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........
Thursday, 27 November 2008
Wednesday, 26 November 2008
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
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.
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.
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.
Thursday, 28 August 2008
el Parque Tayrona
After effectively traveling alone for the previous two or three months I had now stumbled onto he well trodden Gringo Trail where I have resided ever since. Traveling alone had been great but you do work for it so it has been nice to jump in with others and just be lazy about it. By traveling alone, you have the liberty to make your plans up as you go along. I have seriously indulged in this and its great to have that freedom. You are exposed to so many more people. Yeah when you are traveling in a group you get to meet people, but these people rarely become actual proper friends. Also traveling alone allows you get to pick and choose who you hang around with. Any morning you can just wake up and decide to head off again on your own. Fuckin mercenary or wha !?
The Santa Marta region is in Colombia´s North East and is host to many wonderful attractions. I spent the bones of three weeks in the area. After spending a few nights in Santa Marta itself I headed to Taganga - 10km up the road. Taganga is the hub for a lot of the activities to be done in the surrounding areas. Anyone who thinks Colombia is off the beaten track should take a trip to Taganga, its a backpackers mecca like somewhere in Thailand and finally I realised where all the Israeli´s had been hiding, its like little fucking Jerusalem there.
After a night out in El Garaje with my roommate Devon from Seattle, I took a belated boat ride with a boatload of Shron´s to Parque Tayrona. This is a place I´d first read about in a Guardian article about the 10 best beaches in the world, which it voted as its number two. Having been mightily impressed by my visit to its number one choice (the phenomenal Islas Cies off the coast of Vigo in Northern Spain).
Tayrona certainly didn´t disappoint. In fact it was savage. I camped out with an Irish couple Daithi and Sandra with the rest of the backpackers on a campsite at the edge of the jungle fronting onto the Carribean. Magic. While it was the Carribean, it wasn´t the aqua-marine water that you usually associate with it but it was pretty fantabulous nonetheless. Its pretty idyllic to be able to groggily make the ten metres trek at 7 in the morning for a dip in the empty, tranquil Carribean. Luckily, I had my own tent and camping gear but one night I decided to just sleep under the stars in a hammock. I spent 5 days in Tayrona doing, well, fuck all really. It was pretty memorable.
A few of the local lads would come back from a day of fishing in the afternoon and would profer up there catch for a decent price and well there´s not much like a dinner of fresh fish on the beach. Because it is a National Park there´s fuck all there, just a few straw roofed restaurants. So we were essentially hanging around where the jungle meets the Carribean.
The Santa Marta region is in Colombia´s North East and is host to many wonderful attractions. I spent the bones of three weeks in the area. After spending a few nights in Santa Marta itself I headed to Taganga - 10km up the road. Taganga is the hub for a lot of the activities to be done in the surrounding areas. Anyone who thinks Colombia is off the beaten track should take a trip to Taganga, its a backpackers mecca like somewhere in Thailand and finally I realised where all the Israeli´s had been hiding, its like little fucking Jerusalem there.
After a night out in El Garaje with my roommate Devon from Seattle, I took a belated boat ride with a boatload of Shron´s to Parque Tayrona. This is a place I´d first read about in a Guardian article about the 10 best beaches in the world, which it voted as its number two. Having been mightily impressed by my visit to its number one choice (the phenomenal Islas Cies off the coast of Vigo in Northern Spain).
Tayrona certainly didn´t disappoint. In fact it was savage. I camped out with an Irish couple Daithi and Sandra with the rest of the backpackers on a campsite at the edge of the jungle fronting onto the Carribean. Magic. While it was the Carribean, it wasn´t the aqua-marine water that you usually associate with it but it was pretty fantabulous nonetheless. Its pretty idyllic to be able to groggily make the ten metres trek at 7 in the morning for a dip in the empty, tranquil Carribean. Luckily, I had my own tent and camping gear but one night I decided to just sleep under the stars in a hammock. I spent 5 days in Tayrona doing, well, fuck all really. It was pretty memorable.
A few of the local lads would come back from a day of fishing in the afternoon and would profer up there catch for a decent price and well there´s not much like a dinner of fresh fish on the beach. Because it is a National Park there´s fuck all there, just a few straw roofed restaurants. So we were essentially hanging around where the jungle meets the Carribean.
