride (or at least someone with a car who could give me a ride if I paid for petro) and signed up.
Southwest of Johannesburg, in northwestern Kwazulu-Natal you can find the Drakensberg mountains, which means something like dragon’s peak in Afrikaans, are actually more an escarpment, forming a dramatic edge to the high plateau on which Lesotho sits (this is not to be confused with the Drakensberg escarpment near Kruger National Park which lies a distance east of Joburg). The fact that it is flat on top of these peaks—and then in fact they are a rough edge of a tremendous geologic shelf—is truly mind-boggling.
They are a beautiful, if fairly dry (at least during the season I visited) landscape. There are mainly peaks in a vast chain of mountains, but we stayed in view of a ring-shaped group called the Auditorium. Initially, I took some flack for insisting that the B&B we originally booked was too expensive, but the hostel I got us into, something like the South African version of an Albertan ranch hostel, ended up giving us a cabin to ourselves for the price of dorm beds with a fantastic view. The only major issue with the place was the hot water, lit by a gas heater that seemed to leak fumes more so than actually heat anything and the noise from the pub, but since we also partook in the pub on many occasion it all worked out.
The first day we went to an area called Cathedral Peak to do some hiking. The plan was to hike to a set of waterfalls, but each member of the small group I was with had a different opinion of the plan, but after climbing a steep hill to what the parking security had said was the start of the hiking trail, I had no intention of hiking back down again. So I went off on my own and said we’d all meet up again in a couple of hours.
Turns out the security guard was completely wrong (the trails started from a nearby hotel) and I ended up bushwhacking my way through venomous snake territory (I was wondering why the trail was so poorly groomed). Of course I didn’t realize this until a couple hours later—after crawling my way across steep grass cliffs and river rapids—when I finally came upon a groomed path (with signs no less!). I was quite dishevelled by the time I showed up back at the hotel.
The next day went a little better, this time we went to Royal Natal Park, a much more developed area with more clearly marked trailheads. While originally planning to hike to Tugela falls—famous for being apparently the second tallest waterfalls in the world and requiring the climbing of shaky metal ladders to reach them—this turned out to far to go, so we instead focused on reaching a more modest set of falls that looked like a curtain of water over two caves, one above the other. This one was reached by going through a variety of trails: some steep, some paved, and some overgrown, but we found the falls alright, hidden away in a mini-forest (Royal Natal was much greener—and wetter— than Cathedral Peak). All and all, a beautiful part of the country, although be prepared to climb a lot of hills.
PRETORIA AND DE WILDT CHEETAH SANCTUARY
My colleague and friend Emilar Vushe (originally from Zimbabwe) invited myself, Henrik, and Kristina for a traditional African dinner at her place in Pretoria. While I didn’t see much of Pretoria, I did enjoy the good food and hospitality, as well chatting with Emilar’s family and friends.
I rented the car for the next day to see some out of town sights that I had trouble accessing otherwise such as the De Wildt Cheetah Sanctuary and the Cradle of Humankind. This proved to be more trouble than I anticipated as even getting the car in the first place was a bit of hassle (they required more ID when I arrived then they had told me on the phone). But I did manage to get a wimpy cheap Suzuki Alto to drive around in, although it was a standard transmission and had trouble with any and every hill and stop light.
Fearing I would get lost, I actually arrived at the Cheetah centre almost 45 mins early, which meant I ended up having a morning tea with no one else around but a bunch of curious cheetahs constantly pacing back and forth along the perimeter of their pens. I soon saw the staff appear and was greeted by a friendly and gregarious middle-aged man who spoke to me until the tour guides arrived, both of whom were fairly young. When the girl—who would be our guide—had trouble getting out of the truck he attributed it to her “big butt” which he promptly slapped. This was a bit of a strange place.
Anyway, eventually the rest of the tour arrived and I joined them as we walked around the cheetah sanctuary, starting off with a cheetah run. Since we were told we needed to be in good physical condition for the cheetah run, I assumed that meant we would be running with the cheetahs. Turns out we just watched them run, and boy can those cats boot it. They had this wire system with a decoy made of plastic strips that they would whip around on a course where it would zig-zag like quick small prey and then go on a straight away, allowing the cheetah to show of its hunting speed and skill.
The cheetahs here are reasonably tame, or at least used to people, and one even walks from its pen to the running grounds on its own. Apparently females, which usually hunt and live on their own (as opposed to the males who live in groups) were generally faster and more aggressive, so we watched all females. As the tour went on we saw king cheetahs (a rare variation) and I even petted a tame male cheetah which purred just like a regular domestic cat only enlargened and stretched out like an extreme greyhound.
We also saw a few of the other endangered predators the sanctuary looks after including caracals (like an African lynx), wild cats (the ancestor species to the domestic cat) which actually meow, and one especially drowsy brown hyena. The brown hyena, which looks quite different from its spotted cousin, was not exactly a morning person er... well hyena. They’re apparently nocturnal creatures and the guides had to kick up a bit of a fuss to get one of them to come out, throwing rocks into their cage with wild abandon (apparently they did this to trick the hyena into thinking they were tossing food into the pen, but hyenas apparently have intelligence to rival primates so this ruse didn’t work so well). We did see one, but his expression suggested more of “What? What is it? Do you guys know what time of the day it is? We’re sleeping here!” kind of expression.
The other big attraction here though is the wild dogs, an incredibly rare predator these days in the wild, wild dogs used to number in the 50s to 100 in one pack, but they were hunted to near extinction mainly because of agricultural interests who saw them as a threat to their livestock.
As a dog person myself, I could easily see the parallel behaviour between the African wild dogs and their very distant domestic dog cousins. African wild dogs don’t really bark per se, at least not like a normal dog would, but they did chase after our truck like a pack of dogs would chase a car and when one of the guides offered food you could see the same “oh boy, oh boy, oh boy” excited expression and familiar body language. Basically the pack consisted of a mother and older father with their litter of about six of seven pups (there were other wild dogs at the site which they will likely breed with the pups when they reach a certain age). The pups, being wild dog puppies, were the most rambunctious while their Mom and Dad would look on. When they fed the pups, the Dad would sometimes try to sneak in for a nibble, but this would usually result on him getting bitten on the nose. Not the brightest animals, the wild dogs would often fight over the same piece of kibble while leaving an entire pile untouched (much like a domestic dog will be much more interested in the tennis ball in your hand than the one sitting idle on the lawn). Still though, captivating creatures, especially seen up close.
Unfortunately my attempt to drive to the Cradle of Humankind was not nearly as successful. I got lost numerous times due to poor signage and changing highways (and at one point ended up deep in Pretoria). When I finally got to the park, I found 80 km/hr (sometimes up to 120 km/hr) highways going through hijacking zones and sharp turns on large hills. The drivers in South Africa are notoriously bad, and the high highway speeds, poor maintenance, and steep edges and turns don’t help matters. There’s also plenty of pedestrians that walk these dangerous roads (often from town to town) and some will jump out in front of you without much thought.
Finally I was about to reach the turn off I needed for my destination, I found myself coming down a steep hill, going into a sharp turn, and coming upon a narrow bridge—painted for two lanes, but it should have really been one. The traffic circle were I had to turn was just beyond it, but the bridge had other plans. A curb on either side further narrowed the bridge, and this basically raised hard cement edge was blocked on the side I was coming from by a bit of shrubs. I thought I moved far enough to the right (they drive on the left here) to miss it, but apparently I was wrong. I hit the curb, it spun my car out of control, sending me hurtling to the otherside of the bridge. Terrified I would go off the bridge and fall into the rapids far below, I cranked the wheel as hard as I could the other way, but I still hit the curb on the other side. My wheels had been turned so they hit the curb sidesways and I broke off my wheel as my car skidded to a stop on the other side of the bridge on the shoulder. Nobody else was involved in the accident, and I was unhurt, but the car lost its front right wheel, seeming to lose a tirerod. A nearby horse rancher saw the entire accident and helped me call a tow truck.
The tow truck took 3 hours to arrive (it got lost) I was left in a high jacking zone with no one else but a family of baboons to keep me company. That said, a few people including the rancher, another tow truck driver (whom Budget Car Rental forbade me to use despite the fact she could have gotten me out of there two hours earlier), and plumber and his wife who worked in insurance who stayed with me at the end until the two truck finally arrived. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to all of these folks, although I’m still fighting with Budget Car Rental to see the actual cost of the damage and what is fair for me to pay. Don’t rent with Budget, as it stands they’re charging me nearly $2000 despite having insurance through them.
KRUGER NATIONAL PARK
For those who don’t know, Kruger is massive and famous wilderness area in South Africa larger than countries like Wales or Israel, and famous for its big 5 sightings (lion, leopard, rhino, buffalo, and elephant). While I had initially planned to rent a car and drive through Kruger like most people do, the car accident squashed that idea. So I caught a ride with Henrik and Kristina, whose vehicle was perfect for safaris anyway, and we got to stop off at the Blyde River Canyon on route.
The Blyde River Canyon was a majestic peace of landscape, although bit unnerving for people scared of heights (such as me). Henrik and Kristina were far more bold, perhaps too bold (Kristina disappeared for a little while), but we had a good camp and I even saw a family of baboons up close (I hadn’t seen baboons up until this point, so I was quite excited).
Now before we left I had tried to find my way onto a tour since I didn’t have a car, and I ended up getting on of the SANPark wilderness trails, Kruger’s highly coveted 3 day wilderness hikes that need to be booked a year in advance in most cases. I booked mine two days before I left, but I got lucky on a cancellation and ended up going on one of the more popular routes Olifants. The only problem was it started from the Letaba rest camp which was in the north central region of the park, meaning it was a bit further from the more popular southern section. While they was apparently less animals up here, I didn’t find them to be in that much shortage and most of the sightings we made ourselves (ie we were the first people on the scene, whereas down south you’d likely come upon an entire caravan of cars at so much as an impala). And boy did we make sightings. We saw our first elephant within 5 minutes of arrival, and that would set the tone (we actually ended up seeing more elephants than anything else, including impalas for the rest of the day). We saw literally tonnes of elephants, including a massive herd at one point going to the watering holes.
But we also saw giraffes, buffalos (an entire herd), hornbills, zebras, wildebeest, dassie, and more (the big missing items being hippos, leopards, wild dogs, cheetahs, and rhinos). That night we stayed at Mopane rest camp at the edge of northern Kruger and I tried to make a Canadian-style fire to cook our dinner while Henrik desperately tried to find a means to watch the Championship League final (he ended up listening to it on Swedish radio through this cellphone).
The next day we saw even more elephants gathered beautifully around watering holes in the distance like moving behemoths and we found a bridge you walk outside your car on where we observed baby crocs and monitor lizards. The rule is most parts of Kruger that you’re driving through, you’re not supposed to get out of your car. If you drive slowly and carefully, like you’re supposed to, you can surprisingly close to the animals, but apparently as soon as you open the door they bolt. Its not they can’t tell there are humans in the car, but as long the humans stay in the car, the animals don’t seem to see them as much of a threat (much the same way lions and impalas can hang out together so long as the impalas know the lions aren’t hunting at the moment).
We cooled off after a hot day in the pool at the Letaba rest camp before Henrik and Kristina bid me a fond farewell and dropped me off with my tour group.
The tour took us out to a very remote rest camp, deep in Kruger near the border with Mozambique where we lived without electricity in little huts by the river, so close you could hear the hippos wallowing and talking to each other (and we definitely saw plenty of them, mostly in the water, but we also saw a few bolt to the river when we came around a bend).
While we had central hub to drop off bags—thank God—we spent most of the time hiking the mornings in the bush near the camp and the late afternoons by the river in croc and hippo territory (two of the most dangerous animals in Africa, although I still have all my limbs). The area we hiked during the day was beautiful and certainly had plenty of wildlife tracks which our guides helped us understand, but sightings of actual animals were few and far between. The land was quite dry and a recent rash of poaching in the area, especially towards Rhinos which apparently are worth more than gold in Vietnam these days thanks to some crazy guru who claimed that they could cure cancer. That said, I personally think the woman on our group who didn’t understand the whole “be quiet and use your inside voice” mantra didn’t help matters, as she went on and on about birding at full volume and promptly scared even the lions away (at one point we were surrounded by lions, and we heard them, but didn’t see them and they took off). We did see a leopard on the drive back to Letaba, but she other and made such a commotion, including one man asking his wife to hold his hand (despite the fact that we were protected by armed rangers in a massive steel vehicle), that the thing quickly bolted. Same with a jackal that was in mid-poo when we came upon it. Granted most of the group were seniors with thick Swiss German, German, and Cape Town Afrikaans accents (some didn’t understand English that well) and most of them were impressive troopers and managed all the hiking, about 20 km a day, without so much as a complaint. We did manage to catch up with some birds and trees, and a leopard turtle was too slow to get away, and just being in a natural area in Africa so far from civilization was a rewarding experience in itself.
I did have a problem with my end game, as while I did get back to Letaba rest camp, unlike the lady on the phone advised me, there was no means of transferring out of the camp to another camp back to civilization. Thankfully, my recent guide, Steve, took pity on me, and offered me to crash at his place and drive me the next morning to the nearest town Phalaborwa, where I could catch a bus back to Johannesburg.
As such I ended up having a bit of a take your kids to work day with Steve as I helped him collect wood for the next camp out and deliver KFC from Phalaborwa to his colleagues. Steve introduced me to a fair bit of the Letaba staff who seemed like quite the close nit crew, and we ended up having a braai that night (I bought some meat and booze as a thank you) at Steve’s place with two of his ranger friends, Rianna and Travis. We were all about the same age, although Steve clearly knew his stuff and was something of a mentor to the other two.
Rianna at the time was keeping wild Genets as pets in her place. Genets are these wild African mammals, something a small weasel or ferrit, that are distant cousins of the big cats; and they are striped black, grey, and white something like racoons. While they are predators, they’re far too small and cute to be much of a threat to humans. Rianna had apparently rescued them from the wild as cubs and was having trouble letting go, though the scratch marks on her hands made it clear it was time for them to be released. (Since she had two separate species she had to keep them in the two separate rooms, kitchen and bedroom, of her small apartment).
Shy creatures, they spooked pretty quickly once I entered the room and hit behind curtains and ovens. That said, it wasn’t that difficult to coax them out, just use the same method as any dog or cat and simply let them sniff your hand and then shake a toy like an animal to get them to play with it (but be careful, as they will pounce on your hand). At one point, one got comfortable enough to sit on my head and but when it apparently started “marking its territory” in my hair, I was decidedly less so. Still though, wonderful little things.
The next day on the drive back to my early bus, Steve and I encountered perhaps the best sighting of the whole trip to cap it off. A leopard sitting on the road, was stalking a herd of Impala, and we got to see its entire hunting strategy, as it lurked through the bushes ever closer to the Impala. Ultimately the Impala got increasingly nervous until they spotted the leopard and began giving this strange shrill hiss/bleat, basically to tell the leopard “we see you! We see you! Nanner-nanner.” The leopard looked back at us glaringly, as if we had somehow screwed up her hunt, but Steve argued with her and told her she had no one but herself to blame. She trudged off grumpily in the bush, presumably to angle around try the hunt again. All in all, it was a very rare sighting, the kind that Steve said most South Africans wouldn’t believe me if I told them. It was great way to top off a great trip to one of the best wilderness areas in the world.

South Africa Month 3-(Plus Moseyin’in Mozambique and Swingin’in Swaziland)

2011-05-05T12:04:00.001-07:00

In this episode I:
-Have a run in with an ostrich and a crocodile in Swaziland
-Get electrocuted in Mozambique
-Reflect on life
Wow, I can’t believe I’m already over halfway through my internship. It seems like it just started. It seems like it started just yesterday. I’m still a bit groggy from recent travels, so I’ll try not to be too wordsy as per usual.
By now I’ve passed the newbie threshold and can reflect on South African life. How does it compare to life in Canada? Well in many ways it’s pretty much the same. People go to work, go to movies (although they seem to come out 3 months later, have assigned very comfy seating, and butter on your popcorn is unheard of so I hope you like salt). That assigned seating thing really threw me loop, especially as I tend to go to movies no one else wants to see (such as Tomorrow After the War Began the Australian equivalent to Red Dawn), which means I have the theatre to myself anyway (good times). But I digress...
While South African has something like 12 official languages, so in addition to Afrikaans, there are a number of prominent native African languages like Zulu, Xhosa (the language Mandela spoke), Sotho, Swati, etc., but English is also one of them, so if you speak English you can usually understand and be understood (to some extent, accents are thicker than molasses, especially if the person you’re speaking to, first language is a native African one). This means that words like “burger”can sometimes be pronounced more like “bay-ga” meaning your “cheese bay ga” might not actually be a cheese bagel. There’s also a healthy dose of South African slang or alternative terms, such as:
Translator
CANADIAN SOUTH AFRICAN
Trunk of a car Boot of a car
Gas Petro
Barbeque Braai
Sausage Wors (pronounced Vors)
Beef Jerky Biltong
Vegetable Chicken
Soccer Football
Football That game you American pussies play where they wear helmets
Rugby A MAN’S GAME!!
Buddy China
Metis Coloured
To Graduate To Matriculate (just sounds wrong)
Traffic Light Robot
Robot Traffic Light
That last one really threw me for a loop when I first arrived here and would see writing on the road saying “ROBOT AHEAD” and having arrows pointing. Naturally, after a life of being taught that robots are mechanical men who may or may not be trying to destroy all humanity (or at least take our jobs). It took me a good 2 months to figure out they were referring to traffic lights, much to the delight of the local South Africans who would say “Come on man, how could we have robots here? This is Africa, not [North] America.” As if Robots are an everyday occurrence back home.
Of course, I generally get confused for American when I speak (when I don’t speak, I’m Afrikaans). Occasionally someone will guess correctly that I’m Canadian from time to time, claiming they recognize the “softness” of the Canadian accent; or possibly a t-shirt I’m wearing that has a reference to Winnipeg on it (incidentally, I was very surprised to see Winnipeg Director Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg, or “Moj Winnipeg” as it apparently is in Afrikaans, featured prominently on the wall of classics at a local indie theatre, alongside the likes of Gone with the Wind and Alfred Hitchcock. I can only imagine what South African audiences made of the film, if you’ve seen it, or any other Guy Maddin stuff, you might as well). Often a new usually Caucasoid South African I meet, with their often sarcastic confrontational sense of humour, will make some crack about Americans upon meeting me, obvious trying to illicit some sort of response. As someone who has often mocked Americans in the past himself, though, I tend not to know how to respond to this (should I defend them?), so we usually just stare awkwardly at each other, until someone asks “What part of the States are you from?”I and respond “Canada.” Usually this results in the asker going “Ah f*ck, I knew it,” when clearly they did not, and the evening proceeds onwards from there. Sometimes the questions about “America” continue, as clearly the equation between Canadians and Americans is firmly entrenched, and a series of questions about “What’s the Grand Canyon like?” and “What do you think of your president?” ensue. Some even don’t realize we’re a separate country, and are mind-boggled to learn that we not only don’t have a president, we, in fact, still have a queen. Of course, many North Americans, both Canadian and American, still think Africa’s a country anyway (if they ask you what the capital of Africa is, say Istanbul). So fair’s fair, I suppose. Besides, if someone confuses me for an American, they usually apologize, and if they choose to mock me, I treat them like Australians.
So what did I do this month in Johannesburg? Saw a movie called Joburg: Unhinged at the aforementioned Indie theatre (Joburg Unhinged: A locally made doc about life and stereotypes about life in Joburg. Clearly a first film, but a well done one that took years to make. Met the director there). There seems to be a fairly viable film industry here, as I’ve also met the former director of Kung Fu: The Legend Continues at a braai (see above language guide) who was nostalgic about his time shooting the ‘90s tv series in Toronto (he talked at length about “David Carradine” who he referred to as a perpetual drunk who often slept in the trunk of his car. Carradine, of Kill Bill fame, died a couple years back in a hotel in Bangkok with a couple of hookers, which according to his former director “wasn’t all that unexpected.”)
Anywho, uh, I also went to a Sikh New Year’s festival (South Africa apparently has the most Indian outside of India), which involved a lot of traditional Bhangra dancing, and in the “modern traditional” sense, one far too young girl who does far too much booty shaking. The food was good. I tried “Bunny Chow” which is a South African specialty, consisting of a curry (usually mutton) in a carved out of ¼ of a loaf of bread. Its delicious, but you’re supposed to eat it with your hands, which when you’re dealing with messy curry can never end well.
Speaking of South African food, have I mentioned braais, borewors, biltong, and various other meat heavy dishes (have pity for the South African vegetarian). To the outside tongue, these might just seem like barbeques, sausages, and fatty meats (even skim milk is hard to find), but don’t tell that to the South Africans. South Africans love their braais like Canadians love their hockey, passionately to an absurd degree. Of course the South Africans also love their sports, especially cricket, rugby, and football (see translator). I saw a rugby match a couple weeks ago, basically a more chaotic version of our football with a bizarre point system that I didn’t quite understand, but one team eventually won and the security guard informed me that the game was over.
If rugby seems perpelexing, cricket is ten times worse. While its similar to a game called Can Can I played as a kid (where two players with baseball bats in holes dug out of the ground would stand in front of large tin cans, while a pitcher bowled a ball towards one who would try to hit it and score as many runs back and forth between the holes before a can got knocked over), Cricket still puzzles me to a great extent. My host family are cricket fanatics, and generally don’t understand how you cannot recognize the superiority of cricket over all other sports because short games can last entire days (yay!) while traditional games can run for a week, and people will pack food to last the entire game. This justification for this bizarre behaviour will go on for a while before finally ending with the highly debatable declaration “...and that’s why cricket is so exciting.”
But enough about South Africa (until I come back to it). On to Mozambique
MOZAMBIQUE
Not far from high-altitude is the seaside tropical parad-eh, uh place called Maputo, the Mozambican capital. A former Portuguese colony, with a more latin feel and higher level of poverty, Mozambique is South Africa’s Mexico, only its much closer (and it speaks Portuguese, which is not Spanish, despite my best attempts). While malaria isn’t much of a risk in most parts of South Africa, it’s a major issue in Mozambique, whose mosquitoes apparently carry the worst form of it (fantastic!). I was told by both my travel nurse and a veteran backpacker I know in Johannesburg that I could get malaria preventative meds from any pharmacy without a prescription, I didn’t bother getting one, only to find on Good Friday, a day before I left and when all the clinics were closed, that they wouldn’t give me any malaria medication (which I think is a bit silly considering all I literally would have had to do is go to a doctor and say “I’m going to Mozambique” to get one). As luck would have it, I met a Dutch couple on the ferry to an offshore island, Inhaca (pronounced, Inyaca), who happened to be doctors working in rural South Africa, who helped me get some meds. So far, I’ve shown no symptoms (and am probably now in the clear), but I had a few nervous nights where I was layering the bug spray on like skin cream and crawling into the fetal position under mosquito nets and hard-blowing fans.
Speaking of fans, my effort to have more fans in my dorm room (which served the double function of blowing away mosquitoes and keeping down the heat and humidity) resulted in me finding a couple of discarded large metal fans under a counter in my hostel. Anxious to have more fans (and seeing that no one seemed to have used these in a while), I brought’em out and tried to get them going (never thinking that there might be perfectly valid reason why there were hidden and disused in the first place). The first one had no one plug, or I should the plug was ripped off entire, so it could not be used (that should have clued me in, but of course it didn’t).
So I turned to the other fan, which had a plug, which I plugged in. The fan immediately started up, and I got a nasty shock. Now, I thought that was odd, but initially dismissed it as a static shock (despite the fact that I was standing on lineoleum over cement and not carpet). The fan was working, but heard some crackling, and was beginning to think there was some sparks going between the metal of the fans. I know suspected there was an electrical leakage, but for some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to test this by touching the fan. Don’t do this at home.
The fan immediately came a large electrical shock, which cause my hand to jerk back, luckily away from the fan. I had just been electrocuted, gaining a more personal experience with Mozambican voltage than I was hoping for, but thankfully the only shock damage was psychological.
The danger wasn’t over though. I couldn’t just leave the giant fan like that, leaking electricity all over the place. It could electrocute someone else or start a fire or something. I had to unplug the fan. Only problem was the fan was so big it blocked the plug, and sizzled with electricity, eager to shock me again. I gave it as much distance as I could as I snuck my hand around, grabbed the plug, and pulled it out. The fan stopped sparking, and shut itself down, defeated. I laughed at about my brush with death by idiocy (earlier I had been bemoaning the fact that nothing interesting had happened yet that I could write about in my blog).
All in all, mostly due to the malaria scare but a limited time frame as well, I didn’t have that much time in Mozambique only couple of days. But it was enough to get out to an offshore island and popular haunt among South Africans, Inhaca, although the boat ride there took 2 hours both ways and we only had four hours on the island itself, which wasn’t much time, especially when where we ate lunch was on Mozambican time (in other words it took us an hour and a half to get food, which consisted of a chorizo sausage between two slices of bread). The sea ride over was one of the roughest I’ve encountered, as the boat, not too smally, was tossed up and down and side to side by the big choppy waves of the Indian Ocean. While I didn’t get seasick, thank God, I did develop a sudden interest in Mozambican naval safety standards.
Back on dry land, I spent most of my final day in Maputo exploring the city itself. Marveling at the streets, all named after communist leaders (Mozambique was firmly in the socialist camp during the Cold War) like Lenin, Mao, Che Guevara, etc. and now ironically are the main avenues of capitalism in the country (just check the Coca-cola ads at the corner of Karl Marx and Ho Chi Minh). I much preferred exploring the city in daylight, as opposed to the night when my bus initially dropped me off in the middle of nowhere. I had planned to take a taxi, but when the taxis near where the bus stopped were said to be unsafe, I ended up waundering the city (trying to walk towards my hostel), hoping I would find something more savoury, but things got less savoury (its best not to walk around African cities at night on your own, especially with a pile of bags). Thankfully, a local Samaritan saw me and gave me a free ride the rest of the way (and thankfully he was an honest bloke).
Other sights and activities worth mentioning include the Nucleo de Arte (Art Nucleus) where they had a stunning collection of sculptures made out of the remains of AK-47s (while now at peace, civil war plagued the country for over 20 years with the AK-47 at one time being so common its even featured on the Mozambican flag). I also tried a Mozambican meal at a bizarre restaurant hidden deep in an almost abandoned (but still lit up) run down amusement park (think the Brandon Fair if they let it sit there for a while). The food itself, matapas, was basically a mixture of cassava, beans, and other vegetables mixed together and spread over rice. It’s something of an acquired taste.
Getting out of Mozambique to Swaziland without a car meant I had to go by Minibus, which I had used in Joburg sparingly, but had never used to travel between cities. While this is certainly a cheaper option than most, it has some major drawbacks. For one, you’re supposed to be at the bus rank generally by 6 am, which for a night hawk like me is a murderous time to get up. There is no scheduled time for departure, the bus only leaves “when full” so you might be waiting 20 minutes, or you might wait for 4 hours (my bus was more of the 4 hours variety). During this time some random guy with no badge or uniform will grumpily take your passport and disappear without explanation. As you wait an unknown amount of time for your bus to leave, you either be forced to sit in the sweaty stuff minibus or stand out in the hot Mozambican sun (if you leave the bus, it may go without you). Regardless of which place you choose, aggressive hawkers will try to sell you all manner of junkfood and various cellphone plugs (are these things really in high demand, the cell phone plugs I mean?). It’s chaos, its madness, it’s Africa.
When the minibus does finally leave (and somehow your passport has found its way back to you), you can expect to be nice and cozy with the seat next to you on either side (the best you can hope for is that its a pretty girl and not some big momma). Either way it’ll be cramped as the driver tries to jam in as many people as they can. Then there’s always the threat of break downs, border holdups, or vehicular catastrophe (which you when consider the state of these vehicles and the state of their drivers, isn’t that far off a possibility). Most of the drivers are pretty kooky to say the least, swerving from lane to lane, honking and yelling at people on the street that they want to pickup, all while blaring Jesus Gospel music as of on a campaign to convert their passengers. It’s an experience to say the least, but it will get you to Swaziland... eventually
SWAZILAND
My arrival in Swaziland did not go auspiciously unfortunately. The minibus frustrations continued at the border where we were stopped inexplicably a few times. To pass the time, I thought I would take a few photos of the scenery, but this illicited a sudden and hostile response from one of the Swazi border guards who thought her tent was in one of my shots. She stormed at me, asking who had asked me to take a picture of her tent, why would I take a picture here, etc. Etc. The tent, which I never actually took a picture of, was just a square canvas jalopy. Nothing special, I couldn’t even tell she was in it when I first looked. Not sure what the security risk was (although there were rumours of a popular uprising against the Swazi absolute monarchy that month, although this apparently did not materialize). Even if the uprising did occur, i’m not sure how a picture of a tent in the middle of nowhere would serve the cause. My guess is she just wanted a bribe. She threatened to confiscate my camera until I proved that I did not have a shot of her stupid tent by going through all my photos. She eventually lost interest before I got through them all, and I was allowed back on the bus. Welcome to Swaziland.
We continued on to Manzini, Swaziland’s most major city (the country is very rural) and a hectic Minibus turn around, where I had to catch a different minibus amidst the chaos and find my way to the hostel, or as close I could get to it. As I had my bags with me, the guy charged for 2 extra seats, which I thought was fair, but then he decided he would also charge for a 3rd seat, even though I was only using two, just because I was big. I argued with him over this obvious rip off, but eventually conceded as at this point I just wanted to get to the hostel. We eventually sorta of got in the area, with the bus stopping and honking at each person it saw along the way. As I was in the back, and people didn’t seem to eager to move out of my way, I ended up crawling out the back.
That’s when disaster struck. I managed to get my big bag out of the minibus, but it took with my knapsack (including my laptop and iPod other valuables) still on it. I let out a yell that was heard across Swaziland.
Here was my situation. I was stranded in a foreign country on little sleep with no knowledge of who my bus driver (all the minibuses looked pretty much the same, white vans with no corporate logos or uniforms or anything and I had no idea where the minibus was going). And I also couldn’t speak the local language. I was certain that all was lost, but I figured, unlikely, as it was, I would try to track down the minibus that ran with my bag. A nearby Swazi teenager offered to help me find the bag, and we got a nearby taxi driver (although it took a lot of convincing, and them arguing in Swazi, before we moved) in hopes that we could catch the minibus before it went to its next logical stop. This didn’t work though as all the minibus taxis looked the same, so we went to a stop they all went by and hoped the driver would stop there and recognize us. He didn’t, but another driver who had seen me in Manzini (I stood out as the only white guy riding minibuses) luckily knew the guy whose minibus I had boarded, and he called him on a cell, and we agreed to meet at the Manzini turnabout and he would give my bag back to me, for 200 Swazi Emalgenis (basically $30). I wanted to take the taxi right there, but the other driver still wanted to do his route, so we slowly meandered our way back to Manzini, picking up and unloading passengers all along the way, and when we finally got to Manzini and my helpers (who had now grown in number) all bolted from the vehicle inexplicably (they tended not to explain anything that was happening, so I was pretty anxious the whole time). Apparently, my original driver had just driven past them and had gone back on his route with my bag! This time I insisted we chase after him in a regular taxi (ie one that wouldn’t stop constantly and pick people up), and we did, except it decided impromptly to veer off his route, and no one told me of course, and my desperation grew). Eventually they came to a cutoff point, where my original driver would eventually drive past, but I was getting increasingly nervous. FINALLY, my original driver pulled up, I paid him his “holding fee,” and I took the bag back (everything was still inside it). I ended up paying $200 in total with taxi chases and rewards to my entourage, but it was cheaper than trying to replace my computer (although one guy turned into something of a stalker and became angry with me when I said I couldn’t pay for a flight to Canada for him, so that was a bit uncomfortable). Nevertheless, I successfully got my bag back against the odds, and it could have been a helluva lot worse. Very lucky. Although I’ll probably give minibuses a pass from now on.
The next day was fairly low-key by comparison. My backpack firmly locked in the hostel safe, I headed out to the nearby Milwane game reserve, which most people visit in a car, but I didn’t have one, so I just walked around it. This was my first foray into an African wild space, and a decidedly tame one (there were supposed to be no predators for example). The game reserve was in the Lobamba area of Swaziland near the Ezulwini Valley where I was staying. This was the area the king lived, who unlike the Queen of Britain and Canada, rules absolutely (there is a parliament but it just does what he tells it to do). While the Swazis are proud of their culture and history, the king is starting to make some serious enemies, spending national money on lavish palaces for himself and his family (he has many many wives) while the average Swazi is mired in poverty in one of the most HIV-ridden countries in the world. When people rumbled about their misgivings a couple weeks before my visit (there was talk of revolt), the revolt was put down and the king apparently said “the people need to complain less and sacrifice more” completely unaware of the complete hypocrisy of that statement. Frankly I think that’s worse than “let them eat cake.”
At any rate, back to the game reserve, I was walking around and I quickly saw some zebras mixed with horses (which supports the ridiculous theory that zebras are white horses painting with stripes to attract visitors ) and some funky looking goats. Naturally I was taking lots of photos, when I came across what looked like a heap of junk flapping about in the wind. Confused as to what I was looking at, I stopped and made out a rather large bird neck and head amongst the flapping junk. That’s when I realized, this was an ostrich.
So now I knew what it was, what it was doing was an entirely differently question. It appeared to be flapping around and swinging its head it some form of bizarre dance , although it was sitting on the ground. I’m sure this served some evolutionary function.
I began recording its odd behaviour with my camera and after I got enough footage, I stopped and began to walk way at which point the ostrich stopped, stood up, and glared at me. This bird was huge, taller and bigger than me by a long shot. I glared back and took another picture of it standing up. It began to flap and threatened to jump the fence and mess me up. I remembered a nightmare I had as a kid of a giant ostrich-like bird chasing after me and trying to peck my brains out as I hid behind fences, and decided it wise to slowly back away. After I put enough distance between me and the ostrich, it went back to its ground flapping nonsense.
A group of park maintenance workers apparently saw the whole thing and were presently their heads off. Apparently the ostrich, which was male, had mistaken me for another male ostrich and thought I was a sexy threat to its harem, not that I could see any other ostriches around or would really be interested anyway, but I guess that didn’t matter. The workers told me.
“He want to kick you. He almost kick you.”
Apparently ostriches kick things they don’t like. (later on, halfway through my hike I would finally reach the visitors centre, its in an odd place, where they had far too late warnings not to mess with ostriches)
I decided to continue on my hike less the Ostrich decide to give chase after all, but an African bull with the largest horns I have ever seen on a cow was busy munching grass right near the gate I had to pass through. Fighting with ostriches was one thing, but this bull could destroy me with a single charge if so chose. The workers assured me it was docile and wouldn’t bother me, but I tip-toed around it all the same, giving the most space I could.
Finally I got to the visitors centre and stopped for lunch (the visitors centre is oddly located deep within the park, which means you need a map to get to the place that has the maps, which makes no sense, but this is Africa, so they will also charge you R10 for it). The place was full of springbok, gazelles, and other deer-like creatures who liked hiding behind trees just out of shot and then jumping when I got too close. I had some food in the game lodge-like surrounds, enjoying the break from the heat, before decided to walk back. I didn’t want to go back the way I cam lest I run into that damn ostrich again, I looked at the free map on the wall that said I should be able to get back to the park entrance if I followed the path that ran beside the river.
That was safe right? I asked one of the staff. (I was worried about hippos, who, despite being herbivores are the most dangerous animals in Africa. Hungry, hungry hippos is not a game to them). He said I should be fine. “I haven’t seen any hippos or crocodiles today.”
Wait, what was that about crocodiles? I thought this park was supposed to be non-predator.
He said it was, or at least no mammalian predators. They had crocs of course.
Great.
So I’m walking down this path by the river, eyeing every floating stick nervously as I pass to see if there’s a croc or hippo lurking underneath. I never thought to check on land.
But then I saw a strange greenish brown shape covered in large scales poking out of one of the bushes on the other side of the pond, it gradually became bigger until I saw the outline of a 10 foot long giant dinosaur-like lizard.
Yeah there were crocodiles here all right.
Thank God, this one was sleeping and didn’t notice—or seem to care about— a lonely mammal walking by. Once again, I walked away slowly but hurriedly, anxious to get out the park now before I ended up chomped, bored, or pecked. As usual the distance was much longer than they made it out to be and I ended up hitching a ride with an Aussie couple who ended up driving me all the way back to my hostel (as they wanted to go to the craft sale across the street) so that worked out well. (the hostel staff, an American girl and her Afrikaans partner, told me I could hike to both places, but that would have been quite the undertaking in the Swazi sun. Then again they also refused to give me a straight answer about the minibuses, so they perhaps just didn’t like me all that much.)
Other than that, I also visited a Swazi cultural visit where they explained traditional village life and performed traditional dances, followed by a hike to nice waterfall.
DURBAN
I spent the rest of my Easter break in Durban (I was considering going back by Lesotho but the road is apparently only passeable by 4X4 so that idea got nixed. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll make it to Lesotho at some point, perhaps in time for ski season).
Durban is the capital of KwaZulu Natal where the Zulu homeland also is, so there’re many Zulu folks and Zulu hanging around. It’s also said to have the most Indians outside of India, so I was bit expecting a mini-Mumbai, but no dice, Durban’s still very much a South African town. They do have an Indian market where hawkers will pester you at every corner to make you feel like you’re in India, but it lacked the crowds. Still they had some nice artwork, carvings, and I was particularly impressed by the ornately painted ostrich eggs (but I knew, despite the store keeps enthusiasm, there was no way I was getting that home in one piece in a backpack). Another symbol of the Indian cultural presence here is the local delicacy, bunny chow, a fantastic dish consisting of curried mutton (although I usually ordered the chicken) stuffed inside a hollowed out bowl of a loaf of bread, which you use to eat the curry. Delicious!
Durban’s main tourist highlight, however, has to be its gorgeous network of beaches (basically one extremely long and sandy beach that they’ve separated into various names). Under apartheid, this was would be the notorious beach where whites and non-whites were kept separate, though these days its only surfers and swimmers that are segregated.
It being a holiday weekend most everything was closed, so I didn’t really get to see the museums and art galleries that Durban also is famous for, so I ended up spending most of my time poking around the beach. I tried to go surfing, but the wind conditions were too blustery for beginners they said, so I stuck to body surfing which was easier on my budget anyway. I spent a bit of time exploring Durban’s delightfully tacky seaside attractions as well, including an aquarium restaurant with a built in shark tank, a gondola that goes and up then back down for no apparent reason, and an old decrepit arcade in a cement basement of a run-down amusement park where half the games aren’t working and none of them are new; just the way I like it.

