North Side

The next morning I got a spin off the building inspector from the local Council out doing his rounds, I stopped off in Monganui for my morning coffee, where some aul wan was so enamoured by my being Irish that she asked me to could I come out and work on her farm. I assured her that there wasn't a baby in the world with a bottom softer than my hands !

After spending a day extra in Paihia I had to miss out on Matai Bay which was a dose cos again it came very highly recommended by Diana the Kraut. I was heading all the way north to Cape Reinga. Got a spin off a phenomenally cool old geezer who arrived in the country 15 years earlier with his wife and not a word of english between them. They had spent the majority of their lives in communist East Germany, which I'd imagine, was no bag of laughs. He had a plumbing business for 12 years in Auckland (after spending the first year waiting for a work visa and learning english).  They sold that up, moved north and bought a farm.  They'd no experience nor an idea of what they were doing but learned how to make cheese and harvest olives and now they've a fully fledged hobby farm, the produce of which they sell at the market at weekends, with their free time spent scuba diving. Some pup and some life he has !

Northland and especially the Far North (thats actually the name, these white settlers weren't the most inventive lot!) is a magical place, absolutely beautiful, with rolling green hills and pristine, mostly untouched white sanded beaches and a fantastic climate.  Generally the people I met, while maybe not the most amazing craic or anything were absolutely sound out. Really laid back, all-round decent and easy to get along with.

Northland countryside

Got a few lifts off Maori guys and I've never been so enthralled by an accent before, unreal ! They are all exactly like the characters from Boy, a high pitched stacatto-like voice where they practically put a fully stop after every word !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uULUhAa90z0

Generally speaking, it was the most successful hitchhiking I'd ever done, rarely waiting for more than ten minutes.  Twice, I'd cars pull up before I'd even gotten my bags from the previous car ! While mostly, guys my own age, I got collected by all sorts, old women, families, the works.  But as I waited at the turn off for Spirits Bay, I was ready to change plans because not one car had passed me and I'd waited for over an hour.  All of a sudden a car came screeching around the corner and jammed on the breaks.  It was a gravel road and as we sped down it, Adam from England, shouted at me that he does rally driving back home.  As my face practically retreated into my head from the speed we were travelling, I mustered a nod back to him, Jeaaysus. He was just coming to the end of a 2 year round-the-world trip, 2 weeks here, 2 weeks there. I could quite imagine it, certainly if he traveled like he drove anyway. When I told him I was off to Zambia, he said it was in his top three countries he'd been to alongside Vietnam and Colombia.  Music to my ears, any country on a par with Colombia is good by me.

Spirits Bay was fantastic, we sat down on this vast, open beach, about 3km in length with two jutting headlands on either side.  Like most places it had a strong significance to Maori culture, it was where the spirits of the dead gathered before departing on their final journey to the afterlife.

Spirits Bay

After Adam had legged it, leaving a dust-storm in his wake, I camped out at a really cool DOC (Department of Conservation) campsite and got chatting to McCall and Alex, a cool Canadian couple who were planning on doing the 3 day hike out around Cape Reinga the following day. We went out to the beach to watch the sun set, a fantastic experience.

Tally Ho !

In hindsight (and probably foresight to come to think of it), working til the friday before the monday  wasn't ideal but I managed.  Still, after 5 hours kip (packing boxes for shipping til 3 in the am) and an epic weekend finale I managed to make my Sydney flight in plenty of time, courteousy of J L Spanos Taxi Service.  My 9 weeks of travel were to commence. First stop Sydney.

Purpose purely to visit my aunty Josephine before I left her as the sole Daly in Australia.  She was none too impressed by my departing! Met up with Laura Sull (late of Bishopstown) and her pal Louise down in Coogee. Dinner with Jo and Richard followed and just relaxed for the eve.  Early flight to Auckland awaited me the next day.

My third trip to New Zealand having hitched around the South Island two years previously and a long weekend with Hessie to visit Trev and the Duffmeister (an incident packed weekend that was !), both of which had whetted my appetite for a third.  On arrival I had planned on heading north straight away but serious winds (up to 200km/h) put paid to that so I decided to stay put in Auckland for the night.

