You are on a bus. Not a modern bus with new innovations like suspension, but one with a lot in common with a WW1 tank. Old is too new a word. Batterd to the point where you can't imagine it ever being new.
Cold rain is pelting down outside. You are sitting next to the door, or you would be if there was a door, but there is merely a gap in the side of the bus through which rain is now pouring. Your trousers are soaked, and you wished you had put on boots this morning instead of open sandals as your feet are now freezing, but it was sweltering on the way to the bus station- now you are in the mountains.
Next to you there is a young girl, with a baby, and all around stand local people (there are no other foreigners on the bus - they are in short supply here) with unlikely amounts of luggage - at least you have a seat. The road is a dirt track consisting of a series of potholes sewn together by ridges, grooves and cracks.
Your body is being shaken into numbness and your breakfast of eggs and rice (again!), despite only being given a one way ticket, is climbing from your stomach to get a look out of the window at the vistas that would be before you if you weren´t encased in cloud, its crampons seemingly digging in your throat as it scales its way up. At least an hour of the journey has already passed and there is only a further five to go.
The driver is equipped (as they all are) with an extra large bladder to avoid him having to stop; the comfort of the passengers is hardly his concern. He swerves the bus round each bend challenging the single track to grip the sliding hunk of junk and keep it on this most single of tracks.
Suddenly the rain stops and you are transported to a magical world of deep gorges carved from high mountains by what from this height look like no more than tiny streams. As the sun beats down it reveals the texture of the mountains - slashed with the scars of tiny rivers. Some peaks are covered in trees, other bare apart from a covering of velvet in stunning shades of green. It´s wonderful, more than you could have imagined.
A couple of hours later, long after my breakfast had returned to base camp, the almost endless wonderment is interupted by a schreeching halt, this time not a head on encounter with a bus or truck going the opposite way, but a god given stop for a piss ... and food. All it is wise to consume is a thin soup, which after finding unexpectedly sweet, I discover is made from sugar cane and water - and it is accompanied by a large slab of semi-soft cheese which you are supposed to dip in it.
As soon as the bus drivers spoon hits an empty bowl we are chasing him back to the bus lest we be permanently separated from our luggage, and soon pounding the road again, sitting like chickens on a spit in the roasting sunshine.
Not long after we are confronted a roadblock manned by teenagers bristling with assault rifles, and grenades attached to their tunics. Thankfully it is an army checkpoint. . We debus and all the men are frisked all over, including the groin (fully clothed I should mention, this is not a ´tackle out´ occasion) and baggage searched.
All of this is nothing out of the ordinary. This is Colombia.
Is it dangerous here? Well nowhere near as bad as the press and government advice would have you believe. Sure, there is always the chance of being mugged or even kidnapped, but the place is swarming with military and police, and you take all the precautions you can. And anyway if you had come all this way, and found out that it was really perfectly safe, then you would be really pissed off!
Since the beginning of December when I left Galapagos Islands I have spent a week in Banos in Ecuador trying to learn more Spanish, and then following a brief stop to visit a indiginous market, headed north tothe Colombian border. I crossed after dark (well I had to do something to make it more interesting) and have wound my way up to Bogota, all by bus - there are no trains here.
High points
- Not been mugged yet.
- Not been robbed yet.
- Not been kidnapped yet.
- Not been shot yet.
I reserve the right to retract any, or all, of these foolish statements, at a later date.
- The scenery so far (inn the south west of Colombia) has been breathtaking - and I have spent many hours on buses in the past week and a half, plus four days in the mountains. The rock here is soft and hence there are very deep and steep gorges, surrounding jagged peaks. The roads are usually carved into the rock along the sides of the gorges providing excellent views.
- San Augustin - Remains of a lost culture up to 5,500 years old. There are hundereds of statues (some like totem poles, others like a childs drawing), from half metre to 4 mertres high carved out of stone and to guard the graves of the dead and to worship them. All statues were buried underground to save them when the Incas conquered the civilisation probably in about 1450 AD. Powerful symbols of an advanced civilisation with some evidence (although in my mind not conclusive, but then I am 'septic') that they had links with Egypt and India.
- Tierradentro - A similar but different civilisation carved out underground tombs in solid rock to store the remains of the most important people. They are up to 3m high, and 5m radius (semicircular in area) with the entrance about 6m deep accessed by steps carved down into the rock.
- The indiginous market in Sasquisili, Ecuador. I arrived early and was the only non-indiginous person around for a while. To my delight they sold nothing I could buy, apart from traditional pastries and fruit. I could have bought 30 kg of carrots for US$5 (3 British pounds), or a llama, but I didn´t enter negotiations on that one. All the people were wearing their usual dress, the women in bowler hats and colourful skirts and socks. The men struggle (ie dont do) with the traditional dress although some manage to wear a hat.