My Surprise Sidetrip to the Phillipines

2011-03-30T10:32:00.000-07:00

Sidetrack to the Phillipines-(aka South Africa Month 2)
I was pretty sick with a nasty case of... let’s say intestinal irritation for most of the month I spent in South Africa, so for this one, I’ll focus on my time in the Phillipines.
In this episode, I...
-inexplicably go to the Phillipines
-“Pole-dance” on a river barge in Bohol
-get locked naked in a small closet room in Manila
Okay, so I wasn’t exactly expecting to cross the Phillipines off my list, being in Africa (and therefore nowhere near it), but employers were having their tri-annual in person global conference and they were willing to cover the transportation costs, so why not?
The flight from South Africa was a long one as you might expect. We went through Hong Kong and Manila (changing planes of course), before switching to the domestic Phillipine Airlines for the flight to Bohol, an island in the southern central Visayas chain and the home of our conference. I had heard Phillipine Airlines didn’t exactly have the greatest reputation, and while I think the planes I was on were modern enough and fine, it didn’t exactly help my aviophobia when the pilot would make abrupt announcements like “PLANE TAKEOFF!” “PLANE LAND NOW!” “BAD WEATHER! PLANE MAY GO BACK MANILA. PLANE MAY NOT BE ABLE TO LAND BUT WE TRY!” (Bohol, being in the tropics and quite hot and wet, can whip some nasty storms without much warning). I’m thankful they didn’t inform that the airport in Bohol apparently also lacks a proper tower and so the pilot had to “eyeball it” until after we landed.
The airport in Bohol, named Tagbilaran (say that 10 times fast) after the city it is in, is quite a small (its surrounded by houses), crowded facility, with one runway and only enough space for two jets at any given time, though there are frequent flights every couple hours. The only airport for an island of 1.2 million, it can seem a tad chaotic to outside eyes, but that’s life for many Phillipinos.
Of course, I can’t complain. The resort my organization booked us into, the Amorita Resort, was far from chaotic, it was probably one of the nicest places I’ve ever stayed, with spacious rooms, a pool that seemed have no rail, and a team of hotel staff overly eager to bend over backwards to help you (just try to carry your own luggage and see what happens). If that wasn’t enough, the hotel sat on a gorgeous cliff overlooking the ocean, right beside a long sandy beach that you could easily walk down to (at low tide anyway), where you could find plenty of restaurants, hotels, and other services. So while my days were spent at the conference, my evenings were spent on the beach.
While I was here to work, I did manage to find time for a couple of excursions around Bohol and a couple of surrounding small islands. A group of us went snorkelling off an island just off the coast, where you could see the seafloor going from a shallow shelf to a cliff diving into the depths. These environments are great for colourful fish and it was amazing how easy it was to just dip your head underwater and see a multitude of beautiful fish that from the surface you would never know where there. Of course, I would have seen more if I found a way to keep the waves from filling up my snorkel and giving me an unexpected mouthful of saltwater sending me coughing to the surface.
My Swedish friend Henrik had no such aquatic achille’s heel. In fact, I’m not sure I even saw him come up for air the entire time we were there. Even when they made us switch boats on the island, he refused, saying he’d just swim it, which he did.
Meanwhile we waited while the island village men tried to wrestle a massive and resisting hog onto a flimsy canoe to be taken across the water to slaughter (can’t say I blame the hog for resisting). The boats are generally small, wooden, narrow, lifejacket-less canoes with outriggers to give them stability in the rough ocean waves.
Nearby, we also went to see dolphins, but there were too many other boats with the same idea, so basically one dolphin would come up and blow its air, and immediately 15 vessels would pounce on the area, undeniably driving whatever dolphin or fish were there far away.
The tour on land was a bit more successful, not in spotting dolphins but in spotting land-based landmarks which have the advantage of being on land and generally not moving. This tour included beautifully worn Spanish-era churches (including one with a miracle spring), sites where Spanish conquistadors and local chieftains made alliances, a butterfly park with large beautiful butterflies in colours like blue, green, yellow, you name it. We also went to a sanctuary for the Phillipine Tarsier, a rare, primitive-looking, and mini primate that, while once wide spread, only exists in the wild on a couple of islands, Bohol being one.
From an evolution standpoint, these guys are fascinating, because they look like a missing link between the earliest placental mammals (which were probably rodent-like) and monkeys (and eventually humans). They’re actually tiny things, one could easily fit in my hand, with long rat-like tails, a big ball-like furry body, and big black eyes that take up a third of their body (they’re nocturnal). The only thing obviously primate about them is their hands (yes they have hands), with really skinny, bony fingers that they use to wrap around tree branches. They are cute as hell. Despite their size and appearance, they’re apparently one of the most carnivorous of primates, going after insects, small lizards, and even fling themselves at small birds.
That said, interactions between tarsiers and humans, have not been good for the former. The tarsier is a very sensitive creature, and apparently ones that have been taken as pets (something that’s not supposed to be done) often don’t last very long, committing suicide by banging their fragile foreheads. The sanctuary itself was tiny, located right beside a noisy highway, with small cages, debatable care (we noticed one of the tarsiers appeared to be injured and we were quickly dismissed by the attendant) and an endless parade of tourists, told not to use flash photography or touch the tarsiers, but no doubt being typical tourists. Even in our group, which generally consisted of people working on environmental issues, one guy’s stubborn insistence on taking a picture of a tarsier with his camera (which shot a red light on its subject) ended up waking up the tarsier which had been trying to sleep (it was daylight after all, and the things are nocturnal). It didn’t help that he accidentally turned on his flash.
All and all, the tarsiers seem to be in a lot of trouble, and their only hope is that there’s enough jungle left for enough of them to live their lives unmolested.
If I had a been a bit saddened by my experience with the tarsiers, I was pleasantly surprised by the chocolate hills, Bohol’s most famous tourist attraction, a series of highland odd shaped hills that look like the top half of an egg. These hills are surprisingly impressive, and there were a ton of them. No actual chocolate though, that name apparently comes from an American researcher who visited during the short dry season and saw them as chocolate brown.
After this, we went for a dinner cruise on the Loboc river, a surprising large river for a not-so-large island (they do get a lot of rain mind you). It was night now, but you could see the lush palm trees lining either side lit up by Christmas lights as we cruised down the way.
A journey into the heart of darkness, this was not, as while we eventually came to a dark and especially jungly bend of the river, and our boat mysteriously decided to go ashore, the lights came on and we wwere greeted musically by the “Loboc River Surprise Choir,” a 15 person class of children and their instructor who sing traditional songs and dance (and no doubt surprise tourists on a regular basis). The choir was surprising good and the children were fantastic dancers. In not much time, the tourists were brought into the dancing as well, which we naturally did poorly. Some of the dances involved “churning the butter”with an actual butter churner, pretending to play the ukelele, and “pole dancing” which isn’t what it sounds like. In this traditional dance, two girls grab either end of two poles and they bang them on the ground twice, and together once, keeping up that rhythm. The challenge is dance through the moving poles without getting your ankles bruised, and to do it with style. Naturally children were much better at this than I, but what I lacked in skill and I made up in enthusiasm.
After the conference ended, I spent another day or two lounging on the beach in Bohol, and getting a great sunburn, before heading to Manila for a couple days, before heading back to South Africa.
If the beaches of Bohol are heaven, Manila is... well something else. Said by some to be the most densely populated city on the planet, the chaos starts as soon as you leave the airport (and in some cases even before that).
Manila is a gritty, crowded, and congested megalopolis that can be hard to love, especially when you’re getting chased down the street by street hawkers, dubious cab drivers, and “masseuses” offering massages and “other business.” That said, its not all bad news. If you like exotic automobiles, the classic Phillipino jeepney is sure leave an impression. Originally constructed from leftover American jeeps after WW2, these symbols of Phillipine culture are the local equivalent of the South African minibus taxi, except far more colourful. They look a bit like small silver school buses, decorated head to toe with colourful frills, biblical passages, and seemingly anything the driver might want to throw on there. Charming as they are in the daylight, the seeming lack of muffler on them makes decidedly less so at night, when their trademark honk and roar may rustle you from your sleep on a consistent basis.
Unfortunately, I never figured out how to use them, focusing on the metro system mostly. Coming home from the National Museum of the Phillipines on rush hour (the Museum had a few interesting exhibits, although that time it seemed most of the good stuff was in storage or “under restoration.”) The metro was definitely the most crowded train I have ever been, although I did manage to befriend a Phillipino-American girl, Jenny, and her non-English-speaking boyfriend (well at least I befriended her, not sure the boyfriend liked me all that much). She was shocked to see a Caucasian on the subway, but as I was good degree of body mass bigger than most of the people on the subway, I didn’t take her warnings about crowding that seriously, until a rush hour rush swarmed the train, I got shoved from behind towards her girlfriend, and the poor girl got sandwiched somewhere between us (although she seemed to be okay with it, I guess it was preferable to alternatives). Eventually we got to my stop and I literally had to shove my way through the crowd just to get off and avoid retrace my journey.
On Saturday, I had an unexpected experience. Staying as I was at a budget hotel with a shared bathroom, I went to shower first thing in the morning as I normally do. Now, these bathrooms aren’t like western bathrooms, they’re more like closets with a toilet (possibly), a sink, and a shower (but no curtain, so the toilet’s always wet) crammed in. I didn’t want to hold up the rooms with the toilets in case someone else came, so I opted to shower in the one room that didn’t have one. But as I finished freshing myself up, I had a bit of a surprise. The door knob had come off its footing, not enough to actually fall off, but enough it could no longer operate the latch. I found myself locked in a closet with nothing to wear but a towel.
I soon realized I was in a MacGyver situation. Using nothing but the contents of my shaving kit (which included Mach 3 razors, dental floss, tooth paste, rolled up sunblock, and various remnants of cold medication) I was going to have jimmy-rig an escape from my damp prison. Using my best cognitive skills, I tried to come up with a solution and finally I had one. I banged loudly on the door and yelled for help until someone finally heard me and let me out.
All and all, although Manila wasn’t really my favourite place in the world, the Phillipines does have some beautiful and quite affordable destinations that are worth checking out, although I won’t be able to afford the Amorita Resort on my own budget any time soon.

South Africa-MONTH ONE

2011-03-06T07:47:00.000-08:00

South Africa – MONTH ONE (JOHANNESBURG)
In this episode, I...
-Visit Soweto, South Africa’s most notorious township
-Walk around
-Cause a diplomatic incident with a Swedish diplomat
Arriving in Johannesburg from Dubai, I had already been on the road for a week or so, but landing in Africa (said to be the homeland of us all) for the first time is a surreal experience to say the least. My first impressions of Jo’burg were a city that’s quite spread out, basically a series of disparate suburbs climbing up and down one hill or another. Compared to Dubai, it’s helluva lot more green with rolling hills and lots of vegetation. It’s also a lot grittier, but perhaps not as gritty as you think.
with expressways going every which way and following system unbeknownst to many (including many lifetime residents who are heavily dependent on their in-car navigators despite the fact that such devices get just as confused in these streets as humans do). Problem is a lot of the streets were renamed after apartheid and the acceptance of the new names has been met with mixed success, so getting from point A to B can get a little hairy; especially if you don’t actually have a car here (which I don’t).
I heard legends before I came about the aggressiveness of Jo’burg drivers and it generally lives up to the reputation, with many religiously touting the often-quoted false principle that you’re safer if you drive faster, while they spin around a roundabout and charge over another speedbump—both quite plentiful and both completely ineffective in slowing reckless drivers. For some reason, standard transmissions are more affordable here than automatics and most cars come as compact standards, so while you’re clinging to your seat, the driver is also jabbing you in the leg with the stick shift.
That said, many of the myths around Johannesburg aren’t as well deserved. Yes, crime here is an absolute serious issue—a product of a mixture of poverty, corruption, and bureaucracy—but its not like I need an armed guard just to walk outside. I’ve walked on my own now numerous times without issues. As long you keep yourself safe and use common sense, you should be fine. Just mind the drivers.
That said, South Africa’s troubled history has created something of a security culture. Everyone above a certain class, black, white, or whatever, lives in gated compounds, often topped with barbed wire (or even sparking electric fences) other security apparatuses. The most annoying are the guard dogs which bark venom at you for the crime of walking past their gate. For some who loves dogs and has fond memories of canines greeting guests at the door, the fact that these dogs have been trained to snarl at any stranger that walks by is a bit disheartening but such is life.
The place I’m staying doesn’t have any dogs, although they do have 2 cats, 3 chickens, and apparently giant tarantula-like spiders as my hostess Anriette loves to tease me about. I live in a small basement suite under the deck, while Anriette and her family live in the main house upstairs. The property’s quite nice, very lush and vegetative even with a pool (although its not heated and usually too cold to swim in). To give you an idea of the biodiversity around here, Anriette says that over 60 different bird species have been spotted on her property alone.
The neighbourhood is called Melville and is considered the hip Bohemian neighbourhood of Joburg. It’s quite safe, although you sometimes hear otherwise, and while it apparently has lost some of its lustre in recent years—so the locals say—its still a good hangout place.
Soweto
Of course, its not the only neighbourhood I’ve visited and not the most famous in Jo’burg by far.
Soweto, while technically a separate city, is a place whose very name brings up memories of racial segregation and oppression under apartheid. That said, Apartheid ended over 20 years ago, and Soweto didn’t freeze into a time capsule. One of the things that surprised me most about my tour of Soweto was how much wealth did exist in the city.
Unless Rocinha, the slum I visited in Rio de Janeiro where everyone but the drug dealers and an odd soccer player were desperately poor, Soweto had very obvious class differences. The neighbourhood has seen the rise of a burgeoning black middle class—and like middle classes everywhere, they want their two car garages.
And so you see them, large suburban homes with fancy cars and paid servants, displaying a wealth I could never hope for. This is the new Soweto.
But it is not the whole Soweto.
Beyond the wealth suburbs, you only have to cross the street to find the upper lower classes. These houses are more like what you would find in Rocinha, hastily thrown together with whatever was available. Still they seem reasonably stable and livable and the rule of law still applies.
Beyond though you can seem some of the darker sides of Soweto, row housing like shantytowns occupied primarily by often illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe. These sections are said to be run by gangs and are said to be avoided, but even here you can see new decent construction replacing the old houses. It’s hard to say how long the show homes have been there and whether or not the movement of people into the new buildings—said to be plagued by corruption—is going quickly (like most things in Africa, I’d say its probably not), but its nice to see that some progress has been made (especially compared to Rocinha, where the situation seemed static).
Some parts of Soweto, notably the area around the former homes of Nelson “Mandiba” Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu have become regular tourist haunts, almost overrun in fact. But all in all, it appears to be a place where hope for a better tomorrow has already taken them along way.
Apartheid Museum
The most famous museum in Johannesburg is actually a private enterprise—although its curation is much more easily to follow than poor public Museum Afrika—the museum is massive and much like the Holocaust Museum in Berlin has visitors experience the history through artistic means—such as being issued a card saying whether they are white or non-white and being told to enter through separate doors. The museum does a great job of explaining how the system of apartheid came about and the horrors of it, but without demonizing the Afrikaans. Lots of videos of key figures, both for and and against apartheid are played and there is a room full of nooses standing as a memorial to those who lost their lives fighting to bring apartheid down.
The Origins Centre
Africa is the birthplace of humanity (which makes apartheid highly ironic, since we all originated here and are effectively just cousins). And while at some point I’d like to get out of town to explore the Cradle of Humankind itself (where some of the earliest human remains in the world have been found) it looks like I’ll need to rent a car for that.
The Origins Centre based at the University of Witswaterand (pronounced Vits, don’t ask me why) has a great little exhibit on the evolution of humankind and the people of South Africa. Apparently they used to take your DNA tell you what your ancestry was (Europeans for example, are all descended from only 7 seven who each entered Europe at different epochs, the so-called “Seven Mothers of Europe.” There’re similar women for all the other continents). For someone like me who loves history—or in the case pre-history—minus the technical stuff about australopithecine bones and what have you, this was a great place to spend a day, although I really want to get out to the Cradle of Humankind and see the real deal. Anyone willing to lend me their car?
Speaking of South African peoples, most of the people I’ve come into contact here are Afrikaans, although I do work with a couple of black South Africans as well, although most of them are from Zimbabwe (is everyone from Zimbabwe? Is there anyone left there?), Kenya, and other nearby African countries. Being Caucasian, I’m often mistaken for Afrikaans until I open my mouth, at which point I’m promptly mistaken for being American (“What part of the States are you from?” and such are always great questions).
That said, I will say I haven’t seen as much racial tension as South Africa’s reputation had let me to suspect. Maybe I’ve been protected from it, but generally speaking people seem to get along regardless of whether they are black, white, “coloured” (South African term for mixed-race), brown, yellow, or whatever. Granted whites and other non-blacks seem, on the whole, to be far wealthier on average, the main division in this country these days appears to be based on class rather than race.
Case in point, I went to an open-mic comedy show at a local legendary spot called Cool Runnings (love the name) a Jamaican-themed pub. The stand-up comedians, while predominantly white there were black and Indian comics as well, performed before a primarily black, although there were other groups there as well. Anyway, like many basement stand-ups, these guys didn’t hold any punches when it came to jokes about the various ethnicities in South Africa and they didn’t really care too much for political correctness either. Some told jokes about blacks that back home might’ve got a white comic lynched, but here sent a primarily black audience rolling the aisles laughing. Well there weren’t really aisles, the place was full wall to wall.
I consider that a good thing. If both/all sides can joke openly and with each other about their country’s issues with race, without being racist or worrying about appearing as such, probably a lot more honest discussion comes of it.
Although it must have been hair-raising for my buddy Henrik Almostrom.
Henrik is my work mate and my closest friend here in South Africa. He and I went to the comedy show while his gf Katrina was out of town.
If I offered a prize for the most Swedish person I ever met, it would be Henrik.
Tall, blonde, big ears, big grin, and with a fashion sense that can only be described as European, Henrik’s a great guy, but he gets a LOT of attention I can tell he’d prefer not to have. I’m used to people I’m with getting hit on more than I do, but usually its considered a bad thing. Not this time.
A couple times we’ve gone out for drinks now, Henrik and I have been just having a chat over a beer and some drunk inexplicably decides to aggressively hit on him despite various messages to back off. Henrik, to his credit, stays friendly through most of it, although he’s clearly uncomfortable when they won’t leave him alone.
Anyways at the comedy show, they were clearly identifying anyone in the audience who might be foreign and having a go at them: Americans, Greeks, a couple of Indians from India, and you could see Henrik hiding in the dark when the MC scoured the crowd. That said, we had a good time.
One thing about being Canadian, its sometimes hard to pick on us. I remember once a comic tried to pick on me and it went something like this.
“You’re Canadian?”
“Yeah.”
“I went Toronto once. It was pretty clean.”
“Um. Okay...”
“Yeah, that’s all I got.”
But the Swedes have IKEA, and that’s a whole new kettle of worms.
That said, Henrik got a good laugh at my expense a little bit later on. While both of us were helping at a conference that had been poorly organized by one of APC’s rivals, I was doing an ombudsman type job with name tags, as a lot of people had their tags lost or screwed up.
One guy came up to me and said.
“I am not from the Swedish embassy.”
I looked at his tag. It said Swedish embassy on it, so I crossed it out with a felt marker and handed it back to him, jokingly answering “there you go, ambassador.”
To which he gruffly replied “not anymore.”
Henrik then explained that this man was the former Swedish ambassador. To which I responded, “Oh.”
A little bit later on, we had a talk about American politics and I guess he forgave me as the former ambassador asked me what the word “deification” meant after I mentioned the “deification of Ronald Reagan.”
All and all its been an eventful month and I’m sure the next one will be just as eventful.
Until then.