It mightn't look it but New Zealand is bloody big (tiny compared to Australia but 3.5 times the size of Ireland with a similar population size) so I had planned to limit my trip to Northland and the Coromandel. Had such a good time hitching previously and I was traveling alone for the most part I decided to repeat the task, partly for practicality reasons but mainly for adventure. Maybe I've become bored of actually arriving in my planned location on time by bus or something !  But continually met the coolest, interesting people who'd all hitched themselves in the past.

Got onto Izzy, my ole pal from my early Melbourne day, lived together in East Brunswick with the Wangaratta Crew (Nat, Joe and Stef). Izzy had moved back to Auckland and was living with her boyfriend and his pals in a converted shop on Symonds Street, really central location. Great to catch up with her again.

Took off early the day, bused to Silverdale, stocked up on supplies and stuck the thumb out. Not a great spot to commence but got a few short lifts and I was away.  Two young german shams who were living in some hut in the forest brought me most of the way (their car seemed to have been lived in for a fair bit of time too, fuckin mank!).

After a failed attempt at getting to Tawharanui (campsite was closed), the guy who brought me there dropped me all the way back to where he'd first collected me, I got a lift from an old English guy by the name of  Richard. Absolute gent of a man, dropped me (again, completely out of his way) to Goat Island and insisted on collecting me the next morning, which he did, to help me on my way.  He also invited me to visit himself and his wife on their estate at Hawkes Bay for a few days, legend. Unfortunately it was a fair bit out of my way so I couldn't.



That day I made my way up to Paihia the tourist town from which to access the Bay of Islands, which is the major kiwi attraction in Northland. Camped in the holiday park (which was surprisingly good, not usually a fan), lovely setting overlooking an estuary, and some sound people staying there, some good nattering was done.

Photo of dawn breaking from my tent in Paihia

Hung out with Diana the Kraut the next day, decent company if fairly dry, doing touristy things like visiting Waitangi, where the Treaty was signed (as late as 1840) basically turning the country into a colony of England.  I couldn't really see why this was this was is annually celebrated as a significant day for the country as it seemed to have sold the Maori people a pup (the crafty fckers wrote up a different Treaty in English with quite different conditions!).  But apparently it gave the Maori's a better deal than they'd have otherwise gotten. Headed over to Russell, the first capital of the country, and a heritage town. Pretty bland and dull to me.

Early the next morn I set off on a yacht with Laurent and Camille, a french couple and our skipper Glenn to the Bay of Islands.  Great day out, beautiful spot generally.  A rake of dolphins out there and a visit to the lovely Waewaetorea Island.  Later that night I talked the frenchies through the NZ v Aus match as they'd never watched rugby before !

Waewaetora Island

Next day I bailed, (not before time, gettin slightly tired of Paihia's touristy feel). Sweltering heat and a few lifts later (one from an 80+ year old woman - I love these stereotype defeating occurrences!) I got dropped off at the turn off to Taupo Bay (which came highly recommended by Diana the Kraut). Waited for quite a while, no traffic on this gravel road, finally a pick-up came screaming around the corner and jammed on the breaks. The two lads told me to jump aboard, I gladly obliged. As we tore off again, a hand sprung out the window with a bottle, the two lads were boozin (as you do!), it was a pre-mixed bottle of bourbon and coke, rancid shit but I didn't want to appear ungrateful so I grabbed it and took a few token swigs.  Good buzz all the same, traveling in the back of the pick-up with the wind battering me. Dropped me all the way to the beach, who says rednecks can't be sound ! Taupo was only gorgeous, more appealing than the Bay of Islands even.

Taupo Bay

Melbourne Town

Looking back now, tis nearly three years since I arrived to Australia's shores, part of the most recent wave of Eire's youth flocking out across the world, our nomadic tribe, in a movement that has coloured our history and both enriched and pained our people.  Its a country that exists well beyond its boundaries.