- As there is a shortage of guerillas to fight here in Colombia (they have retreated to the mountains) the main function of the police (apart from standing around trying to look threatening) is to maintain a large crib right outside the police station and stick as many figures on it as possible (almost everyone is catholic here). The records so far for plastic sheep in a crib outside a police station, is 70, plus all the attendent, shepherds, kings, donkeys etc.
- The lack of foreigners in Colombia - usually this is a good thing, but it does have drawbacks like being stared at by the locals and if a group is required to hire a jeep for the day then you either have to wait a few days to get enough people or miss out.
Low Points
- Homework! Never thought I would ever do it again, but it crops up a lot when learning spanish. Four hours of brain numbing conversation and learning about the structure, followed by Homework! in the afternoon.
- The Xmas decorations are exactly the same as at home. Snowflakakes, snowmen, icicles etc... And this is the equator! I came all this way to get away from that.
- Bus rides. Up to 11 hours a day on some bouncy roads does not endear buses to me. Loads more to come though - maybe the roads will be better if I dont go to such remote places. Oddly enough it is always the locals that throw up. This may be gods way of telling them to build better roads!
- Watching Colombian football on TV. It is constantly being interupted by adverts ( about 10secs every minute) where the bottom third of the screen is taken over by an advert and the commentry is cut to allow the advertisers to annoy you. This is random so if a goal is being scored at that moment - tough. I haven´t watched much football here.....
Next it if off to Venezula ... after Xmas.
Feliz Navidad y neuve ano (Happy Xmas and New year) from Bogota.
Luv
Pete
Saturday 20 December 2003
Tuesday 9 December 2003
Where 21 - Galapagos Islands, Ecuador --OR-- Dancing with Sealions
HI there,
It doesn´t seem 5 mins since I left the cold and rain of England for the slightly warmer climes of the equator, but time is moving on, unfortunately faster than I am and the Xmas trees with flashing lights are taking over the shops and houses here making me think it is time to think about where I will be for Xmas and new year - Colombia or Venezula seem to be the very likely answers right now, but who knows.
Since leaving on 11 Nov I spent as little time as possible in Quito (Ecuador) and flew out to Galapagos where I have spent a couple of weeks (several days too long - see later) but then they are a unique ecosystem, infact a whole string of unique ecosystems as each island has it´s own.
The Best Bits
- The whole of the Galapagos is wonderful, its animals, some unique others not, are more friendly than an especially cuddly cat! In particular...
- Dancing with sealions - on the beach they are approachable (within a metre) but most of the time just lie there sunbathing. In the water they are not only agile, fast and curious they actually play games with you. Imagine a torpedo whizzing past, by the time you realise what it was, it´s gone. But it returns, this 1.5m sealion, effortlesly accelerating through the water straight for your mask and veering away when only a metre from your nose, then going eyeball to eyeball with its enormous drugged out bulging eyes, and having it swim round you, do backflips in perfect circles in front of your nose, bubbles pouring from its mouth, squarking 'can´t you do this' before it picks stones from the bottom in it's mouth and tries to give them to you. After a while you realise that it is trying to teach you tricks - just a bit of role reversal, after all we clumsy people can teach them nothing about agility in water. After 20 mins or so with the same animal you begin to understand it, know what to expect next. Then it hangs upside down in the water grinning at you - too close to take a picture as it will be out of focus - somehow I feel it knows that - Just Playing it is. It made my day, I hope I added something to its.
- Blue footed boobies - And yes there are loads of t-shirts on sale with a piture of 2 blue feet and the line ´I love Boobies´ underneath. They really are birds with blue feet and so entertaining they are named after the spanish word for clown ´Bobo´. They look pretty stupid and act even stupidier e.g. showing its blue feet is the way of attracting a mate, whether it washes them first I dont know. They are the best fishers though, zipping vertically into the water with swept back wings at incredible speed and gobbling its catch before surfacing else the Frigate birds (with huge red, heart shaped inflated chests will nick its fish).
- Pelicans - The most clumsy animals I have ever seen. They crash in to the sea with a large element of random precision and rely on scooping out a huge slice of water with their expanding pouches filtering it for small fish. In the air they are flying dinosaurs, and on land waddle awkwardly over each other and anything that gets in their way, usually resulting in them falling over each other or into a hole, constantly using their unweildy wings as surrogate arms to stop themselves or pull themselves up. They even steal the fisheads from the fishermen, store them in their pouches and sit their quite contentedly until they are alone, then having to spit out the fish only to realise it is too big for them to eat. Next to them stands the super efficient heron, bewildered by their antics and losing out to the numbers and brute force of its clumsy competitors.
- Penguins - yes they have penguins on the equator - watching them fly through the water chasing shoals of fish is remarkable. Where their power comes from is not clear, but they are elegant and ..... and they are penguins ... what more do you need!?