Dad and I in Dubai

2011-01-27T01:49:00.000-08:00

Dad and I in Dubai
In this episode I...
-Smoke a sheesha pipe with my pops
-Sneak into the world’s most luxurious hotel for free
-Ski
Ah Dubai. Whether you think of it as the Jewel of the Persian Gulf, the Vegas of the Middle East, or that place where underwater hotels and desert ski resorts seem like viable business decisions, odds are you’ve heard of the headline-grabbing boomtown, even if you’ve never head of the U.A.E. (the United Arab Emirates, the country in which Dubai lives).
Like many people, I found myself headed to Dubai en route to somewhere else (in my case, Johannesburg) taking advantage of the savings in airfare. That said, Emirates airlines are no no-thrills enterprise. The flight to Dubai from Toronto was the smoothest (and longest) I’ve ever been on, with a brand new aircraft, free-flowing liquor in coach, your choice of movies, games, tv, etc, and even cameras mounted on various parts of the aircraft so you can follow what’s happening (including watching the pilot’s view of takeoff and landing). That said, Emirates is a state-owned corporation in Dubai and its diplomatic maneuvering to get more landing rights in Toronto caused a major diplomatic snafu between UAE and Canada, resulting in new visa restrictions which added a huge headache and almost a large new sum to the trip. Luckily though, everything got resolved and I ended up not having to pay a large fee as had been the fear.
Once arrived, we checked into our B&B, a pleasant modern villa in a residential neighbourhood run by a friendly Indian couple, Ancy and Thomas, and their Nepalese assistant, Debela. We were the only guests staying there at the time (they only have two rooms), so we quickly felt right at home, having drinks on the balcony and barbequing up kebabs in the backyard under the bougainvillea. Hard life eh? Of course we did eventually get out and explore the place.
Dubai is a city on a grand scale. On a scale even greater than Shanghai, you see new buildings everywhere, constant construction, and the 2008 economic slowdown appears to be nothing more than a slight hiccup. Dubai often gets criticized as being too new and superficial, but really, when you consider that 100 years ago this place was nothing more than a fishing, pearling village of less than 20 000, the fact that it has blossomed in a vibrant, clean, safe, multicultural, and functioning metropolis in basically a matter of decades is nothing to sneeze at (granted oil revenue might have had something to do with it, although now oil represents only 6% of the local economy).
Unlike some “new”cities, however, Dubai has not completely built over its history. The old part of town, especially the area around the Bastakiya Quarter, retains its traditional style architecture, hectic souqs (markets), and wooden boats still plying the same trade routes they have for centuries (although now tourists represent a big moneymaker for them). There also plenty of mosques—in the new part as well as the old part of the city—with the call to prayer being heard 5 times daily (and sometimes far too early in the morning) and many—but not most—people walking around in traditional dress—women in black often in hijabs or burkas (must be really hot in the Arabian sun) and men in white robes with wrapped head scarves (although occasionally these head scarves will carry a name brand like Calvin Klein).
Many people had told of us of great bargains to be found in the various souqs in the old quarter, including the cloth souq, the spice souq, the fruit and vegetable souq, the seafood souq, and most famously the gold souq; where aggressive salesmen try their damndest to convince you they have “good price.” Unfortunately, the prices, in our experience, weren’t terribly good, being far higher than what we were accustomed to at home (even with bargaining accounted for), but this may have been due to the price of gold being so high. The situation was more dire for my Dad than I as he had promised to get my Mom a necklace.
While the Dubai Museum and other places in the area had some interesting sights, our most memorable experience was probably went we tried to go for dinner in the district. Our guidebook had recommended a place called Bastakiya Nights as one of the few places offering authentic Emirati cuisine, although it was bit off the road and so we had trouble finding it. At that time of night, the area was quite deserted, and we only saw one place where people appeared to be sitting and eating, so while there was no sign (just multitudes of UAE flags and celebratory portraits of the ever-unsmiling Prince Makmoud Al Bin Rasheed Something... basically the king of Dubai). The Prince and his royal family, although never apparently smiling, are often credited with steering Dubai into a modern liberal (as far as the Middle East goes) prosperous city and a bastion of safety and stability in the world’s most notoriously rickety region. But I digress.
So basically we went into this place assuming it was the restaurant. After all there were people there, they appeared to be barbequing something, and they quickly encouraged us to sit. A series of men with varying degrees of English skills, gave us first a kebab, then some coffee, and then an orange. While in another room it appeared a family had a gathered to do karaoke or something and another group of men had opted to do the Arabic version of bridge. I asked one of the men what he called the kebab. He looked at me, confused, and said “chicken.”
It quickly became clear that there was no menu and this was no restaurant, but what it was remained a mystery. Dad suggested that we might consider leaving.
Soon though two men started preparing a sheesha pipe for us, and insisted we stay and smoke the sheesha (traditional middle eastern smoking pipe, something like a bong). Before long, Dad and I found ourselves smoking oriental pipes in what his mind must been something akin to an opium den. We discreetly left and found our intended restaurant 10 metres away.
New Dubai.
The new quarter of Dubai (ie about 80% or more of Dubai) is a world apart. Shiny new glass towers rise up almost effortlessly from the sand while a state-of-the-art metro runs speeds along. Dubai is an architect’s dream city, although perhaps not a pedestrian’s. Very much a car city, it seemed inevitably whenever we tried to walk somewhere, a large expressway would end up barring our way. Most of the time, when we asked for walking directions, people would say “taxi,” although we got annoyed with taxis after it became clear a couple of drivers where obviously taking overly circuitous routes. We tried using public transportation, and while the metro is new and very affordable, it seems every station we wanted to get off at was still quite far from where we wanted to go. For example, at the Dubai Mall station, we still had to take a bus to get to the Dubai Mall, which I found perplexing.
Speaking of malls, while I know West Edmonton Mall was, at least back in the 90s, the world’s biggest mall, I’m sure one (or 15) of Dubai’s shopping behemoths must give it a run for its money (if not entirely eclipsing it). These malls are gargantuan and appear everywhere (you cannot enter any major attraction in New Dubai, it seems, without first entering a major shopping complex). Ski Dubai is at the Mall of the Emirates, the Bhurj Khalifa is entered via the Dubai Mall, even the Palm Island has its own mall. The stores are mostly high end, and many ring familiar, but taking an American dream and turning into a Dubai one on a massive scale seems par for the course around here.
Speaking of massive scale, the scale of Dubai’s offshore developments are astronomical (and I don’t just mean the proposed galaxy islands proposed to be built to link the 4 km offshore world islands to Dubai). Even the Palm Island, the first artificial island and the one that started this offshore reclamation craze, is large enough to support its own metro line with 4 stops. The islands inspire awe to say the least, but one must wonder what the environmental assessment report must have been like. They’ve proposed four of these palm islands alone (most of new ones to be bigger and grander than the previous) with one expected to be larger than the city of Hong Kong.
But that in essence is the new Dubai, making the impossible happen. Tallest building in the world by 300 m? You got it. Indoor ski resort in the middle of a desert? Done. Underwater hotel? Still working on it (that one may have been too much even for Dubai, or perhaps they decided to pool their money and build a bridge to the moon instead).
I did manage to go skiing at the indoor ski hill, mainly for novelty value rather than anything else. The hill is surprisingly long, although realistically there are only 2 runs. There is a four person chair-lift going up and a t-bar on the side for “experts.” The cost is about the same as going skiing in Minnedosa in Manitoba, although you get far less time (but they do provide you with a fetching ski suit that everyone on the hill is inevitably also wearing). In typical Dubai fashion, there is a restaurant, cafe, and shop, halfway down the hill where you can stop and freshen up even if you’ve only been skiing for two hours or less.
The hill is immensely popular, probably due to its rarity in this part of the world (where else are you going to go skiing on the Arabian peninsula?), and its quite amusing to watch kids having perhaps their very first snow fight and families riding the “chairlift ride” up and down, apparently just for the thrill of it. Unlike in China though, there were quite a few people here who knew how to ski and ski well, and raced down the slope without much issue. The snow was surprising easy to ski on, although it did feel a bit like skiing in a giant freezer. Used to I am to uneven surfaces while skiing, I took some getting used to the straight gradients on some parts of the hill.
The Bhurj Khalifa was more of a disappointment. Not only was it difficult to find the entrance, but after waiting for an hour in line, we were told we would have to come back in 3 hours if we wanted to go up the tower (or pay $100 to go up now), so we ended up walking out. It’s an impressive tower, but I’ve been to the top of a few towers already, and that price was as steep as its sides.
We did however see the Dubai fountain, a set of dancing fountains timed to music in the pond just outside the tower (Think of them as an elaborate classier version of the Brandon Shopper’s Mall robots). The fountains were stunning, although watching them dance to “I will always love you” by Whitney Houston with my Dad was a bit weird.
Earlier that day, however, we did manage to get into another famous Dubai tower, the Bhurj Al Arab, the self-described seven-star hotel (often claimed to be the world’s most luxurious). As a hotel with such exclusive guests who can drop a couple thousand dollars a night on a hotel room, you can’t just stroll into the place. The hotel is built on its own island, linked by secure bridge to the mainland and you must pass through a checkpoint before even getting on the bridge (most actual guests arrive by helicopter landing on a James Bond style helipad jutting out from the hotel).
That said, the hotel has a multitude of restaurants, none of which you can afford to eat at but at which you can make a reservation. With a record of our restaurant reservation, passing through security was a breeze, and we simply didn’t show up to the restaurant itself, choosing to explore the hotel’s environs instead (the hotel’s gorgeous and stunning if a bit gaudy).
Naturally, we’re not the only ones who tried this stunt. And there’s an army of smiling security types throughout the hotel, who are more than happy to prevent you from walking into certain areas. That said, with a little persistence and maneuvering we managed to see most parts of the hotel, even taking a ride to the top in the glass elevator that goes up the hotel’s spine overlooking the gulf. This last one was a bit of a thrill ride, as I pushed the top floor button on a lark, not thinking the elevator would go, but sure enough the doors closed and we found ourselves immediately shooting towards the sky, my poor Dad—who has a fear of heights—startled to say the least.
It didn’t help that the next day we went on a desert safari in a land cruiser, in which our driver, akin to a taxi driver, drove as fast and as precipitously as he could up, down, over, around, and through 20 foot high sand dunes. It was quite the thrill ride, and I got more to experience more of the desert than I bargained for. Our driver, said he had been on the job for 20 days, but he was self-taught and therefore experienced. He also came from Pakistan near the border region with Afghanistan, and he and Dad had a good chat about why he came to UAE while I tried to keep in my lunch.
When not on a hair-rising ride, however, the desert can seem quite peaceful, with rolling dunes everywhere. After our ride, we went to a “Bedouin Camp”where we entertained with camel rides (camels incidentally, nearly buck you off them when they sit down, luckily my groin got stopped by the handle or I would have been thrown forward. Good times), a Bedouin feast, henna tattoos, and my Dad finally got a necklace for Mom after some intense haggling with a very persistent salesman.
There was also a belly dancer demonstration for us, and the gal put on quite a show. It’s interesting that belly dancing developed in a part of the world where women are so famously forced to cover up and pretend to be non-sexual. In contrast, belly-dancing is both visibly arousing and visibly visible, but still with a bit of class, and its a shame if its been clamped down on recent years. It might be one of the few areas where women can oppose restrictive clothing without being seen as foreign.
All and all it was a great trip, and great experience to have with my Dad, especially since he doesn’t get to travel as much as I do and has now seen a part of the world that once seemed impossibly far away.

Perilous Peru and Equatorial Ecuador

2009-06-05T12:18:00.001-07:00

Perilous Peru and Equatorial Ecuador

In this episode, Ryan…
-wins a trivia contest in Cuzco
-enters a convent in Quito, Ecuador
-encounters Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez

Puno, Peru

Border-crossings in South America make me yearn for the ease of which I traveled through Europe (gotta love that Schengen Agreement), though of course if it weren’t for awkward border crossings, I probably wouldn’t have half as many stories about South America now would I?

Coming from Bolivia, I was beginning to expect anything and everything (or nothing as the case might be) from buses, so when I was told we were to be whisked to Peru in a glorified Mini-van with jimmy-rigged fold-out seats (the bus companies are determined to increase passenger capacity and they’re not about to let a silly little thing like customer comfort or vehicle safety get in the way).

So after getting us all packed up and conditioned, we prepared ourselves mentally for a long uncomfortable journey.

The bus stopped about half hour later and we were kicked off and told to get a new one. This was the Peruvian border, and we’d be having a new bus on the other side. First though we had to go through customs on both sides, waving good-bye to the smiling photo of Evo Morales for the last time before waving “hello” to the smiling photo of whoever it is that is currently president of Peru (I think it’s some latino guy).

The Peruvian border office seemed markedly cleaner than Bolivia’s and I took this as a positive omen, and I needed one as my intestine was still doing cartwheels from my Bolivian adventure. The bus we were on was much bigger too, and though the lights kept flickering on and off (mostly off) and I still had to sit diagonally (on account my knees kept hitting the seat in front of me), at the end of the day, I made it to Puno (the major Peruvian city on their side of Lake Titicaca).

At first glance, Puno doesn’t seem a whole lot different than Bolivia (although perhaps a little cleaner). That said, the town does have a few markets, restaurants, and copious amounts of cheap video game arcades that made me fall in love with the place (although I probably wasted a few too many “Nuevo soles” on Metal Slug 4).

Puno’s also the jumping off point for voyages to the Peruvian islands in Lake Titicaca, although I was only able to visit the Islas Flotantes (Floating Islands), which were a series of aboriginal villages built by the Uros people to escape subjugation by the Incas. Think of them as the Venetians of Mesoamerica (not to be confused with the Venezuelans who were also named after Venice because aboriginal villages there were also built out over water). In Venezuela and Venice though, the villages were firmly built from the lake bottom up (or just built on stilts), where as these islands, made of mud and buoyant reeds from Lake Titicaca, actually float, which gives them some unique advantages. For one, you never have to worry about rising water levels or flooding (although you might have to worry about sinking if your reeds rot out too much and you haven’t replaced them), and if some foreign people is threatening to make nasty from the shore, you just haul up your anchor and float towards Bolivia. Neat trick eh?

Of course, these days the islands experience daily tourist invasions (although they’re just as happy to relieve you of your Nuevo sole as the next guy) and touring them is neat (although very touristy). You can expected to run a gauntlet of hawkers of traditional handicrafts at some point in your visit, though make sure you buy from the artist directly if you can.

Because the miniscule islands are not interconnected, you have to take boats to travel between them (which makes independent travel nigh impossible), so basically you’re always with a herd of other tourists (Incidentally you have to be very careful getting off boats as its hard to tell where the reeds are strong enough to support you. Also they’re springy, so if you jump off the boat, you tend to bounce). At some points I tried wandering away from the group, only to have some old guy yell at me to get back with them, but eventually I found a hunter dude who showed me the bird he killed and his gun (his gun was about 10 times larger than the bird it killed, I’m surprised it didn’t obliterate the thing) and would be cooking for his family in next day or two (meanwhile it sat outside in a swamp unrefrigerated). He also showed me his house and his kids, had a couple of those too, which was very small and made of the same grass reeds as the island it floated on (we’re talking the size of a tool shed back home with upwards of six people living in it). He was very proud though and didn’t mind the clutter. He didn’t even ask me for money, knowing full well I’d have to give him some later as he was the ferryman tasked with canoeing us off the island.

(One last note on Puno. Advertisements for RC Cola were everywhere. Apparently its considered an aphrodisiac in Peru).

Cuzco

After Puno, I headed to Cuzco which is famous as the former capital of the Incas (and being not far from Machu Piccu, relatively speaking). Cuzco itself is very hilly old colonial city (many Spanish colonial buildings remains) and is quite beautiful to walk around (if you’ve caught your breath yet). Watch yourself though, as due to it being one of the biggest tourist towns in South America, its also one of the worst for people who prey on tourists. Practically everyone I talked to had been scammed in one way or another, some losing thousands of dollars or finding themselves in precarious situations. The worst for me was at the bus station when I arrived as aggressive would-be salesmen chased me throughout. I had to dive backwards into a cab (which was awkward as I had a backpack on) as if I was escaping paparazzi.

Cuzco is also said to be the party capital of Peru and I was feeling somewhat better, so I decided to be more sociable. It turned out there was a trivia night at the hostel that night, so me and two other independent travelers, a Dutchman and an Irishman, formed a trivia team to fight for the unnamed prize (the contest was to raise money for a school for poor children). Since most of the other teams had like 15 people on them, we didn’t think our chances were that great, but we were determined to win that unnamed (and likely minimal we presumed) grand prize, so we hunkered down and attacked question after question, and as it happened the three of us had exactly the right mix of obscure trivia data to pull us through (for example: I knew that 300 points was the maximum score in 10 pin bowling and the Irishman knew the title of Madonna’s book from the early 1990s and in which movie Marilyn Munroe’s skirt blows up, although he asked not to be congratulated on knowing both these things). In the end, we tied with another group and so it came to a tie-breaking question (both teams were asked to guess the number of kids living under the poverty line in Cuzco, and the team closest would win). Using Cuzco’s total population and some clever logical deductions, we were able to get nearly bag on the figure, we were able to win the contest and the grand prize… which to our surprise was a bottle of champagne.

Naturally we had been drinking heavily up to this point, but when three strangers win a bottle of champagne through a spontaneous burst of camaraderie, there is no choice but to drink it. And this is where our logic failed us…

Pisco is national alcohol of Peru (mentioning “Chilean Pisco” is a good method of starting a fight with a Peruvian), and while it might seem like just a strong wine-based brandy, it can certainly mess you up good if you let it (which basically consists of anytime you drink the stuff). Naturally, since we were new to Peru, we had enjoyed many a Pisco by the time the champagne came out, and by the time the champagne was finished, so was I.

Nevertheless, I continued out with the group as they to a nearby nightclub, hoping my condition would improve itself. When all I got was a bareknuckled cab ride, flashing lights, and throbbing music, I realized this wasn’t going to work. Minutes after walking in the door, I decided it was time to leave.

What followed was one of the most gruesome nights I experienced in my entire South American trip, as the Irish Stew I had for supper, not to mention my re-awakened Bolivian bowel syndrome. Cuzco may have been the party capital of Peru, but I’d be spending most of my time there in close proximity to a washroom facility.

That said, I did manage to find my way to a few places of interest. I saw a folklorico show at the Centro National de Arte Nativo (which featured native dancing and Incan history alongside ridiculous amounts of flashing lights and effects) and the Centro Artesanal de Handicrafts (I may have that name wrong) where was I able to haggle my way to purchasing a few traditional handmade crafts for the folks back home. By Saturday I was feeling a little better, so I decided to do what I came to Cuzco to do in the first place. Go to Machu Picchu.

While some people hike to Machu Picchu on the Inca Trail, I had been advised not to attempt it. A) because its difficult B) because its overrun with tourists, is expensive, and has to be booked well in advance and C) because most of the people I mentioned earlier who got scammed, got scammed at something involving the Inca trail. So I took the train.

Now, I was looking forward to the train journey, as experience had taught me that train journeys are generally smoother than bus ones. Of course in Peru this was not the case, but at least they advertised the Hiram Bingham Backpacker train (Hiram Bingham’s the Indiana Jones-type who made Machu Picchu famous) as if it were. I’m pretty sure the train was too big for the tracks it was on, but oh well…

The train drops you at a place called Aguas Caliente (“Hot Water,” and no I didn’t take a shower here). And from here you can take a bus up a gazillion precarious switchbacks to reach the summit, where you find the majestic ancient citadel whose purpose remains a mystery. (Of course some people like to hike up, but unless you’re a fan of masochism in the outdoors, one look at the cliff you have to climb should tell you this isn’t perhaps the wisest way to spend your vacation. I found the trailhead at Machu Picchu while I was up there, and it was chock full of absolutely exhausted people who were in no position to enjoy the ruins they worked so hard to reach).

That said, Machu Picchu is a world wonder for a reason. It leaves you breathless wondering how (and especially why?) this massive and ornate ancient city was built in such a difficult (but startling beautiful setting). It was one of my must-sees in South America, and you’d be an idiot to come all the way to Cuzco and miss it, traveller’s diarrhea or not.

At any rate, with Machu Picchu under my belt it was time to move on to my next objective. Nazca here I come.

Nazca

Peru has a ridiculous amount of priceless archaelogical sites (partly due to the ridiculous amount of advanced ancient cultures that called Peru home at some point). There weren’t just the Incans, in fact the Incans were only the pre-eminent culture in Peru for about 100 years before the Spanish came a-conquistadorin’. Pretty much every region has a relic of a previous society, one of the most famous non-Incan sites being the Nazca lines. (by the way, I know I’ve been talking about highways too much, but let me just say that the road from Cuzco to Nazca switched back on itself so much that I’m surprised it didn’t tie itself into something of a bowline knot).

These 300+ configurations of animals, plants, and mythological creatures were only re-discovered by an overflying plane in the 1930s (from the ground, people apparently didn’t recognize anything unusual). They are giant pictographs created by removing surface rocks to reveal the different coloured rocks underneath and theories about their purpose range from alien visitors, time travelling Peruvian, and an ancient astronomical calendar system constructed over time by the local inhabitants of the Nazca region (my money’s on the latter). You can only really appreciate the lines by air, but the flights are notoriously bumpy and my stomach was still recovering from Cuzco, so I decided to do the ground tour (which involved me climbing a tower, visiting the house of the German woman who dedicated her life to the lines, and generally wandering around in the desert). That night, I went to a planetarium to learn more about the possible astronomical functions of the line (many theorists think the pictographs correspond to ancient constellations and were made to be only visible to the sky as to be visible to the sky gods as they charted stars and solstices and whatnot). Unfortunately, I missed the English session of the planetarium, but when I was the only one who showed up for the Spanish version, I was able to convince them to do it in English anyway using my clever persuasiveness.

I was supposed to go to Lima the next day, but a transit strike soon threw a rock at those plans (if you try to leave town during a transit strike, the strikers throw rocks at you). Since the road was clearly blocked by all manner of debris.

Consigned to the fact that I would be at least spending one more night in Nazca, I finished some blog work on the computer, which one of the Peruvians whose family ran the hotel to gawk at my apparently rapid keyboarding skills the same way some people gawk at a bearded lady (perhaps Peruvian schools don’t teach word-processing). Wanting a break from South American food (and its aftermath), I decided to try Chinese food instead and ended up eating at a Chifa restaurant (Chifa being a Peruvian rendition of Cantonese food). They ended up sitting me with a young Englishwoman by the name of Sultanna (but because she was darkskinned I thought she was Peruvian at first) whom I ended up helping to order in Spanish (she didn’t speak Spanish and as she was Muslim she had a few dietary restrictions, such as not eating pork, which the waitress assured us wouldn’t be a problem, though my Muslim friend was still served pork). The two of us, both stranded travelers like something of a modern Miller’s Tale, regaled each other with stories of our journeys in lives, trying to pass away the time before the transit strike finally averted. The Chinese food, aside from the pork, wasn’t that bad either (and I’m not saying Peruvian food is bad, au contraire, their Mandarin oranges are excellent).

Lima

Now many travelers had spoken negatively about Lima, some even telling me “it’s just a big city, avoid it altogether.” But since I have a Peruvian friend, Rubi Paredes, whose from Lima but lives in Canada, and it was clearly on the way, I figured I’d give the Viceroyalty turned Republican capital a go. And I’m glad I did, the place is far more awesome than its backpacker reputation gives it credit for…

Okay, granted it helped that Rubi hooked me up with some compadres of hers including her family and attractive female friends, and I ended up staying in Lima for about a week. The Paredes family invited me to stay with them for free, apparently they’re thinking about opening a backpacker’s hostel themselves and wanted to get my feedback (as Rubi had told them I was an experienced traveler right after she told me to please not cause any international incidents this time while in Peru). I had been staying in a hostel called Flying Dogs in the nightclub district of Miraflores, but I was anxious to move after after arriving home at 1am on my first night to find the door locked and no one answering with a group of suspicious and obviously lying characters standing outside. After knocking aggressively to no available, and repeated attempts to separate me from my money by the harassing scam artists outside, it took 45 minutes more of bugging Starbucks employees, walking to an alternate Flying Dogs location, and getting them to call and wake up the security guard so I could finally go to bed (the next morning, another hotel guest had all his luggage stolen from inside the hostel security locker). So yeah, I was ready to move, and would advise anyone visiting Lima to give Flying Dog a miss. There are many more hostels to choose from.

Miraflores though, should not be missed. Not only does it have its share of Lima-ish drinking establishments (Pisco Sours are the local fave and a great way to induce an early hangover). It is right beside Lima’s seashore (yes, there are even tropical beaches, and people apparently surf here, some every morning before work). The coast is a great series of giant green cliffs parsed by major highways and shopping centres. Further down is the similar neighbourhood of Barranco, likewise famed for its nightclubs and bar districts, although Miraflores and Barranco. Centro Lima (Downtown Lima), the colonial district filled with elaborate and well-restored colonial architecture that makes it seem like something out of Europe, also has an assortment of cool bars and places to hang out and is a great place to meet locals, although not necessarily the locals you want to meet (the reputation is a tad dodgy).

Let’s see, we also climbed a hill, looked at ancient Waca structures (mud pyramids which I’m going to say were made by the Wacan people), ate arroz con pollo (rice with chicken) and other Peruvian specialties. We even saw a fountain park, which had many moving waterspouts and served as an excellent way to get soaked.

Of course, a big thank you goes out to the Paredes family, including Ma and Pa Paredes, Amparo, Mariela, Betsy, and Anhil and his wife (whose name has escaped me), as well as Danny Luz, Ana “Anita” Maria Quispe Aguirre, Magaly Gastello, Milagros Otto, and even one else who hung out with me in Lima.

Mancora

I spent longer than expected in Lima, so I didn’t have much time to get north to Quito where my flight back home was leaving. But it was too far and legnumbing to just bus it straight to Quito, so I decided stop halfway at the Peruvian tropical beach resort of Mancora, where you get a beachside hut to sleep in for like $15 (why not?).

The beach is very long and nice, although watch yourself (I ran to a few people who were held up at gunpoint). And there are plenty of places to party along the strip although they don’t really get going until the weekend. Still if you want to meet Peruvians on vacation, this is the place.

If you’re going on to Ecuador though, be warned that the border crossing is nicknamed “the worst in South America.” There’s a reason for this. As recent as 1995 this border was a no go zone, as Ecuador and Peru were still fighting each other over land claims. The war’s been over for 10 or more years now (although Ecuadoreans, who lost the most in the conflict, are still bitter), but the Canadian government still advises against all travel to the region due to the abundance of landmines. Probably though, the bigger threat to travelers is all the shady characters and corrupt border officials that populate the area. The border posts themselves are organized bizarrely, so you have to criss-cross a run-down and crime-ridden city multiple times in order to get all your stamps in order. This is also the only crossing where I felt I need my Yellow Fever card (proving that I’ve been vaccinated). Not that they even looked at it after I showed them mine, but they sure gave my Irish friend some hassle because his was stolen (although he had documents proving he had one). Likely they were just fishing for a bribe.