My arrival in November 2010 took in a process of detainment that many experienced in Ellis Island in the past and many non-white arrivee's still experience today before finally setting foot on Australian soil.  My 36 hours in Kuala Lumpur International Airport, however, was completely of my own doing and not of the authorities.  I had spent the day scratching my ass, waiting to head to the airport, completely unaware that my flight was 1 hour earlier than i'd thought. Clown ! Missed it by ten minutes (I did eventually cope on) and spent the next day and a half like that Iranian sham who spent 17 years in Charles De Gaulle airport (although he didn't have The Sopranos to help him through it).

I left Melbourne with so many positive memories and a life richer for having lived there. It was fuckin class. Leaving came quickly, the decision was more about timing as long as I still had the freedom to decide. I did. I was off. Thank you and g'luck !

I will miss the place, I had great people there that I shared the three years with. Top notch. That's the hard part. It was the first place I'd moved to that I had people already there - Keefe, Brads, Wonger, Rowan, Spanos and Trev (three hours away up in the hills).  The first two legged it after a few weeks but the others were a major help, ready made networks whose friends became my friends.  That makes the lot of a dirty immigrant all the easier and I didn't really experience the tough settling in period, at least not a prolonged one.

Its a really stimulating city, an easy one in which to exist.  The contrast between life in Gertrude St of Fitzroy and that which awaits me in Zambia couldn't be starker! A largely white, secular, liberal area where stresses revolved around which cafe to breakfast in and which to take coffee in (to do both in the same place would be an unthinkable waste).  But with that, the cushy living, comes a lack, of what I'm not sure but the grittiness and friction that comes in other less 'liveable' places brings also stimulation and interest.  Not that it lacks character but a monoculture of 'creatives' and 'progressives' detracts from an area having a 'soul' so to speak.

My pad in Fitzroy

Melbourne gave me a lot. Super friends, work was great, and I'd a helluva lot of fun. In hindsight it worked out wonderfully, Canada may also have. I left while the going was good but I was comfortable that the timing was right.  My gut agreed and my gut has been good to me over the years.

Leaving was a bit of a rush but I probably managed it better than I expected.  Working up until the friday before my before my monday departure put me under all sorts of pressure to carry out all the things that needed doing but it got done.  A quality weekend to wrap it up was had, centred around a tremendous friday eve at Lilly Blacks, a typical laneway city centre watering hole that is a speciality that Melbourne does oh so well.  Having to work around the different groups required a bit of effort but it was so great to see all those I'd spent the previous three years with and a wonderful send-off to boot that continued into the not so early hours of the morning, gettting down in Boney.

Melbourne, I tip my hat to you, its been immense.

Cartagena

I spent the night in the dorm at Calypso´s place and the next day I was finally ready to leave Santa Marta/Taganga. I was unsure as to whether I would head to Barranquilla or Cartagena. It was a friday night so I said I´d plump for the latter. I arrived quite late and headed straight for Casa Vienna, which had been (badly) recommended to me.

Tried to check in but it was full. That wasn´t the only surprise awaiting me. Who was in the reception area only the fckin lads from the trek - Stavros, Tommy, the Pup and Rob. Bingo. Wonderful surprise and perfect timing. Friday night and I had a great crew to hit it up with. Apparently the boats to Panama only go every few days and the lads had just missed one but were leaving the next morning. They were joined by Flo Jo - the crazy frenchman and a few more of their aussie friends.

Had a great laugh with the lads again albeit in spite of, rather than because of, Cartagena. As a town its one of the most beautiful I´ve cast my eye upon but its also quite frustrating as it just feels like ´it just ain´t got no soul´.




For Colombians its the pinacle (well, thats after their bemusing obsession with Miami). The well-off flock there in their droves. So its full of Colombian tourists, foreigners and people working in the tourist industry ie. street vendors, brassers, bumbs etc. Therefore, I file it, once again, under the list of ´beautiful shit places´.

Maybe I´m being a bit overcritical. It is what it is. Its setting is fantastic. An old walled fortress city - they call it the Pearl of the Carribean. It has beautiful old battlements and fantastically colourful and ornate old buildings. These things along with a large Afro-Latino population (due to it being a hub during the slave trade) lend it great similarities with Salvador in Brazil. But again the same irritants and hassles of Salvador. I believe it was the setting for the recent adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez´s Love in a Time of Cholera (didn´t see it) and they expect the tourist trade to explode there.