- Tortoises of the Giant kind - 1.5m long and living to over 150 years old - the oldest know one was 152 when it died in an accident, but no-one knows how old the current ones are. The are prehistoric, stretching their wrinkled necks out to reveal toothless grins, they rip the grass out by its roots and clamber with painful awkwardness over to a new patch of grass. Each one has a different personality, retracting with a hydraulic hiss, in its mountainous shell or posing elegantly for photos, they are magnificent animals - though why anyone thought it necessary to invent them is difficult to understand...
- Hanging out with the white tipped reef sharks about 10m down whilst scuba diving in the harsh and unpredictable currents whilst scuba diving. More evidence of our clumsiness as we desperatly cling onto the rocks to avaid being swept away, they just hang in the same spot hardly making any movement. They swim within a couple of metres and look curiously at me with their tiny squinty eye. I wonder what it was thinking? I know what I was thinking ... that´s probably close enough... And then a 4m hammerhead shark cruises by with eyes sticking out of its hammer - strange them sharks.
- Getting bored yet, well there was hanging out with the turtles as they fed on the weed on the rocks just below the surface, calmly being swept back and forth in the swell; The yellow, 2m long land iguanas, black marine iguanas unique to here - every few minutes they spit out salt to keep their bodies pH balanced - they are dragons with wry smiles, wrikled skin and spikes along the back and head - punk rock started here!
Enough Enough - we want to hear some bad bits! I hear you, so here they are:
- Missing Englands triumph in the world cup - it wasn´t on tv in Galapagos - England World Champions! (rugby that is, and for all you who dont know the game - its like american footbal witout the padding or the time outs - and more than one team competes in the world champships). And to all those Aussies reading this ...Unluckly mates HaHaHaHaHaHa....etc.
- Rice, rice bloody rice. Asia is the home of rice and South America the home of the potato.... so why do they serve rice with everything? Potato comes with rice, spaghetti comes with rice, and if you are nieve enough to just ask for rice you get a double helping. Rice twice a day really is too much of a (cheap but) indifferent thing.
-The Galapagos cost a fortune, over US$1,000 to: fly there from Ecuador, national park entry, 8 day boat trip, so l will have to survive on the delicious rice they serve here from now on!
- Taking the round trip to the airport twice and failing to get on a plane (7 hours each time inc the 4 hours waiting at the airport). Third time I was lucky.
- The equator at sea level. It's got to be really hot right. No. Its cloudy nearly all the time and there is a slight chill in the evening. I mean it´s not like an english chill, but this is the equator - I had to wear long trousers in the evening, how ridiculous is that ... But the water must be warm? Sometimes - but then sometimes the cold Humboldt current from Antartica suddenly rises to the surface and it is like having an ice cold shower! BBBBrrrrrrr.....
- In a protected area of the Darwin Research station there is Lonesome George - a giant tortoise just hanging out. He is lonesome because he is the last of a species. They very last tortoise from a particular island, all the rest have been killed by man. They dont know how old he is, but he wont mate with similar species of tortoise from other islands at the moment, maybe he will in 50 or 100 years time, who knows. Imagine being the very last of a species .. now that´s tough.
Heading off to learn a bit more spanish in Banos and then into Colombia - maybe then it will get mote interesting - for you at least!
Bye for now
LuvPete
It doesn´t seem 5 mins since I left the cold and rain of England for the slightly warmer climes of the equator, but time is moving on, unfortunately faster than I am and the Xmas trees with flashing lights are taking over the shops and houses here making me think it is time to think about where I will be for Xmas and new year - Colombia or Venezula seem to be the very likely answers right now, but who knows.
Since leaving on 11 Nov I spent as little time as possible in Quito (Ecuador) and flew out to Galapagos where I have spent a couple of weeks (several days too long - see later) but then they are a unique ecosystem, infact a whole string of unique ecosystems as each island has it´s own.
The Best Bits
- The whole of the Galapagos is wonderful, its animals, some unique others not, are more friendly than an especially cuddly cat! In particular...
- Dancing with sealions - on the beach they are approachable (within a metre) but most of the time just lie there sunbathing. In the water they are not only agile, fast and curious they actually play games with you. Imagine a torpedo whizzing past, by the time you realise what it was, it´s gone. But it returns, this 1.5m sealion, effortlesly accelerating through the water straight for your mask and veering away when only a metre from your nose, then going eyeball to eyeball with its enormous drugged out bulging eyes, and having it swim round you, do backflips in perfect circles in front of your nose, bubbles pouring from its mouth, squarking 'can´t you do this' before it picks stones from the bottom in it's mouth and tries to give them to you. After a while you realise that it is trying to teach you tricks - just a bit of role reversal, after all we clumsy people can teach them nothing about agility in water. After 20 mins or so with the same animal you begin to understand it, know what to expect next. Then it hangs upside down in the water grinning at you - too close to take a picture as it will be out of focus - somehow I feel it knows that - Just Playing it is. It made my day, I hope I added something to its.