Quito

15 hours later, after awkwardly transferring buses, taxiing around, repeated checkpoints, and hours upon hours of Vin Diesel movies (en espanol) we finally reached Quito, at which point the bus drove off with my luggage, leading a sleepless and bedraggled me to chase after it, lose it, and eventually create a scene in the Quito bus station (which ultimately lead to me recollecting my baggage, thankfully, at Cargo). In the process though, I lost track of my Irish friends (in the confusion I hadn’t had time to collect their contact info) and as a result made them worry sick that something nasty had happened to me (I found this out later when I randomly ran into another girl from the bus).

Quito and I didn’t get off to a great start (on account of my lack of sleep and the aforementioned luggage fiasco), but somehow I made my way to Old Town and found a place to shack up (my guidebook claimed Old Town was safe to stay while the more popular New Town was extremely dangerous after dark. Other people claimed the reverse to be true. I’m still undecided.) I did like the old architecture of old town and hotel was decent enough (the shower was electric, which meant it had wires running out of it and ranged from red hot to ice cold and no where in between.) Still though, the place was alright.

As I usually do when I enter a city for the first time, I spent my first day basically just wandering around. I tried to have lunch at the Mercado Central in order to try some Ecuadorian cuisine, but as I went to place my order, a big cockroach ran across the counter, stopped to look at me, and then slithered off. The server was dumbfounded as I inexplicably changed my mind.

Instead I wandered to the Plaza Grande, the biggest square in Old Town and seat of the Ecuadorian government. Mainly I was here for ice cream, there’s a traditional home-made ice cream shop just a block or so away, but since it turned out to be closed, I decided to take in the square anyway.

As I was photographing some of the buildings, I noticed a small crowd gathering outside one of the more important looking ones. There were colourful guards outside, so at first I thought it was a changing of the guards or something, but when I asked one of the street vendors what was happening he gave me a surprise.

“The president of Venezuela is coming to visit.”

Hugo Chavez? The most famous—and probably infamous—current president of a South American country? He was made famous as an enemy of Bush during the Bush era when he referred to Bush as the devil in a speech at the United Nations. He’s been leading the charge, alongside Evo Morales, of trying to put leftist candidates in charge in all of South America’s presidencies, and apparently they’ve been having some success as almost all South American presidents (with the notable exception of Colombia’s Uribe) are leaning left of centre. That said, the situation at home isn’t so rosy; word on the traveler’s street says Venezuela has gone to hell since Chavez took power as poverty rates have skyrocketed therefore so has crime. In fact, many people say the reputation that Colombia used to have now belongs to Venezuela (things have been steadily improving in Colombia apparently).

In any case, like him or loathe him, Chavez is an undeniably important figure in the present-day politics of Latin America. And judging by the crowd he seemed quite popular too. They cheered wildly as his motorcade approached, and then again when he appeared at the balcony with Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa. One woman even threw a flower at him. The closest I could get was 15 feet, but that’s not bad for someone who just stumbled on this.

As someone who personally doesn’t agree with Chavez that much, he wields a lot of boasts and bravado which overshadows the increasing misery faced by average Venezuelans, I was quite surprised at how many people showed up to cheer him on. I was later informed that in fact most Ecuadoreans share my opinion of him, but they all like a good party, and will show up and celebrate regardless of the political views. One girl told me that, when Israel invaded Lebanon back in 2006, many of the people who showed up to the pro-Israel rally also showed up to the pro-Palestinian one. Ecuadoreans love a good fiesta.

That night I checked out the Mariscal neighbourhood, but not knowing anyone in town it kinda became something of a dull evening, so I ended up going home early and catching some shut-eye.

The next day I went to the Museo Central to Banco National (Ecuador’s premiere museum) and appreciated a great deal of art, meeting the lovely and charming Lady Sofia (She was named after Lady Di, as her mother thought “Lady” was Di’s English first name). A nurse by profession, but a chef in training, she took me out to a few places around New Town to sample Ecuadorian cuisine, which can range from everything from fried Guinea Pig to Yuca plants to delicious potato cheese patties called Llapingachos. It was so good we met and had breakfast the next morning.

Now, because I left Ecuador to last, I didn’t have that much time there before I had to head back to Canada (needless to say, it felt a little rushed much like Scotland at the end of my Europe trip). But I still had time to see a few more things before I left, like a few more museums, a heckuva lot of churches, and of course Ecuador’s namesake, the Equator (there’s a tourist site called Mitad Del Mundo where you can dance along both sides of the line and watch an interesting display about swirling toilets. It’s a bit kitschy and cheeseball sure, but what the hell?).

I also found time to visit the convent of Santa Cantalina, where 20 or so nuns voluntarily live in complete isolation for 5 years (not my idea of a good time), and spend that time growing gardens and producing an assortment of hand-made products (including some pretty tasty consegration wine) which they sell through a revolving door which keeps them hidden. Apparently this has been going since the early 1500s. Huh.

Miami

Oh well unfortunately the time came for me to fly home, which I did early one Thursday morning. The plan was to fly American Airlines to Miami then switch there and fly Air Canada to Toronto then on to Winnipeg (I was trying to get back to Brandon so I could surprise my buddy Ray at his wedding social dressed as a Latin dancer). Unfortunately, there was a major storm system passing through the US and Caribbean at that time, so things were a little shaky. We landed alright, but the plane I was supposed to take to Toronto got a piece of Styrofoam stuck in its engine, which after many delays ended up grounding it for the night.

I suppose there are worse places to be stranded than Miami Beach, Florida, but when my bags didn’t appear on the carousel I went into panic mode. Air Canada claimed they never received my bags, although I had personally re-entered them through security (as instructed by American Airlines) after I cleared customs. While they promised to cover costs of accommodation, meals, and transportation for the unexpected overnight stay, I was worried about my bags so I asked if I could check with security. I raced across the airport only to be held up by more bureaucracy (and claims that Air Canada did indeed receive my bag) only to return and find the desk abandoned and myself on my own for the night. Needless to say I was not a happy camper, and after much expense and hassle, when I finally did get to a place to stay in South Beach, I just ordered a pizza and fell asleep (although, fearing I’d lost my bag, therefore half of the total amount of clothes that I own, I bought a few south beach shirts, so if you see me wearing them, that’s why)

The next day, I managed to get to Toronto and then on to Winnipeg and finally Brandon where we had a great social and I promptly began thinking about travelling again. Oh man, I’m hopeless.

Well thanks for reading everyone. I hope to see you on my next trip.

Until then, hasta luego.

Chill'n in Chile and Believ'n in Bolivia

2009-05-05T13:18:00.000-07:00

Chile and Bolivia

In this episode, Ryan…
-Bleeds profusely at a Santiago nightclub
-Practices Spanish with a Chilean “Chica”
-Detonates dynamite on a Bolivian hill-side
-Watches Bolivian women wrestle

Chill’n in Chile

Ah Chile (pronounced more like “chili” than “chyle,” although Chileans love it when you call it the latter).

My first exposure to Chile occurred on a late night bus from Argentina, crossing over the Andes. Against better judgment and advice, I booked the cheapest ticket to Santiago, which meant I was on a fairly cramped bus next to a gentleman who enjoyed spreading his legs and behind another fellow who loved nothing more than shoving his chair back and forth to its most unnatural position repeatedly through the night. Needless to say, I didn’t get a lot of sleep and ended up with cramped legs and crippling back pain (for practically the whole time I was in Santiago, I basically waddled like a hunched over old man, it was pathetic). (Argentinean buses had been great up until this point).

Poorer still was the situation faced by the Canadian couple in the aisle across from me who relied on me to be their Spanish translator every time the bus attendant whipped off a flurry of incoherent though no doubt important message in what I would soon discover as the “unique” Chilean dialect of Spanish. Of course, it didn’t help that my Spanish was, how do you say, muy pathetico.

At any rate, we somehow managed to find ourselves in a border checkpoint and went through three lines and copious amounts of tiny little easy to lose or throw out papers, but are ultimately necessary for you to leave the country. Like every other South American border crossing so far, the drug dogs made their appearance (it is South America, after all), and I was startled to see this big bushy sheepdog appear of out the air beside me like some sort of floating fortress of fur (no eyes, no tail, no legs, just fur and a nose hovering across the ground). At any rate, he left me be and wandered over to his puppy apprentice, whom I assume was a new drug dog or at least a very creative tactic on the part of the Chilean drug police. Basically, this dog, a friendly golden Labrador retriever in a police dog vest, carried a tennis ball in his mouth and would wander around the station pawing random people wanting them to play fetch with him. Of course, the people upon seeing a drug dog pawing them, would immediately start to freak out and get nervous, not knowing he just wanted to play fetch. A neat trick, really.

I arrived in Santiago on Easter Weekend, and with Chile being one of the most conservative catholic countries in the world, it should not have surprised me that nothing was open. Instead of the bustling neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires, Chile’s capital seemed downright… quiet. Sure there was a downtown (pretty much just for big businesses) and a very attractive multi-terraced park, but I was disappointed to find site after site closed for the holiday (not that I blame them really). Coinciding my Chilean visit with Easter brought some other interesting events, I was stopped in my tracks on the way back to my hostel by an impromptu passion parade (at least I think it was a passion parade) and the old church in the main plaza was actually filled with a congregation (a rarity in many of the old churches I’ve visited so far).

The hostel itself was probably the highlight of my time in Santiago. A converted 19th century mansion with a pool, pool-side bar, and copious courtyards and large spaces, Lonely Planet described it as “The Real World filled with backpackers,” a description not far off the mark. It was based in the Barrio Brasil neighbourhood, which while a little rough at night, had a wide assortment of quirky restaurants ranging from Italian-Sushi to Domino’s Pizza, and my favourite, a Norse-themed establishment literally dubbed “El Vikingo.” (Yes, that was its actual name) This place was great, the décor was literally ripped off of Lord of the Rings or something, and most of the menu items were slabs of meat you ripped apart with your teeth. Oddly enough, they also made a fantastic strawberry juice.

I met a few compadres at the hostel, mostly from New York, Australia, or the UK (and Essex in particular for some reason), although I definitely felt a bit of an age gap (especially when one Liverpool guy, whose accent was barely comprehensible when he was sober, asked me if liked “coke” and I presumed he was referring to a soft drink). With not much else to do in town on Easter weekend, the hostel folks engaged in drinking games (they certainly haven’t changed much, although they seem to have all been merged together) and go to one club in the Bellavista neighbourhood (apparently the only establishment open at night in Santiago on Easter Weekend). Yes, I shook my booty as best I could, but apparently the dance stylings of Western Manitoba (made extra great by my inability to stand upright since the bus ride as mentioned earlier) are not terribly impressive to Chilean women, so I spent most of the time mesmerized by the bizarre background projects they chose to showcase. Now as you may or may not have been aware, a lot of dance places now seem to be showcasing these quirky videos as background ambience (amidst the flashing lights, beat-throbbing music, and inability to have a conversation)… only nerds like me actually watch them.

This one, though, was just too weird to ignore. They were showing this Discovery Channel documentary about the origins of Bible stories, presenting evidence that major stories in the Bible (eg. Jesus) bore suspicious resemblance to earlier stories from other religions in lands in or near the Middle East, making almost a Da Vinci Code-esque argument. In some ways I could understand this one, what with Chile being such a catholic country—and Chileans who would be in a nightclub during Easter are presumably not its most pious lot—perhaps they were attempting to make some sort of ironic statement out of their drunken revelry.

When they switched to documentaries on September 11th conspiracy theories, though, that’s when they lost me.

At any rate, realizing I was probably being a douche by spending my Saturday night in Santiago watching documentaries in a night club, I decided I should at least try to get jiggy with it. And try I did… laying down all manner of hot moves learned through years of awkward grade school dances and the odd undergraduate social. Oh I got a few eyes alright… but only of the cold glare variety, although one guy’s girlfriend occasionally took pity on me and another guy stepped on my foot.

At first, I didn’t give the foot much thought (I didn’t feel anything other than a sharp initial pain that quickly disappeared). Granted, I probably shouldn’t have worn flip-flops to the bar, although my socks and shoes seemed less than cool under my shorts (and if these same flip-flops got me up the Liechtensteiner Alps, see Switzerland-Liechtenstein chapter, surely they could handle a Chilean dancefloor). But the night was dragging on, and I was trying to think of an appropriate excuse for telling my hostel friends I wanted to go to bed. When I happened to look down, I found it.

My right foot was awash with blood, my blood; a trail of it leading back to the dance floor from whence I had come (apparently the guy who stepped on my foot had had a broken shard of beer bottle glass stuck to his foot). All my toes were red with it, and I wasn’t even clear were I was bleeding for a moment. I stared at it for a moment… then decided perhaps I should seek assistance.

Hats off to the Chilean bouncers for having a first aid kit readily available (and thank god I didn’t have to explain in Spanish, I just had to point at my foot). The first aid kit was the size of my Dad’s tool box, and within a few minutes my wound went from gushing blood to merely a grotesque bloodstained but contained mess. Once again, foreigners have impressed me with their first aid prowess.

All in all, with my foot bandaged, back killing me, leg cramped, poor dancing skills, and too many flashing lights to really enjoy the documentary, I convinced my hostel friends that it was socially appropriate for me to call an end to the evening and I took a taxi home.

Okay, I may have been an injured mess (at least my mosquito bites from Uruguay had mostly healed and had been lowered from excruciatingly itchy to moderately aggravating) in Santiago, but gosh darn it, I was still going to see Chile. I took a bus to Valparaiso and Vina Del Mar, limping around their old colonial neighbourhoods and seafront boulevards. Valparaiso, a Unesco World Heritage site and an old, beautiful and a bit crumbling colonial port city built on a series of cliffs, is famous for its “acensores,” old-fashioned outdoor elevators that lead from the bottom to the top of the cliffs (and a blessing for me as I could barely climb stairs at this point). Valparaiso had fantastic political murals, lots celebrating Salvador Allende and condemning Pinochet (both whom, apparently, were born in Valparaiso), but think twice before eating at the Cuban restaurant. While the food was good, the aftermath was not… (all I can say is thank god, Chile’s version of the Home Depot have public washrooms as they were the only ones I could find).

Finally on Tuesday, after two failed attempts to see Santiago’s premier museum, the Museo de Arte Pre-Colombino, I was allowed to enter (amidst a throng of Chilean schoolchildren). Indeed, as promised, there were copious amounts of pre-Columbian artifacts, mummies that predated those of Egypt, and many many ceramic jars. Probably the most interesting though was the video of a traditional fisherman from northern Chile who would demonstrate his methods with a toothless smile. He hunted many things, but seemed most excited to hunt octopus which he called “tonto” (and they translated into English as “stupid”). Which means that him and the filmmaker would have conversations like:

Fisherman: You find stupid here hiding under the rock, and then you just have to trick stupid, and old stupid will come out. Sometimes stupid will build a pile of rocks to protect his stupidself.

Filmmaker(in disbelief): You’re saying the octopus actually makes a shelter out of rocks?

Fisherman: Sure, but then you just knock down the rocks and scare stupid.

While he’s saying this, the fisherman grabs an octopus and casually beats it to death on a rock.

Granted he stops beating it for a minute to point out the colour changing camouflage. Then he resumes beating.

A bizarre method of fishing to say the least.

Having had enough of Santiago, I decided to go back to the hostel and begin the long journey north. It was still mid-afternoon, and the busy streets were filled with school children from the museum. Before going, I picked up a chocolate milk (I was feeling pretty beat) and as I headed to the subway, a couple of women sitting on a bench (one playing some form of gameboy) asked me for the time (first in Spanish then in English when it was clear I had no idea what they said). I told them and casually continued on my way, only remembering that in Taiwan being caught with a drink on the subway would net you a major fine (and I hadn’t seen any drinking or eating on Santiago’s sparkling new subway, so I assumed it might be the same case here) so I looked for a place to sit and finish my drink.

I sat at one table but was promptly kicked out by the restauranteur it apparently belonged to, at which point the women who asked me the time waved me back and made room on their bench. Feeling insecure about my poor Spanish (and consequently my inability to connect with locals) and buoyed by their signs of friendliness I decided to engage them in conversation. I should probably mention at this time that they were dressed in long sweaters and skirts yes but nothing abnormal compared to what other Chilean women were wearing (the reason I’m taking time to make note of this will become obvious later) so we started talking… very basic conversation, but conversation nonetheless. I had time to kill before the bus anyway.

The girl with the gameboy got bored and left and told her friend she’d see her later, but the other girl seemed very friendly and eager to help me with my Spanish (a welcome relief when most other people I’d met just got immediately frustrated and switched to English). I asked her what she did for a living and she said she was a “Compania mujere,” which I interpreted as “company woman” or “business woman,” although her friendliness was getting me a tad suspicious. Nevertheless she went on to talk about all this engineering work she was doing, and so I concluded she worked for some sort of engineering consultancy firm.

There was a pub nearby, and while I was anxious about catching my bus, I figured one drink wouldn’t hurt, and my Spanish was improving by the minute. On the way to the pub, a woman from an eye-glasses shop came out and, the two of them had a heated argument (nothing of which I understood) and then we continued to the pub.

I soon learned that she was Colombian and had moved to Santiago for school, but that her family was back in Colombia and she missed them dearly. Apparently she’d had trouble fitting in Chile and missed the landscapes of her homeland. She wasn’t particularly attractive and apparently felt self-conscious about her looks.

The conversation continued on as such, and I was beginning to think “I really should tell this girl that I have to catch a bus and am not staying in town.” When she suddenly said in English “Havesexwithme,” which I didn’t catch as we had been speaking Spanish the whole time.

“What?” I said.

“Havesexwithme.” She said again.

I fumbled something like “Sorry, I’m flattered, but I don’t really know you and I have to catch a bus,” but she kept saying things like “It’s okay, it’ll only take an hour.” When she started writing prices for various acts on a napkin, I realized that “Compania mujere” didn’t mean what I thought it did.

I explained the misunderstanding (how do you explain nicely in Spanish that you’re not interested in prostitution) and promptly asked the bartender for a cheque. At any rate, she eventually accepted that I wasn’t going to be her customer (apparently she was indeed a university student in engineering and this was how she paid for her tuition) and we gave each a cordial good-bye before I caught a subway and bus out of town as fast as I could.

After Santiago, I headed to a town called La Serena, famous for its beaches, although I never saw them as they were 4 km from town and it was cold and overcast. Instead, I enjoyed the luxury of a room to myself (ah, what luxury indeed) in a charming bed and breakfast (minus the breakfast). The next day I took a tour of the Elqui Valley, a nearby valley famed for its pisco plantations (Pisco is a strong liquour made from grapes, ie something like a wine although it goes down more like whiskey). Peru and Chile have a long-standing rivalry over the drink, so I thought better try Chile’s entry, before moving on to sample Peru’s homegrown brew.

It is amazing how dry the land gets just in a few kilometers away from the sea. You can go from shore to desert in no time, seriously. And this desert is dry… the world’s driest actually (average rainfall is only 5 days a year, and in some parts of the Atacama region there has never been a recorded drop of rainfall). With such abundant sunshine, the Elqui Valley sported some unique attractions such as a Solar Restaurant where all the food was cooked in Solar Ovens (i.e. you remember that project you did in Grade Seven, where you put tinfoil on the angled side of a beer box and used it to cook a hot dog?, well guess what, someone’s turned that concept into a full-blown restaurant). The foot was tasty although the goat was a bit dry.

Leaving La Serena proved more difficult than I thought. First they lost my reservation then the new bus I reserved didn’t show up. After a half an hour or so, I asked the ticket clerk what happened, but he just said I had missed the bus and it was my own fault. After arguing for a bit, I managed to get him to change my ticket for the next bus, when surprise of all surprises my original bus appeared, with one of its windows boarded up (apparently this window had spontaneously exploded mid transit and thus had caused a the delay) and I continued on to San Pedro de Atacama, meeting up with two Canadians (a guy and a girl, although the guy asked that I not refer to them as a couple) and an Irishwoman and the four of us journeyed north.

San Pedro de Atacama was definitely my favourite place in Chile. Built on an oasis amidst the heart of the driest parts of the Atacama, the place shouldn’t even really exist, but exist it does, as a collection of mud-brick buildings, wild west streets, and a plethora of backpacker-types that could’ve been fresh out of Burning Man. Granted it’s a bit touristy, but whatever, there’s plenty of crazy outdoor sports (if you don’t mind the boiling hot days and ice cold nights) and we engaged in a few, including sandboarding (like snowboarding only much easier in that I can actually do it), hiking the valley de la Luna (the moon-like valley), and stargazing (thanks to the lack of rain, the Atacama has some of the best stargazing in the world, and I can honestly say I’ve never seen the Milky Way so vividly, nor Saturn for that matter, as I could actually see the rings—with the help of a telescope mind you).

Believe it or not Bolivia

The next day at 8 am, genuinely sleep-deprived we engaged on a perhaps fool-hardy 3 day off road journey to Uyuni, Bolivia. My guidebook warned that this journey was a tad rough and it didn’t lie. Crammed into a Toyota 4X4, our bags tarped to its rough, we barreled and twisted over jagged rock path after jagged rock path (to call them roads wouldn’t do them justice), eventually reaching an altitude of around 4900 meters above sea level, crippling everyone with altitude sickness and its accompanying headaches, pins and needles, and shortness of breath. In attempt to assuage our altitude sickness with a herbal remedy, Edgar our guide (who couldn’t speak a word of English) gave us all coca leaves to chew, but when I accidentally swallowed mine, intense nausea was added to the list (which wasn’t helped by Edgar’s aggressive and swervy driving style).

Edgar himself was an interesting hombre. He decked the front of the 4X4 with a curtain embroidered with Bolivia’s national colours (red, yellow, and green, almost like a Pan-African country), and from which hung little dolls, ball doilies, and a shrine to the Virgin Mary. Edgar himself, was definitely no virgin, as every place we stopped there was a Bolivian woman in a black bowler hat whom Edgar would call out to. Usually the woman would try to ignore him, her face demonstrating some sort of past history, but inevitably Edgar would stop the car, jump out, chase after the chica, get slapped by the chica, and then they would head to the back room for a “discussion.” Edgar even tried to get me to hook him up with my sister just upon hearing that I had one (I told him she wasn’t on the market), and ironically the only English song he seemed to know was “Womanizer.” At the end of tour, we met his lovely wife and kids.

Edgar was also a fan of South American pop music, where it seems the synthesizer effects of the 80s never went out of the style. Some of the songs were even in English, although I’d never heard them outside of South America (so if they were hits from the 80s, they must have struck a stronger chord here than elsewhere). The little dolls hanging from his windshield would seem dance to the music as we ricocheted off of rocks.

Throughout the tour we saw many lagoons; many wild flamingoes, desert foxes, vicuna, and llamas; geysers; and even the odd smoking volcano. We also had a crash course in Bolivian toiletry where you flush by splashing buckets of water at the toilet. Unfortunately, many of us failed the course.

Accomodation was largely rustic. No electricity the first night made for a very cold night, as the high altitude dropped the thermometer to -12. The second night we stayed in a village house, which had electricity for four hours in the evening, and as result there was a mad dash for they only warm shower for miles.

At 4:30 am, we hit the road again, this time to head out to the Uyuni Salt Flats, by far the highlight of the tour (you might remember them as the South American desert Bond has to traipse through with his attractive female co-star in the last Bond film, Quantum of Solace). Basically they’re a giant salt lake which extends for miles, the remnant of ancient saltwater lake, and are flatter than Saskatchewan (a welcome relief after the incredibly bumpy journey prior). They’re ghostly white, with cracks running like an uneven checkerboard towards the horizon. We saw the sun rise from an island amidst the salt lake (the salt lake is still land of course) that was chockfull of cacti, so much so that I learned when climbing a steep rocky hill in the dark its best not to reach out and lean on what you think is a post as it may very well not be.

It was a beautiful island alright, an odd intrusion of rocky outcropping amidst a barren white expanse. Because the salt flats are so barren and white, many people like taking “perspective” shots, where by you get one person to stand a distance away and another to stand up close and you can create the photographic illusion of your friend standing on your head, being pinched in your hand, bathing in your coffee mug, about to be crushed under your foot, being blown away by your breath, or any other assortment of perspective fun (note this would probably work in Saskatchewan too).

After the salt flats we visited a Salt Hotel turned Salt Hotel Museum (Salt Hotels have been banned as their waste was being funneled back into the salts causing environmental damage). While I don’t think anyone stays there anymore, the Salt Hotel definitely seemed fascinating, constructed entirely of salt (and perhaps some cement) it resembled the Bolivian version of Sweden’s Ice Hotel, complete with salt carvings of Bolivian symbols, a salt based lounge area, and even a live baby llama that scared the hell out of one of my fellow tourists when she opened the room to discover it. After they realized what it was, it was pretty clear it wasn’t scary at all, just damn cute and cuddly. (On a side note, Llama meat is absolutely delicious, like a steak without all the heaviness. Mmmm.).

After the salt flats we headed into Uyuni, which from the outside seems a town unfinished, saw the train cemetery (where a ton of trains from the 1800s have been left to rust, which takes a long time in a desert), and discovered that our plans to go to Potosi had been kyboshed by a labour strike that was blocking all traffic to and from the city (we were told if we tried to break the blockade we’d be stoned at the very least).

The strike over, we began our arduous journey to Potosi. Bolivia’s known for having some of the world’s worst and most dangerous roads, and I can tell why. The road from Uyuni to Potosi—if you want to call it a road—zig-zags haphazardly up and down cliff-edge after cliff edge along a muddy track that is frequently flooded with water. There are no safety rails to speak of, and at various points in the journey you can see other similarly constructed roads that have collapsed (this region is known for its mudslides). Add in to the equation that you’re traveling on a puttering old bus filled beyond capacity (and I do mean beyond, not only was every seat filled, but the aisles were standing room only—yes people stood crammed like sardines in the aisle for the entire 6 hour journey). Needless to say I’m glad we booked our seats early (as half the bus didn’t have seat). Add into the mix that some people were preparing food on the bus (and there were basically no showers for miles, so body odour rampant) and you have one memorable if not enjoyable bus experiences. At one point during the 6 hour journey we stopped for a bathroom break, minus the bathroom (there was no bathroom where we stopped) and it was a sight to see an entire busload of passengers stream out in all directions to do their business in the desert au natural. Still confined by my naïve North American notions of privacy while urinating, I struggled to produce a flow whilst partially hidden behind a large thornbush (one of the few covering vegetations in the area). I had almost achieved my goal, when two elder Bolivian women came up beside me, dropped their pants and performed their tasks, and promptly returned to the bus—never breaking their conversation in the process. Embarrassed and still a bit on edge, I said a couple of “Serenity Nows,” went to my happy place, finished the task at hand, and returned to the bus. A few hours later, we arrived in Potosi. (Bolivians, both men and women, seem perfectly at ease with going au naturel—indeed many Western women theorized this was the reason behind their big wide skirts. Hell, if Edgar’s house didn’t have a bathroom, everyone just went into the field out back).

Potosi is one gritty and hard-working city and its very name is synonymous with historic and present-day tragedy and heartbreak. It’s most famous feature are the Potosi Silver Mines, once so rich than they practically single-handedly financed the Spanish Empire for three centuries (Even today, the Spanish have expressions like “vale un potosi” or “worth a fortune”). Of course this wealth was built on the backs of Indigenous and African slave labour who died by the thousands carving out the mines, prompted one Spanish priest to describe them as “the Mouth of Hell.” The moniker is still true today, as working conditions in the mines are horrendous. Accidents with dynamite, cave-ins, and runaway trolleys kill 50 of the 5000 miners every year, and miners (who can start as young as ten) have to work in near pitch black conditions, often under intense heat, with no ventilation, excruciatingly narrow crawl spaces (many of the shafts still rely on colonial construction), and whilst being exposed to a myriad of toxins such as asbestos, cyanide, lead, copper sulphate, and silica flakes. Even breathing in the mine is so difficult that I was unable to make it halfway through the first level before being entirely out of breath. Life expectancy for miners, after they begin their career, is 10 years. This place is probably the most horrific site I have ever witnessed. There’s not much room for humour.