The Life Aquatic

As the lads headed onto Cartagena to catch a boat to Panama, I returned once again to Taganga I had decided to do an open water diving qualification. I suppose I saw it as an investment as I had always regretted not doing the full course that time with Bamb in Ko Tao in 2002.


I shopped around and settled on Calypso Diving School. They were trying to flog me their ´Diving Safari´deal where I´d be based in el Parque Tayrona once again but really I just wanted the eh most economical deal (as I hadn´t really budgeted for it) which was based from Taganga. In the end they offered me the Safari deal for the price of the land based one as it suited them better. Score ! So I headed off for 6 dives based on a beautiful isolated beach in the National Park only accessible by boat.



Eating fresh fish, collapsing into my hammock every night at 8 to be woken by the rising sun at 6 in the morn. Sooo relaxing. There were a few of us doing the dives together. Names elude me now but Helena and Will (i think - Scotsman with an English accent, questionable), Leicester from Cambridge and his girlfriend from Sweden and the little Israeli with those disturbingly tight swimming togs.


The diving was pretty decent too. Mark the English West Ham supporting instructor was bang on too. Saw a few octopus´s and a Manta Ray, among others. The only thing that Mark didn´t was spend a lot of time on the theory part of the course (thankfully. god its boring) but this proved a bit of a problem when myself and the Colombian girl sat the exam. After 3 days of problemless diving, I fuckin failed the test !!


Funniest thing was the boss guy kind of looked at me, gave me back the test with the proper answers and told me to read over them. When finished he asked me whether I now understood. I replied positively. This pleased him, so he signed my certificate. I had now passed !!

Aah Colombia - what a great country. Era I always hated physics in school anyway....

15 minutes of fame

Forgot to mention bout la Cuidad Perdida. A few years ago a group of about seven or so backpackers were doing the trek and they were happened upon by the ELN (similar group to FARC). Or rather the ELN searched them out. Where? Exactly the fucking place we stayed in on the second night.

I remember reading about it in the Guardian a few years ago. Among the captees was an English guy who made a miraculous escape. He somehow escaped by making a jump for it while being marched at gunpoint through the jungle, blindfolded. Apparently he jumped off the rope bridge into a deep ravine and was discovered days later by the local indigenous people, half starved to death.

Or at least this is what he told the press

Speaking to Andy, the owner of the hostel in Bogota (been in Colombia for years and had traveled to length and breath of the country), he told me that it was complete horseshit! From speaking to people in the area he said that apparently the ELN let them go themselves cos they were running low on food supplies cos thaty had to feed these 7 kidnapees. But also apparently they kept the 3 Israelis a few days longer cos they were so annoying !

In fairness to the English guy, if that was the case then I don´t blame him. He probably made it onto Wogan (fuck it, he´s probably on Big Brother or something!). You can just picture him at a party now going "yeah that reminds me of the time I escaped from a torture camp in the Colombian Jungle after being taken into captivity by an absolutely merciless Marxist Guerilla group. I really thought my time was up. Really puts things in perspective for me" as he wipes a tear from his eye........

Journeying to la Cuidad Perdida

After the splendour and laziness of el Parque Tayrona I retreated to Taganga with the ambition of taking on the 6-day trek to la Cuidad Perdida. The Lost City is one of the major archaelogical discoveries in Colombia (found sometime in the 70´s by local treasure looters). Founded about 800 A.D., some 650 years earlier than Machu Picchu, it had been the centre of civilisation for the Tayrona Indians.

I settled with Magic Tours and we set off the next day at the ungodly hour of 6 in the morn. I was back on my own again and therefore my next few days were completely at the mercy of the shower I was to be grouped with. I was justifiably apprehensive.