Loco-mbia
And now I had finally reached my goal of returning to South America to visit the glorious Colombia. When the five of us headed off wide-eyed and bushy tailed for South America back in 2004 we were unanimous in agreeing that the only country we wouldn´t consider visiting was Colombia. It was just too fucking dangerous.
Ever since then, anyone I´ve met who had hit Colombia just raved about the place. And not in a "its so dangerous and wacky its cool" way. They all maintained that it was just an allround quality joint. And I´m often skeptical bout people´s opinions on such places but again these were just your average travelling punters.
So Colombia was gonna be one of the focal points of my voyage. Even from the outside its charms are pretty obvious: mountains, the jungle, cosmopolitan cities like Medellin and Bogota, pretty little colonial towns, the Amazon, the Carribean and the Pacific.
Prior to arriving here I was aware that the country had done much to improve its plight. In his first term Uribe had become a very popular president among his people. He had pushed the FARC deep into the jungle and had done huge amounts to tackle the security problems experienced by ordinary Colombians. Apparently by 2004, two years after coming into office, homicides, kidnappings and terrorist attacks had decreased by as much as 50%.
This, allied to the attacks led by previous governments on the drug cartels namely that of Pablo Escobar´s has placed Colombia and its people in a far healthier place today. I recently read that Medellin, once the home of the majority of the Colombia cartels and obviously a place where you tread lightly, is the safest city in Latin America. All of this has helped Colombia to be a more attractive place to live in, visit and do business.
Ever since then, anyone I´ve met who had hit Colombia just raved about the place. And not in a "its so dangerous and wacky its cool" way. They all maintained that it was just an allround quality joint. And I´m often skeptical bout people´s opinions on such places but again these were just your average travelling punters.
So Colombia was gonna be one of the focal points of my voyage. Even from the outside its charms are pretty obvious: mountains, the jungle, cosmopolitan cities like Medellin and Bogota, pretty little colonial towns, the Amazon, the Carribean and the Pacific.
Prior to arriving here I was aware that the country had done much to improve its plight. In his first term Uribe had become a very popular president among his people. He had pushed the FARC deep into the jungle and had done huge amounts to tackle the security problems experienced by ordinary Colombians. Apparently by 2004, two years after coming into office, homicides, kidnappings and terrorist attacks had decreased by as much as 50%.
This, allied to the attacks led by previous governments on the drug cartels namely that of Pablo Escobar´s has placed Colombia and its people in a far healthier place today. I recently read that Medellin, once the home of the majority of the Colombia cartels and obviously a place where you tread lightly, is the safest city in Latin America. All of this has helped Colombia to be a more attractive place to live in, visit and do business.
Thursday, 14 August 2008
The Raging Bull
After an absolute mothertrucker of a journey I reached Colombia. I had connected in Maracaibo to get a local bus to the border. About 40 minutes from the crossing I was the only one left on the bus so the driver decided it wasn´t worth his while so he turfed me out in the middle of some absolute hole that stank of shite and petrol.
I then started to pile into one of the trucks that act as taxis with a rake of locals when the bloke in charged stopped me and said "No Gringo´s". After getting about two hours sleep the night before on the bus I was not a happy backpacker. I lost the plot at this slight and unleashed on the guy, initially in Spanish, then I just started abusing him in English! Probably not my finest hour but the guy just got up my shnoz. Dickwad.
Then after another half an hour of people refusing to pick me up or quoting me exorbitant prices I got collected by this couple in a cab. Yer one was a right wart of a woman and demanded cash up front. Another argument ensued, I told her she´d get her money when I arrived where I was supposed to arrive. After a few minutes more when I got my head together I realised that it wasn´t actually a taxi but just two punters with a car. Started to get a bix anxious about this. Most people emit positive vibes but these two fuckers certainly didn´t.