On one lighter side though, we were able to buy dynamite for about $2 Canadian at the local miner’s market. Following the mine tour, we were encouraged to have our picture taken holding a lit ball of dynamite (there’s a visibly concerned image of me doing just that), before the miners would help us whisk the lit dynamite to a hillside detonation site. One German dude misunderstood the miner’s suggestion to “hide behind this rock” to mean “put the dynamite behind this rock,” which resulted in the miner, upon going to the same hiding spot, finding the German with the still lit dynamite right at their feet. Visibly concerned, the miner quickly ran the dynamite back to the detonation site (barely), before diving back under the rock just before the dynamite (there was a few packs of dynamite lit) began going off one by one, draping the hill in dust and smoke (not to mention leaving a few craters). My guide, a Quechua former miner who spoke English well and went by the nickname Machoq’ajcha, told me the mountain has lost 1000 m over the centuries due to mining activities. By the looks of things I believe him.

After Potosi, I began the long journey to La Paz (waving farewell to my Canadian, Irish, and French friends from the Uyuni journey). This journey was considerably more paved than the previous one (and there were no people forced to stand in the aisle this time). On the latter leg of the journey, I met a mechanic from Cochamba (who like most Latin Americans became convinced my name was Brian) and his bus employee friend, and together we watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade en espanol from a difficult angle (we were seated at the very front of the bus). The only real mishap was my experiment in Bolivian cuisine in Oruro (a halfway point), which left me with some nasty indigestion for the next couple of days.

La Paz is a bizarre conglomeration of humanity. In one sense, it’s a city in its worse sense: clogged irregular streets, endless traffic jams and angry drivers, smog everywhere you turn, the threat of pickpockets ever present; but it also has some positive aspects: beautiful surrounding mountains, forests near town, plenty of quirky culture, and its cheap, cheap, cheap.

Bolivia as you may have guessed doesn’t have exactly the same safety standards as home (one Chilean warned me before I went that it was like Chile 40 years ago), but on the otherhand you’ll never find a better bargain and many people, of all ages, continue to dress in traditional clothes. The most prominent of these is the Bolivian cholita, which is a woman (often older, although many young girls dress this way too) wearing traditional colouring Andean robes and dress, topped off with a bowler hat one size too small. The bowler hat puzzled me the most. Not only did it seem to clash with the rest of the outfit and sit precariously atop heads, but as far as I can tell bowler hats aren’t actually Andean in origin (I tend to associate them with Edwardian England personally, or England circa 1900-1910). Why this particular headwear style should choose to flip genders and cling on to life here is a mystery to me.

While you can see all the cholitas you want in streets all over Bolivia, in La Paz on Sunday nights you can watch them wrestle. Yes, that’s right Cholita wrestling is a big sport in Bolivia (or at least La Paz), and despite my unruly intestines I wasn’t going to miss out. In an athletic centre in a hilltop park, hundreds of locals (and quite a few tourists) gathered to watch the spectacle, which while more showmanship than sport (like North American wrestling, it’s largely staged) was still quite a show. Basically, its everything you think it is, tough cholitas in traditional dress, Mexican-style masked wrestlers, arrogant villains, and corrupt refs, all smashing chairs over each other, flinging each other from the ropes, and doing all manner of knitwister, spinerattler, and bonecrusher you can think of (a feminist scholar would have a field day here, especially on the staged matches between men and women). Through it all, audience members are encouraged to huck things at the ring (and huck we did). At one point, one of the refs actually started bleeding from his forehead, and actually had to leave (not part of the show). The event had quite the carnival atmosphere (there were actual carnival games outside) complete with people selling cracker jacks, coca-induced soft drinks, and this one guy kept marching around carrying a 20 foot high tree (I’m not sure what else to call it) of cotton candy. Seriously, if you’re in La Paz on a Sunday, and love absurd phenomena as much as I do, you have to check this out. Just make sure you get the right tour bus home. Mine dropped me off in middle of La Paz and I had to scramble my way back to the hostel in the middle of the night.

The next day, I did the self-guided walking tour of La Paz (which is to say, I just wandered around). In doing so, though, I discovered a few items of interest. Feel like casting a spell? Check out the Witch’s Market, where all manner of Incan totem, dark powder, and llama fetus can be acquired. One shop had a considerable amount of dried bullfrogs for sale, but then these might have simply been tourists who neglected to ask permission before taking photographs.

At some point during my journey, I acquired a ridiculous amount of oranges. Oruro’s culinary experiment having finally passed through my system, I was feeling much better but hesitant to try anything too substantive. Feeling I could also use some vitamin C, oranges seemed like the right trick. I asked one of the street vendors (of which there are many across La Paz) how much was it for an orange. She replied 1 Boliviano (like $0.20 Canadian) so I naturally assumed this was a reasonable price to pay for one orange in Bolivia. Much to my surprise, upon receiving my single boliviano, she emptied half her collection into a bag and handed it to me. Gracious but dumbfounded, I continued on my way.

My ridiculous high amount of oranges (especially for a walking tour) would come in handy, as after the Witches Market, I found a quieter street where I felt I could relax without worrying about being harassed by pickpockets (they hadn’t really been a problem yet, fingers crossed, but I was always nervous) or hawkers. Naturally of course, while no pickpockets pestered me, the hawkers proved more difficult to avoid.

Soon after sitting down and opening one of my many oranges, I heard a man singing jailhouse type songs (in English) coming down the street. The Bolivians seemed to ignore him and I did the same, assuming he was just some dude who went down the street singing (in big cities, such things are not uncommon). As he came into view, he looked rather sketchy: gangly with tattoos running up both arms and rough clothing. I continued to ignore him.

Naturally he stopped right beside me.

“Do you speak English man?”

Thrown off by his American accent, I replied “Yes.”

“Fantastic man,” he introduced himself, “My name’s Rag, I’m a criminal…”

Great, I thought.

“My name’s Ryan.”

“Randy?”

“Yes, Randy.”

“Nice to meet you, Randy, where you from?”

I told him I was from Canada, he told me he was from New York. Apparently he’d been serving a 10 year sentence in Bolivia, although he never told me what for (judging by his mannerisms I’m guessing it had something to do with drugs). Apparently he had two weeks left in his sentence (which immediately made me wonder what he was doing out in public) and then he explained that he helped the prison recruit tourists to tour the prison and visit the various Americans, Canadians, Europeans, etc. held inside. (I should probably mention that Bolivia didn’t have a great reputation for civil liberty, while I was traveling through an Irishman, a Hungarian, and a Croatian were killed without trial by Bolivian government special forces for allegedly plotting to assassinate President Evo Morales. A few British Jewish girls from the Uyuni trip claimed that there had been a series of Jewish-related arrests at synagogues across of Bolivia and that they had been warned by people with political connections not to do anything “too Jewish.”)

He ultimately did ask me for money, but I unloaded oranges on him instead (In fact, I kept giving him oranges until he finally asked me to stop). I told him I would have to check with my “friends” before agreeing to the tour, and he probably went off, his pockets bursting with oranges (although I still had way too many left), he bid me farewell and continued his jailhouse shanties and went on his way. I later learned that this guy was an absolute scam artist (my hostel had a warning posted about him).

About this time I noticed that the street I was on was stuck on some sort of repeat sequence. As the same couple that had walked before I met my jailhouse friend, once again walked by, seemingly having the same conversation with the same expressions. Then the same two old cholitas in their bowler hats. By the time, I heard the jailhouse shanties again, I decided it was time to move on.

I wandered back through the Witch’s Market and ended up at somewhere called Plaza San Francisco, which like many plazas in South America was named for its adjoining church, a grand cathedral designed from a mixed European-Andean perspective.

From here, I climbed up to a pedestrian street called Calle Commercial (Commercial Street) and this took me to the seat of Bolivian government (ie Evo Morales’ house). Evo Morales, by the way, is probably one of the most enigmatic South American leaders currently in office. The first indigenous President of Bolivia (in a country where the majority of people claim indigenous ancestry), “Evo” as he is affectionately dubbed in grassroots graffiti propaganda across the country, is a former coca farmer, close ally of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, and famous for his standoffs with the US over the coca plant. In one famous case, he smuggled a coca leaf into the US and used it at a speech at the UN.

As far as I can tell, most Bolivians still support their president (they seem to be a very patriotic people), but nothing’s ever certain in this country (after all, there’d already apparently been one attempt on Evo’s life while I was in Bolivia). While in La Paz, I heard repeated outbursts of what sounded like gunfire, and there were plenty of police around the Presidential Palace (many in riot gear and holding automatic weapons). There were even modernly dressed guards standing outside the visibly nervous traditionally dressed guards (for some reason, every country seems to feel the need to have some form of archaically yet colorfully dressed guard standing outside their most important buildings).

I decided to rest my feet here for a minute on a open park bench beside an old lady, when one of the local shoeshine boys (inexplicably masked teens, that look like they want to rob a bank or play paintball, but actually just want to shine your shoes) approached me and asked if I wanted my shoes shined. Thinking my shoes could use a shine (I’d put them through a lot of abuse and they’re my only pair down here) I asked him how much.
He said two bolivianos, which caused the old lady next to me to erupt in protest and demand he reduce his price to one boliviano. I stayed out of the debate. Granted veteran travelers always brag about their ability to bargain like a local, but when we’re arguing over $0.20 or $0.40, I feel like an asshole making a stand.

Nevertheless the masked teen shined my shoes, and did a pretty good job of it, then asked for the two bolivianos, causing the argument to erupt again. Fearing the wrath of the old lady (and appreciating her efforts to assist me) I paid him one boliviano, told him it was all he had, and he reluctantly packed up and went on his way.

At this point I left the presidential plaza, and headed over to the Museo del Enthnographia y Folklorica (Museum of… while surely you can figure that one out). This museum would be worth the money I paid for it, even if it wasn’t free. Half old colonial house, and half remarkably new and state-of-the-art exhibition centre, the Museum displayed a vast assortment of Bolivian ceremonial dress and artifacts calendar timing would not allow me to see otherwise. The highlight was the Mask Room which displayed tons of colourful masks used in tribal ceremonies across Bolivia, ranging from sun and moon gods, to angels and devils, to almost Asian solemn masks, to mockeries of the Spanish and other persons and more. Just be careful not to get stuck in the dark with the masks alone, as happened to me. Apparently, I was taking too long inside admiring the masks and the lights (on an automatic timer) went out, and I found myself in pitch black surrounded by tribal masks. I fumbled my way through the dark until I finally found the entrance. As soon as I left, the lights came back on again. Lots of the museums in La Paz had this feature of turning on and off lights and sounds only if someone were to enter the room (a great energy saver, so I was impressed Bolivia was on top of that). Other museums I visited included the Museum of Musical Instruments (very awesome, a courtyardial mansion full of all sorts of wacky guitars, xylophones, and any number of rhythm machines some of which you can play, or at least they don’t tell you not to play) and the San Francisco Church (which fronts the San Francisco Plaza go figure) which is deceptively larger inside than outside (not that the outside looks miniscule by any stretch of the imagination). I unexpected received a personal guide with my entrance fee, which was great, although I had to make her stop every time we went up the stairs so I could catch my breath (I still wasn’t accustomed to the altitude… either that or I’m just out of shape). The church is very grand (it has a mix of Andean and Spanish architectural designs), and you get taken all over it, including the roof and belltower, where you can get dangerously close to ringing the bell and making your charming guide extremely nervous that you will do so. I certainly learned a helluva lot more about the Franciscan order than I had intended.

Lake Titicaca

The next day, I took a very South American bus (more like a tourist collectivo) to Copacabana (on the shore of Lake Titicaca) the bus arrived a bit late (not usual in South America) and all our bags were tied haphazardly to the roof (I’m not sure how the guy was able to lift them all up there). At one point, we actually had to cross a section of Lake Titicaca (no bridge) and so we were all shuffled off the bus, which was loaded onto a rickety raft, and we had to pay 1.5 Bolivianos to get across in a motor boat ferry, which had me huddling my laptop about a foot above Lake Titicaca itself (talk getting up close and personal). The lake itself was very clear, and “seemed” like it might actually be a refreshing place for a swim, although I wasn’t seeing anyone taking a plunge. You do see a lot of interesting sail/fishing boats with one triangular sail, usually blue, and draped off to the side.

This Copacabana (apparently that’s a popular name) ain’t that big, and you could easily walk around the main portion of town in an hour. There was a very nice (surprisingly large) Moorish-style cathedral (ie. a church that looks like a mosque). While looking for a place to eat, I ran into some friends from the hostel in La Paz, Margaret the travel writer for Viva Travel Guides (a new online-based travel publication trying to break into the market) and her friend from Nashville that came out to visit her. They were pretty cool to hang out with (I learned a lot about the travel writing business, especially how it pays $3 an hour) and gained some tips. Who knows maybe they’re be a business partnership in the future (she did have a card game idea that was turned down by her boss, so I said maybe I could develop it instead, but lets not get ahead of ourselves). We ate at a very jungle themed Vegetarian Restaurant which had a surprising amount of mainly meat dishes (I had the pizza steak).

Afterwards, the girls were tired from researching islands all day, and so we headed back to our respective hostels. I thought it would be an easy night for me. Instead, I found myself in the role of hotel bouncer.

I was surprised to find a very drunk local man (probably in his late teens) shouting at the hostel door. I should probably mention that the hostel I was staying at was apparently being run by a 13 year-old girl (I never saw the parents, and the girl did all the guest sign-ins, so I presumed the parents were away somewhere. Though having kids take on such an active role is not uncommon in South America, you usually expect to see an adult somewhere around). Anyways, it was pretty clear that the girl didn’t know this guy and just wanted him to leave, but he would not stop yelling for a “Beny” and slamming the door to get our attention when we tried to ignore him. I just walked by him, as did most the other guests, when I entered, and I did drop a few things off at my room, but when it became clear he wasn’t leaving, and may indeed be threatening the poor girl, I decided I better stay in the courtyard, just in case she needed my help (he was much bigger than her, but I was certainly bigger than him). We tried telling him his friend wasn’t here (we assumed he was looking for someone named Beny, and would get angry when we did not produce him). I tried talking to the girl in my broken Spanish to figure out what she wanted to do about the situation (I didn’t exactly want to take charge in a foreign language in someone else’s property), but it became clear she didn’t know the guy and wanted him to leave, but her parents weren’t around and calling the police did not appear to be an option (in Latin America, the police unfortunately aren’t always reliable). Finally after shouting at us from a distance, he stumbled his way into the hotel itself towards the girl. At this point, I directly intervened, and approached the man myself. I introduced myself, and surprisingly he shook my hand. I then asked him to walk with me, and I guided him back to the entrance. I explained that “todos la gente acqui esta durmiendo” which I think means “all the people here are sleeping” and thank god he understood me. I also told him that he did not look well and should return to his house (my Spanish was pretty broken, but he seemed to understand, and became more cooperative at this point). We got him back outside again, and I motioned for the girl to close the door. To my surprise he said a friendly “Ciao” and left, I said “Ciao” as we locked the door behind him, both of us breathing a sigh of relief. We didn’t hear anything more from him.

The Island of the Sun of the Island of the Moon

Two major Incan islands in Lake Titicaca were relatively close to Copacabana, so naturally I set about trying to reach them.

The first—the Island of the Sun—touts itself as the birthplace of the Incan empire, as the Incan Sun God was allegedly born on this island out of a rock that apparently looks like a puma (apparently you have to look at it from the right angle). The second, the Island of the Moon, was famous for housing a multitude of virgins of the sun.

Naturally, I tried to get to Moon Island first, but it proves difficult if not impossible to get there on my own (whence why they’re still virgins methinks). At any rate, the “virgins of the sun” thing probably went out of style 400 years ago. Now, they’re basically just Catholic nuns. But oh well, a fella can dream.

So I went to the Island of the Sun instead, and planned to stay one night to get “the full experience of the island.” Don’t do the tours, my guidebook says, stay the night and really get inside the local culture. Unfortunately, it was the local culture—particularly those of a bacterial variety—that got inside of me, as after finally getting the health and courage back to try Bolivian cuisine again (not that there were a lot of other options on the island), I found myself right back on the toilet for the remainder of the night, and this time running dangerous low on toilet paper (sorry hankerchief from Potosi tour, but your sacrifice will be remembered).

At any rate, while I probably would have seen more of the island (and less of the bathroom) had I actually just done the tour, I was able to see some parts of the island in between bowel movements. As promised the islands were definitely more traditional than the mainland (although they obviously depend on tourism for their livelihood as everywhere you turn you’ll be asked to donate a boliviano).

Most of the guesthouses (you stay with local families) are based on the southern half of the island, near the impressive massive Incan built staircase. What they don’t tell you, is you have to climb said stair case with your luggage. Hope you’re over that altitude sickness.

Yes the island is adorned in steep cliffs, many of which are terraced according to traditional Incan agricultural methods. Donkeys are constantly being led up and down (I’m not sure why, actually) and many of the people wear traditional dress. Indeed, there are some impressive Incan ruins on the islands, but the island itself steals the show with steep cliffs, clear waters, and traditional if touristed life.

After returning to Copacabana, I caught a crowded and bizarre collectivo/bus/thing that moved to the Peruvian border, whereby we went through the usual confusing border rituals and bus changes before heading into to Peru and Lake Titicaca’s other half.

Argentina-rena and Uruguay-Hey!

2009-04-10T08:33:00.000-07:00

Argentina and Uruguay

In this episode, Ryan…
-Explores his sensual side with Argentinean Tango and Brazilian Carnival dancers
-Becomes lunch-meat for disease-ridden tropical mosquitos
-Learns the Spanish for “Man Overboard” during a rafting expedition in the Andes

The Argentina Scena

“Don’t cry for me Argentina…” okay, I’ll leave the Eva Peron references for the Buenos Aires section. Let’s start with the waterfall.

Iguazu Falls, made famous by the most recent Indiana Jones film, was my first stop in this elongated country. Legend has it when Eleanor Roosevelt saw the cascades she exclaimed “Poor Niagara!” I’d have to be inclined to agree. While Niagara Falls are impressive in their own right, Iguazu Falls are much larger and while they attract a lot of tourists, the area around the Falls is a national park (meaning it’s developed with hiking trails and wildlife reserves rather than casinos and viewing platforms). The experience is surreal to say the least. I first came at the Falls via a short jeep tour through the jungle, where we encounter giant-ass spiders that were reportedly docile although I wasn’t taking any chances. Then they threw us into river runners that sped over the rapids towards the foot of the falls (it is something else seeing waterfalls from the water itself), after posing for the requisite photos, the boat decided to dampen the crowd by driving head first into the white plumes of not one, not two but three of the massive falls, including one of the more major ones (Needless to say, seeing your boat driver hit the gas headfirst into one of the largest waterfalls you’ve ever seen is a good way to wake yourself up).

The Iguazu Falls are basically the only attraction in the area, but man what an attraction they are. The park is well-serviced by hiking trails (although expect to climb a lot of stairs in 35 degree humid heat) with many bends and turns that constantly stop you in your tracks with stunning views of the falls, not to mention jungle birds, wandering lizards (including one on San Martin Island that was two feet long), and a weird cross between a raccoon and an anteater with a penchant for going after tourist’s bags. There are two main sets of falls (that would be famous in their own right if they weren’t so close to each other), and a series of other falls that dot around the landscape surprising you at every corner. There’s a free old train that takes you to the mouth of the Devil’s Throat (the curved curtain of water and the most intense section of the falls) and an exotic island between the falls, called San Martin Island where you can observe the Falls through natural stone arches, douse yourself off at the base of the Falls (more than a few tourists have succumbed to Iguazu’s currents so the swimming area is understandably small and they’ll close it if too many jack-os try going beyond it as happened while I was there), and evade that aforementioned big lizard.

All in all, even if you’re not remotely interested in waterfalls, these cascades are simply stunning and shouldn’t be missed.

And after you’re done, you can stay at the Hostel Inn Iguazu in Puerto Iguacu, Argentina where I stayed (without a doubt the most luxurious hostel I have ever stayed at, and I’ve stayed at a few). Converted from an old casino, this hostel actually looks brand spanking new and comes with a massages, palm trees, air conditioning, its own excursions desk, meal plans, a volleyball net, nightly entertainment, two bars, a massive TV room, a firepit, and even a big outdoor pool that’s open late (and practically has a swim up bar). Seriously, this isn’t a hostel, it’s an underpriced resort. The only drawback was I got stuck with a group of annoying fresh-out of high school teens in my dorm room whose immature antics prevented me from getting any sleep (one, whom I assume most of just gotten off a reality show, made such a fuss over his cigarettes that I finally broke down and told him to just go buy some from the front since they cost the equivalent of like $2). Then again, I can’t blame the hostel for that.

Indeed, I met a few good people at the hostel, including a couple of Canadians I later re-encountered in Buenos Aires, a friendly and perky Australian dance partner, and a sassy Brit and her German… sorry Austrian accomplice (he always got offended when anyone insinuated he was in any way German, spoke German, or had anything do with Germany, so naturally these connections were made on a frequent basis) with whom I ended up in an impromptu Mid-night dip in pursuit of sandals in which some people entered the pool fully clothed.

Things might have gotten a little out of hand that evening, I for one blame the Brazillian traditional dance show, which took “traditional dance” to a whole new level. First the hostel fed us fresh BBQ’d Argentinean meat, a treat in its own right, and let us know that traditional Brazillian dancers were coming out to entertain us. Now, when I heard “traditional dance” I thought Folklorama or Lt Gov’s Winterfest type dancing (ie. Scottish sword dancing, Chinese umbrella twirling, that thing Ukrainians do when they jump around a lot in flashy pants).

At first it started pretty sedate, just a samba dude with a tambourine. He was energetic but most people just continued eating. It was only when they brought the girl out that I remembered what Brazil’s most famous traditional fest was called: Carnival.

Before I knew what was happening, I was whisked on stage where a scantily clad Brazillian woman in a g-string and feather cap began gyrating in front of my face (and about 8 other eager but pleasantly surprised men), this continued with flirtatious hip bumps, (at one point one guy was cajoled into giving what he thought was one of the girls a lap dance only to turn around and find out it was the same crazy Samba guy from before, prompting the lap dancing dude to run away in shock) a bringing of women on stage for some samba twists, and ultimately a giant congo line where I ended up paired with an Australian girl whom I was expected to twirl and spin above my head (Thank God she was rather petite). At any rate, if the Brazillians thought they could teach the world to dance, they’d apparently never met a Manitoban… despite copious efforts, rhythm was not my companion, but my well-intended dance buffoonery apparently endeared me to the Australian and her boyfriend (okay, granted I’m not so sure about the boyfriend) and they soon conscripted me to perform lift and chicken fighting duties in the pool with numerous beautiful recent dancers. It’s a tough life I know.

The next day, I caught a 17 hour bus to Buenos Aires, which was nice and air conditioned (although long and motion sicky) and had copious amounts of border stops, checkpoints, and shepherd’s pie. Go figure.

Anyways, Thanks Iguazu for a fantastic time, on to Buenos Aires!

So I ended up in Buenos Aires a night before my friend Megan arrived from Canada, and I spent it drinking in patio bars and hostel bars sipping a ridiculously awful cocktail called a Fernet and Cola. Apparently, it’s a favourite amongst Argentine men, although the girl behind the counter sold it to as “tastes like bad medicine.” Her prognosis was correct, as the only equivalent I could think of in Canada would be if you mixed a wad of cola, added a tinge of campari, and topped the whole thing off with a bottle of Buckley’s Cough Syrup. An acquired taste to say the least. Man, that drink was terrible. The stuff was so unswallowable, I couldn’t finish it and was forced to spend the remainder of the evening pawning sips off on unsuspecting hostellers and amusing myself with their facial reactions. Incidentally, Argentine women apparently drink something called Giancia (Giancia Blanca I think the name of the cocktail), which I tried for comparison purposes and rather enjoyed it, promptly wondering why socially acceptable drinks for men generally taste godawful, perhaps being able to stomach atrocious liquids is a sign of masculine prowess (ladies?). Women’s drinks, while often a bit on the sweet side, actually tend to go down a lot smoother, with the possible exception of a Monkey’s Lunch. Seriously, I might try to write an article on this for a feminist magazine or something (the unemployed gotta finance their drinking habits some way).

Anyways, so Megan arrived the next day and we hit up the Buenos Aires scene pretty quickly. Buenos Aires is said to be the most “European” of major South American cities, and definitely the San Telmo neighbourhood we were staying in, with its old colonial apartments, narrow alleys, and cobble stone sidewalks, felt like a barrio of Paris—if Paris had a suburb that spoke Spanish, had an unusual obsession with empanadas, and survived on a heavily devalued currency. Both Rio and Buenos Aires have very vibrant nightlife scenes, although quite different—where you might not even bother to put on a shirt to go to a party in Rio (or pants as the case might be), Buenos Aires socialites tend to be a tad more subtle in their approach to sexiness (ie, they’ll still show plenty of skin, but there’s more of an emphasis on style). That said, I was still wearing my barely washed backpacker shorts. Like any true South American Paris, though, Buenos Aires is stylish on to some, arrogant and prickish to others (Megan’s guidebook, for no apparent reason, had a list of jokes about Argentineans, including “How does a Argentinean commit suicide?” The answer: “He climbs to the top of his ego and jumps off”).

Cynical guidebook writers aside, I actually found little to no arrogance or prickishness from the porteños (people from Buenos Aires) and in fact, the anti-Buenos Aires sentiment is probably equivalent to Canadian Toronto-hating (sure there are some assholes, but there are plenty of non-assholes, just take the city for what it is). In fact, the dude who did our walking tour for free, although he accepted donations naturally, was probably one of the best tour guides I ever had. Not only was he very knowledgeable about Argentine and Buenos Aires history and cultural going-ons, he also could shoot the shit about topics as varied as gaucho mystique, why Latin Americans love Homer Simpson so much (seriously, they’re on TV almost as often as futebol), Argentine relations with Chile, Canadian Confederation (I told him Canada gained its independence because Britain didn’t want us anymore, and a bunch of provincial heads got wasted in Charlottetown and didn’t realize what they were signing), and of course what tour of Buenos Aires would be complete without at least one conversation surrounding 1980s animation sensation the Thundercats (yes it came up, although I can’t recall why).

Perhaps you’re wondering what a gaucho is, which would make sense because I never explained them. Basically, they’re like an Argentinean cowboy and play a similar role in the Argentinean cultural psyche as they do in American folklore—agricultural, rugged and masculine, fervently individualistic, always ready for a fight, somewhat unbathed, etc. Unlike their American counterparts, gauchos forewent the six shooter and fought with knives and panchos, and yet for some reason still knew how to tango. I think one would make an excellent Indiana Jones adversary.

Let’s see, what else did we do in BA? Well there was the Defensa street market on Sunday (which covered half the city), an old colonial mansion and converted party space, and the Casa Rosada (Pink House instead of White House) famous as Argentina’s seat of government. This—presumably—was that same building from which Eva Peron (EVITA!) gave her famous speeches from the balcony, cementing her place in history as the first major female political figure in world history to deliver her speeches entirely in song (what, you thought Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote them?). (The current Argentine president, Cristina Fernandez, is also a woman, and a mucha caliente one at that). We also saw Evita’s grave in the Recoleta cemetery (cuz nothing says vacation fun like a reminder of your own mortality), itself a treasure trove of ornate tombs and gothic artwork (seriously, if I ever get the budget for a major vampire or zombie movie, I am totally coming back here, or possibly Edinburgh), although I spent most of my time there searching for the tomb of Jorge Luis Borges, mainly so I could ask him what the hell was going on in Labyrinths, the collection of short stories I had to read for Postmodern Lit. Unfortunately, the cemetery proved to be an unsolvable Labyrinth all its own—and in Spanish no less.

No matter, we gave the labyrinth a rest and proceeded to consume delicious dulce con leche ice cream (dulce con leche is a sweet caramel spread South Americans love almost as much as futebol, ham and cheese sandwiches, and the Simpsons) and eat ridiculously underpriced and absolutely delicious Argentinean steaks (sorry Paraguay). Seriously, this has got to be the only country on Earth, with the possible exception of Uruguay, where steak is a common menu choice for grimy backpackers (seriously, the thing cost like $6-$7 Canadian).