I boarded the mini-bus and headed for the back seat (some kind of childhood insecurity still in me maybe!) and lumped in next to a 19-year old Dutch lad named eh, Jip. Picture your stereotypical Dutch guy and multiply him by 10. This fucker couldn´t have passed for any other nationality, he looked a cross between Dirk Kuyt and Goldmember (an unfortunate nickname he had bestowed upon him, mainly as a result of my promptings). He was a classic ´Cheesehead´, which my ole man used to tell me was a term that would rile any Dutchie. He was so Dutch it was unbelievable. I couldn´t help but snigger uncontrolably whenever he would utter certain words like "yesh" and "fantashtic".

The other thing that separted ole Jip apart was his apparell. Most people, when embarking on a (what turned out to be) 5 day trek into the deepest and darkest jungle with extreme humidity and torrential rainfalls, would be expected to be somewhat prepared with the basic essentials - mossie repellent, proper backpack, sturdy shoes with good griping, a rain coat and spare clothes etc but Jip, nope.

Comically the fucker turned up with this tiny ´rope bag´. That is one of these bags made of cotton that you close by pulling the strings together at the top of the bag. He later would carry it on his back, the rope ripping the shite out of his shoulders. He brought no towel, one hoody, a pair of ´tennis shoes´ with fuck all grip, no long pants (mossies at night being the reason these are essential), one pair of socks and one t-shirt. Whatever bout hygeine, the one t-shirt thing was ludicrous. The killer humidity and the rain meant that your t-shirt was always 100% saturated. I wore the same one every day but always had a nice dry clean one for the evening.

Finally, his biggest failing was his lack of insect repellent. The average person got hit pretty bad by the bastards up there but Jip was the pastiest kid you´d ever seen. Man, he got fucking annihilated by them ! It was hilarious (in a schadenfreunde kind of way), the fucker looked like a four year old with Chicken Pox!! Anyway, I was sitting next to him for the two hour journey to our starting point and we had a good chat about Ajax under Van Basten and Dutch soccer in general.

Then four lads piled onto the bus with loud Aussie accents. Fuck I thought, these guys are gonna be a right pain in the hole. Aussies can be tough to deal with at the best of times, let alone a group of them. Although, it later transpired that only two of them were Aussies and ironically that were a fucking blessing of a group, absolutely sound out.

They were Tommy from Queensland - an absolute gent, Stavros the Greek from Adelaide who I ended up traveling with for the next two weeks, The Pup (Simon) A Gooner from Norf London (god was I happy to meet him, seriously trivial arsenal conversations kept us going on those tough mountainous stretches) and Rob the Dub. Rob was dead on. But he´d had some pretty shocking luck/fate of late. He had been going out with this Aussie girl previously on the trip (who the lads maintained was an absolute psycho). They broke up due to her aforementioned psycho-ness. The last he saw of her was when he gave her €50 and told her to get the fuck out of his life!

That was until she rang him two weeks later to tell him she was pregnant with his child ! Strangely she was over the moon at this. Needless to say he was less than enthused but committed to fulfilling his fatherly duties nonetheless. Then in another phone call she told him that unless he cut short his trip immediately he would never see the his child and she´d make him pay for everything.

In fairness to him he was still willing to give it a go with her and make the best of the situation. Ever tried to put a positive slant on as fucked up a situation as that to a fella !??

The remainder of the group was made up of a nice quiet French guy and girl, a Costa Rican lad who hurt his knee on the second day and for the remainder of the trip acted like an war vet who lost a limb in the trenches in the first World War (walked around with a cane and made the guides carry all his stuff), a four foot nothing Colombian girl who really wasn´t up to it and an absolute gobshite of a Frenchman we named John Rambo.

Rambo was a tool of the highest order and that became apparent within less than half an hour. He was the single biggest show-off I think I´ve met since I was about 6. He practically put the tour guides out of a job. He was up on the top of the jeep loading up the bags, he was in there chopping up all the vegetables and preparing the dinner, managing to do all this while seemingly shouting at the top of his voice. If there was a burst tire he´d probably have insisted on fixing it himself.