When we got to the exit point from Venezuela, I had to get out to pay my Hugo Chavez Departure Tax. As I was pretty pissed off and paranoid at this stage I decided to lug all my bags from the car with me contrary to the advice of the two assholes driving me. When I came back from paying the tax the fucking car was gone !! Thank fuck I took my bags and thank fuck I didn´t pay them. But now I had to walk the 2km to the Colombian entry point with my enormous backpack in the sweltering heat after which I had to queue for another hour to get in. I was like a demon at this point !
As I mentioned previously, I´d only gotten about two hours snooze on the bus. This is not unusual for me with bus travel in the developing world. Often for shorter journey´s I take the ´chicken bus´option. The ones with all the street trading grannies and where people bring all their worldly possessions on. So there´s as much a chance of you sitting next to a bag of radios as, lets say, a goat. They´re always good for a bit of humour.
But for the over night journeys you gotta go with the luxury coaches really. But even still there´s always a surprise in store for you. Often they flake the air-conditioning (another american obsession down here) up to Artic levels. Anyway, as I was just about to finally fall asleep at about six in the morning, they decided to lash on a dvd. Not the usual Steven Seagal batch but a live concert of this atrocious but widly famous Venezuelan singer. He was this big fat 25 year old dude with a bushy moustache, a Hawaiin shirt and a truly awful awful taste in music. If that wasnt bad enough, the tv speakers were right above my head, the volume was appallingly loud and the old woman next to me started singing along to all the songs.
When I finally arrive in Santa Marta in Colombia, with the plan that I´d be ready for a good saturday night out, the only thing I wanted was a bed and by 9pm I was out of the count. Yip, travelling ain´t always so rosy !!
I then started to pile into one of the trucks that act as taxis with a rake of locals when the bloke in charged stopped me and said "No Gringo´s". After getting about two hours sleep the night before on the bus I was not a happy backpacker. I lost the plot at this slight and unleashed on the guy, initially in Spanish, then I just started abusing him in English! Probably not my finest hour but the guy just got up my shnoz. Dickwad.
Then after another half an hour of people refusing to pick me up or quoting me exorbitant prices I got collected by this couple in a cab. Yer one was a right wart of a woman and demanded cash up front. Another argument ensued, I told her she´d get her money when I arrived where I was supposed to arrive. After a few minutes more when I got my head together I realised that it wasn´t actually a taxi but just two punters with a car. Started to get a bix anxious about this. Most people emit positive vibes but these two fuckers certainly didn´t.
When we got to the exit point from Venezuela, I had to get out to pay my Hugo Chavez Departure Tax. As I was pretty pissed off and paranoid at this stage I decided to lug all my bags from the car with me contrary to the advice of the two assholes driving me. When I came back from paying the tax the fucking car was gone !! Thank fuck I took my bags and thank fuck I didn´t pay them. But now I had to walk the 2km to the Colombian entry point with my enormous backpack in the sweltering heat after which I had to queue for another hour to get in. I was like a demon at this point !
As I mentioned previously, I´d only gotten about two hours snooze on the bus. This is not unusual for me with bus travel in the developing world. Often for shorter journey´s I take the ´chicken bus´option. The ones with all the street trading grannies and where people bring all their worldly possessions on. So there´s as much a chance of you sitting next to a bag of radios as, lets say, a goat. They´re always good for a bit of humour.
But for the over night journeys you gotta go with the luxury coaches really. But even still there´s always a surprise in store for you. Often they flake the air-conditioning (another american obsession down here) up to Artic levels. Anyway, as I was just about to finally fall asleep at about six in the morning, they decided to lash on a dvd. Not the usual Steven Seagal batch but a live concert of this atrocious but widly famous Venezuelan singer. He was this big fat 25 year old dude with a bushy moustache, a Hawaiin shirt and a truly awful awful taste in music. If that wasnt bad enough, the tv speakers were right above my head, the volume was appallingly loud and the old woman next to me started singing along to all the songs.
When I finally arrive in Santa Marta in Colombia, with the plan that I´d be ready for a good saturday night out, the only thing I wanted was a bed and by 9pm I was out of the count. Yip, travelling ain´t always so rosy !!
Monday, 11 August 2008
Viva la Revolucion ?
If you´re not interested in politics - skip this part !
Venezuela is a very divided country. And there is a very visible gap between the two types of people it seems. Not so much in a rich/poor sense like other countries I´ve visited like Bolivia, Brazil or Mehico. But more pro or anti Chavez.