- Blue footed boobies - And yes there are loads of t-shirts on sale with a piture of 2 blue feet and the line ´I love Boobies´ underneath. They really are birds with blue feet and so entertaining they are named after the spanish word for clown ´Bobo´. They look pretty stupid and act even stupidier e.g. showing its blue feet is the way of attracting a mate, whether it washes them first I dont know. They are the best fishers though, zipping vertically into the water with swept back wings at incredible speed and gobbling its catch before surfacing else the Frigate birds (with huge red, heart shaped inflated chests will nick its fish).
- Pelicans - The most clumsy animals I have ever seen. They crash in to the sea with a large element of random precision and rely on scooping out a huge slice of water with their expanding pouches filtering it for small fish. In the air they are flying dinosaurs, and on land waddle awkwardly over each other and anything that gets in their way, usually resulting in them falling over each other or into a hole, constantly using their unweildy wings as surrogate arms to stop themselves or pull themselves up. They even steal the fisheads from the fishermen, store them in their pouches and sit their quite contentedly until they are alone, then having to spit out the fish only to realise it is too big for them to eat. Next to them stands the super efficient heron, bewildered by their antics and losing out to the numbers and brute force of its clumsy competitors.
- Penguins - yes they have penguins on the equator - watching them fly through the water chasing shoals of fish is remarkable. Where their power comes from is not clear, but they are elegant and ..... and they are penguins ... what more do you need!?
- Tortoises of the Giant kind - 1.5m long and living to over 150 years old - the oldest know one was 152 when it died in an accident, but no-one knows how old the current ones are. The are prehistoric, stretching their wrinkled necks out to reveal toothless grins, they rip the grass out by its roots and clamber with painful awkwardness over to a new patch of grass. Each one has a different personality, retracting with a hydraulic hiss, in its mountainous shell or posing elegantly for photos, they are magnificent animals - though why anyone thought it necessary to invent them is difficult to understand...
- Hanging out with the white tipped reef sharks about 10m down whilst scuba diving in the harsh and unpredictable currents whilst scuba diving. More evidence of our clumsiness as we desperatly cling onto the rocks to avaid being swept away, they just hang in the same spot hardly making any movement. They swim within a couple of metres and look curiously at me with their tiny squinty eye. I wonder what it was thinking? I know what I was thinking ... that´s probably close enough... And then a 4m hammerhead shark cruises by with eyes sticking out of its hammer - strange them sharks.
- Getting bored yet, well there was hanging out with the turtles as they fed on the weed on the rocks just below the surface, calmly being swept back and forth in the swell; The yellow, 2m long land iguanas, black marine iguanas unique to here - every few minutes they spit out salt to keep their bodies pH balanced - they are dragons with wry smiles, wrikled skin and spikes along the back and head - punk rock started here!
Enough Enough - we want to hear some bad bits! I hear you, so here they are:
- Missing Englands triumph in the world cup - it wasn´t on tv in Galapagos - England World Champions! (rugby that is, and for all you who dont know the game - its like american footbal witout the padding or the time outs - and more than one team competes in the world champships). And to all those Aussies reading this ...Unluckly mates HaHaHaHaHaHa....etc.
- Rice, rice bloody rice. Asia is the home of rice and South America the home of the potato.... so why do they serve rice with everything? Potato comes with rice, spaghetti comes with rice, and if you are nieve enough to just ask for rice you get a double helping. Rice twice a day really is too much of a (cheap but) indifferent thing.
-The Galapagos cost a fortune, over US$1,000 to: fly there from Ecuador, national park entry, 8 day boat trip, so l will have to survive on the delicious rice they serve here from now on!
- Taking the round trip to the airport twice and failing to get on a plane (7 hours each time inc the 4 hours waiting at the airport). Third time I was lucky.
- The equator at sea level. It's got to be really hot right. No. Its cloudy nearly all the time and there is a slight chill in the evening. I mean it´s not like an english chill, but this is the equator - I had to wear long trousers in the evening, how ridiculous is that ... But the water must be warm? Sometimes - but then sometimes the cold Humboldt current from Antartica suddenly rises to the surface and it is like having an ice cold shower! BBBBrrrrrrr.....
- In a protected area of the Darwin Research station there is Lonesome George - a giant tortoise just hanging out. He is lonesome because he is the last of a species. They very last tortoise from a particular island, all the rest have been killed by man. They dont know how old he is, but he wont mate with similar species of tortoise from other islands at the moment, maybe he will in 50 or 100 years time, who knows. Imagine being the very last of a species .. now that´s tough.
Heading off to learn a bit more spanish in Banos and then into Colombia - maybe then it will get mote interesting - for you at least!
Bye for now
LuvPete
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