Last but not least we did the ubiquitous tourist requirement and went to a Tango Show. Apparently, I have just as many left feet in the southern hemisphere as in the north, so the next Carlos Gardel I was not, but I did amuse my poor Dutch dancing partner with my serious Tango-dancing face which I saw the Tango Dance who looked like Bill Murray using during a street Tango earlier in the day. Later on, we were whisked to a dinner theatre where we were entertained by tango theatrics. Colombian pop sensation Shakira, who I believe had a famous song about dancing tango, once quipped that her dancing was not “sexual but sensual.” I think this adequately describes Tango. Sure it involves a lot of interlocking legs, body contact, slinky dresses, sleek suits, and invasions of personal space, but that’s not “sexual”—ie an overt means of expressing or arousing sexual desire—it’s “sensual”—a slightly less overt means of expressing or arousing sexual desire. And man was that dancing sensual, unbelievably sensual. When they had me pose for a photograph with one of the leading ladies raising her leg ever so sensually across my body, my face turned as red as her fishnet stockings. Now, that’s some sensuality.

Phew, moving on. What to follow that with? I know, ECONOMICS! Yay! Argentina—no stranger to financial crises—appears to be in the grips of one especially bizarre one, a change drought. Retailers, restauranteurs, and businesses were constantly perilously short on small change, so much so that many would ask if they could write us an I.O.U. or giving us the nearest amount in bills or whatever tiny denominations of coins they could scrape together from the bottom of the cash register. Seriously, no one had coins. If somehow you received a one peso coin, you were told to cherish it, save it, and impress your grandchildren with it presumably. Indeed, I was a little taken aback by the excitement I received when I first spent a one peso coin (about the equivalent of $0.33 Canadian) as the clerk reacted as if I had just handed them a bar of gold (this was before I was made aware of Argentina’s unique coinage situation). Why, you might ask, would an entire country be constantly short on small change? In fact we did ask, a lot of people, but nobody seemed to want to give us a straight answer. One girl from Iguazu told me it was the mafia (apparently the Argentinean mafia had stockpiled ridiculous sums of small coins and were charging businesses exorbitant sums for them) while our tour guide claimed it was just due to an unexpected popularity of the Buenos Aires transportation network which only accepts coins (and therefore receives the lionshare of them). My guess… some form of Subway Mafia is at fault, or I suppose I should say Subtle Mafia. (Argentinean Spanish, by the way, is incredibly strange. Where other Spanish speakers say “yo” they say “cho,” and they use a lot of archaic overly polite Spanish constructions like “vos” and “sos,” presumably to maintain their European aristocratic image amongst South Americans).

So that in a nutshell, was Buenos Aires. Oh and I caught a duo of pick-pockets trying to steal my bag at the bus station (they thought I wasn’t paying attention. They were wrong).

In addition to Buenos Aires, I also visited Uruguay (which I will write about after this) and the Mendoza region, famous for its high mountains (Mt. Aconcagua is the highest peak in the Americas), Arizona-esque landscape, wine tours (it’s Argentina’s wine-making region) and extreme sports (an odd combo to be sure). I basically was only stopping there en route to Santiago, Chile, but I still found some time to do some extreme sports like horseback riding, whitewater rafting, and rappelling (okay, maybe not so much the last one). Basically it was a combo package, and since I wanted to try whitewater rafting (and things are generally cheaper in Argentina, even if Mendoza is like Argentina’s Banff-Okanagan) I decided to give the other two a whirl. We started with horseback riding which is a bit like hiking except the horse does the walking for you. The terrain around here really is desert and canyon-esque a lot link the American Southwest (or at least what I imagine the American Southwest to look like from watching Road Runner cartoons as I have never been there). Only you’d be in the middle of the desert and off to one side would be a giant mountain with snow on it, so you could actually stand in a desert and see snow… weird.

Next we did white-water rafting (the land was dry, but there was still a lot of run-off from the mountains) and it was actually pretty wicked. The safety instructions were only in Spanish mind you, but I quickly learned the Spanish for “Paddle Goddammit!,” “Stop,” and “Man Overboard.” No, it wasn’t me who fell overboard. It was the Argentinean guy sitting across from me (you know, just beyond the handle of my paddle that occasionally jutted out unrelatedly in his direction). Seeing my Argentinean amigo flop backwards in the frothing surf, I leapt heroically to his aide, grasping his hand and thinking I had done well, when our guide pointed out (with excited gestures, he didn’t speak English) that by us both abandoning our posts the craft was steering dangerously towards a giant rock. I hurried back to my post—paddling my ass off, as my amigo clutched the rafts siding for dear life—as our guide plucked him out of the water like a wet puppy and set him back to paddling.

Like I said, there was also supposed to be some rappelling on this trip and indeed our guide did take us up a steep crumbling 30 m cliff with lots of cute and spiky cacti to fall on at its base. Now, I’m not so nuts about rock climbing to be honest (hell, I can’t even climb a tree) and heights are for me what snakes are for Indiana Jones (a cause of great phobia yet also a phenomenon with which my life choices frequently bring me into contact), but I was going to give it a shot, that is until my legs and hands became inexplicably consumed by cramps—right after our flip-flop wearing guide (if my Alps experience has taught me anything, flip-flops ain’t exactly the best mountaineering shoes) tried to explain in his broken English that our loose straps weren’t flimsy at all and passed not but the most stringent of Argentinean safety standards—it probably didn’t help that, as my guide was distracted by his struggles in English, the tourist on the end of his support rope careened into the cliff wall. Oh well.

The next day, I went up to pay the Aconcagua area a visit (it takes 12-15 days to actually climb the mountain, and after my aforementioned distaste for climbing, although I just photographed from it the highway). To be honest though, the mountains just outside Mendoza look more impressive from the ground (probably because there’s a much greater degree of change from the flatlands of Argentina to these sky-high mountains). We also stopped at a natural bridge, a bizarre steep man-made bridge to nowhere over a creek that could easily be hopped across, and a deserted (and I do mean “desert”) ski resort (apparently it snows here in winter, though it looks more like Arizona right now).

Uruguay, more than just the butt of 3rd Graders’ Wordplay

Ah Uruguay. Yes, it’s a real country. No, they don’t think that joke is funny either.

Of course, that might be because they speak Spanish and don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

Having had a bit of a run-in with South America’s other “Guay” I was a little apprehensive about what this venture across the Rio Plata would net me. But as their slogan “There’s Paraguay and then there’s a Better Guay” suggested (note: may not be an actual slogan), Uruguay proved to be pleasantly free of questions about my security (at least compared to Paraguay) and if anything it was probably over developed for tourists (The reasons we visited, Colonia Del Sacramento and Punta Del Este, where like Uruguay’s Wasagaming and Monte Carlo respectively). Actually both towns—Colonia Del Sacramento being a quaint colonial-ish village while Punta Del Este being a beach destination for the Spanish-speaking nouveau riche—were surprisingly devoid of tourists, at least during the day, but then we learning that South Americans, at least the ones who can afford to party, are actually full fledge nocturnal creatures (an early party starts at midnight, most start after 1, indeed one club we visited said the space was for children only until 1:30 am). How so many people are able to keep this going confuses me to this day (Presumably these people still have jobs, and occasionally fatigue?). Is this why they need a siesta?

Compared to Buenos Aires, Uruguay felt like we were stepping back into rural Manitoba (copius amounts of flat farmland might have had something to do with that). Being just across the river from Buenos Aires, Uruguay has a Canada-US complex with its bigger neighbour to the south. And yes, Uruguay your beef is good too.

To be honest, we didn’t do a whole helluva lot in Uruguay other than lounge on the beach, ride the bus, purchase personal care products, and fail in our attempts to see Montevideo. There was absolutely no accommodation to be had the night we dropped in on Uruguay’s capital and largest (perhaps only) city, as apparently some Geography conference had attracted conference-goers from across the nation and hotels and hostels had been booked up solid for months (Uruguayans must really freak’n love Geography). The conference also ran into Argentinean spring break, which meant we couldn’t even get a boat ticket back to Buenos Aires until the morning of the day Megan flew back to Canada.

About the only thing disastrous that happened would be that I suddenly realized the number of mosquito bites I had accumulated in the last few days (after travelling through regions known for malaria and dengue fever, yay) that my legs and arms looked like they were breaking out in hives. I was mess with itchiness let me tell you, so much so that I apparently woke people up with my incessant scratching throw the night (you’re not supposed to do that, but I lost my self-control). Inevitably, I started taking some meds and my legs and arms seem to be on the mend (although they still don’t look pretty). Odd thing was, Megan and everyone else barely got bitten at all. Apparently, I’m considered muy guapo and sensual in the South American mosquito world. Great.

Well I haven’t developed malaria or dengue fever yet, fingers crossed, and I should be immune to Yellow Fever, so on to Chile!

Bountiful Brazil and Perilous Paraguay

2009-03-28T15:04:00.000-07:00

Brazil & Paraguay

In this episode, Ryan…
-Roars through a favela on with a machine gun-toting band of motor cyclists
-Battles to the death with an army of hormigas in his hotel room
-Competes for the record of “whitest dude” at the beach in Rio

Getting to South America

“Only senior citizens use travel agents,” claims Scot Paterson, a buddy of mine who’s driving me and his parents into Winnipeg for a morning flight. His folks are going out west for holiday, I’m going slightly further afield.

In my experience, I’d have to agree with Scot. I haven’t had found much use for travel agents since I learned the art of Internet flight booking though I do feel bad for them (they’re just trying to make a living out of traveling, can’t blame them for that), but the reality is I can almost always (actually I can’t think of a circumstance where this wasn’t the case) get a better price by surfing around online then by asking a travel agent (in this case, I got nearly half the price I was initially quoted).

But one thing about travelling on the lowest common denominator is that you can’t always be sure what backasswards method will be employed in getting there. Winnipeg and Rio didn’t have any direct links (go figure) so I ended up flying on tiny jet (so small my head kept bumping the ceiling) to Chicago, catching a brand new intercontinental flyer to Washington, laying over there for a few hours, catching another new flyer south to Sao Paulo (slight change of plans it seems) and then on from there on a quick hop to Rio De Janeiro. Needless to say I was pretty tired upon arrival in Rio, but the journey itself did bring some absurdities. As the flight from Chicago to Washington taxied down the runway, for example, I was trying rather fruitlessly to open a bag of sour jubes to chew on the flight (so as to prevent my ears from popping of course). In my frustration, I turned to the foolhardy “pull them apart with all your might” approach to opening stubborn plastic bags, when the intercom welcomed us aboard United Flight 97 direct to Brussels...

Now as I was trying to go to Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, South America, the news that I was suddenly on a flight to Brussels, Belgium, Europe struck me as a bit of a surprise. I do apologize to my fellow passengers for my reaction to the news and to the torrent of gummy candies that rained down upon them as a result of it. As I nervously tried to collect my thoughts and the Great United Air Candy Explosion of 2009, the flight attendant kindly reassured me that the plane did in fact land in Washington before heading off to Belgium, where it would continue (with my troublesome candies stowing away around its fuselage) to Europe with me.

Other than that, the only other experience of note was my efforts to amuse myself in my long layover in Washington in the airport’s numerous America! shops which hawk all manner of cheesy over-patriotic nonsense that Americans are so widely celebra—er… known for.

These included such gems as “Don’t blame me, I voted for McCain & Palin (side note: I don’t care what the problem is, I still blame them),” foam presidential seals, and my all-time favourite “Barack in the Box.” Yes, you guessed it. You can actually purchase a jack-in-the-box version of Barack Obama at the Washington-Dulles airport; just turn the crank and a Mr. Rogers neighbourhood version of Captain Change pops out to spread his message of the Audacity of Hope. Shove him back in the box and use him to surprise your friends. I gotta admit, I was really tempted to buy one of theses, but it was too bulky for my luggage. Maybe they’ll make a pocket-sized edition for his re-election bid. I can wait 4 years.

So yeah, then I caught the overnight flight to Sao Paulo and finally emerged a be-draggled and jetlagged wreck in Rio, upon which point I realized, “Oh crap, I’m in South America” after which all this other stuff started to happen…

Brazil-Getting Real in Rio

January River!

Doesn’t sound too exotic does it? Or even somewhere you’d want to go (more like a frozen wasteland)

But just translate it into Portuguese and see what you get.

BOOM! Rio de Janiero, now we’re talking…

Yes Rio is indeed as beautiful as they say it is. Steep ancient mountains, verdant green rainforests and beaches that stretch longer than the legs of a carioca. The place would be a natural paradise if weren’t also a urban behemoth teeming with millions of soccer fans.

I stayed in Ipanema Beach, namely because I heard about it in that song. Upon arrival I was informed that there really was a Girl from Ipanema, although the song was written in 1962 or something, so she’s considerably older now and as one Brazillian guy put it “no longer beautiful, but in the 60s she was ah yeah.” In any case, there is certainly no shortage of beautiful people in Ipanema (or in Brazil for that matter), and the streets are filled with joggers at all times and heat levels. Now, that said, there are definitely people on the beach who come in all shapes and sizes (mainly the tourists and well me), but if want something to stand out like a sore thumb just ship it out from frozen Manitoba. I mean I’m used to feeling awkward with my shirt off, but this was… well let’s just say Rio had no more need of a lighthouse while I was on the beach. Then again, at least it drew attention away from my unsightly chest hair which for some reason has transfigured itself into the shape of a falcon.

But I digress… Rio has not one but two beaches that have famous songs written about them. The first, as I mentioned is the Girl From Ipanema song (“Tall and tanned, and thin and lovely, the Girl from Ipanema goes walking…”) but there’s also Copacabana Beach (“At the Copa…Copa Cabana… the hottest place north of Havana”). A side note to whoever wrote that song, incidentally: Havana is in Cuba which is the northern hemisphere, Copacabana Beach is in Rio which is in the Southern hemisphere. Granted there might be other Copacabanas (there’s one in Bolivia I think, but I don’t think that’s the one they meant, and its still south of Havana). There’s not whole lot of Latin America north of Havana (Tijuana perhaps?).

But I digress, Rio is full of beaches, and yes there are people in g-strings (both genders) but there’s also plenty of more conventional swim wear. The beaches are always full (unless its night and then they’re deserted and its unsafe to be there). The waves are huge too and smacked me into the sand but good on many an occasion (apparently you’re supposed to dive under the crest not bodycheck your way through it).

So let’s see, what else did I do in Rio? Oh yeah there was this boat party, where they had this DJ and people jumped in the water and tried to dance on the top of the boat. No as much I enjoy dancing with bikini clad ladies on a sopping wet boat in Brazil, I’m surprised more people didn’t crash into the stair well they teetering over (or fall over the railing into the ocean more). People were plenty drunk enough. Frankly I’m surprised I personally didn’t do either of these things. About the only disaster I was involved with was the loss of a digital camera (not mine). Actually someone was trying to take a no doubt incriminating photo when he slipped and dropped the camera in the ocean.

I met some cool people in Rio, like the British girl constantly in romantic turmoil who wrote music for video games and vaguely resembled Rene Zellwegger (I’ll call her Bridget Jones), the whirling like a dervish and gypsy dancing in the street happy girl from Istanbul (I’ll call her Turkish Delight), the cassanova of a hostel manager who could only speak like 5 words in English but that was all he needed to woo the hostel girls (I’ll call him Samba Ramba), the tough but sassy female dorm roommate who referred to me as “fresh meat” within an hour of my arrival (I’ll call her Will-kill-me-if-she-found-out-I-gave-her-a-nickname).

I didn’t spend the whole time at the beach. No, I also went to a soccer game at Maracana stadium which was pretty intense (see my piece on Cuban beisbol then throw in a dose of extra violence and rain storm). The game itself wasn’t anything spectacular, except it was between two rival teams from Rio (Vasco and Flamenco) there were more red cards than goals. My guidebook described Brazillian soccer as the “most inventive and creative” in the world, but by that I think they mean there’s a lot of “acting.” Seriously every single play would practically go like this Player from team A would get the ball, would pass to another player on Team A, this player would be tripped by Team B, the tripped player from Team A would fall to the ground in absolute agony unless it was clear the ref wasn’t watching, in which case he would get up without hesitation and rejoin the game. At one point, one of the goalkeepers was out at midfield with the ball—an odd place for a goal keeper to be at the best of times—when an opposing player crashed into him. Both fell to the ground, the goalkeeper doing a flip before dosing so. While his fall was dramatic, he quickly got up and returned to his post. It was only after he turned around and saw his adversary acting injured in front of the ref that he suddenly realized that he too was in agony, collapsed, and called for the ambulance. Ridiculous.

Only two goals were scored (for 10 red cards) neither of which I saw, because a massive downpour forced me and a human stampede to flee our seats, which were practically court side, for shelter of the bleachers, which of course we couldn’t get to, because 20 000 people trying to cram into the same one metre aisle doesn’t work so well. Not sure how they expect people to get out in an emergency.

And don’t kid yourself, Brazilian stadiums are never far from one. Putting aside stadium collapses (which apparently have happened during games in Brazil) The crowds redefine rabid devotion, with competing teams waving flags and banners like a call to arms. The rabid of the rabid take any calls against their team, no matter how minor, as insults to their manhood, which for some reason appear to be remedied by only taking off their shirts (a frequently used solution in Rio to many of life’s problems), bellowing loudly, and beating the seat in front of them. Hey whatever works I guess.

I should probably mention that Rio has a rough side. It might seem like a paradise, but it doesn’t take long for that veneer to fade as people will often warn you this is one of the most dangerous cities on the planet. Tourists are instructed to taxis everywhere they go (and to be careful about the taxis they use) and to go everywhere in groups and avoid large chunks of the city at night or altogether. Even in relatively safe and wealthy Ipanema, I heard of at least two fellow travelers being robbed at knife point nearby. That said, nothing bad happened to me (not even a pickpocket attempt) and the annoying hustlers weren’t near as bad as Cuba. In fact, almost all cariocas (ie people for Rio) where extraordinarily friendly to me and not just because they thought I had money. Indeed some welcomed into their homes and took on us on wild tours of the city (the Turkish girl was very good at ingratiating herself with the locals). Too good perhaps, as her and I soon found ourselves whirling across Rio on a very sketchy bus on a Friday night, but the destination we hit (a massive street party in the Lapa neighbourhood) was well worth it. Literally there were thousands of people in the street getting their groove on (apparently these kind of parties happen every Friday night Rio) and somebody had the bright idea of offering me a capinrinha, a Brazillian cocktail made out of exotic Amazonian fruits, that knocked me around oh but good with just one glass.

But my time in Rio wasn’t all just beaches and parties… okay it was mostly beaches and parties, but I did make a point of doing a tour of the Rocinha favela, said to be the biggest urban slum in all of Latin America, in the interest of doing “research” which was the theoretical point of my being in South America in the first place. Now, we were explicitly warned never to enter favelas unguided, so I hired a tour guide who drove us out to the base of the slums, the idea being we would hitch a motorcycle ride with locals to the top of the favela, which was built into the side of amount underneath the big Jesus Statue, Cristo Redentor (I did go and see the statue at some point, but it was fogged in, so there wasn’t much to see except for a giant headless Jesus—the fog obscured his head).

Now I should mention that the police have no control over favelas, and in fact routinely engage in altercations with the various gangs, druglords, and corrupt cops who do control them. This particular favela, Rio’s largest with a population of 200 000, was controlled by a drug dealing gang called Amigos Dos Amigos (Friends of Friends—and yes the name makes the sound more like a peer group for special needs students than a criminal organization, but I wasn’t about to tell them that), anyways the motorcycles they were using to escort us apparently had some legal issues, and some cops had arrived to confiscate them (this was still on the edge of the favela) so our guide informed us we were going to sneak the motorbikes a block north, take off from there, and run away from the police. Before I could protest that engaging in a hot pursuit in Rio de Janeiro maybe didn’t seem like the hottest move, we were swarmed by a crowd of 20 motorcyclists (there were only twenty of us on the tour), and I soon found myself (on my guide’s insistence) whisked onto the back of one, and sent racing up the steep inclines of the favela, as the motorcycle armada fled the police. The roads jagged left and right, over cobblestone, litter, and exposed wires, as pedestrian and motorcycle traffic shot both ways. A couple of times I lost sight of my compadres and instead found myself side-by-side with a teenager motorcyclist with a M80 machine gun tied to his back. When I would later reconnect with my guide at the hill’s summit, he would explain that these teenagers were members of the gang and defacto police of the favela, and although he insisted they were all at least 18 I wasn’t terribly convinced. At any rate he suggested it was not a good idea we took pictures of them and I happily complied. He said that there usually wasn’t this many number of armed people walking around and that “something must be up,” to which I replied “great.”

Now the guide did say that most of the people living in the favela are not druglords and that we shouldn’t pay too much attention to them (not that kids walking around casually with weapons issued to armies is easy to ignore), and he did have the point. There are plenty of legitimate people (okay quasi legitimate) doing things like producing art, baking food, and even foreign workers running schools (although I think the general lack of safety of the area should make one consider carefully if volunteering there is the right choice for them). That said I certainly didn’t have any problems, other than the ubiquitous requests for donations, although my fellow tourists perhaps weren’t the brightest tools in the sheds and kept wandering off and driving the guide nuts (two dudes were rich suburban teenage partiers from Miami who seemingly only joined the favela tour to score women and drugs and maybe were a tad naïve about what they were getting themselves into). At any rate, the experience was definitely very eye opening, and the sheer scale of poverty, the underlying reasons for it, and what motivated people to live under these conditions was definitely educational in a way a news report never could be.

So on that note…

Paraguay-Para Hey!

Okay so Ray Silvius made fun of me for making Paraguay my second stop on my South American journey, but Brazillian visa requirements demanded I have a flight leaving Brazil and I still wanted to go to Iguazu Falls, which is near the border with Paraguay and Argentina (although I couldn’t get a direct flight to Argentina) so I ended up booking a flight to Ciudad Del Este, Paraguay. Ciudad Del Este (City of the East) is known as one of the most corrupt cities in one of most corrupt countries this side of Africa. The “international airport” reminded more of a paved field than a global terminal, and there were a couple of curious unmarked 747s parked on the runway.

Paraguay seemed very agricultural after Rio, and in fact I consider it a subtropical Manitoba, dusty, flat, and full of cowboys. The soil was a brilliant red—and believe me there was a lot of soil, not to mention gravel roads. Clearly if I had been trying to get off the beaten path, I had succeeded.

Wanting a break from the hostel (and a couple of annoying Swedes I was rooming with who seemed to have an inexplicable hostility towards all things Finnish), I opted for a room in a hotel near the bus station as recommended by my guidebook (actually there are no hostels in Paraguay apparently, so it wasn’t so much a choice as a necessity). Hotel Tia Nancy was an interesting family run joint, and I do mean family run--We’re talking pictures of the grandparents on the walls and toddlers chasing about the halls. In fact, I’m pretty sure I was the only non-blood relative in the building. They were very friendly to me and made the freshest peach juice I’ve ever tasted (it was so good, I ordered like a litre of the stuff) and fed me a lunch of Paraguayan beef ribs and accessories (Paraguayans apparently take offense to the Argentines taking all the credit for South American beef bragging rights). Looking forward to a night to myself, though, I was in for a bit of a surprise, as while there were certainly no other people in my room, I was far from alone. At first a lone hormiga (ant) trotted across the floor, and being unphased by such a simple invasion and vaguely bored, I opted to smash the creature into oblivion. As successive attempts failed, I began to notice a second ant, and then a third… and then a hundred. Pretty sound a fountain of insects was pouring out of two cracks in the baseboards, and one in the sink.

Overwhelmed I retreated to the front desk, explained my problem and requested a room change (Ants may not be much of a big deal in Canada, but in South America I wasn’t taking any chances). The clerk smiled and handed me a bottle of Raid.

So that was it then, the room would either be mine or the ants’, one of us had to go. I charged back to my room and began unleashing chemical warfare upon the insectoids, targeting their access points and then mopping up the survivors. Eventually I secured a perimeter around my bed—probably inhaling a fair share of the spray in the process—and satisfied that my mission had been accomplished I opted to get some fresh air and walked down the street to a local Internet Café (the hotel didn’t have Internet access it barely had a phone).

Due to a bad connection and a mouse that refused to work when the girl running the café wasn’t looking, I ended up spending longer at the shop then I wanted to, and I was startled to realize that the neighbourhood had turned considerably sketchy in the interim (night had fallen). I cautiously headed back to the hotel, stopping only for some food and drink at a food stall. Many Paraguayans were definitely eyeing me in the street and one finally asked me “What the hell are you doing here? This area is not safe. You should go home, quickly.” Grabbing what I believe was so form of cheeseburger, I took his advice.

A bit put off by security concerns and ant infestations, I decided to move up my onward journey to Igauzu Falls although I felt I should at least see one Paraguayan attraction before I left the country unable—thanks to its visa requirements—to return.

As it turns out Ciudad Del Este does have one attraction, a big giant dam.

The Itaipu Dam, which straddles the border with Brazil, is the second biggest dam in the world (only China’s Three Gorges Dam is bigger) and such a behemoth of engineering that it created a lake so big that Se Queda Falls (a set of waterfalls that once rivaled Igauzu it in immensity) was completely submerged, along with countless acres of forest and traditional Guarani villages (the Guarani are the aboriginal people of Paraguay). It is an engineering feat of great magnitude, and is a national treasure of Paraguay, even celebrated on one of their high amount bills (actually, the Paraguayan currency is the guarani, named after the aboriginals who were displaced by the dam). It supplies the power for 90% of Paraguay and a huge swath of Brazil. That said, it’s basically just a big dam. I guess that’s cool if you like that sort of thing. Tours only in Spanish.

A note about Paraguayan currency. It’s named after the Guarani presumably to honour them, but 1 guarani is worth so little that they don’t appear to have a bill lower than 1000 guarani. In fact, about 1 dollar Canadian could buy you something in neighbourhood of 4000 guaranis (you could make your own village). Take out a normal amount of funds from the bank and suddenly you’re a millionaire.

Of course though, once you get guarani money good luck spending it. Even the Paraguayans prefer other currencies, such as the Paraguayan taxi driver my hotel hired for me who followed me around all day including at the dam, at the cramped zoo created as means of making ameans for the ecological destruction caused by the dam (not sure if Paraguay really has a good handle on this environmentalism thing), and last but not least, the Argentinean border. To get to the border with Argentina (I was trying to get to the town of Puerto Iguazu, Argentina) you first had to cross through Foz do Iguacu, Brazil. The border crossing between Foz do Iguacu and Ciudad Del Este basically consists of a pretty sketchy bridge that travelers are advised never to walk across at any time of day or night due to the high frequency of muggings. Luckily I still had a taxi, but I still had to run across a crapload of traffic, and people hanging out in the street so I could get my passport stamped at the well hidden passport office before heading back to the taxi via the same precarious route and over to Brazil.

Now if your taxi driver says you don’t need an entry stamp for Brazil, but your guidebook, embassy, and stomach say you do, listen to the latter three. Despite my repeated requests, we did not get my passport stamped for entry into Brazil and after my taxi driver dropped me off at the Brazilian border with Argentina, the Brazilians informed me that they I had entered their country illegally (while Brazillians themselves might seem relaxed, their customs officers certainly are not). Thankfully, I was able to explain the situation and the woman gave her head a shake that suggested this wasn’t the first time this was happened and I was whisked off to the Argentinian side where I was promptly searched. Finding nothing but my dirty underwear, the Argentinian official cracked a few jokes and let me go on my way. Finally, I arrived at a Hostel Inn Iguazu, a former casino and possibly one of the nicest hostels I have ever stayed at, at which point I promptly thanked God and jumped in the pool.

New York, New YORK

2008-06-12T18:16:00.000-07:00

New York, New YORK

In this episode, Ryan
-rocks it out with Stephen Colbert
-lights a microwave on fire in the meatpacking district
-gets escorted out of a compound by the NYPD

SATURDAY

Not a big fan of flying, I decided that I’d overland it to NYC, and while Amtrak and Via have never had the greatest of reviews in my experience—except from retirees from Australia for some reason—they couldn’t be any more ramshackle than the Hershey Train in Cuba, so screw it man, train it to NYC!

The journey cost me something like $70, which ain’t bad, but it takes a whole day. You leave early in the morning and don’t arrive until late that evening. It was 10 hours, but then it didn’t seem that bad or terribly long, especially when I could kill time with Civ IV and periodic flirtations with the attractive Mexican nanny-student in the seat next to me (who was good enough to share a bag of old potato chips, which—along with an over-priced hot dog from the café, served as my only nourishment for the entire trip).