For the most part the people I spoke to were of the middle class and very anti-Chavez but its predominantly the poor and rural who adore him. And its pretty obvious as to the reasons for both sets. The middle and upper classes have lost a lot during his reign. In the developing world the rich, in many countries, live in a very privileged position, often having the run of the place and can use money to achieve most everything.
It seems that Chavez has really gone about getting up their noses and made the country economically more conservative. Nationalising much of the oil industry (although I still noticed a few foreign companies like Shell and BP) and clamping down on the abilities of Venezuelans to obtain foreign currency (which has led to a huge black market) and on private individuals ability to buy foreign goods for import.
His supporters say that the international press´s (mainly from the States) reporting is largely biased against him which is probably right considering I´ve only read negative reports about him. Essentially he has widespread support and his party holds the governorships of all but 2 of the regions/provinces. He seems to be pumping a lot of resources into education and social programmes and is currently undertaking a large rail network project which is pretty progressive for a Latin American country. I presumed that he´d be more interested in building statues of himself.
The main economic story about Venezuela is Oil. After traveling around the US and seeing how paranoid they are getting about fuel prices, I had to laugh my ass off when I learned about Venezuela´s situation, as being one of the top five oil producers in the world. The Yanks are crying blue murder for having to pay $4 a gallon when we in Europe have been paying the equivalent of of $10 a gallon (get a fuckin grip like !) . In Ireland petrol is around 1.40 Euro ( i think) a litre, in Venezuela they pay, wait for it, 0.03 Euro a litre !! 3 fckin cents. unreal.
They don´t report that in the US. Goddam Communists !!!
In all seriousness its probably not a good thing in Venezuela cos they have a huge level of car ownership and Caracas has some of the worst traffic i´ve ever seen. Essentially though, it probably does more to add to Chavez´z reputation as a populist than anything. That plus the fact that he gave all the public workforce a 30% salary increase in the last two years has sent prices rocketing so much so that in my experience it is now the most expensive country in Latin America.
Whatever about the pros and cons of Chavez, most sane people were happy when his bid to amend the constitution to allow him to extend his term indefinitely was unsuccessful. He is definitely power hungry and the power he craves is very unhealthy for the nation. Even Mother Theresa herself would have turned for the worst with the amount of power! The strange thing is that he seems to have enough popular support to withstand the opposition for quite a while yet.
Generally I think he is positive for his country and it will be a better place because of him when he finishes in 2013. But more so I think he is positive for the continent. Latin America has suffered greatly over the past 50 years at the hands of the Yanks by being weakened through successive civil wars. Now the region is seeking to stand on its own two feet which can only be a good thing. The less positive side to Chavez is his quest to Cubanise the country. Cuba took that direction through necessity and during different times. Venezuela doesn´t need to do that and it seems that Hugo craves the longevity and power that Castro had.
I don´t think he has half the acumen that Fidel possesses. Castro never made his reign about him personally, it was always about the ´Revolucion´. You don´t see any statues or murals of him in Cuba - its all Guevara and Jose Marti. But in Venezuela its all about Chavez. The fucker is everywhere.
The other thing that I distrust about Chavez is his background. You show me a country ran by the military and I´ll show you a people that have suffered greatly as a result. Chavez is ex-military and it shows.
The other problem the rich have with him is his ethnicity. Generally speaking, the ruling powers in most Latin America countries are white Europeans. Chavez is a mix of white, indigenous and black. I can´t imagine the Venezuela rich being happy to be governed by someone racially "inferior".
The other thing that marks the anti-Chavez brigade from the rest are their lifestyles. Its very ironic that the country that is most anti-US in its orientation is one of the most US influenced countries in Latin America. In fact, apart from the colonial architecture and its Spanish language, there is little evidence of any European influence remaining in the country. The front page of the newspapers was covering not Euro 2008 but American baseball. The middle classes have a love for American style consumerism - be it really awful designer labeled clothing, lavish cars, a love for shopping malls and really expensive tacky bars and restaurants. Basically, if you have any cash in Venezuela, you do everything in your power to show it - bit like Ireland really !!