He would never do something the normal easy way, like the rest of us. If everyone was jumping off a 10m cliff, he´d find a 20m one. If we jumped feet first, he´d jump head first. Why should he when there was a harder, more impressive way of doing it. God we disliked him !

But the worst for me was that he would only talk to the tour guides and adopted a rural colombian accent into the bargain. Like, I´m all on for integrating with local people and having the odd chat but I do so fully aware of who I am - an english speaking, white, foreigner. I have no intention of trying to pretend I´m Colombian, as great a country as it is..

The trek itself was sheer quality. There were parts of it that were ball-breakingly tough (as there should be). Because we squeezed the six days into five, day two was a dose. There were parts of it that you just had to stop chatting, put the head down and graft for 2 hours straight. Also, I had done quite a few ´jungle´ treks in the past but this was truly the first proper Jungle I´d been in. In hindsight, the others were really only rain forests. This was different. Immensely thick and verdant foliage with rainfall like I´d never seen. Day two was longer than the others and we got seriously caught up in said rainfall. Ole Jip got truly flahed by that occurence as absolutely nothing would dry.



Accomodation was in hammocks accompanied by blankets and mosquito nets. We usually hit the hay after watchin Jip go beserk during a game of cards. The boy had a temper he just couldn´t get a hold of and well, I´ve got a hell of a lot of experience at pushing those kinds of people to the limit and enjoying it immensely!

It feels quite good being woken by the rising sun at half five in the morning and listening to the sounds of the jungle as you lie in your hammock. Although that wasn´t necessarily the case on our first night. We were woken approximately every hour by the fucking rodents they described as dogs, in the first place. These little fuckers would bark the house down if one of the other ones came within half a metre of them. As the aussie lads would say they needed to ´harden the fuck up´ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unkIVvjZc9Y

Now, I´m generally fond of dogs but I would quite gladly have put these fuckers in a bag full of bricks and chucked them into the nearby river !

The second day joined by two more guys. One, Pagey - a good lad from Melbourne (who also happened to be the biggest moaner I´d met in a while) and this eccentric 48 year old english geezer who´s name escapes me as I type. He was quite unique. Skin and bone and as bald as a eagle. One of these guys who, while not having a word of spanish, wouldn´t even say ´hola´ or ´gracias´and would speak to the locals as if they were from Surrey. He also had the gayest laugh i´ve ever heard in my life.

I didn´t speak much to him initially but got chatting to him one day. An interesting character to say the least. Started telling me that he used to be a punk and was basically a tearaway when he was younger. Taken every drug under the sun (smoked crack at work) and was absolutely flaberghasted when I told him I had little interest in doing the same!

Astonishingly, when I asked him what he did for a living, he told me he was a divorce lawyer (!) and had some interesting and probing observations from his experiences. When I asked him what he was up to out in Colombia, he said that he told him wife that he was out looking for a holiday home investment (as he chuckled away). A few days after the trek when I bumped into him back in Taganga, he was wearing a fish-net top which he took off immediately when he saw me. We all reckoned he was over to meet some 18 year old boy he met online or something. This was definitely the one where the wife and two kids was a front....

Back to the trek, we finally reached the Lost City and the end of Day Two. That was after passing through a Tayronan Indian settlement and crossing about 6 rivers, bags above our heads and water up to our chests. The City itself was bereft of any remaining buildings, just the foundations of what lay there before. We spent the third day exploring these ruins and some of the lads made some swaps with the patrolling soldiers (since Uribe militarised the country, there are soldiers in every nook and cranny of Colombia that are properly under the control of the Government). In fairness, the soldiers got the better of the deals. The lads left with these manky camoflauged t-shirts, army green belts and necklaces with bullets attached. Me, I got over wearing army outfits when I was, oh, about 5.

The soldiers, with their ever busy patrol duty, somehow found the time to bring us to some great spots where we could jump of waterfalls, sometimes up to 20m high. In the end the soldiers pulled out their towels and spare jocks to change into. Seems like its part of their daily routine. What a job!

On the fourth day, we made our way back towards civilisation (unfortunately over the same route) which took two more gruelling days. Overall, it was a class trek, amazing scenery and luckily a great group of people to boot.