Arriving underground at Penn Station at night, your first sight of NYC is Madison Square Gardens (known to me as the home of the Rangers, but apparently they have some sort of NBA franchise that’s more popular down there) and the neo-classical columns of the New York Post Office. The motto at the top of the building is like something taken right out of a Western from the 1950s saying something akin to “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” Inspirational, yes, and reassuring about the promptness of their courier services, but I’d still hate to be the sucker riding-pony through flood, fire, and hurricane, just so some dude in Alabama can get his monthly issue of Hustler.

Anywho, I did the obvious and hailed a yellow-taxi (what other colour would there be in New York?) which was surprisingly affordable and surprisingly the exact same feeling as riding in a regular taxi. Some though, have credit card slots and television screens to entertain you in the back, should looking out at Manhattan prove tiresome for you.

The hostel I stayed at the first night was like a converted courtyard of apartment complexes and bunkhouses with a confusing array of stair cases, friendly Koreans who seemed too shy to speak to me, less friendly Russians who seemed too disapproving to speak to me, and an older presumably wiser elderly Japanese man with long white bushy moustache and beard and a tie-dyed shirt. It’d be no stretch of the imagination to refer to him as a new Japanese hybrid of David Suzuki and Mr. Miyagi from the karate kid. He also didn’t speak any English, but since I’m always eager to embrace the absurdity of a conversation between two folks who don’t have a single mutually intelligible tongue between them, we hung out in our hot and muggy bunkhouse (despite summer’s arrival in New York, they had apparently neglected to turn off the heat from winter). Giving me some sage advice about life and not wasting it, he sent me off with a mouthful of altoids into the nearby club district of New York.

Okay, granted there’s a few of these, but this one in particular was called “the Meatpacking District” because of the abundancy of butchers and packers that originally set-up shop in the area. Now “the Meatpacking District” is a club district. Feel free to make all sorts of amusing puns and jokes here, I’m sure plenty have. I am curious though about the etymology of the slang term “meat market” referring to clubs where a lot of skin is on display. I heard this mainly during my undergrad in Canada, but could it have originated here in NYC? That would make for some beautiful irony.

Now if you know me—and odds are if you’re reading this you do—I ain’t exactly your stereotypical night-dawg player man. Most times I find myself in a club, I’m not entirely sure what to do with myself, except to drink over-priced beverages and gyrate my limbs in a behaviour that is distantly related to dancing. Being alone makes it that much more awkward, but this would be the only Saturday I’d have in NYC and it seemed sacrilege to not take in the nightlife from “the city that never sleeps.”

Of course though, I’d just spent 10 hours on a train, and all the altoids in the world couldn’t mask the Amtrak hot dog breath, well-trod sneakers, and fashion-sense dictated by charity giveaway t-shirts and shorts that hadn’t seen an iron since the NHL strike. But I carried on, looking for a place free of velvet rope, because there’s nothing that de-humanizes you like standing in line for 2 hours, only to get harassed by a steroid-induced bouncer, rejected by a cute flirt-in-a-skirt who could’ve been one of your TA students, and bankrupted by a bartender who doesn’t understand the difference between dark and light rum.

So I decided on a couple things. No cover, no crap-ass music, and something between sardine-wannabees and drinking alone on a lawn-chair on the moon. Naturally I found myself walking for a bit (which didn’t help my altoid or run-down running shoe situation), dodging the masses of beautiful people who probably spent more on their evenings wardrobe than I would on my entire trip (naturally, you can guess whose expenditure covered more, but hey I wasn’t complaining). I ended up walking by Hogs & Heiffers and rejecting it as being too much like Houstons (a popular nightclub in Brandon, one of 2 or 3) and I ended up on a place whose name I forgot but whose main distinguishing feature was that it had a dark lit-neon blue glow and a “pool room” in the basement, so-named after a pool filled with plastic balls next to the dance floor. (One wonders how often the floating balls become flying balls and the over-exuberant dancers decided to try this “floating” thing themselves). I ended up hooking up with a friendly Manhattanite and her friends whose dresses and well-permed hair made them look a cast-member of Sex and the City. Hearing it over the the thumping house music, my dance partner’s name sounded like “Justyna” but later turned out to be something more Russian sounding like “Nostyna.” Long-story short, soon after the name debacle and the club closing, I stumbled my way back to the hostel for what few hours of sleep remained before I had to check out of my night’s accommodation. On the way, I stopped in an all nite deli (which appears to be a New York word for convenience store) and picked up a Chicken parmigiana wrap, which I remember thinking was a freakin’ awesome culinary revolution.

SUNDAY

Of course, my opinion of the dish would change dramatically once I tried to mike it for breakfast the next morning. The group of ever-so-friendly Russians were hanging out in the kitchen at the time, and subsequent actions would only prove to solidify their disapproval of me, but meh, what traveller hasn’t ignited a microwave in a hostel before? Remember that Chicken parmigiana wrap I mentioned earlier? Well it seems that somewhere between my drunken revelry and my morning sleep deprivation I forgot that part of it was wrapped in tinfoil. If you’ve ever wondered why it’s a bad idea to microwave tinfoil, it’s because the metal produces sparks. These sparks are relatively harmless unless they come into contact with combustible material like oh-I-don’t-know the paper wrapper that surrounded the tinfoil and thus was the cause of my surprise when I noticed bright orange flashes coming from the glass front. Upon closer inspection it became apparent that my chicken parmigiana had become completely engulfed in a ball of flames, and my initial microwave-must-be-wacked-up theory to explain the orange glow soon had a more immediate and self-incriminating explanation.

So I went into emergency mode which for me effectively consists of standing still and eerily calm and trying to figure out what the hell to do. First, I cancelled the remaining cooking minutes. Normally I would have just grabbed it and chucked it in the sink, but the flames engulfed the entire thing, so it wasn’t going to have any of that. I tried blowing on it, but the flames were too big to be put out in such a fashion and ashes spread. I discovered that by closing the door, I choked off the oxygen and the flames gradually began to die down a bit, but by this point smoke was billowing through the hostel kitchen and one of the Russians charged in, grabbed the mostly de-flamed wrap, and doused it in the sink, before handing me the charred and somewhat overcooked remains of my leftovers.

So about an hour or two later, I checked into a different hostel. This one was called the Bowery Whitehouse Hostel, and luckily I had already planned to move to it. Recommended by my guidebook as the place to get a single room in downtown Manhattan for $30 a night, I thought why not? Obviously at that price there’s going to be a catch, and there’s was that the individual rooms were better described as walled-in cubicles (I literally was taller than the room was long, so I was forced to sleep in a quasi-fetal position), but you did have your own closet and bed and visual privacy, although the roofs of each room were open to allow for the communal air circulation (and noise circulation). Noise was a serious problem, as the building was probably almost a century old and the floors creaked to prove it. My room was right next to the entrance, so every time someone came through the door, it sounded like an elephant roller-skating. On the plus side, the bathrooms were communal, which usually I consider a disadvantage, but on this trip I made most of my new contacts at the hostel just waiting for the shower, including the smiley German who spent far too much time on her hair, the long-legged Singaporean who confused me into thinking her boyfriend was her cousin, and a confident Dutch traveler who dressed as liberally as her country’s policies.

I declared Sunday to be “New York Stereotypical Tourist Day” where I would endeavour take in the ubiquitous big apple landmarks that define anyone and everyone’s first visit to New York. First stop, Central Park. I had hoped to find the legendary drum circle—even bragging to a few friends about joining in—but alas my search was in vain and when I asked a park attendant he looked as confused I as I did. Nice park though to be lost in, though. Mind you, while its one of the biggest urban parks in the world, you could find far more nature and have it all to yourself practically anywhere in Canada. Though the skyscraper backdrop is an interesting nature-civilization fusion.

After Central Park, I headed north into Harlem-the city’s famed heartbed (yes I invented a word) of black culture and music, including everything from hip-hop to soul and R&B. Traditionally, it’s also been a rather rough neighbourhood, one of the places where you’d have to watch your back or avoid altogether, lest you end up as inspiration for an episode of Law & Order. These days Harlem, like many traditionally run-down neighbourhoods in North American metropolitan centers, had caught the gentrification bug. So where once stood pawn-shops and payday-loans now you find outlets like The Gap and H&M. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still very much a black community, and I stood out like an albino rhino amidst the pedestrian throngs but the only criminal behaviour I saw was on a billboard advertisement for Grand Theft Auto IV.

Next stop, Ground Zero, site of the World Trade Center. Truthfully, there’s not much to see here except a giant construction site (The Freedom Tower should be rising from the ashes of the World Trade Center shortly) and few souvenir hawkers with questionable ethics. There is a definite sense that something big is missing, and the surviving curtains of escalators near the middle of the site seem to extend eerily upwards. Designed to whisk thousands of commuters in and out of the WTC during rush hour, it’s still functioning although it seems to extend up into a void and the scale of the escalator system alone is enough to remind you of how big and important these towers really were. And yes there are lots of American flags.

So on that uplifting note, I headed south for the Staten Island Ferry, which is free and gives you a nice view of the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline. You can take a ferry to Liberty Island and Ellis Island themselves, but that’ll cost you some and I didn’t really have much of an interest in Ellis Island (While my Dad’s family did initially settle in New York when they emigrated to North America, this was when it was a British colony and they left long before Ellis Island opened its doors). With the Staten Island ferries, you also run a better chance of riding with local New Yorkers (Staten Island is one of the five boroughs, the other four being Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx) although don’t kid yourself, the tourists’ll be there too. In fact, the only drawback to this plan is it has a tendency of stranding you on Staten Island, which isn’t the most captivating of places to visit. During the day ferries are every 20 mins, but my ferry was later in the day and so I had to wait an hour for a ride back to Manhattan. On the plus side, I got to meet an attractive German-Korean lawyer and her friend and take photos of the Statue of Liberty at sunset.

The next day, the sun shone brightly over Long Island and I decided it was too nice of a day to spend it in a Museum (plus they are often closed on Mondays) so I opted to check out The Bronx Zoo. Like Harlem, the Bronx also has a fairly rough-and-ready reputation, which is no doubt reinforced by the high amounts of barbed-wire and prison fences you cross over on the elevated rail. Also like Harlem, it’s been pacified—and by extension gentrified—in recent years, and the only rumbling that I noticed was my stomach after forgetting to eat before going to the zoo.

Surprisingly, the zoo is somewhat hard to reach by subway—surprisingly in the sense that it is one of the very few places in the Bronx, other than Yankee stadium, where people actually go. I got dropped off amongst a stand of tough working-class brick tenements and waundered until I found a forest and a bunch of grizzled but jolly old men playing poker. Not wanting to interrupt their game, I noticed a NYPD cruiser on the other side of the field, and I moved toward it, noting that the police often prove to be excellent people to ask directions of. There wasn’t anyone in the cruiser however, and there was another one beside it, and another one beside that… and another… and another..

I stopped. It had become clear I had entered a NYPD compound somehow, but since I still needed directions I went further. I had to go a little further before I found a group of officers hanging out on a coffee break. One of them in full uniform, a big black fella something like Uncle Phil from Fresh Prince of Belair, hollered “NYPD FREEZE!” at me. Within seconds he had gone from casual coffee break stance to full arrest position, pointing at me with something black which may or may not have been a firearm (it was likely just been his radio, mind you, but he was still a fair distance from me at this point, so I couldn’t tell).

I froze.

“What are you doing here? What do you want?”

“uh…directions,” I responded, “I’m looking for the zoo.”

The NYPD officer laughed a big belly laugh and immediately withdrew his aggressive stance and went back to coffee-break form. He and the other officers shook their heads and then one offered to escort me out of the compound (which for some reason consisted of me going directly through it rather than backtracking). This new officer, who had a thick Brooklyn accent, gave me a few quick directions and sent me on my way.

The ordeal of getting to the zoo was not yet over. I had an expressway to cross, and something told me a rousing game of human frogger wasn’t going to cut it. I followed the path outlined by the NYPD constable, but it soon became entirely blocked by a fenced off construction site. I ended up following the fence along through a crowded playground and ultimately to a tunnel under the expressway where I met “The Naturalist.”

Well to be more precise he met me. He had come up behind at one point and started shouting “Ian, Ian” at me. Since my name is not Ian, I just ignored him, presuming he was talking to someone else. Eventually though he came right up behind me and since it was obvious now he was talking to me, I turned around.

“You’re not Ian.” He said

I acknowledged that I was not.

According to the Naturalist, his friend Ian is my identical twin, but from the back only. I admitted that I get confused for other people all the time, especially in English-speaking countries (that Wasp blood, we all look alike I guess).

Anyways, we got to talking and he explained that he was a Naturalist, repeatedly. I remember from my undergrad that a naturalist, historically at least, was someone who advocated the preservation of nature as completely untouched by human hand (ie. Extreme conservationist, you set aside a piece of land and ban all humans, including park rangers, from interacting with it). I don’t know if he actually was a naturalist, or how one obtains such a title, but he was proud to call himself one nevertheless. Besides he wore a tucked-in bleach white t-shirt which read “Bronx River Naturalist Society” in big colourful letters which took up the entire front of the shirt, as well as a ball cap, glasses and a shaggy pepper-streaked beard. As far as I’m concerned, these were all the qualifications he needed.

He asked me where I was from, and I at first said Toronto, but when this sparked a serious of questions about small towns around Toronto which I knew little about, I confessed that I was actually from Manitoba, and then he got excited about farm life and rural advantages over life in the city. He asked me if I planned to move back there now that I had graduated and I said I was hoping to stay in Toronto because it had better job prospects. He glared disapprovingly and effectively said only a fool would give up natural paradise to live in a city. I failed to mention that this was an odd view of someone who lived in the largest city in North America.

He led me onwards to one of the zoo’s rear entrances, all the while finding out new ways of explaining that he was a naturalist, and trying to seduce me with secret paths and natural hiking trails that could offer free entry into the heavily forested zoo. Expressing my hesitancy about purposely breaking into the zoo, not so much out of fear of the NYPD (my encounter with them had occurred only 15 mins before) as feeling somewhat silly about trying to cheat what was ostensibly a charitable organization (Granted zoos are somewhat controversial in that they keep animals against their will—as do cattle farmers to the same extent—but this one at least pioneered the concept of open range zoos—ie down with cages—and has been central in efforts to save many endangered species.) Ultimately, he insisted upon approaching the counter and managed to talk the clerk into letting me in for free (apparently he was an official naturalist after all).

After getting me through the gate he went off to go do his naturalist thing, but before leaving he asked me what my faith was. I answered Christian, but admitted to less than regular church attendance. He gave me the same look he gave me when I suggested giving up small town Manitoba for Toronto, but then went on his way, wishing me good luck and remind me again that he was a naturalist.

So I got into the Bronx Zoo for free and wandered around its environs for a bit although I had arrived later in the day and most of the animals had already gone off exhibit. The tigers were cool tho. At one point I took a gondola ride, partly out of guilt of not paying and partly because I wanted a bird’s-eye of view of what animals were still out and roaming around. As it turns out, though, all I saw were tree tops.

After the zoo, I went waundering in the Bronx again, this time in a more commercial neighbourhood. As stated earlier I was pretty hungry by this time, and I was eyeing an Italian joint’s menu when I heard “Canada! Hey Canada!” Once again I didn’t realize he was talking to me at first, but then I remembered that in foreign parts, one’s homeland can quickly become one’s unsolicited moniker.

Sure enough, there was the Naturalist, but this time he had his embarrassed wife in tow. His wife was admonishing him in vain to not stop and talk to strangers (this seemed to be an ongoing issue in their marriage) but he ignored her and was just as friendly as ever (she continued pleading with him the whole time however, mostly in vain). The Italian restaurant I was considering was apparently a personal favourite of his. Naturally, he knew the owner and the family that ran it were authentic Italians (true) and it was popular in the neighbourhood. I took their advice, as the Naturalist’s wife dragged him off into the distance.

That night I checked out Broadway, and while I had initially planned to take in a show, I was disappointed to find that the offerings didn’t really excite me enough to warrant forking over the equivalent of a Leafs game in ticket prices. That is not to say there weren’t interesting productions, the prospect of the musical Curtains which featured David Hyde Pierce (Niles from Frasier) playing a hard-boiled detective. In the end, I ended up going in for an Improv show, which turned out to be a giant ripoff (they charged you $10 on the street, but insisted on a 2 drink minimum where even pepsi was an atrocious $7). For that price you’d expect the cast of Whose Line Is It Anyway live, but all we got were cheap knockoffs who weren’t good at improvisation or comedy. One skit for example, was supposed to have been inspired by an audience suggestion of a famous historical event and the audience did shout out suggestions including the Civil War, the Stockmarket Crash, and 9/11. Granted that last one would be a bit inappropriate, and the Stockmarket Crash would be difficult for a skit that turned out to consist of cast and audience members striking dramatic poses as if in a historical portrait while a “historian” interprets stem, but the Civil War would have worked fine. For some reason though, the host just ignored the audience suggestions completely and went with Declaration of Independence, revealing how canned the comedy was (and if you’re going to can it, at least can the good stuff). Oh well, at least I met a group of outspoken Scottish lassies at the table next to me.

TUESDAY

What the hell did I do Tuesday? Oh right, I slept in. (I really needed some after the previous few days) Then I hit up a couple of the museums. First the Museum of Radio and Television (now called the Paley Center for Media or something). I remember my Grade 9 English teacher telling us that this archive held every TV show ever broadcast, and while I was skeptical about physical possibility of such an archive, curiosity had gotten the better of me and so I showed up on their doorstep. It only took a few searches for “Star Wars Christmas Special” before it became apparent that the claim that they held absolutely everything ever broadcast was absolutely false. They did have a lot of shows though. Primarily American ones mind you, and primarily network shows, although the number of South Park episodes was considerable and composed probably the oddest result titles I’ve ever encountered on an archival search. In the end though, I ended up watching the first post 9/11 episode of the Daily Show and an episode of Strangers with Candy. After the TV museum, I tried to go to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) but it was closed on Tuesday (not Monday as I presumed) so I ended up going to the American Folk Art Museum instead, which might have been more interesting for me anyway, as I’ve always been a bigger fan of folk art than modern art.

The highlight of the day, however, was the Colbert Report. Well I knew there were no guarantees I’d get into either the Daily Show or Colbert. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are practically the only celebrities I might actually go gaga over, so I knew I had to at least try. As it turned out, the day I chose to go was the final day of the primaries when Hillary Clinton ended her campaign and Barack Obama was declared the democratic nominee. The line-up at the Daily Show was huge, so I just basically gave up on it that day (I tried again in vain on Thursday, but it was a pointless venture) and investigated Colbert, where the line was surprisingly short (I ended up #9 in the stand-by line). The wait was fairly long (about an hour) although I met an intriguing Californian couple, the guy a demasked Mexican Wrestler with a beard he could have borrowed from Thor, the girl a San Francisco flower child with dream-filled eyes who happened to be a long-time aficionado of the Burning Man festival (They later told me a great deal of the festival and offered to hook me up with tickets, an offer I’m tempted to take them up on).

So yeah as it became clear that I was actually going to get into the show, my excitement grew and I remember telling the ex-luchador that I felt “like a child on Christmas and Halloween at the same time.” I love that Stephen Colbert, I ain’t gonna lie.

Once we were all crammed into the audience holding tank, one of the Report’s many interns (its amazing how many they actually have) performed crowd control and stalled for time by answering behind-the-scenes questions about the show. Between him and the comedian that warmed up the crowd once we were in the studio, I learned that every stereotype about Willie Nelson is damn true, Stephen Colbert actually did steal Bill O’Reilly’s microwave (he apparently got it past security by telling them “Bill said it was okay” even though Bill had never given him permission and had in fact left his lunch in it), Jane Fonda actually did tongue Colbert’s ear and got him in a whole heap of trouble from his wife, and Howard Dean swears a lot (especially make statements like “Fucking awesome man”) when off camera (He will also magically appear if someone says the magic words “I want to donate $10 000 to the Democratic Party.”) The comedian before was fairly decent, although he was one of those American style audience roasters which can often rub me the wrong way. He asked if anyone was from another country, so I raised my hand he pounced, declaring that wasn’t a real country and then asking if I thought the Toronto subway was clean, to which I responded “uh.. sure.” Apparently he was looking for a more substantial lead to go on, but it became apparent he knew dick all about Canada and therefore had little comedic grounds for satire, but it did remind me how often New Yorkers remarked about the cleanliness of Toronto’s subway (Most Torontonians don’t share this point of view). In New York, I’d say, the subway’s grimey-ness is part of its attraction-repulsion charm, just like its guerilla buskers and its ridiculous complicated system of colours and letters. Based on world averages though—or at least on subways I’ve visited around the world—I’d say Toronto’s is cleaner than New York’s, but the cleanest are in Taipei and Nanjing (both being new subway systems and with much more rigidly enforced rules, such as a ban on food on Taipei’s MRT). That said, in both those cases, the subway’s are clean, but the cities around them are dirty and covered in litter so you take what you can get I guess.

So finally the time came and Colbert himself came screaming out the door like kid who just came off his ridalin prescription. He looks exactly the same in person as on TV, only slightly more 3 dimensional. Seriously, there was something surreal about watching a show you’ve watched countless times being performed live in front of you, almost as if you were watching a jumbo screen with virtual reality vision or some high tech technology (of course the layman might just call it “theater”). Colbert took questions and requests from the audience including “Can you blow the ram horn?” and he did, saying “Mmmm…. tastes Rammy.” Most of the questions were about different characters he played on other shows, like Dr. Fantastic on the Venture Bros, and while it wasn’t my favourite question “Which was more fun to work with Amy Sedaris or Bill O’Reilly?” (the answer’s obvious) Colbert’s exact response was “Amy Sedaris. Bill O’Reilly is a tool.” One smart ass audience member who obvious spent too much time thinking about this (although maybe he should consider grad school) asked whether or not it was contradictory to refer to O’Reilly affectionately as Papa Bear when Colbert despised bears so, and Colbert explained that just because you tell your best fried to “go get’em tiger” doesn’t mean your best friend should actually be a tiger.

I was going to ask if he’d do a show in Canada or did he not have the balls? Unfortunately, he never picked me during question period. Nevertheless, Colbert stayed high energy and running throughout the entire show (seriously I don’t how he does it) including the off-camera moments when he would usually rock out to tunes like Song 2 by Blur. During one of the “Woo Hoos” he saw that I was rocking out with him, so he gave me the old finger guns, and I gave them right back, and so the show progressed (it was the episode about Stephen’s Sound Advice for students finding work, appropriate for me and Hillary’s campaigns demise).

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday rained like a faucet, so I decided to use it as the “museum day” I had saved for just such an occasion. The first museum I attended was the United Nations, which granted isn’t yet a museum, but was something I was personally quite interested in having once been president of my undergrad chapter of Model UN and generally believing that having some place where the governments of the world have to share a table in the cafeteria or potentially find themselves next to each other at a urinal serves the world immensely (and practically ever country is a member, so it seems to be working). The guide, who was from China, was very nice and professional, but I was still recovering from Colbert so my sarcasm was at an all-time high. In the General Assembly I kept asking the poor girl questions like “What happens if North and South Korea get stuck in an elevator together?” which turns out is more probable than you might think. The UN elevators are over 50 years old.

After the UN I went to the American Museum of Natural History, made famous in Ben Stiller’s Night at the Museum (although I think it was also famous before that) which has a huge collection of dinosaurs, elephants, and even a full-sized blue whale (brother let me tell you those things are HUGE). They also have an interesting gem and mineral exhibit and that’s where I met another friend, be-spectacled long-time volunteer with an artist’s background whose love for the museum’s rocks was bordering on unhealthy obsession (actually, I’d say she even crossed that border). Basically she was the female equivalent of the Naturalist (the Geologist?), I half-wondered what would happen if the two kooks ever met. Perhaps if thinks didn’t work out with his wife, the Naturalist should pay a visit to the mineral and gems room (Natural History would be up his alley after all), although these two could even be brother and sister for all I know.

She whisked me around the room pointing out complex formulas and colourful crystal formations and as I searched for a polite means to escape. Eventually she showed some bizarre meteorites that had strange etchings on the name. The way she talked about the etchings made me think she was trying to lead me to conclude they were evidence of extra-terrestial life, but I just commented on how similar they were to snowflakes and did the patterns at all follow magnetic domains? She ignored these theories and moved on, although eventually she claimed that Earth was in the path of a supernova and that the world would end in 2012 so use the gift shop souvenirs while you still can.

Based on the German-Korean lawyer’s suggestion, I headed to the Apollo Theater for amateur night in Harlem, which was rather inexpensive (although the Apollo Theater is one fancy-looking joint). There wasn’t anything terribly fancy about Amateur Night as it basically consisted of a glorified gong show, whereby a variety of non-professional acts would take the stage and do their thing amidst cheers or more often jeers from heavily vocalized audience (think Jerry Springer meets Queen Latifah). The decked-out in bling MC spoke in such heavy ebonics that I had no fucking clue what he said most of the time, and seemed like a reject from a Jay-z video. His sidekick was a tap-dancing break-dancing black Jamiroquai, who would be brought out in a politically incorrect costume any time the audience booed at an act of stage so he could break dance them off the stage and dismiss their performance skills with an exaggerated kung fu chop. The acts themselves were often quite decent, even the ones booed off (often I had no idea why the audience was reacting with such distaste), one poor Asian girl was practically booed off the moment she opened her mouth. The winners turned out to be a tie between a male singer and a male trio who while they could perform well, judging by the vast portion of teenage girls in the audience—and their vocalizations of desires—it seemed to have more to do with the tightness of their abs than anything else. All in all tho, I found the show amusing in its absurdity, although my fave flave was the dude who had the gonads to go up on stage with a sandwich saying “boycott rappers” and then proceeded to rap about about how awful rappers were in the Apollo Theater in the heart of Harlem and somehow didn’t quite get enough boos to get kicked off stage. Even he was surprised that he actually got to finish his act and when he was included in the final round of possible winners you could see success was not a contingency he anticipated or planned for. He had my vote.

THURSDAY

This was my last day in NYC, so I used it to make one last (ultimately vain) attempt to attend a screening of the Daily Show (I wasn’t too heartbroken mind you, as I had successfully gotten into the Colbert Report). And to check out Brooklyn, in particular the Brooklyn Museum (which had an exhibit on Murakami a famous Japanese mangaka/filmmaker that had first inspired me to take an interest in anime and later manga) and Coney Island. For eats I had planned to take in a Coney Island hot dog and a slice of Brooklyn-style pizza, although the pizza I found in Brooklyn looked remarkably unremarkable so I ended up going to White Castle instead. Hearing about it in Harold and Kumar movies and as the butt of jokes on the aforementioned Daily Show, it’s discount greasy-spoon fast food attraction-repulsion was enough to entice my curiosity, although the mini-burgers they serve you could best be called “meat paste” or rather “meat-like paste” as they had so little solidity that some of mine literally came folded in half with smooshed bun and all. The famous Coney Island corn dog, which I got from Nathan’s (host of the famous hot dog eating competition), turned out to be little more than a corn dog that’d been in the deep fryer too long, but I guess it’s the experience you pay for… not the taste.

The museum though was very nice, although the exhibited work was very different from most of Murakami’s stuff I had been more familiar with (ie. Spirited Away, Nausicaa, Princess Monoke), and ranged from the absurdly cutesy to the hyper-sexualized with very little in between (although there was some very abstract interpretations which I didn’t realize Murakami dealt in). The hyper-sexualized works in case you’re wondering—and I know you are, so don’t even try to deny it—consisted mainly of the ubiquituous manga school girl in a ridiculously short skirt, a naked cyborg lady who could transform into a fighter jet (for some reason they chose to make her clearly displayed vagina the nose of the aircraft), and a matching naked male and female pair who squirted white fluid out of boobs and penis respectively to create some orb of power around them. Yes, there were many children at this exhibit… many accompanied by parents with amusing expressions. (I wonder what would happen if the exhibit moved to Oklahoma or some such place).

So yeah, overall New York City was a very fascinating place, the kind of city where you’re amazed how much you know it before you even get there (there is an absolutely ridiculous amount of famous landmarks), but it can still surprise you. Yes, it gave me that big skyscraper awe I haven’t felt in many years (especially upon first glimpse after emerging from Penn Station), but it also surprised me how friendly New Yorkers actually were. Yes, there are angry ones, and yes I saw more than a couple verbalized skirmishes between cars, but generally-speaking people were a lot friendlier than I anticipated. Just goes to show you. Every traveler likes to claim the last place they visited was the “friendliest on Earth” but really friendliness is apparently a fairly widespread phenomenon, which perhaps means there’s some hope for our species yet. I just never thought I’d be getting in New York.