Two more little anecdotes about Chavez. The fucker decided that as part of his term in power that he would change the time. Yip, the time. So he moved the clocks back, not an hour, not two hours but ...... half an hour. If thats not egotistical I don´t know what is!
The other thing that struck me about Venezuela was that there were very few backpackers around (certainly compared to Colombia). But even of the backpackers I had met, there was one nation of people that were surprisingly missing. Nope not Americans but Israeli´s. Anyone who has travelled in Latin America or Asia will have met them in their truckloads. I couldn´t figure out why they weren´t there. Yeah its really expensive which would turn a lot of them away but still. So I put this to one of the locals , he started laughing ( a Chavista no doubt!). Apparently as Chavez is not exactly a fan of Israel, he makes them all apply for a visa to enter the country. So they don´t !
Venezuela is a very divided country. And there is a very visible gap between the two types of people it seems. Not so much in a rich/poor sense like other countries I´ve visited like Bolivia, Brazil or Mehico. But more pro or anti Chavez.
For the most part the people I spoke to were of the middle class and very anti-Chavez but its predominantly the poor and rural who adore him. And its pretty obvious as to the reasons for both sets. The middle and upper classes have lost a lot during his reign. In the developing world the rich, in many countries, live in a very privileged position, often having the run of the place and can use money to achieve most everything.
It seems that Chavez has really gone about getting up their noses and made the country economically more conservative. Nationalising much of the oil industry (although I still noticed a few foreign companies like Shell and BP) and clamping down on the abilities of Venezuelans to obtain foreign currency (which has led to a huge black market) and on private individuals ability to buy foreign goods for import.
His supporters say that the international press´s (mainly from the States) reporting is largely biased against him which is probably right considering I´ve only read negative reports about him. Essentially he has widespread support and his party holds the governorships of all but 2 of the regions/provinces. He seems to be pumping a lot of resources into education and social programmes and is currently undertaking a large rail network project which is pretty progressive for a Latin American country. I presumed that he´d be more interested in building statues of himself.
The main economic story about Venezuela is Oil. After traveling around the US and seeing how paranoid they are getting about fuel prices, I had to laugh my ass off when I learned about Venezuela´s situation, as being one of the top five oil producers in the world. The Yanks are crying blue murder for having to pay $4 a gallon when we in Europe have been paying the equivalent of of $10 a gallon (get a fuckin grip like !) . In Ireland petrol is around 1.40 Euro ( i think) a litre, in Venezuela they pay, wait for it, 0.03 Euro a litre !! 3 fckin cents. unreal.
They don´t report that in the US. Goddam Communists !!!
In all seriousness its probably not a good thing in Venezuela cos they have a huge level of car ownership and Caracas has some of the worst traffic i´ve ever seen. Essentially though, it probably does more to add to Chavez´z reputation as a populist than anything. That plus the fact that he gave all the public workforce a 30% salary increase in the last two years has sent prices rocketing so much so that in my experience it is now the most expensive country in Latin America.
Whatever about the pros and cons of Chavez, most sane people were happy when his bid to amend the constitution to allow him to extend his term indefinitely was unsuccessful. He is definitely power hungry and the power he craves is very unhealthy for the nation. Even Mother Theresa herself would have turned for the worst with the amount of power! The strange thing is that he seems to have enough popular support to withstand the opposition for quite a while yet.
Generally I think he is positive for his country and it will be a better place because of him when he finishes in 2013. But more so I think he is positive for the continent. Latin America has suffered greatly over the past 50 years at the hands of the Yanks by being weakened through successive civil wars. Now the region is seeking to stand on its own two feet which can only be a good thing. The less positive side to Chavez is his quest to Cubanise the country. Cuba took that direction through necessity and during different times. Venezuela doesn´t need to do that and it seems that Hugo craves the longevity and power that Castro had.
I don´t think he has half the acumen that Fidel possesses. Castro never made his reign about him personally, it was always about the ´Revolucion´. You don´t see any statues or murals of him in Cuba - its all Guevara and Jose Marti. But in Venezuela its all about Chavez. The fucker is everywhere.
The other thing that I distrust about Chavez is his background. You show me a country ran by the military and I´ll show you a people that have suffered greatly as a result. Chavez is ex-military and it shows.
The other problem the rich have with him is his ethnicity. Generally speaking, the ruling powers in most Latin America countries are white Europeans. Chavez is a mix of white, indigenous and black. I can´t imagine the Venezuela rich being happy to be governed by someone racially "inferior".
The other thing that marks the anti-Chavez brigade from the rest are their lifestyles. Its very ironic that the country that is most anti-US in its orientation is one of the most US influenced countries in Latin America. In fact, apart from the colonial architecture and its Spanish language, there is little evidence of any European influence remaining in the country. The front page of the newspapers was covering not Euro 2008 but American baseball. The middle classes have a love for American style consumerism - be it really awful designer labeled clothing, lavish cars, a love for shopping malls and really expensive tacky bars and restaurants. Basically, if you have any cash in Venezuela, you do everything in your power to show it - bit like Ireland really !!
Two more little anecdotes about Chavez. The fucker decided that as part of his term in power that he would change the time. Yip, the time. So he moved the clocks back, not an hour, not two hours but ...... half an hour. If thats not egotistical I don´t know what is!
The other thing that struck me about Venezuela was that there were very few backpackers around (certainly compared to Colombia). But even of the backpackers I had met, there was one nation of people that were surprisingly missing. Nope not Americans but Israeli´s. Anyone who has travelled in Latin America or Asia will have met them in their truckloads. I couldn´t figure out why they weren´t there. Yeah its really expensive which would turn a lot of them away but still. So I put this to one of the locals , he started laughing ( a Chavista no doubt!). Apparently as Chavez is not exactly a fan of Israel, he makes them all apply for a visa to enter the country. So they don´t !
Friday, 18 July 2008
Merida
Merida is a nice university town sitting the mountains in the south west of Venezuela. It is also the base for many of the best outdoor activities in the country and thanfully for me, it was nicely cool and away from the sweltering heat of the coast.
I bumped into a lad from the States at the bus station. His name was Quinlan - his first name. Bit strange that but he was dead-on and we ended up knocking around together for the next few days. The fucker had spent the previous year in Rio as part of his masters studies and was about to start a PhD in Berkeley in a few months.
I bumped into a lad from the States at the bus station. His name was Quinlan - his first name. Bit strange that but he was dead-on and we ended up knocking around together for the next few days. The fucker had spent the previous year in Rio as part of his masters studies and was about to start a PhD in Berkeley in a few months.
Merida is a attractive enough place and in no way as edgy as Caracas. As Quinlan´s mum is a Dutchie, we both had a strong interest in watchin die Oranje play the Ruskies in the quarters but unfortunately they were well outplayed and went crashing out. We had two great nights out in el Hoyo and Biriosca. Suprisingly, Merida had a pretty lively nightlife, especially during the week due to the large student population. We met a rake of american students and another big gang of eh ´religious converters´.
One of the other inhabitants at our guest house. Comforting.
Quinlan headed back to Caracas after the poor bastard spent two days in bed crippled by the Scutts (!). Started hanging around with this crazy lad from Catalunya - Alfonso. My first impressions of him were rather worrying, that he was truly off his rocker. It must be added that this was during the Spain v Italy game. Man, it was like being at the match itself. Priceless. He practically watched the game from behind his hands and every twenty seconds or so he´d jump up off his seat and roar some obsenity at the top of his voice.
He nearly had a break down during the penalties. As each Italian would make the walk up to take the spotter, Alfonso would start roaring at the TV - insulting their mothers, questioning the legitimacy of their births etc and as a Catalan he left aside his disgust for all things Madrid and Royal for the duration of the game.
Watching the Russian game with him was a more tranquil affair due to the superiority of the Spanish team. In between the two games we headed further into the mountains with Sarah, a Kraut from near Bremen, to a village called Los Nevados. It took a very bumpy four hour jeep ride to get there and a five hour hike early the next morning (although Sarah took a mule much to our amusement) and then we descended on the longest and highest (apparently) cable car in the world.
The day after the game I took the bus and headed for Colombia, the focal point of my trip.
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