Would I go back? Sure, but for now I’ll be working on my Brooklyn or Harlem accent. Peace out homies.

Cuba Si

2008-02-18T17:25:00.000-08:00

Cuba Si?

In this episode, Ryan…

-gets blessed by a shaman in a Santeria ritual

-goes fanatic at one of the world’s zaniest rivalries of béisbol

-bumps and grinds his way to libertad in a Havana nightclub

You might be asking yourself, “What the hell is Ryan doing in Cuba, I thought he was finishing his Masters.” Well, you’re right, I should be doing my Masters, but since my advisors have disappeared on me and I’ve learned that thesis work basically amounts to pissing in the dark, I deemed once again that I could learn more from hopping on a plane to foreign lands rather than reading theory… and once again I was proven right!

It all started last Christmas break at the King’s Head Pub in Winnipeg, when my friend Megan—a midwife and capable of explaining what exactly the hell a midwife is in a bunch of different languages—proposed to a group of us that we should all head off to Cuba in February. Mutual friends Ray and Jill had already done so a couple of years ago, and I paid lip-service to the idea, thinking—as has been the case of most idle travel plans I’ve made with friends in the past—that no voyage would actually come of this seemingly whimsical aspiration. To my surprise though, Megan contacted me near the end of January wanting to confirm flight details. Now at this point I probably should have done the responsible thing, but I had just had a week from hell involving a dumping, a huge quarrel with my boss, and a nasty case of food poisoning from some shady shawarma which ended up ruining my birthday and its intended concert. So I told Megan, to hell with it, I’ll go to Cuba with you.

So we went to Cuba. Now at the time, the cheapest way we could find to reach Cuba was by snagging one of those all-inclusive deals on Sell-off Vacations.com. Now, let me start by saying I’ve never really been an eager pursuer of all-inclusives and in fact hostels are more often than not just fine by me, but in Cuba’s case it was considerably cheaper to buy the all-inclusive than to pay for flight and hotel separately. So we swallowed our independent tendencies and headed off to Sunbeach resort. We flew Cubana airways which I soon learned had a poor safety record (yay!), although for some reason the flight to and from Veradero was on an aircraft painted with “Flair Air” colouring. Now, I had never heard of this “Flair Air” before, although the Air Transat necklaces suggested to me that it might some sorta quasi-independent company drawn up by Air Transat so they could fly to Cuba without getting dinged by the American embargo. At any rate, the flight down there wasn’t too bad, although it felt like the pilot was showing off on the way back with hairpin turns and a corkscrew landing… and to think I was sick before the flight began. Oh well, one Albertan couple we met said their plane bounced off the runway before landing for real. At any rate, we did land safely in Veradero at a small airport where we were greeted by a couple stern-faced but short-skirted Cuban border control ladies who after they gave us our paper visa (separate from your passport so Americans won’t get in trouble when they return to the US) and then it was off to the hotel.

Once in Veradero, we were taken to our 3-star hotel, which compared to the digs I had grown accustomed to in Europe seemed extravagant. Called Hotel Sunbeach, it was fairly clean, the food was decent (and occasionally traditionally Cuban), and I only saw one tropical cockroach. Incidentally, if you’re wondering what traditional Cuban food is like, sometimes referred to as Criollo (Creole food) or Uruguayo food (Uruguayan-don’t ask why Cubans have this identity crisis), it often involves things like ropa vieja (“rope-like” or pulled beef), copious amounts of pork (they really put the “ham” in hamburger), and my favourite los cristenos y mores (the Christians and the Moors, basically white rice mixed with black beans.)

Some people said the resort areas restricted access to Cubans—something called “tourist apartheid”—but when I looked out my front door, right across the street were hundreds of weathered but lived-in looking Cuban homes, so if you wanted to meet real Cubans it could be done in Veradero, although they would probably ask for your hat or wet towel and try to sell you a cigar. The hotel supplied all its food, drinks, and entertainment (ie. Nightly dance shows) for free, although the open bar proved a harsh mistress to many of my associates. On the up side, I learned how to say “I’d like a cuba libre with dark rum and a little lime” in Spanish.

As for the beach, it was across the street from the resort, and deserving of its reputation of being the best beach in Cuba (presumably, although we didn’t visit any others). Now, I enjoy a beach as much as the next guy, but no matter scantily clad Cuban women one might find there, I can only spend a day or two at most just beaching it. That said, it is a nice beach, and not as tourist-laden as I had expected (definitely wasn’t as saturated as the much wimpier beaches in the south of France) and I most certainly enjoyed taking a spin on the old Hobie Cat while Megan befriended the well-built Cuban life guards. Still though, we only spent a couple days in Veradero, give or take a jeep safari (or should I say “heep safary?”) through rural Cuba and culminating with a swim in a flooded cave.

Ultimately though we had chosen Veradero for 2 main reasons A) it was cheap and B) proximity to Havana (or as the Cubans call it Habana). Havana is by far the largest city in the Caribbean and is a place unlike I’ve seen before. Once quite the haven of sin and extravagance, Havana’s once booming waterfront looks tired and weathered from years of Castro’s efforts to create an egalitarian socialist utopia (whether or not he succeeded, that’s open to debate). Say what you will about Castro’s or Batista’s regimes (I’ve heard plenty of arguments for and against), the Cubans are such a talkative and expressive people that I doubt anyone could effectively limit their freedom of expression.

Certain icons of Cuban culture are just as ubiquitous here as they are in the rest of Cuba, although you’re going to find them in concentrated amounts. This means plenty of short-skirted latinas and well-built latinos, kids playing bottle-cap baseball with sticks in the alley (a plastic-bottle cap is the Cuban equivalent of a wiffle ball), and of course the ever-present classic American cars from the 1950s held together with (occasionally) new paint jobs, rust and duct-tape, and the Caribbean work ethic and Cuban optimism and know-how.

As with the rest of Cuba, you won’t find much advertising here, save for the occasional ever-so-subtle dose of anti-American propaganda. What you will find is a bunch of people wandering around at any given hour, and throngs of people on the market strip of Obispo which just so happened to be where our casa particulare was located (a casa particulare is a Cuban version of a bed and breakfast, in this case run by a couple named Juan and Margarita). The casa we stayed on the 5^th floor of a building, which below had a clothing store and a series of Juan’s relatives. Margarita wasn’t there when we there, but Juan was, and as chatty as my friend Ray and had suggested (Ray had recommended this particular casa particulare). A retired engineer, Juan lamented how bizarre his country’s economic situation was. In a presumably socialist country, they had not one but two circulating currencies the Cuban National Peso (which was designed to be used by everyday Cubans) and the Cuban Convertible Peso (which was designed to be used by tourists). One is 25 times less valuable than the other, I’ll let you guess which. Still though, my guide book at suggested I could save money by using National Pesos, so I took 20 dollars worth of them and tried it out, only to find that as a foreigner I could only seem to spend them on peanuts, and since I didn’t really want to eat THAT many peanuts I was practically giving them away by the end of the trip. Juan also said that he made for more in a month running the casa particulare than he ever did as an Engineer, and far more than what was average for a doctor, a teacher, or a host of other highly trained personnel. He had been to the US once to visit family (apparently Cubans could do this) and enjoyed reading the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Sun, although I never thought to bring one.

The first day in Havana was museo day, and we checked out la museo de la revolucion and a cigar factory. The Museo de la revolucion (the Museum of the Revolution, in case you needed that translated) was basically Cuba’s National Museum of Propaganda which very creatively finds means of blaming the US for all of Cuba’s problems since the Spanish-American War (which apparently Cuba was just on the verge of winning on its own, before the US stuck its nose in). While I can definitely appreciate the US’s tendency to screw around in foreign countries when it shouldn’t, I think it goes a bit far to blame them for the introduction of Dengue Fever to Cuba.

One interesting thing that happened at the Museum was some form of summit meeting between Cuban and North Korean diplomats which for some reason was happening on the day we were there. Intrigued by this up close encounter with one of the most mysterious and tightlipped regimes still left in the world, I decided to try and take a picture or at least talk to some of the North Koreans (the women were all in traditional Korean dress while the men wore Soviet-style military uniforms with over-sized hats that suggested they were compensating for something). I think one of men caught me trying to get the attention of the North Korean women, and he gave a suspicious glare so I smiled and said “how its goin?” then remembered that he probably didn’t speak English. He looked at me funny, then smiled and nodded and when back to watching some guy go on about how awesome Kim Jong Il is and I tried to take a picture but another short-skirted Cuban security woman intercepted me.

After the Museum we hit the cigar factory, one of Megan’s must-sees and I’m glad she suggested it. Now, I don’t smoke, but Cigars are such a part of Cuba’s cultural identity that you have to at least give them a look-see, and I must say this factory was an interesting one to say the least. Housed in a century-old building, it employed hundreds of employees, rolling and packaging cigars by hand (everything was by hand, no robotics in this factory). Although I wondered how healthy it was to handle so much tobacco on a daily basis, the Cuban workers did seem more or less content with their job and apparently they did occasionally bring in entertainment, although I think I’ll shop my resume elsewhere. I did end up buying cigars although not here, but at a grungy storefront in Veradero where a man happily sold me a cheap package of Relobas after he got up from his siesta.

In exchange for going to the factory, I insisted Megan accompany me to a Cuban béisbol (baseball) game. Now, I knew Cubans were fanatical about baseball (the number of kids playing it in the street being but one sign), and it just so happened that Juan informed that the top two teams in the league, the Havana Industriales and the Santiago de Cuba uh… Wasps I think, were playing each other that night at the Estadio latinamericado. Now, the rivalry between these two teams—representing Cuba’s two largest cities—is legendary, think Montreal Canadiens vs. Toronto Maple Leafs, Saskatchewan Roughriders vs. Winnipeg Blue Bombers, New York Yankees vs. Boston Red Sox, now add all three together, double that, and put them on crack, and that’s how off the hook the stadium was that night.

Not only did the stadium sell out, but it was half full of Industriales fans and half fun of Santiago fans (both of which had a cold war of how enthusiastic they could get). We sat behind the Santiago bench, and the crowd was so stoked that even so much as one of their players made it to first base everyone would be on their feet chanting what I can only presume were derogatory songs and cheering as though they had just won the national championship. You don’t even want to know what they did when someone hit a home run.

Highlights from the night include the stadium bathrooms (think stadium bathrooms in Canada, then remember this was in tropical and often run-down Cuba. Effectively they were like rusted troughs with god knows what organisms evolving over the course of an inning. Mmm smells delish!), at least 2 or 3 intentional beamings, the fact that the game ended in a tie at 1 am and they had postpone the whole damn thing and do it all again the next night. Probably best of all though was El Mascoto, which for Santiago consisted of a dude wrapped in a thin layer of taped on cloth, a tattered cape and a hood, a bella clava, and a whistle. Looking like a last-minute Scarecrow Halloween costume, El Mascoto would pump the crowd—cuz Lord knows they needed pumping—by boxing the air with his fists, blowing his whistles, and intimidating the other bench through a series of pelvic thrusts.

The next day we visited the Yoruba cultural centre (a museum about Cuba’s African population and their traditional beliefs) and El Museo de Ron (no, not the museum of some guy named Ron, but the Museum of Rum! Hell yeah). Sugar cane never tasted so sweet (except that time we went up river into the Cuban jungle on the jeep safari on these drug-runner type boats and cranked fresh sugar cane out of the stalk). Of course, I didn’t buy my rum there, but at a rum shop in Veradero where it was cheaper and where I got to try a sweet 7 year-old Cuban rum called Legendario, which was probably one of the smoothest rums I’ve ever had the pleasure of drinking (sorry Newfoundland Screech, but you’ll always have a place in my heart).

That night would be our last night in Havana and we had still not really appreciated the crazy underground nightlife this colonial metropolis had to offer. We started off the evening by investigating some noisy drumming on Obispo which turned out to be a Santeria ritual on the second floor of a building. After watching a Shaman who reminded me something of a Caribbean Snoop Dawg dance about and sing in Spanish a blind beggar approached me beseeching funds so I dropped one of my useless peso notes in his box, thinking it was only fair to pay my respects for being allowed to observe their religious ceremony. Of course whether giving this guy 20 national pesos was ridiculously extravagant or ridiculously cheap ass I’m not sure (I was never good at calculating the value of that bloody currency). One things for certain though, as soon as that 20 peso note dropped, the ceremony stopped and the shaman and everyone else starred right at me, the dumbass tourist with camera in hand. The shaman danced over to me and before I could do anything, he ran his hands up and down the left and right sides of my body like some sort of Santerian airport security guard, before taking off inexplicably to the back room for what I can only imagine was some form of coffee break. Seeing my dumbfounded look, Megan—who had spent 8 months living in Tanzania, although she said this had nothing to do with Santeria—explained that I had just been blessed. So I said, “okay” and we decided to leave the ceremony in peace.

After stopping at a few places for supper, including one place with the archetypical Buena Vista Social Club type band we decided to try our luck at the deservedly scandalous Havana night clubs. Apparently, before Cubans can dance (and Lord knows they have such difficulty dancing), they have to be entertained by what our guide-book referred to as “karaoke” but which would be better described as the Politically Incorrect Drama-Comedy Variety Especial with the ever-present Scantily-clad dancers! After that wonder was finished, the dance floor opened up. Shy at first after a busy day, I soon regained energy after a cuba libre and two and after an agreement to refer to each other as hermano and hermana (brother and sister), we hit the dance floor. I lost track of Megan although I’m told she was quite successful in my insistence of her taking on a campaign of seducing Cuban men, while I somehow found myself with a Cuban MILF (not sure what the Spanish word for cougar is) on either hip who promptly introduced me to their daughters to the point where I’m pretty sure I bumped and grinded with the entire double X chromosome section of an entire Cuban family to such classics as the Numa Numa song and Girl I Want to Make You Sweat. Good times, at one point a Cuban gentleman stopped me and said “What the hell is your fucking problem?” to which I presumed he meant I had gotten a little too close to his girlfriend, although it later turned out he was passionately opposed to my drinking of a rum and coke instead of beer. As for what happened between me and the Cuban ladies all I can say is what happens in Havana, stays in Havana, and occasionally spills over into the streets.

Now then, so what else did we do in Cuba? Well we rode the Hershey train back to Veradero (the Hershey Train is a dilapidated old streetcar system that originally serviced one of the Hershey Chocolate companies sugar cane processing centers before Castro kicked their American ass out and turned into a trans-urban transportation system.) I say trans-urban, but the vast majority of stops featured a single glorified bus shelter in a field in Cuba’s equivalent of the middle of nowhere, still it was an interesting ride and a great way to meet Cubans although don’t be surprised if one of the train conductors tries to get you to send him a Pentium III hard drive from Canada. One thing I should mention about Cuba, as one of the only major areas of concern (other than the difficulty in finding cheap reliable Internet access) is the constant presence of jinteros/jinteras (ie. Hustlers) who will target you like the tourist you are and often not let go until you elicit the assistance of sympathetic Cubans (which we had to do on 2 separate occasions). That said, as long you can be firm with them and learn to keep them at bay, Cuba ain’t so bad. Of course, we did go back to the resort for a few days where we met a group of young Montreal entrepreneurs (including one interesting gal who sells homemade gothic dolls), Toronto’s Cuban girls-gone-wild wannabee contigent, and a collection of Russian air traffic controllers visiting Cuba in the hopes of attaining a romantic vacation from their wives.

So that’s Cuba in a nutshell. It’s a fun week, and while I would go back there are plenty of other destinations on my to go list which something tells I might be hitting up in the near future. Let’s just finish this bloody Master’s shall we?

Scotland and What Else Could I Stick it With?

2007-09-29T15:20:00.000-07:00

Scotland and well just Scotland

In this episode, Ryan…

-Takes his Dad to a goth rock concert in the Glasgow Underground

-Orders a second helping of Haggis

-Gets spooked in the haunted underbelly of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile

So here I am back in Canada writing my last entry for my Europe 2007 edition of My Dog Smells Like Coconuts, and while I’m still fighting the numbness of jetlag and university bureaucracy I thought it high time to finish off the last remaining country, Scotland, while it was still fresh in me mind. I’m not sure that I’ll continue my blog while in Canada. It’ll probably go to sleep again like it did after Taiwan, but if you want me to keep updating it, even if it’s just about zany adventures around the land of the Maple, email me at ryscrap@hotmail.com or just let me know. Anyways, let’s get on with the last entry of Europe Blog 2007, the Scottish entry, before some angry highlander comes marching down my door waving a Claymore and telling me to stop this shameless self-promotion. Anyways, on to Scotland, here she goes…

Glasgow

We arrived in Scotland from Dublin via Belfast and using a jet-powered aqua-sled star ship that could also be called a “ferry.” We weren’t supposed to push for Glasgow that night, but it was easier than stopping in the relatively unknown Stranraer, so we did it anyway.

Glasgow itself is a fairly modern city—except modern in the European sense which means the downtown are still filled with detailed old late 19^th century and early 20^th century commercial buildings, and the first thing that struck me as I left the train station was how many young people were there. As soon as I left the train station, mobs of rocky-punky young teens (like Avril Lavigne, except less obviously commercial) jammed the streets for blocks as far as the eye could see. Why they were here was anyone’s guess, but we pushed through to the hostel, and settled into our inexplicably mauve room.

Apparently, Glasgow is something of a music and concert city, a rock capital if you will, but we had not known to what extent this was the case. Dad read in my lonely planet that there was a club called King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut which apparently had been the launchpad of acts like Oasis and Radiohead early in their career. Dad hadn’t ever heard of Radiohead, but he did recall me liking Wonderwall as a teenager, so off we went to investigate this oasis of radio-dom in Glasgow’s local music scene.

To get to the place, we had to walk a fair distance away from the centre of downtown, and I was beginning to think we were lost, until we spotted it under what appeared to be a nondescript condominium complex. It looked rather small, but there was no mistaking the name—who else would call themselves a Wah Wah Hut?—so inside we went.

We entered into a fairly decent though quiet pub under the condos, with a few people having drinks, some music playing over a loudspeaker. There was no cover, so we assumed no music was playing tonight, but I saw a staircase leading up near the back and so we decided to see where it lead to. Naturally of course.

The staircase leads up seeming into the space that should have been occupied by the condos or some extra-dimensional space behind it. And it just so happened that, on that night the space—which indeed was an intimate but still rocking concert stage—was occupied by a Punk Goth act called IAMX, which had a fairly devout fan following. Not only did the band cover themselves, with feather tipped hats, gaudy black make-up, and copious tattoos and piercings, but a vast majority of the audience did as well. The music itself was hardly easy-listening, and my Dad was definitely showing signs of disgust at first sight, but we’d walked a long way to get here and didn’t want to just turn around and leave, so we thought we’d each have a pint of Magner’s and give the band a shot.

As we drank our ciders, though, we slowly got into the music. The band onstage had undeniable energy in their act, not just the 80s baron Samedi-esque lead singer, but also the hot rocker chick on the keyboard and gothic kurt cobainesque bassist, and even the drummer got into each song—unlike any band I’d seen before or since—and rocked their hearts out, bringing the crowd into the frenzy with them. In my Dad’s words, they “put on a damn good show.” They were also deeply in-sync with their audience, with the lead singer at one point even bodysurfing on the crowd while he sang, and we got so into it, that we ended up having another drink and staying until the end. My Dad especially enjoyed it, achieving enlightenment in regards to the music of current youth culture. Indeed, he even argued that this group wasn’t so different from the Beach Boys of his own youth, although he was rather puzzled as to how their guitars worked without heads for tuning.

Other than the concert, we also checked out some outlying parks in Glasgow (apparently the start of the Highlands) and the Kelvingrove Museum, mainly so we could see its full-sized Spitfire. The transport museum was also cool, like a permanent car show filled with English gangstamobiles from the 1930s.

Loch Lomond

Not far from Glasgow is the southern Highlands resort community of Loch Lomond, which is comparable to Lake Tremblant without the skiing (or probably the snow). By the time we arrived here, we were too tired to do much, so we basically lounged on the beach after exploring a bit of the shoreline. Still a peaceful lake with a little bit of nature is not a bad thing.

The highlight of Loch Lomond for me though was the Tullie Inn Pub where we had the best Haggis in Scotland (at least that we tried). The place was a little expensive but I wanted to try the Haggis at least once while in Scotland, and this one came in a whiskey sauce so it was like 2 birds with one stone (not that I ever really hesitated to try Scotch Whiskey on other occasions). They served it like it was a French hors d’ouevre, with haggis on the bottom, a neatly cut disc of turnip or sweet potato on top, and capped with a flurry of potato. Add the whiskey sauce and you got an order of Haggis so good, I actually found myself ordering seconds. “Another Haggis please” is not something I thought I’d ever hear myself say. (at another point on the trip we also ate black pudding, aka blood sausage, but as it was deepfried and from a late-night greasy spoon it wasn’t quite as good)

The pubs in Loch Lomond where bustling with Scots that day (probably because their team was playing and ultimately losing to New Zealand in the rugby world cup). As the Scots first celebrated with a drink and then drowned their sorrows in a drink, the bartenders laughed to the bank, as the locals spoke presumably friendly gestures to us, particularly in the bathroom, although none of the communication was understood. At one point, a bartendress—possibly indignant of someone ordering a rum with coke!—instead filled the glass up with more rum and didn’t charge us anymore (my guess is she was having a little fun with us, but we didn’t mind, it was a steal of a deal on Lamb’s Navy Rum). Another Scotch please…

Edinburgh

The last stop on my trip through Europe before flying back to Toronto, Edinburgh was a very picture-esque town to cap off my grande tourismo. My sister spoke lovingly of this place when she came through, and definitely I had to agree with here. The city seems almost too cinematically convenient to be believed—dominated by a castle perched on a cliff overlooking the city, old merchant shops and snaking cobblestone lanes called “Closes,” and even an extraordinarily gothic churchyard complete with skulls and crossbones, and skeletons engraved everywhere and creepy barred off tombs. Some buildings even had ancient traps—somewhat of a poor man’s burglar alarm—like purposely uneven steps designed to trip up unwanted intruders unfamiliar with the stairs. Thanks to a bloody and disease ridden history, Edinburgh is reportedly tied with Prague as the most haunted city in Europe, and it considers Prague’s case to be a stretch at best. Understanding this, looking for something to do in the evening, and remembering Christy’s recommendation we decided to opt for one of the many ghost tours that were operating that evening, thinking it seemed a tad cheesy but what the hell, it might be fun.

So we signed up for an Auld Reekie tour (Auld Reekie is purportedly an old Scottish nickname for Edinburgh which translates roughly as “Old Smelly.”) Our guide was a drama student in a cape, who for an hour and half meandered in her narration of Edinburgh’s horrific history from gently ominous almost whispers to loud witch-like cackles. The tour started innocently enough on the streets where she explained where infamous murderers Hair and Burke once knocked dozens of the urban poor in order to exchange their bodies for the handsome reward offered by the medical college for any bodies they could use for analysis, or where the Conventers staged an ill-fated resistance for their particular form of Protestantism, or where witchburnings would take place or witch trials which resulted in people being tossed into a sewage ridden swamp to see if they if would float or not (if they floated, there were witches and would be tortured and burnt at the stake along with their families, if they sank, that meant they were falsely accused but well just as dead). To illustrate the fun of witchhunting, our guide selected one Aussie guy to falsely convict of witchcraft and had us all point and condemn him. Good times.

Afterwards, we were lead into a dark series of tunnels under the old city, where apparently the urban poor by the hundreds used to live piled on each other in their own filth and the filth seeping in from the street above. Disease, crime, and death was rampant in these tunnels, and at one point, during a Great Fire of Edinburgh, a group of hundreds got trapped in one of the rooms and the heat cooked them alive, making that parcticular room a Level 3—the highest and most dangerous level—of Haunting (our guides description of the people being cooked was definitely one of the most disturbing stories I’ve ever heard). The hallway itself was a Level 1, someone called the Watcher apparently strolls it from time to time. And there was one room, which apparently was a still functioning modern Wicca temple (it looked pretty surreal from the outside, as we werent’ allowed in) (I was actually rather fascinated by this place and wanted to learn more about what was a serious religious temple and not simply something for the tourists my guide stressed). They apparently hold ceremonies on nights when the moon is full, and since it was that night I rightly asked where they were, and apparently—like other religions attempting to modernize—they had moved the time of service earlier so as to fit in better with people’s work schedules. The Wiccans themselves had previously used another chamber in the tunnels although apparently they had accidentally released an evil spirit into the room, which had attacked people and left marks on their bodies, and the leader of the temple stayed up one night wrestling with the spirit until finally trapping it within a stone circle. The guide warned us not to step into the circle, as the spirit was still trapped there, but invited the skeptics to give it a shot, though no one wanted to give it a go (I sure as hell wasn’t messing with it).

For the most part the crypts were deathly quiet and when the guide’s flashlight flickered and went out—which happened often—it did send a chill down your spine. At other times you could some loud thumping music, which our guide begrudgingly explained was a gothic rave party in a neighbouring crypt. After hearing stories about this, and a group of gothic teens who were caught playing soccer with a human skull in the Edinburgh cemetery, I was starting to believe there might be some truth to idea of an underground world of vampires and werewolves lurking in Edinburgh’s alleys. At any rate, the city itself made you want to believe.

Indeed, if there’s one thing I can say about Edinburgh, it’s that it’s the time of place that your imagination could run wild in, and maybe that’s part of the reason its spawned or fostered so many writers and poets like Robbie Burns, Walter Scott (potentially a distant relative of mine), Robert Stephenson (Treasure Island, ie the guy who practically invented the pirate mythos), and even latter day authors like Ian Rankin and J.K. Rowling. Indeed, I wish I had more time there, as I wished I had more time in Scotland, or in all of Europe for that matter, but alas one must leave some things for a future visit—it just gives you all the more reason.

Although next time I go to Edinburgh, I’ll try to line it up with Halloween, as I can’t imagine another city which would be a more chill place to be.

Thanks to Everyone who’s been reading my blog and to everyone I met along my journeys especially those who helped me along the way. I owe you big time. Let me know if you find yourself in Canada, and who knows maybe our paths will cross again, in Europe or even beyond…

And now before I sign off one last time, let me end Europe with a song—yeah that’s right, I said a song—an old Canadian classic about going off on drunken adventures in Europe and which is a surprisingly accurate description of my own trip… especially after my Dad—a man who loves pubs so much he built one in his basement—joined me. So please enjoy “Home for A Rest” by the Spirit of the West and sing-along if you know the melody. Enjoy and as they say in Europe, cheers!

"you'll have to excuse me, i'm not at my best
i've been gone for a month, i've been drunk since i left
these so-called vacations will soon be my death
i'm so sick from the drink i need home for a rest.

we arrived in december and london was cold
we stayed in the bars along charing cross road
we never saw nothin' but brass taps and oak
kept a shine on the bar with the sleeves of our coats

you'll have to excuse me, i'm not at my best
i've been gone for a week
i've been drunk since i left
and these so-called vacations
will soon be my death
i'm so sick from the drink
i need home for a rest
take me home....

euston station the train journey north
in the buffet car we lurched back and forth
past old crooked dykes through yorkshire's green fields
we were flung into dance as the train jigged and reeled

you'll have to excuse me, i'm not at my best
i've been gone for a week
i've been drunk since i left
and these so-called vacations
will soon be my death
i'm so sick from the drink
i need home for a rest
take me home....

by the light of the moon, she'd drift through the streets
a rare old perfume, so seductive and sweet
she'd tease us and flirt, as the pubs all closed down
then walk us on home and deny us a round

you'll have to excuse me, i'm not at my best
i've been gone for a month
i've been drunk since i left
and these so-called vacations
will soon be my death
i'm so sick from the drink
i need home for a rest
take me home....

the gas heater's empty, it's damp as a tomb
the spirits we drank now ghosts in the room
i'm knackered again, come on sleep take me soon
and don't lift up my head 'till the twelve bells at noon

you'll have to excuse me, i'm not at my best
i've been gone for a month
i've been drunk since i left
and these so-called vacations
will soon be my death
i'm so sick from the drink
i need home for a rest
take me home!"